It is admittedly a narrow canal, and not the only narrow one in the city. But places to keep your boat are almost impossible to find, so one has to Make Do. But that doesn’t always Make Happy.
If you are close enough to read this, then this person may well be talking to you.
“Pay attention when you’re maneuvering / The executioners of your dead relatives / There is always damage to repair / at my expense.”
Let me explain about the executioner. “Boia,” depending somewhat on intonation, is one of the baddest of the bad words you can use in relation to people, things, phenomena, events, microbes, anything. To invoke the boia in any expression kicks it up numerous notches. Do not use it unless you mean it.
To draw a person’s deceased relatives into the situation is also an expert level insult. Putting them together means that this person is beside himself. Of course, you yourself can’t be offended by this because you are innocent. You have never damaged his boat when trying to squeeze past in your boat, you have never even gone down that canal. And if you did, as they say here, you were sleeping.
Seen from this angle, the canal does not, to my eye, appear to present any particular challenge to most passing boats. I see that the boat ahead of him still carries a fender that died nobly in service to its master, and you don’t hear him complaining.Seen from this perspective, though, the boat is clearly in a risky position with regard to the 90-degree angle just behind it to the left. A boat turning that corner, entering or exiting, would have to really care about not scraping the boat on the right. If you don’t pay attention the tide will play tricks on you here, whether it’s rising or falling, and your motor won’t do much to save you from contact unless you are already prepared for the tricks. Most people with motorboats don’t even know what the tide is anymore. They may have read it about it once, riffling through Moby-Dick. So our exasperated boat-owner has been reduced to irritable fist-shaking. In his situation, I myself might have considered finding some more effective protection than those three little impotent fenders, but why fix a problem if you can just rant about it.Speaking of narrow canals, this one isn’t much narrower than the one above, but it doesn’t have any insidious corners. Boats on both sides give the sensation of having to slalom past them, though obviously if you go slowly all you have to do is maintain a straight line. Too bad you have to slice through all those clotheslines and laundry on the way…. Notice that there is a wide difference of opinion among the boat-owners concerning the fenders, need for or usefulness of. The quaint little fronds of twisted rope are adorable. I wonder if they were ever effective.In this case, the two boat-owners have hit upon the perfect method for protecting their boats from damage. Just make it impossible for anybody to get through. I have checked with my resident navigator/expert and he confirms that there is no secret way to slither through here. This canal is now blocked. I don’t think this situation would have lasted long, though. One or both of these bright sparks is clearly parking illegally, and it wouldn’t have taken long for someone who really needed to pass to have resolved the problem by calling the vigili. This isn’t annoying, this is ridiculous.
Well, I waited six months to get a haircut, so I suppose I’m not one to criticize a hedge. But I’m confused. Wouldn’t you think that the so-called most beautiful city in the world would do a little more to keep itself presentable? I know my mother would.
Granted, we all know how you just go along thinking everything is fine… you’ll fix your hair/mop the floor/write that thank-you note just any day now…and then suddenly something snaps and you realize that your hair is a freaking mess, etc. etc. The jig is up.
In the case of this hedge, nobody seems to be responding to the jig. Maybe wild-haired hedges are just the latest trend, or something related to the Biennale which is just through the park ahead. But company’s coming to town (and some is already here — I’ve seen the yachts). Tomorrow is the first day of the Venice Film Festival, and if there were ever a time to trim that hedge, I’d think the time would be now. Actually, yesterday. ACTUALLY, a week ago.
But what, as I often ask myself, do I know? I never trimmed my bangs to suit my mother, so it’s clearly just as well I was never responsible for a hedge.
Oh, did you want to see that statue? Sorry, come back later. No, I don’t know when. Later.It’s clear at the end of this row that somebody with a hedge-clipper, or machete, had made a good start. But they got a day off, or had to take their kid to the dentist, or something broke the momentum (or the tool), and here we are.Or it might have been around the time when the hedge finally realized it was never going to play Hampton Court Palace, or the Redberry Maze, or the Laberinto Katira, and just let everything go.
Yesterday morning around 10:00 AM. This is the bacino of San Marco, looking toward the Grand Canal.
During the past two weeks there has been fog: Some days on, then sunshine, then back the fog rolls again. It’s very poetic and romantic, looked at one way. But it’s highly inconvenient if you need to take the vaporetto to do something unpoetic, because some lines are suspended, and the rest are all sent up and down the Grand Canal. This means that you may well be walking farther to your destination than you had budgeted time and energy for. Maybe you yourself can manage that, but if you’re a very sick and frail old lady — looking at you, Maria from upstairs — who has to get to the hospital for her chemotherapy, the fact that your vaporetto doesn’t exist today means you’re forced to take a taxi to the hospital. That’ll be 50 euros please. Going, and then coming home. Not at all poetic if you’re living on 750 euros a month.
But let’s say you’re on one of the vaporettos, living a routine day. Don’t relax completely. Because even though the battelli (the big fat waterbuses) have radar, and so does the ferryboat trundling up and down the Giudecca Canal between Tronchetto and the Lido, that doesn’t guarantee that the drivers are looking at it, or if they are, are understanding what they are seeing. Radar, much like bras or penicillin, is intended to help you, but only if you actually use it.
Visibility was like this this morning, and also yesterday morning.
I mention this because yesterday the fog was pretty thick. And around 1:00 PM, the #2 that crosses the Giudecca Canal between the Zattere and the Giudecca itself collided with the ferry. At that point the two routes are operating at right angles to each other. Everybody knows this. I mean, one shouldn’t be even minimally surprised to find these two boats out there.
But find each other they did. In the collision nobody was hurt, but one passenger temporarily lost his mind and punched the marinaio, the person who ties up the boat at each stop, in the face. Why the marinaio? Because he was there, I suppose. He certainly wasn’t navigating. Nor was the captain, evidently.
This is roughly the area in which the accident occurred. There would have been very little traffic (this photo was not taken yesterday). Plenty of space to maneuver, if one wanted to.
To translate the phrase in the brief article in La Nuova Venezia, “Probably the incident was caused by the thick fog.” I don’t mean to be pedantic, but “The fog made me do it” doesn’t sound quite right. The fog had been out for hours; it hardly sneaked up on the boats from behind. The pedant further wonders why the fog gets all the blame. It didn’t grab the two boats and push them together, like two hapless hamsters. One might more reasonably say that the incident was caused by two individuals, one per boat, who were not paying attention either to the water ahead or to their radar. Footnote: These vehicles operate on schedules. I’m going to risk saying that one could easily predict when they would be, as they put it here, “in proximity to each other.” If one wanted to.
The ferryboat gives Wagnerian blasts of its warning horn when small boats are in its path. There aren’t foghorns anymore, but the ferry’s klaxon can be heard for miles. If it’s blown. (Il Gazzettino, uncredited)This is one of the ferryboats, though maybe not the one involved yesterday. Clearly David met Goliath, but in this case it was David that took the hit. (photo uncredited ACTV)
But let’s return to the poetry.
Rio di San Giuseppe, Castello.Rio di San Pietro, Castello.Rio de l’Arsenal.Admiring the view.Riva degli Schiavoni.Via Garibaldi. Life goes on, and so does the trash.
Rio de la Ca’ di Dio. The forecast is for more fog tomorrow. If I put on my gray coat, I’ll disappear.
My day got off to a superb start with the discovery of the Boron family. PaceTom Lehrer, I am now hopefully (note rare correct usage) awaiting the appearance of more relatives from the chemical elements clan. You remember them: fermium, mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium…. But joking to one side, I think the Boron family should be respected. I have received no compensation for this mention, they don’t even know I exist. Also that I do not drink alcohol. But boron isn’t a name you expect to see around, especially if it’s attached to wine. I mean, to people.
While we’re on the subject of food — and when are we not? — here are a few worthy character actors on the great Venetian culinary stage who may have been hidden in the swarm of the stereotypical food cluttering every Venetian menu.
Apples: There seemed to be no surprises left in the winter starting lineup. Here almost all of those seen in Venice come from the great northern valleys of Non and Venosta — Delicious (or Melinda), Royal, Gala, Pink Lady, Fuji. But the other day a newcomer found a place at the end of the bench, so to speak: The annurca/anurka apple, officially known as the Melannurca Campana I.G.P. (Indicazione Geografica Protetta). Luca on the fruit and vegetable barge told us that it is an autochthonous breed, native to the Campania region. Its admirers refer to it as “the queen of the Caudine valley.” I’m sorry to bring up a sensitive subject, but it’s nice to know that that particular area is famous for something other than one of Rome’s most humiliating defeats. Read up on the Battle of the Caudine Forks (321 B.C.) if you want to re-evaluate some of your life choices.The annurca (Malus pumila) is one of the symbols of the Campania region, where it has been cultivated for at least two millennia; it is depicted in frescoes in Herculaneum and mentioned by Pliny the Elder. Why haven’t we seen it here before? (Or more to the point, why are we seeing it now?) This delectable sweet, firm, slightly acidic little fruit represents a mere five percent of the national apple production, and two-thirds of the crop is absorbed by Campania and Lazio, while another 20 percent reaches Lombardy, Piemonte and Tuscany. That leaves precious little for the rest of us, but somehow the Veneto is now on their delivery route, and this trusty little veteran is a wonderful discovery. Or, if it could talk, it might well say “I’ve been around for thousands of years; where have YOU been?”It really is the most agreeable little apple. I’m glad it’s managed to hang on.These gnarly little knobs are not ginger. They are a wintry visitor that usually appears so briefly that you could easily overlook them. This year, for some reason, they have lingered longer. Meet topinambur (toe-pin-am-BOOR), or Helianthus tuberosus. Jerusalem artichoke, Canadian sunflower, sunchoke, sunroot, and/or German turnip. It is a South American plant; its curious name here probably derives from the Tupinamba’, an indigenous people of Brazil. One method of preparing it is to scrape away the surface dirt, saute’ some garlic in extravirgin olive oil, cut the tubers into very thin slices, toss them into the oil and garlic, adding salt and pepper and a little vegetable broth, if needed, to keep them from drying out. They’re very pleasant, something like a potato, or maybe a water chestnut, with a slight flavor of artichoke.This is just sad. How could this celestial espresso machine end up in this condition? Sex? Drugs? Rock and roll? And why is it sitting outside the front door of this restaurant? Isn’t it supposed to be in rehab somewhere?“All hat, no cattle” is a common, if cutting, judgment given as necessary in the American West. It comes to mind in the case of this marvelous –judging by appearances — mollusk. Are you tired of clams? You should be, they’re the prime, and sometimes only, bivalve on Venetian restaurant menus. (Stop right there: Of course there are often mussels on offer, but they don’t fall in the “clam” category of this cadenza.) If you should happen to see “spaghetti con telline,” which has happened to me exactly once, know that you will have a plate that cries out to be photographed. But as for the telline (tell-EE-neh) themselves, you may not even realize you’ve eaten something. They are so tiny and so insipid that you will be happier admiring their shells than consuming their contents. I have never seen them in the fish markets, although they come from the shallow Adriatic shoreline, Lino tells me. So they are local, in one sense. They’re out there somewhere. Bonus points: Skip the first course and just buy a batch of “purple tellin shells” from Etsy. Not made up. Look for the ones called “purple coquina shells.”
Somebody loves pasta. Somebody is selling pasta. This sculpture was in the window of the Pastificio Serenissima some while back. The can is not leaning on the shelf; it is being held aloft by the column of stuck-together bowties (or what they call butterflies here) and some nubbin I can’t identify. This photo is here for fun, not for erudition.Nothing to do with food, but I just can’t keep it to myself. Wandering around, I came across these clarion phrases. An anonymous door on the street is talking to YOU. The first sign in heavy black letters in equally heavy Venetian dialect translates as “And until I come back nobody can come in!” That clearly wasn’t enough, because a second notice is taped above it, saying “I repeat until I come back nobody is allowed to come in. And he that can has my number.” So nobody except somebody is permitted to enter. From behind the door came loud noises of a chainsaw and the tiny gleam of a lightbulb. Conclusion: The proprietor is not far away on a cruise to the North Cape, but slaving away at something. Building a replica of the Kon-Tiki? Whatever it is, nobody is permitted to see it until he comes back, and only if you know the guy who has his number. Update: I went by today, and the two signs have been removed, leaving the bit you can barely see is already taped beneath. That bit carries one word: “Chiuso.” Closed. You can’t quibble with that, it’s final.This is not a comestible. It is merely a cat so remarkable he/she/it looks as if it were designed. Even the nose is part of the scheme. The eyes, though, give me the strange sensation of being weighed in the balance and found wanting. If a person looks at you like that you can try to do something. But cats don’t care.
