Wednesday’s Child: Letter from Messina
To one who has never visited it before, Messina comes as a shock. Even if the visitor comes from elsewhere on the same island – Palermo is about three hours away by car or by train – the shock is seismic, and yet it is exceedingly difficult to analyze or to describe. Perhaps it is the air, which, unaccountably, reminds one of the Italian Alps, so crystalline it is, as though suffused by vernal sunlight reflecting off freshly fallen snow. Locals say the clarity of the air is due to peculiar currents of wind and water in the Strait, where...