My personal account of living real life in real Venice, and more
There is no earthly reason to show these photos, except that they are glimpses of what I’ve been seeing lately on the old via Garibaldi. Winter is a very, very good time for slicing bits of beauty out of the city. Don’t worry, they grow right back.
I have lots more (and many show the eastward view, too — it’s not always sunset in ErlaWorld). But no time to start looking for them at the moment.
Prepare to be stunned. The big news in today’s Gazzettino comes as a thunderstrike from the blue, at least to me who doubted that I or my non-existent great-grandchildren would ever see the departure of the “Boy with a Frog” from the Punta della Dogana.
He’s leaving.
One might recall that we signed a petition on November 21, 2011 to remove the statue and replace it with the long-beloved and historically valid lamppost. There was also a Facebook group organized with the same purpose, and while the time has been long and toilsome, perhaps they both had some effect on this happy outcome.
Tourists flocked to take photos of his appendages, but many Venetians looked at him and saw only what wasn’t there anymore, and what they wanted to have back. Including Lino, and also me.
There were so many protests of various sorts, including occasional calls to arms to destroy it, that the museum owner, Francois Pinault, paid for a transparent protective box to cover it every night, and an armed guard around the clock. A guard who, a recent article recounted, was required to work a 12-hour shift without anywhere to sit, keep warm, eat, or go to the bathroom. You don’t get to be a billionaire by feeling sorry for people.
But perhaps the “vehement letter” from Franco Miracco, ex-councilor of the Ministry for Cultural Treasures (“beni“) was what was finally needed. He wrote, the story reports, asking the city and the local Superintendency for Artistic and Architectural Treasures “whatever happened to the authorization to leave (the statue) there.” As in: The jig is up.
So the news is that on March 18 the work will begin to remove the lad and replace the lamp.
The city is congratulating itself publicly for its concern to replace the old lamp with a perfect replica, made from the mold (1860’s vintage) at the foundry in Mantova which had made the original lamp. I too congratulate them. I also wonder whatever happened to the lamp that was there until 2009, but there must be a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” injunction on that question. Works of art and history get lost in warehouses all the time. Cut up, sold, melted down, and so on.
In case you might wonder how this feat is being accomplished by a municipality which has made a cult of having no money, it’s being paid for by a group of companies which supply public lighting.
So is this the last we’ll ever see of the eight-foot stripling? Maybe not. The city has only said that “Its future at the moment is uncertain. The sculpture could find a new space in Venice, but might also leave the city.”
I’m seriously considering planning a going-away party for the little guy. It would be like a baby shower — we could all give him clothes. Underpants. Shearling coats. Collegiate hoodies. Compression running tights. Mukluks.
If I ever hear of a reason why this decision was made, I’ll pass it along. Of course, you don’t get to be a billionaire by explaining why you do things.
For now, I’m filing it under “The Fullness of Time.”
What I love are the glimpses of life I get when I’m walking around the city with Lino. Lino’s life, mostly, which by this point extends and entwines itself with what seems like virtually everyone and -thing we encounter. I’m convinced that I could point at anybody (or thing) at random, anywhere in the city, and it would bring some reminiscence to the fore.
Sometimes the reminiscences arrive under their own steam.
The other morning we were walking from San Giovanni e Paolo (please note: No matter what the guidebooks insist on claiming, primarily because most of them repeat what they’ve read in other guidebooks — fancy way of saying “copy” — NOBODY says “Zanipolo.” I have seen it written as the name of a transport company, but as for saying it? Never. They might have done so 50 or 100 years ago, but even if the Venetian language is still thriving, it too is metamorphosing, and certain words and phrases are as remote as “Forsooth.” People here go to the Maldives and Thailand on vacation and have all the satellite TV in the world. And it’s hard to maintain quaint old-fashioned modes of speech, no matter how much certain foreigners wish you would, when your kids watch “The Simpsons” and MTV). Anybody who wants Venetians to be saying “Zanipolo” almost certainly wants Americans to say “Goldarn it” and Mexicans to say “Caramba.” Except that specimens of the latter two might possibly still be found in a grotto somewhere. If you find a Venetian who has just said “Zanipolo,” I want you to bring him or her to our house and I’ll fix him or her dinner and take pictures of him or her and send them to the Gazzettino.
So as I say, we were walking from there toward the Strada Nova, wending through the mid-morning traffic. A man overtook us.
“Ciao Lino,” he said as he passed, without stopping.
“Oh, ciao!”
And he was gone.
“That man used to be a national rowing champion,” Lino said. By “rowing” he was referring to canottaggio, or what is also called here “English-style rowing.” This is a sport with a glorious history of Venetian athletes but which now barely survives, due to the inexorable increase of motondoso, by eating tree bark and licking dew-dripping leaves. So to speak. So a national champion from Venice is not to be taken lightly.
“His son also rowed,” Lino continued.
“One day they (the Italian Olympic committee) contacted his son and invited him to join the national Olympic team. No tests, no trials, no eliminations. Just like that. He was that good.
“And his son said, ‘Nah. Not interested.’ Nobody could make him care. So he didn’t go.”
“His father must have lost his mind.”
“You can imagine.”
I’ve never been keen on New Year’s, nor have I ever felt an urge to celebrate it. My instinct is to hide under the bed until after midnight. But that’s just me.
I can’t do one of those end-of-year reviews, it would wear me out. Living it once was enough. But bits of detritus are still flying off the stern of the Good Ship World as we speed toward the next 12 months, at least as seen from over here. Before they sink (and may it be soon), here are a few:
Mrs. Ex-Berlusconi’s alimony. Veronica Lario is certainly ending the year on a high note. It’s been determined that she will get 36 million euros ($48,000,000) a year in alimony. Or $4 million a month. Berlusconi is trying desperately to get himself re-elected premier of Italy, but I think a settlement of these dimensions makes it hard to take him seriously as a person who has the well-being of his country in his hands. But I think she would make a fantastic prime minister! Secretary of the Treasury! Chief Comptroller! If she ever wants to run for anything, she’s got my vote.
Don Piero Corsi and his opinions on “femminicidio.” The parish priest of the church of San Terenzo in Lerici published a broadside last week concerning the endless series of murders of women in Italy, awkwardly termed “femminicidio.” First of all, I learned that more women meet a violent death in Italy than in any other European country. But he went at the subject from another angle, urging women to take a good long look at themselves to see how far they might be “provoking” such a crime.
I’m not going to translate it for you, but you can imagine the mushroom cloud of outrage that’s bloomed from all sides. He hasn’t published a retraction, but the bishop has put him on what might be termed “administrative leave.” (Spiritual retreat? Re-education camp?). I was following all this with some form of calm until a perfervid feminist wrote a letter to the Gazzettino objecting to the ugliness of the word “femminicidio.” Let me go on record as saying that compared to the act it represents, the word is as the “Hallelujah Chorus” sung by seraphim. Let’s not waste time niggling about terminology — at least he got people talking about something that obviously needs to be talked about.
Divorced fathers sleeping in cars. This isn’t a funny line, it’s another view of the economic crisis as lived over here in the so-called Belpaese where, according to a cliche’ I sometimes hear, “people really know how to live.” There is a disturbing number of men in Padua whose alimony payments have eviscerated their budgets (is one of them Silvio Berlusconi?). By the time they’ve paid the monthly support, they have almost nothing left over. So they are sleeping in their cars under an overpass, banded together for protection. They wash at work and eat at the Mission with the destitute immigrants and alcoholic street people. I feel sorry for everyone, but these fathers have punched a hole in my heart.
Most dangerous items on New Year’s Eve: Homemade fireworks and clams. Tons of bivalves from Tunisia were checked at the port of Salerno and found to be harboring so many contaminants that, to protect the environment as well as people, the clams are being incinerated. The importer has to pay the incineration fee: 10,000 euros. And a fine. Nice. But there are undoubtely plenty of other clams out there waiting for their big moment. Eat beans. Make your own explosives.
Last non-news of 2012 and probably first non-news of 2013: The Calatrava Bridge still has problems. The ACTV continues its extraordinary managerial contortions. I can’t remember the rest, but the list is long.
Now to something beautiful. I do love one thing about New Year’s Eve here, and that is going to the last mass of the year at San Marco, and hearing them chant the Te Deum in Latin — the only time in the year that this occurs. I love it, not because I think it’s a spectacle, but because in spite of everything, we’re supposed to thank God for all His blessings, even the ones we don’t know about, and especially the ones we thought weren’t. The Te Deum does all that.
See you on the other side.