The Casa de las Carcasas in the Merceria (the name does not refer to carcasses, but to cellphone cases) wants “Peace for Ukraine.” Emotions remain on high simmer around here.
Recently there have been intermittent donation drives here, as in so many places, in aid of Ukrainian refugees. (As of today, nearly 60,000 have arrived; their main destinations are Milan, Rome, Naples, and Bologna.) So far, at least in via Garibaldi, these drives have been organized by Caritas, the charitable wing of the diocese of Venice.
They needed toiletries, toiletries abounded. (Don’t forget children’s toothbrushes.) They needed clothing, we decimated our closet. Boxes have been left, meanwhile, in various churches to encourage the ongoing accumulation of goods.
But this coming Saturday there will be a big new all-day drive, and frankly, I’m kind of intimidated. This is far beyond toothpaste and socks; this effort seems to be gearing up to furnish a hundred M.A.S.H. units.
I translate: “In our churches we are gathering in specific containers the following sanitary materials until Sunday 10 April. PRODUCTS TO MEDICATE WOUNDS: Sterile and non-sterile gauze, surgical drape in microfiber, various bandages (sterile, self-adhesive, iodoformic), bandaids of various sizes, set of reusable plates, materials for sutures, suture removal kit, hemostatics (to stop bleeding), tourniquet, sterile and non-sterile gloves, first-aid kit for treating injuries, scalpel, tweezers and medical scissors, medical equipment (aspirators, oxygen concentrator, PAO gauge, glucose meter with strips), kit for bladder catheterization with disinfectant, or venous catheters, IV tube setup, normal and luer-lock syringes. OTHER MEDICINES: Antibiotics, pain relievers, anti-hemorrhagic medicine, fever reducers, antihistamines. Saturday 9 April there will be a special collection in via Garibaldi all day … thank you.”
I’ve studied Amazon wish lists, I’ve pored over wedding registries, I’ve even looked occasionally at Dear Santa letters, but this cry for help beats them all.
But let us not be daunted! You can get lots of these via amazon.it. Many of them are very cheap. If you should have ever felt any desire to send scalpels or iodoformic bandages or luer-lock syringes to anybody, this is your moment. (I am addressing any local people whose hearts may be moved by this exceptional appeal.)
Otherwise, plain old donations will never go out of style.
You can’t even walk out your front door without stumbling over ways and means to donate to Ukrainian relief. At the checkout counter at the Coop (I admire the logo they came up with), this poster appealing for aid takes front and center. Curious that the big word HELP is in English but I’m not going to stop to quibble. “We have no more words. Only a gesture. Coop help the civil population of Ukraine with a collection of funds to confront the humanitarian emergency. You too can participate with a donation: you can give 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 or 100 euros. #coopforucraina Ask the register operator. Coop favoring UNHCR Sant’ Egidio Doctors without Borders.”This is practically haiku. Here it’s a new little boy, but every baby is a cry for peace.
This fabulous mass of clouds billowed up the other afternoon behind the Arsenal (just to set the general scene). The Arsenal was considered the most secure place in the city for this event, a decision that wouldn’t have much surprised the Venetians of the long-ago Republic. In Venice’s greatest ship-building days the area was surveilled by boats patrolling the perimeter night and day, aided by men watching from 15 guard towers along the walls. They didn’t put up the current signs — “Military Zone, Access Forbidden, Armed Surveillance” — but it was implied.
The G20 are coming for dinner. And breakfast, and fancy fetes, and big meetings from July 7-11, and for days we’ve been given periodic updates on what this will entail for daily life.
For those who may not feel like knowing more than necessary, here are the basics (thank you, Wikipedia): The G20 is composed of most of the world’s largest economies, including both industrialized and developing nations. The group collectively accounts for around 90 percent of gross world product (GWP),[4] 75-80 percent of international trade,[A 1] two-thirds of the world’s population,[2] and roughly half the world’s land area.
Think: Economic Ministers and governors of central banks. Also think: Organized demonstrations protesting the many defects of the global economy, with protestors coming from far and also wide, at least some of whom are known to prefer violence. Each group will be assigned a specific area from which to express their views. They won’t be near the Arsenal, I think I can promise that.
This year it was Italy’s turn to play host, and considering that by the late 13th century Venice was the richest country in Europe, it seems pleasantly appropriate for the money masters to meet here. I doubt that was the organizers’ motivation, but it does fit. Although the decision was made in Rome, and not here, Venice may well have been seen as a city uniquely adapted to the control of movement by land or by water.
The city began planning all this last January (probably much earlier, actually), by means of at least ten separate committees. The basic idea was to keep the city in as normal a condition as possible with the help of 1500 extra police (Carabinieri, Guardia di Finanza, Polizia di Stato, etc.), including police divers ready for canal duty. The prefect made a big point of saying he could have just shut the city completely down, but wanted to show it as open and even welcoming. I hope that turns out to be true.
Some statistics: The eleven canals nearest the Arsenal were emptied of the boats that normally are moored there. These 450 vessels were temporarily transferred to the marinas at the Certosa island (“Vento di Venezia”) and Sant’ Elena Marina. I believe there is no cost for this to the owners, but there will certainly be some inconvenience in going to either place to get your boat.
This is what I call extreme house-cleaning — the rio de la Tana completely empty of the boats usually moored there. I don’t know who owns the blue barge, but I bet it’s not going to be there two days from now.
The 62 delegations (size of each unknown) will be lodging in eight luxury hotels in the city. The extra police that have been brought in as reinforcements will be bunking on the mainland, if that interests you.
Covid swabs every 48 hours are guaranteed to everyone at the meeting, at points in the Arsenal and in the delegation hotels. Ambulances are on standby.
The yellow area is the “Security Zone,” accessible only to residents and shopowners who show their pass. At “D” you find the taxi station between San Zaccaria and the Arsenal is suspended, and at E and F the fuel station and boatyard by the church of San Pietro di Castello are suspended, seeing that they are within a few feet of the second water entrance to the Arsenal. No yachts will be permitted to tie up along the Riva degli Schiavoni.
This gate and others like it at any entrance to the Yellow Zone will be closed and overseen by someone in uniform who will check your credentials before letting you enter. All the streets leading into the Arsenal area are now seriously gated. (Gazzettino)The organizers are totally not joking about protecting the Arsenal area. The caption refers to the gates “disciplining foot traffic,” a very polite way of basically saying “Keep Out.”The Francescana rowing club is based inside the Arsenal in a large shed accessible by water and by land. The boats are now all inside the shed and the door locked tight, and the land entrance, as you see, will be blocked as of Sunday night by these supplemental hinged bars.
The vaporetto stops closest to the meeting site (Arsenale, Bacini and Celestia) will be suspended. The Fondamente Nove are partially unavailable to traffic; one helpful notice explained to residents of the Lido that if they needed to go to the hospital, they would have to go to Murano, then proceed to the hospital by way of the Fondamente Nove stop.
Baffled by how this would work, I studied the vaporetto options and discovered Line #18 that runs from the Lido to the Murano stops, where you change for the 4.1. As if normal life here weren’t already sufficiently inconvenient, this line operates once an hour from 9:18 AM to 7:50 PM, with a break between 12:18-4:50 PM. I don’t know that I’d undertake the voyage except in case of direst need.
Navigation will be controlled according to this color-coded scheme, and that means everybody, up to and including you and your aging uncle who wants to take the motorboat out to go fishing.
The green areas are for normal usage at any time; they term it “pleasure” use. “Anyone boating outside Venice must use the green areas. The yellow stretch is for pleasure boating only by residents and only in order to reach a green patch. The rest of the Giudecca Canal (red, though they call it orange) is forbidden to pleasure boats, as is all the rest of the orange zone (Grand Canal from the Bacino of San Marco to the Accademia Bridge. and the Bacino of San Marco to the Canale delle Navi at the end of Sant’ Elena). Navigation of every type of boat, including taxis and barges, is forbidden from 8-10 AM and 4-6 PM; the only exceptions are vaporettos and Alilaguna boats. The blue stretch (they call it purple, but never mind) is forbidden to everybody. This is the Arsenal wall facing the lagoon, so it’s unquestionably a potential hot zone. Work out your own alternatives.
Transport of merchandise will be forbidden between 8:00-10:00 AM and 4:00-6:00 PM. (See the red-orange zone on the map.) Restaurant owners have been advised to stock up early, in case there are any glitches.
Don’t imagine that you can somehow manage to cleverly do things your own way; there will be some 60 boats of the Guardia di Finanza out patrolling, as well as four helicopters. I appreciate the prefect’s assurances that normal life will continue, but I’m starting to wonder how many people are just going to decide to take a long weekend and go to the mountains.
The irrepressible wits at Nevodi Pizzalab are offering three new specials in honor of this important event, as always written in Venetian: Mancava, Anca, and El G20. “We were also missing the G20,” the broader translation being “All we needed, on top of everything else, was the G20.”
The triangular red notice-boards of the Biennale have returned to their ancestral homes in the neighborhood. Here’s an important one, front and center in via Garibaldi.
If there’s one term (among many) that has become fashionable around here this year it’s ripresa — recovery. (Not to be confused with “Recovery Plan,” which is exactly what Italians call the mega-component financial scheme that will somehow reassemble our dismembered economy. Does saying it in English give it some occult power? Wish I knew somebody I could ask.) I would have suggested “comeback,” like for some devastated boxer staggering back into the ring, but whatever you want to call it, everybody’s trying to get back to normal.
Over the past two weeks or so, there have been tiny but unmistakeable signs of life such as gradual lessening of curfew, gradual increase of shops and restaurants opening, etc. We still have to wear masks, though not everybody does, but the only thing missing from a cartoon version of life here right now is birds swooping around with little hearts floating upward.
So I’ve been enjoying the tiny signs — more every day — that belong to life as we used to know it. And many of them are connected to the imminent reopening of the Biennale on May 22 (canceled last year, along with its millions of euros from the municipal budget).
Being that our neighborhood is the epicenter of Biennale activity, of course I’d be seeing things such as enormous crates on barges with cranes being unloaded in the exhibition zone, unknown people wearing unusual clothes just standing on bridges looking around, a person here or there with lots of video or camera equipment, or the ticket booth for the vaporettos about to start selling tickets again, ever more individuals dressed in black with a lanyard and plastic-sleeved document around his/her neck. Press, I presume. More water taxis. Gondolas with people in them. I saw a woman today walking around with a big paper map of the city. Boy, that takes me back.
Let’s also notice the soundtrack: The scrapey clatter of rolling suitcases outside the window, the constant low rumble of motors everywhere. All you need is a barge with three cement mixers aboard trying to get somewhere against the tide and you’ll hear what I mean, but the noise from even smaller motors gets to be big, when there are enough of them. This is one part of the Sound of Venice I did NOT miss during quarantine. But here we are.
So generally speaking non-Venetians are returning to their Venice, and we are sliding back into ours, invisible again. We are all side by side, but we are not in the same city. I’ve commented elsewhere on these parallel tracks of life here that never meet, and so that’s a part of normal that is ineluctable.
Not only is the day after tomorrow Opening Day for the Biennale; the following Saturday will be the opening of the week-long Salone Nautico, or Boat Show, in the Arsenal. So bring on the people. I guess we’re ready.
I’ve really missed the yachts; I look them up online to see what they’re like inside. Monsters such as this are moored here, not for their voyagers (this babe costs 238,000 euros per week) but as the perfect venues for really important Opening Weekend parties. It — or perhaps Plan A? — will probably be back for the same reason at the end of August for the film festival.This restaurant was created a year ago February in what was the only shoe store in via Garibaldi. As soon as lockdown hit, it closed up and has never opened since then until this week. Getting all spiffed up and ready for hungry art-lovers. I think basil plants instead of flowers is an outstanding idea. Also, they say green is the color of hope.This Eastern European man is a staple at the entrance to the Giardini, playing the old favorites (including “My Way,” my oldest unfavorite, but also the tango music from “Scent of a Woman”) to a modest recorded accompaniment. He had disappeared for a year, because who was around to give him money? The fact that he’s back is a huge sign of better things on the way.Shapeless whimsy is seeking fame and fortune — the Biennale’s back and boy, is Venice glad.You start with a plinth of some sort and work up. No way of guessing what might be due to be put here, we’ll just have to wait and be surprised.The meaning of this will be revealed in due course, though perhaps not by me. At the moment, it’s sitting there in its perfect shape, though its relevance to “How will we live together?” is not immediately evident.I have no way of knowing whether bags of mulch are a work of art — it’s a little hard to know where to look in these areas or what to appreciate. So I’ll appreciate the mulch.
One entirely unexpected discovery, beyond the fields of the Biennale, was a collateral effect of the city’s revival: The opening of the church of San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti to the public. I have only ever seen this church open for funerals, not infrequently because it was built in 1634 as part of the city hospital. (Hospitals and funerals are unfortunate companions.) We came upon this on a random afternoon wander, and seized the chance to see the church without mourners and memorial wreaths.
The church of San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti is inserted into the city hospital, and is usually shut up tight, as you see here. (Foto: Abxbay on Wikipedia).
Enter the church and this is what you discover is filling the space over the front door. Meet Alvise Mocenigo (known in Italian as Luigi Leonardo Mocenigo), Admiral of the Venetian navy in the 25-year War of Candia during 1648-51 and 1653-4.You already have grasped that he was a Capitano da Mar because of his very particular hat, and his baton of command. He defeated the perennial Turkish foe at Paros and Naxos, but his qualities as a commander and as a man were evidently so remarkable that when he died even the Turks bedecked their ships with tokens of mourning for their worthy adversary.The Battle of Paros (1651).The Battle of Naxos. That rearing horse must have been the sculptor’s absolutely favorite part of the whole thing. The obelisks bear medallions representing the four medals struck in Crete to commemorate Mocenigo’s victories (Civica, Rostrale, Murale, Graminea. This will not be on the final exam.)
So modern art brings tourists, which leads to opening some spaces to lovers of old art. I might like this new normal.
I don’t often watch New Year’s Day concerts on television (or computer), but lots of people veer toward the version from Vienna, perhaps drawn by the irresistible, fatal lure of the “Radetzky March.”
This year, though, we were keen to see the concert from La Fenice, live via streaming, and apart from the music itself, I was entertained by observing all the measures the orchestra and chorus had taken to maintain distancing and otherwise limit contact in the decidedly closed area of the theatre. I checked them off, mentally, as from some viral bingo card. Masks, of course, though the inevitably maskless wind and brass players were separated by plexiglas panels. The chorus wore masks, which didn’t seem to affect the quality of the singing but must have been somewhat challenging where breathing was concerned. (Not to mention the drippage that masks inevitably call forth.) The next day it was sharply noted by many that the musicians of the Vienna concert had not worn masks.
Making space for everybody meant that the entire orchestra section of the theater was stripped of its pink velvet armchairs and covered with a platform. (Some of the armchairs were moved to the stage for the benefit of the singers.) I’d like some expert to explain how this repositioning might have affected the overall acoustics. I didn’t notice any particular problem.
Lack of an audience threatened depressing intervals of silence between the numbers, but it turned out that the performers applauded each other — the chorus clapped for the orchestra or soloists; the orchestra stamped their feet and the string players also tapped their music stands with their bows. The conductor clapped for everybody. It was perfect.
The armchairs are very comfortable and very luxe. It’s an ambitious space to cover, though. This image was taken before a performance two summers ago.
Naturally the program was entirely composed of old warhorses, and we love them all. This is one moment in the year when rash experiments in music are neither needed nor wanted.
The reason I’m mentioning all this is because someone had the charming idea to complement the “Barcarolle” from The Tales of Hoffman with a ride through the canals aboard a gondola. Even if you don’t care about music, old or equine, I wanted you to experience this sensation, partly because it has become sadly rare these days, and partly because these few waterborne moments give the most expressive glimpse of the city as she is at the moment that I’ve ever seen. I suppose it was filmed early on a Sunday, because although the taxis and gondolas have almost disappeared, the barges on workdays are still going full tilt. But the sense of emptiness, in canals and along many streets, has become all too common.
Among my many hopes for the New Year is one in particular: To see the city full of gondolas again, slipping through the maze of Venetian waterways. With or without Hoffman.
(Apologies for the quality of these clips; I couldn’t find any better. But they show the organization of the concert, and the music itself is wonderful, as always.)
