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.
And the happy ending to the story of the predicted high water at dawn today is: Reprieved! Curfew shall not ring tonight!
The maximum was forecast for 8:45 this morning. But we had already calmed down by then because at 8:00 we could see that the tide hadn’t gone past the edge of our first step, and it was already “getting tired,” as the saying goes here. As the tide approaches its maximum height, whatever it may be, it begins to slow down. And slow down. Till it finally stops. And, I suppose, draws a deep breath. Then it begins to move back out, or down, or however one wants to think of it. Away, in any case.
The view from our front door, looking left. Wet but manageable.
At 8:55 the tide touched 136 cm [4.4 feet] above median sea level, a delicate little 4 cm [1.5 inches] less than the maximum forecast. Not a lot less, but we like whatever less we can get.
The image below shows a thing of beauty. (It also, I make a note, shows what 136 cm looks like in front of our little hovel.)
By 10:00 AM the street was empty of water. Now we can get on with the rest of the day. Unlike the wretches freezing to death in Eastern Europe.
This is what the maximum acqua alta looked like this morning, just barely making it to the edge of the first step. (The line indicating moisture above was caused by the tide's attempt to pull itself up as high as it possibly could.) This is also a picture of me smiling.
We’re sitting here holding a sort of tense little domestic vigil awaiting the end of the world, which is predicted to reach Venice some time tonight.
Acqua alta doesn't necessarily have to come pouring over the battlements. As here in the Piazza San Marco, it often comes up through the drains.
Briefly, a huge weather system is moving across Italy and will be bringing high winds, torrential rain, and acqua alta, or high water, sometime tonight. I say “sometime” because Things Might Change (at least slightly — maybe the wind won’t settle into the southeast after all, for example) but we’re going to be getting wet. Just how wet is the question that is keeping the lights burning in our little hovel.
The tide is going to turn and begin to rise about 3:00 AM. Which means we can expect to hear the municipal high-water warning sirens begin to wail not very long after that.
The tide forecast is: Maximum at 9:30 PM tonight at 75 cm [29 inches above mean sea level] ; minimum at 2:25 AM at 45 cm [17 inches]; maximum at 8:35 AM at 130 cm [51 inches]; minimum at 3:40 PM at 20 cm [7 inches].
This is Lino on December 1 last year, watching the tide rising outside our front door. This is me, taking the picture, still hoping that the tide will stop here. It didn't. And the barrier didn't do anything useful to keep it out.
My only hope and prayer at this point is that the tide will only reach the three-tone level, because that means we’re still dry. We discovered last December 1 that when we hear four tones, we’re basically doomed.
We had water in our very own domicile; what was unnerving wasn’t so much its height (I guess it never exceeded an inch on the floor) as its inexorability. I can’t recall a sensation to compare it to: The realization that you can’t do one single thing to stop it. I suppose going into labor might be something similar.
I can tell you that the garbagemen are working an extra shift right now, setting up the temporary walkways in the parts of the city which will certainly be submerged to some extent, especially around the Piazza San Marco, the lowest point in the city.
There is also absolutely no doubt that Paolo Canestrelli and his band of hardy forecasters are working the lobster shift at the Tide Center, refining their predictions probably minute by minute. What they really, really hate is to turn out to have gotten the numbers wrong. People may snicker at them when the tide doesn’t rise as high as they thought it would, but people rage and snarl and shriek when they estimated too low. Not a job I’d be at all interested in having.
For the record, a normal tide (measured in height above mean sea level) is between -50 cm and +79 cm [minus 19 – plus 31 inches.] One siren tone.
Code Yellow (“sustained tide”) is between +80 and +109 cm [31 – 42 inches.] Two tones.
Code Orange (“very sustained tide”) is between 110 cm and 139 cm [43 – 54 inches.] Three tones.
Code Red (“exceptional high tide”) is over 140 cm [55 inches.]
Here I was last year, standing in our little street and contemplating the mysteries of the universe, still not convinced that the water was going to rise any further. Shortly after this, we stopped taking pictures and started bailing.
In case anyone has heard about the MOSE floodgate project (perhaps to be operational in 2012), intended to block high tide from reaching the city, I want to point out that it is intended to be used only in the case of Code Red. Which means that for 3/4 of the high-tide events, we’re still going to be pulling on our wellies.
Another point: The numbers don’t really tell you much because Venice is not uniformly level. So a number in one place isn’t going to signify the same experience in another — sometimes even just 50 yards down the street.
More tomorrow, at some point. Going back to doing laps around the rosary.
This is just one of my random musings; they usually come when I’m doing hard labor, of which there is plenty every day.
It’s the old idea of imagining what certain historical personages would do or say if they found themselves thrown together at, say, some cocktail party in a trendy loft in the meatpacking district. The kind of gathering where you realize you know absolutely no one but the host, who has long since disappeared in the scrum.
So I was washing the dishes when suddenly Copernicus came into my mind. He seemed lonely. I cast around for somebody who could keep him company till at least the next tray of canapes came past, and I thought, Baby June. Already this party is looking up.
So I needed more. George Burns is staring out the window — odd, I know, even I have trouble picturing him standing still — so I sent him Marie Curie. There. He’ll make her smile, which I think she probably hasn’t done since she fainted from hunger in her freezing little garret as a student in Paris. And she’ll give him a leg up on something really important about the subatomic world, which you have to admit is a subject that has always been lacking in his shows.
So we throw out a batch of models and a few publicists and screenwriters and street artists to make space for some more happy couples. I think Nikola Tesla and Edith Wharton would be smokin’. I know he would be pretty far out along the edge of the envelope for her, the edge of the flap that cuts your tongue, but I believe that she could talk with anybody. That’s what real sophistication and real manners means and real intelligence means. I have no doubt that by the end of the evening he’d be thinking how smart she was and a little less about his own scintillating brain.
Then I got to imagining Enrico Dandolo and Mary Anderson (you know, the woman who invented the windshield wiper). He was one of the most pragmatic people ever born, and I think he’d have liked her. Or at least understood her. I’m serious. Because I don’t think many people understood him, either.
Joan of Arc and George Clooney.
Ernest Hemingway and Marian Anderson.
Captain James Cook and Wilma Rudolph.
Margaret Sanger and Hereward the Wake.
Vitale Bramani and St. Hilda of Whitby.
None of these really working for you? Okay, how about this:
