When last seen, Venetian rowing champions Giampaolo D’Este and his partner, Ivo Redolfi Tezzat, had delivered a document, at the start of the Regata di Burano on September 19, to the mayor and other appropriate officials.
The document protested their having been disqualified halfway through the Regata Storica for infractions of the regulations — including the ephemeral rules of “sportsmanship” — and called for the immediate removal of all the judges and the various committees who administer the realm of racing here.
Goodbye, cruel world. D'Este and Tezzat at Burano prepare to deliver their lightning bolt.
According to the offended parties, and their frenzied fans, something has clearly become so rotten in the entire organization of the races that the only solution is to tear out all the weeds, along with whatever healthy plants (they see none) may also happen to be in the garden, and start over. Presumably replanting the entire garden (to continue the metaphor) with people who are entirely, consistently, unassailably objective. The theory seems to be that anyone answering to this description will be sure to uphold justice, fair play, honesty, rectitude, and to act in their favor. If you know any such people, send their names along.
Their fans have also helped to keep the fire stoked under this cauldron of rage, and the latest contribution, by a so-far anonymous partisan, is the publication on YouTube of parts of some 11 minutes from the first half of the race on the official video of the race, complete with the sound track of the judges’ voices and caustic play-by-play comments printed (in Italian) by someone who makes it clear he is part of the D’Este-Tezzat column.
This video is made from the first judges’ boat during the race, and considering that it’s the property of the city, those who made it are more than a little irritated that it is now out on the web even if technically city property is also public property. In any case, things like this don’t help the general situation.
I do not contribute any comments on anything that was done or not done in the race. I may already have written that I am not taking sides; I don’t care who won. And yes, I am certainly on the side of justice and fair play. I am merely trying to give as complete a picture of the situation as I can.
The latest developments from the turmoil following the aforementioned dramatic denunciation have been two-fold.
First: Not only have D’Este and Tezzat not received any redress for past judicial misdeeds, they now have been formally disqualified from the next two races (the Regata di Mestre and the Regata de la Sensa), which obviously are in next year’s season. Of the seven races open to men of their caliber, this leaves them only five. This is a heavy sentence indeed; usually the Commission has to forbid only one race to make its point.
Naturally this decision has only shown, yet again, the treachery and incompetence of the entire system in the eyes of the plaintiffs. No more documents have been issued so far from the samizdat of the affronted duo.
The Commission has also disallowed the payment to them of the usual “indemnity for training”; in the Burano race it was 198.50 euros ($276.84). Admittedly it is a token sort of payment, a small addition to the equally modest purse allotted to each racer according to his order of finish. But this payment is contingent on the rowers participating in the race, so giving them the indemnity would make no sense at all.
Second: Two of the six men comprising the Technical Commission have resigned. For the record, they are Umberto Sichero and Osvaldo Zucchetta. If a third member, most likely a former champion named Bepi Fongher, follows suit (it is always unclear how his statements and actions are going to match up, though they often don’t come close to each other), the committee will terminate and the Comune will be able to start over (the Comune appoints four members, and the Racers’ Association chooses the other two). So losing half the committee would provide enough of an opening in what appears to be a severely bombarded and weakened wall of credibility and competence to allow some heretofore unfeasible innovations to enter the system.
What next? D’Este-Tezzat have announced that they are giving up racing. Only time will show whether they’re serious, or whether this is just another of those fervent vows racers tend to make under stress, like seamen in a typhoon.
One of many ex-votos promised by sailors in danger. Being saved is nice – fulfilling your vow to publicly thank the Virgin Mary for intervening for you is even nicer. (Museo Storico Navale)
Today I woke up to October, and while you can’t say we’re in the depths of autumn, I’m struggling to accept that summer is no more.
It’s not that fall is so bad — in fact, it has many excellent qualities — but there is one thing about it which I object to. No, it’s not the darkness creeping ever more deeply into the edges of the day, nor the descending temperatures, nor the having to dress with all those layers of clothing that make me feel like some mongrel foot-soldier preparing for battle — brigandine, puttees, Sherden helmet, gauntlets.
No, what I object to is the annual farewell to ice cream.
I know, it doesn’t actually die, it just sort of goes into hibernation. What dies is its natural habitat, which consists of heat, sun, and fatigue. Of course I could eat ice cream at Christmas, but much as I love it, I don’t see the point.
Little-known fact: Summer was actually invented by Italian gelato-makers. Until you’ve eaten gelato in the sweltering depths of an endless July afternoon here in the cradle of the Renaissance, you haven’t tasted it in all its extraordinary glory, its divine combination of flavor, texture, and temperature. It’s the coldness that takes it over the top, far beyond fudge, and I’m convinced that people who live with air conditioning eventually lose their capacity to completely perceive the exquisiteness of the sensation of that frigidity on the tongue. You have to have reached some tertiary level of heat prostration to really appreciate it. Sorry: No suffering, no redemption. No sprinkles.
Cones seem to have been invented by any number of enterprising people since the early 19th century. The division between cone people and cup people is deep and wide.
The great thing about ice cream here is that people regard it as food. More than food, something your body requires for survival in the summer the same way it requires, say, water. It’s not entertainment, it’s nutrition. Articles will appear (I love them) in which doctors and studies are cited praising its benefits to the human body. To hear them talk, you’d think you’d have to eat it even if you hated it.
“Eat gelato,” they say. “The summer weather demands it. Your body requires it. Have as much as you like, it can’t hurt you, it’s the only thing that can help. It’s crucial for everyone — babies, the bedridden, the new litter of puppies. It’s better for you than Omega-3 fish oil.” Well, they don’t say that, but if they did, I’d believe it.
Here’s an example: Somebody asked on a web forum how many calories are in a gelato that’s served in a cup. Note the clever way of putting the question so that it’s impossible to answer. But an intrepid reader didn’t hesitate: “Last week I heard a report on Tg2 [television station],” he replied, “that said that gelato has very few calories. I think they said 50 calories per cone.” No mention of how many scoops the cone contains, or even the dimensions of said cone. But 50 calories sounds about right to me.
Ice cream is a health food. You have to come to Italy to discover that fact.
One reason, among many, is its lower fat content compared with American ice cream. Another is the lavish use of fresh fruit in season. Either of those beneficial aspects can be annulled by adding whipped cream, of course. Not to mention that you can also get simple slabs of frozen cream. But your average gelato will not be the fat bomb that goes for premium prices back in the US and A.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US stipulates that to be called “ice cream,” the product must contain no less than 10 percent butterfat. The average is 12 percent. Premium ice creams in the US can contain as much as 20 percent butterfat.
Italian gelato, on the other hand, contains 7-8 percent butterfat. Funny, I don’t miss that other four to 12 percent fat at all. It only means I can eat more of it.
There are a few gelaterie around Venice which in my opinion are worth re-routing your wanderings to visit. The one in the middle of via Galuppi on Burano, the one at the foot of the iron bridge on Murano. (They don’t have names, or I’d give them to you.) The gelateria San Giorgio right here on via Garibaldi.
Who could resist the image of rolling hills of ice cream stretching to the horizon?
I realize that opinions vary. I also realize that there are cultures in which red-bean flavor is more appealing than chocolate/orange fondente. But anyone knows great gelato when they taste it.
Here’s something you may not have known: March 24 is the European Day of Ice Cream. Surely this hasn’t been instituted to jolt people into thinking of ice cream. It must have been to jolt people, such as European Parliament members, into thinking about what new laws and special ordinances they can devise to help ice cream propagate more profusely everywhere.
So who is the patron saint of ice cream makers and/or eaters? There doesn’t seem to be one, but we could construct him or her out of the following pieces: Saint Lawrence (patron saint of candy makers), St. Martha (dieticians), Saint Honorius (bakers and sweets), and St. Brigid (dairy products). Also Saint Dolley Madison.
Thinking, thinking...Maybe it would be easier if there were a doctor behind them whispering how good for you it is.
But great ice cream seems not to depend on geography — in Italy, I mean. Not trying to award medals, but I’ve had great gelato all over the map. There was that little storefront in Torino, and Vivoli in Florence, not to mention San Crispino in Rome. One of the most dazzling frozen treats I’ve ever eaten was served at lunch at a club in Naples. It was a watermelon sorbetto, deep red and with a rich fruity flavor, studded with small chips of bittersweet dark chocolate masquerading as the seeds. Technically not gelato, but unforgettable. And cold.
I suppose the very best ever — why try to categorize? It’s ridiculous — was in a small shop run by an old man in a hillside village up behind Trapani, in Sicily. There were only a few flavors; I tried the “cassata,” but it was only a million times better than normal cassata. The flavor, the texture, the exceptionally perfect level of cold, it all came together into something I am convinced that they eat in heaven.
Somewhere in Venice is a stone cone with four scoops of stone ice cream made just for him. He's been ready for about 400 years.
I’ve had celestial gelato in the usual flavors (strange, in the homeland of espresso I have yet to find a coffee ice cream that means it). And I’ve also had some of the unusual flavors: honey, rose, pomegranate, walnut and fig, pumpkin, carrot and celery (surprisingly good — think carrot cake). Also apple and ginger. Ice-cream makers, like artists anywhere, are on some kind of continual quest.
A few years ago, an Italian legislator got his name in the paper because of his complaint about the deplorable quality of the ice cream served in the Parliament cafeteria. Does this tell us more about the quality of the ice cream, or of the public servant to whom it was served? Yet complaining about inferior gelato, at least in the summer, doesn’t seem totally crazy. And you can’t expect him to be complaining about funding for public schools in August. Nobody would care.
Where in the USA do they eat the most ice cream? It isn’t Mesa, Arizona. It’s Alaska. I don’t understand that. It must be the alimentary equivalent of Stockholm syndrome. That, or each Alaskan eats 200 gallons of it between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
More minutiae: In 2007, the USA led the world in ice cream production, yet New Zealand was the country that led the world in ice cream consumption. Italy is merely sixth. More ice cream is eaten in Sweden and Finland than in Italy. There it is again: The colder the country, the colder the food? Bizarre. Unless they’re eating aquavit-flavored gelato. That could work.
So where do gelato makers go in the winter? The jungles of Costa Rica, or perhaps the Okavango Delta of Botswana? I can see them there, up in the trees, sitting on tiny eggs soon to hatch new gelato makers. Don’t laugh, there are more here every year.
I’m going to miss it, though. Prometheus brought fire to humans, but I want to meet the person who brought gelato.
She's either musing on how fleeting are earth's pleasures and how little time we mortals are given to enjoy them, or she's still wondering if she should have gotten the rum raisin instead.
The past few days in the world of the oar have been pretty agitated here.
The Commission of Discipline (no remarks please) has listened to the rowers and the judges involved in the dramatic events of the Regata Storica and has rendered its decision. An assortment of decisions, really, which amounted to throwing a couple of spare barrels of oil on the waves of accumulated anger.
Angry rowers are nothing new, and a fan that isn’t enraged and offended by something isn’t worthy of the name. But this time the judges — angry too, which also is no novelty — made the unusual step of revealing their antagonism to the public. This is an alarming sign of how far order in the world of Venetian racing has deteriorated.
And I sense that it’s not over yet, not least because when you throw oil on turbulent waters, you often get covered in oily spray. But usually the situation at that point is so perilous that the benefits outweigh the oil.
To review: Ivo Redolfi-Tezzat and Giampaolo D’Este (celeste gondolino) were disqualified in the throes of the Regata Storica on September 5, the most important and hugely most remunerative race of the year, because they did something(s) to prevent their lifelong rivals, Rudi and Igor Vignotto (canarin gondolino), from accomplishing some maneuver that might have been to their advantage. In fencing terms, this could be called the celeste parrying the thrust (or probable and/or imminent thrust) of canarin. Celeste was disqualified, canarin won.
The three leading gondolinos before things went south, an image which illustrates why tempers were incandescent. (Photo: Nereo Zane)
The Verdict: The appeal of Tezzat/D’Este was rejected. The new regulations stipulate that the judge’s verdict is unassailable, which in some ways ought to make the judges more punctilious. But that would be true only in an ideal world, and the Grand Canal is beautiful, but not ideal.
First point: Under the new rules, the order of finish is carved in titanium, hence celeste had no hope of being judged the winners in the cool light of the morning after. But that didn’t stop Tezzat/D’Este from registering a formal protest, hoping for a severe punishment to be inflicted on canarin. Hoping is fine, seeing as hope costs nothing. But their status as disqualifees remains unchanged.
Second point: The Vignottini did not escape completely unscathed, however. They received an official admonition (“diffida,” or warning) for “unsportsmanlike conduct” during the race. This is a black mark on their record, but does not comport any material damage.
Observation: I am not the only person who has noticed a certain incongruity between a decision which says that (A) celeste sinned and deserved its punishment but that (B) canarin also sinned but only needs a rap on the knuckles.
Judges at work during the Regata Storica, here the race of the young men on pupparinos. Nothing went wrong. Sheer luck?
Third point: The judges. The two judges in the first boat, Gianni Tonini and Sandro Fort, were reprimanded for a series of errors which did not help, and perhaps aggravated, the situation during the race. In the simplest terms, their function (true for most judges) is to anticipate and prevent problems by timely warnings during the race. A judge, as one of them commented to me, doesn’t show how brilliant he is by the number of punishments he inflicts, but by the number of imminent problems he manages to resolve before punishment becomes inevitable. That didn’t happen here.
Tonini got an official “richiamo” from the Commission, and Fort got a richiamo because he let the race start even when the starting gun misfired. (As in: didn’t fire at all. The rules say the judge has to fire again and return all the racers to the starting line.) There were also a few commands issued to the rowers during the race by both men which are hard to justify even if you don’t care who won. But the important point is that this is the first time a judge has been publicly reprimanded.
Extra surprise: Startling but true, Ernesto Ortis, the coordinating judge, formally and publicly disassociated himself from the actions of Tonini and Fort. I believe this is a first here; like many groups, the judges have always prefered to present a united front even while they bicker inanely among themselves. It is no secret that bile has been bubbling for quite a while against the perceived hubris of Fort.
Outcome: The reaction to all these decisions (all of them wrong, of course, in the eyes of everybody except the commission) was to be seen at the regata at Burano last Sunday.
REVENGE AT BURANO
You may recall that the infuriated Tezzat first claimed they weren’t even going to try out for this, the last regata of the official season. But they did. Rowers make all kinds of affirmations that they never act on, usually some variation on “Take a good look at my oar, because it’s the last time you’re ever going to see it.” Next day, there they are.
So Tezzat and D’Este did the eliminations (What? Aren’t you supposed to be in Queen Maud Land?) and qualified for the race.
The Vignottini warming up. Red, my favorite color. Just like blood.
They showed up at Burano on Sunday on the green gondola. It was time for the race. All the gondolas were at the starting line, each poppiere (person rowing astern) clinging to the rope and struggling to keep his boat straight in the face of an annoying headwind and contrary tide.
But where’s green?
At the last minute, Tezzat and D’Este rowed, not to the starting line, but to the judge’s stand (all you racers just wait there till we’re done….). There they handed a piece of paper to the race announcer, who read it over the loudspeaker to the officials grouped on the dock, and to the suspenseful, murmuring hordes crushed along the water’s edge.
Tezzat (astern) and D'Este approaching the judges' stand to deliver their screed. Notice all the other racers lined up back there, waiting to do the race. Isn't that why we're here?
This document announced to the world, in the loftiest terms and the purest tones of innocent, persecuted victims, that Tezzat and D’Este would not only skip the race that was waiting to start, but won’t be racing again until All This gets cleared up once and for all. It was a sort of “J’accuse” aimed at the judges, collectively and individually (corrupt, incompetent, superannuated, cretinous) and at the Comune, represented by its execrable functionaries.
Their declaration did not use the exact terms employed by Emile Zola in his immortal denunciation (“…a great blow to all truth, all justice…”…”It is a crime to poison the small and the humble…”…all the revulsion of an honest man…”…”And these people sleep at night, and they have women and children whom they love!”). But I think they would have used those terms if they’d thought of it.
D'Este hands over the document.
They then consigned a pair of symbolic oars to the new Counciler for Tourism, Roberto Panciera, and rowed back to the boathouse. I was on the dock and didn’t see anything oar-like changing hands, but maybe they were coffee spoons modified to look like oars.
This pantomime was not followed by stunned silence, it was followed by every shape and size of bellowed protest of passionate partisanship. There was one woman who yelled rolling phrases of excoriation in a voice of doom that could carry to the mainland and possibly farther. She was amazing. Just think, she could have summarized everything in the simple phrase “String ’em up,” but she clearly had quite a lot on her mind which had been pent up too long. If you’ve ever wondered what the vox populi might sound like, she was it.
While Tezzat assumes his "Here I stand, I can do no other" pose.
Then the race proceeded and the Vignottini won. No surprise there, naturally. God, how it rankled the public! I’ve never heard so many people so rankled. This was one situation where the daily habit of everybody talking at once turned out to be useful, because except for the Voice of Doom, you couldn’t understand anything anybody was saying. I thought about cheering for the Vignottini just to see what would happen, but the fans were like a mob of maenads, and I didn’t feel like being dismembered and devoured raw. Maybe some other time.
What next? I have no idea. There is already a sub-theme being promoted which demands the immediate dismissal of all the judges (why not — let’s just kill them all) and the installation of an entirely new cadre of judges, a new Commission of Discipline, a new everybody.
And then they row away. Feel free to cheer.
Only problem is, every time the Comune invites people to apply to become judges, nobody responds. Nobody wants to spend summer Sundays in all kinds of weather dealing with the racers, their relatives, and their fans who are howling that the judge’s dead relatives are dogs. Judges are likely to lose all their friends, too, who would suddenly regard them as unspeakable traitors. I know judges whose friends look the other way when they walk past on the street. I know: So they’re not real friends. But still. All this for 40 euros ($52) a race, and now there’s the chance to be publicly chastised as well? How could anybody turn that down?
The only option left to Tezzat for reclaiming his symbolic oar is to appeal to the mayor. The Vignottini resorted to this a few years ago, back before Igor threw his pennant into the canal in front of the mayor and their relationship turned to stone. But now there’s a different mayor, and let us not forget: Tezzat and D’Este are innocent.
I’ll see you on the barricades.
The race got off to a predictably exciting start, though the Vignottini on red are already pulling away. The basilica and campanile on Torcello look on impassively; after a thousand years, summer and winter, it's hard to get excited about any of this.
Walking home yesterday afternoon, I noticed this boat. And I instantly deduced that hunting season is about to open in the Venetian lagoon. It isn’t just the camouflaging reeds that give the game away, it’s the fact that they are freshly cut.
Actually, a glance at the Veneto Region’s official calendar of hunting season shows that it had already begun (September 1, and a few scattered dates thereafter) for a small group of winged creatures that keep to the shore, such as turtledoves, blackbirds, jays, magpies, and crows.
The Northern pochard. (Photo: Gary Houston)
The Veneto has the highest density of hunters in Italy. However, the total number of hunters in Italy has fallen from 1.4 million in 2000 to about 800,000 today. I can’t usefully interpret either one of those facts but there they are.
Bird hunting — I don’t mean pheasant and duck and other famous flying comestibles, but lesser-known sort-of comestibles such as song thrushes and skylarks — is a topic that could easily lead us into unpleasant political and environmentalist territory (the island of Ponza, for example, is essentially a seasonal killing field for any avian who enters its air space), so I’ll just stick to the basics.
In the Veneto, from September 19 till January 31, a person sitting in a blind freezing in the dark in the middle of the water is permitted to attempt to slay mallards, coots, common moorhens, common teals, shovelers, pochards, gadwalls, water rails, wigeons, Northern pintails, garganeys, tufted ducks, common snipes, Jack snipes, and lapwings.
Their landbound confreres gazing skyward will also be freezing and waiting for partridge, red-legged partridge, pheasant, ruff, skylark, woodcock, fieldfare, song thrush, redwing, common wood pigeon, and quail.
Male and female tufted duck. (Photo: Andreas Trepte)
The catbird isn’t found in Europe, but all these hunters will be sitting in its proverbial seat starting tomorrow, because the Venetian lagoon is situated on one of the most important flyways in Europe. At certain times of year there can be as many as 200,000 birds here, nesting or resting or spending the winter diving, dabbling, or digging through the mudflats at low tide.
When UNESCO designated Venice as a World Heritage Site in 1987, it specifically included the Venetian lagoon. You wouldn’t have guessed that by the antics that go on in it, but let’s move on for now. The lagoon covers an area of some 212 square miles, and is one of the few coastal wetlands left in Europe, a region which has lost 2/3 of its wetlands in the past 100 years.
In other words, the lagoon is one of the best places in Europe to be a bird, except in the winter. Depending on your species, a hunter is allowed to bag from 35 to 50 of your relatives in a season.
The days designated for this divertissement are Wednesday and Saturday in the Southern Lagoon, and Thursday and Sunday in the Northern and the Caorle Lagoon (where Hemingway used to love to hunt).
When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying,” Ernest Hemingway wrote. “They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.” You can’t say that about everything, or even most things, in this life, so I’ll let him have the last word on the subject.
I’m glad I mentioned hunting, though, because it constitutes a direct link to the Great Days of the Venetian Republic.
The male mallard, which the old Venetians described as the "wild duck with the red feet," was the original ducal gift. (Photo: Greg S. Garrett)
From farthest antiquity, the doge was expected to give a specific Christmas present to all the noble families, who formed the Great Council (there were 1,200 such families for a long period, then the number began to increase).
That present was five mallards per family, which comes to 6,000 ducks a year. Eventually this number dropped to two, but finally there were so few birds that on June 28, 1521, the Council decreed that instead of the ducks, the doge would give each patrician a coin specially minted for the occasion, worth one-quarter of a ducat. This coin was known as an osella, Venetian for “bird.”
The osella of Doge Pietro Grimani (1751). (Photo: Classical Numismatic Group, Inc.)
With the exception of two extremely short-lived gentlemen, every doge from Antonio Grimani (1521) to Ludovico Manin (1797) minted an osella each year. One side bore a generic image of him kneeling before San Marco, and the obverse a particular design highlighting an important event or aspect of the past year.
The poster for the exhibition of the oselle owned by the Banca Popolare di Vicenza.
The Banca Popolare di Vicenza (People’s Bank of Vicenza) happens to own the most complete collection of oselle in the world visible to the public, which comprises 275 coins. After the middle of the 17th century, the oselle were minted in gold. The Bank of Vicenza collection was on display here for a short while last spring, and even though I know next to nothing about numismatics, they were spectacular.
Just think: Even when they start with ducks they end up with money. I love this town.
One of who knows how many duck blinds left behind when the season ends.
a)selvaggina stanziale: 2 capi giornalieri con un massimo di 35 capi stagionali; per la lepre, 1 capo
giornaliero con un massimo di 5 capi stagionali;
b)selvaggina migratoria: 25 capi giornalieri (di cui non più di 10 codoni, 10 canapiglie, 5 morette e
5 combattenti) con un massimo di 425 capi stagionali (di cui non più di 50 codoni, 50 canapiglie, 15
morette e 15 combattenti); per la beccaccia 3 capi giornalieri con un massimo di 20 capi stagionali
No, what I object to is the annual farewell to ice cream.
