This ad was prominently displayed last fall to publicize Vodafone, the European telephone behemoth.  Here they are helpfully informing us that they are sponsoring at least some of the restoration of the church of San Bartolomeo, just underfoot near the Rialto Bridge.

Their main message, though, is to promote their new package of special rates for calls to the people who  matter the most to you — in their shop just underfoot, etc.

Whatever you may think of them or their packages, their advertising agency is above average.

The line says:  ”The most beautiful things are done in pairs (literally, ‘in two’.”

This shred of philosophy made me smile, though probably it doesn’t stand up to heavy pondering.

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

I am usually able to dominate my conscience in a fairly effective, and moderately long-lasting, way.  But I realize that I have let silence reign for longer than intended here on my own little Planet Blog.

I’m not in Venice this month.  Which doesn’t mean I still can’t blog about Venice, but that my energies and activities are not centered  on the so-called most beautiful city in the world.  In fact, they’re not even close.  Sorry.

I will do my best to write something before long.  Just didn’t want anyone to think I had lost interest, or forgotten, or — God forbid — had run out of things to say. Like that could ever happen.

Nor have I been stolen by people in ski masks who forgot to leave a ransom note.

Back soon.

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

The last two weeks of August here contain some of the most predictable events ever found on earth, right up there on the list next to sunrise and the last Saturday at WalMart before school starts.

Our predictable events in this period are the preparations for the Venice Film Festival (this year August 31 to September 10), which involve what always look like amazingly late and chaotic preparations of the main theatre known as the Palacinema and its environs, plus truckloads of complaints and accusations of waste and inefficiency from everybody except the organizers.  There are also preparations for the Regata Storica, whose five days of eliminations conclude tomorrow, which proceed in a more organized way.  This may be because they are, in fact, better organized, or only because they entail fewer people and matter less to the world at large, by which I mean there’s less money involved.

But these are events which you can ignore if you’re not particularly interested. What nobody can ignore is the afa.

If you can make out any land at all on the horizon, that would be the rest of the world. Or maybe it's a mirage.

The afa currently sucking the life out of the lagoon and its denizens also qualifies as an annual event  and you don’t even have to go to it.  It comes to you.  ”The afa came down like a wolf on the fold,” as Lord Byron didn’t say, and its cohorts, if it had any, are definitely not gleaming in purple and gold. They’re not gleaming at all, theyre practically naked and most of them are neck deep in the exhausted tepid water of the Adriatic.

In fact, a morning view of either the sea or the lagoon gives the impression that these bodies of water are not made of water at all, but of glycerine, heavy and smooth, a colorless liquid that barely has the strength to form even the tiniest wave.

I know how it feels.  When the alarm sounds in the shapeless sodden dawn, the term “primordial ooze” comes to mind, by which I don’t mean the world, I mean me. It isn’t a good feeling to be either primordial or oozy and to be both is depressing even if I  know that evolution will eventually bring me the opposable thumb and the sextant and the sonnets of Shakespeare.

Looking toward Venice, the most beautiful city in the world, if you can make it out.

A Saharan front is pressing down on the Veneto region and also much of the rest of the old Belpaese, and it’s the longest and hottest heatwave around here for the last 20 years.  Good for beach tourism, I suppose, though not good for other activities like farming.

One Bosnian truckdriver was completely unimpressed by all this.  He stopped in a supermarket parking lot at Crocetta del Montello near Treviso yesterday, and all that sunshine immediately made him think of catching some of those rays.

This may not have been precisely the form of the truck in question, but it still doesn't say "beach" to me.

So he climbed up onto the roof of his cab, I suppose on some kind of towel to avoid completely crisping, with a supply of drinks at hand.  Voila!  His own little beach!

Then he took off all his clothes and stretched out.  Evidently Bosnian truckers hate those bathing-suit lines as much as anybody.

A cashier in the supermarket saw the naked man tanning himself  up there and called the Carabinieri.  End of tan.

I don’t know if Venice has ever experienced a monsoon, but I can tell you we’re all waiting for one.

Afa will make you do anything is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

As I’ve often remarked, one of the things I love about being here is the faithful return of certain events — moments — throughout the year.  Of course there are events everywhere upon which one may confidently depend — tax deadline day comes to mind — but I’m talking about here.

One occurrence which is so predictable that I don’t even have read the paper, much less even wake up, to recognize it is the double-edged event known as THE EXODUS.

Trieste is only 7 km/4 miles from the Croatian border. From then on, time and distance take on new meanings.

No, it has no Biblical overtones, unless one is thinking of the famous Plagues. In fact, now that I think about it, this could possibly be a worthy candidate to join the frogs and the flies that afflicted Pharaoh.  But since we’re living in a democracy, this little plague afflicts everybody going on vacation. And everybody goes in August.

So the first weekend of August inevitably sees an outbound migration  of massive proportions clogging the highways — The Exodus.  On the last weekend of August, there is the equally appalling Return Exodus.

This is what Croatia looks like from the Italian side of the border. You can be sitting and looking at this for quite a while. But of course, you're not seeing this, you're seeing what it represents: Fabulous beaches, great food, maybe even no people.

We could call it the Plague of Traffic.  Or, if you’re sitting on the highway in a monster backup, the Plague of Everybody Else on Earth.  And the only thing that changes from one year to the next is the length — from unbearable to inconceivable — of the backups at the Italian borders and Alpine tunnels.  Last Saturday the backup at the border dividing Slovenia from Croatia reached about 40 km/25 miles.  Ah yes, Croatia: Gorgeous! Near! Irresistible! Cheap! Also: Small! Mountainous! Not Many Roads!

This Exodus traffic is funny to people who aren’t there, like me, and to people who are funny wherever they are, like Lino Toffolo.

Lino Toffolo is an actor/standup comic  from Murano who writes a column every Sunday in the Gazzettino.  He’s usually right on top of the main subject of the day, which last Sunday was The Exodus.

Here is what he wrote (translated by me):

Instead of facing the usual five kilometers of tailback [in Italian, merely "tail"] to go to Jesolo, why don’t we go to Croatia or Dalmatia or along down there, where there are bound to be fewer people?

Perfect idea!  Let’s go!  40 kilometers of continuous tailback!  Basically, when the last person gets there he just turns around because his vacation is over.

Every year, right on schedule, other than the drama of the “checking the stomach on the beach I swear I’m never eating again” is the  one — unsolvable — of “where to go” and above all, “when to leave.”

The imagination is unchained!  At night, at dawn, at mealtimes like telephone calls [local people scribbling ads often say "call at mealtimes"].  Every so often somebody has the idea of the “intelligent departure,” which they reveal only to their friends who — as with all true secrets — they pass along to one friend at a time, even on Facebook.

The result: Everybody is stuck in the backup, everybody is complaining.

Grandpa Tony thinks that the laborers working on the highway are tourists who just got bored sitting still and figure this way they can at least be doing something…. Sometimes you can watch plants growing.  

“But — it is obligatory for us to do this?”  ”No!  That’s exactly why we’re doing it!  If it were obligatory, we’d all stay home!”  

And the Croatians?  Where do they go?  Italy? Gorgeous!  Near! Irresistible! Expensive!

This is a glimpse of the Croatian coast. Worth the voyage, as the Michelin Guide might put it.

This is the Italian coast in Puglia.

Croatia.

Italy. The only difference I can see that might make it worthwhile to sit in a car for hours to get to one instead of the other would be that Croatia is currently a hot destination, while Puglia has always just been there.

Summer vacation starts — and ends — in the car is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Summer has so many regrettable aspects — heat, mosquitoes, tourists — but there is one aspect I always look forward to and that’s the special sort of dementia that overcomes people during this brief but intense — and hot — time of year.

I don’t know if the heat is to blame.  Maybe these things also happen when the ice and chilblains move in and they just don’t get reported.

But here is what happened two days ago in Rome.  I’m sorry it didn’t happen in Venice, though of course it could have.  But I can’t let that detail stop me from telling about it.

An unnamed 37-year-old man was out on via Giorgio Morandi in the outlying area of the Eternal City called Prenestino.  A quick check reveals that — according to someone — this used to be known as a Bad Neighborhood but by now that reputation is no longer deserved.  Singer Claudio Baglione grew up here, if that helps you get a fix on its zeitgeist.  Anyway,I’m  just trying to provide a little context.

Back to the story.

Lana Marks makes only one "Cleopatra" bag a year. I'm just guessing that this is not the bag -- or the woman, speaking of Helen Mirren -- involved in this bizarre episode.

This unnamed man, walking along the via Giorgio Morandi, saw a woman, also walking along.  She had a handbag.  He wanted it.  So he grabbed it.

This was not an entirely spontaneous act on his part (though heat and perhaps mosquitoes might have degraded his decision-making capacity) because as soon as he had the handbag he ran away.  Not just anywhere, but to his getaway car where he had installed two accomplices. (Why two?  Did he need a spare in case one broke down?)

Did I mention breakdowns?  He leaped in the car, they gave it the gas (or benzina or gasolio or whatever they fed it) and prepared to zoom away.

But there was no zoomage.  After a couple of yards, the car just sort of putt-putted to a stop.  (Pause for the sound of shrieks and head-punching:  ”You were supposed to put gas in the car!”  ”I thought YOU were supposed to!”  ”I told YOU to do it!” etc. etc.).  Anyway, the car is now stopped very, very close to the scene of the crime, and it’s not moving anymore.

So the handbag-snatcher realizes it’s he who’s going to have to move.  Rapidly. And immediately. He leaps out of the car and begins to run.

However, these precious seconds, spent in going essentially nowhere, have given the passersby a chance to focus on him.  So he’s running, but now other people are also running: After him.

This is bad.  They’re gaining on him.  Must take cover.

So he runs into a pharmacy.

"La Reunion" pharmacy in Havana looks like it could have hidden our man, for at least a while. But I'm assuming that the pharmacy in Rome, including its proprietors, weren't anything like this.

This could work, I suppose — he could stand there pretending to buy aspirin, or a truss, or some nicotine-replacement product.  But standing in a small enclosed space that has only one door is not the best idea.

And here’s another bad idea: He was still holding onto the handbag.

Now let us turn to a recent study conducted at the University of Cambridge on the human brain.  The researchers, led by neurobiologist Simon Laughlin, have concluded that the human brain has reached the limits of its intelligence — actually, the limits of its energy-capacity relative to its also limited space, kind of like our little hovel — and therefore can’t evolve any further.

It gets better: There’s no reason why it shouldn’t start losing intelligence, retreating under the inexorable pressure of everything involved in life on earth from playing “I Wanna Be The Guy” to getting your toddler to stop asking “Why.”

I wouldn’t have placed our 27-year-old failed Roman bag-snatcher in the “Our brains are too evolved to develop any further” category. But he’d make a superb candidate as an example for the “Our brains are evolving backwards toward the primordial alphabet soup” hypothesis.

They could do a study on him!  First question: Is there anything in this room that reminds you of a lady’s handbag?

Somebody's brain. If it were of our aspiring thief, the left hotspot would be signifying "Grab that woman's bag!" The one in the middle is signaling "Flee! Abscond! Serpentine!" And the big one on the right is flashing "Bag? What bag? I don't see any bag. Oh this? It's my lunch. I always carry my liverwurst sandwich in a diamond-rimmed bag."

Run away! Run away! No! Stand very still! is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

I hope nobody has told him people are expecting to spend an intimate evening with him. He'd be in for a shock.

There’s not much I can say about the poster on the trash can near the “Giardini” vaporetto stop.

Of course that’s not true.  I could say all sorts of things, but there are two main observations that it inspires, which is why I’m mentioning it.

First: Once again, as at the festa the other night, it’s written in English.  I guess they don’t believe any non-English-speaking Italians/Venetians/miscellaneous foreigners are going to be interested. Or they don’t want non-English-speaking I/V/mfs coming to this event, even if they did happen to be interested.

Or maybe it’s in English because there’s not enough space on the poster for “nan yon aswe entim ak ekselans nan” or “ng isang kilalang-kilala na gabi na may ang quintessential” or even “একটি বিশুদ্ধ সঙ্গে অন্তরঙ্গ সন্ধ্যায়.”

Second: It’s not that it promotes a mere concert.

It’s going to be “an intimate evening” with James Taylor in the Piazza San Marco, a event which, on the intimacy scale, certainly beats the stuffing out of Bobby Short at the Carlyle, Sally Bowles at the Kit Kat Klub, or Noel Coward anywhere.

The Piazza San Marco cannot in any way be made to look, sound, or feel intimate, any more than can Beaver Stadium in State College, Pennsylvania, which it resembles more than you might think.  Go Nittany Lions.

But maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe the next time you want to savor an intimate evening with your personal heartthrob, you should plan a candlelight dinner in the Piazza San Marco.  If the racetrack at Belmont isn’t available, I mean.

Sweet Baby James is going to have to work some kind of magic to keep this intimate. Or even quintessential.

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

For technical reasons I regret, especially because I forgot about them, the YouTube clip which looks splendid on my dazzling official full-color blog page does not carry over in the version of my posts which come via e-mail to my faithful subscribers.

Excuse me, I have to scream.

So let me try this: If you click on this link, perhaps you will see all the guts and glunder that went on here Sunday afternoon.

Here goes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3b67vT59LQ&feature=youtu.be

Galleons: video clip is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

As you see, I am now back on track, back on the horse, back in thought and word and deed.  Fixing things up on Planet Blog took somewhat longer than I anticipated, but this only confirmed Zwingle’s Fifth Law, which states: “Everything takes longer than you think it will.”

Life continued all the same, of course, and here is a bit of it.

I was at the Rialto Market yesterday morning, standing at the stall of our favorite fruit and vegetable vendor.  We always go to him because he’s from Sant’ Erasmo, and because he has the most luxuriant fronds of rosemary ever seen, among other things.

The produce is always first-rate here; the customers, not always quite so much. The departing woman is not the lady of the story. Taking her picture would probably have made her try to kill me.

In this case, I was interested in buying some cherries, which are now in season, as you know.

There were two women ahead of me; one was in the process of  buying whatever she needed and another was waiting her turn.  It is the second woman who I discovered had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed, approximately eight seconds after she was born.

Of course, if I hadn’t said anything to her, none of the following would have happened.  But I occasionally allow myself some small intervention which is intended to be helpful.  (“Helpful,” I realize, is in the eye of the helpee. I always keep in mind C.S. Lewis’s observation: “She’s the sort of woman who lives for others — you can tell the others by their hunted expression.” But sometimes I decide to risk it.)

Also, may I note,  the person I speak to has almost always thanked me. Sometimes sincerely, maybe sometimes not, but in any case, has attempted to reply with some degree of politeness.

The aforementioned second woman, while waiting her turn, was testing the smallish tomatoes she wanted to buy.  Which means touching and somewhat squeezing them.  This is absolutely not the thing to do here.

I realize that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to buy a fruit or vegetable that you haven’t examined yourself for ripeness (bananas and artichokes excluded), but in Venice the notion that Lord knows how many people  have touched an object which another person may eventually buy, take home, and eat is utterly horrifying.  At the supermarket, they even provide plastic gloves for anyone intending to touch a botanical object for any reason.

I’ve gotten used to this.  One thing that helped me was hearing Lino’s occasional heat-seeking-missile comment to a person using their bare hands in public.  (And considering the catastrophe underway in Europe involving a hitherto unknown and potentially fatal strain of E. coli, you can see why it might matter.)

This lady was touching the tomatoes. Even though I have seen Venetian battleaxes also doing this, I assumed that she was a tourist.  It’s not hard to see tourists at the market.  When they’re not getting in your way taking pictures while you’re trying to do your shopping, they’re often touching things, and the vendors who correct them aren’t always the most genteel.

I considered saying nothing as long as she was keeping the tomatoes she picked up.  It was when she put one back that I spoke up.

“Do you speak English?” I asked in my most polite way.

She turned and glared at me.  ”Yes,” she said in a strong German accent. (Note: this is not anything against Germans.  She could have had any accent — even Venetian — and the point of the encounter would have been the same.)

“Well,” I said, “it’s not the custom here to touch the produce.”

She didn’t hesitate for an instant, nor did she turn down the voltage on the glare.

“Maybe in your country,” she snapped, “but here we are in Italy.”  ”Your country” meant that she may have noticed my undoubtedly noticeable American accent, but even if she didn’t, I was wearing a T-shirt with a few words written in English. Still, whatever country I might come from did nothing to invalidate my remark about what goes on here in Italy.

This stopped me for a second.  While I always welcome new information, being told I was in Italy wasn’t something I’d been expecting to hear.  And in any case (my mind suddenly going into “Dive!  Dive!” mode), the fact that she also was a foreigner made me wonder what kind of sense her remark could possibly have made.  Even if touching the merchandise were the custom in her native land, here, as she said, we are in Italy.

Having interpreted her geographical observation as an invitation to get lost, I persevered.

“I’ve lived here for twenty years,” I replied, to correct her impression than I might be some random passerby just off the plane.

She didn’t pause.  ”So have I,” she retorted.

“So,” I said, “that means that you know you’re not supposed to do it, but you’re doing it anyway.”

“That’s right.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

She paid for the tomatoes and departed, leaving me with several thoughts which were struggling to resist  being sucked down into the mental whirlpool she had created.

She’s a foreigner who resents being mistaken for a tourist, even though she was acting like one.  She also has a sublime sense of entitlement that living here (I’m taking her word for this) permits her to do whatever she wants.  Just like a tourist.

I believe the compulsion to do what you know is wrong could be termed “original sin.”  Too bad I didn’t know how to say that in German. Shifting from the tangible to the spiritual could really have livened up my morning.

Rialto Market encounter is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

To my dauntless readers:  The situation to which I refer above does not involve Venice, though as you know, every day there are more situations here than anybody has room for.

I know that there has been silence from me the past few days.  This silence does not represent either laziness or lack of desire to load you up with all sorts of news and views.  Au contraire, as the man said in the Bay of Biscay when asked if he had dined.  (Credit to Dorothy Sayers.)

The thing is that I have been hit by a rogue wave of technical issues concerning my blog which have seriously slowed me down.  I must resolve at least one or two of them before getting back to posts as before.  I may be able to publish something without a photograph — humans did manage to communicate somehow before photographs, I seem to recall — so I may do that to keep you up on at least some of what is going on out here.

In any case, I am on the case, and will be back to you as quickly as the technosphere will allow.  I think I must have made it angry somehow.  I probably insulted it by acting as if I knew what I was doing.

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

And the happy ending to the story of the predicted high water at dawn today is:  Reprieved!  Curfew shall not ring tonight!

The maximum was forecast for 8:45 this morning.  But we had already calmed down by then because at 8:00 we could see that  the tide hadn’t gone past the edge of our first step, and it was already  ”getting tired,” as the saying goes here.  As the tide approaches its maximum height, whatever it may be, it begins to slow down.  And slow down.  Till it finally stops.  And, I suppose, draws a deep breath.  Then it begins to move back out, or down, or however one wants to think of it. Away, in any case.

The view from our front door, looking left. Wet but manageable.

At 8:55 the tide touched 136 cm [4.4 feet] above median sea level, a delicate little 4 cm [1.5 inches] less than the maximum forecast.  Not a lot less, but we like whatever less we can get.

The image below shows a thing of beauty.  (It also, I make a note, shows what 136 cm looks like in front of our little hovel.)

By 10:00 AM the street was empty of water.  Now we can get on with the rest of the day. Unlike the wretches freezing to death in Eastern Europe.

This is what the maximum acqua alta looked like this morning, just barely making it to the edge of the first step. (The line indicating moisture above was caused by the tide's attempt to pull itself up as high as it possibly could.) This is also a picture of me smiling.

Acqua alta: Reprieved is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up