Then went for lunch at La Vecchia Conza in Sciacca (recommended by our guidebook). Antipasta mare della casa turned out to be a spread of a dozen seafood appetizers -- very good!
Then some of us took a nap, others wrote a few teacher comments. After our lunch, supper was out of the question.
The day ended with a visit to Baldassare "Baldo" Interrante's place near our agriturismo. Baldo is a local phenomenon. He grew up as an illiterate shepherd, left Sicily as a young man, went to Switzerland, got a heart disease, got a pacemaker (he claims the first in Europe), learned to make jewelry, made money, left his greedy wife (according to his story), came back to Sicily, bought a diciotto tumuli (about 7 acres?) of land, and converted his house into a mix of a theme park, ethnography museum, art studio, and junkyard. This is one of Baldo's installations:
Baldo has built half a dozen of these over 22 years, each in a separate hut.
Baldo's story is on the web, of course, like everything else (see p. 6). The local press loves his back-to-the-roots story. He also runs presepe vivante every Christmas, which is a re-enactment of nativity scenes with live actors (his family and friends) and live animals (a donkey, a calf). This is not uncommon in Italy. We missed the live "performance" because it was scheduled for the next day. Baldo also writes verses, a little simplistic to my taste: he went to school only until the 3rd grade. There is a sample on the web (for some reason accompanied by a funny picture of a rabbi!). He gave us his book of poetry, which includes newspaper clippings about him. He must be about 70 now. His daughter, about 25, didn't appear too enthusiastic about all that was going on around her. Or maybe she was just tired of acting in the presepe several times.
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