Sotto la Cenere: Etna Grounds Catania Again as Bensonhurst Preps for Santa Rosalia

Italy Today

• Etna keeps grounding flights into a second week. As of the morning of Aug. 17, ash from the still-active volcano forced Catania’s Fontanarossa airport to cap incoming traffic at five aircraft an hour until 2pm — the tail end of a stretch that has canceled roughly 700 flights and stranded 100,000 passengers since Aug. 8.

• Update: Colleferro’s mystery blast is now a formal criminal probe. Velletri prosecutors have opened a disastro colposo (negligent-disaster) investigation into last Thursday’s explosion at the KNDS Ammo Italy munitions plant — against unknown parties for now — and are examining a possible link to an Aug. 10 blast at a Ukraine-supply warehouse in Bulgaria. Sabotage remains ruled out.

• Update: the Ferragosto migrant wave everyone braced for didn’t come. Despite days of social-media chatter urging a repeat of July’s mass Ceuta crossing, Aug. 15 passed with Moroccan forces intercepting only about thirty people near Fnideq — Italy’s Schengen suspension with Spain, in force since July 31, remains without the crisis its critics warned would justify it.

Brooklyn Dispatch

• Little Italy just ran its 137th San Rocco procession. On Aug. 16, the San Rocco Society carried the saint’s statue and a first-class relic from the Shrine Church of the Most Precious Blood on Baxter Street through Little Italy and Chinatown, Danny Vecchiano’s Giglio Band in tow — a tradition unbroken since 1889, and still a draw for Brooklyn families willing to cross the bridge for it.

• Bensonhurst gears up for its 52nd Feast of Santa Rosalia. The 18th Avenue feast returns Aug. 20–30 between 68th Street and Bay Ridge Parkway, closing with an Aug. 30 procession to Our Lady of Guadalupe — proof the neighborhood’s calendar still runs on the saints, whatever its census numbers say.

Arts & Culture

• Sara Curtis broke the same world record twice in one afternoon. At the European Championships in Paris, the 19-year-old Italian swimmer took the 50m backstroke world record in the semifinal (26.63) and then broke her own mark again in the final (26.56) en route to gold — her third medal of the meet.

• Update: Venice’s full lineup lands, and the closing film is unmistakably Italian. Beyond the honorary Lions already flagged in our Aug. 12 brief, the 83rd Mostra (Sept. 2–12) opens with Danny Boyle’s Ink and closes with Giovanni Veronesi’s Dio Ride, starring Pierfrancesco Favino — a home-turf bookend to a program otherwise stacked with Robert Pattinson, Casey Affleck, and an Oasis reunion doc.

Parola del Giorno

Parola: sciàra (noun, f., Sicilian dialect) — a stretch of ground buried under old lava; possibly a blend of Arabic šaʿra (“barren land”) and Latin flagrare (“to blaze”), per Sicilian Post’s etymology. This week: shorthand across Sicilian coverage for Etna’s ash-buried flanks. Usage: “La sciàra ha inghiottito la strada provinciale.”

Parola: colposo (adjective) — from colpa, Latin culpa (“fault”); describes harm from negligence rather than intent. This week: prosecutors opened a disastro colposo file on the Colleferro blast. Usage: “Non dolo, ma disastro colposo — nessuno voleva che succedesse.”

Parola: primato (noun, m.) — record, supremacy; from Latin primus, “first.” The word Italians reach for over the English loanword when sport is involved. Usage: “Sara Curtis si è presa il primato mondiale due volte nello stesso pomeriggio.”

Parola: processione (noun, f.) — procession; from Latin processio, “a marching forward.” This week: San Rocco’s statue moved through Baxter Street on Aug. 16, and Bensonhurst’s Santa Rosalia procession is booked for Aug. 30. Usage: “La processione parte dalla chiesa alle undici e mezza.”

Takeaway