Halloween 2014, Tutti i Santi, Festa dei Morti.

This year for Halloween I got a nice pumpkin well several really and carved the big one.
I have been doing this since I was a little kid 50 odd years. I put the pumpkins on the balcony, we are not expecting any kids at all, since our building is mostly older adults with no kids. There are some kids but I do not know if they are around tonight. Of course tomorrow is the Dia de los Muertos, the day of the dead 1 November, a big tradition in Mexico and in many countries like Poland. Two countries where I have lived and saw their traditions. Very interesting, in Mexico people who got married on November 1 put skeletons and coffins on their wedding cakes. Tombs in cemeteries were ornately decorated with a multitude of flowers and candles. In Poland thousands of flickering lights would decorate family tombs and everyone went to visit the dead in the day time and also at night, the Cemeteries would be ablaze with candle light, quite lovely and a little spooky because of the many big old trees everywhere casting shadows. There was no Halloween in China or in Italy too foreign a concept, same for Egypt or Jordan. The concept of Halloween is very North American.

Here are some photos of the season.

Citrouilles 2014 

By the way for those who might wonder how do you say Halloween in French, well you say 

L'Halloween, simple yes?

Here are other photos of our neighbourhood

Our neighbours pumpkins 

Here is our pumpkin for this year, next to the Chicago Drake Hotel ceramic pumpkin I bought in 1994 with the 3 little pumpkin of this year, including the blue gray one called Sweetmeat pumpkin.

Katane, Catania, eastern Sicily

We drove today from Siracusa to Catania, an easy 60 Km on the highway. As you approach Catania there in front of you it looms large, very large, it looks like any other mountain, lost in the clouds. This is no ordinary mountain this is Mount Etna, the most active volcano in Europe and a deadly one at that, in its known history it has probably killed one hundred thousand people and destroyed numerous towns and villages, provoked great earthquakes and enormous tidal waves (tsunamis). At the moment it looks peaceful but like any monster it can wake-up and wreak havoc. Catania spreads at its feet, and Etna has destroyed Catania and killed its inhabitants about 8 times so far in recorded history, but they hung on and rebuilt.

Catania has several great churches, a Royal Chapel Santa Maria of the Alms blessed by Pope Eugene IV so that the Royal Bourbon Family of Spain who ruled Sicily for nearly 500 years would have a place to go and pray when they came to town. Several great princely families had palaces rebuilt after the earthquake of 1693 called Earthquake Baroque out of black lava rock and limestone giving the town sort of a Mexico City look. The most famous avenue is Via Aetna which crosses the city and ends on the slopes of the volcano. The cathedral is dedicated to Santa Agatha who is the patron saint of the city. She was a pretty local virgin who refused the advances of a powerful Roman official on the grounds that good girls don’t do things like that, early Christian morality which did not hold water with the old Roman morality and values of the time.

Her punishment was to be raped, have her breast cut off and rolled in hot sizzling charcoal for good measure, ouch!

In the cathedral you can also see the body of Blessed Cardinal Dusmet, he died a long time ago, but his body is on display in fine Cardinal red robes, it is quite obvious that under the robes is nothing but a skeleton, the skin of the hands are paper thin and black and his cardinal ring hangs loosely from the dried up fingers. This is something about Catholicism I find very disturbing, why do they have to expose corpses to pray too? The same thing is about to happen to the late Pope Jean-Paul II who is going to be placed in Saint Sebastian Chapel next to the Pieta in the basilica of St-Peter in Rome.

The local musical celebrity who is also buried in the Cathedral in a beautiful mausoleum is Vincenzo Bellini who was born in Catania. In his short life, he died at 34 he wrote 10 operas like Norma and I Puritani. The opera house in Catania one of the largest in Europe and also in need of a major restoration is named after him.

Catania is a port city and of all the cities I have seen in Sicily so far on this trip, I cannot say that it is appealing.

Since 2002 an effort has been made by the authorities to clean up and restore monuments but much remains to be done and I have to say that I found it all a bit sad looking. The black lava stone used in construction of so many buildings with the downtrodden aspect of the city does not help in the overall aesthetics. Let’s hope the authorities continue to improve the city and services and clean up its monuments, much has been done so far. The business people are friendly, the locals less so, it is a port city, you hear many foreign languages, French, German, Turk and Russian.

The one monument I really liked is in the Piazza del Duomo and it is the smiling statue of the Elephant Leotru, it is made of black lava rock. The story goes that he belonged to a famous magician in the 8^th century A.D. Leotru is the symbol of Catania found on the Coat of Arms of the City. We also took the little train around town, a 30 minute tour of the most famous sites. Like many such tours it is not made for accuracy in details but to show off what the city has to offer. The comments are a rattle of statistics and names of places as you go down the streets. Most of it is entertaining and gives you a good idea of the layout of the city. The city is known for its fish and seafood restaurants. We did find good restaurants Antica Sicilia near the Piazza del’universita was one and the other was Metro an enoteca with very good food at reasonable prices, friendly and knowledgeable waiters.

We sail from Catania Sunday on our 12 hour ride up the coast of Italy to Naples.

    

I predict...

Since April 20, the oil well in the Gulf of Mexico has been leaking millions of barrels of oil. At first the press and BP where playing down the incident, words such as ''could'', ''may'', ''appears to be'' were used to play down this catastrophe. We were told that dispersant were used, they still are and are highly toxic and dangerous to man and wildlife. BP CEO said It is a big area and this is not so serious, it can be contained. BP had originally said that they had the technology to deal with any disaster, they now admit they do not and never had any plans. BP does not know what to do, they are trying different ideas. One using an atomic weapon to seal the leak, brilliant! There is expectation that the White House and the President should deal with this crisis. They are not chemical engineer and what they can do, they have done, investigate and bring criminal charges against BP and its incompetent management. Of course all this could have been avoided had ideas like deregulation of industries and risk management never taken hold of society. It all started with a B movie actor who understood little of governance and probably knew more about chimpanzees, good ole Ronald Reagan, nice guy but not the right guy for the job and then the 2 Bushes and all the neo-conservative claptrap and white fundamentalist Christians values. What a horror show this has been.

On top of the current cover-up BP has engineered to minimize impact, per example hiding the true damage to the Gulf of Mexico and to its wildlife, already all kinds of species of fish, dolphin, turtles and birds are washing up dead on beaches. BP is doing all it can to keep the press at bay as far away as possible, while showing off robotics under water.

I predict that from this disaster BP will be bankrupted and disappear as a company, it has already lost one third of its value as a company in just a few days. BP will cover part of the expense of the clean-up but in the end will not be able to pay it all and given it will take years, BP will beg off claiming insufficient funds, etc.. BP management will quit and get huge cash bonuses which will anger the public but then so is life. In the end despite criminal investigations no one will be held responsible and the tax payer will cover the cost of it all financial and otherwise. The disaster will soil and ruin all of the Gulf of Mexico and wildlife will die and disappear, it will be the first major environmental disaster on such a terrible scale that we will be unable to cope with it. Livelihoods of all who live near the coast in the so many States and Mexico will be changed forever. Gone seafood, gone property values, gone jobs and communities, all gone. The clean-up if one is ever possible will take decades and the wildlife will not come back since it is dying at this very moment, that too is gone. It is not over yet, so there is much more horror to come from this disaster, stay tune. I am just waiting for the oil to arrive in the Florida Keys and really spoil the area.

All this for oil so we can drive a car and use it as a vanity item, humans are truly foolish.