Signals of spring

One of the many wonderful things about spring is that nobody can start it or stop it.  That’s why the earliest signs are always the most eloquent.  Here’s a glimpse of the past few days, in more or less chronological order:

The fish are returning to the lagoon from their winter spent wherever they go, and one of the first to arrive are the seppie, complete with ink. This was clearly not the destination this seppia had been imagining on his way up the Adriatic.
Another day, another victim. The seppie are coming into the lagoon to spawn. Just after the feast of the Redentore (third Sunday in July), which is the way the Venetians date the event, the eggs hatch, and everybody's out along the fondamente fishing for the baby seppie. Around about the Feast of the Dead ("i morti," Nov. 2), the "fraima" commences, which is the annual migration of the fish out of the lagoon and back to sea. However, a few seem to linger, because in late December there comes a day which is the first really cold day of the winter. I've experienced it several times, it seems to favor St. Stephen's Day, Dec. 26. When the cold hits, it's very likely that some seppie (squatting in somebody's summer home?) come to the surface. If you can stand the cold water, you can even catch them with your hands. They're kind of stunned by the cold.
Another day, another victim. More black drops from an indignant seppia.  The seppie are coming into the lagoon to spawn. Just after the feast of the Redentore (third Sunday in July) — feast days are still a standard measure of time here –the eggs hatch, and everybody’s out along the fondamente fishing for the baby seppie. Around about the Feast of the Dead (“i morti,” Nov. 2), the “fraima” commences, which is the annual migration of the fish out of the lagoon and back to sea. However, a few tend to linger, and in late December there comes the first really cold day of the winter. I’ve experienced it several times; the moment seems to favor St. Stephen’s Day, Dec. 26. When the cold hits, it’s very likely that some seppie who’ve stayed behind (squatting in somebody’s summer home?) drift to the surface. I think they’re stunned by the cold, but I don’t know that for a fact.  I do know that if you can stand the cold water, you can even catch them with your hands.  They move pretty slowly.
I grew up in Ithaca, New York, where it snows from October to April (more or less). At a certain imperceptible signal the city is swathed in forsythia, so of course I took it totally for granted. Now I watch this corner every spring for this burst of glory. It's not nostalgia, exactly. I'd love this even if I'd grown up in Rochester (lilacs).
I grew up in Ithaca, New York, where it snows from October to April (more or less). At a certain imperceptible signal the city is swathed in forsythia, and being young I took it totally for granted and didn’t firmly grasp how thrilling it was. Now that I live in a city not known for any particular flower, I watch this corner every spring for this burst of glory. It’s not nostalgia, exactly. I’d love this even if I’d grown up in Rochester (lilacs).
This plum tree -- specifically "baracocoli" -- is a little behind the blooming curve. Its cousin near the Giardini vaporetto stop is already finished with flowering.
This plum tree — specifically “baracocoli” — is a little behind the blooming curve. Its cousin near the Giardini vaporetto stop is already finished with flowering.
There’s an old saying — which probably means that only old people say it now: “Quando la rosa mete spin, xe bon el go’ e el passarin.” When the rose puts forth its thorns, the go’ and the passarin are good. The two lagoon fish — gobies and European flounder (Gobius ophiocephalus Pallas and Platichthys flesus) — are in season, or starting to be. This rosebush is already on  its way to producing amazing  flowers, and the fish are also going to be excellent.
Peach blossoms from Sicily. Not Venetian but I've only ever seen them here so I'm adding them to the local squadron of spring.
Peach blossoms from Sicily. Not Venetian but I’ve only ever seen them here so I’m adding them to the local squadron of spring.
Fish, check. Flowers, check. And of course the tourists also begin to hatch, bloom, whatever the right word might be. Winter was nice, but now they're baaaaaack.
Fish, check. Flowers, check. And of course the tourists also begin to hatch, bloom, reproduce, whatever the right word might be. Do they also come here to spawn?  Are these early visitors the ones responsible for the millions we see in the summer?
I know it's a free country, but I can never understand why they're HERE. There's virtually nothing in this neighborhood to lure a routist with its siren song. I realize that when the Biennale is open, they spill over into the rest of the world. But now? Are they lost?
I know it’s a free country, but I can never understand why they’re HERE. There’s virtually nothing in this neighborhood to lure a tourist with its siren song. When the Biennale is open, they inevitably spill over into the rest of the area. But now? Are they lost?
IMG_0776 blog spring
Easter is imminent, and as predictably as the seppie or the much-sung swallows of Capistrano, the window of Mascari becomes an orgy of chocolate eggs. You see this and you cannot deny that all is right, if not with the world, at least with this window.

 

 

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Who was that really?

Lino didn't go to school with this lion, but if he had it wouldn't surprise me.
Lino didn’t go to school with this lion, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he had.

By now you know how it goes.  We’re out walking somewhere, or on the vaporetto, or just minding our own business, and somebody Lino knows will cross our trajectory.

Seeing people you know isn’t something remarkable in most towns.  Seeing people you’ve always known is particularly Venetian.  Or particularly Lino, anyway.

We were standing on the dock at “Rialto Mercato” waiting for the vaporetto and Lino glimpsed an average sort of man, rather innocuous, walking on behind us.  “Oh boy,” said Lino.  “There’s Piero.”  Yes?  Lino started doing that mysterious thing we all recognize which says I AM INVISIBLE YOU DO NOT SEE ME I AM NOT HERE.  Very loudly.  The reason being, as Lino muttered, that he would nab you and start talking and you’d never get away. This is a hanging offense in LinoWorld when he still has to finish the Gazzettino.

“We grew up together,” he began to explain, which also isn’t so remarkable.  “Nursery school, kindergarten, elementary school.  He lived on the calle de le Botteghe at San Barnaba.  We went to day camp together.

“Then he went to work at the port.  He was some kind of laborer — I don’t remember what.  Maybe he weighed things, or operated the crane.

“Anyway, at a certain point he reached legal retirement age” (which is based on years you’ve worked, not your birthday-age, and people of Piero and Lino’s vintage started really early, usually around 16).  “So they told him he had to retire.  He didn’t want to, he wanted to keep working.

“So after he left the port he kept going around to anybody who he thought could help him find another job — the parish priest, the Patriarch.  Anybody.  He said he’d work for free.  He didn’t care about getting paid, he just needed something to do.”  But he didn’t find anything, so he has joined the ranks of the many unwillingly-retired men who go out every morning and glom onto whatever friend wanders into glomming range.

“He was muculoso,” Lino recalled.  Mucusy.  Always wiping his nose with his sleeve.  Lino remembers a surprising number of people who answered that description, either individually or categorically (as in: When Lino sees a person he’s known since childhood who has clearly gotten above himself, forgetting or ignoring his/her humble origins, he might pointedly mutter, “He didn’t even have a handkerchief to wipe his nose.”  Or, more vividly: “Quanti mussi al naso!”  He was pretty snotty!).  Ah, these are the real memories.

Piero’s nasal passages have calmed down, but he did come and sit down behind us and start talking to Lino.  Fortunately, Lino’s friendly but short replies got the message through, and he decided to just sit quietly and let Lino read the paper.  It took me several slow, painful years to learn that lesson.  But then again, he’s known Lino longer than I have.

This man was much farther away than he appears here. Lino said, "Oh look, there's Bepi 'Stella.'" It's like jungle lore -- he can tell by the boat, he can recognize the person by the way he's rowing. I never get tired of this, it'slike watching somebody hit the bull's-eye with their back turned or something.
This was one of my favorite moments of this phenomenon.  This man was much farther away than he appears here. Lino said, “Oh look, there’s Bepi ‘Stella.'” It’s like jungle lore — he can tell by the boat, he can recognize the person by the way he’s rowing. I never get tired of this, it’s like watching somebody hit the bull’s-eye shooting over their shoulder or something.

We were pausing in via Garibaldi for some reason one afternoon in early February. I remember the date because there was a big Carnival event impending (the corteo of the Marie), and there were plenty of Vigili Urbani around.  These are like the first-tier policemen, all uniformed up.  Three men in particularly serious garb walk by, one of whom is taller and somewhat more distinguished-looking than the others.

“Oh, there’s Rizzo,” said Lino.  “I remember him.  His father was a gondolier.  Died young.  He was as old as my brother Puccio (editor’s note: who also died young).  I remember his grandmother.”

Having set the scene: “Wow.  Look at him.  He looks like a general.”  (Which was said with only the tiniest inflection of “You ain’t all that.”)

So, we were walking homeward this morning from the vaporetto stop at San Pietro, after a visit to someone in the hospital.  There were a few people walking ahead of us.  “You see that man with his hands behind his back?” asked Lino.  I did.  “He’s a retired gondolier.”  And you know this because……?

Easy answer: “He used to be at the stazio at the Molo.”  In other words, you know him. Interesting answer: “Also, you can tell by the way he walks.”  Yes, I could see that he was limping slightly, favoring his left leg, by which I mean that he let his weight fall more onto his right leg.  Thus, discomfort on left side — hip, knee, etc.  This is an occupational hazard — or virtual certainty — of the full-time gondolier after a very long while at the stern.  The stern rower always has his left leg forward, which means that with each stroke of the oar, his weight is transferred onto that leg.  Do that every day for days/months/decades, and in the end you will pretty much have worn your trochanters away.

I think gondoliers ought to get a special rate for hip replacements.

This is your workaday method of wearing out your hip.
This is your workaday method of wearing out your left hip.
And if you're a gondolier who trains for the official Venetian rowing races (in this case, the regata de la Sensa), you get to put just that much more strain on your hip. It all adds up after a while.
And if you’re a gondolier who trains for the official Venetian rowing races (in this case, the regata de la Sensa), you get to put just that much more strain on your hip, though in this case it’s for glory.  Your hip doesn’t know that, though.
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Good doggie

A dog and the human foot. Not a good combination after all the kibble have been consumed.
A dog and human feet. Not a good combination after all the kibble has been consumed.

The streets of Venice are paved with trachyte, and often are marked with something less durable.   Venetians have always loved dogs, and many of their owners do indeed clean up after them.  But a rancid few are perfectly fine with their dog’s biological functions.  So fine that the popo’ (the polite term that corresponds to “poop”) the dog leaves behind magically becomes invisible to them.

No need to take up space describing the disgust both the product and the barbaric dog-owners inspire in everyone.  But one woman struck back.

Anna da Schio (Anna from Schio — no last names on this one!) wrote to the Gazzettino on January 28 describing how she finally dealt with one dog-owner’s nonfeasance (translated by me):

I’m struck by the desperate appeal of Signor Marco Panfilo to the mayor that he should banish the dogs of Venice because their owners are uncivil.  It would seem more correct to me to banish the uncivil owners, more animals than their animals.

Anyway, I’d like to note that one can defend oneself against even these.

A few years ago, Signor Sempronio lived near me (“Sempronio” is the equivalent of “John Doe”), the owner of a very beautiful and very big boxer, which, however, left behind him mountains of popo’.  I got fed up and I decided to act.

So, they arrive — Sempronio and Fido — just like every morning.  Fido leaves his little mountain right in the middle of the sotoportego under my house, where it is super-easy to step in it because the area is dark.

Sempronio looks at the sky, pretends not to notice anything, and moves on toward the Corte Santi.  I watch this act (by Sempronio, not by Fido), and I follow them: Corte Santi, Calle del Monastero, Rio Tera’ San Vio, Calle del Sabbion, Fondamenta Zorzi and then Calle de le Mende, and I’m still behind them.

At this point the good Sempronio begins to have some doubts, and walks faster, and I’m still behind.  When we reach the Campiello degli Incurabili, he suddenly turns around and asks why I’m following him.

I reply that I’m waiting to see him return to clean under the sotoportego.  Sempronio assures me that this is completely his intention, but in the meantime walks briskly toward the Ramo degli Incurabili, and I’m still following.

We come out, a little out of breath, at the Zattere.  Fido is thrilled because this walk is a lot longer than usual, but Sempronio is visibly altered, and uncertain what to do: He doesn’t want to let me follow him all the way home, because I’d discover where he lives.  He makes a rude but eloquent gesture in my direction, heads down the Zattere almost running, and I’ll spare you the rest of the marathon, but we reach, flying, the sotoportego where, fortunately, the “mountain” is still intact.

Sempronio, who till now has considered it useless to carry the necessary tools for dealing with this, sacrifices a page of his newspaper, cleans it up, and departs with his odorous package.

I’ve often seen Sempronio and Fido, but I’ve never found any more mountains of popo’ near my house.

I see this dog thinking, “If only I could pick up my own poop — I’d try anything to make everybody’s life better.” The owner perhaps imagines that it has already been done.
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