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What was your name again?
Walking home the other day, I cast my eye, as usual, on the building corner which Lino refers to as “The Wailing Wall.” Meaning no disrespect to the original place of that name, our little angle is the perfect spot to tape up death notices. I’ve mentioned on other occasions that the cost to publish such a notice in the Gazzettino is totally fantastical, so these rectangles of plastic are extremely useful in keeping people up to date on for whom the bell is tolling.
But I don’t usually expect to see names I recognize, mainly because the number of people I know who might be likely to demise is very limited. And although some surnames are a little unusual, there are very few which hurl one back 700 years into one of the most complicated and desperate conspiracies ever formed to attempt the overthrow of the Venetian Republic.
So I was unprepared to see a new notice stuck on the wall, complete with photo of the deceased, announcing the death of Baiamonte Tiepolo.
This name may not connote much to you, but anyone who has skimmed Venetian history knows it as the name of one of the most audacious revolutionaries who ever tried to scuttle somebody’s government.
It was like seeing a notice for some innocuous little person who just happened to be named Benedict Arnold, or Oliver Cromwell, or Ernesto Guevara, or Gregory Rasputin.
As for someone bearing the name of a renowned Venetian noble family, this isn’t quite so startling. I interviewed a descendant of doge Jacopo Tiepolo some years ago, and I know that there are Grimanis and Zorzis and Da Mosto’s still roaming the city. I have also met a young woman carrying forward the storied name of Bragadin.
But it’s one thing to bear the last name; if you were a Bragadin, I think it would be cruel to name your son Marcantonio. The name is certainly worthy of remembrance, but the boy’s life would be hell. There are only so many witty remarks you can make to someone whose forebear was flayed alive after an epic siege that lasted almost a year, and the lad would have to hear all of them.
On the same note, the Venice phone book lists two men named Marco Polo. They must have been doomed to a life of a steady drizzle of really funny remarks. “Hey, Marco — back so soon?” “Give my regards to the Khan, next time you see him.” “Did you really invent pasta?” And so on.
For the late Baiamonte, the drollery would have had to be more erudite, and I won’t risk any here because life is short, and by the time one (that is, me) has related as much as possible of his ancestor’s spectacular, if also scurrilous, story, the potential for humor would have dried up and blown away in the wind. But I feel safe in saying that, thanks to his namesake and his cohorts, the year 1310 stands out in Venetian history as much as 1492 or 1776 stands out in the American annals.
Here is the drastically condensed version of his story. The plot was foiled, he was exiled for four years, and his palace was torn down. He spent those years traveling, visiting Venice’s enemies (Padova, Treviso, Rovigo, and some very powerful families therein) doing everything conceivable to convince them to join him in another conspiracy. He just wouldn’t give up.
Not amused, Venice changed the sentence to perpetual exile. He wandered around Dalmatia seeking new collaborators. He was imprisoned. He escaped. The Venetian government forbade anybody to have anything to do with him. Finally, in 1329, the Council of Ten decreed that he had to be eliminated, by any means.
The details of Baiamonte’s death are uncertain, which is not surprising when a person has to be eliminated. (The “Caught a cold and stopped breathing” explanation has often been sufficient.) As for location, at least one historian states that he was in Croatia, staying with relatives, when his last day came and went.
For the Tiepolos of Lower Castello, maybe it was a point of pride to name their son Baiamonte. It couldn’t have been inadvertent. I can’t imagine somebody saying “Heavenly days, it never crossed my mind that somebody would think of the old subversive of blackened fame.”
I notice, though, that he named his son Andrea. Maybe he had had enough.
Details on deceasing
A reader has written to ask for some elucidation on my phrase “death notices taped up around the city” in my post “RIP don Ferruccio.”
There are several ways to announce the decession (it ought to be a word, so now it is) of your loved one. You have your choice of any or all of them, depending on how much money you feel like spending.
- What I called a “death notice” is a plasticated rectangle the size of an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper with a photograph and some salient details concerning the deceased: Name, age, names of surviving relatives, the name of the funeral home, funeral details, and usually some additional phraseology to express grief, hope, and/or faith.
This is a typical design for the notices that are taped up; in this case, don Ferruccio's was tacked to the church door. One of the most common ones translates as “No one dies as long as they live in the hearts of those who love them.” I think that’s painful. Anyone who has lost someone dear to them knows perfectly well that the person is dead, no matter how much love they may feel. Makes it sound as if loving the person is practically the same thing as having them there in the flesh. End of unsolicited opinion.
These notices are taped up around the neighborhood on convenient corners. There’s a corner near us which seems to be a common favorite; sometimes there are two or three stuck there. Lino calls it the “Wailing Wall.” But it is a very useful way to let people know what’s happened, and often little clumps of people will stop to read it and discuss the person and express feelings or opinions. Sometimes, to save money, the family will photocopy the notice and tape that up. I think that’s painful too.
The cost of these plastic announcements is usually included somewhere in the total cost of the funeral, though the job of sticking them up on walls is completely up to one of the family members, or whoever feels like doing it. I think it’s inexpressibly sad to see, say, the widower taping up the melancholy announcement about his wife on whatever corner seems right to him. But then again, maybe doing it helps somehow. What’s really sad is to see someone taking it down after the funeral.
However, you can also order them separately from a funeral home, even if you haven’t engaged them. In that case, they cost about 5 euros ($7.42) apiece.
- Your other option is a notice in the Gazzettino. These are not really obituaries as they don’t say much beyond the barest basics of the situation. However, the cause of death is never mentioned. In some cases you can deduce it if the family has included a special thank-you to the doctors, staff and clinic/hospital. Hard to mistake if the gratitude goes out to the oncology department.
Whether to put the news in the paper might be a very easy decision to make when you hear the price, which is generally calculated by the line rather than the word. In any case, the minimum is 300 euros plus 20 percent tax (360 euros or $534). If you want to add a photograph, it starts at 150 euros plus tax (180 euros or $266).
- If you are not directly involved in the bereaved family, you have economy option: You can add your name to the published notice to notify the world that you share the family’s sorrow. For five names (“Laura and Federico with Annamaria”) is 50 euros plus tax (60 euros or $89). If you add more names, you spend more money.
If the person who has gone to glory is sufficiently notable, a small article will be published. Presumably this doesn’t cost anyone anything, but I can’t promise that. You just never know in this world.
Moving forward, backward, in circles?
I had an interesting dream last night, set in Venice; nothing particular happened but I did awaken with this thought: It’s not the canals that make Venice so particular (special, different, beautiful, strange, etc.), it’s the corners.
Why is that? Because there are so incredibly many of them, and when you turn one, or two, or more, you either move ahead or you somehow find yourself pretty much back where you started.
That’s my new metaphor for Venice. As far as I can tell, after the enormous difficulties and turmoil caused by two years of Covid, somehow it seems that we’re back where we started. You might think that could be a good thing (“Back to normal!”) except that it’s not (“Back to normal!”). Things keep happening, but almost nothing really changes. Names change occasionally, but the headlines seem to be set on “replay.”
There are now fewer than 50,000 Venetians living in the historic center of Venice. (In 2021, there were 50,434). This is a threshold many people dreaded crossing, but it has been crossed nonetheless. I have no idea what this means in real life, because supermarkets continue to open. Who are their customers?
When the mayor uses the term “Venice,” he is referring to the general metropolitan entity, the preponderance of which is on the mainland. Everybody knows he really only cares about the mainland: “The future of Venice,” he said openly, “is Mestre.” Take that, Venice-lovers! The future of Milwaukee may well be Sheboygan, but to someone who thinks of the Piazza San Marco when he/she hears “Venice,” Mestre is a bit much. Still, this is how it’s going. Eight of the ten city councilors are from the mainland. The ninth is in Venice itself, the tenth lives on the Lido. And of course the mayor too is from the mainland, where he has business interests. So voices speaking up for the dwindling historic center are faint and few.
Meanwhile, daily life is made up of stores closing, stores opening. Unpredictable transit strikes and all-too-predictable wailing by ACTV, we have no money we have no money. Tourists: We want them, but they’re making us crazy. The sudden drought of Russian tourists has torn a new hole in the city’s financial fabric.
Cruises: Big ships are banished from the Bacino of San Marco. The cruise ships will enter the lagoon at Malamocco, toiling like container ships up to the raggedy docks in the commercial port zone of Marghera.
The MSC “Sinfonia” opened the season by docking at Marghera on April 9, the first of the 200 cruises scheduled for this year. Sound good? Not when you compare it to the 565 cruises that stopped (or started) in Venice in 2019. But those days are gone.
MOSE: There will never be anything new to say about this. Work stopped, problems found, money gone, problems found, money arrives, work starts again, problems found, date of completion always on the horizon.
The thing is that headlines blurt out news that any Venetian already knew years ago. Example: Barnacles. Lino mentioned the inevitability of barnacle encrustation to me back in 1994. It would be impossible to astonish anybody who has kept a boat in the water here. This is as much a fact as that water is wet.
Still, somebody finally noticed the problem. In 2018, an article announced the discovery by an underwater drone that the MOSE barriers were rusting and encrusted with barnacles. Time passes, nothing is done. In 2022, another headline: Barnacles!! Or to be even more precise: Mussels.
Turns out that the gates that have been lying in their assigned position underwater awaiting the call to block the tide have not been receiving the required and agreed-upon maintenance. The money for maintenance was allotted some time back, but it seems to have not been spent on maintenance. If the crud was predictable, so was the fate of the maintenance money.
Years ago, the cost of annual maintenance was forecast to be some 15 million euros. Then estimates of maintenance costs rose to 80 million euros, and now they’re projected to be 200 million euros per year. Where do these numbers come from? Are they breeding in dark corners, like wire hangers? In any case, vast amounts of money can’t ever sit still long enough to be spent on what they’re supposed to be spent on. When you actually need the money, somehow it’s just not there anymore.
There’s no need to read headlines, this has been going on for generations now. The big hold-back-the-tide project began in 1973, when the Special Law for Venice allotted money for a competition for designs (held in 1975). When the first stone was laid in 2003, the end was promised for 2010. We were all so young, so innocent… Then the 2014 deadline came and went, then the middle of 2018, then the beginning of 2019. The “acqua granda” of November 2019 broke several financial logjams, and work picked up with the promise of concluding in 2021. Sorry, I meant 2023. Endless years pass of “We’ll get there! Give us more money!” Lack of funds closed the works for the entire year of 2021. Rome sends millions, then more millions. And yet, somehow there is never enough.
Tourism: They’re baaaaack. Intermittently, and more often on weekends, still more often just during the day. There were a few Carnival crush-fests in the San Marco area, but nothing noteworthy. I suppose it just wouldn’t be Venice without 100,000 or more visitors in a day. And just now, on the cusp of the Easter weekend, we are back under siege again.
This is supposed to be good (even as we see the interminable lines at the vaporetto stops for boats to Murano and Burano). Venice has got to get back in the game, seeing as it’s the only game there is.
Venice isn’t the only Italian city to take a major hit from the pandemic, but I am not seeking comparisons. There were 8,800,000 visits in 2019; 2,500,000 in 2020, and a little more than 3,200,000 in 2021. Between May and August of 2021 (peak summer season) the arrivals were 54 percent fewer than in 2019.
Last year sometime there was a brief quiver of excitement over the resurrected idea of installing turnstiles to control the flow of tourists entering the city at certain points. That idea has been mothballed. I think we don’t want to slow them down. The eternal subject of the selling a ticket to enter Venice has also been put aside. But these ideas will be back. They’re like the swallows going to Capistrano.
Biennale: Yes, it is opening this year — April 23 to November 27 — and the vibrations are palpable. The small park on the Riva dei Sette Martiri tends to host more light-hearted works. I’ll just call them “works,” because I can’t bring myself to say “art.” I honestly don’t know what they are.
So here we are, caught in the endless cycle of everything. Maybe there will be something new around the next corner (or ten), but I’m not counting on it.
Water on the floor, and the day after
On October 29, 2018, there was water on plenty of floors. The tide wouldn’t have been all that high if the waning moon had been in charge of the weather, but the wind took over, reaching gusts of some 70 km/h (45 mph). The scirocco, or southeast wind, was what really brought the water home.
The media was flooded (sorry) with dramatic images of not one, but two “exceptional” high tides. “Exceptional” is the official term for any height over 140 cm above mean sea level (we got 156 cm at about 3:00 PM, 148 cm at about 11:00 PM). And, as Lino and I know from our experience ten years ago, 150 cm is the limit of the top step leading into our apartment. Therefore we had already gotten busy preparing our humble dwelling for this uninvited guest.
So the water came in but, in the time-honored way of the tide, it also went out. And I — along with everybody in the city at street level — can tell you that while “water on the ground” (as the common phrase here expresses it when the quantities of water are more modest) provides dramatic photos, water on the floor is tiring. Everybody’s next day was dedicated to cleaning up. Which is also tiring.
Because many friends have so kindly asked how we are (or, by this time, how we were), here is a little chronicle of the event as we lived it. There aren’t many pictures of the water outside our house because, as you’ll see, we had plenty to take care of inside.
It wasn’t fun, and of course it created major problems for vaporettos, ambulances, and other necessary boats which wouldn’t have been able to pass under the bridges. But the water here wasn’t anything like the monstrous flooding of the rivers devastating the Veneto region, where epic rain had filled some rivers, such as the Piave, up to 30 feet above their normal height. Bridges overwhelmed, roads completely impassable, houses drowned up to their second-story windows. Unlike high tide, flooding rivers kill people, so no wailing from us. Our water meant I had to dust and wash things I certainly had no interest in dusting or washing, but everything is back to normal for us. Out in the countryside, they can’t even see “normal” on the horizon yet.
The next morning, I had some errands to do on via Garibaldi. As I expected, what I saw wasn’t a scene of destruction and lamentation but universal enforced housecleaning. The Venetian bucket brigade, with mops.
