Word: messinas
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Anna Giordano was only 15 when she found her true calling. In 1981, near her Sicilian hometown of Messina, she watched helplessly as poachers unleashed their fire from cement bunkers on the hundreds of honey buzzards, hawks and other birds migrating over the narrow straits between Sicily and the Italian mainland. After seeing 17 birds shot out of the sky, she vowed that "this was the beginning of the end for the poachers...
...supposedly protected birds--mostly honey buzzards, falcons, storks, orioles, kestrels and swallows--were slaughtered each year. Today the count averages less than 100 in Sicily, although more than 500 on the Calabrian side of the straits. On a recent tour of saltwater lakes on the outskirts of Messina, Giordano proudly pointed to the dozens of cormorants perched on wooden posts in the shallow water. "Twenty years ago," she says, "you would not have seen even one cormorant here. People used to shoot at them from the street...
Over the years, Giordano, now 35, turned her passion into a profession: she studied ornithology and earned a degree in natural sciences from the University of Messina in 1989. Today Giordano runs the World Wildlife Fund's Natural Saltwater Reserve in Paceco, Italy, and its Center for the Rehabilitation of Wild Animals in Messina. The center's aviary houses some two dozen falcons and buzzards in various stages of convalescence. The injured birds, who collectively consume more than 13 lbs. of meat each day, have a home for life, and those that recover are turned loose. "They...
...acts dominated the night, showcasing the developing potential of local performers. Singer-guitarist Martin Sexton, deemed Outstanding Contemporary Folk Act, silenced the audience with his startlingly emotional ballad spiked with intense, accelerated outbursts. Winning Act of the Year, Outstanding Female Vocalist and Outstanding Country Act, country singer Jo Dee Messina, who was born and raised in Boston but cultivated her career down south, was thankful to be invited back home to display her powerfully clear and mellifluous voice. The impressive Kornlike hardcore band Godsmack, who received the Debut Album of the Year honor, blasted through synthetic fog with their relentlessly...
...recent issues of Vogue. A small city with a rich Greco-Roman heritage, it has become increasingly downtrodden during the past decades. Growing up there in the 1950s and '60s, Versace witnessed the miserable postwar poverty that filled the streets, but could find elegance in the turquoise Strait of Messina that lay just beyond them. His was a city where Calabrian Mafiosi thrived in all their cheap glamour and children once passed the hours in ancient ruins. Versace's family home neighbored the remains of a Greek temple...