Events | Venice: I am not making this up

America’s Cup hits Venice

May 23, 2012 6 Comments

I’ve noticed that there are people who don’t like to change their minds, but I do. It generally means I’ve learned something. Here follows my most recent advance.

For the past two weeks or so, there were intermittent and increasing signs of the arrival of a Very Big Time sailing race to be held last weekend: Catamarans battling it out for a title belonging to something known as the World Series of the America’s Cup. There were to be races in the Adriatic just off the Lido, and races in the Bacino of San Marco. The idea of a boat race in what amounts to the center of downtown struck me as extremely strange, possibly not appropriate, probably not very successful. This reaction wasn’t the result of actual thought, just the force of habit.

Essentially, it sounded like it was going to be Just Another Thing. Specifically, just another of those many things which exploit Venice as a stage set, but which have nothing to do with the city and which only create problems for everybody.

Wrong again.

IMG_5355 amcup — The banners were lovely. I only noticed later they had chosen the papal color scheme. I wonder what it all means.

Yes, I had observed intriguing new elements, such as the various crews walking around the neighborhood (the boats were kept in the Arsenal). These were men of various sizes who seemed to have been hewn from oak: All young, all strong, all superbly confident. I don’t mean confident of winning, I mean confident of existing.

It was also announced, in what seemed to me to be a cute sort of “go team” spirit, that a prize would be awarded to the shop on via Garibaldi which was deemed to have created the most imaginative window display with a nautical theme.

That’s as far as I’d gone with tuning into this event.

Then, on my way home Friday afternoon about 5:00, tired and cranky, I found myself at San Marco, stuck because the vaporettos had been suspended because of the races. First reaction: Oh swell.

Second reaction: My God, that’s a lot of helicopter racket from overhead (there were four). As I began my inevitable walk home, plod plod, I looked out at the water. Then I stopped.

Maybe those people on dark Kentucky back roads who find themselves in front of a UFO feel something like what I felt. Because the Bacino had suddenly been transformed from its usual condition of resembling the Wal-Mart parking lot on the last Saturday before school starts into an arena that could only be described as epic.

The Bacino had been taken over by majestic beings skimming with a speed and precision that made it hard to believe they were even touching the water.

It was thrilling.

On your average day/week/era, Venice makes it far too clear that however much it wants to bill itself as a world-class city (credible only because it once was), today it’s essentially a small town in Ohio. And nothing could have made this clearer than to suddenly find the city in the throes of what was in fact a truly world-class event.

I don’t especially care about catamarans and I don’t spend much energy on the America’s Cup. Of course I’m vastly proud of it and know that it’s a huge deal, but I suppose if everybody said, “oh well, let’s not do this anymore,” it wouldn’t have much effect on the fate of the world.

But this was beyond dazzling. The sheer magnitude and splendor of these creations, the diabolical skill of their creators and their sailors (not to mention their owners), the stunning effect of seeing something this important here in little old Venice — I literally stopped in my tracks. And beyond the beauty and strangeness and scope of it all, behind the roaring of the helicopters, you could also hear the roar of the cataract of money which had created all this, which, in a strange way, also added to its fascination. It was like standing under an Iguazu Falls of dollars. Euros. South Korean wons.

It was too much. Venice, which spends most of its time plinking out the same drab little melodies (“We have no money, there are too many tourists, we hate/love/hate/love the big cruise ships, we don’t know what to do about anything…….”) was suddenly on center stage in the middle of the Ride of the Valkyries.

And she pulled it off. There were thousands and thousands of spectators for the finals over the weekend, the hotels were full, and the weather exceptional (except for Sunday afternoon, when the wind wore out). All told, a spectacular success. In fact, it may have been the first time that I glimpsed some sliver of the sheer magnificence which used to be the order of the day here, the grandeur which overwhelmed every visitor who ever got within eyeshot of the place.

That’s where my mind changed. Ideas here, however good and even expensive they may be, are usually left only partially realized, or fully realized and then abandoned, or briefly put aside and then forgotten.

But this was brilliant. Which brought to mind my high school choir director. The first time we managed to do something exactly the way he wanted, he’d stop. “Now you’re in trouble,” he’d say. “Because now I know you can do it.”

Venice, over to you.

PS: Many photographs will be coming as soon as a technical seizure is resolved.

Events

Happy Easter

April 7, 2012 11 Comments

Here is what Easter is looking like out in the country, a/k/a Sant’ Erasmo. We rowed over to the island today to buy some vegetables from the Finotello brothers and came home not only with bitter chicory and a couple of fresh eggs but also two bussolai buranelli and hearts full of spring.

As I write, it’s 11:00 PM and the bells have just begun ringing outside. This means it’s Easter. They don’t wait till a sedate, well-bred 8:00 in the morning. In fact, they don’t want to wait at all. If nothing else could make Easter beautiful, it would be enough just to hear all the bells singing in the dark.

I had a fleeting notion of looking up some Easter poetry for you. Then I decided to just let the world speak for itself.

IMG_4728 fino — Somebody in the Finotello families -- two brothers and wives and small children -- always assembles some sort of festal creation. Whoever does it manages to make it look like it wasn't any effort at all.

IMG_4737 fino — Even the rosemary is in bloom.

IMG_4741 fino — And the baby fruit trees.

IMG_4735 fino — And some embryonic fig trees, branches already budding with teeny little figs.

IMG_4742 fino — This is what an Easter basket for that happy Primrose family looks like.

IMG_4762 fino — Of course you knew it was all going to come down to food. For anyone who thinks chocolate is too simple or trite, let me present their homemade bussolai buranelli. This is how I like to consume my Easter eggs. All you need is large quantities of flour, whole eggs, egg yolks, butter, sugar, and small quantities of lemon and vanilla. Like most homemade comestibles, these bear little resemblance to the ubiquitous commercial version.

IMG_4731 fino — A sample was thoughtfully and craftily offered. Because only one small chunk was needed to convince me to buy two. Believe me, this is not a confection to scarf like popcorn. It demands to be taken seriously, to be eaten with appreciation and complete denial of any knowledge of what it's made of. If you think of the ingredients, you're doomed.

Events

Harvest home

November 24, 2011 4 Comments

IMG_1968 tgiving new — Shine on, shine on harvest moon, up above via Garibaldi.

Today, as every year, I indulge in a little orgy of nostalgia for the Thanksgiving traditions, customs, and eccentricities of my native heath. I miss all of it, even the tyranny of the turkey — I know they say we can eat anything we want, probably even tofu or tilapia, but rejecting turkey seems to me to be asking for trouble.

We usually saute a turkey breast and get on with the day. I long ago learned that you cannot duplicate foreign customs with any degree of satisfaction — in fact, trying only makes it worse — so I don’t try. But turkey breast is my propitiatory offering to whatever needs to be propitiated. It’s better than decapitating a live rooster buried in the wheatfield. I’ll get to that in a minute.

IMG_2372 tgiving — The town of Gemona del Friuli decorated City Hall with local products, including eggplant.

Just because Italy doesn’t have Pilgrim Fathers and Ben Franklin and the Gettysburg Address and so on doesn’t mean that the countryfolk here have no harvest traditions. Au contraire — the country is suffocating with them, as a brief little research has revealed. Venice doesn’t share any of these practices, having devoted all of its forces of gratitude to the Madonna della Salute. But I’m in the harvest mood, so I decided to range afield.

The primary divergence from American customs seem to be that grain, not the bird, has traditionally been the hero of the end-of-cultivation-season celebration, and the majority of these festivals take place toward the end of the summer. Schedule your harvest festival to coincide with the harvest itself? What an idea.

The symbolism, as explained by the author of the website “Luce di strega,” works this way:

The Spirit of the grain is rooted in the pagan traditions of the cycle of fertility, birth and rebirth; the myths of Demetra and Persephone, Ceres and Proserpina, vividly illustrate this reality. Vegetation dies at the end of the summer, returning to the earth from which it will be reborn the next spring. That is, if you perform the correct actions pleasing to the Spirit of the grain.

IMG_2500 tgiving — The dried corn is classic, but in Gemona they added a bunch of wild persimmons.

This Spirit was transposed to a sacrificial animal, to improve the chances of pleasing it; this animal was traditionally a bird (rooster, turkey, quail) which lives and hides in the fields, especially in the shocks of harvested grain. The last phase of the harvest would become a sort of race among the farmers to be the first to finish, nabbing a luckless bird, thereby obtaining an appropriate creature to kill as an offering to the Spirit of the grain. Note: The sacrifice has to be an animal because it contains blood, the crucial element in the magic of fertility rituals.

“In some parts of Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Picardy,” writes James George Frazer in “The Golden Bough,” “the harvesters put a live rooster in the grain which is to be harvested last, and they hunt and catch him and bury him up to his neck and decapitate him with the scythe or sickle.”

If this practice should seem extreme, consider that killing a fowl was seen to be better than killing the person who had scythed the last stalks of wheat, which was the original idea.

Have I just completely ruined your enjoyment of your turkey? Perhaps you could regard its position on your table as something a little less drastic — maybe as a sort of propitiation of the Spirit of Black Friday. In any case, there is a definite link, in mythological terms, between the annual ingathering and a cooked (anyway, killed) bird.

IMG_1917 tgiving — Our favorite farmers on Sant' Erasmo put this together before Halloween. The pomegranate is a nice touch, though eggplant seems to be non-negotiable.

Wandering around the web and YouTube reveals an impressive number of harvest festivals in the countryside and mountains of Italy, out where some connection with agriculture can still be found, though the festivals by now, however deeply felt they may be, seem to have shifted their focus to propitiating the Spirit of Tourism. Which, by the way, never dies, so it never has to be reborn. No blood, just offer money.

Here is a snippet of the famous harvest festival in Foglianise, a small town in the region of Campania about 50 km (30 miles) northeast of Naples. It is held on August 16, which not only coincides with the end of the harvest (at least in the olden days), but is the feast day of San Rocco, patron saint of plague victims. Seeing that he responded to the villagers’ pleas for deliverance from a disastrous pestilence in the 1600’s — yes, it was everywhere — the people of Foglianise have made a special point of honoring him on his day.

The traditional procession involves the predictable dancing, costumes, and music, but the most fantastic element is the series of all sorts of buildings and monuments made of twisted straw, drawn along on carts. The Corn Palace is essentially the same thing, except that it was built to attract settlers, not to invoke fertility. I think. And, of course, it doesn’t move. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1203SadCYs

I’m not going to go into the symbolism of the cornucopia, but it’s pretty complicated too. It doesn’t involve death, however.

Happy Thanksgiving, whatever you decide to do. Or eat.

IMG_2404 tgiving — The church at Gemona was decorated for their Day of Thanksgiving on November 13. Cornstalks are always an excellent touch.

IMG_2405 tgiving — An arrangement set before the high altar involves not only the usual squashy vegetables but flowers made from fresh wood shavings.

IMG_2502 tgiving — City Hall was festooned within an inch of its life. There are some cabbages up there, too -- along with the eggplant.

Events

The Bossi fest

September 20, 2011 2 Comments

Sunday afternoon I managed to make a few snaps of the Great Gathering of those Bossi people (I block the scores of puns that surge into my mind), so here they are.

It appears that, in the end, there were more police than potential police patrons.

The organizers claimed that there were 50,000 of the faithful; the police estimated 6-7,000. The difference makes me think of those construction estimates which start on earth but when the job is finished the total cost is lost somewhere in Multiple-Zeroes Land. It’s been like this every year of the past 15 that this event has been staged: the participants want to make it sound as if there are more of them than Attila’s Huns.

The anticipated thunderstorms politely waited till evening.

IMG_1613 bossi2 — The floating platform, with the speakers facing inland. It being Sunday, most of the neighborhood was somewhere else. But Bossi was intending mainly to preach to the choir anyway. It was a good day for making money, too: all those tour boats that brought his flock undoubtedly made plenty of crisp crackling euros.

IMG_1613 bossi2a — From a distance, this mega-poster looks like it could be just another advertisement, not unlike the billboards around the Piazza San Marco. But instead, it is an image of a cult object (as a perplexed archaeologist might call it): A picture of Monviso, the highest mountain of the Cottian Alps and, more to the point, the source of the Po River. It stirs all sorts of emotions which do not submit to logic.

IMG_1621 bossi2 — A few blithe spirits wanting to show their fidelity to the united Italy, which the Northern League wishes to cleave asunder, came out to wave the national flag. Some of the many policemen zooming around came to keep them company -- not to arrest them, but to make sure nobody got close enough to annoy them.

IMG_1625 bossi2 — Anyone who's ever visited the gift shop of, say, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center and seen the "I Have a Dream" ashtrays knows that there is no idea or emotion so exalted that it can't be turned into tourist trinkets. Here, the stands were selling T-shirts, cigarette lighters, keychains, and potholders, bearing various motifs but concentrating on the symbol of Padania (the Promised Land yet to be found/created).

560px-Flag_of_Padania.svg bossi — The emblem of Padania is a mystic symbol which the League calls the "Sun of the Alps" but which is also recognized around the world as the "Flower of Life." Not quite the same thing. I don't know if anybody has commented on its startling resemblance to Cannibis sativa. They must have.