Some say he was originally from Ethiopia, but he died in Sicily, on Mount Calogero (this Mt. Calogero is located south, in Sciacca, there are a few of them scattered around the island which points to the possibility that there may have been many Calogeros) in 486 CE of natural causes. This particular region is filled with healing thermal vents and caves— places inside mountains that have been used therapeutically since the 5th century.

The steaming vents were considered sacred territory and Calogero entered into them and used them as dwelling/healing spaces, using the steam as a vehicle for healing.

He is also called L'eremita (the hermit) which is a word that represents the inner cave, the hermit card in tarot, the healing that can be done when we go deep within, to the places within, and then to emerge, to shine light and heal others with what we discover. Calogero was a cave/threshold worker, like so many of the other saints we know (Lucia, Agata, Rosalia…). 

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Maybe some of you follow me on social media (@radicisiciliane) and I quickly shared a little story about how when I was little I took some raw cookie balls while my mother and my zia were making them — and threw them at the ceiling. They stuck (that is how perfectly moist they are) and left a little brown spot (after it finally fell off) for a while until my mother, typical Italian style mother, figured out how to scrub a ceiling clean.

Well these are the cookies.

These cookies have gotten my family through 7 weddings (even when a sibling got married out of town, boxes of these cookies and others, made their way to wherever the wedding was being celebrated). Funeral — someone whole bring a tray of them, and of course Christmas. These were always a Christmas favorite.

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Mass immigration deeply affected those who were left behind, or stayed home. 

Sicily, one of Italy’s poorest regions (alongside Calabria and Abruzzo) has more than one in five members of the working-age population unemployed, and almost half of all island residents are either living at poverty level or at risk of poverty. Sicily appears wealthy– because of what we see on social media — the constant images of places like Noto and Taormina, the inimitable beauty of the land, the glorious food, the stunningly gorgeous people, the joyful, “dolce vita” energy, the colorful festi and celebrations – and yet multi-generational Sicilian people still remain economically disadvantaged at poverty levels. 

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What do you know about your own ancestral lands? What grows there? What are the trees like? What color is the dirt? What is the water like?

What are some plants that grow on those lands that sustained your ancestors?

How can we inhale the magic of our ancestral lands into our body memory now, to take that feeling with us everywhere?

What did your ancestors do in honor of land? Far back ones? Recent ones?

Find a song in your ancestral tongue, then sing it to the land under your feet.

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In this Amaro making workshop we are going to focus on the roots of our ancestors — what are they? What bitter roots is your holy dead wishing for? What are their stories contained in the roots of the earth? What autumn roots will tend to your gut, tend to your ancestral guts? And we will also offer The Holy them fruits: late summer/ early fall harvest brings some of the most beautiful fruits (pomegranates, figs, cranberries, hawthorn berries, grapes, persimmons….). Also considering what plants are growing out your back door, ready to become gut medicine?

This Amaro dei Morti is a spell for your holy body, your ancestral body. Your body is the altar that this amaro will be offered to once strained just in time for (in Sicilian) U juornu rii muorti. This spell will be for fortification for the Fall season, an offering to the dead to move through our bodies this season of death, and an invocation of celebration to be alive, and be of the dead, all in the same moment. Salute!

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Our ancestors had a wisdom around gut health without even having the “modern science” that we have around gut health.

They tended to their guts with many medicinal foods and plants, but one of the consistent types of flavors that they used was “amari” or bitters.

Who has sat through a 6-course meal in Italy or Sicily and then in the end were given a perfect shot class of a bitter booze to sip and digest your meal? To soothe all the beautiful food you just spent hours eating? The folks on the motherland know we need amaro after meals to help our bodies receive and digest our food.

They know the power in bitterness. All our ancestors did.

What happened to the bitter, or "Amari" in our new world diets? Why have we lost it? Why isn’t it a post-meal ritual in our modern world?

Amaro was an important flavor and way of being for our ancestors, one that we mostly have replaced for sweetness (which directly messes with our guts).

I grew up watching and learning from my papa while he cultivated “booze” with bitter greens and plants he grew in his garden or that grew wild around his home in upstate NY. He’d take me out with paper bags and we’d fill them with wild cardoon, dandelion greens, and mustard greens along with fruits from his trees and herbs from his garden. He remembered the power of making bitter drinks from the old country. He passed this medicine on to me.

He didn’t call his concoctions “amaro” but that’s what they were, for the most part, their foundation was always something bitter.

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COVID hit. And hit Italy hard.

We held hope for healing and but our prayers in keeping our pilgrimages going.

But, because of the fast spreading nature of this virus, we had to cancel all three of our 2020 pilgrimages.

These pilgrimages were in partnership with my dear friend and co-creator Francesco, who had invested so much of 2019 in preparing for more and more gatherings; a van, a license, and many hours planning together, co-creating transformational experiences on ancestral land. This pandemic really affected them, as it did so many folks on Sicily. This is an island of tourism. People go there to be with the land, the sea, the food, the wine, the beautiful and warm and welcoming ways of the people. Be go there for a unique kind of togetherness.

After the thinking “it will be gone soon enough” felt like a pipe dream, we decided that we would do what we could to support the dream of these very roots-based, transformational pilgrimages —— we would bring them to you, virtually, as best as we could.

We plan on rolling out a variety of experiences, from cooking, to basketweaving, to embroidery, all the food and folk ways of the land. They will be light, fun, educational, connective and focused on weaving community while supporting our beloveds in Sicily (all funds from these classes go straight to Sicily and Radici Siciliane keeps none except for a small % to donate here on Turtle Island to grassroots mutual aid funds).

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The contadini/ peasant class — of Southern Italy especially— lived under harsh conditions. Their land was taken from them during the process of Risorgimento and many became indentured on their own land. This forced them to endure a deep hunger, both the kind that lived in the bellies and the kind that lived, and was passed on, in their cells, in their spirit and psyche.

Much was lost for these “terrone” - (a derogatory term for land working people that think it’s important to know and reclaim). The hardships of their lifes deeply embodied in them as a narrative for their world, how they navigated and survived. This was a world where their access to what they needed was very limited — that anything “good” and nourishing was in limited supply to them, it was scarce, and there was never enough. It was withheld from them by others. Things such as food, financial agency, prosperity, good health, trust, hope, fertility -- even beauty -- fecundity-- were all seen as scarce — not enough to go around for everybody.

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I wanted to share this dandelion wine recipe with you before you :: 1. decide to mow that lawn! and 2. to invite you to look right outside and see the abundance and the nourishment given to us wild and from the soil. and 3. hope you can find a connection to your ancestors through making this wine, too!

This wine has a warm, sweet, grounded tastes. You can leave some of the greens on it if you want a little bitter it in.

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The etymology related to the Italian root "bagn" meaning "wet or bath". This dish is unique to the Piedmonte region of Italy and has been known as a speciality food there since the 16th century. It's basically a hot dipping sauce that you can dip anything in {but more on that later}. The main ingredient in this dish is anchovies - which I found to be interesting since this region is not a sea faring region. Anchovies are coastal foods. For a region that ate only locally, what was the deal with this famous dish being anchovy based? Anchovies had to be coming in from far away. But when I looked into it, I found out a cool story. This dish was birthed through the successful attempts of the peasants to "trick" the man and bypass unfair and ridiculously high taxes. The region my grandfather lived in was landlocked -which also meant there were no salt mines anywhere - and so they needed to bring salt in......

Directly south of Piedmont is Liguria, a crescent-shaped region hugging the sea. Liguria’s extensive coastline supported not only fishermen but salt-making, and its warmer climate gave it olive oil in abundance. Since Roman times, salt had been tightly controlled and heavily taxed commodity. After all, people could not live without salt, and could not avoid paying the price for it. “Salt roads” were built throughout the empire, guarded to ensure the safe passage of the precious commodity but also to make sure the government got it’s share of the revenue. One such road ran north to Piedmont, where Ligurian traders exchanged barrels of salt for Piedmont’s grain and butter. Human nature being what it is, the traders found away to avoid paying the salt tax. Since anchovies weren’t taxed, they took to packing barrels of salt with a layer of anchovies on top. Then, if the barrel were examined, inspectors would see only anchovies. In this way, salt came to Piedmont with a bonus of salt-cured anchovies on top, which the Piedmontese found a way to use.

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