What seems like an orange pregnant with a baby orange and may well simply be an interesting mutation in a Sicilian orange (some of which, I found out as I stood outside a display of oranges for sale in front of a gas station, are actually strains of Washington Navels)—I take as a lucky reminder of the distinctive goodness of Sicilian food. Among the new foods I tried, I can remember a grilled horsemeat wrap that tasted maybe like a Big-Mac, pasta bathed in a black squid-ink sauce, and stewed cow spleen in a sandwich. Among the tastiest were the chocolate in Modica and some strawberry granita I had in a Palermo shop owned by a hospitable old gentleman. Experiencing these memorable foods added to the curiosity for cuisine that Bowdoin Dining has helped spark in me. Too, partaking in the special culture around food Italians and Sicilians share—sitting down for longer meals, enjoying the conversation and laughter of good company—definitely served our group well in getting to know each other on a more personal level outside of our lives as academics. When Sue asked Victoria and me to share the weird orange with her, it wasn’t that weird.

Mt. Etna was a fun way to put a top to our trip on our last full day in Italy. In addition to the great and distinct meanings the still-active volcano has inspired among Sicilians over the centuries, including among its Greeks and Romans and its more contemporary writers of modern literature, the significance of the volcano as a geological site was also intriguing to me, since just last semester I fulfilled my INS requirement with an Earth and Oceanographic Science class in which we covered volcanoes. Although I could have benefitted from brushing up on some of the course material or having Cam’s company and his EOS knowledge, I really enjoyed examining some of the rock and seeing the traces of the volcano’s wrath as the bus winded us up toward it. I pondered how exactly the physical and geological aspects of the volcano/mountain have influenced popular and literary perceptions of it, especially considering its geological and cultural connection with Mt. Vesuvius over in Naples.

Although this picture does not do justice to the most proportionally beautiful proportional church façade I’ve seen, it does show the various architectural features that make the Duomo di Siracusa a(n) (out)standing example of the amalgam of peoples who have come to call Sicily home over the centuries. Those Doric columns to the left—fluted, apparently monolithic, and accompanied above by the bottom vestiges of triglyphs—once stood as part of a Greek temple constructed around the 5^th century BC. The temple, which may have originally built to convert an even older religious space, was then converted into a Catholic church in the 6^th or 7^th century, which was converted into a mosque by the Muslims in 878, which was reconverted into a Catholic church by the Normans after 1085. The façade, to the right, with its beautiful columns and intricate designs, flamboyantly displays the Sicilian Baroque architecture popular on the island in the 16 and 1700s; it also suitably cements the cathedral’s (and the Church’s) position as the most prominent part of the plaza del Duomo, the city’s public domain.

Il Valle dei Tempi: Michele, standing on the same massive altar on which I’m sitting, finishes taking a picture of the beautiful landscape behind me (the kind of landscapes the ancient Greeks loved to frame as the backdrop for their monumental buildings); Kim smiles for a picture I’ll guess Sue is taking; some other tourists walk by after having admired the sight; and Prof. Boyd smiles as she calls our attention to begin her lecture on this one impressive temple of several others in the archaeological park. The ruddy color on the inner temple walls persists as evidence to the capture and subsequent burning of the town by invading Carthaginians around 406 BC. One of the defining parts of our trip was having among us two expert scholars—Prof. Boyd and Prof. Gavioli—to enlighten us with their lectures, answer our questions and ask some thought-provoking ones, and point out things that we otherwise would have probably missed. Between them, the juxtaposition of ancient Roman and Greek themes with more contemporary, literary Italian ones, helped to place each topic in better context.

Here’s the view of the small valley below the path that cuts from Pirandello’s childhood house to the garden and boulder where ashes lie (and the ashes of some other Italians, as tells Prof. Gavioli interesting story). It was looking out over the valley, walking back to the bus after visiting the tomb, that we saw a flock of sheep being herded by two pastors—one in the front and one in the back (this one can barely be made out in the picture)—through the small grassy hillside and past a set of railroad tracks into the distance. I was naturally impressed by the scene because it was the first time I’d seen the herding of a flock, and it stuck with me even more because it contrasted in several ways to the rather Biblical images I have of shepherding: the shepherds were dressed like normal civilians; the backdrop was not some idyllic landscape but not-too-distant rows of high-rise buildings in either direction, in the picture’s backdrop and behind us on the path; and the sheep, even the last few stragglers, continued over the railroad tracks as if it were pasture. In mind were the Italian class’s talk about the conflict between civilized modernization in which northern Italy prides itself and the more rural life of southern Italy: I could see the conflict physically manifested before me and how, just as the sheep and shepherds went on, life seems to go on despite or alongside the intrusion of new things. Fresh in mind, too, were some of the lines in Book V of the Aeneid, and I could imagine these two young pastors as a couple of the many Sicilian youth from the countryside who, eager for pride, entered the footrace sponsored by Aeneas.