Venice situation report

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.

 

 

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Papal visit: the party’s over

 

The papal banner was waving everywhere, including the F. Morosini Naval College. Gold and white were the colors of the entire weekend.

 

The one and a half days that the Pope spent in and around Venice have left a pleasant glow, it appears, in the hearts of virtually everyone, even the gondoliers.  There was a special glow radiating from the Patriarch of Venice, too, which shone, in my opinion, from the eternal flame in his innermost being where his desire to become Pope burns night and day.

But there was no sturm, neither was there any drang.  The four gondoliers who rowed His Holiness across the Grand Canal all said they got really emotional; one even said he had goosebumps when it struck him he was rowing the Pope himself.

My goosebumps were also abundant but they were caused less by emotion (sorry) than by the relentless cold wind which was blowing from the east on Saturday afternoon.

Some unidentified official -- there were so many -- helping to spiff up the rope line.

Lino and I, along with about 50 other people, waited outdoors at the Naval College to greet the Pope as he passed from his helicopter to the motor launch. Wind is fine, but we ended up standing for three solid hours out there, drastically underdressed.  So I win two extra points for having chills even before the Pope appeared.

A few of my other memories are similarly physical. Speaking of standing for three hours (his helicopter landed at the Naval College 45 minutes late) the wind wasn’t the worst part.  It was only the suspense of waiting that smothered the desperate Mayday-Maydays from my feet.

I still love them. I just don't want to wear them. At least not for several whiles.

I can tell you that if the Pope had looked at my feet, he’d have seen two attractive beige pumps with a moderately low heel.  If he’d looked at my face, he would have realized that this footwear had been designed by Torquemada, the “hammer of the heretics.” Lino helped me limp home.

The Pope himself, I can confirm from very close range, is very small, very thin, and very old.  All those vestments and the magical amplifying effects of television obscure these facts.

I was also musing — as I stood there, resisting hypothermia — on how relatively simple it appears to be Pope, in the sense that his every moment is managed by phalanxes of people of every description.  The area was pullulating with important men who couldn’t keep still.  They arrived, they departed, singly or in small groups, while we all tried to interpret what significance these movements might have.  Naval people, from the Commandant down to the sailor with the bosun’s whistle, mixed with lots of men in dark suits and dark glasses who looked like narcs.

The Guardia di Finanza provided one of several extra-large boats. Perhaps they couldn't find a minesweeper in time.

As for maintaining the safety of the area, there were firemen, divers in wetsuits checking the underwater area where his launch was waiting; State Police, Carabinieri, Guardia di Finanza, Civil Protection, Capitanerie di Porto.  Any entity whose agents are entitled to wear a uniform, or a badge, or carry some communication device, had somebody there.

The college chaplain, Father/Brother Manuel Paganuzzi, and the Commandant, Captain Enrico Pacioni, seem to have just remembered they forgot something.

When the Pope arrived, all these armed people were supplemented by priests and deacons and bishops, assigned to carry things.  He doesn’t travel with one large suitcase, he divides his necessities among four or five carry-on bags. And other variously shaped containers.  The Pope himself was almost an afterthought to all this entourage.  (Suddenly I”m wondering whether in the throes of all these aides, assistants, keepers, hewers of wood and drawers of water, whether His Holiness could just walk away.  It might be days before anybody realized he was gone.)

The first wave of bearers and beaters has just arrived; the Pope must be somewhere close by.

 

Of course all this is necessary.  It was already known that the Secret Service had spent days checking every single palace lining the Grand Canal, ringing the doorbells of everybody who had an apartment with a Canal-facing window and asking for names, dates, and serial numbers (so to speak).

Suddenly, the Pope breaks from cover.

Of course this is normal procedure, it’s just that when you think of having to accomplish that little task here, you suddenly realize how many palaces and windows there are along the wettest main street in the world. But it had to be done. No agent wants to be the one who didn’t manage to speak to little old Mrs. Tagliapietra on the fourth floor and find out too late that she let in somebody Sunday morning who claimed to want to read the gas meter.

Sunday morning was the big mass on the mainland for some 300,000 of the faithful.  Then he got into his launch and headed back to Venice, and finally the big boat procession in the Grand Canal was on.

I know they're all there to help, but any cardinal who suffers from claustrophobia shouldn't even think about becoming Pope.
Captain Pacioni salutes the pontiff as he boards the floating Popemobile. Angelo Cardinal Scola, Patriarch of Venice, awaits his turn. To get on the launch, I mean.
Buttoning up to keep out the cold wind. Wish I'd had a couple of vestments, I could really have used them in that wind.
And off they go. The lagoon waters for miles around were totally calm -- nobody dared to speed with the flotilla of big official boats standing guard.

We were long since at our assigned place.  We tied up the boat at about 11:45. Then we waited.  (“Papal Visit” translates into the Real-Life Dialect as “Bring a book and food and a jacket and make sure they leave the light on for you.”)

Finally, at about 1:30, came the long-awaited moment.  The sun was shining, the breeze had gone down somewhat, and there were more boats than I’ve seen in a corteo in quite some time.  Big, important, glamorous boats.  I would never presume to compare the emotion generated by the Pontifex Maximus to that generated by masses of Venetian boats, but I can tell you one thing:

It’s the only procession I’ve participated in that called to mind the emotions experienced by Venetians in centuries past at similar visitations. Because while the procession for the Festa de la Sensa is nice,  and the procession for the Regata Storica is just one postcard after another, these are merely re-evocations of a remote event.  This was an event in itself; it wasn’t replicating anything. I’m not sure I ever thought this was possible anymore.

My feet have their own thoughts, however, and they are not happy ones. And the shoes have been sent to the corner for a very, very long Time Out.

He looked like he was having fun.
And so were we.

 

 

 

 

 

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Papal visit finale: The Gondoliers

The results of the two elections held among the gondoliers have come in and now the pope can sleep easier knowing who exactly is going to be rowing him from one shore to the other next Sunday. (One of them won’t be Charon.  I presume.)

One can hope that the pope's voyage across the Grand Canal won't bear any resemblance to this little jaunt. ("Charon Carries Souls Across the River Styx," by Alexander Litovchenko.)

And the winners are: Franco and Bruno Dei Rossi, nicknamed “Strigheta” (not much of a surprise there, they were at the head of the pack several days ago), and one each of the two famous battling pairs of racers: From the “Vignottini,” Igor Vignotto; from the other, Giampaolo D’Este.

Comments in the Gazzettino on this outcome were as sardonic as they were swift:

“This is splendid news.  In the end, love always triumphs.”

“Since when have gondoliers all become basibanchi (these are those obsessively pious people who are always in church)?  Is this the miracle we’ve been waiting for from Giovanni Paolo II?” (who was beatified yesterday, first step on the road to official sainthood).

“Given the well-known diplomatic refinement among these four, it makes one wonder …  if they can manage not to swear at each other for ten minutes.  It wouldn’t be so bad even if it were to happen. Venice couldn’t present itself worse than what it is, even if it wanted to.”

So everyone has finally calmed down?  I know one person who hasn’t: Lino. He is all of the following: Astonished, infuriated, and offended, genuine, incandescent emotions far removed from the Lilliputian self-serving quibbling that has distinguished this whole affair.

Why is Lino so angry?  Because of all the people mooted for the Papal Row, he regards Igor Vignotto as the last — actually, far behind the last — gondolier who deserves this honor.

Yes, we remember in the end that rowing the pope is, in fact, an honor, and not just another gig.  I realize that “honor” is a word that rarely — well, never — seems to find a seat on the bus of normal conversation regarding gondoliers, but a papal visit is a noteworthy exception and the men who row him ought to have consciences which have been washed at least on the “delicate” cycle.

Igor and Giampaolo have two things in common.  One is that they  both row in the bow of the gondolino, which means that they, at least technically, can’t be considered guilty of all the skulduggery which has led to the current bitterness because they aren’t the ones responsible for steering the boat.  All they’re doing up there in the front is rowing their brains out.

Their other link, unfortunately, is that they both were banished from racing for the entire 2008 season because of their respective crimes in 2007.

In the case of Giampaolo, he was found guilty of having threatened a race judge with serious bodily harm, his way of asserting his innocence regarding an infraction during a race for which the judge had punished him.  The infraction is one thing, but stating in the hearing of many people that he would be prepared to settle the score by attacking the judge physically is, as they say here, “another pair of sleeves.” Also, there’s a rule against it.

Giampaolo D'Este.

I note that he only said he wanted to do it, he didn’t actually hurt anybody. This is a good thing, because while privacy laws make it difficult to discover his exact height and weight (I could probably do it eventually, but time is short), I can say that he appears to correspond to the stature of a two-year-old grizzly.  One of his nicknames is “The Giant.”  But rules are rules, even for midgets, and we can’t have racers going around volunteering to bash the judges.

But Igor’s case was worse, because what he did not only offended the rules and the judges, but all the other racers — those present as well as the hundreds stretching back into history — and the entire world of racing and, in a sense, the city of Venice itself.

It happened at the end of the culminating race of the Regata Storica three years ago (September 2007), in what then was a notorious altercation but which now seems to have been totally forgotten (which also adds to Lino’s indignation),

It’s true that the race had been unusually fierce, even by the standards of the searing rivalry pitting him and his cousin against the D’Este-Tezzat pair, and it’s true that the finish was so close that the judges had to check the video to determine the winner. But when Igor heard that they had given him second place, he kind of lost his mind.

Igor Vignotto exultant after passing D'Este to win the race at Murano in 2009, the year they both returned from exile.

Not only did he engage in a volcanic exchange with the mayor, Igor grabbed the prize pennants and threw them  into the Grand Canal.

Not just the two pennants destined for him and his cousin, but all eight pennants waiting to be awarded to the rowers of the first four boats to finish.

Of the many things which, in the view of various people, would have been much better thrown into the water (the “Boy with the Frog” being one of them), pennants have never, and should never, be treated in this manner. Set aside the fact that not all of them got fished out in time; or the fact that those that were fished out were essentially D.O.A., thanks to the salt water. It’s not even a question of whether the city made replacements.  It’s not even a question.  He shouldn’t have done it, and however good it may have made him feel at the moment, that’s how bad it made everybody else feel.

Not much is sacred to your average Venetian racer, but the prize pennant comes pretty close. Red for first place, white for second, green for third, blue for fourth. The remaining five teams just have to smile and look ahead to next time.

So when Lino heard that Igor was one of the Papal Rowers, it was Too Much, even in a city where things that are Too Much happen every day.

Bruno Dei Rossi "Strigheta," the only man ever to have won all the official races, rowing in the bow or the stern.

First a rower allows himself to essentially spit in the collective eye of the city, the race, the other racers, and history, and now he gets a reward?  Of all the people who could have been chosen, they chose a person who had committed an outrage that had never been committed by anyone, not even “Mad Dog” Sullivan.  And, strange to say, so far Lino is the only person who has expressed any opinion on this.

There’s a sprightly ditty in  the second act of “The Gondoliers,” by Gilbert and Sullivan.  It’s called “Here we are at the risk of our lives.”

Franco Dei Rossi "Strigheta." Oddly, for two such great racers, his seasons rowing with his brother were not their best.

 

I think it should be played in the background all day next Sunday.

 

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