Venice used to be famous for cats, but they have somehow relinquished their mythic stature. When I came to Venice back in 1804, there were still scattered outposts where old ladies would leave food for the stray cats, near makeshift little huts. Now the only place I can be sure of seeing a feline is either roaming the cloister at the city hospital, or on or near a few windowsills in the neighborhood. The once-abundant freelancing cats have been rounded up and stowed in a pound on the Lido.

Instead of cats, there are dogs.

Arguably the most famous Venetian dog, here waiting for Saint Augustine to finish having his vision and do something fun. (Vittore Carpaccio).

When Lino was a lad, families were still large and didn’t have extra food to waste on a dog  just to play with.  The only dogs who were given room and board had to work for it, like retrievers or hounds.  No need for a guard dog, that’s what grandmothers are for. Or, as Lino put it, “What was there for a dog to guard?  Most people didn’t even have tears to cry with.”

Nor was there extra money to spend on trips to the vet, not to mention the wardrobe.  Now not only are there dogs everywhere, many of them dress better than I do, though they tend to belong to people (often, but not always, women) who confuse them with human children.  I once saw a woman on the vaporetto, holding her dog on her lap, cradling it like a baby. No, the dog wasn’t sick.  I can’t remember if it was wearing a bonnet.

Probably the second-most famous dogs, in another painting by Carpaccio. This is a detail from a picture depicting the menfolk out hunting in the lagoon; hence, these ladies are waiting for them to return. Evidently even playing with the pets palls after a while -- everyone here is immobilized by boredom.

I amuse myself by tracking the changing fashions in the world of Fido and Rex (though here people tend to like the name Bobi).  Like other fashions, it’s hard to discover a reason for it, but evidently either you can get tired of a dog faster than your nose-ring or skateboard, or you just really need to be like everybody else. Or you didn’t care about your dog in the first place.

First, there were Afghan hounds. It seems strange now, but this is true.  Then all of a sudden everybody had boxers. They traded these in for beagles.  Then came a rash of Jack Russell terriers.  Now that I think of it, it’s been a while since I saw a beagle — they used to be everywhere.  And the Jack Russells are mysteriously fading away too.

Now we have a mixed bag, with a few of the above (not the Afghans, those are long gone), joined by a few French bulldogs, an English bulldog, a couple of Rottweilers, Golden Retrievers, Labradors, a batch of Shih Tzus, assorted terriers, and a smattering of spaniels of various sorts.  There are also plenty of mutts, I’m glad to note.  They never go out of style.

There is an organization which seeks homes for abandoned dogs, and their notices taped on municipal surfaces are very touching and very repetitive.  There is a photo of the dog, of course, with its name and a paragraph describing its sad past — and some of these dogs have been through torture — and a description of the dog and its character.  This is the repetitive part.  You’d be amazed how many dogs are “sweet.”  Hulking, tiny, old, blind, their primary trait is sweetness.  This is wonderful, especially if true, but it does make all these animals sound like animated stuffed toys.  If you want to sell an apartment in Venice, the crucial word is “luminoso” (full of light).  If you want to donate a dog, you’ve got to call it sweet.  I realize that “cranky, demanding, and incontinent” won’t inspire many offers, but still.

Detail from "The Entourage of Cleopatra" by Giambattista Tiepolo.

This passion for dogs is far from being some new aberration, at least according to centuries of Venetian art.  It’s pretty clear that the patricians have always been dog-crazy.  Look at any number of Venetian paintings, even at random, and you’ll see that where two or more are gathered together, there will be at least one dog.

When I go to a museum or church or palace here, I don’t admire the brushwork or the color scheme, I play Find the Dog. It’s a very satisfying game because you know there is at least one, and often more.  It’s like a treasure hunt.

Someone might tell me that the dogs are there in their purely symbolic capacity, like other animals in European art such as peacocks or bees. Dogs, as we all know, typically represent fidelity, obedience, protection, courage and vigilance. All excellent traits which would be valued here, as anywhere. Scholarly sources don’t mention its symbolizing sweetness but they are obviously not well informed.

But by the way most dogs are depicted, they don’t seem symbolic at all.  Most of them have got more personality than many of the people around them — just like now.

"The Dinner at Emmaus," by Paolo Veronese. The grownups can eat and talk all night if they want, the kids have got the dogs to play with.

"Christ Washing the Disciples' Feet," by Tintoretto.

"The Last Supper," by Tintoretto (detail).

What started me on all these ruminations is the fact that, for however much the dog might be adored here, it remains the quintessential insult-figure.  ”I cani di ta morti” (your beloved deceased family members are dogs) is absolutely the worst thing you can say to a person here, so bad that you don’t say it unless you intend to make that person your enemy forever.

This is occasionally modified to “ti ta morti,” which I think means that you have left a small window open for future reconciliation. Or at least haven’t branded yourself as irredeemably vulgar.

You can substitute “porceli” (pigs) for dogs, which is the only way you can make the insult worse.

This dog seemed perfectly happy in this position.

You don’t have to say it to the person, you can also merely say it about the person.  ”Why did your boss make you work last Sunday?”  ”Because she’s got morti cani.”   If the situation warrants it but I don’t want to utter the death blow, I soften it by merely referring to the person and his or her behavior as having or being M.C.  In any form, it’s such a useful expression that I wish there were a corresponding phrase in English, but I haven’t found it, or managed to invent it, yet.

"The Happy Union" from "Four Allegories" by Paolo Veronese.

I will have to pursue further research on the subject of insults because I am under the impression that the main force of the phrase doesn’t come from the dogs, but the fact that the insult is aimed at your family.  In Rome, the corresponding vilification is “i mortacci tua” — again, an imprecation against your dead relatives.

Your typical insulting Anglo-Saxon doesn’t tend to invoke either death (unless it’s yours) or your relatives (unless it’s your mama).  Therefore death and your family status appear to carry a freight of meaning here which must come from some extremely deep Mediterranean source.  Perhaps the Phoenicians devised it, along with the alphabet.

I sometimes wonder what dogs say about each other.  ”Your dead relatives are humans,” probably.

Stay on the safe side and don’t ever refer to dogs or people in the same sentence. Especially not if you observe how much the animal and its owner resemble each other.

"Danae," by Tintoretto.

"Boy with Dogs in a Landscape," by Titian.

"Cupid with Dogs," by Paolo Veronese. I think it would be more accurate to call it "Dogs with Cupid." Or maybe he could have just left Cupid out of it altogether.

Venice goes to the dogs is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

The catastrophe of the Costa Concordia two weeks ago today has been a good thing in at least one (sorry, I mean only one) way: It has given a turbo-boost to the local opposition to allowing big cruise ships to slide past the Piazza San Marco like floating Alps.

By now, images of these behemoths and Venice have become as trite as Venice and acqua alta.

Just one example at random of a typical big ship coming to Venice. The top deck is lined with thousands of people, all making the same photograph of the Piazza San Marco. As far as I can tell, this is the main reason why the big ships insist on entering and leaving Venice by the Bacino of San Marco.

There was murmuring before, but the death of a ship and some of its people has created a good deal of commotion, not only in Venice but also at the national level, concerning the desirability of allowing these ships to come here. Needless to say, the political parties have all hoisted their shields and battle-axes and are ready for combat.  And, as usual, the trumpet sounding the charge tends to drown out any other sound.

I’d like to review the main points, though I have to warn you that this subject, like most other subjects here, has become a mass of insanely knotted statistics and semi-statistics and facts and semi-facts interpreted in 11,552 different ways, according to who is speaking and, ergo. what they want.  Debates of the pros and cons of heavy cruise ship traffic in the world’s most beautiful city and environs are so loaded with emotion that it has become virtually impossible to hear what anybody’s really saying, though the various viewpoints are fairly simple to summarize.

Cruise statistics for 2011 as published by the Gazzettino.

Pro: There is only one item in the “pro” column on the proverbial yellow legal pad, and that’s “Money.”  Venice has done everything possible to attract and keep cruise business.  In 2000, only 200 ships visited Venice, and it is now the Number One cruising homeport in the Mediterranean, and the third in Europe. With the shrinking of the income from the Casino, the starving city budget is being kept alive primarily by this new touristic medium.

Don’t be distracted by the number of companies whose ships come to Venice (43), or how many ships visited last year (654) or the number of transits they made of the Bacino of San Marco (1,308) — I’d have thought there were more — or the number of passengers last year (2,248,453), even though all these numbers are pretty impressive (fancy way of saying “huge and scary”).

The only number that matters to the city, and the only factor which virtually guarantees that cruising will continue to be crucial here, is the money the city earns from it: 300 million euros (US$390,246,000) last year.

If you want to object to cruising in or around Venice, you need to come up with a suggestion for some other activity that will make that kind of money.  Or, preferably, even more.  Feel free to get back to me on this.

A view of the docks at Tronchetto. As you see, seven assorted ships can fit in here at any one time, though these is space for smaller ones (yes, there are smaller ones) at the Zona Marittima nearby -- three are moored there in this picture, just to the right of the big docks. Discussion is underway to expand the dock area.

The two main items in the “con” column concern the environmental damage wrought by the floating Alps.

They are:

Erosion caused by waves (there are no waves) and/or by the suction of the motors.  This suction is real: I can attest that the motors of these ships perform a phenomenal sucking/pushing action, very much like what happens to the mouthwash when you rinse your mouth.  I have seen with these very eyes the waters surging in and then surging out as a ship passes, even if it passes at a distance.  It’s hard to think that this could be unimportant.  As we know from the humbler but more destructive daily motondoso, water going into a fissure in a foundation pulls something with it — soil, mainly — when it comes out.  This eventually creates empty spaces under buildings and sidewalks.

Ships maneuvering to enter or back out of their berths also create massive suction, as the brown sediment churned up here attests.

A study done by Worcester Polytechnic Institute on the hydrodynamic effect of big ships found this:  “As cruise ships pass smaller canals along the St. Mark’s Basin and Giudecca Canal, they displace and accelerate the surrounding body of water, essentially pulling water from the smaller canals.  This caused a noticeable increase in canal speed and a drop in the water levels.  A total of five velocity tests were completed resulting in a 57.4% increase in canal speed, and two canal height tests were completed which showed an average water level drop of 11 c (4.3 inches).  The observations suggest that the root cause for these accelerations can be explained by the Bernoulli Effect: the colossal geometry of cruise ships creates fast currents and low pressure areas around the moving vessels.”

Particulate Matter, the form of air pollution made up of tiny bits of stuff from combustion exhaust.  Nobody made an issue of this when Venice was a real industrial center, and nobody brought it up when the Industrial Zone on the shoreline was going full blast.  Nobody made an issue of it, Lino points out, when everybody — everybody — heated their homes or cooked using wood or coal.  ”You didn’t need to smoke anything,” he said — “smoke was everywhere.”  But particulate matter from the ships is intolerable.

The view of the Giudecca Canal as seen by the passengers on a departing ship. I'm on a Minoan Lines ferry to Greece. If a ship were to go rogue here it could endanger city on both sides.

Four days after the Concordia ran aground, Corrado Clini, the new Minister for the Environment, came to Venice for a day.  He was shown a number of things (MoSE was not on the list, which I can understand, because nothing can be done about it now), but the subject on everybody’s mind was the big ships.

He offered the following opinion: “Common sense suggests that if the principle value to care for is our natural patrimony, the fundamental resource for our tourism, we must avoid that it be put at risk.”  You can’t argue with that.

He continued: “The traffic of these ‘floating apartment buildings’ in the Bacino of San Marco, with a notable impact, are without utility for the environment and for tourism.”  If he is seeking utility for tourism, all he has to do is look at the municipal balance sheet.  However, “without utility for the environment” is hard to refute.

Luca Zaia, the President of the Veneto Region, who was on hand, remarked that “The big ships in Venice are dangerous and certainly a problem to resolve.  I have to admit that to see these colossi at San Marco is, to say the least, horrifying.”  I myself have to admit that it’s odd that he only became horrified after the Concordia ran aground; the ships have been passing for years.

Giorgio Orsoni, the mayor of Venice, contributed these observations: “The subject of the big ships is an open one.  With the Port Authority we have begun to reflect on a rapid solution which will satisfy the touristic system as well as the economic one.” Rapid solutions are not easy to come up with, because every player wants his concerns to come first.  Nor would a rapid solution instill much confidence.  If complex, well-reasoned solutions haven’t been found yet, why would a rapid one be any easier to devise, much less implement?

Sandro Trevisanato, president of VTP, which runs the port, stated that the big ships are the least polluting form of tourism, adding that the buses, the big launches, and cars create much more pollution than the big ships.  (For the record, I’d like to say that this is the most intelligent comment so far.)  He points out that emissions are one of the arguments used by those who want to ban the cruise ships from the lagoon, far beyond the aesthetic question.  It’s a question of taste,” says Trevisanato. “In a few seconds the ships have passed and disappear.”  Seconds?  Has he never stood on the embankment on a summer Sunday evening to watch the March of the Pachyderms as they depart? Even one ship, by my estimate, takes at least 45 minutes to pass from Tronchetto to Sant’ Elena.  And there could easily be seven of them, virtually nose to tail.

In any case, everybody directly involved in cruise tourism agrees that  pollution must be kept at “level zero.”  How to do that isn’t explained.

As for the possibility — remote, all agree — that something could go wrong with the motors, or that the ship for some other reason would suddenly become ungovernable, and that the force of inertia would impel it to ram bow-first into the Piazza San Marco or some other bit of Venice, Trevisanato says that the port is one of the most secure in the world, as the ships are protected from the effect of wind and waves, and the ships pass at a reasonable (I put that in) distance from the shores.  Hard to say what is “reasonable” when the Giudecca Canal is only 320 meters (1000 feet) wide, or less.  But you will have noticed that referring to wind and waves prevented him from discussing the consequences of a big ship going adrift in the Bacino of San Marco.

Someone reminded him that in 2004 the ship “Mona Lisa” ran aground in the fog in the Bacino of San Marco.  His reply: “Exactly: and nothing happened.”  This is true; the ship was on its way after a mere hour, undoubtedly thanks to the help of the rising tide.  But the “Mona Lisa” is 201 meters (609 feet) long by 26 meters (85 feet) beam, and a gross tonnage of 28,891; not exactly a floating Alp.

The Concordia was 292 meters (958 feet)  x 35.5 meters (116 feet); gross tonnage 112,000.

In any case, saying “Nothing happened” isn’t very  helpful. It brings to mind the famous exchange in a Ring Lardner story: “‘Daddy, are we lost?’  ’Shut up,’ he explained.”

The "Mona Lisa." This is what most cruise ships used to look like, before they put them on steroids.

And the mayor’s statement that a “rapid solution” is in the works isn’t very reassuring, even if it were true.  Solutions have been debated for years.

Proposed solutions so far:

Building an “offshore port” in the Adriatic where the floating Alps would tie up, and offload passengers (and luggage) into launches which would bring them to Venice.  Objections: Cost, feasibility, and the obvious pollution, primarily motondoso, which would be caused by thousands of launches trundling to and fro all day.  I can add the element of potential danger to people, if not to Venice, of boarding and traveling in a launch when the bora is blowing.

Make the Bacino and the Giudecca Canal a one-way street.  Tourists get to snap the Piazza San Marco either coming or going, but not both.  This has the advantage of not depriving them totally of this scenic opportunity, while cutting in half the number of transits.  A tour operator told me that it isn’t uncommon for a potential cruise customer to ask if the ship passes in front of the Piazza San Marco.  If the answer is no, it’s an immediate deal-breaker.

Bring the ships into the lagoon via the inlet at Malamocco.  Heavy shipping already passes here, heading for the docks at Marghera, so more heavy ships wouldn’t make any difference.  Theoretically.

But this new system would require deepening a heretofore unimportant natural channel known as the Canal of Sant’ Angelo in order to create a sort of bypass. Enter the lagoon at the inlet at Malamocco, steam up the shoreline via the Petroleum Canal, then turn right in the Canal of Sant’ Angelo, which neatly brings the behemoth to Tronchetto.  The ship would depart via the Giudecca Canal, so the passengers could all snap their photos.

Or, the ship would enter, as it does now, by the inlet at San Nicolo’, steam past San Marco (snap snap snap) to Tronchetto, then depart down the Canal of Sant’ Angelo, Petroleum Canal, and out into the Adriatic at Malamocco.

Sometimes a big ship moors downstream from San Marco at the Riva dei Sette Martiri. It might seem like a bright idea to put them all here, except that the passengers wouldn't get their snaps; also, there isn't enough shoreline for the typical job lot on a summer weekend. And there is also the issue of the vibrations from the generators and the blocking of television reception which are major irritations for the residents. Who would want to spend the summer with these just outside the front door?

What’s extremely wrong with this idea — in my opinion, as well as many environmentalists — is that deepening the Canal of Sant’ Angelo would be a reprise of the digging of the Petroleum Canal, a deed which many have long since recognized as a disaster for the lagoon. A channel as straight as an airport runway and deep enough for cargo ships and tankers behaves like the average water faucet, concentrating and accelerating the force of the water passing through it. Many environmental groups date the beginning of the deterioration of the lagoon ecosystem from the creation of the Petroleum Canal.  Among other things, it is estimated that this canal is responsible for the loss of one million cubic meters of sediment every year. We don’t have to care, but the myriad creatures and plants which depend on the sediment certainly do.

Digging another deep channel will almost certainly cause the same phenomenon, thereby multiplying the damage.  Just what we need, when you add in the same effect caused by the deepening of the three lagoon inlets for the installation of the MoSE floodgates.

So the bypass canal, which looks so good on paper, would be yet another blow to an ecosystem which UNESCO, along with the city of Venice, designated as a World Heritage Site.  Now that I think of it, the only group that hasn’t weighed in yet on this is UNESCO. Maybe they’re thinking.

Last idea: Forget Tronchetto. Move the whole passenger port over to the shoreline at Marghera.  Docks already exist, or could be created, so logistically the idea has a lot in its favor. Except that Marghera is part of the dying Industrial Zone, with all the aesthetic appeal of a dying Industrial Zone.  It’s like selling a cruise from Venice that actually starts in the Port of Newark or Liverpool. Intending no offense.

Speaking of the force of inertia, debates, meetings, commissions, studies (oh good, we can always use more of those) and assorted pronouncements will undoubtedly continue.  I can make that claim because when the “Mona Lisa” ran aground in 2004, the then-mayor, Paolo Costa, ringingly declared that a stop must be put to the  big ships passing in the Bacino of San Marco.

He said (translation by me): “What happened has unfortunately confirmed my worries, and that is that an absolute certainty doesn’t exist on the possibility to guarantee the security in this zone of the city (Bacino San Marco) which is so important and delicate. It was horrifying to see the ship aground a mere 30 meters from a vaporetto stop, and fortunately consequences were avoided that could have been disastrous and unimaginable.  Now we must take rapid measures, more than one, and very detailed, that eliminate the danger of finding, one day, a ship in the Piazza San Marco. Because everything which today is at risk in the Bacino of San Marco isn’t something that can be protected only probably, but certainly, and with safety.”

Eight years have passed, two mayors have succeeded him, Costa is now President of the Port of Venice, and those “rapid measures” are still being fervently invoked.

The Port of Venice may be protected from potentially dangerous winds, but there seems to be no way to protect it from hurricanes of hot air.

Venice and the floating Alps is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Dawn at sea on the Adriatic. Capt. Schettino isn't going to be seeing this anymore.

As you might imagine, during the past almost-week the shipwrecked cruise ship has taken over everybody’s thoughts and conversations here (as is probably the case in the rest of Italy).

Yesterday I got what I hope may be my final dose, as I sat in the doctor’s waiting room.  Because he only comes to the neighborhood two hours a week (one on Wednesday, one on Friday — no appointments), the room tends to fill up fast.  I suspect some of the old dears come over mainly to have the chance to indulge in a good long chinwag. They pretty much all know each other, and it’s better than a cafe’ because you don’t have to buy anything in order to sit and talk.  They rarely say anything new on any topic at all — but if you do it right, it can take quite a while to contribute all the comments, opinions, and third-party bits of information to the information-mulching bin.

From this interminable gabfest about the Costa Concordia, I came home with many interesting things to consider.

1. Castello is populated entirely by experts on navigation. I heard so many detailed analyses of  the fine points of the engineering, construction, and behavior of very large ships that I can’t believe they, including the grandmothers, aren’t all retired admirals.

2.  None of the people present would ever consider, not even for a moment, going on a cruise.  The implication is that they’re too smart to risk their lives on a vehicle and in a medium that is so inherently dangerous, and which any intelligent person would long since have known.

3.  The ship is too big to make any kind of sense — 4, 429 people on board! This fact naturally sent up warning flares, confirming the intelligent people in their decision not to have taken a cruise on it.

4.  The captain screwed up.

First prize for originality goes to the lady sitting next to me, whose observation was the following: “And they even had a climbing wall on the ship! What does anyone need with a climbing wall?”  This was said with a whiff of scorn, which gave me the unpleasant sensation that in her opinion, you can virtually assume that a ship with a climbing wall is going to come to a bad end.  I’m not saying that she believes it deserved to hit the rocks, or that the people who were on it were another race of people who require things that are obviously no earthly use to decent people who know enough to stay at home and hang out at the doctor’s office.  But to her, the climbing wall was ominous.

The subject of abandoning the ship also got a certain amount of attention because everyone — including me — is utterly fascinated and bewildered by Capt. Francesco Schettino’s behavior.  The exchange between him and Capt. Gregorio De Falco of the Capitaneria di Porto in Livorno is harrowing, right up to the point where De Falco orders the captain to return to the ship, and he refuses.

A few commentators (not in the waiting room) have confessed a sort of shame that a nation which had produced such immortal seamen as Columbus, Vespucci, Verrazzano, Da Mosto, Caboto, had come to this. Italy has, in fact, been blessed by any number of men who had — as the saying here goes — “balls squared.”  And they aren’t all world-famous.

Capt. Salvatore Todaro

There is one who is famous only among Italian and/or World War II buffs, whose name deserves to be added to the list if for no other reason than to provide a counterweight to the crushing gravity of the current situation. Of course I realize that a hero in Column A can’t do much to redeem a caitiff in Column B.  But I still want you to know about him.

His name is Salvatore Todaro (1908 – 1942), and I am not referring to Salvatore “Black Sam” Todaro, the mobster.  Our Salvatore (whose name means “savior” — keep this in mind) was a submarine commander and came from Chioggia, just down the lagoon from Venice.  Just to indicate that mariners from Chioggia aren’t necessarily limited to tying and untying the vaporettos at each stop.

He died in combat in 1942 with six medals for bravery, whose dedications contained such phrases as  ”resplendent example of serene, intelligent courage,” and “a mystic devotion to duty understood in its highest and broadest sense.”

Here’s an example: The “Kabalo Affair.”  Off the island of Madeira on the night of October 16, 1940, he attacked and sank a Belgian ship. He then saved its 26 sailors, and towed them toward safety aboard a raft. When the towing cable broke after four days, he took them all into the submarine till they reached the Azores, where he put them ashore.

As Lino tells the story, Todaro recounted later to have prayed fervently not to encounter any enemy ship on the way because he would have been forced to dive, inevitably killing his enemy passengers because the only place he found room to stash them was in the compartments which, in order to effect a dive, are filled with seawater.  One of his few comments on the exploit was “I’m here to destroy ships, not men.”

I realize that you have to be born that way — they don’t teach it in Captain School.  But they must teach something rudimentary of that nature, which did not immediately come to the mind of  Francesco Schettino. Which in addition to the loss of life, makes me extremely sad.

What the world is going to look like to Schettino -- and, unfortunately, for his family -- for a long time.

Ripples from the Costa Concordia is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

One of the squillion Befanas that swarmed the stores. Snaggly teeth: check. Broomstick: check. Stockings crammed with candy: check. She's good to go.

January 6, as all the world knows, is the Feast of the Epiphany in the non-Orthodox Christian calendar.  Here in Venice, as most of the world by now must know (if it’s been following my bulletins), the day is personified by a grizzled old woman with a broomstick. This cheerful hag is known as the Befana.

Her arrival and swift departure bring joy to overstimulated and overfed children, even if the joy is tarnished by the fact that she signals the official end of the holiday period — back to school, the party’s over.

Anyone walking around Venice will have noticed, even with only one eye open (not recommended, unless that eye is dedicated to scanning the pavement ahead where the remnants of canine overfeeding may well be waiting), that her distinguishing characteristic is candy — specifically, a stocking full of it known as the calza caena (KAL-tzah kah-EH-na).

But anyone who has foregone the city for an afternoon ramble in the lagoon during this period will have noticed that her distinguishing characteristic is exceptional low tide.  This phenomenon is known as the “secche de la marantega barola,” or the exposed-sandbanks-of-the-ugly-old-lady.

Our favorite patch of lagoon, between Sant' Erasmo and the Vignole, at a classic late-December/early-January low tide. Here the vegetation is of the non-green variety, but it still reveals plenty of snacks for the birds.

The tide is still going out but the egrets have already started noshing. Among other wonders in this scene are what looks like scattered rocks: they're the half-submerged scallops known as pinna nobilis, or "noble pen shell." They are returning after not having been seen here for years.

A pinna nobile as we normally see them.

High tide, of course, is the star around here, inspiring in transient visitors (fancy term for tourists) a mixture of fear, loathing, terror, pity, catharsis, and whatever other epic emotions a couple of inches of water on the ground can stimulate.  High water also makes for interesting pictures, even if they are all pretty much the same.

But every year I feel much greater emotions inspired instead by the absence of water.  When the tide really, seriously goes out, as it always does in this little window of time, a concealed world emerges, to the joy of the foraging wildfowl and the marveling eyes of your correspondent.  I know it’s not magic — it just feels like it.

The same stretch of water on a summer afternoon. Not only is the water higher, the area is also swarming with trippers from the mainland who come in their motorboats and like to crawl around digging for clams. By the end of the summer they have left nothing behind, except the pinna nobiles. I think these mollusks must have a way of burying themselves, otherwise these savages would be taking them too.

The first time I saw this phenomenon I was taken completely  by surprise. Looking from the Lido across the lagoon toward Venice, I saw, instead of the usual expanse of grayish-greenish-blueish water, a vast swath of brilliant emerald green, dazzling marine vegetation gleaming in the sunshine.  It was like seeing Nebraska with bell-towers.  Of course I knew that the lagoon bottom wasn’t as empty and flat as the high-school swimming pool, but seeing it was astonishing.  I was hooked.

Why does January (or this year, also late December) always favor us with this phenomenon?  Myself, I’d just give the credit to the Befana and move on, but curiosity has nagged me into looking for a real answer.

After more research than I anticipated, most of which only led me dangerously deeper into the astronomical wilds, I will hazard a summary of the situation.

The high atmospheric pressure not only conduces to the lower tide, it also brings weather which is little short of celestial. Yes, it's still chilly, but could anyone want to stay indoors when it's like this out here?

The outgoing tide creates a sort of lagoon within the lagoon, dedicated exclusively to the birds.

It’s all based on the indestructible link between the sun, the moon, the earth’s orbit, gravity, centrifugal force,and probably other things as well.  (There is also a correlation between high pressure and low tide — the higher the first, the lower the second.)  But this only tells us what, not why.

One source explains:  ”The gravitational forces of the Moon and the Sun both contribute to the tides. The sun’s gravitational force is greatest when the earth is closest to the sun (perihelion – early January) and least when the sun is furthest from earth (aphelion – early July).”

Basically, the sun’s pull can heighten the moon’s effects or counteract them, depending on where the moon is in relation to the sun.

The Moon follows an elliptical path around the Earth which has a perigee distance of 356,400 kilometers, which is about 92.7 percent of its mean distance. Because tidal forces vary as the third power of distance, this little 8 percent change translates into 25 percent increase in the tide- producing ability of the Moon upon the Earth. If the lunar perigee occurs when the Moon is between the Sun and the Earth, it produces unusually high Spring  (not the season Spring) high tides. When it occurs on the opposite side from the Earth that where the Sun is located (during full moon) it produces unusually low, Neap Tides.

Neap: from the Anglo-Saxon hnep, meaning scanty. I knew you were wondering.

It so happened that the day I took the most dramatic photographs was December 23, when the waning moon was one millimeter from being completely new, which it was on the following day. I maintain that the new moon has the same effect as the full moon, as described above.

To sum up: In January, therefore, I deduce that the relative positions of the sun (low) and moon (high) combine with other factors — such as the aforementioned high pressure — to produce the unusually low tide.

You can have your Bay of Fundy, and I’ll throw in Mont-St. Michel as well.  I wait all year for this moment to see the lagoon revealed in its spectacular variety and richness.

More of the same area, at sunset. The tide is still going out.

Postscript: Low tide in the city is also diverting, revealing banks of mud lining the canal walls which were churned up by months, even years, of passing motorboats. It also, may I point out, creates at least as many problems as high water — if not more — for normal life here.  If the ambulance or the fireboat doesn’t have enough water to get to your house, it’s arguably worse for the quality of life than whatever happens in acqua alta — for example, having to put on boots for a few hours. This aspect of the secche de la marantega  deserves a chapter of its own, but not today.

People sometimes ask me, "How deep are the canals?" And I have to ask them, "When?" This canal at Sant' Erasmo clearly reveals the mark of the normal water level. And, as you see, we've only got inches to row on.

Most people think the lagoon must be at its most beautiful in the summer. I beg to differ.

The Befana was here and she took the lagoon with her is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

The Befana has been and gone, the Christmas decorations are stored or lost or thrown away, and only a few hardy addicts are still eating panettone, making the most of the two-for-one discounts the stores always offer in an effort to get the things off their shelves and make room for the galani coming up for Carnival.

January is a superb month here.  Cold and empty.  By which I mean empty of the usual battalions of tourists, empty of racket and clutter, not empty of interest or beauty.  The lagoon, possibly even more than the city itself, is brimming with enchantment in the winter. Please do not mark your calendar to come to Venice in January. I will hunt you down and slay you.

The day before yesterday I was walking along the brink of the lagoon toward the southern end of the Lido, toward an area called the Alberoni.  I was on my way to perform a specific task but the reason I was walking instead of riding the bus was that I wanted to savor the moment.  Buses and cars prevent savoring in much the same way that an inner-tube prevents you from sinking. It’s against the laws of physics, or the laws of something.

Of course looking toward the setting sun is spectacular, but the scene is no less beautiful looking away from it.

At this point I was hoping to give you a few filaments of poetry on sunset — not written by me, God forbid.  Written by some genius.  A few of them worked the angle of comparing sunset to death, but that wasn’t even remotely related to the mysterious magic I was watching. It was like being able to see a sigh.

In any case, even geniuses can only approximate a rough translation of the transparent, transforming loveliness of this silent interval because they are forced to use words. Even Hawaiian words, which are mostly vowels, are too rigid to express either a winter sunset or a summer dawn. As a writer it pains me to acknowledge that, but it’s just the way words are.

Speaking of words, there are a good number of them which describe various phases of sunset — twilight, dusk, gloaming, nightfall, crepuscule — and they all have precise definitions.  But I couldn’t find a word for what was happening in front of me.  So, no words.

However, if I were forced to describe it, I’d say that the panorama looked as if it were made of  mother-of-pearl reproduced as glass.

But happily, I’m not forced to describe it.

I wonder if the fish know it's this beautiful on the other side of the surface. They probably just know that the lights are going out.

At this point I had to go inside, otherwise I'd still be there.

Winter sunset is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

This splended relief carving crowns the main entrance to the church of San Giuseppe (Saint Joseph) in Castello. There are two especially good things here: First, Saint Joseph is, as always, in the background -- even on a church dedicated to him. He must have been a remarkable person. Second, the three shepherds are as accurate as artist Giulio dal Moro (early 1500's) could make them. The first one, kneeling, not only has a small barrel attached to his belt (brandy?), but his upraised right hand is holding sheep-shears.

Venice at Christmas – it sounds as if the entire city ought to be refulgent with gleaming and sparkling, as if every fragment of its shattered splendor should come together and shine in an unearthly and glorious way.

Yes, it does seem that it ought to be that way.

Instead, scattered efforts at decoration all around the city make bright flickers, some bigger, some smaller, that don’t come together in any coherent way. Venice is littered with Nativity scenes, in paintings, in sculpture, not to mention other aspects of the Christmas story — the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi, the Flight into Egypt, and even the Massacre of the Innocents –yet the general attitude toward Christmas is not excessively devout.  It remains essentially a domestic holiday and I suppose that ought to translate, if depicted accurately today, into scenes of Mary in the kitchen wrestling with something heavy in the oven while Baby Jesus is busy trying to teach the cat how to swim, or of them looking desperately, not for a room at the inn, but for a place to park at the mall. Meaning no disrespect.

Puntually on December 1, the Christmas mailbox gets installed outside the tobacco/lottery/toy shop.

Little old people, as everywhere, are being wrangled into some extended-family configuration; and the children are, I think, essentially like children everywhere — eyes and spirits fixed, not on the Star, but on the imminent deluge of presents. And not brought by kings or wise men, but laid on by squadrons of adoring relatives, even in times like these.

Perhaps there are gala balls being held in palaces, but my sense is that anybody with a palace is probably already at Cortina.

Still, the framework remains the same, at least in our little hovel: Christmas Eve means risotto of go’ and roasted eel, the ripping open of the presents, midnight mass, the singing of “You Descend from Heaven,”  and slicing the panettone at midnight and popping the prosecco.

Christmas Day means the big mass at San Marco, some fabulous meaty lunch, then either sleeping on the sofa or visiting relatives, then more eating, and more sleeping.

The day after Christmas — the feast of Santo Stefano — is another holiday.  More gorging on food, this time with all of Lino’s family.

One quaint aspect of this holiday is that there are no newspapers for two days because the journalists and editors and printers don’t work  on Christmas Eve and Christmas. This is an antiquated practice that is even more exotic than bearing in the boar’s-head and drinking wassail.  Newspapers in the rest of the world come out as usual, but here, for some reason (and I do not believe it’s because the entire category wants to spend two whole days in church) the newspaper-producers just don’t work on Christmas.

To which I say: Who notices or cares?  The broadcast journalists are working as usual, and the news continues to flow to us in an unbroken stream via the television and the Internet.  But somehow print journalists feel themselves to be special, which, I presume, is fostered and sustained by the unions.  And then they complain that readership is falling.

But this is normal.

This homemade Nativity scene was created by the family on Sant' Erasmo where we go to buy our vegetables. Who says there were no apples and squash in the stable?

What is going to be abnormal this year for the holidays is: Minimal garbage collection.  Of any sort, whether recyclable (there’s a weekly schedule for the different types of material) or otherwise (clam shells, coffee grounds, orange peels, fishbones, half-eaten cupcakes, wine bottles, etc.).  And this will last for two days: Christmas Day, and Santo Stefano.

Two days with no garbage collection — this is a startling innovation in the festal folkways, especially in a city which purports to be world-class, or somewhere near it, and during a period which could be described as garbage-intensive.

The Gazzettino conveys the explanation given by the garbage company, which is nothing more than an arm of the city government with a different name: The garbage collectors are all going to be too busy keeping the streets clean to have time also to collect the bags which are daily left outside the doors of houses and shops.

The very best part is that, given this fact, the garbage company respectfully requests the good citizens to refrain from putting their bags of refuse outside for two days.  So the streets can be neat and tidy. And the interiors of the houses and stores can become kitchen middens.

This is only moderately annoying to us, but for families with children, it’s inconceivable.  I can tell you right now, sitting here with my eyes closed, that the streets are going to be FULL of bags of garbage.  Or maybe there will be a mass reversion to the Old Way, which involves a big splash.

To review: We are requested to not clutter the streets because the trash-teams are going to be busy keeping the streets clean.  But if we’re not putting out trash, why do the streets need to be cleaned? It’s like the definition of chutzpah: First you kill your parents, then you plead for clemency from the court because you’re an orphan.

I tell you, sometimes life in the most beautiful in the world makes my head hurt.

But let us return to the reason for the season, as they say.  Here is a small assortment of glimpses of Venice preparing for Christmas.  But of course, the most beautiful scenes of all are arranged and decorated and illuminated where you’ll never see them: In each person’s heart.  Compared to which glass angels and marzipan cake and all the strings of lights ever plugged in are as nothing.

Out on the eastern edge of Venice, the furthest bit of inhabited land, someone has chosen to put up a little lighted sleigh with one reindeer.

I'm still mystified by whatever is hanging on the fence below the sleigh, but it does seem merry and bright. Could it be an illuminated poinsettia?

The boathouse of the Generali insurance company's rowing club always has a Nativity scene of some sort. This year they made it float on the canal -- beautiful and evocative, though the waves from the endlessly passing motorboats during the day make it toss like a ship in a storm.

An enterprising bakery and pastry shop hollowed out a chocolate panettone and put in little figurines of Mary, Joseph and Jesus made of marzipan.

They also added a small light to represent the star. But if marzipan can be made to resemble real fruit and fish and so on, why did they make the Holy Family look as if it were carved out of soap? Lino says they already did plenty to make it look like this, and I should just zip it.

One of the innumerable variations on the Christmas cake. However they decorate it, the sentiment is always happily the same.

The Nativity scene in a hut in via Garibaldi has all the necessary components, down to the empty manger. In a startling flash of logic, the Baby Jesus isn't installed until Christmas Day.

The glow of Christmas on via Garibaldi, silently and majestically and completely upstaged by the moon. And to all a good night.

Christmas spirit is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

The makeup artist's bag contained the day's call sheet, which listed everything in the world.

Every person who has come here in the last hundred years — and there have been a lot — has almost certainly said that the city looks like a stage set. This realization comes immediately after noticing there are canals instead of streets.

And if they haven’t said it, they’ve thought it.

Attention: You are now entering the film sector, in which you can't or must do everything as per the list: Entrance forbidden to unauthorized people; Danger: 380 volts; Danger; Forbidden to smoke or use open flame; Danger of falling; Material falling from above (as opposed to from below); High-tension electric cables; Machinery in movement. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Venice makes the most of its stage-setness by offering itself as the location for at least a few segments of plenty of movies.  Since I’ve been here I’ve come across bits underway of “The Italian Job,” “Casino Royale,” “The Merchant of Venice,” “Casanova,” “The Tourist,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” and a French feature named “Les Enfants du Siecle.”  There may have been more.  This is yet another way in which Venice resembles New York, including the fact that Venetians acknowledge all the fuss only in relation to how much inconvenience it causes them personally.

Evidently there are enough incentives to induce film companies to work here to offset the logistic challenges imposed by canals, tiny streets, lots of bridges, and skillions of people. I myself would hate to have to organize a film shoot — it’s hard enough organizing an ordinary day.

The latest movie to have cluttered the streets and canals with equipment and crew is called “Effie,” a biopic about the life of Effie Ruskin.  It stars Dakota Fanning, a large number of non-Hollywood luminaries such as Emma Thompson and Derek Jacobi, and an Italian god in human form named Riccardo Scamarcio.

We were there as part of a group of members of Arzana‘, an association (of which Lino is a founding member) dedicated to the conservation of old Venetian boats of every sort.  Whenever a film needs boats, the boats also need rowers, so anybody who applied and was chosen by the film company got a chance to participate in film-making for at least a day.

Lino and I went to the office, filled out the forms, got our portraits snapped, and waited to be called.  He went three times, and I went twice.

So I urge you to see this film (it will be out in June 2012), because if nothing else interests you, you could peer in the darkness at the screen trying to discern a feminine figure in fusty nineteenth-century garb rowing a boat who could be me.  I’m merely a human in human form, but I had a fantastic time as an extra.

Good thing I’m relegated to the background, though, because while the long skirts made me feel swell, the bonnet and slicked-back hair, all perfectly accurate, made me look like a Victorian cross between the Witch of Endor and Baba Yaga.  If I’d been born in Effie’s time they’d have killed me in my cradle.

Lino didn’t come out much better.  What with him and his cloth cap, high collar and muttonchop whiskers, and me with my shawl and apron and hat, we looked like a pair of Dickensian hobbits.

This is a view of the confusion on land.

And a view of the confusion on the water on an ordinary working morning. The outliers stopped traffic at the crucial moments, otherwise the canal went back to being everybody's waterway. Four regular gondolas, one member of the Querini rowing club out for a spin, somebody in a motorboat. The boat with the camera crew is hugging the left wall; the actors in the gondola are hugging the right.

I had two days on duty.  Most of the first day was spent watching the six hours or so of activity involved in shooting two minutes of film.  We stood in the sun and ate loads of the free sandwiches the help was carrying around and watched an amazing amount of activity which seemed to happen without anyone telling anyone else what to do.  Then we went inside and ate lunch.

At 3:00 Lino and I went to be dressed and titivated.  When that was done, we climbed into a small mascareta and took up our positions on a stretch of small canal.  By now it was 6:00 PM and getting dark, but lights were blazing everywhere.

There was a camera on a crane, a camera on a boat, and this one, braced atop a bridge.

Our task, once the cameras started rolling, was to row very slowly along a snippet of canal only about 200 feet long (67 meters), which we accomplished in about a minute and a half.  Also being rowed along the canal, in one or the other direction, was a battella and two gondolas, both replicas of the 17th-century version.  One of the gondolas carried Effie and her husband, John Ruskin.  By the look of things they were not happy.  ”There was,” as Dorothy Parker once wrote, “a silence with things going on in it.”

We repeated this slow row many times.  I felt fine, except for my feet, which aren’t used to wearing shoes with heels (my costume included thin-soled mid-heel boots they’d given me to wear, even though nobody, not even me, ever saw my feet). The air wasn’t especially cold — thankfully, there was no wind — and God knows I wasn’t hungry.

At 10:00 PM it was quitting time.  We changed our clothes in record time (the costume crew standing by to help), the makeup girl took off my hat and ripped out the 3,491 bobby pins which she had rammed into my skull to anchor my hairpiece, and we ran downstairs to the boats. Now we had to really row, to get them all back to the boathouse and tied up for the night.

Rowing at night is bewitching.  There is almost no traffic, so you can actually hear the water murmuring under your boat; the distances and proportions are mysteriously transformed, and the combined effect is impossible to resist. There we were, sliding along the black glistening water flanked by prodigious palaces, virtually alone (I ignored the lone vaporetto), in a universe created by giants. And it belonged only to us. I’m not going to pretend these things don’t affect me, even after all this time. “My God,” I thought, “I’m rowing up the Grand Canal.”

Lino isn’t impervious to this allure, either; he said practically the same thing, and he’s been doing this all his life.  Because there is no way to resist the sorcery of this city at night.

During the day, the city just lies there and dispenses, in a bored sort of way, a steady supply of small doses of beauty and splendor, just enough to make people want to take lots of pictures.  But at night, she hurls caution and hauteur aside and utterly swamps you in a deluge of grandeur and seduction.

It was getting on toward midnight, but we didn’t want it ever to end.

Two days later, we were out in force on the Grand Canal doing a modified isn’t-the-city-busy sort of rowing around.  It was sunny and warm, which is pleasant but sort of inane, and we got almost no food.  You see how demanding I’m getting to be?  And we didn’t row all that much, either.

We finished before sundown and the boats were back in their stalls before dark. No magic this time.  But just as they say you can get so accustomed to chocolate that it just doesn’t do anything for you anymore, the same must be true of rowing at night.  If we did it all the time, I suppose it would become boring.

I’m ready for the next film, whatever it might be.  They can call me anytime — and I don’t care if they make me look like a mutant psychopathic canal-dredger.

A view of the stage, so to speak: that strip of canal heading down toward San Marco. The actors are in a gondola near the next bridge, where the motorboat with the camera is idling, transmitting images to the screen on the shore.

This is how the scene appears in Movie World.

Dakota Fanning and the rest of the actors got a break to come in and warm up.

Riccardo Scamarcio gets a touch-up, which I'd never have guessed he needed anywhere.

This is the scene that required a hundred takes, I don't know why: Dakota Fanning as Effie Ruskin decides on a carefree impulse to try rowing herself.

And for some reason Scamarcio makes the same attempt.

The Grand Canal shortly after dawn, as we row our old boats to the day's shoot. Perhaps not quite as dramatic as at midnight, the canal still looks amazing. I'm giving you this view because you'd probably never see the Grand Canal so empty (it was a holiday). I wouldn't have either, if I hadn't had to get up and go to work.

Venice, starring me is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Each day in each week in the so-called most beautiful city in the world often feels like a loaded coal cart which I am pulling along a rusty track.  Instead of coal, however, which hasn’t been burned here for quite a few decades, my daily cart, so to speak, is loaded with the same detritus of which life is composed pretty much everywhere: appointments, shopping, cleaning, public transportation challenges, all enlivened by the occasional strike which makes the usual inconveniences even more complex and invigorating.

Still, I’d rather be here than in Fargo or Yazoo City.

While I’m hauling the daily freight, though, there is a steady supply of tiny events throughout the day, running on a sort of parallel track, which form their own little train of entertainment.  I’ve finished with this metaphor now.

For example: Last Sunday morning I was walking across a nearby small campo which I was surprised to see embellished by an unusual arrangement of objects.  It wasn’t a relic of the recently-closed Biennale (though it made a lot more sense than many of  the putative works of art I’d seen).  It was a token of the vox populi, or rather, the vox of one person, crying in the wilderness, a person who had suddenly snapped.

Little blue plastic bags and a strip of white paper. If you recognize the bags, you can guess what the paper's for. Spontaneous denunciations show up on walls and doors, decrying some behavior which has become intolerable. But this is the first time I've seen a sign on the ground.

The bags -- by now a neighborhood staple, though they're not always blue -- contain dog poop. If you think this is gross, you should know there are still plenty of people who deny that their dog ever eliminates. But this person has had enough: "Disgusting pigs," the writer begins: "Pick up your dogs' poop. Uncouth pigs."

Another voice recently made itself heard on the neighborhood notice-board at the Giardini vaporetto stop.  This board, like all of them, is entirely improvised, a sort of stationary town crier which serves an obviously useful purpose, despite the fact that it is pretty much illegal.

Augusto Salvadori, the previous sub-mayor for tourism, as well as the self-appointed arbiter of decorum, civic uplift and general improvement of tone, made a stab at abolishing these little outposts by threatening to fine anybody who dared to tape or glue their humble advertisement on any public surface. Seeing that these notices always carry a phone number, this threat could have been scary, except that the snarling tiger had no fangs or claws, otherwise known as the power of enforcement.  So the notices continue to bloom and, in my view, continue to serve a useful purpose. I happened to find a good, inexpensive seamstress this way, and I’ve also got the number of a computer geek stashed somewhere, which I took down off a strip of paper near the San Pietro vaporetto stop. So I’m glad they’re still there, even if they are ugly.

But the other day I came across a notice advertising a room for rent. This in itself isn’t noteworthy; since the city is awash in budget-restricted residents of every sort, from students to Eastern European women working as caretakers, accommodations are always eagerly sought — more eagerly sought than offered, may I say.

But this particular notice, on second reading, carried an unpleasantly different connotation.

It said:  ”Fifty-year-old will share with a girl or working woman an apartment which is sunny, near the Santa Marta vaporetto stop, a single bed in a small room available.  The house is composed of an eat-in kitchen, small living room and two rooms of which one is occupied.  Contact Francesco (followed by his cell phone number).”

I spent a lively five minutes telling Lino what I thought of a man offering his extra room explicitly to a female, and no nitpicking about age.  My reaction could be summed up in one word:  ”Swine.”

Today, to my surprise, I came across the same skeezy announcement taped up at the vaporetto stop by the hospital.  Why was I surprised?  He must have put these up all over town.  What struck me was that someone had written on it my very own thought: “Porco.”  Pig. It made me feel a bond with someone I’ll never know. Maybe there are people all over the city who have thought, or written, this opinion.  We should form a club.

But all the surprises aren’t so rank.  There was a beautiful little bonus on the other side of the bridge as we left early this morning: A boat piled with fish.

Maybe you don’t care about fish, but any sign that somebody has gone out in the lagoon and come back with something finny is a great thing.  It used to be as normal as learning how to swim by hanging onto your mother’s washboard in the canal (not made up).  Now people go buy salmon and lobster at the fishmarket.  You’ve heard this rant before.

They were grey mullet, which I’ve caught myself; sometimes an especially exuberant one jumps into the boat.  But this was quite a haul, and there must have been at least 50 of these creatures all tangled up in a heap of net, against which most of them were still fighting, except for their brothers who had long since suffocated underneath everything.

The few people who were out at 7:00 stopped, or at least slowed, to have a look.  As a sign of the continuing deterioration of culture here, one woman asked if they were sea bass – this, in a neighborhood where people once knew their fish better than the multiplication table.

Another young woman’s sole remark was, “I wouldn’t take them if you gave them to me.”  This is guaranteed to hit one of Lino’s most exposed nerves.  “She grew up eating LOBSTER,’  he hissed sarcastically to me. People used to thank God on their knees for food, not to mention fresh fish; the idea that you could reject such bounty really fries his ganglia.

A little girl walked by on her way to school, with her little brother.  She paused to look at this mound of goodness, then stretched out her closed umbrella and pushed the tip gently against the cheek of one fish.  Then she turned to walk away.  Her little brother thought it was funny.  “What if the fish ate your umbrella?” he asked her, laughing.  Maybe he had imagined the fish suddenly rearing up, like Jaws, swallowing her and her umbrella whole, never to be seen again. She didn’t reply.

If you pay attention, you will always see something beautiful.  Perhaps you don’t think that beauty could qualify as unexpected here, but there are so many different kinds, at so many different moments, that some of them are bound to surprise you.  Like the mountains at sunrise.

No more need be said.

The unexpected is always expected is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Last Saturday I went to watch one of my favorite Venetian rowing races: The regata of Santa Barbara, an annual contest on six-oar caorlinas organized by the discharged sailors’ association in honor of Saint Barbara, patron saint of seamen and, by extension, of the Navy.

The only hint at 10:00 AM that something unusual might be imminent was the lone red buoy, fixed in front of the Arsenal to mark the finish line.

For every Regata Storica, there must be ten races held every month here (I’m making this number up — maybe it’s more), winter or summer, by rowing clubs, gondoliers, and assorted groups of every sort.  And don’t think that just because there isn’t any prize money that these races aren’t fought to the finish.

Technically, Saint Barbara’s day is December 4, but Saturday was more convenient for everybody and no doubt the good saint took it in stride. After all, her bones supposedly lay in a cupboard somewhere on Murano for about 400 years, so she’s fully aware of the prevailing attitude toward time here.

The crew of each boat was composed of four gondoliers who had done their (formerly compulsive) military service in the Navy, plus one boy from the Scuola Navale Militare F. Morosini, where Lino teaches rowing. For the first time in 15 years, there was also one fireman.

A statue of Saint Barbara is often found at the entrance to mines -- here in a lead mine at Pian dei Resinelli in Lombardy.

The firemen weren’t there to quell any spontaneous combustion; Saint Barbara is their patron saint too.  Generally speaking, she is assigned to watch over anyone who is dealing — intentionally or not — with things that go “boom.” If there are explosives, fire, or lightning involved, or the threat of sudden, violent, incendiary death, she is your go-to saint, and specifically protects sailors, firemen, artillerymen, miners, sappers, road-builders, geologists, mountaineers, petroleum workers, and the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Aviation ordnancemen.  Also bell-ringers and architects — maybe there’s a link to high towers with no lightning rod.  This list is not exhaustive, by the way, I just decided to stop.

Trivia alert:  A powder-magazine or other storage area containing explosives is often referred to as the “santabarbara.”

It rained and fogged.  This is typical.  There have been times in the past 15 years when the sun beamed down on victors and vanquished alike but usually there’s water. Perhaps this is a helpful gesture from the saint, who abhors fire.

Getting the boats --not to mention the rowers -- ready, in the canal that leads to the Arsenal.

There were all the usual components:  Competitors who have known each other since before they were born, the benediction of the boats, the traditional pennants for the first four boats to cross the finish line, and other prizes offered by sponsors (Pasta Zara sent everyone home with a neat box containing two kilos of pasta), bottles of wine, even small trophies of Murano glass, presumably not in memory of Saint Barbara’s sojourn on the island.

There were assorted dignitaries, including an admiral, some of whom gave impromptu speeches into a microphone which could have used a dash of nitroglycerine to wake it up. Nobody listens anyway. The speeches were, also according to tradition, too long, too rambling, and often more than a little bit too self-congratulatory.  I will not name names but I know who they were.

The prizes were given, the photos were snapped, then everybody headed for the buffet.  As I have often mentioned, “Every psalm ends with the Gloria,” as they say here, and every event ends with food and drink.

And tradition requires — or maybe Saint Barbara requires, she being an extremely practical saint, it seems to me — that there should be pasta e fagioli. Not only at this race, but at 98 percent of amateur races here. Pasta and beans are hot, filling, delicious, hugely good for you and  can be made in massive batches reasonably far in advance.  Trivia alert:  Beans such as the borlotti used around here contain more protein than red meat, though I don’t think anybody cares.

So carry your bottle of Beano and dig in. Or plan to spend the rest of the day outdoors, in the fresh air.  For a gondolier, that’s obviously no problem. They often go back for seconds.

The boats head out onto the playing field, so to speak. These guys look like the ones to beat. Too bad they finished 8th -- next to last.

The boats line up to be blessed by Padre Manuel Paganuzzi, the chaplain at the Scuola Navale, and the rowers respond with the traditional salute, or "alzaremi." The man in the bow of the pink boat is cheating by not reversing his oar. Saint Barbara punished him: they finished dead last.

Crossing the finish line, each crew is expected to repeat the "alzaremi." As you can see, this tradition appears to be degenerating toward the "optional" category.

The judges take a minute to make sure they got the order of finish right.

Everybody immediately starts to remove all their stuff -- only the shell of the boat will go back to the city boathouse.

This young man – I’m assuming he practices yoga when he’s not rowing --is removing the platform on which he was standing. Each rower has one, but they belong to the boat. He's probably going to remove the wooden strips he had nailed to its underside.

The boats are stripped and all the speeches are finally over . On to the prize-giving, the perfect moment for the rain to start.

Third-year cadet Luca Merola displays his first-place red pennant, the perfect gift for today, his 18th birthday.

We eat! There’s enough pasta e fagioli to feed three battleships. The plastic bowls are also part of the tradition; weakened by the scalding heat of the contents and the weight of the jumbo portion, they sag dangerously and you burn your hands trying to hold them. It would depress me if this, for some reason, were not to happen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would be calling this the Ship of Fools if somebody else hadn't already come up with the phrase. In this minuscule motorboat we have: five of the six rowers of the red boat, who finished fourth (note rolled-up pennant), five oars, the paioli, or floorboards of the caorlina, a case of wine, and the corrugated fiberglass used to protect the boat from the rain. I'd say they're ready to head for the Bay of Biscay, if they don't encounter any waves. And if nobody breathes.

And the event ends as it began: fog, silence, and space. It's as if nothing had ever happened.

Racing Saint Barbara is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

This is where we stopped, as Lino had already determined, passing here as we often do, that this terrain was going to be good.

While the rest of you were lolling amid the wreckage of flightless birds and tangled NFL teams last Thursday, we went for the mollusks.  I suppose we could have gone fishing, but considering that the tide was going to be unusually low at a convenient time of day, plus the fact that a few calm, cool, golden days of St. Martin’s Summer had briefly wandered back to the lagoon, probably by mistake, it seemed to fly in the face of Providence not to take a boat and go clamming.

I refer to “we,” in the sense that an anesthetist might refer to “our” brain operation. Lino does the hunting and gathering of the submerged morsels, and I help him by rowing there and back and keeping quiet.  I have dug clams in my life, so I know it’s possible.  I also know that I do not have the (A) knack  (B) patience  (C) desire  (D) interest in this endeavor.  Perhaps if I were to actually find a clam occasionally, all of the above would increase, even if only a little.

But no.

He jams his finger into the sediment where there are NO SIGNS of bivalve habitation, and comes up with one after another.  I jam my finger into the sediment where there are NUMEROUS signs, and come up with nothing or — worse — a little castanet full of mud where the clam used to be.  This is the clam’s way of wreaking revenge, even though he wasn’t eaten by us but by some passing marine creature such as a sea snail. But if you can be fooled by the shut clamshell, you will happily claim it and throw it into the skillet with the others, where it will duly open up and distribute sandy mud all over its companions.  Not a lot of sand.  Just enough.  So not wishing to risk being the agent of this unpleasant eventuality, I tend to sit in the boat and watch and breathe and listen.  And take pictures, or read.  Sometimes I even think, if there’s any time left over.

And he immediately gets to work. Summer clamming requires walking around in the water barefoot, but by November you need to switch to Plan B.

Rowing out in the lagoon when the weather is chilly (or cold, or very cold), but calm and sunny, is almost the best thing ever.  The traffic has been slashed to the bone, the light is delicate yet rich, with shifting nuances that overlap in alluring combinations that set themselves on fire in celestial sunsets.

Watching the tide drop is also a beautiful and mysterious thing.  Of course you can’t see it drop any more than you can see a leaf changing color, but you can notice it in phases and it’s a pleasant reminder of things that are bigger and even more important than you — I mean me.

Reverence for truth compels me to add, though, that the soundtrack isn’t nearly as seductive as the scene itself.  I said there was less traffic — I didn’t say there was no traffic, because since the advent of the motor (or at least since the advent of me), I can tell you that there is no day or night, no season or location, in which you will find silence in the lagoon.  There is always — I need to repeat that — always the sound of a motor coming from somewhere.

Whenever a boat goes by out in the channel, it thoughtfully leaves all sorts of waves behind.

Trying to imagine the lagoon without the sound of motors — and believe me, I do try to imagine it, on a regular basis — is like trying to imagine the Garden of Eden, or being Angelina Jolie, or even inventing some stupid little app that makes you five million dollars in six months.  That is, your brain can’t do it. Because no matter how divine may be the velvety midnight sky, how nacreous the dawn, how resplendent the vault of heaven seared by the flaming rays of sunset, there will always be motor noise.  Small, but steady and grinding, like a dentist’s drill, or deep and ponderous, or silly and busy and self-important.  It’s the aural equivalent of the vandalage inflicted by The Society for Putting Broken Bedsteads into Ponds identified by Flanders and Swann.  Only not so funny.

Back to clams.  Lino was happy, I was happy, the clams — well, I try not to think about their mood. They were put in the lagoon to be consumed, not to write bi-lingual dictionaries or form a sacred harp choir.  Apologies to any Catholic vegetarian readers, but I have to say that clams make a beautiful death.  And broth.

The falling tide begins to reveal the world beneath. The lagoon, as one sees, is essentially a flooded alluvial plain.

The sun and water are both noticeably going down, but this does not deter our intrepid clammer.

Your diehard clammer wants "just one more" even more fervently than six paparazzi want photos.

Happy Clamsgiving is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up