My grandparents, Michelangelo e Pasqualina Ross, came to the US from Messina, Sicily a year prior to its destruction by earthquake in 1908 (they just missed being included in the 100000 fatalities!). LA FAMIGLIA RUSSO

TRINAKRIA is the ancient Greek name given to Sicily because of its triangular shape and, like the island, the Sicilian has 3 faces: Greek, African, and Italian. The cultural significance of the Sicily is not pizza, or the Sopranos, but that Sicily grew the grains that built empires and, because of it's location in the Mediterranean Sea, it served as a multicultural depot for great civilizations. The modern musical group AGRICANTUS has done an interesting job at capturing this aspect.

3000 years ago the Phoenicians began establishing permanent colonies in Sicily with the most important being Palermo which was inherited by Phoenician Carthage.  Hard on Phoenician heels Euboean Chalcis established the first Greek settlement just south of Taormina called Naxos. It's 3000 year old theater is still in use today for plays and other performances but the breathtaking view of Mount Etna in the open background steals every performance. Then Corinth established Syracuse further to the south which eventually becomes the most wealthy and powerful city in Europe, in its time, and giving to posterity the scientific genius of Archimedes. Ionians settled Catania (between Naxos and Syracuse).
 

Dorians settled at Megara Hyblaea along the same coast. Greeks from Crete and Rhodes settled at Gela on the south shore later giving Sicily the unifying tyrant Gelon who foiled the Carthago-Persian western prong of conquest of Europe by defeating Hamilcar at Himera while mainland Greeks defeated Xerxes at Salamis, Plataea and Mycale. Other settlements followed at Selinunte [Selinus], Camarina, and Agrigento (Acragas) on the southern coast . On the northern coast came Messina (whose straight contains the Odyssey's not-so-mythological Charybdis whirlpool), and Himera. Within a settlement period of less than 100 years Sicily had become a vibrant part of the Greek world and Greek becomes the common language of Sicily for 2000 years.The Sicilian's inherent Greek love of independence made him a poor bedfellow in Rome's love of empire and he remained essentially Greek although Sicily became Rome's first province.

Under Islamic and Norman rule Palermo was a jewel and envy of the civilized world for its culture, affluence, and ethno/religious tolerance while all of Europe (except Moslem Spain) was in it's Dark Age. Moslem Sicily was a storehouse of the Classic culture that would give rise to the Renaissance. "Mafia" is an arabic word for the interior badlands where Sicilian resistors took refuge. Mussolini, jealous of power, emasculated the "Mafiusi" but with the help of the US the "Mafiusi" reemerged in the resistance of Nazi occupation. Islamic Sicily and Spain remember a time when Moslem, Jew, and Christian worked together to build a golden age of commerce, science, medicine, literature, and art. It shall remain a light for me that shines in this dark age.
 

ACCORDING TO THE ORDER OF EMPEDOCLES... Assuming that the appropriate resources will be in place I hereby will that my ashes be contained in one of my mandolins and then to be tossed into the crater of Mount Etna in the presence of my 3 kids and whomever else. If volcanic activity renders this unfeasible I will that my ashes be deposited in the Charybdis whirlpool in the Strait of Messina (It feeds the volcano).

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