Strange how one can miss the most obvious things, but it does show me, yet again, that I mustn’t be writing at midnight.

The winners were the Vignottini (canarin/yellow).

Second place: Bertoldini/Vianello (viola/purple).  Third place: Luca Quintavalle/Gaetano Bregantin (rosso/red).  Fourth place: Franco dei Rossi “Strigheta”/Luca Ballarin (arancio/orange).

These are the “bandierati,” or winners of their respective bandiere, or pennants, and glory and praise, and money. If you finish from fifth to ninth place, you get a manly shake of the hand, and money.  If you’re the reserve, or last-minute-substitute boat, you just get money.

More details will be forthcoming about the deeper nature of the skirmish between Tezzat-d’Este and the Vignottini.  The more I think about it, though, the more these races resemble high-stakes horse racing.  In some ways it’s not what you do or don’t do, it’s mainly what you can manage to get away with.  If I have misinterpreted anything about horses, I apologize.

Based on past races, I have no doubt that the Vignottini were not, nor have ever been, what they call “farina da far ostie,” or “flour for making Communion wafers.” I’m not taking sides, I’m just pointing it out.  But why the hammer fell on Tezzat this time is indeed a convoluted tale, which I will try to relate as soon as I can manage to organize the particulars, the context, and the history.  And understand it enough to explain it.

It's not Venice that's mysterious, it's people. Any people, anywhere.

But what has driven me to mention it is because it’s yet another in an infinite series of examples of the insatiable need people seem to feel to refer to Venice as “hidden.”  ”Secret.” “Mysterious.” Despite scores of other worthy adjectives (I like “peerless,” though “incomparable” is also good), people can’t resist using these exhausted banalities to describe a city which evidently was built, not on a batch of marshy wetlands, but on quivering Jungian swamps of the unknowable.  Maybe it’s Carnival, with everybody in disguise, that has doomed Venice to be labeled “mysterious.”  Maybe it’s the fog. Maybe it’s the wonders of low tide.

I object to this tendency for several reasons.  One, because it is a cliche, and cliches annoy me.  The image of the city as an enigmatic, unfathomable, a faintly (or overtly) sinister place, an amniotic sort of realm ruled by inscrutable forces illuminated by a faint but lurid aura of romanticism, began to germinate in the 1600s, when visitors began to be interested in the city less as a political or commercial power and more as a place of intrigue, decadence, and general dissipation.

Pigeons have a refreshing outlook -- the only mystery in their world is where to find food.

Mystery, in fact, is a quality that was promoted by the city itself, whose patrician families and government (which were the same thing) knew that secrets had real power. Discretion and dissimulation were serious weapons of self-defense in a world composed of much larger and more dangerous nations, all of which wanted to hurt, or, if they were having a very good day, to kill you at some point or another.  This much we can certainly appreciate.

“The first who wrapped the city in mystery were the Venetian rulers,” Espedita Grandesso, a Venetian writer and historian, told me once. “Because the Serenissima was a little bijou in the midst of iron barrels.  So this state of things made the nobles and merchants keep everything secret, even the most foolish thing.  They weren’t completely mistaken.  All they needed was the rumor of something going wrong, and all the governments of Europe would be breathing down her neck.”

“All the secrets of the crafts had to be protected, like the secret of making scarlet dye,” costume designer Stefano Nicolao added.  The same paranoia applied to the techniques of glass-making, and many other trades, such as the formula for the best teriaca in Europe.  (Teriaca was the all-purpose medicament of choice for centuries, but the recipe has been lost. Would that be a mystery?)  There were obvious commercial reasons — survival reasons — for relying, not on a hearty handshake and a call for another round of drinks, but merely the shimmer of a sideways glance, a tiny shrug.  Did that little frown mean yes or no?

Sometimes even Venice takes the easy way out. Anything looks mysterious in the fog, even me taking this picture.

But by the Romantic era, the idea of Venice’s inscrutability had gotten completely out of hand.  Once secrecy had become the way of life, aided by the custom of wearing masks up to half the year, it didn’t take long before the entire city came to be viewed as a fantastic decoction of intrigue, deception, and eventually — why not? — erotic adventure.  But I still don’t see how all that adds up to “mysterious.”

Which leads me to my second objection to this cliche, which is that I don’t understand how a city which covers just three square miles, with only 59,000 inhabitants, and is visited by millions of people every year (though admittedly in very short bursts of time and attention), can possibly be presented as retaining even the tiniest shred of a secret.

Tokyo has 35,676,000 inhabitants and covers 5,200 square miles– you could make a very good case for there being a mass of secrets as big as the Sears Tower hidden in there somewhere.  Probably a much better case than you could make for Venice.

"Mysterious" means something that can't be known or understood, not something that only appears perplexing.

Maybe the force governing these Venetian so-called secrets is the city’s beauty. But why should beauty have anything to do with secrecy?  I’d be willing to bet money that there are as many, or more, secrets in Lincoln, Nebraska, as there are in Venice.  But nobody indulges in reveries about the secrets of Shreveport, or contemplates the mysteries of Walla Walla.  Why?

And another thing.  If there were to be secrets here, how have they managed to stay secret all this time?  Amazon.com lists 11,696 books under the keyword “Venice.”  Secrets?  Where?

My opinion on the subject can best be expressed by Sherlock Holmes’s astute comment to Dr. Watson: “You see, but you do not observe.”

This wasn't hidden, it was sitting right there where people could walk straight through it.

Why insist on seeking something ephemeral and perhaps even indefinable?  If you really want to discover Venice, don’t go looking for secrets; look at exactly what there is.  Anything you can see in broad daylight anywhere in the city is going to be as complex, as brilliant, as astonishing as any rumpsprung old “secret” foisted off on you by yet another Venicemonger.

Yes, of course the city has an eccentric glamor, an insinuating fascination that can indeed sneak up on you and trap you.  Venice is beautiful; to say that is to have said little more than that the sun rises in the east and water runs downhill. It is unforgettable, fatal, addictive, whatever you want. People become infatuated with it, or the idea of it.  I offer myself as a case in point. But that doesn’t make it mysterious.

Now here's a Venetian mystery for you. Who is leaving their bag of garbage outside our house when they know perfectly well that it would be picked up in front of theirs? And why?

So let me make a heartfelt, and I’m sure completely inaudible, plea for some new word to describe Venice that will take the place of any term that is synonymous with secrecy, concealment, enigma, or anything more subtle than a bowl of pasta and beans, or a couple of fried clams. Please. Just try.

Buildings are what people care about — logical, since no buildings, no Venice.  Some Venetians have told me that they don’t believe anything will be done to resolve motondoso till an entire building collapses, a notion that once seemed idiotic until I came to realize that it could happen.  A building collapsing, I mean, not that it would lead to any meaningful action, though one can always dream.

So perhaps some structure really will have to be sacrificed, like an unblemished white heifer,  for the benefit of the tribe.  The idea has a romantic, mythic quality to it that’s almost appealing.

You could also say “People,” about which I haven’t said much, if anything, and you’d be right again.  The most obvious hazard that waves present is the risk of capsizing; every so often you read about some tourists in gondolas who have gone into the drink.  There was even a traghetto (gondola ferry that crosses the Grand Canal) that got blindsided by an anomalous wave and the whole cargo of passengers went overboard.  I seem to recall that a small child got caught beneath the overturned boat, but one of the gondoliers pulled him out in time.  Some years ago an American woman drowned. Fun.

Erosion caused by the waves continually sucking soil out from under and between stones means the stones collapse, but sometimes a person collapses with them. It happened to a woman walking along near the Giardini one day — she put her foot on a stone, it gave way, and faster than you can say “Doge Obelerio Antenoreo” she fell into a hole higher than she was. Nobody in the neighborhood was surprised; they’d been sending complaints to the city for months to no avail.

Then there was the child playing on a stretch of greensward at Sacca Fisola facing the Giudecca Canal when a hole suddenly opened up  beneath him.  If a man with quick reflexes hadn’t grabbed him, the child would long since have gone out to sea.  Events such as these — and may they be few –  no longer inspire surprise.

This satellite view of the Venetian lagoon gives a general hint of the variations in depth. These variations are part of what make it a lagoon and not, say, Baffin Bay.

But what if you weren’t a human?  This question may not often cross your mind, but Venice looks radically different to its other fauna, and not a few flora, as well.  And waves are not their friend.

What really makes Venice so special is its lagoon, which covers 212 square miles.  Without the lagoon and its concomitant canals, Venice would merely be a batch of really old buildings — beautiful or not, depending on your taste —  which could just as well be sitting on the outskirts of Enid, Oklahoma.

I will be expatiating on the lagoon on another occasion. (A Venetian word, by the way: laguna).  The witness (that would be me) is instructed (by me) to stick to the topic at hand, which is waves.

A more detailed view of the lagoon immediately surrounding Venice gives a better idea of how the area is shaped. These shallows, though, are not barene. (Photo: oceana.org)

The Venetian lagoon is a silent but intimate partner in Venice’s fate.  Not only are the waves undermining the foundations of the city, they are scouring away the foundations of the lagoon.  And while damage to buildings is certainly important, there is arguably even more damage being done to its waters.  And they’re going to be a lot harder to fix than a palace.

So if you  haven’t got time to watch what waves can do to buildings, you should take a look at what they do to the lagoon — specifically to the barene (bah-RAY-neh), the marshy, squidgy islets strewn about out there.  Venice was built on 118 of them.

These are barene. Looks like lots, but 60 years ago there were half again as many. That was a real lagoon.

Barene are the building blocks of the lagoon.  They form 20 percent of its total area, and are crucial to everything in it: microorganisms, plants, animals, birds, fish and, till not so long ago, also people.

Let’s say you have less than no interest in ecosystems and their inhabitants, at least the inhabitants smaller than humans.  Barene, along with their myriad meandering capillary channels, are perfect for slowing down the speed and force of the incoming tide.  They act as a built-in assortment of natural barriers which, if they could remain where they were, would already be limiting the force and the quantity of acqua alta in good old Venice.

But over the past 60 years, half of the lagoon’s barene have been lopped away by waves.  The World Wildlife Fund estimated, several years ago, that at the current rate of erosion (erosion caused by motondoso), in 50 years there would be no more barene left.

A cross-section of a barena near Burano. If you were an endangered bird, or even just a really tired one, this patch of mud would be more beautiful to you than twenty Titians.

Why do we care?  Even if all we’re really interested in is buildings, we care because as the barene diminish, the tide can reach the city faster and ever more aggressively.  The natural brakes, so to speak, are being taken out.

And we also care because, as I have probably said before, whatever a wave can do to a batch of mud it can and will eventually do to bricks and marble.

Part 5: Solutions?

Waves are as destructive to wetlands as they are to buildings, but the wetlands can’t even put up a fight.

The large pilings were put in ages ago, to mark the line between the channel and the barena. As you see, the waves have shrunk the barena, so the large pilings are only sort of symbolic. As a bonus, we see the remnants of the wall of smaller pilings which was installed to prevent any further erosion of the barena.

The distance between pilings and barena here is just another of many examples of the very simple effect of waves.

I remember when this channel was only half this wide. Most of these boats belong to people from the mainland who come all this way so they can just sit. Lovely, admittedly, but they bring waves and take away part of the lagoon when they go home.

Tourist launches of all sizes offer day trips around the lagoon.

Taxis are always in a hurry, especially on airport runs. (Photo: Italia Nostra)

Ordinary working barges at Sant' Erasmo on a Sunday afternoon. Their owners are almost certainly out in smaller motorboats, but tomorrow it will be back to work with all of these.

Just one of the countless waves (here, the Giudecca Canal lands a left hook on the Zattere) which are reducing Venice to rubble.

Slapping. Punching. Thudding. This is the sound of what things have come to. For 1,795 years, Venice celebrated Ascension Day with a ceremony in which the doge threw a golden ring into the sea and intoned the words: “Desponsamus te, O Mare, in signum veri perpetique dominii.”  (”I wed thee, O Sea, in sign of true and perpetual dominion.”)  In this case he was referring to the Adriatic, and possibly even the Mediterranean, and the Venetians did an excellent job of this for a long time.  But the Venetian lagoon is a body of water which resists domination.  It is not a happy marriage.

The gondoliers at the Molo, on the Bacino of San Marco in front of the Doge's Palace, finally installed a breakwater at their own expense. It's not the perfect solution, but it's better than nothing.

Over the past 50 years, the complex rapport between land and liquid, hitherto marred by only occasional bickering — an engineering misunderstanding, say, or some meteorological outburst — has now reached the stage of open battle.

But contrary to the general impression the world has of Venice’s rapport with its waters, the most serious problem does not involve acqua alta, or high tide. It is motondoso (sometimes moto ondoso), or the waves caused by motorboats, which is literally killing the lagoon’s erstwhile spouse.  And unlike other forms of pollution or pressure, waves are a little hard to keep secret.  The sight and sound of crashing water has become nearly constant.

Venetians routinely refer to motondoso as “the cancer of Venice.”

If you’re not impressed by the roiling high seas surrounding the city (try stepping between the leaping and plunging dock and vaporetto after the motonave — or better yet, the Alilaguna, the yellow airport “bus” — has just passed), give a glance at any canal at low tide.

You’ll see walls with chunks of stone and brick gone, stone steps fallen askew, cracks and fissures snaking up building walls from the foundation to the second floor, and even higher. It doesn’t take many canals before you begin to wonder how the city manages to stay on its feet. There are palaces on virtually every canal which have holes in their foundations bigger than hula hoops – dank caverns stretching back into the darkness. I have seen them with these very eyes. And if I’ve seen them, so has everybody else. But it just keeps getting worse.

Several years ago the fondamenta on the Giudecca facing the eponymous canal was finally completely repaired.  Years of pounding waves were causing it to literally fall into the canal.  But the waves continue as before — on the contrary, they’re increasing.  The force, the height, the frequency, pick what you will.  It’s all bad.  (One study has stated that the highest waves in the entire lagoon are in the Giudecca Canal.)

Therefore the fondamenta is beginning to weaken again in the same way, which you can check by looking at the point at which a building is attached to the fondamenta.  Cracks are opening up.  Again. 

So fixing — or saying you’ve fixed — a problem doesn’t count for much if you haven’t, you know, actually fixed it.

The constant spray from the waves creates the ideal environment for a type of algae which is spectacularly slippery. And in the winter, spray turns to ice. You're on your own.

Low tide here is an appalling revelation. One of the primary causes of this damage are enormous iron workboats. If one bumps into a wall even slightly, it opens a crack (or hole) which the waves keep eroding. Hey, it's not their wall. (Photo: Italia Nostra)

This is one version of the intermediate stage, here on the Riva dei Sette Martiri facing the Bacino of San Marco. The waves have been pushing and pulling underneath and gravity has begun to take over. Just imagine if this were happening under your house. And yet, this is normal by now. There are no warning signs or barriers, no indication whatever that anything is happening here. This silent catastrophe is just sitting here peacefully in broad daylight as people wander by.

Waves working night and day will eventually produce a result like this ruined fondamenta facing the Canale di Santa Chiara just behind Piazzale Roma. The former walkway looks like a dead parking lot because it’s undergoing renovation, work almost certainly necessary because the pavement was giving way due to the pounding waves in the canal. The fondamenta will eventually be new, but the waves will continue – not only is the canal narrow, it is a major route for vaporetto and barge traffic.

Next: Part 2: The Why

Part 3:  The How

Suck It Up

Part 4: The lagoon’s eye view

As I was expatiating on this theme recently, I neglected to mention a few of the manifestations of this linkage lurking here.  And one of them does not show Venice in her best light.

First:  Two steps from Campo San Barnaba is a short, narrow street (with bridge) named the Calle (and Ponte) de le Turchette.  If you were to guess, based on your elementary Italian, that this means “Street of the Little Turkish Girls,” you would be right.

Tradition maintains that in the era before the Casa dei Catechumeni was established to accommodate instruction in the Roman Catholic faith, there was a house here where Turkish women (”Turchette”), taken prisoner in assorted battles, were kept.  Their time was spent mainly in being converted to Christianity.  Or not.  No word on the rate of conversion, or whether conversion was considered optional, or what the consequences were for not converting, at least not by the point where I stopped seeking information.

According to the estimable Giuseppe Tassini, writing in Curiosita’ Veneziane, a document in the Scuola di San Rocco states that the confraternity possesses a house in the parish of San Barnaba, “in Calle Longa, where the Turchette are housed.”  That’s all I can tell you about this, though every time I pass this way I admit that images of exotic females, enclosed in another sort of harem, wander through my mind.

Second:  An even more intriguing Middle-Eastern, let’s say, element is a mute patera (PAH-teh-ra) affixed to the side of a house behind the former hospital of the Incurabili.  (These “incurables” were mostly syphilitics, if you’re wondering.)

This patera is very easy to miss, being so uncharacteristically high. Looking up is always a good idea when walking around in any city, especially here.

Patere were typically circular plaques carved in low relief on Istrian stone, often showing animals, which were placed on buildings generally from the 10th to the 12th century, though a few date till the 15th.  These images were intended to ward off evil.

The one that fascinates me, though, has a very different vibe.  It shows a cross, whose base is in the suggested form of a sword, standing upon a crescent. 

The conclusions one might draw from this are fairly obvious, but that’s what annoys me — because so often the obvious turns out to be excitingly wrong.  There is also the curious factor of the points of this crescent not being identical.  So far, however, I haven’t been able to learn anything about it.  But there it is.

A small digression on Turkishness: Ever since maize began to come to Italy from the Americas in the 1500’s, it has borne the name granoturco, or Turkish grain.  There are various hypotheses for this, none of them definitive, but one of the more credible ones refers to the custom of lumping all sorts of foreign things together under the generic label “Turkish.”  A relic of this habit applies here today regarding the Slavic women who come from Eastern Europe to work as caretakers of the elderly; even though they may come from Ukraine, Romania, or Moldova, I’ve heard at least a few Venetians refer to them as “Turche.” 

Now we come to a longish street whose official name is “Barbarie de le Tole,” but which I think of as the “Street of the Kebab Joints.”  And here the theme of Turkishness becomes less attractive.

There are some 20,000 students in Venice, a total of the enrollments in the two universities (Ca’ Foscari, the University of Venice, and the I.U.A.V., or University of Architecture).  There is also a noticeable number of immigrants in the city, some from the Middle East or North Africa.   And there is also a growing group of tourists who are getting by on a squeaking budget.  These are all people who typically seek nourishing and/or good food at a very small price.  So from pizza-by-the-slice (Italian, even if not very civilized), the choice has broadened out to include doner kebab, or what in the U.S. is often called by its Greek name, gyros.  Foreign.  Suddenly this changes things.

Whether or not you read Turkish, the image itself translates as "good cheap food."

Doner kebab was invented in Erzurum, eastern Turkey, and since the Seventies it has become a common and familiar fast food in most European countries.  The making and selling of it are virtually always in the hands of Turkish individuals. 

But all of a sudden Venice isn’t happy with these little places.  I can’t say whether the kebabs’ precursors were available in the declining years of the Venetian Republic, but considering the spectacular variety of ethnicities and creeds which were to be found milling around the streets and markets and waterfronts of Venice back in the Old Days, it wouldn’t surprise me. 

In the past decade or so, the subject of immigration (to Europe, not only to Venice) has become an increasingly tormented one politically, economically, and socially.  Considering the multi-cultural foundation of this town, any anti-foreign sentiment is in some ways difficult to justify – not that one can’t understand it.  This is a theme which I will dissect at another time.

But on December 4, the Gazzettino announced that the mayor has signed an ordinance forbidding the granting of any new licenses for kebab joints until 2012.  The reasons given for this are many; they bob like ornaments hanging on a tree which has been hollowed by termites.  The reasons as stated are:

• The proliferation of these establishments and the consumption of their product on-site contribute to the “impoverishment” of the typical local places, as well as of the architectural and environmental quality of the city “due to the particular nature of their furnishing and equipment,” and
• The “incompatibility” of the opening of new pizza/kebab joints with the “conservation of the artistic patrimony” and the “typicality” (if there is such a word) of the historic center, and
• Opening such places in certain points in the city conduces to the “maximum vulnerability of the cultural and touristic profile” of the city (whatever that might mean), and
• That anyway there are already enough such places to satisfy the demand, so no need for more.

And who proposed this extraordinary measure?  Not any of the assorted Superintendents of the Artistic/Historic/Cultural/Archaeological Heritage; nor the director of the Academy of Fine Arts, nor the Guggenheim Collection, nor anyone from the battalions of professors of art, history, or even tourism, if you will, though any of those protagonists might be able to make a reasonable case.  Not a voice from the syndics of the Venice Atheneaum.  Nobody from any sphere or stratum of the cultural or artistic universe here.  Not even a wail from Augusto Salvadori, the City Councilor for Tourism and Protection of Traditions and Decorum.

Despite its being couched in cultural and historic and artistic terms, the proposal was in fact made by Giuseppe Bortolussi, the plain old City Councilor for Productive Activity and Commerce.  Therefore one can interpret these cultural concerns in economic terms, in favor of the small businessmen who are the competitors of the kebabists.

And the decree will cover 13 of the 24 most important touristic points of the city, including the Rialto, the area of San Marco (where there is already a flourishing McDonald’s), the train station, and the Accademia.  They might just as well have said “everywhere,” considering that they have stated that there are already enough such places to satisfy the demand.  

I thought capitalism posited that the consumers, not the city councilors, were the ones who get to decide which businesses live and which die.  And if it’s possible to determine at what point there are “enough” kebab joints, it ought to be possible to determine at what point there are “enough” shops selling glass and Carnival masks, which a stroll around the city reveals as being somewhere around 249,327.  Enabling infinite choice in souvenirs (good!) doesn’t seem to translate into infinite choice in foodstuffs (not good!).

This ordinance looks strangely like an effort to protect the restaurateurs, not the city, from impoverishment.  To herd the wandering tourist seeking sustenance back into the trattorias and restaurants where the prices can sometimes go so high, at least compared to the value received, that they practically glow in the dark.

But I’d like to close this little cultural pilgrimage with the observation that  hypocrisy evidently provides more fertile terrain than volcano slopes after an eruption if you want to grow a bumper crop of  contradictions.  All those affirmations of protecting the artistic and historic nature of the city?  One hardly knows where to start to list the examples of how that concept has been violated. 

I’ll provide just a few random snaps, chosen mainly by their convenience.  Anyone who can explain why these alterations are permissible (I’ll spare you the details of the laws designed to “protect” the artistic and architectural nature of the city) is eagerly invited to enlighten me.

The "Danieli Excelsior" (center) was built in the 1950s as an addition to the Danieli Hotel, and wedged between the hotel, formerly a palazzo of the Dandolo family (late 1400s) and the New Prisons (1589-1616).

Somebody thought these balconies would be just the thing on this already unattractive modern residence, right next to the church of the Santo Spirito (1506).

Then there is this construction, housing the University of Venice's Department of European and Post-Colonial Studies, next to the Gothic palace now housing the Capitaneria di Porto (Port Authority).

Tramontin and Sons (1884) is one of the few squeri still building gondolas in Venice, and it shows the traditional setup, from the wooden-chalet workshop to the ramp sliding down into the water.

Right next door to Tramontin is the squero Daniele Bonaldo, which used to be its identical twin. I watched its inexplicable transformation from the traditional layout (he kept the wooden chalet workshop) into a major boatyard for motorboats. The cement platform covers the beaten-earth ramp, the hydraulic winch was unknown to his forebears, and of course the boats have nothing at all to do with gondolas.

This is the headquarters of the Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia (Venice Savings Bank) in Campo Manin. It's called Palazzo Nervi-Scattolin (1972), not for conjoined noble families but for the two architects, who stated openly that they didn't intend to create a "false antique." They succeeded.

I apologize for the quality of the photograph but was unable to improve on it in the short, crowded time I was there.  Here is the carving:

As you see, a triumphant angel hovers above the figure of a man being pulled bodily from the water into a gondola. The faint outlines of the nearby palaces can be discerned. The hair on the victim's head is dripping with water.

I always assumed that the man survived.  One reason was that the angel seems so powerful and triumphant that it’s hard to interpret in any way except that of victory or success.

The second reason (and this is only slightly cheating) was because of the dedicatory plaque facing it, which to my primitive brain seemed to be an occasion for offering thanks.  Then a friend of mine who teaches Latin translated it for me.  It’s not happy. 

It says:  “That which Pietro Nicola F. Michiel, torn from life by a mournful destiny, had begun to do [or make] on the first of January 1824 , Anna Badoer, who survived her husband, carried to completion according to the terms of his will.”

This only raises so many questions I have to remain calm.  Why was he making this?  I seriously doubt he was carving his own tombstone.  Or perhaps he was making the stone for someone else and he died of an entirely different cause, like appendicitis or cirrhosis or gout.  (Can you die from gout?)  The incident itself: Who is the man and how did he end up in the water?  Diabetic crisis?  Suicide?  Who was it that pulled him out and — who knows — attempted to administer CPR?  I can’t stand not knowing the answers.

What I can tell you, by merely looking at their surnames, is that they were both from old (extremely old) patrician Venetian families.  The Michiel came to the primordial Venice in the year 822, and were recorded as one of the 12 “apostolic families” of the city, as was the Badoer family, whose original surname was Partecipazio.  It’s easy to find barrels of information on their families, but hardly anything about them.  It’s conceivable that he was old enough to have lived during the Venetian Republic and to have gone through its fall and reincarnation as an Austrian colony, which would be enough to make me throw myself into the canal, anyway.  

What little more I have been able to learn about Anna Badoer is that an oratory dedicated to her is one of four in the church of San Giorgio in a small village called Maserada sul Piave, 12 km [7 miles] northeast of  Treviso.  Or it was there in 1838, date of the survey document that listed the church and its possessions.  This oratory would presumably not be there because she had achieved any level of sainthood, but she probably paid for it to encourage people to pray for her soul.

And, as we see, we also know that she was faithful in fulfilling her husband’s wishes, whatever or whyever they were, and that’s something worth remembering any day.

Perhaps you don’t find the mats of squishy green clinging to the building foundations very appealing.  Perhaps you don’t wish to notice how many small life forms are scurrying around, unhindered by that pesky water.  Perhaps there is a general sort of sliminess that reminds you uncomfortably of just how biological the Venetian environment is, and how little the lagoon cares about posing for you and your romantic photographs.

But let’s say those things don’t bother you; let’s say you’re curious to find out what’s beneath the waterline, or almost.  If you look carefully, you may very well see this:

This incised capital C with the line beneath it is called the “Comune Marino” (hence the “C”), which roughly means “average sea.”  Or perhaps “sea average.”   This one, as it happens, is in the canal just outside our little hovel. 

Water level measurements were formalized in Venice in 1440 when the Water Authority (Magistrato alle Acque) began to measure the upper level of wet algae on canal embankments by carving the letter “C,” which indicated the normal high-tide level.  Water fosters certain kinds of algae which flourish in an “intertidal zone”, which is alternately wet and dry, and the line of algae corresponds to the level of water.  Obviously.

So “Comune Marino” refers to the line created by the algae, a line which clearly indicates the upper limit of the tide.

Good to know, but why?  Because  there are many situations in which an engineer would want to know where the average upper limit would be — if he was planning to build a bridge nearby, for example, or even an entire building.

So far, so general.  Keep in mind, though, that in each place the “C” is a marker of the average sea level in that canal at that point.  Its height only matters in relation to what’s next to it — the water level will be “high” (or low) compared to a building foundation or embankment.  If the “C” appears to be going down (or the algae to be going up, like elevators in a French farce) it might indicate that the building is subsiding, or even that the canal is silting up and becoming shallower.  Factors such as these all bear some influence on where the average sea level will be in that place and whether you find it innocuous or annoying.

A look at the mark when the tide is out. This illustrates the difficulty of answering the frequent question, "How deep are the canals?" As in, when the tide is high, or when it's low?

An analysis of the displacement of the “algal belt” also gives engineers some idea of the long-term trend of apparent rising of the sea level.  This is a subject that is far too great for this little post, but I merely note that the algae is playing its part in informing the world about the state of Venice.

Don’t be too quick, though, to think that just because there’s some algae above the “C” that the city is sinking inexorably into the lagoon.  The algae has its own growing period (late winter to early autumn) and if the average high-tide level should rise one year, for one or many of several reasons, the line of algae will also rise.  If it should go down the next year, there will be less algae at the previous level.   Exceptional peaks in the high-tide level may cause temporary new growth, but it won’t necessarily survive the sunshine and dryness that returns when the tide level goes down.

Algae growth is also influenced by whether its location is on a sunny or shady side of the building, or whether the stone or brick it’s inhabiting is particularly porous. 

Field observations have shown that the fluctuation in the height of the “algal front” is no more than 2 cm (7/10ths of an inch).

So all is well?  Not really.  One factor the Venetian engineers of 1440 didn’t have to deal with was “motondoso“ – that’s a polite way of saying “water constantly splattering from the waves caused by motorboats.” 

I’ll be devoting plenty of attention to motondoso on a future page, but I recommend that you draw conclusions very carefully about water level based solely on the line of algae.  It’s highly likely that whatever spot you’re looking at is getting drenched by waves day and night, encouraging algae in an extravagant way, something that wasn’t happening back when they were busy carving “C’s” all over town.

The constant and extreme "motondoso" in the Giudecca Canal has created the perfect environment for algae on what used to be considered dry land, so its presence here doesn't tell you anything useful about average sea level. Do not ever step on this kind of algae, it's more slippery than a slice of raw bacon.

The Daily Trivia:  Regular measurements with instruments began in the 1870s.  In 2004, mean sea level was found to be 25 cm (9 inches) higher than it was in 1897.  Yet all water-level measurements continue to be based on the mean sea level in 1897. 

We like to cling to the old ways here.  Or something.

If you walk down Via Garibaldi at around 6 on a summer evening, you will realize that this is one corner of Italy in which the word “birthrate” isn’t associated with “falling.”

But an unusually perceptive person would already have known all that from the scene I noticed outside one of the tobacco/candy/lottery ticket/toy stores here.

What these three alarmingly pink doll-size strollers reveal is:

• That there are little girls living nearby. 
• That there are lots of them, enough to create an important market for toys, especially those designed for little girls, a market that requires serious  inventory.
• That they are extremely demanding customers, who require choice in the products they insist their relatives buy them, whichever relative has recently shown a weak spot that can be exploited.
• That any color is good, as long as it’s pink. 

I hope I’m here when they grow up, I really want to see how they dress.

Work underway in Campo San Vio. The site looks remarkably like an archaeological dig -- the water pipe alone appears to be a relic of an early Iron age cult.

(When they have to cross a canal, they cling to the underbelly of the nearest bridge in a marsupial kind of way.)

What happens with the water pipes is that they leave traces — not of the water itself, but of the condensation they cause because of the difference in temperature between the water in the pipe and its surroundings.

Example:  It’s deeply hot now in Venice, the days are dazzling with heat and sun, though the air, thank God, isn’t very humid.  At night, things cool down somewhat, and in the early morning, this appears on the fondamenta near our house:

In the winter, the opposite phenomenon occurs, as you see:

Nothing revolutionary here, I just find it diverting.

It takes no time at all to reconstruct the scene:  A seagull nabbed a seppia, or cuttlefish, and a battle ensued, which the seppia lost.  You can tell by the splashings of desperate black ink.   Another clue is the cuttlebone, which if I had a parakeet or Andean condor I would immediately have taken. 

Your cuttlefish are no match for a seagull’s beak, as you see, but don’t underestimate them.  If you were a small marine creature you’d want to do everything possible to avoid any passing seppia (plural: seppie; in Venetian sepa/sepe).  Soft and squidgy they may be (although technically a mollusc), but they too have a sort of beak, and it’s tiny and hooked and sharp.  They look so innocuous, sort of like Mister Magoo, as they drift fecklessly along, but just remember that they have that mouth.  Not much use in land combat, though.   I could tell you some stories about that sharp little beak, and I probably will, at some point, but I don’t want to ruin your enjoyment at thinking of how delectable they are, so I’ll stop.  The little ones are wonderful grilled.  They are a classic Venetian snack, or cicheto (chih-KEH-to).  The bigger ones are chopped up and simmered in water and tomato paste, and their ink.  Some people omit the ink, which is heathen.

While we’re talking about their being eaten, by whatever sort of life form, make a note that seppie (on spaghetti or in risotto) are the only fish on which you are allowed to put grated parmesan cheese.  To see someone put cheese on any other fish dish makes Venetians shudder.  But it is, in fact, required on seppia.  If you don’t try this, you won’t know what I mean.  Trust me.  If your waiter tells you not to do it, ask him where he’s from.  Or just smile and go ahead anyway.  Or skip the smile.

Another seppia clue:  If you walk along the fondamentas edging major channels – say, along the Riva dei Sette Martiri in Castello, or the Zattere in Dorsoduro, or the opposite side of the Giudecca Canal, on the Giudecca — you will certainly see stains like these on the stones.  Now you know they’re not paint.  Many of them indicate epic battles,  all futile.

There are two seppia seasons: Spring, which is when they come into the lagoon  from winter quarters somewhere in the Adriatic in order to spawn, and anytime after the festa del Redentore (third Sunday in July), when the fraima (fra-EE-ma) begins, the general ichthyous exodus from the lagoon out to sea.  This second period is, obviously, the time when you are aiming for the little ones — I hate calling them babies, but that’s what they are.  In both of these periods the deepest lagoon channels are strewn with temporarily anchored boats from which men, and often their wives, too, are fishing for seppie.  These boats refuse to move for any passing craft, from the vaporettos to the cruise ships.  It drives the captains to the verge of crazy.

And speaking of decoding cuttlefish, I saw my first seppia this year on March 6.  It wasn’t the little cephalopod itself, but its remains, floating in with the tide  in the canal outside our hovel.  It made me so happy I took a picture of it — it was like seeing the first [crocus, sandhill crane, or add your favorite seasonal thing here]. 

Then the fondamentas begin to fill up, lined with amateur fishermen, some of whom take their catch home, and some who sell it.  They often go out at night, too, depending on the tides, rigging up a strong light to attract the animals.  Or they use a fish-like lure.  Lino once slew a vast number of them by hooking a medium-length remnant of a white plastic bag to his line and pulling it slowly through the water; despite the fact that seppie have some of the most developed eyes in the animal kingdom, it somehow looked irresistibly like another seppia.  They don’t eat only crabs, shrimp, worms, or whatever — they snack on each other, as well.  Too much information? 

But we’ve caught seppie without even trying, when we’ve been out rowing, minding our own business.  There one will be, just floating along; if it’s close enough to the surface you can pick it up with your hands.  It’s better, though, to have a volega (VOH-ehga), the net on the long pole, because you can go deeper.  If you can see it, you can probably catch it.  I used to feel sorry for them; Lino’d be all excited and I’d be shouting, “Dive, little seppia, dive!”  He thought I’d lost my mind.  Now that I know how good they are, I’ve quit that.  There will always be more.  It’s not like they have names.

Last tidbit for the day: In the fish market, they used to use seppia ink to write the prices on pieces of paper.  (Hence the color tone called “sepia,” which is more brown than black, really, but which came from the cuttlefish’s ink.) There must have been generations of fishmongers with permanently black hands.  Just as soon as the Sharpie and Magic Marker were born, and tourists began to pay good money to eat spaghetti with cuttlefish ink, you can believe that stopped. 

One more thing: It may not be very likely that you’ll be buying seppie in the fishmarket, but if you are looking at them for whatever reason, you should know that the whiter they are (it’s more like a ghastly gray mortuary pallor), and the more smeared with sticky black ink, the older they are.  Lots of ink is a Bad Sign. 

The super-fresh ones, as shown here, have very little ink on them, are a lovely brown with faint pale stripes, and display the most amazing iridescent stripe along their bodies, which is another guaranteed way to confirm their freshness.  This stripe is made up of iridophores, which reflect the color of the seppia’s immediate surroundings and hence are part of its system of camouflage.   I did not make that up.