Finances

The wonders worked by gold

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Simple little gold. I don't know how much this is worth, but I know I could use most of it.
Simple little gold, otherwise known as Au, or 79. I don’t know how much this is worth, but I know I could use most of it.  So could Venice, but I”m not sharing. (Dallas Refining)

Money in Venetian is known as schei (“skay”).  It is also known, by extension, as the thing we need most and have least.  In fact, we have none.  We never have any.  There isn’t any.  We can’t pay for anything because we haven’t got anything to use, not even bricks of salt or boxes of tulips.  We’re broke, and proud of it.

I’m broke because no money comes in.  The city is broke because money comes in but then it goes out again, somewhere, lots of somewheres, all according to accounting systems that bear more resemblance to Advanced Squad Leader than simple little double-entry bookkeeping, which was invented in Venice, by the way.

It’s something astonishing.  Venice can’t pay for the Regata Storica.  It can’t pay for the city hospital.  It can’t pay for repairing (fill in name of favorite monument, church, work of art here).  It can’t pay to build a new cinema for the Film Festival.  It can’t pay to correct the errors which were paid for with money which it didn’t have.  It’s trying to sell the Casino because the once-flourishing cash cow is running out of butterfat.  Somebody wrote to the Gazzettino that the best way to settle the evergreen conflict about whether the Italian Region of Alto Adige is really the Austrian Region of South Tyrol is to sell it to the Austrians. Conflict over, coffers bursting.

The only way to confront snaggly streets and exhausted bridges and anything else that needs fixing is to seek a sponsor.  The word “sponsor” has acquired the lonely, sacred, unattainable significance of “Holy Grail.”  “We have to find a sponsor” is the most annoying, monotonous, “I got nothin'” phrase since “Have a nice day.”  It means “We have to find an oil field,” “We have to find a rhodium mine,” “We have to find something that doesn’t cost us anything and gives us everything.”

But money there is, because it keeps popping up where it isn’t supposed to be — not only in Venice, but all over Italy.  Bribes.  Payoffs.  Fake blind people imbibing state subsidies for disabilities.  (A woman has just been nabbed for having requested — and received — a 300-euro contribution to pay for her children’s schoolbooks.  She claimed to have only 6,000 euros in this world.  But in fact, she turns out to have 480,000 euros in this world.)  One man who has finally been cornered for some malfeasance I haven’t been tracking was discovered to have 238  bank accounts.  Is that a lot?  I have no way of knowing.

If it's hard to earn gold to spend on cars and clothes, think of how hard it is to earn gold in Olympic medal form. This is from the Winter Olympics of Cortina d'Ampezzo, 1956.
If it’s hard to earn gold to spend on cars and clothes, think of how hard it is to earn gold in Olympic medal form. This is from the Winter Olympics of Cortina d’Ampezzo, 1956.

I do know that there were long, convoluted negotiations between the city and Pierre Cardin about the “Palais Lumiere,” the cyclopean ultra-modern glass skyscraper he wanted to build on the edge of the lagoon.  Everybody but the two aforementioned entities thought it was a terrible idea and finally he gave up and took his idea and went away.  Which means that now the city suddenly doesn’t have the 30 million euros (I believe it was) which they had already happily scribbled onto the “Income” side of the ledger.  Which means that now they haven’t got enough to pay for extending the tram across the bridge from Mestre to Piazzale Roma.  Evidently the phrase “You should have thought of that sooner” applies to more situations than to five-year-olds in the back seat of the car who suddenly have to go to the bathroom.

As usual, everyone is wailing about taxes and many are wailing about the cost of government.  (Feel free to wail in your own language.)  But if anybody has the sensation that the taxes are going nowhere, it’s possible to discover at least some of the wheres.  Such as running the government.  We heard on the radio that the cost of government in Germany is 4 euros per person; in Greece it’s 6 euros per person; in Italy, it’s 27.  It’s expensive to keep 630 people in Rome arguing all day about the other parties’ members and mistakes.

Am I going somewhere with all this?  Certainly.

I am reading a very diverting book entitled “A Book of Scoundrels,” by Charles Whibley (1897), which delineates the careers of England’s most notable highwaymen and other sorts of thieves and criminals.  Short version: In spite of their faults and failures as humans, he was basically on their side as long as they had panache, originality, and/or great clothes.

I offer the following segment in honor of all the fiscal frivolity that crowds the newspapers and the courts.  This may be the only period that I’ve ever wished I were a lawyer; I’d be fixed for life.

And there was that little unpleasantness about the Golden Calf. Based, as I recall, more on its calfness than its goldenness. A detail, and not one that would get me out of court.. (The Nuremberg Chronicle, Vanderbilt University).
And there was that little unpleasantness about the Golden Calf. Based, as I recall, more on its calfness than its goldenness. A detail, and not one that would get me out of jail. (The Nuremberg Chronicle, Vanderbilt University).

The characters: James Hind (1616 – 1652) a notorious highwayman of Royalist sympathies who happened to get his clutches on John Bradshaw, the judge who had condemned King Charles I to decapitation. The scene: The luxurious open spaces of Dorset, near Sherborne.

First, Hind took all of the judge’s money, told the bodyguard (who had judiciously decided to suspend his active service) to take off his hat, and then delivered the following discourse on gold:

“This is that incomparable medicament, which the republican physicians call the wonder-working plaster.  It is truly catholic in operation, and somewhat akin to the Jesuit’s powder, but more effectual.

“The virtues of it are strange and various; it makes justice deaf as well as blind, and takes out spots of the deepest treason more cleverly than castle-soap (sic) does common stains; it alters a man’s constitution in two or three days, more than the virtuoso’s transfusion of blood can do in seven years.

“‘Tis a great alexiopharmick, and helps poisonous principles of rebellion, and those that use them.  It miraculously exalts and purifies the eyesight, and makes traitors behold nothing but innocence in the blackest malefactors.

“‘Tis a mighty cordial for a declining cause; it stifles faction or schism, as certainly as the itch is destroyed by butter and brimstone.

” … The very colour of this precious balm is bright and dazzling.  If it be properly applied to the fist, that is in a decent manner, and a competent dose, it infallibly performs all the cures which the evils of humanity crave.”

Thus having spoken, he killed the six horses of Bradshaw’s coach, and went contemptuously on his way.

Take that!  And that!  Hind’s scorn might be wasted on the prime exemplars of modern brigandage here in the cradle of the Renaissance.  Not that they’re unfamiliar with scorn, and some irony manages to make itself heard from time to time, but discourses such as Hind’s would lack flourish in Italian, where utterances often depend more on blunt instruments (words such as “shame”) than the whetted poniards of true rhetoric.

But I feel better now.  Why?  I don’t know.  Maybe because it shows that there’s no point in struggling to be better people. It’s been this way forever.  Here we are, and here we’ll stay.  Evolution is over.

So let's revert to mythology, when life was simpler, if shorter. Danae met Zeus in the form of a golden shower, the story goes. James Hind could only dream of this. (Orazio Gentileschi, date TK, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg).
So let’s revert to mythology, when life was simpler, if shorter. Danae met Zeus in the form of a golden shower, the story goes. James Hind could only dream of this. The gold, I mean, not the girl. (Orazio Gentileschi, c. 1621, Cleveland Museum of Art).

 

 

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Uncategorized, Venetian Problems

The more things change….

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The sun is shining but the sky is dark. I know it happens everywhere but here it has a sort of metaphoric vibe.
The sun is shining but the sky is dark. I know it happens everywhere but here it has a sort of metaphoric vibe.

People sometimes ask me — or ask themselves, standing next to me — why the government of Venice doesn’t do one thing or the other to resolve the city’s problems, which are right out there for everybody to see.  It seems impossible that nobody has come up with any ideas for what to do to make it cleaner, safer, more efficient (well, that might be a reach) — or just generally spiffed up and functioning.  How can it be that no long-term solution is found for something — anything?

If we were to take the proverbial legal tablet and write the proverbial two comparative lists, one would be titled “Problems” (it would be a very long list), and the other “Solutions” (which would also be long).  But there are almost no points at which they recognize each other and embrace, like twins separated at birth.

But guess what I just found out?  People were raising red flags, launching the lifeboats, pulling out handfuls of hair in 1970 about the very same problems everyone complains about today.  That’s 43 years of standing in one place.  If I were a city, I’d be tired by now.

This would be a characteristic glimpse of Venice -- not so much due to the water, but the history of the house on the right. The windows have changed several times -- being opened, being bricked up, being put wherever there's a free spot. Lots of changes, none of which essentially changes anything. Yes, I'm definitely on a symbolism streak today. Bonus: a glimpse of the future, which isn't pretty: The missing block of stone beneath the lowest window, which has left the stone above it just hanging in empty space, waiting to fall down. You can see it, you can understand it, you can even know what to do about it. Except that you don't.
This would be a characteristic glimpse of Venice — not so much due to the water, but the history of the house on the right. The windows have changed several times — being opened, being bricked up, being put wherever there’s a free spot. Lots of changes, none of which essentially changes anything. Yes, I’m definitely on a symbolism streak today. Bonus: a glimpse of the future, which isn’t pretty: The missing block of stone beneath the lowest window, which has left the stone above it just hanging in empty space, waiting to fall down. You can see it, you can understand it, you can even know what to do about it. Except that you don’t.

As I have long suspected, it’s not ideas that are missing here.  (I mean, constructive, forward-looking, beneficial-to-everybody ideas).  It’s execution.

Tides of ideas flow through Venice from all sides, but like the lagoon tide, they go out again.  Most of them.  To return again.  Most of them.  Some of them begin to be realized, then they stop.  Then they start again. You get the idea. (Sorry.)

Here are some of the most telling bits from a big article in the Gazzettino last Sunday, written by Pier Alvise Zorzi. It might be useful to know that the Zorzi family is documented to have been in Venice since 964 A.D.  That doesn’t mean he knows more than anyone else, I’m just saying he’s not the latest person to see the fireworks of the Redentore and decide to stay here forever.

Mr. Zorzi reports that back in April, 1970, veteran journalist Indro Montanelli dedicated virtually the entire month to articles about Venice and its problems — its particularity, its fragility, the housing depression, the political bungling, and so on.

“THE ILLS OF VENICE? THE SAME WERE REPORTED BY INDRO 43 YEARS AGO.  From depopulation to the risk of the touristic monoculture, from the sublagunare project to the problems of housing.”

“I have in hand a page from the Corriere della Sera (April 23, 1970) with the headline: ‘The Youth Front for Venice,’ with the subtitle “On the lagoon one breathes the air of the Titanic — the discouragement which by now pervades the Venetians is the main danger to face – to break this passivity a movement of young people has arisen without any political label ready to support at the next elections anybody who defends Venice.”

Under some emblematic photographs are these succinct quotes from 1970, which read like telegraph messages from the front lines.  It’s deja vu again, and again, and again.

“Tourism: The city can’t live only on hotels and restaurants.”

“Housing:  Too many uninhabited palaces and the cost of rent is through the roof (as they say here, “to the stars”).”

“Dignity: Enough of sterile complaints: each person needs to get involved.”

He continues:  “A young person who was interviewed complained of the progressive abandonment of the city…the problem of housing, which is not only decrepit but at much higher rents than on the mainland…And the culminating point, ‘We don’t intend to raise tourism to the level of a monoculture. A city like Venice can’t live only on hotels, trattorias, tips.  It will become degraded.'”

And the solutions these young people suggest are also, by now, hoary and draped with cobwebs: More artisans, for example, or linking highly specialized institutions to the world of production and cultural foundations in Europe and America.

The Front eventually fell apart, but the old problems are still here, and have been joined by some new ones: “The ‘hole’ of the Lido (endless construction projects that are badly conceived, worse realized, mercilessly expensive); the ghost of corruption on the MOSE project (more about this in another post), the mega-billboards which continue in spite of new ministerial regulations.”

But wait -- I see repairs going on! A few years ago the bridge over the rio dei Mendicanti was in clear and imminent danger (imminent being the only kind of danger that gets attention) because motondoso was, as you see, breaking the link between the steps and the balustrade. This is not an unusual sight -- you can find similar large fissures between fondamente and the walls of houses as the walkway begins to break off and slide toward the water. But it is nice to see it being fixed. Until you've been here long enough to realize that without fixing the cause, the same problem is inevitably going to come back again, and again, and again, and again. Is that enough "again"s to make my point?
But wait — I see repairs going on! A few years ago the bridge over the rio dei Mendicanti was in clear and imminent danger (imminent being the only kind of danger that gets attention) because motondoso was, as you see, breaking the link between the steps and the balustrade. This is not an unusual sight — you can find similar large fissures between fondamente and the walls of houses as the walkway begins to break off and slide toward the water. But it is nice to see it being fixed. Until you’ve been here long enough to realize that without fixing the cause, the same problem is inevitably going to come back again, and again, and again, and again. Is that enough “again”s to make my point?

Zorzi acknowledges a few positive signs lately, small and tentative though they may be.  But the essential character of the situation is not only unchanged, but maybe even unchangeable. “The problem,” he says, and so do lots of people here, “is that everyone who is able to make the decisions is so tied up in the webs of common interests, either political or economic (but aren’t they the same?) that they move only with extreme, sticky slowness.

“The risk? That 40 years from now we’ll still be right there, at the same spot. I don’t want my grandchildren still to be reading, for example, about the Calatrava bridge, that economic abyss … or the suspected speculation on the renovation of the Manin barracks.  Or the hospital. Or the eternal MOSE. Or all the usual things which the national newspapers don’t bother with anymore because everybody’s fed up with Venice’s constant whining.

“I want Venice to have the dignity to save herself on her own, thanks to the citizens which consider her not as something to exploit, but something to invest in.  I want the Venetians to denounce the little local mafias, instead of trying to join them in order to gain something for themselves.  I want the multinationals who buy the palaces to invest in the city and not merely in their own image.  I want that each person, even in their own little way, should do something to safeguard our special character. If I were to live for a hundred years, I’d like to read something new about Venice.”

You know what’s too bad about this cri de coeur?  I’ve heard it before.

Which degradation is more disturbing? The kind shown here? (Anyone who considers the condition of this once-beautiful wrought iron to be charming can skip to the next question).......
Which degradation is more disturbing? The kind shown here? (Anyone who considers the condition of this once-beautiful wrought iron to be charming can skip to the next question)…….
IMG_1006 victory
Or this? Mass tourism creates blowing trash and cattle-car transport and other unattractive things which could be considered degradation. But you don’t need a mass of tourists to feel depressed. You can manage with just two, if they’re like this pair, relaxing in front of the church of San Zaccaria.
So I look for things that nobody can spoil. Like the sky.
So I look for things that nobody can spoil. Like the sky.
Or real human contact, of which there is still a heartening amount.
Or real human contact, of which there is still a heartening amount.

 

As you see. People lurking in crannies as the avalanche of uncontrolled tourism and uncontrolled everything surges over the city yet another day.
As you see. People lurking in crannies as the avalanche of uncontrolled tourism and uncontrolled everything surges over the city yet another day.
I didn't get close enough to listen in, but these Venetians are almost certainly talking about something that's either gone wrong, is going wrong, or will be going wrong. If I had ten cents for every time I've heard a Venetian say "Poor Venice," I'd be living in Bora Bora by now. The elderly gentleman, on the other hand, is saving his energy by merely reading about the day's problems in the newspaper.
I didn’t get close enough to listen in, but these Venetians give several signs that they’re talking about something that’s either gone wrong, is going wrong, or will be going wrong. (Perhaps it’s about work, or the mother-in-law, or the car.  But eventually it will almost certainly be about Venice.) If I had ten cents for every time I’ve heard a Venetian say “Poor Venice,” I’d be living in Bora Bora by now. The elderly gentleman, on the other hand, is saving his energy by merely reading about the day’s problems in the newspaper.
This is a view of what I think we need. I don't mean the doge (especially not this one, Francesco Foscari, who had enough calamities of his own). I mean the lion. I want this lion to come back and take the situation in hand, in tooth, in claw. He looks like all he needs is a signal from somebody.
This is a view of what I think we need. I don’t mean the doge (especially not this one, Francesco Foscari, who had enough calamities of his own). I mean the lion. I want this lion to come back and take the situation in hand, in tooth, in claw. He looks like all he needs is a signal. First thing he’ll do is throw the book at everybody.
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Venetian Problems

Big Ship reflections

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The "Zenith" carries stats stats
The “Zenith” in a happier moment.

Maybe all of you out there are sick of hearing about the Grandi Navi (Big Ships) kerfuffle, but it’s just about daily news here.  It provides a needed (though I wouldn’t say “welcome”) break from the other endless topics, such as everything else that’s screwy around here.

But something happened two days ago which in my opinion changes the entire scheme of the bureaucratic/political/economic volleyball game between the Comune, the small but obnoxious band of protesters, and the Port Authority.

As you know, there has been and continues to be an exhausting back and forth between these factions about What to Do About the Big Ships.  All these heated remarks and assertions, which keep fizzing and flaming like sodium dropped in a glass of water, are based on the conviction that a big ship is a clear and present and inevitable and catastrophic danger to Venice. Every remark on the subject, like acqua alta, starts from the unstated assumption that it is inherently hazardous.

As you also know, I am not convinced.  Not being convinced doesn’t mean that I find the behemoths attractive, but there is a difference between something being ugly and something being bad.  The protesters don’t want them in the city for reasons which have nothing to do either with the ships or the city, and so have created an issue where one didn’t exist before, and doesn’t have to exist now, either.

The subject has been twisted around in a way that brings to mind the observation of Seneca the Younger regarding the difference between the Roman and Etruscan outlook on the cosmos:

“Whereas we believe lightning to be released as a result of the collision of clouds, they believe that the clouds collide so as to release lightning: for … they are led to believe not that things have a meaning insofar as they occur, but rather that they occur because they must have a meaning.”

Because the big ships could be dangerous, we have to assume that they will be dangerous.

Don’t misunderstand.  I think it would be a terrible thing if a big ship suddenly lost control and ran into the Piazza San Marco killing countless people and cleaving the Doge’s Palace in twain.  I also think it would be a terrible thing if an eagle dropped a turtle on my head.  So many terrible things hurt and/or kill people every day — abusive husbands, cigarettes, car crashes, malaria-bearing mosquitoes — that fixating on the big ships seems excessive.

But there’s good news!

Two days ago a sort of fire-drill occurred.  It wasn’t planned, and it wasn’t fun, but in my opinion it demonstrated that the people who would have to deal with the much-dreaded emergency in the Bacino of San Marco are very much up to the task.

A Big Ship named “Zenith” (soon, I guess, to be rechristened “Nadir”) carrying 1,828 (or 1,672) passengers and 620 (or 603) crew members caught fire.  That is, a fire broke out in the engine room. The ship was not far from Chioggia, in the first night of its cruise heading toward Venice.  The fire was quickly brought under control, but the ship lost all power and was anchored ten miles offshore (seasick pills anybody?), in the dark, etc. Scenarios that are too familiar from recent Carnival line carnivals.

At 4:20 AM, after having spent ten hours trying to get the engines started,  the captain called the Capitaneria di Porto for help and a flotilla of assistance was immediately thrown into action.  Three large motor patrol vessels of the C di P began heading south, along with a large fireboat with firemen, two big tugboats (“Marina C” and “Hippos”), soon followed by another two (“Angelina C” and “Ivonne C”).  Aboard the tugboats were more firemen and seamen from the Coast Guard. Also divers.

The tugboats managed to attach their towlines to the ship — not easy in a heavy sea — and tow her into the lagoon at Malamocco at about 4 knots/7 kilometers per hour. All this took most of the day. At 11:00 PM the ship was finally moored at the industrial zone at Marghera. Total elapsed time: 20 hours.

Why is this good news?  First of all, the passengers lived through it and the experience didn’t last for days and days, as has been the case in some other similar events.

Second, and most important,  the Venetian maritime system showed itself  highly capable of resolving this emergency in admirable form.

So if they were able to accomplish all this in a long and complicated situation, why would they not be able to intervene immediately  in the Bacino of San Marco if a Big Ship lost power, when two tugboats are already attached, and there are rarely waves or wind to match those of the open sea?

Maybe Seneca the Younger has the answer to that.  My answer is that it appears they’d be able to do just fine.

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Venetian Problems

Dogs ruling the roost?

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There is a strong local conviction that bottles of water prevent dogs from whizzing on public surfaces. Doorways, walls, and even wells are often defended by these bottles. Whether it works or not, it's better than attacking the animals, not to mention their owners.
There is a strong local conviction that bottles of water prevent dogs from whizzing on public surfaces. Doorways, walls, and even wells are often defended by these bottles. Whether it works or not, it’s better than attacking the animals, not to mention their owners. Just another example of the struggle to coexist with the neighbors without resorting to weaponry.

There has been so much madness-by-the-metric-ton here lately that it might have been easy to miss a small but perfectly formed fragment of recent craziness.

The stories in the Gazzettino kept the city apprised, moment by moment (translated by me):

STOP THE CHILDREN’S BIRTHDAY PARTIES AT THE PARCO GROGGIA     THEY DISTURB THE DOGS

Not made up, I’m sorry to say.

There is a large, luxuriously verdant park in the farther reaches of Cannaregio known as the Parco of the Villa Groggia.  It is understandably a favorite place for families, children, and the occasional canine to frolic and gambol. You might have thought that this would be the Venetian version of the Peaceable Kingdom, missing only a chorus of singing begonias, but you would have thought wrong.

I have expounded elsewhere on the passion of Venetians for their dogs.  But there is a subtle line that divides passion from obsession and some people have clearly crossed it.

Many dog owners — which is not a correct term, because it’s obvious that many dogs own the people — firmly believe that their pets were born with certain inalienable rights, including running around off the leash and often doing more tangible and disagreeable things. But apart from the repulsive and unhealthy reminders of this fabulous freedom, there is also the potential for an uncontrolled dog to harm a child. This may seem obvious to you and me, but not to a dog’s bipedal slave. The kind of person who refers to herself as the dog’s “mamma.”  I heard it just this morning. I don’t know how men of this mentality — and there must be some — characterize themselves.  Maybe they call themselves “Uncle” or “Cousin.”

This conflict at the Parco Groggia started a while back, when a balloon, pursued by a tyke, popped, thereby “terrorizing” a certain lady’s little dog.  “From that moment,” said Tiffi, a mother of three who has a dog, too, “everything the kids do is under attack.”

The dog slaves — or at least this one belligerent lady — have made many complaints about the children to Franca Caltarossa, the director of the local playroom called the “Grasshopper and the Ant.”  They want the children to play inside, preferably (I’m imagining this) in the dark, in the cold, with the windows shut and sealed by duct tape.

Next headline:

NOW THERE IS A PETITION FOR THE VILLA GROGGIA

Citizens and mothers, to the number of 120, signed a petition protesting the requested ban on alfresco birthday parties.  It’s not easy to find nice green open public space here, for one thing.  For another, Franca Caltarossa revealed that this is only the latest in a series of disagreements with certain neighbors. “This isn’t the first time that we’ve had problems with the dog owners.  We’ve had to call the police more than once because they let their dogs run free, endangering the children.”

While the dog-slaves are fixated on how disturbing children can be, they evince no awareness of how phenomenally disturbing their dogs can be to most of the rest of us, even if we love dogs, on the whole.  They bark, they shriek, they scuffle, while their human lackeys either ignore or abet them by smiling.  It would take Nanny McPhee with a blunderbuss to re-educate them to the notion of living civilly with other people.

The story even got big play on the newsstand billboards: "Stabs to death his neighbor's dog." A fantasy of many fulfilled by one?
The story even got big play on the newsstand billboards: “Stabs to death his neighbor’s dog.” A fantasy of many fulfilled by one?

Speaking of armaments and their usefulness in re-educating the neighbors, just the other day an unidentified man living at Stra, up the Brenta River toward Padova, decided to handle things his own way.

The headline yesterday was: “Stabs to death the dog that attacked his.”  Two mutts leaped on his Springer spaniel and he couldn’t get them to stop, so he pulled out a knife and stabbed both of the dogs, killing one.  The carabinieri arrived before he could play an encore on the enraged owner of the two dogs.  He has been cited for illegally carrying a dangerous weapon and for killing an animal, while the owner of the victims was charged with not controlling his dogs.

But of course, things would never reach that point in the Parco Groggia, especially if we were to herd the little kiddies into a cellar and push a big stone on top of the door.

Is there a special circle in hell for the Grinch, Ebenezer Scrooge, Silas Marner, Captain Ahab, Edward Murdstone, and their ilk?  There must be plenty of room left for the dog-owners of Cannaregio. Or rather, “owner.” A statement from the Comune referred to “complaints from a user of the park.”  It doesn’t take many to get the wild rumpus started and evidently this person is already well-known for his or her grievances.

The first official voice of reason was heard from Erminio Viero, president of the municipality. “The park of Villa Groggia is for everybody,” he said. “The park is under our responsibility and there is no preclusion of children.  Dogs can circulate only on the walkways and on the leash.” This must be the first time many of the dog-people have ever heard of these rules and I’m sure they think it’s a fable.

“THE ALARM” WITHDRAWN FOR THE PARTIES AT THE VILLA GROGGIA

The city’s statement on all this is: “There has never been a prohibition (against children in the park).  Children’s parties will continue to be organized by “The Grasshopper and the Ant” utilizing the park of Villa Groggia, just as it has been established by the City Council deliberation of October 2, 2003 which is still in effect, which permits and regulates the parties, even for birthdays, of the city’s playrooms (“ludoteca“).

That’s pretty clear, but Mr. Viero couldn’t resist chiming in, with all the ardor of a Russian provincial functionary in a story by Chekhov: He denied “in the most absolute manner that there is any provision whatever put out by the municipality with the purpose of prohibiting or limiting the children’s parties at Villa Groggia, parties which the municipality is more than happy to host in its territory. Common sense and the most elementary civic manners suggest to the owners of dogs to always keep them on a leash.”  (For those dog owners who may lack common sense and the most elementary civic manners, there is also a city ordinance — see above.)

The last word goes to Tiziana Agostini, city councilor for education: “If there is a happy place for children , it’s Venice, and in Venice, it’s the Parco Groggia.”

One dog is on a leash (inexplicable), while another is roaming free with no owner in sight. This is typical.
One dog is on a leash (inexplicable), while another is roaming free with no owner in sight. This is typical.
This busy little spaniel was released on his own recognizance for while.... no owner in sight.....
This busy little dog was released on his/her own recognizance for a few important moments…. no owner in sight…..
Then he was very civilly attached to his leash while his owner went into the cafe. Manners are a great thing, but they work better when you use them correctly.
Then he/she was very civilly attached to the leash while the woman who owns the dog went into the cafe. You see? She did know what she was supposed to do.
This little dog is never on a leash, and has a shrill, shrieking bark with which it defends itself against everyone and everything. It's unbearable, espcially when the owner is sitting for hours with her friends at the next table at the cafe.
This little dog is never on a leash, and has a shrill, hysterical bark with which it defends itself against everyone and everything. It’s unbearable, especially when the owner is sitting for hours with her friends at the next table at the cafe and every moving object the dog can see needs to be screamed at.
I like everything about this scene: The calm, the tranquillity, the equilibrium, the leashes.
I like everything about this scene: The calm, the tranquillity, the equilibrium, the leashes. But especially the calm.  It’s possible that this woman hates children and everything they stand for, but at least her dogs aren’t being used as pawns in some silent struggle.

 

 

 

 

 

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