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

The solemnity (more and/or less) of the past three days — All Saints Day and All Souls Day — dissolves today into the genuine solemnity of the annual commemoration of the end of World War I.  November 4 (1918) is the date on which war against the Austro-Hungarian empire and its allies ceased.

It sounds so tidy: Victory.  Peace.  Ninety years have gone by.  Let’s move on.

But every year the moving-on stops, to observe what is now called the Festa of the Armed Forces. Many civic monuments, and not a few of the parish memorials listing the fallen sheep of the local flock, are decorated with shiny fresh laurel wreaths given by the City of Venice.  And a ceremony performed by veterans’ groups and other military elements is held every year on this day in the Piazza San Marco.

In Rome, the President of the Republic made the traditional visit to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which soldiers guard night and day.

France had established the first tomb of the Unknown Soldier in 1920, and the Italians wanted to do likewise.  They had lost some 1,240,000 men, almost entirely on the northern front which had stretched some 400 miles, almost one-third of the entire Alpine arc.  In what some have called history’s greatest mountain battlefield, the gathering and burial of unidentified soldiers had been going on for two years.

The map shows how far into northeast Italy the Central Powers' forces penetrated. The Italian line held at the Piave River, now universally known as the "river sacred to the fatherland." Lino's father was taken prisoner on the Asiago Plateau and spent the rest of the war in a camp in Germany.

A commission was formed to choose one soldier from each of the eleven sectors of the front (Rovereto, Dolomiti, Altipiani, Grappa, Montello, Basso Piave, Cadore, Gorizia, Basso Isonzo, San Michele, and Castagnevizza). No identifying marks of any kind were to be permitted — no name, or rank, or serial number.

Maria Bergamas on October 26, 1921, before entering the basilica to choose the casket. (Photo: Achille Poli)

The eleven caskets were taken to the basilica of Aquileia, not far from Trieste. Here they were arranged in a line, and on October 26, 1921, a woman named Maria Bergamas from Gradisca d’Isonzo stepped forward to choose one.

Her son, Antonio, had been killed but his body had never been found.  No one imagined, I’m sure, that one of the eleven victims could have been her son.  She was there to represent all of the mothers, wives and women of Italy.

One eyewitness reported that she walked toward the row of eleven coffins, “with her eyes staring, fixed on the caskets, trembling…in front of the next to last one, she let out a sharp cry, calling her son by name, and fell on the casket, clasping it.”  Strangely, there are less fervid accounts, also by eyewitnesses: “In front of the first coffin she seemed to become faint, and was supported by her escort of four veterans, all decorated with the Gold Medal for Valor. In front of the second, she stopped, held out her arms and placed her mourning veil upon it.”

As a journalist, I can’t grasp how there could be more than one version of the event, but I assume everyone was extremely keyed up.

Here is the scene as depicted by "La Domenica del Corriere." Meaning no disrespect, it clearly would have made an excellent third act to a tragic opera.

In any case, one was chosen, placed on a gun carriage, lashed onto an open-sided train carriage,and covered with the Italian battle flag.  Four other open carriages were attached, to contain the flowers which undoubtedly were going to be offered by the people along the way.

The train stopped at Udine, Treviso, Venice, Padova, Rovigo, Ferrara, Bologna, Pistoia, Prato, Firenze, Arezzo, Chiusi, Orvieto, and finally Rome. But in fact it stopped — was stopped, actually, by the throngs which had waited for hours to see it — at all the stations, even the tiniest. Some threw flowers, others clasped their hands and knelt.

The train arrived in Rome on the evening of November 3, and the casket was taken to the basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri near the station. Mourners passed all night to pay their respects.

The next day, November 4, 1921, the war would formally end at 3:00 PM. The cortege proceeded slowly down the Via Nazionale toward Piazza Venezia and the massive monument known as the Vittoriano, where the body would be entombed.

The monument known as Il Vittoriano, in Rome. The "Altar of the Fatherland," where the casket was placed is in the center, beneath the statue of the goddess Roma in the golden niche. (Photo: Alessio Nastro Siniscalchi)

Total silence reigned.  King Vittorio Emmanuele III walked behind the gun carriage bearing the casket.  At the monument, the casket was lifted and carried by six veterans, all of whom had been decorated with the Gold Medal for Valor. Finally, it was placed in the space beneath the statue of the ancient goddess Roma.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrOMk91vCfo 

You might be surprised, as I have been, to discover how many poems (at least in Italian) have been written about the Unknown Soldier.  Some are even composed as accusations, reflections, admonitions, rebukes, spoken directly to the reader by the Soldier.  There is also a number of songs about him and/or war, in the mold of the protest songs of the Sixties and early Seventies.  They seem dated and futile.

Well, of course they’re futile.  Just look around.  Still, some respect for the fallen is the least we can do.  Or apparently the most we can do.

She wasn't weeping, she was eating something. Life insists on going on.

November 4, The Unknown Soldier is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

A courtyard on the island of Burano was renamed last year. Needs no translation.

It’s September 11 again.  Ten years have passed, which in a city this old is nothing.  Even so, I don’t understand how a mere decade could occupy so much space and bear so much weight.

Everyone here was stunned, heartwrung — everyone.  Five days after the towers fell, the last race of the season was held at Burano, and all the boats (27 of them) carried a black ribbon tied to their bow.  I remember that an immense thunderstorm bore down, and how those little strips of mourning thrashed in the tearing winds under a battered sky full of bruised clouds, black and purple and green. The races had to be suspended.  It was too perfect.  If I hadn’t been there, you’d have thought I made it up.

A ceremony was spontaneously organized, with speeches (short and sincere) by officials of every party. And more than one American came, as you can see.

There was a mass at the basilica of San Marco, with the chief of the New York Fire Department as a special guest.  The service was entirely in Italian, including the Gospel text:  Matthew 18: 21-25.

“Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?’  And Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven.’”

I sat there looking at his back and wondering if he understood it, and if so, what he could possibly be thinking.

A number of gondoliers came out to raise their oars in the traditional Venetian salute. It was mere coincidence (I think) that there was an Italian warship in the harbor.

At the mass they also read the Fireman’s Prayer (translated by me):

O Lord, who illumines the heavens and fills the abysses, make the flame of sacrifice burn in our hearts.

Strengthen the spirit of service which burns in us, make sure our eye, and secure our foothold, so that we may complete the rescue which we bring in Your name to our brothers in danger. 

When the siren screams in the streets of the city, hear the beating of our hearts which have been offered to renunciation. 

When, racing with eagles, we rise toward Thee, hold us up with Your wounded hand. 

When the irresistible fire breaks out, burn the evil which makes its nest in the homes of men, but not the life and the affections of Your children. 

Lord, we are the bearers of Your cross, and risk is our daily bread. 

A day without risk isn’t even lived, because for we believers death is life and light: in the terror of the collapse, in the roaring of the waters, in the inferno of the conflagrations. 

Our life is fire, our faith is in God. 

For Saint Barbara, martyr.  Amen.

At the regata at Burano last year, a visiting group of New York firemen on a caorlina participated in a small, friendly, and short race. Not bad, considering how little time they'd ever devoted to this activity.

There was clearly a link between the FDNY and Columbia University, but I didn't pursue the details.

An article was published under the title “C”ntarea Americii” (“Ode To America”) in the Romanian newspaper Evenimentulzilei, that translates “The Daily Event” or “News of the Day” on September 11, 2006:

Why are Americans so united? They would not resemble one another even if you painted them all one color! They speak all the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations and religious beliefs. Still, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into a hand put on the heart. 

Nobody rushed to accuse the White House, the army, and the secret s services that they are only a bunch of losers. Nobody rushed to empty their bank accounts. Nobody rushed out onto the streets nearby to gape about. The Americans volunteered to donate blood and to give a helping hand. 

After the first moments of panic, they raised their flag over the smoking ruins, putting on T-shirts, caps and ties in the colors of the national flag. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in every place and on every car a government official or the president was passing. 

I watched the live broadcast and rerun after rerun for hours listening to the story of the guy who went down one hundred floors with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she was, or of the Californian hockey player, who gave his life fighting with the terrorists and prevented the plane from hitting a target that could have killed other hundreds or thousands of people. 

How on earth were they able to respond united as one human being? 

On every occasion, they started singing their traditional song: “God Bless America!” Imperceptibly, with every word and musical note, the memory of some turned into a modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone call, millions and millions of dollars were put in a collection aimed at rewarding not a man or a family, but a spirit, which no money can buy. 

What on earth can unite the Americans in such a way? Their land? Their galloping history? Their economic Power? Money? I tried for hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases with the risk of sounding commonplace. 

I thought things over, but I reached only one conclusion… Only freedom can work such miracles. 

(signed) Cornel Nistorescu 

 ”AND THE WAVE SINGS BECAUSE IT IS MOVING,” by Philip Larkin (September 14, 1946):

And the wave sings because it is moving;

Caught in its clear side, we also sing.

We are borne across graves, together, apart, together,

In the lifting wall imprisoned and protected….

Such are the sorrows that we search for meaning,

Such are the cries of the birds across the waters,

Such are the mists the sun attacks at morning,

Laments, tears, wreaths, rocks, all riden down

By the shout of the heart continually at work….

Death is a cloud alone in the sky with the sun.

Our hearts, turning like fish in the green wave,

Grow quiet in its shadow.  For in the word death

There is nothing to grasp; nothing to catch or claim;

Nothing to adapt the skill of the heart to, skill

In surviving….

And the waves sing because they are moving.

And the waves sing above a cemetery of waters.

September 11 x 10 is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

All three flags, each flying its own way. It's very Italian.

At 10:00 AM yesterday — as you recall, the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy — I went to the Piazza San Marco to watch the ceremony of the alzabandiera, or flag-raising.

Or, I suppose, flags-raising, since there are always three: The gonfalone of San Marco (the historic flag of the Venetian Republic), the Italian flag, and the flag of the European Union.  There is a rule now that the national flag can’t be displayed without the EU one by its side.  That’s your bit of useless information for the day.

This is probably a larger flag than Lino carried when he was this boy's age, but it may be that he carried his with more emotion.

Most of the Piazza was cordoned off, so the spectators were pushed far to the edges.  I was around the corner, in front of the campanile entrance, where the procession of veterans representating each of the armed forces was forming up.

There were a few distant speeches from the invisible platform bearing the mayor and other notables.  There was lots of music by the band of the Bersaglieri (bear-sahl-YAIR-ee), who as always arrived and departed at a brisk trot.  This, along with their extraordinary feathered helmets, is their trademark.

And there were flags of all sizes carried by people of all sizes.  Not thousands of either, but a comfortable amount that made it clear that the spectators cared. The band played the national anthem, and some in the crowd also sang it, though there wasn’t exactly a roar of a myriad voices, swearing the oath of the Horatii. Oh well.

The bersaglieri play even better than they run. Or the other way around.

Half an hour later, the bersaglieri went trotting out, followed by their confreres in approximate formation.  The rest of the uniformed participants — assorted notables of varying grades of notability — wandered away in little clumps.  This is typical.  I realize that we’re not at a state funeral, or some other occasion that calls for sharp edges and crisp behavior. But the formless wandering always does something to reduce the atmosphere of the event in a small way.

This is what a procession looks like, leaving a ceremony.

And this is what wandering looks like, though if you're a carabiniere in full dress uniform you can do anything and still look amazing.

In the afternoon, a large procession formed up at San Marco, dedicated to around the carrying of an improvised longest (perhaps) -tricolore-in-the-world.  This creation was borne along the Riva degli Schiavoni, up and down bridges, along the Riva dei Sette Martiri, and ultimately came to rest at the monument to Garibaldi. They strung it around the fence that encloses him, his faithful soldier, and the regal, if wingless, lion at his feet.

The three long strips of cloth were more or less the right colors. The important thing was that it was long.

That was it for any public activities that I was aware of. There may have been others elsewhere, but I was cold and tired of standing up.  I realize that Garibaldi’s indefatigable troops wouldn’t have succumbed to a few drops of frigid rain and a gray, determined breeze, nor did they ever complain about their feet, at least not around him.

I didn’t complain.  We just went home.

The florist was one of several merchants who three-colored-up via Garibaldi.

There. This ought to keep that pesky flag from flapping around upside-down.

This girl brought her project home after school.

Our flag proudly mounted on the door of our little hovel.

Happy Birthday, Italy: Part 2 is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Italian flags have been appearing on windows, balconies, even people -- a dazzling change from the usual bring-it-out-only-when-there's-a-soccer-game mentality.

Today, March 17, there is cause for rejoicing in the old Bel Paese.  In fact, it’s a national holiday. Some political parties have been bickering — you know how they love to bicker –about exactly how much joy is justifiable, but I think most of their shenanigans are going to be drowned out.  It’s just too big a deal.

What? One hundred and fifty years ago today — March 17, 1861 —  Italy was born. The process of labor had lasted 41 years (120 years, if you count the uprising in Genoa on December 5, 1746 as the start), but here it finally was: A whole country with one name where before there had only been jostling, homicidal kingdoms, duchies, princedoms, and the occasional city-state such as Venice and the Papal States, each loaded with greed and heavy weaponry and ruled by people whose characters were so stuffed with ambition that there wasn’t much room left for scruples. Mostly.

Revolution: Italy wasn’t a country for most of history, recorded or otherwise; it became a country as the fruit of heroic and idealistic travail, a period known as the Risorgimento. This process involved not a few bloody and horrific battles, conducted by people whose names deserve to be read aloud in every public square today. Actually, every day. They believed in a unified Italy with passion and conviction (like most revolutionaries), and certainly more strongly than a lot of people today believe in anything, considering that they were willing to die for it.  In fact, there were no fewer than three Wars of Independence which led ultimately to the country we associate so happily with pizza and “O’ Sole Mio” and Vinnie and Guido.

So today is known as the anniversary of the “Unita’ d’Italia,” the unity, or uniting, of Italy. Let us pause briefly for the national anthem, and I hope any of you hecklers can look these people in the face.

The National Anthem: It goes by several names : “Inno di Mameli,” “Fratelli d’Italia,” or the original title, “Canto degli Italiani.” This stirring piece of 19th-century patriotic romanticism is crammed with historic references , each of which plays a specific symbolic role. Goffredo Mameli composed this poem in 1847 at the age of 21. not long before his untimely death. The text exhorts Italians to awaken, reclaim their historic pride, and struggle till independence is achieved. Even I know the first of its five verses.

The most moving passage begins the second: “For centuries we’ve been trampled and derided, because we’re not a people, because we’re divided. Let us all gather under one flag, one hope, to fuse ourselves together….” The term is the same one used for producing alloys of metal.

The Great Men: The struggle for independence was led by the even-then-legendary General Giuseppe Garibaldi and his noted partner, General Nino Bixio, and many other patriots, particularly Mazzini and Cavour.

The maximum monument to Garibaldi, near his eponymous street in Castello. His is one of those names, like Bolivar, that's bigger than ten ordinary people.

And what founding a nation be without certain mythic phrases? Every child learns them and they become part of the common vocabulary, even if you don’t use them. More or less like I cannot tell a lie.”

Garibaldi, at a certain crucial point in the struggle, is supposed to have turned to Bixio and declared, “Nino, qui si fa l’Italia, o si muore” (Here one creates Italy, or dies). He probably didn’t say that, scholars point out; the rallying cry that is documented also has a certain ring to it: “Italia qui bisogna morire!” (“Italy, here we need to die,” the sense being the need to make a desperate assault, once and for all, without thinking of survival).

There is also his equally famous reply to King Vittorio Emanuele II of Savoia, who commanded him to halt his imminently victorious advance on Trento: “Obbedisco,” said Garibaldi.  ”I obey.” It’s hard for me to come up with a one-word response so freighted with meaning, one that isn’t profane.

Every revolution needs at least one philosopher, and Giuseppe Mazzini was it. Considered one of the fathers of the nation, he now watches over the vaporettos milling around the Rialto stop.

While these terms might not be needed every day, it’s more common to hear somebody describe a thing that’s been done, created, thrown together, really fast, as having been done “alla garibaldina” — like a soldier of Garibaldi. This isn’t to disparage a man who was universally admired, even by his enemies, for his courage and discipline, but to express how his troops had to keep improvising in order to keep going.

Unity Today? You might think that unity would be something nobody would argue with today, but you would be in error. The politicians governing some Italian regions (what correspond to our states), are all tangled up in snarly disputes about how valuable it really is to be part of one whole country with one name. (Sorry, Garibaldi, I guess all those men of yours died for nothing.  Oh wait — they died so that politicians could argue later about whether what they did ever mattered.  Impressive.)

The Northern League wants the northern regions to secede, for example, and when its intensely right-wing members look at the unified Italy they see only disaster and bankruptcy of every sort (financial, moral, political, etc.) where many people from beyond the borders notice only a great country with a great history and great food and great art and and great music and so on.

And speaking of music, the League doesn’t even like the national anthem. And they don’t just nag about it, some politicians have even left their city council meetings when the anthem was played. Apart from being moronic, it shows some invigorating hypocrisy.  They seem to have forgotten (or dismiss) the fact that when most of them fulfilled their compulsory military service (until the draft was suspended in 2005), they swore a solemn oath to defend their country.  Sounds a little strange to say later, “Oh well, we didn’t mean THAT country.”  Second, they got elected to governmental bodies of some sort, which to me represents a sort of agreement to the system as organized by the Constitution.  Put more crudely, they’re happy to have the gig, and now they’re going to waste time talking about how stupid it is.

What I think: While flaws and defects and even derelictions of duty may abound (this being a country populated by people and not by angels, though the gross tonnage of paintings and statues of the winged beings might make you doubt it),  this is a country that deserves all the admiration usually lavished on more famous peoples and revolutions, such as the French, or the American, or the Russian.  Furthermore, until a person can say “I could have done everything they did, and I’m willing to die, just tell me where to stand and what to have on,” that person would do well to take several deep breaths and change the subject, because comments from people who can’t say that matter less than a sack of dried split peas.

The Soundtrack:  Like most children of his generation, Lino also learned, along with kilometers of poetry, a slew of the patriotic songs which were composed and sung during the Risorgimento. He can still sing verses and verses of them — it’s extremely cool.  He vividly recalls being taken, with the rest of his class, to the Piazza San Marco on April 25, 1946 (Liberation Day). He was eight years old, and the teachers had armed everybody with little Italian flags to wave.  He remembers singing “O Giovani Ardenti,”  among various pieces, and as you’ll see below, it practically sings itself.

I’d love to translate all of these songs for you, but I suspect you can interpret the main words, which are the ones you’d expect in songs such as these (independent, liberty, union, battle, sword, slave, and so on).  ”Camicia Rossa” refers to the emblematic red shirt worn by Garibaldi’s soldiers; “Suona la Tromba” is a call-to-arms rally, and “La Bandiera dei Tre Colori” (or “La Bandiera Tricolore“)  is plainly about the flag, the most beautiful in the world.  

So a big shout-out to all my Italian friends in the US, of whatever generation they may be: Camilla, Bill, Ben, Francesca, and Nicolo’.  I hope you’re proud as all get-out.  I am.

Next: The celebrations.

Happy Birthday, Italy: 150 Years Young (Part 1) is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Since I’ve been here, all sorts of dates have become staples of my annual pilgrimage through the months — dates which never had any significance for me because they didn’t have anything to do with me.  Like most dates, today excepted.

Take May 5.  No, I don’t mean Cinco di Mayo. It’s not Florence Nightingale’s birthday.  Not the first publication of Don Quixote.  Not the invention of WD-40.  All events worth observing but they don’t have much to do with Venice.

Death mask of Napoleon (Library Company of Philadelphia).

May 5, just so you know, was the Death of Napoleon.  In case this still doesn’t matter to you, your city probably wasn’t starved, raped, mutilated, and then sold into slavery. Probably.  So anyway, May 5 is, in fact, a day worth remembering, however briefly.

But, I hear you cry, this is March, not May.  I realize that.  I just wanted to say that March 5, which comes to nobody’s mind except Lino’s (and now mine), claims just as important a place in my calendrical memory.  And I wasn’t even there.

March 5, as Lino tells me every year (“Who knows why this date has remained so fixed in my mind?” he asked this morning), was the Battle of the Great Frozen Eel.

On the night between March 4 and 5, he went out in the lagoon to fish.

“There was hoarfrost in the bottom of my boat,” he starts out, to set the scene, and to point out how cold it was. March is famous for pulling tricks like that —  it snowed here day before yesterday.

Neither sleet nor snow nor fog nor gloom of night stays the letter carriers, and should the gondoliers be less than they?

He fishes for a couple of hours out in the lagoon.  ”I got all kinds of great stuff,” he says (I’m freely translating).  ”Seppie.  Passarini [European flounder]. And an eel.”

The fact of there being an eel isn’t so remarkable — the lagoon version has a lovely pale-green belly — but considering that he fishes with a trident, they’re pretty tricky to spear.  So this was a sort of bonus.

All the fish are tossed into a big bin.  He continues fishing.  It continues to be really cold.

Finally he rows home, lugs the bin upstairs and dumps the contents into the kitchen sink.

The eel makes a clunk. It’s frozen solid in the curled-up shape it was forced to assume in the bin. “That didn’t happen to the passarini,” Lino adds,  ”but the eel was hard as stone.  So I began to run tepid water on it to soften it up.”

“All of a sudden” — (I love this part, it’s like a fairy tale when the witch or prince or stolen baby appears) — “all of a sudden, I see its gills begin to move.”  He makes a slowly-moving-gills motion with his hand.

“My God!  It was still alive!”  Astonishing, if you believed, as I — and obviously Lino — would have, that freezing would kill a creature.  But the gills were definitely moving.  And shortly thereafter, the rest of the eel was also moving.  A lot.

“You should have seen what that eel was doing in the sink,” Lino goes on.  Naturally it’s slithering like crazy, trying to get out, but naturally it is failing.  And naturally Lino is trying to grab it, but it cleverly has a slippery skin to prevent that.

“Finally I took a dishtowel and grabbed it using that,” he says.  ”It still wasn’t easy.  I managed to pin it down and made a couple of cuts” (in whatever part of the body was convenient).  Then, when it began to slow down, he continued with the usual procedure of dispatching and cleaning eel, which I will not describe to you.  Anybody who wants to know can write to me.

So remember March 5, sacred to the memory of the gallant eel who didn’t realize he was better off frozen hard as stone.

March 5 in Venetian history (ours) is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the first flight inVenice. This might sound like a quaint bit of trivia, if one didn’t know (which one is about to) how important Venice was in the history of Italian and also, may one say, European, aviation.

So pull your minds for a moment from the canals and consider the heavens. I myself am not a connoisseur of the aeronautical, but I am always interested in history, especially in “firsts,” especially if they actually mattered.

On February 19, 1911, Umberto Cagno took off from the beach in front of the Excelsior Hotel on the Lido in his Farman II airplane, and made six brief flights, in spite of the fog. (ACTV, please note.)  On March 3, better weather encouraged him to fly, for the first time ever, over Venice.

A few months later, on September 19, 1911, the first airmail flight in Italy departed from Bologna and landed on the Lido. That is to say, Venice.

The symbol of an airplane just above the word "Lido" marks the location of Nicelli airport.

Geography is destiny, as Napoleon observed, and Venice’s position was obviously as valuable to air transport as it had been for centuries to shipping.  At that time, the Lido was largely uninhabited, making it the ideal place to establish an airport.

The airport is open to visitors, especially those who want to take a helicopter ride over Venice and the Lagoon (www.heliairvenice.com).

The first was built in 1915, a military base on the northernmost part of the Lido, which was active during World War I.  Then, in 1935, with some major variations, it became the Aeroporto Nicelli, and air became yet another way, in the march of progress, to get to Venice. Flights on Ala Littoria and Transadriatica connected the famously watery city to points scattered around Europe. Even to Baku, if you happened to be going that way.

Nicelli immediately became the scene of extremely glamorous arrivals, as movie stars deplaned on the grassy runway to attend the Venice Film Festival. This continued until 1960, when Marco Polo airport opened on the mainland.

As shown on the map displayed in the airport, Venice remained at the center of things into yet another century.

So far I may have made it sound as if all these things were accomplished by an occult hand. But of course many hands were involved, among which none were more important than those of  the late Lt. Col. Umberto Klinger.

Klinger, a native Venetian, was already a celebrity by the time he created the Officine Aeronavali at Nicelli, a large workshop dedicated to repairing and maintaining airplanes.

A glimpse of Klinger on the cover of a book written by his daughter.

He had begun as a highly decorated pilot in World War II, with more than 5,000 hours of flight to his credit, 600 of which were in combat, earning 5 silver Medals of Military Valor.  He also served as Chief of Staff of the Special Air Services of the Italian Air Force, not only organizing the activities of squadrons of Savoia-Marchetti S.75s (troop transports or bombers), but also flying them himself, often at night, over enemy territory.  After the war, he served as president of one of the first passenger airlines in Italy (Ala Littoria), and four other companies. Far from being a mere figurehead, Klinger raised Nicelli to the level of the second airport in Italy.

So much for the history lecture.  Now we have to move into the darkened halls of humanity, where to do justice to even the bare outlines of the story of Umberto Klinger you’d need to resort to dramatic opera.Verdi! thou should’st be living at this hour, but you’re not; to the people who knew him, though, the name of Klinger creates its own music. Especially those who remember his last day.

Lino, for example.

Lino went to work for the Aeronavali as an apprentice mechanic at Nicelli in 1954, at the age of 16.  He often saw “Comandante Klinger,” and even spoke with him on various occasions. Right up to today, Lino pronounces his name with reverence and regret.  This wasn’t unusual — Klinger was by all accounts a powerfully charismatic man admired for his courage, respected for his skill, but with a special gift for inspiring real love.

In 1925, Transadriatica was one of the first passenger airlines in Italy; its first route connected Rome and Venice. This poster promotes the link between Venice and Vienna.

The Aeronavali flourished, with hundreds of employees working on aircraft of all sorts, from the Italian Presidential plane to cargo and passenger planes of many different companies.  When Marco Polo airport opened on the mainland in 1960, the Aeronavali moved to the mainland with it.

Then politics began to set in.  The broad outlines of what is undoubtedly a hideously complicated story are that certain elements in Rome, wanting to gain control of the company in order to place it under state, rather than private, administration, began to create financial problems for Klinger. The Aeronavali kept working, but payments from the Ministry of Defense were mysteriously not coming through.  And the unions, manipulated by the aforementioned political factions, began to stir up discontent.

Lino remembers the increasingly intense meetings of the workers and the unions.  He remembers Klinger pleading with them to be patient as he struggled to reopen the financial flow. But the unions rejected any compromises on pay or contracts, however temporary they might be, compelling the workers to resist. They ultimately even went on strike for 72 hours. Celebrity or no, the man — who had looked after his employees with no less solicitude than he had cared for his pilots — was running out of fuel.

The Aeronavali worked on any sort of aircraft -- Dakotas, Constellations, and the Savoia-Marchetti S.75, a 30-passenger plane also used as a bomber in World War II. These were Klinger's specialty, comprising virtually all of the squadrons he commanded of the Special Air Services.

During these harrowing days, Klinger was heard to say more than once that what was needed to resolve this impasse was “something really big.”  He ultimately thought of something that qualified.

Early in the morning of January 21, 1971, he went by himself to the old hangar at Nicelli, by that time virtually abandoned. And he took a cord. A few hours later, when the guardian made his rounds, he discovered the body of Comandante Klinger. He had hanged himself.

Lino remembers the gathering at work that morning, when they were all given the news.  There was utter silence, he recalls, though if stricken consciences could make an audible noise there would have been plenty of that.

The first time I heard this story, I thought his was the despairing last act of a man who had run out of hope. Now I am convinced that Klinger’s suicide was a voluntary self-immolation in order to save the company — not unlike the Russian officers after the fall of Communism who, left unpaid, finally killed themselves so their widows would get their pensions.

And Klinger turned out to have won his gamble. Almost immediately, the overdue funds began to pour in.

The hangar, seen across the runway from the terminal.

The funeral, in the church of San Nicolo’ next to the airport, was attended by a huge number of mourners; many had to stand outside. Did any union officers come to pay their last respects?  ”Sure,” Lino said.  ”They were at the head of the line.”

Courage in combat — it isn’t needed only in the skies.  Nor does it only involve things that explode, though they can still be fatal. Umberto Klinger deserves another medal, one which doesn’t seem yet to have been created.

Klinger, the way his employees remember him -- in mufti, smiling.

Postscript: It’s very easy to visit the airport.  At the central vaporetto stop on the Lido at Piazzale Santa Maria Elisabetta, take the “A” bus marked for “San Nicolo’ – Ple. Rava’.”  (If the weather’s nice, you can just stroll along the lagoon embankment for about half an hour.)  Get off at the last stop, in front of the church and walk a few minutes across the grass and up the driveway.

The terminal has been spiffed to a modern version of its former glory, with a cool retro-design restaurant, “Niceli.”  Have lunch, or just a coffee or drink on the terrace.  If you come toward the early evening in the summer, bring lots of mosquito repellent.

The lobby today.

Or maybe the restaurant is named "Nicely." I like the design, even if it is unclear.

Wings over Venice is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

A situation has been brought to light — actually, had light suddenly and dramatically shone on it — that ought to be noticed more clearly than by the faint gleam discernible over here.  Allow me to step in with at least a couple of highway flares.

A few paragraphs in the Gazzettino recently revealed that the basilica of Santa Maria Assunta at Torcello is falling apart.  Brief and brutal, but there it is. This news may not have interested very many people here because the paper is full of stories, depressingly often, about the ways in which Venice is falling apart.

The basilica of Santa Maria Assunta is on the left; the smaller church of Santa Fosca to the right. May I mention that despite many notations to the contrary, "basilica" and "cathedral" are not synonymous. A basilica describes a building with a specific floor plan, which could just as easily be your school gym. The world is full of basilicas which aren't cathedrals; they don't even have to be churches. A cathedral is the church where the bishop has his cathedra, or seat, which could just as easily be in an Airstream trailer. The cathedral of Venice (also a basilica, as it happens) is San Marco. (Photo: necrothesp)

Pieces of stone drop off facades (November, 2007, a 110-pound/50- kilo chunk fell from the Palazzo Ducale and grazed an elderly German tourist; November, 2008, a 15-inch/40 cm bit of marble from a house in the San Marco area grazed a Swiss tourist as it headed earthward; March, 2010, a 132-pound/60-kilo piece broke off the convent of Cristo Re near the Celestia; October, 2010, a bit of stone decoration fell off the Court building and struck an employee…..).  Roofs collapse, bell-towers are braced, and so on. The reason?  All together now: No ghe xe schei. The mayor himself has said that he may have to ask for money, not for the sake of the buildings per se, but for the sake of public safety.

But back to Torcello, a lovely, almost uninhabited little island famous for the aforementioned basilica, which is arguably one of the gemmiest of the gems of Venetian history, art, architecture, and above all, mosaics.

Life is hard on Venice in so many ways, from high water  to tourist trampling. But let us not overlook what may be the most dangerous hazard of all: Neglect.

Torcello’s parish priest, don Ettore Fornezza, recently drew attention to one example of what neglect can lead to: The floor mosaics are breaking up.

I went to Torcello the other day to see don Ettore and the situation that he was describing.

The ten-minute walk from the vaporetto stop to the church has never been so lovely.

For anybody who loves Torcello, or who believes that there is no place within 50 miles where you can go to escape the tourist tidal waves, I cheerfully recommend you visit the island early on a freezing, windy, gray Sunday morning in January.  Yes, it was colder than I don’t know what. (Down side.) But there was literally no one and nothing in sight. (Up side!) I’ve been going to Torcello for years and I have never seen it utterly deserted.  The lagoon was empty too.  It was so astonishing that it was worth not being able to feel my feet.

Looking toward Burano, normally a scene of motor-driven anarchy.

People go to Torcello to admire the mosaics on the walls.  But the floors are no less valuable, and they get a lot more punishment. You can see the evidence of this deterioration everywhere, in the widening spaces between the bits of stone and even in grotty, dark empty areas as big as salad plates and as much as an inch deep. Unchecked humidity, for one thing, has gradually loosened the tesserae (as the bits of stone are called) and made them vulnerable to other forces.  Like people and their footwear.

A view of the interior of the basilica. Note the condition of the floor in the foreground. This is nothing.

And so it was that during a recent stroll around the church, don Ettore saw a tourist not only dislodge a small piece of 1000-year-old mosaic with the heel of her shoe (regrettable but not intentional), she then picked up the loose bit and made to put it in her pocket.  Or purse. Anyway, to take it away.

When he asked her what she was doing, she replied, “I wanted it as a souvenir.”

Somewhat thunderstruck, he suggested she consider leaving it behind, so it could be kept, if not actually returned to its native habitat.

She gave it back.

When don Ettore reached this point in the story, it occurred to me that it was too bad he hadn’t replied, “Well then, I’d like to take your shoe as a souvenir.”  Just a thought.

A detail of damage to the floor mosaics. I would have taken photographs, but it's strictly forbidden, not that that would have stopped me. But the girl on guard that morning made nabbing me her mission. My admiration and appreciation to the intrepid visitors who managed these images. (Photo: ezioman).

But this is no time for gay repartee.  The incident of the tessera was merely one random event in a long and all-too-evident decline.  Because for some time now, the heels of the shoes of thousands of tourists a day have been weakening what is, in fact, a very fragile creation.  All it takes is for one piece to go, and the discussion shifts from what is happening to merely how long it’s going to continue.

For don Ettore, this moment was, as he put it, “the spark” to bring to light the larger, deeper, wider problems of the basilica.

“We can’t go on like this,” he said. “People come from all over the world, and they see the deterioration and they come to tell me.  I can’t do anything, because I”m responsible for the spiritual side. But I have eyes, and I see the things that don’t go well.  Torcello could be reborn, with a little attention. With the love people have for this place, this would be the pearl, not only of Venice, but of the world.  It’s worth the trouble to insist on this, because Torcello is worth it. We don’t want Torcello to die. If it were up to me, it would have been resolved already.”

There are so many distressing aspects to this situation that you can pick any one at random and ruin your day.  Given that the present mosaics (not the first mosaic flooring, by the way, which was laid in the 8th century) date from 1008, it’s obvious that they will now be in need of constant and expensive care.  Just like a person, actually, when you think of it.

But here we have an ancient and irreplaceable work of religious, historic, and artistic value; we have uncontrolled masses of people using it every day for most of the year; and we also have lack of personnel, lack of serious interest, and — no need to repeat it, but I must — absence (they say “lack”) of money to do anything useful to deal with it.  Here, too, the skeletal hand of chronic poverty is tightening its grip.

Speaking of poverty, however, let me insert some startling observations made to me in Hyderabad, India by Mr. P.K. Mohanty, then Commissioner of the city’s governing body.  (I was there for my article on “Megacities,” National Geographic, November 2002.)

“What we need in India isn’t money,” Mohanty said. “Large cities of the Third World are reservoirs of wealth.  We need political reforms, bureaucratic reforms. The problem is one of poor management. If cities are properly managed, there cannot be resource problems.”  I’d guess that the same could be said of large cities of the First World.

As for the mosaic floor of the basilica, nobody can consider spending the money that would be needed to complete a serious restoration — they say there’s no money even to pay for a protective carpet like the one that often covers the floor of the basilica of San Marco.  But anyone who has visited the Roman-mosaic-blessed former churches at Aquileia and Ravenna will recall that their mosaic pavements  are kept in near-perfect condition. Aquileia and Ravenna have mysteriously found a way to acquire the schei necessary for their mosaic maintenance.  Or maybe, as Mr. Mohanty observed, the problem isn’t really schei.

Small gaps between the stones; you can just imagine where this is going to go.

Back to Torcello. I would like to blame mass tourism, because obviously masses of tourists are not helping the situation.  But I hesitate to use a term which is so general that it could describe almost everything except plants (no wait, those travel too) to describe just one certain type of tourist.  Of course there are cultivated, intelligent, sensitive tourists who leave a very faint footprint on the delicate, peerless places and cultures they visit.

But there is the clueless tourist who tends to come in chaotic herds, and who passes through leaving behind not much beyond a few sous and a lot of accumulating wear and tear on the places and people he or she has encountered.  And some trash, usually.

Taking away pieces of Italian history is  nothing new.  The Italians themselves, over the centuries, have removed tons of pieces of their monuments for use in other projects.  And there are, unfortunately, still too many tomb-robbers who steal and sell priceless artifacts from lost civilizations.

And let us not forget the famous advancing barbarian hordes, who pillaged and burned and wrecked large parts of Europe and its treasures. Also bad, but at least you can fit this damage into the category “Conquer and Dominate,” which does make a kind of sense.

But we’re talking about tourists.  They have been known to dislodge and remove, as far as they can, pieces of the Roman walls built by Marcus Aurelius.  Tourists climb over altar railings and try to take away historic sacred vessels.  (I am not making any of this up.)  I learned more than I ever wanted to about this for my article “Italy’s Endangered Art” (National Geographic, August 1999).  These are not necessarily evil people, nor even people seeking to make money by selling what they take.  They just take. Why?

The lady at Torcello admitted why she did it: She wanted a souvenir. Instead of buying something that had been manufactured, she impulsively felt that something genuine would be better. But how does this work?  You take a little piece of old stone, dislodged from its context, dislodged from its reason for being, specifically in order to be reminded of the place you’ve just despoiled?  You don’t run to the ticket booth to say “The floor is coming apart!”? Or does the fact that the piece is loose mean that it’s now free pickings?

I pause here to recognize that there may be an insignificant difference between a souvenir and spoils of war; the Elgin Marbles, which I suppose you could regard as a sort of monumental souvenir, come to mind.  But if the possessors of cultural patrimony have finally come to recognize at least some of the value of their heritage, it ought to follow that visitors ought to value it even more, otherwise why are they there? They could just as well be sitting under an awning somewhere, eating gelato.

To many visitors, a trip to Torcello is mainly a good excuse for a jaunt out into the lagoon. When they're done here, they go to Burano and buy lace-like objects. Real souvenirs.

All this makes my  brain hurt.  Because I am convinced that whatever bits of stone or wood or pottery get carried away — a bit that really mattered where it was born — is going to get lost.  Thrown away. Forgotten. Hidden under stuff in the attic that nobody ever looks at until they have to sell the house and by then nobody remembers what the thing is, or why it’s there. So what was the point?

Wait!  Let’s say the person takes it home and puts it in a beautiful box or frame to display it.  This means that either they are capable of spending the next 50 years looking at something they stole, which probably won’t remind them that they stole it, or they want other people to admire it. So they can say, “Yes — I contributed to the destruction of an irreplaceable landmark by stealing this. Nice, isn’t it? I’m glad you like it.”  Then they send money to protect the dolphins or save the rainforest.

If you’re still reading, you may be edging toward the door.  But I’m not crazy.  Or if I am, I’ll never be as crazy as the tourists.

But let’s be fair. Even if the tourists were all made to tiptoe around the church in cloth slippers, it wouldn’t do much to stave off the inexorable damage caused by humidity, salt in the groundwater, storms, subsidence, and many other factors that are part of life on this planet and whose effects are all too visible at Torcello.

The point isn’t that people want to take bits home, it’s that the church isn’t being protected and cared for. It’s just sitting there, enduring what it must till another piece breaks off.

And by the way, the same thing is happening in the church of Santa Maria e Donato on Murano (first building, 7th century, flooring completed 1140), an edifice equally rich in mosaics.  Don Carlo Gusso, the parish priest, is also ringing the alarm bells.

So far, though, it appears that nobody but you and me have heard them. Or at least have recognized that they’re not the dinner bell.

"The Pavement San Marco" by John Singer Sargent (1898). Who would ever have thought that even here, the floor would have been left to deteriorate like this? I'm not referring to the undulations, but to the holes. But if they could fix the floor here, I'm not clear on what's stopping them at Torcello. Did they have more schei back in 1898?

Torcello mosaics: Help yourself. Take two. is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Virtually every day of every year, the news here will include some mention of how deeply disappointing the municipal government is, and the many ways in which its decisions (bear in mind that not deciding also qualifies as a decision) fall short of the minimum necessary for decent human life.

I’m not here to defend anybody, but history shows that Venice has always presented an exceptional challenge to its rulers.

Beautiful? Often. Byzantine? Always.

Giving some consideration, as I do every day, as to how run a city and/or empire in the most efficient and beneficial way — principles which can easily be applied to other activities, such as running a house, or a large corporation, or a work-release program or whatever — I thought I’d give a sample of some of the laws which the Venetian government passed and also, I think, enforced.

In 1348 Venice, with more than 100,000 inhabitants, was the most populous city in Europe. Even before it grew that big, managing it, body and soul, was something like playing three-dimensional chess — its governing bodies had to keep track of everything (wars, famines, earthquakes, attempted coups, plague prevention, counterfeiting, ostentatious clothing, civil servants with sticky fingers) all at the same time.

Naturally they passed metric tons of useful laws governing business and commerce, goods and services, civil engineering projects, weights and measures, and the rights, duties and privileges of virtually everybody. These are not comic material, they’re the reason (among many) why Venice survived for  close to 1,500 years.

But as anyone who has ever been two years old knows, it’s one thing to establish a rule, it’s another to enforce it, most especially where behavior is concerned.  Passing a law makes everybody happy; enforcing it, not so much.

So as you read the following, cast your minds back, ever so briefly, to imagine the situation which had reached the point at which a law was required to control, or even stop it, we hope.  As you’ll see, all those squillions of different snowflake-patterns are nothing compared to the myriad misdemeanors that people are apt to get up to when living in a small area with thousands of other people, many of whom may not have your best interests at heart.  Or you theirs.

But also bear in mind that most, if not all, other European governments between 421 and 1797 A.D. were some variation on monarchy or despotry. Venice was governed, not by an individual, but by groups of people, groups which had been formed over time not merely to do a particular job but to ensure that other groups didn’t get the upper hand. This checks-and-balances system, which seems so obvious to us today, was one which many intelligent people devoted time and energy to devising, improving, and maintaining.  So no snickering from the cheap seats.

This is nothing -- you should see the Mercerie during Carnival. Not what appears to be the ideal path for someone on horseback, even though the horse would obviously have the right of way.

1224:  It is forbidden to ride horses along the Mercerie [the street between Rialto and San Marco] due to the great increase in pedestrians. This seems so obvious as not to require a law, but as you see, it did.

1229:  It is forbidden to spend more than half a ducat per person for food when giving a dinner. Something had to be done to combat the phenomenally luxurious banquets which had already become common — common, that is, among the classes not known as common.  The relentless ingenuity of the wealthy patricians to find ways to out-spend each other sometimes verged on the potlatch mentality, and required a steady supply of ever-more-specific laws to control. One of many reasons why the government considered display worth controlling was because it was apt to stir up envy and other unpleasant emotions which could lead to even more unpleasant situations such as attempted coups, or the assassination of the doge.  I’m not sure how they enforced this  half-ducat limit but it sounds like the right idea.

1258:  Pharmacists are forbidden to sell medicine without a prescription. Furthermore, doctors, even the most illustrious, are required to treat poor patients for free. One of many examples of how innovative, not to say revolutionary, Venetian thinking often was.

1274, February 29:  It is prohibited to pass along the Mercerie on horseback because of all the people on foot [wait, didn't we already have a law about that?].

I intuit that the column now in Campo San Salvador is where the fig tree used to be. Not stadium parking in any case.

1287, February 29:  It is forbidden to go through the Mercerie on horseback [Are you people not listening?] except for foreigners who have just arrived. [Couldn't find a parking place for their horse?]  Furthermore, anyone wanting to go to San Marco has to tie his horse to the fig tree in the Campo San Salvador. [Voila'! Parking.]

1315: It is forbidden to commit impure acts in sacred places [finally something the church and state can agree on].  This law was intended to stop the “dishonest and disgraceful” behavior running riot not only in the porticoes of the basilica of San Marco — to say nothing of the many convents — but inside the churches themselves. How effective this law proved to be is shown, for example, by Marco Grimani, who was fined for “having attempted to fornicate with a young lady under the arches of the basilica.”  This occurred in 1363. Venetian laws seem to have had a limited shelf life, more or less 50 years, or roughly two generations.  Time enough for people to quit listening.  Or  caring.

1322:  The government decrees the construction of 50 public wells, to be completed within two years. In 1424 another 30 were added.  Wells (whether cisterns for rain or installed over an artesian source), or barges from the mainland, were the city’s only means of obtaining fresh water.  The price of water was set by the government, and each year the waterboatmen were required to donate the contents of 100 waterboats to the public wells [4,506,000 liters, or 1,190,359 gallons, presumably not all on the same day]. It went on like this until the aqueduct from the mainland was built in 1884. Excellent planning, and execution, you old Venetians.

1350, April 11: Some six months earlier — on    September 25, 1349 — a certain nobleman, Stefano Manolesso, was riding his horse in the Piazza San Marco [doing WHAT?] and unfortunately ran over and killed a little boy. Therefore  The Great Council passes a decree  which requires that horses wear rattles to warn people of their approach. [So you don't risk getting trampled by the horses that aren't supposed to be there.]

1354: November 11.  It is prohibited to carry grimaldelli [picklocks], because they have become the favorite toy of young bloods, perfect for breaking into houses, especially where beautiful and wealthy girls are residing.

1392:  August 29.  It is debated whether on festive days it should be forbidden to ride your horse at a fast pace in the Piazza San Marco. [Now we're just quibbling over speed?]

Not exactly the Circus Maximus, with or without acqua alta, but I suppose if you had a horse the urge to gallop eventually became irresistible.

1397: It is decreed to place new lamps or candles for street lighting.  The problem of dark streets here has been obvious for centuries; in 1128 the first lights were placed, at government expense, on votive shrines around the city, in the hope of discouraging the nocturnal mayhem — mugging, homicide — that had become the norm.  Venetians would wake up in the morning to find murdered people lying in the streets.  So they started installing faint but well-intentioned illumination at many corners and intersections. Which was insufficient three centuries later. Was there more crime? More streets? Nobody replacing the candles or refilling the lamps?

1407, September 11:  It is severely forbidden to throw garbage or trash into the canals. A few years ago we were rowing along behind the Giudecca, and as we turned into a certain canal I saw a hand-lettered sign thoughtfully placed near the entrance.  It said (in Italian, of course): “WARNING. GO SLOW. WASHING MACHINES IN THE WATER.” What was so funny (it’s not funny) was the use of the plural.  In any case, the sign is gone now.  I have no idea if the washing machines themselves are also gone. Maybe not. Human nature is tougher and more resistent than I don’t know what.  15-5PH stainless steel. Which is also not to be thrown into the water.

1409, September 26:  Members of the Great Council are not to throw the cloth balls used for voting at each other. [And they're making our laws?]

1411, January 27:  Servants and slaves are not to create a racket at night in the Palazzo Ducale. [Throwing balls of bread dough at each other?]

1414, April 18:  New, more severe rules [there already were some?] against people blowing bugles at night.

1415, July 25: Every year the names of those who have stolen state property will be announced in the Great Council, and this will be done for the entire life of the guilty parties. Public shame is supposed to be a deterrent, and maybe it was.  But I’d be willing to bet that everyone who heard those names only thought some variation of “Better him than me.”

1423, March 26:  The desks of the Chancellery are to be raised so that curious passersby can’t read the secret documents. [There. Mind your own beeswax.]

1425, February 7:  The government responds to the protest of many Venetians and decrees that church bells shall not be rung at night except in case of fire. It had reached the point where bells were being rung far into the night to celebrate all kinds of events. What with bells, bugles, and I don’t know what all, night in Venice must have been like noon in Shanghai.

1430, March 2:  The Great Council limits the height of the heels of women’s shoes.  I can’t say what height they had reached, but it was probably fairly ridiculous.  Not that most of the lower classes were wishing  they could have shoes that made them walk like flamingoes, but it’s just better to keep the footwear under control.

There is a fair number of similar plaques around the city -- yes, literally carved in stone -- which remind Venetians of how to behave. This is one of the simpler versions, written in an interesting mix of Venetian and Italian and Latin. Full translation at right.

MDCXXXIII [1633] 20 June

All games are forbidden, of whatever sort they may be [note: these "games" were not hopscotch, but gambling] and also to sell things, set up a shop or corbe [large wicker baskets for carrying coal], to utter blasphemies or other indecencies around this church or any nearby sacred places and this is by deliberation of the Most Excellent and Serene Executors against Blasphemy with the penalty for transgressors of prison, the galleys, banishment, and also [a fine of] 200 small lire [to be divided] between the accuser (who will be kept secret) and the captors.  D. Francesco Morosini, Procurator, D. Nicolo Contarini, D. Marco Antonio di Priuli, D. Alvise Mocenigo, Executors against Blasphemy.

Note: Forbidding blasphemy does not indicate that Venice was in the grip of religious fanatics, but that it was included with other common forms of public behavior which were revolting.  The Executors against Blasphemy were responsible not only for punishing blasphemy (priests were also often guilty), but also the profanation of sacred places, the defloration of virgins promised in marriage (remember the picklocks?), pimping, the publication of forbidden books, and most other activities, of which there were many,  that degraded the quality of life.  It was a losing battle but they had to try. In 1512 Lorenzo Priuli, later doge, wrote in his diary: “In Venice there were two things that were very difficult to overcome: the blasphemy used by every grade of person and clothes in the French fashion.”

1455, March 20: It is decreed that it is illegal to deprive a condemned person of his clothes before the execution. [Good grief. They'd been sending the poor bastards to the block in their skivvies?]

1461, October 20:  It is illegal for a creditor to deprive a debtor of his cows or agricultural tools, even if he owes money to the State.

1570: It is decreed that  it is illegal for a creditor to deprive a debtor of his bed.

1469, December 27: It is decreed that the lawyers pleading cases in the Council or the College may not speak for more than an hour and a half. [Lawyers without "Off" buttons have always been with us.]

1474:  Once again in the vanguard, the Republic issues the first laws which protect patents on inventions and the rights of the inventors.

1476. November 17: The Republic creates a new office, the Supervisors of Pomp. It can issue laws [oh good, we need more of those] concerning the display of wealth [it just doesn't stop], including but not limited to elaborate clothes and decorations, ostentatious display of jewels, excessive fancying-up of your servants or boats, over-the-top banquets, and anything else that is, as they put it, contrary to the spirit of the Republic, seeing that extravagant consumption [even if the money is all yours] is not only wasteful and teaches the wrong lessons, but also conduces to scandal [spending bags of money on stuff might weaken your grasp on the idea of boundaries, yours and everybody else's] and thus is to be avoided. [Clear as a 25-carat diamond.]

1498, June 11: At the request of the people living on the Giudecca, it is forbidden to “roast” cinnabar. The government was vigilant to relegate hazardous or extremely obnoxious industries (dyeing and tanning among them) to outlying areas of the city, but in this case they neglected to make it an uninhabited part.  I can well believe that the residents objected; the idea of a furnace roasting mercury ore anywhere near groups of vertebrates is so ghastly that it’s hard to believe it was ever permitted to exist. I’m sure the councilors didn’t let this furnace get built because they were distracted by deciding how much silk you would be allowed to use to make your underwear [I made that up]. They must have been thinking about how important it was to produce mercury for hatmakers, and for pharmacists concocting treatments for syphilis.

1563: At an unspecified date, a momentous decision is finally made.  It is forbidden to ride horses anywhere in the city. Sometimes tourists marvel that there are no cars in Venice [before they notice the inconvenience of all those bridges].  However, if anybody had ever wondered why there are no horses, now we know.  It was forbidden. Seriously forbidden.  And this time we mean it, totally prohibited.  With this majestic edict all those rattles and rules could be thrown out and I suppose collected by the itinerant rag, bone, and scrap iron merchant to be turned into soap or paper. Certainly they weren’t thrown into the canals. That’s illegal.

Venetian laws and order is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Epiphany, which it says in the fine print is intended to commemorate the visit of the Three Kings to the Baby Jesus, offering him gold, frankincense, and myrrh, has metamorphosed over the centuries into a day dedicated primarily to a happy little hag known as the Befana.  Her name, which I suppose could just as well have been Hepzibah or Basemath, is a homely mutation of the word Epiphany.  You probably already figured that out.

She's almost always smiling. That's a good sign.

Her connection to the day is gifts.  No, of course children haven’t gotten enough of them yet.  Are you mad?  It’s been a whole 12 days since the last truckload of presents was dropped on them.

The Befana is a remarkable creature, and to love her you must get past your feelings about hook-nosed, snaggle-toothed harpies with broomsticks.  She’s actually closer to honey and poplar syrup and agave nectar, all sweetness and no light.  She flies at night.

Stockings don’t belong to Santa Claus, here they’re hung out tonight for the Befana to swoop through and fill with candy and doodads.  In my day, a doodad might have been a Slinky. Today, it’s probably an iPhone.

Here is a dish of candy coal, which makes as much sense as candy corn.

She is also liable to leave coal instead of candy, coal being the traditional judgment on Bad Children. But naturally  by now a loophole has been found — created, actually — by inventing a candy that looks like coal.  I’ve tried it, and it tastes exactly like what you’d think a block of black sugar would taste like.  Not that black has a taste, but your imagination instinctively supplies one.

The Befana is always changing, always the same. Averaging out the thousands of versions crowding the candy stores and pastry shops, I’d say she was a combination of Dame Edna Everage and Jimmy Durante. I found one that looked like a distant cousin of Porky Pig, but I’m sure that was unintentional.

There are many and deep significances to this observance which I won’t repeat now; my post last year covered most of them.  I only note here that I am looking forward, as always, to detecting the smell tonight of woodsmoke blowing over from nearby farmland — Sant’ Erasmo, or, slightly further away, the settlements by the sea near Jesolo, Ca’ Savio, Treporti, smoke swirling out of the flaming bonfires which are lit in her honor.

I want to note — for the record, whoever may be keeping it, or reading it — that the occasional practice of burning the effigy of the Befana atop the pyre is historically wrong.  Bonfires, yes, but with the purpose of disposing of a lot of dead plant material you have to get rid of before next spring’s planting.  The “Vecia” (old lady) is more traditionally burned up at the middle of Lent, and some places still plan it that way.

Meaning no disrespect whatsoever to this venerable crone, I have to say that Venice once was swamped with cronish ladies, of various ages, whose mission in life was to patrol the family, and neighboring families, with relentless scrutiny.  Now that neighborhood life has changed so much over the past three generations — television, sufficient heating, children moving away, and death have taken their toll on the dense agglomerations of terrifying, invasive, implacable old ladies who could smile like angels as they slashed your reputation to ribbons behind your back.  I know this because Lino has told me Stories about them, and does a bloodcurdling impression of a typical conversation between a few of these matrons.

Even more, I can confirm that the Venetian language is gratifyingly rich in terms which describe the myriad nuances of ancient females.  I don’t imagine I can do them justice on my own, even though they’re words you could hear every day and eventually begin to use instinctively in certain situations: Marantega, carampane, grima, sbetega, peocio refa‘, and many more, all have deliciously complicated meanings.  The fact that there are so many words for the variations on these life-battered and -battering women (not to mention casual expressions to describe them, such as “Ugly as the plague,” “As ugly as hunger,” and so on), show the depth of feeling they inspired in everyone who knew them or even came near them, especially their families.

Espedita Grandesso, in her wonderful  book, “Prima de parlar, tasi,” has applied her exegetical scalpel to many of these terms.  Here is a brief sample (translated by me):

Marantega: [Ma-RAHN-te-ga].  The Befana is sometimes referred to as the “marantega barola” (barola meaning really old), but that is sort of a slur, in my opinion. A marantega, according to Grandesso, is primarily an ancient and misanthropic woman, dedicated to the cult of the dead in the sense that she keeps daily tabs on who has preceded her to paradise, spreading the news everywhere. This type of woman possesses a mournful sense of existence and is the town crier of every disgrace which occurs in her range of activity.  In days gone by, one could find her in the performance of these duties in church, at the hour of saying the rosary, or vespers, in the act of delivering the last horrid news in the ear of yet another unfortunate biddy, chosen from among the meekest and most impressionable.

Carampana:  [cah-rahm-PAHN-ah]. By now this term signifies a woman of decrepit agedness, who maintains presumptions of attractiveness and, for that reason, plasters her wrinkles with rouge and continues to dress in the style of the time when she was lovely. In general, she is a pathetic creature who, unfortunately, gives a helping hand to derision.  In the past, however, this term literally meant “prostitute,” and can still describe a trollop who is old and out of service, and who, with her excessive makeup and her attitude maintains an equivocal air that is almost the stamp of her long-practiced profession.  In fact, it was originally the name of the neighborhood near the Rialto which was the red-light district.

Sbetega: [SBEH-teh-ga].  Literally a shrew and loudmouth.

Grima: [GREE-ma].  Much worse than a sbetega.  In this case it means a malignant woman who is, at the same time, aggressive and hard to neutralize.  Mothers-in-law often belong to this category, but daughters-in-law also do pretty well for themselves.

Peocio Refa‘: [peh-OH-cho reh-FA].  Literally a made-over cootie.  This is a person (who could also be a man) who has made money and enjoys a good financial position, remaining at the same time crude and mean-spirited, whose greatest pleasure consists of humiliating her neighbor, especially if that person is culturally superior to her.  The northeast Veneto [and, may I add, much of the Lido] offers excellent examples of this species.

These would be Befana Lite.

Otovario dei Morti: [Aw-to-VAH-ree-oh day MOR-tee].  I myself haven’t heard this term used in daily life around here, but the character it describes is eternal. Grandesso says that the “ottavario” was the word indicating the repetition of a religious feast, one that was particularly solemn or deeply felt, eight days after its first celebration. Therefore the Ottavario dei Morti was tied to All Souls’ Day, or the commemoration of the deceased. This term is given to a person who is sad, either in appearance or temperament, who only talks about depressing or funereal events, whether public or private, reaching the apex of pleasure when they are particularly disastrous.  In the days of patriarchal families, this role was generally performed by widowed or spinster aunts, well along in years.  These charitable women, having long since left behind the joys of the world, busy themselves in extirpating them as well in the hearts of relatives, friends, and acquaintances.

None of these expressions could ever be used for the Befana, though.  She adores children and I myself don’t believe she cares what adults might think or say about her. You can tell she isn’t from around here.

The Befana sweeps through is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up