DÉJÀ VU: CEFALÙ AND AGRIGENTO!

I am writing from our hotel room in Agrigento: the Grand Hotel Mosè. I stayed in this hotel in December 2001 for a Pirandello conference. Being in Agrigento and in this hotel is déjà vu all over.  It was a rainy and cold December. It also marked my first year on the academic job market and, while in Sicily, I was invited for an interview with the University of Georgia (Athens). We agreed to have a phone interview at the hotel, but I did not have a cell phone and the phone in my room did not work properly, so I remember running downstairs to use a public phone near the main entrance. The public phone is gone but, this being Italy, its shadow is still on the wall where it once was. Another reminder of the Italian attitude towards the past: move beyond the past, but never actually erase it, being an insignificant detail such as the phone that I used to frantically call the University of Georgia that cold afternoon in 2001, or something grand and important like a Greek ruin.

PS The University of Georgia offered me a position, but I went to Rice University instead.

Our table marker at the Palermo (Santa Flavia) hotel 

Evelyn's presentation on Monreale by the pool at sunset 

The whole group on the steps of Cefalù's cathedral

Very serious tour leaders in Cefalù

Cefalù

Greek crater with tuna vendor in the Cefalù museum

Maddie, Jaymie, Michaella and Jazzy posing in an early Christian tomb in Agrigento's Valley of the Temples

Ombretta and Ulrich also sitting in an early Christian tomb... a bit of a morbid trend today

Another shot of extremely severe looking Professors Debnar and Frau in front of the Temple of Concordia

Fallen Ikarus in front of the Temple of Concordia

Pirandello's house near Porto Empedocle: Happi is going down the stairs

Indira and Mark in Pirandello's garden