Pizzo Calabro – A First Look at Calabria

After the short flight from Rome to Lamezia Terme on the Saturday before Palm Sunday, we piled into our van and drove to Pizzo (or Pizzo Calabro), a small town perched at the top of a cliff overlooking the Gulf of Saint Euphemia. We had reservations in a small set of apartments near the bottom of the hill, so we initially tried to weave our van through the narrow winding streets. Several times we needed 6-point turns just to turn the corner, so tight was the space between the buildings on either side of the street! Finally threading our way to a more open space, we decided that reaching our destination by car was going to be impossible. Instead we disembarked in the quiet village square and dragged our luggage down the cobblestone streets toward our waiting rooms.

Across the street from our temporary residence was poetry, carved into the cement risers of a stepped passageway leading back uphill toward the town square. Just one of many surprises to come.

Making our way back up hill in search of lunch, we found a square lined by cafés, all of which advertised themselves as selling gelato. Actual food seemed secondary, but we did manage to find a place willing to make us pasta and salads, all of which were quite acceptable. (They solemnly informed us that pizza was only made in the evening.) We even found the town’s master tartuffo maker. He happily demonstrated how two different flavor ice creams are combined in his cupped hands, which then form them into a ball with a concave center into which he pours a chocolate-hazelnut syrup, proceeding then to quickly close up the hole, wrap the whole thing in paper, and transfer it back to a freezer to harden for a few hours. Mr. Morino has been doing this since opening his shop in 1973, as his son proudly explained to us.

The village was quiet, as tourist season does not really start until May and begins in earnest in June. But the weather, although brisk, did not keep us from wandering around the old town fortifications overlooking the sea and then down to the seaside itself. A sculpture made of wire mesh was particularly striking, as it watched over the port, striking a very modern pose. Elsewhere we wandered up and down narrow streets and passageways, often leading to the sea at their bottom.  As people poked their heads out of windows and doors, we occasionally started up conversations.  A group of men played cards at one of the cafés on the square, and the barber next door kept busy with customers.

Other men hung around the action, watching both the card game and the people passing by.

The next day, however, was Palm Sunday, and townspeople came out to go to church, parading with children and palm fronds. The churches themselves were also decorated with palm fronds and other greens.

A few of us hiked about ½ mile out of town to visit the Chiesetta di Piedigrotto, a cave near the shore filled with biblical figures and scenes, carved into the cave walls and stalagmites. 

Returning to town and gathering in the square with our luggage, we were surprised to see a parade of church officiants and townspeople approaching us, with flags and palm fronds, on their way to one of the churches.  Surely a treat as a send-off!

Maratea on Easter Sunday

We found ourselves in Maratea on a cold and episodically rainy Easter Sunday. Maratea is a port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea, with an ancient history and more than 40 churches, some dating to the 16th century. Evidence of settlement dates to the Paleolithic era, and the town was recorded to exist as far back as In the 15th–14th century BC. Above the town stands the marble statue Christ the Redeemer, which overlooks the town and its harbor. At this time of year, most visitors are Italian, including a hiking club from Umbria (pictured posing in front of the statue).

There is a small bus that will take you near the top of the statue mount for 1 euro (well worth it). From there, a path leads to the church on the mount and to the statue. A few concession stands offer tourist souvenirs and snacks. But the views are wonderful, and the marble statue itself is quite amazing.

View of the harbor from the statue mount

Sunburst over the shoulder of the statue

The port of Maratea, viewed from the statue mount

View of the bay from a road near the top of the town of Maratea on Mount San Biagio.

An Umbrian hiking club posing for their group picture in front of the statue

Town scenes

We had our daily coffee and croissant breakfast, as well as one lunch, at this café. The proprietor was an amazingly energetic woman who worked day and night. And the food was excellent (as was the gelato).

U Ballu di Diavulu (the Dance of the Devils) in Prizzi

Easter morning in Palermo, on a gray gusty day, was preternaturally quiet.

Fruit vendor in Palermo Easter morning

After wandering the markets provisioning Easter dinners in town, we set off on a two-hour drive (that is, when you don’t get lost) to 28 km from nowhere (otherwise known as the town of Corleone).

View of Prizzi from the road leading up to town.

Because on Easter Sunday, U Ballu di Diavulu (the Dance of the Devils) is celebrated in Prizzi, and the Devils and Death dance in the streets between Jesus and Mary.

The Devils and Death carouse among the crowd and the band.

Death, fully masked and dressed in yellow, with a crossbow in his hand, careens along the main street of the  city in his search for souls among the crowd to take to hell. The Devils wear red overalls and masks, with manes of hair framing their heads and falling down their backs.

The Devils and Death get down to it.

Together they bounce up and down the narrow cobblestone street, crashing into spectators, grabbing people out of the crowd, dancing with some, and then with each other.

Dancing with the Devils

His granddaughter is not so sure things are really okay.

Together with Death, the devils spend hours playing a frenzied catch and release game with people in the crowd,  while an energetic band tries to keep up with them.

The band plays the tune as the Devils and Death dance in the streets.

The devils and death pretend to capture people of all ages, leading them into a nearby tavern, where the victims are “locked up” until they pay an obolo, a small sum of money, after which they leave with Easter candy.

The Devil capturing a father with his daughter atop his shoulders.

A Devil scales a second floor balcony.

The peak of the event occurs when Death and the Devils try to prevent the joining together of the mourning Virgin Mary, cloaked in black, and the Resurrected Christ statues that until this point have been at opposite ends of the main street of Prizzi.

Carrying the Virgin Mary toward the Resurrected Jesus

Finally, angels intervene, death and the devils bow obeisance to Jesus and Mary, the Virgin Mary loses her black cape and shows herself with a light blue dress, and the reunification of Jesus and Mary in the town square represents the triumph of good over evil.

Death and a Devil bowing down before the Virgin Mary in front of the crowd

A guardian of the Resurrected Jesus.

Resurrected Jesus being carried forward toward the Virgin Mary.

Originally thought to have been a pagan feast to celebrate the arrival of Spring, the Dance of the Devils is one of the most notable Easter events in Sicily and attracts both the locals as well as spectators from all over the world.  In fact, there was a ‘feeding frenzy’ of photographers battling each other to get the best photos. Yours truly among them.

 

Sicily — First Impressions

Belonging is not possible. Having is a mirage. Connecting is recognition of the human condition .

Seaside on Porticello

Wandering small towns east of Palermo, we met fishermen, boat builders and repairers, cafe owners and waiters, old men having a smoke or playing cards. The sun played hide and seek with the rain for two days. The dense monotone of a dark cloudy sky would give way to a warm sun, which was quickly banished by a fitful rain.

Building a deck for the back of his boat

Pressure washing a boat under repair in Porticello

Having a smoke in Porticello

Restaurant owner in Porticello

Throughout, we searched out subjects for our cameras. Children in school were hardly visible most of the day, and women, singly or occasionally in pairs, could be sighted only rarely marketing or apparently running errands, but almost never standing or sitting in groups, like the men.

Woman buying meat for dinner at the local butcher’s in Castelbuono

The men, some young but mostly old pensioners, welcomed us into their social clubs and card games. One 95 year old man, Giovanni, told us about his life and how he was still in love with his wife, who had passed away 13 years ago. Talking about her, his face lit up and he put his arms around himself as if he were embracing her, his eyes shining with emotion as he did so.

Giovanni, 95 years old, in Castelbuomo

The women go to church. The men not so much. As the sun prepared to set, while the women prayed, the men chatted outside on the church portico, dodging the rain, telling stories and laughing with old friends.

Old friends waiting outside church for their wives

Shadows and Reflections (Portugal and the Allegory of the Cave)

Plato was a wise man, who understood our imperfect ability to perceive the world in front of us.

Through glass, darkly

Plato described how Socrates explained to the students gathered around him that their perceptions were poor reflections of the world around them. 

Reflections in a window

Reflected light through stained glass

Socrates compared their knowledge of the world to that of prisoners in a cave. The prisoners were shackled, so that they could not turn their heads or bodies and look behind them. Thus, the only thing they saw were shadows cast onto the wall in front of them by the movement of people and objects in front of the light of a fire behind them.

Shadows in the train station

To the prisoners, these shadows were their reality. However, once the prisoners were unshackled, several things happened. First, they saw that what they had taken for reality was only shadows.

Light and shadow

Then, upon leaving the cave, they were first blinded by the brighter light outside and then illuminated by the sun and the sights of the world outside the cave. Finally, they tried to re-enter the cave, only to discover that they could no longer perceive the shadows as well as the current prisoners, as their eyes were now adjusted to sunlight (and truth).

Boats

In what way was Socrates’ view like that of Buddha’s? Buddhism’s view of an illusory world points to the way the world is constantly changing, especially through the effects of our own perceptual biases.

Seen through smoke

All the world is a phantasm of suffering, which we can choose to perceive and invest with reality or not. However, to Buddha, things were not what they seemed, and what was spiritually real was hidden behind the inconstant appearance of the world we see. Thus we must use our inner mind to distinguish between that which is perceived and that which exists but is undetected.

Reality and reflection merge

Photography is yet another way of grasping and bringing to a vivid understanding things which are seen but not always perceived.

Doorway

Stairs

By focusing from a particular vantage point or on a certain object, even by directing our attention to shadows and reflections, photography at its best can show us heretofore unperceived realities in the world around us.

Window or reflection?

And thus, I offer this set of images of shadows and reflections, in which I have tried to find new ways of seeing what is in front of me.

Train doors

 

Baker and customer

Looking and seeing: Finding the different in the similar (Portugal)

We often think we travel to get away–away from the cares and away from the pressures of our daily lives.

But for those of us who travel far, we often go seeking to find something different, even perhaps something exotic. To an extent, the purpose remains to escape our own lives, be it the humdrum, or the have-to’s. But we also travel to find something else. Frequently, that something extra is ourselves, revealed to us against a backdrop different from the one that defines our daily existence and thereby defines who we are.  That goal, however, is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve, as the world, and especially the Western world, grows more homogeneous.

Portugal, especially in its cities, offers its guests much the same as do New York, London, and Paris, from the Hermes boutique to McDonalds’ fast food. But to discover ourselves, we need to see the differences among the similarities. And if we come specifically to do photography, then the images we discover become part of our sense of ourselves.

Certainly, coming from the United States, one clear sign of otherness is the age and architecture of many of the buildings. The esthetic of how the old and new are combined and contrast with each other is often peculiar to a specific place.

Porto, on the northern coast of Portugal, is one of the oldest urban centers in Europe, having first been settled as an outpost of the Roman empire.

 City wall and view over a bridge in fog, Porto

Children gather and play as they do everywhere; but in Tomar, Portugal, they may cluster around an iPad or iPhone at the foot of an ancient fountain in the plaza in front of the Convent of Christ, built by the Knights Templar in Tomar in the 12^th century.

Sharing a game on the steps of a fountain

And shadows are cast by different, more intriguing shapes. The Cloister of John III in the convent of Christ in Tomar was built in the 16^th century. It is considered one of the most important examples of Mannerist architecture in Portugal. The two stories are connected to each other by four elegant helicoidal stairways, located at each corner of the cloisters.

Light and shadows, helicoidal staircase, Cloister of John III , Convent of Christ, Tomar

Of course, anywhere in Europe, the churches, monasteries and cathedrals are major tourist attractions. But as magnificent as many are, the opulence is also a reminder of the fact that they were erected as monuments to a deity that preached helping the poor and downtrodden, while the church of the times in which these monuments were built largely ignored their poor, at the same time promulgating the suffering of the crusades and inquisitions. Nonetheless, many Portuguese are devout Catholics, and their faith undoubtedly brings them relief from suffering and hope in the future.

Heartfelt prayer

Which brings us back to the people, who more than the edifices and castle walls help us rediscover ourselves and our own unique humanness.  The old women, both proudly erect and bent over, are nonetheless on the streets, with their own sense of determination.

Going shopping

Three generations, out for a stroll

The train stations are the melting pots of the cities. Farewells, greetings, arrivals and departures are all intermingled.

While the quiet places, such as the Cistercian monastery of Alcobaça, also help people find each other.

 

Close to Home

Unrecorded have gone trips to Sri Lanka, London and India, among other places. But now, having just traveled out of town four weeks running, I am looking forward to staying closer to home for at least a little while.

North Carolina used to be tobacco country. Farmers could make a pretty good living growing tobacco, and several towns around the state were consistently redolent with the smell of curing tobacco.  Now, we go to Hyco Lake, in the heart of tobacco country, to enjoy lakeside recreation. The houses along the shore are increasingly upscale and pricey; the old bungalows are vanishing.  But not too long ago, the land inundated by damming the Hyco River to make a source of water for cooling a nearby coal power plant was growing tobacco.  And on the land still above water, the old tobacco drying sheds and log houses of past denizens can still be seen on our morning walks. Here are just a few views. Someday I would like to spend more time (with a car as well as a camera) to capture more of these crumbling buildings of a past age, now being engulfed by nature.

Neighborhood Children

After working at my computer all morning, I decided to walk around the neighborhood. For a change, the skies looked reliably without rain. But rather than sticking to the main streets, I started exploring the small alleys on each side. There I found mostly women and children. As often occurs in India, life was being conducted on the stoops of houses and in the doorways. Although I am sure they don’t often see a foreign tourist roaming their narrow passageways far from main streets, they were mostly welcoming. Smiles and sign language passed in both directions.

At first, the children were wary. But gradually, they warmed to the idea of a smiling grandma wanting to take their pictures. And some would have posed for pictures for hours!

Practicing the alphabet on her slate

First he drew a house. Then he wrote his ABC’s and his numbers. Finally he wrote his name, Siddarth.

Two young women in an alley.

She wouldn’t look at me until she was in mommy’s arms.

Rice powder patterns welcome the visitor.

Children in the doorway with laundry

Our gang #1

Our gang, #2

Coming home from school.

School buddies

Soon after  returning from my walk, a torrential rain blew in and our floor in the hotel was flooded. But for a few hours, it had been a sunny day with lighthearted children.

Ganesh Immersion – The Final Night

Last night, after dinner, we walked out of our hotel and into the surrounding neighborhood, to see how the community was preparing for the final night of Ganesha Chaturthi. After walking a few blocks, we found a community center with a temple devoted to Ganesh set up inside.

We started peeking into the door and windows, and immediately were invited inside. The crowd even kept pushing us forward so we could see the action even better. Inside, families were offering pujas, and a holy man was seated in front of the Ganesh statue, receiving offerings and dispensing blessings.

Offerings to Ganesh

Sayings prayers and asking for blessings

The children were dressed up, and the young men were wearing special colorful turbans.

Children with turbans and a drum

Dressed for the party

While we waited for the Ganesh statue in the community center to be moved to the truck that was to take it to Hussain Sagar to be immersed in the water, another nearby temple had loaded its Ganesh statue and was starting the procession down the hill and toward the lake. So we left the first temple to see the action outside.Everyone wanted to ride on the truck with Ganesh.

The truck was blessed by the holy man, and the way was lead by bands of drummers.

Another Ganesh on the way to immersion

The last of the drummers were ready to go home for the night.

Drummers ready to rest for the night

And so were we!

Hyderabad -Just in time for festivals

Coming from Dubai, where the temperatures were generally above 100 during daylight hours (and only slightly below that at night), our arrival in the evening in Hyderabad offered a welcome change. Temperatures in the 70’s, not suffocatingly humid, we immediately had smiles on our faces. Two days of touring around Hyderabad were on our agenda, and we learned quickly that we had arrived as the city anticipated two major holidays.

The Hindu festival, called Ganesha Chaturthi, honors the elephant-headed god Ganesh, who is the god of knowledge. The festival goes on for 10 days and is celebrated both in homes and in public areas. At home, families install new Ganesh shrines and generally celebrate with family and friends.

But the high point of the festival is the immersion of Ganesh idols in local lakes. On a gray day, we went to Hussain Sagar (Hussain Lake), the largest lake in Hyderabad,  to see the action. The Ganesh icons are (supposed to be) made of clay and thus are temporary idols meant to be returned to nature. They vary in size from 10-12 inches to much larger than a man and are invariably painted in bright colors and festooned with garlands and gold ribbons.  The large ones require cranes to lift them off truck beds after several strong men maneuver the statues on to the platform hanging from the crane. The cranes then swing them over the crowd of watchers and down to the surface of the lake, where it takes some strong pushing by the men riding on the suspended platform to topple them over into the water, with the crowd watching eagerly from the shore.

 

Bringing the family’s Ganesh for immersion

 

Ganesh goes up

Watching from Daddy’s arms

Into the water of Hussain Sagar

Also coming quickly after our arrival was the Bakrid festival, also called the Festival of the Sacrifice (Ein Al-Adha). This holiday celebrates the people’s willingness to follow God’s commands and marks the time of Ibrahim (Abraham)’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac in obedience to God. It also delineates the end of the annual Hajj to Mecca. On this holiday, families buy and sacrifice an animal (generally by beheading). In many countries, this is a cow, but in India, it is a sheep or goat. As a result, temporary goat and sheep markets had sprung up all over the city, along the sides of roads and in small empty lots. Country roads were clogged with goats and sheep being herded to market to be sold for these sacrifices.

Goats being driven to market for Bakrid

In fact, all the markets in the old city were buzzing in preparation for the holiday and its feast.

The bangles market in old Hyderabad

Fruit seller in the market

Pomegranates bursting with juice