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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A pinna nobile as we normally see them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But no.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We knew it couldn’t last, all that sun and warmth and autumnal glow.

And it didn’t.

Friday morning we woke up early to the insistent clattering of the Venetian blinds against the window.  The message they were tapping out was “Let us in, it’s cold out here.”

As you see, the wind hasn't stopped everybody from working. You should know, however, that when Lino was a lad -- before motors made everybody feel invincible -- everybody would still have gone to work on a day like this, rowing. Not made up. There were farmers on the mainland who rowed to Venice every morning -- extremely early in the morning, too. No snow days, no parental slips, as in "Please excuse my son from rowing to Venice this morning with the milk, there's too much wind." People didn't think that way.

Did I say wind?  We got to the vaporetto in record time, rushed along by a powerful southwest wind known officially as the libeccio but here is called garbin (gar-BEEN).  What was happening was a highly invigorating “garbinata.”

The lagoon was having a seizure.  Between the waves caused by the wind and those created by boats with motors, the water didn’t know which way it was supposed to go, so it pretty much went everywhere.

This is a man who has tremendous confidence in his boat, and himself. An obstreperous wave or gust could easily change all that.

But we knew it wasn’t going to go on for long, because when the tide turned the wind was going to turn too,  leaving the stage for the next performer, its opposite number, a northeast wind officially known as the grecale but here is called borin (bore-EEN).

This has been ordained by the Great Ordainer and is so dependable a phenomenon that there’s a phrase that goes with it: “Garbin ciama borin” (gar-BEEN chama bor-EEN): the southwest wind “calls” the northeast wind.

It also rained for several hours in a sort of “Get it all out, you’ll feel better” kind of way.

I certainly felt better. I loved hearing the rain, it was visit from a long-lost friend.  And I’d say that even if I had had to be out in it.  You know me.

It didn't matter which way you were heading -- everybody was in the same fix.

And spare a thought for the working stiffs ashore. This poor bastard had been sent out by himself to tie down the big banner announcing something important. The top edge is supposed to be lashed to the supports at his feet. I didn't watch for long because it seemed rude, and I might have offered to help except that I seriously doubted I'd be able to. It would have been like offering to help somebody furl the mainsail in a gale.

There goes summer is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

An early spring morning swathed in diaphanous air, to aid and assist in the swathing of the filmy trees.

Spring here is in constant evolution, as it is anywhere else, so it’s slightly silly to talk about it at all, considering that by the time you read this, things will have changed.  A few of the earliest (and therefore best) highlights are already gone, making way for subsequent highlights, and so on till we get to summer, which would probably like to have highlights except that the heat and humidity kind of destroy them. Or at least destroy my will to notice or care about them.

When we lived at the other end of the city, near Santa Marta, my spring herald was a small weeping willow tree that drooped over a brick wall bordering the rio di Tre Ponti (canal of Three Bridges).  Its first minuscule leaves created the faintest conceivable film of pale tea green, or pale celadon, or pale eau de nil, or pale honeydew melon, or probably a combination of all of these.  Maybe I should call it “pale first leaves of weeping willow” green.

I would check up on this little tree as if it were on probation. But all my watching didn’t reveal its very best moment, I’m sure, because the tree always seemed to leaf too fast.  I suspect it was working at night, like an illegal Moldovan bricklayer.  In any case, it passed its exquisite birth stage and grew up far too quickly for my taste.  It should have lasted just two days longer and I’d have been happy.  But no.

Seeing that there are no willows in our current area, I've decided to concentrate on the progress of this little plum. Its beauty is even briefer than the willow's; you really need to get up early to see spring here.

Now we live at the other extreme of the city — as of everything else — and instead of a willow tree my heralds are one little plum tree, and a whole slew of blackbirds who seem to be able to sing everything up to Elizabethan motets.

There are also the flying heralds: I’ve seen scatterings of bees, of course, and unexpected little apprentice herald showed up today in the form of a roaming fly that buzzed through the house.  He seemed to be on some sort of reconnaissance mission.

Bring on the wisteria -- not that it needs any invitation, or encouragement, either.

The plum and cherry blossoms have come and gone; the wisteria is just beginning to take their place, to be followed by the magnolia, and the jasmine.  It sounds as if I’m living on some Veneto-Byzantine tropical plantation.

Flowering Venice: I hope you’ll add this to your list of images of this city, along with the bridges and canals and ogee arches.

Obviously not flowers but they bloom all year long.

Sunset in early spring. The colors change, but the mist hangs on. And the seppie, along with all the other fry, are on their way into the lagoon again. You have to imagine that, I can't show it to you.

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

If you’ve either flown into/out of Venice, or driven into/out of Venice, you already know that the mainland (a/k/a “the rest of the world”) involves a surprising amount of farmland.  Or fields, anyway.  It’s not Kansas, true, but there is a noticeable amount of cultivation going on.

Back in Venice, we have a first-rate country option which doesn’t involve going over the bridge.  Or getting in a car.  We go there in a small boat, rowing.

It’s the island of Sant’ Erasmo — the largest island in the lagoon (3.26 km/s, or 1.25 square miles), though that isn’t what makes it worth knowing about.

It’s farms.  Or better, market gardens, though some of them are larger than what we usually think of as gardens, unless the garden were to be Longwood or Stourhead or the Villa d’Este.

We pull the boat onto the beach at #13, where the two brothers labor in their spare time. The "Sapori di Sant' Erasmo" is slightly inland from #12.

I have mentioned Sant’ Erasmo from time to time — odd, perhaps, when you consider that it isn’t on the way to anywhere, and that if you’re not interested in vegetables or biking or mosquitoes, there isn’t much reason to come all the way over here.

Ninety-eight percent (I made that up) of the island consists of comfortably large plots of grapevines, artichokes, peas, asparagus, and whatever else is likely to grow  in its appointed season.

The words “Sant’ Erasmo” scribbled on signs stuck among the produce at the Rialto Market always means something special (fresh, local, really good). I eventually discovered that (A) the label isn’t always accurate (fancy way of saying “untrue”) and (B) that I can get them at the source itself. This has made me insufferably demanding now. That may seem a little silly when discussing mere vegetation, but I can taste the difference, and I can really taste how much less expensive they are than at the vendor’s stall in the Big City.

Shopping for vegetables is also a great excuse for an excellent row across part of the lagoon.

We have two sources, so far.

Our first option is a modest but flourishing commercial operation called “Sapori di Sant’ Erasmo” (Flavors of Sant’ Erasmo — not a bad name unless you’ve come here often enough to associate the island with the flavor of mosquitoes).  It belongs to Carlo and Claudio Finotello and there is virtually always someone there, ready to sell you some of their produce.  If you’re lucky, also a bottle or two of their wine.  I don’t drink, but I’m very happy that there’s a place where you can get some real local Raboso.

Sant' Erasmo has canals too. This one leads from the lagoon toward the "Sapori di Sant' Erasmo."

If the water weren't so turbid today, you could see what this string is doing: It's attached to a moderately large rubber tube maybe two feet long, which is lying on the bottom waiting to trap any passing eel. Eels check in but they can't turn around and check out.

Either red or white grapes make a very appealing local wine.

Just looking at all this chlorophyll makes me feel healthy and strong.

This little mascareta has been reincarnated as a flower bed. Waste not, want not. And speaking of wanting, as far as I can see, Sant' Erasmo was (and maybe still is) one of the few places on earth where hunger would be virtually unknown. Apart from the fruit and vegetables, there are the fish in the lagoon (or in small fishponds), wild ducks to be hunted, chickens and pigs and goats and anything else you can either find or cultivate. Venice? We don't need no stinking Venice.

The second option is the modest but variegated plot belonging to a man — actually, his aged parents — two steps from where we pull the boat onto the beach near a rumpsprung bar/restaurant called Da Tedeschi.  He’s been known to buy artichokes from him that  he’s just cut off the stalk for us. Tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, eggplant.  Only problem is, he isn’t always there.  And/or there’s nothing growing that’s ready or that we even slightly want.

The other morning we went ashore near the second option: The plot near the beach, where we found the man (I still don’t know his name) and his brother (ditto) tilling the soil by their parents’ house. Parents nowhere in sight.  This is what kids are for.

The older man got to talking with us as we watched his brother working the soil with a broad hoe, preparing it to be sown with tiny little Ukrainian onions all ready to take root.

He imparted the following fragments of information: He retired three years ago after 45 years as a master glassmaker on Murano, work which he started when he was 12 because back then, not so many people went on to study and besides, he didn’t like studying all that much.

That there used to be a big acacia tree right over there (pointing toward the beach) that put out pink blossoms in the spring.  They would pick the blossoms, then bread them and deep-fry them, the way people do more commonly  now with zucchini blossoms.  His expression as he remembered this delicacy told me that it was worth experiencing and that he misses it.  I’ve never tried fried acacia flowers, but after having seen his face, I resent the fact that I never had the chance to.

Artichokes: Everyone, even I, knows that Sant’ Erasmo is famous for its “violet” version, and that the salty soil is one factor in their flavor. What I didn’t know is that one plant will put out roots to create four or five other plants, and that a normal plant will produce up to 21 artichokes.

Near the beach, the two brothers (well, one, anyway) are preparing to plant onions.

The little Ukrainian onions waiting to return to the soil.

I have now also learned that they can’t be grown in hothouses. You’ll be glad to know I can’t tell you why (we’d be here all day, at this rate), but I believe him when he says that under the big top the plants grow unnaturally tall, produce fewer artichokes than normal, and that the artichokes they do produce are kind of — he made a soggy, wilting sort of grimace — what they would call “fiapo” (FYA-poh). Fiapo is what happens to your grilled-cheese sandwich when you have to leave it to go answer the phone. People can also be fiapo, usually in August.

Unfortunately, artichokes from Sant’ Erasmo have one thing in common with pieces of the True Cross: There are too many of them to be real.  In fact, artichokes from Livorno, which are trucked over to Venetian markets, come in so much earlier than the Sant’ Erasmo product that labeling them as local eventually caused serious protest.  Telling that little fib will get you a fine, if you’re caught.

Then there was the year of the Big Freeze: His friend had 1,300 peach trees on Sant’ Erasmo. They were all destroyed.

The "violet" artichokes from Sant' Erasmo are famous. The little morsel that's left when you remove those leathery outer leaves is utterly delectable.

But then there was this: The year of the Big Acqua Alta (Nov. 4, 1966, as all the world knows), was the only time Sant’ Erasmo has gone underwater.  In fact, he said, the island was like a semi-submerged barena. Nobody had ever seen this happen, but there were two results.

One: All the crops were totally ruined by the salt water soaking. No surprise there.

Two: The following year, they had a mythically great harvest of just about everything.  Whatever the Adriatic had taken away with the flood, it more than gave back the next year by means of whatever elements it had brought in.  I don’t believe it was just salt, because salting the fields has been a time-dishonored way of destroying future crops for several whiles.

Lino supports my theory that the tide brought something that the salt couldn’t vanquish, because he said that when you raise a sunken boat out of the lagoon, it’s covered with the finest conceivable layer of some kind of material.  I’m imagining melted earth that’s been clarified, like butter.

Anyway, that’s just my theory — obviously the fields knew what was happening, so let’s move on.  What we do know is that the next summer, the memory of the lost winter harvest had been transformed into a glowing realization that life is, indeed, good.

At least on Sant’ Erasmo.

All the plum trees (Prunus domestica) have bloomed at virtually the same moment. You can't see them but there are hundreds of bees gorging themselves in these blossoms. Later, we'll be eating the fruit, known here as baracocoli (roundish and golden).

Going to the country is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

There ought to be a special Venetian handshake, or greeting, or food (what? no special food??) to mark this little anniversary.

But I did hear something that sounded like a mystic knock at the year’s door, loud enough to be heard but perhaps not enough to be noticed.

The knock that struck ever so faintly on the old cochlea was delivered at the Rialto market.  (You see? Of course food belongs in the picture. I was only testing you.)

These are carletti, and their moment is so fleeting you might not even see them the day you go to the market. Lino forages for them along the lagoon shoreline, and if you don't get them at just the right moment, whatever their parent plant may be will develop them into something inedible. They aren't cultivated anywhere; these little bouquets were picked by somebody, leaf by leaf.

Bruscandoli, or wild hops, stay in the market longer than the carletti. Both of these plants make an excellent risotto -- that appears to be their main mission in life.

Instead of an occult greeting, there is an assortment of poetry passed on by the ancients to acknowledge the moment. Once again, it comes from the fathomless store of balladry that Lino memorized as a lad. If his teachers had had any notion that his brain was going to retain all this material far, far into the distant decades — maybe even forever — they might have wondered if it would have been better to have him memorize something else.  Like algorithms, or the names of the then-68 member countries of the UN, or all the books of the Bible.

But poetry seems to have turned out to work better, because how often in any day or occasion would it be necessary, or even appreciated, to burst out with all the books of the Bible? Poetry, however, is always the Right Thing to say.

In exactly the same place (and perhaps bucket) where you can buy calicanthus in December, peach blossoms appear for a brief period in early spring.

So this morning, like every March 21, was marked by a spontaneous recitation of the vernal poesy of Giovanni Pascoli and Angiolo Silvio Novaro.  Read these to the mental music of blackbirds cantillating in the dawn, and the sound of the truck delivering the branches of peach blossoms from Sicily.

If I had time, I would research the reasons for selling peach blossoms, and not apple or apricot or almond or any other flowering tree. I myself would like to know the reasons, but for now I can only say that these are here because that’s what people do.  ”People” meaning the growers, sellers, and buyers.  So don’t come asking for pear or loquat blossoms or any other frippery.

Valentino, by Giovanni Pascoli.  Lino launches into it like greeting an old friend:  ”Oh! Valentino vestito di nuovo/come le brocche dei biancospini!/Solo, ai piedini provato dal rovo/porti la pelle de’ tuoi piedini…”

Biancospino, or common hawthorn, is one of the first heralds of spring.

Then there are lines he doesn’t remember so I’ll skip those, then the conclusion and the link to March: “… e venne/Marzo, e tu magro contadinello/restasti a mezzo…ma nudi i piedi, come un uccello:/come l’uccello venuto dal mare,/che tra il ciliegio salta, e non sa/ch’oltre il beccare, il cantare, l’amare/ci sia qualch’altra felicita’.”

Valentino is a poor country boy whose widowed mother survives by selling the eggs from their chickens. Winter is brutally hard and he has outgrown the shoes she made for him. The poet compares his bare feet to those of a bird.  But then in March come the first signs of spring, and he concludes, “like a bird that came from the sea, that leaps in the cherry tree, and doesn’t know that other than to eat, to sing, to love, there could be any other happiness.”

The second of these classics is a little paean to the soft rain of March, which makes the plants begin to bloom.

Che dice la pioggerellina di marzo? by Angiolo Silvio Novaro:

Che dice la pioggerellina di marzo/che picchia argentina/Sui tegoli vecchi/Del tetto, sui bruscoli secchi/Dell’orto, sul fico e sul moro/Ornati di gemmule d’oro?”

“What says the misty rain of March/that strikes silvery/On the old tiles/Of the roof, on the dry motes/Of the garden, on the fig and on the mulberry/Adorned with buds of gold?”

He goes on to say that winter is past, tomorrow spring will come out, trimmed with buds and frills,with bright sun, fresh violets, the beating of birds’ wings, nests, cries, swallows, and the stars of almond, white… The entire team, in other words, plus cheerleaders.

All this sounds much better in Italian, but in any language these poems and their ilk amount to a deep sigh of relief.  Sometimes it’s not so much that spring is here, but that winter is gone.  Less winter, more spring. If that doesn’t call for a poem, you may have a soul made of styrofoam.

No offense.

"Quando la rosa mete spin/xe bon el go' e el passarin." When the rose begins to bud, the go' and the passarini are good. In other words, to everything there is a season, and March is the moment for these creatures.

The passarini are looking good.

First Day of Spring in Venice is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

We went out rowing the other afternoon, which is always a good thing but not exactly news. Other people might have been unenthusiastic — and in fact, we didn’t see anybody else out — but we don’t wait for the weather to sing its little Lorelei song. That’s a waste of valuable time especially in March, what with Lorelei being so skittish.  We just go.

A nondescript March afternoon, soon to become much more descript with the gathering of the oysters.

For a while, the most notable thing about the excursion was the faintly hazy, vague color scheme of the part of the lagoon where we like to go. Then the breeze began to get to me. It wasn’t so strong, but it was raw and insistent, which began to be annoying, like a crying baby in the apartment at the end of the hall.  Part of the effect of the crying baby, as with the wind, is that there’s pretty much nothing you can do about it. Things I can’t do anything about really, really annoy me.  Just so you know.

But the situation became much more interesting when we ran the boat onto the exposed mudbank — the tide was out — so Lino could go exploring. I would have gone too, but wasn’t wearing shoes that would have made even the slightest effort to resist the squishy, waterlogged terrain.

And what he found were oysters.  I knew they were out there because he’s brought them home before.  Lagoon oysters on the half-shell were our antipasto for Christmas Eve dinner a few years ago, and they are delectable, not too large, not too small, and faintly sweet.  One source states that this breed is known for its “unique tannic seawater flavor…and [is] considered excellent for eating raw on the half shell.”  As I said.

To be precise, these unsung lagoon creatures are known elsewhere as the highly prized Belon oyster, the stuff of high-wattage chefs and cultivated feeders.  Here, nobody cares about them anymore. Even less than not caring, nobody seems to even know they exist. Here the restaurants are fixated on clams…clams…clams…clams, like a stuck culinary record.

These animals (Ostrea edulis) go by various names, from the clearly appropriate "mud oyster" to the much"European flat oyster" to the much more glamorous Belon oyster. Too bad about the lone canestrello, or "lid scallop," that was forced to come along. Lino would gladly have brought a batch of friends for him, if he'd found them.

Oysters were once as common in the market as clams.  A particularly Venetian habit, more firmly rooted than kudzu, is to exclaim “Ostrega!” (OSS-tre-gah) which means “oyster” in Venetian. (Italian: ostrica).  It’s an all-purpose term that would instantly reveal you to be Venetian anywhere  in Italy; in fact, it carries amusing overtones of charming quaintness to anyone not from here. It is one of those clever next-to words (like “hello” instead of “hell”) that people employ to avoid using a really serious and socially inadmissible word — in this case, “ostia,” which is the Communion wafer. Ostrega is close enough to get your meaning across without offense.

“Ostrega” is a flexible word which, depending on your tone of voice, can express a variously emphatic reaction from astonishment to agreement, disbelief, displeasure, wonder, delight, and so on.  ”Ostregheta” (OSS-tre-GHE-ta, or “little oyster”) is a gentler variation. I have a Venetian friend who will sometimes say “OO-strega,” which I think is adorable.  I keep meaning to ask him if he invented this.

On the building at the corner of Campo San Pantalon is a small stone tablet where fish used to be sold. One of several that remain from the Venetian Republic, it shows a list of the fish for sale and the legal minimum size.

Back to the oysters themselves. One of the clauses in the numberless regulations governing fishermen (which began to be documented in 1270), as stipulated in 1765, stated that  ”To only the fishermen who personally exercise the laborious toil of fishing, should remain the usual freedom to go to the neighborhoods selling fish at retail such as eels, flounder, mullet, sardines….cuttlefish, clams and oysters in the permitted times.”

Another plaque with fish and sizes is in Campo Santa Margherita, here pleasantly accompanied by three stands selling fish.

But now, as with so many things (such as papaline), they have fallen out of favor and I’m not sure anyone can say why.  There seem to be fashions in fish. It can’t be because oysters are difficult to collect, because they’re generally easier than clams. Clams lurk beneath the sediments, but oysters — like canestrelli — are often found lying there on the muddy/sandy bottom, right out in the open, not even trying to hide. You can just pick them up, like Lino does, though back when they had commercial value men would take them by means of a cassa da ostreghe, more simply known as an ostregher (oss-treh-GHEHR).

A bragozzo in the lagoon, with an ostregher attached to each mast. (Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venezia.)

An ostregher was a sort of baggy net weighted with a strip of iron which was tied to the stern of your boat, and which you would drag along the bottom as you rowed or sailed.   Something similar, called a “cassa da canestreli” or “scassa diavolo” was used to take canestrelli (Pecten opercularis), as Lino often did when he was a lad; he sometimes shows me where, along the edges of the Canale del Orfanello stretching from the Bacino of San Marco toward the island of  San Servolo. Or in the Canale del Orfano, from San Servolo to the island of La Grazia. Lots of people did this, just for themselves. Even now, a few people might still joke, when the vehicle you’re in (say, the vaporetto) is slowing down for no apparent reason: “Are they dragging a cassa da canestreli?” I imagine that most youngsters have no idea what they’re talking about.

All the fish go by their Venetian names here; the ostrega is second from the bottom, with minimum length of 5 cm (1.9 inches).

Then the city outlawed this technique as damaging to the lagoon.  You might say this was a good thing — it’s certainly fine as a concept, like peace on earth — except that it wasn’t damaging, and if it were, why was this method outlawed while illegal clamming continues, night and day, by people using a mechanized version of basically the same technique, leaving utterly barren, completely devastated tracts of lagoon behind?

Lino happily returned to the boat with a bag containing a batch of oysters and a lone canestrelo which he couldn’t resist.

All now frozen solid, awaiting their moment of glory in Lino’s next fish soup.

It turned out to have been, as the saying goes, an excellent day to die.  For the oysters, I mean.

Another day, another mollusk 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

We were all peacefully plodding along toward spring when March burst through the door. Did the famous month come in like a lion?  More like a pack of enraged jaguars.

On Monday night (February 28) the wind began to pick up.  A very special wind, the bora, blowing from the northeast with gusts up to 54 km/h (33 mph).

At Sant' Elena, looking toward the Lido.

This went on all day and night for the following two days — as I write, the wind is finally subsiding to a polite 20 km/h (12 mph).

The scirocco, the fetid breath of the southeast, can impel acqua alta, but if you stand sideways to the bora it will blow your brain out of your skull. Not that you’ll be needing your brain at that point, because the survival instinct will have taken over the controls.

We could hear the powerful roaring noise with the door and windows shut. Women didn’t hang out their laundry, which told me more than even the messages being tapped out on our window by the desperate Venetian blinds. Normally you’d like a real breeze because it gives you a boost in the drying-laundry department, but here your housewife would have risked either seeing her underwear being ripped out of the clothespins and soaring away toward Sardinia, or clinging to the clothesline while being rent to rags, like a flag in a hurricane.

For me, not seeing laundry is more ominous than the dog that didn’t  bark in the night.

The bora making its point along the Fondamente Nove.

But while all this is very exciting for Venice (well, for me, though it’s certainly not the first bora I’ve experienced), it set a record for Trieste, the city as famous for its wind as Venice is for its canals.  They haven’t had a zephyr like this since 1954.

The Triestines endured this bora with gusts up to 163 km/h (101 mph). This is a speed which isn’t even on the Beaufort scale, and creates more damage and danger than 76 acqua altas put together. Some people in Trieste were literally blown over, suffering serious head injuries.  The houses and trees went through something of the same thing.  It’s quite a place where the weather person can breathe a sigh when he tells the viewers that the wind is dropping and that now it’s only at 70 km/h (43 mph).

Here is a view of the bora in Trieste at 150 km/h.  This occurred in 2005, but it gives some idea of what 163 km/h might look like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itcaETv705Y&playnext=1&list=PL35DE065227480E8F

Interesting fact that sounds like folklore, except that I can confirm that it’s true: No matter how many days the bora may last, it always ends on an odd-numbered day. Like today. Strange, I know.

I stayed home and made my once-a-year batch of galani, to gorge on today (“Fat Thursday”).  They didn’t come out as well as they did last year, and I am convinced that I changed nothing.  Of course we’re eating them, but they fall short of sublime, which is disappointing.  If I’m going to eat slivers of fat and sugar, they ought to be at least irresistible.

The galani this year. Next year, even better.

Call me deranged, but I’m blaming the bora.  Cold high pressure from Russia meeting warm low pressure from the southwest right over our little hovel. I’m just glad that the roof tiles didn’t get blown away.  Though I suppose I could have glued some galani on in their place.

March blows into Venice is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up