Water | Venice: I am not making this up

Ready on the firing line

September 18, 2010 No Comments

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 piÃ¹ di 10 codoni, 10 canapiglie, 5 morette e

5 combattenti) con un massimo di 425 capi stagionali (di cui non piÃ¹ di 50 codoni, 50 canapiglie, 15

morette e 15 combattenti); per la beccaccia 3 capi giornalieri con un massimo di 20 capi stagionali

Boatworld, Events, Tourism, Venetian-ness, Water

Regata Storica, the saga continues

September 16, 2010 No Comments

The newspaper was bubbling like a large pot of overcooked beans the two days after the big race, what with charges and countercharges flying amongst the rowers. Most of these wails of injured pride came from the embattled and disqualified pair on the celeste gondolino: Ivo Redolfi-Tezzat and, by extension, his partner, Giampaolo D’Este. D’Este doesn’t make public statements, he leaves the heavy lifting to his buddy. Who by now has made a second career of said lifting, considering all the trouble he seems to have been born to create, then complain about. At least one of his former partners actually gave up racing, he couldn’t take the tsuris anymore.

It's not just the first boats who are battling it out.

What I have been able to discern is that the judges in the first boat, who were keeping their eyes on the gondolinos in the lead, had already called out a warning to Tezzat for creating an impasso — a term which generally means “blocking.” To create an obstacle, in one of a myriad ways. Obviously this doesn’t mean he tried to literally put his boat in front of the Vignottini, but he was doing something which clearly made problems for them to proceed at optimum speed and trajectory.

It seems that the judges called eight warnings. That ought to be enough for anybody to grasp that it’s time to stop. Because after one warning, and another, and perhaps even another, the judge will call out that the racer now has a richiamo (ree-KYAM-oh) on his record, which is not good but not fatal. But if he gets more than one richiamo in a race (as in, if he persists in whatever he or she is doing), he is liable to be disqualified. Which is exactly what happened. Tezzat knows this, so I’m not real clear on why he took such a risk. Except that it seems to be his specialty. Perhaps he races because he can’t go skysurfing.

And he did not help his case by admitting that he had committed an error, which while it sounds extremely sportsmanlike and almost penitential, makes his rants against the judges a little hard to take seriously. He wants them to be fired, if not exiled and then executed. This is a reaction that’s not uncommon in soccer, but is a little hard to make credible when the athlete has been warned eight times.

I did mention that money was involved in this conflict. Glory, bragging rights, the satisfaction of having pulverized and humiliated your lifelong rivals, whatever else may be concerned, there is in fact a tidy sum set aside for the winners. “Tidy” as in 2,850 euros ($3,682.65). Per person. And then there are other prizes that come rolling in, too, such as the money offered by the Gazzettino for the first boat that passes under the Rialto Bridge on the outbound leg (775 euros per person in 2004), or the prize offered by the other newspaper, La Nuova Venezia, for the first boat to pass under the Accademia Bridge, and so on. Even though these prizes have been slashed, like everything else in the budget, losing them would make you bubble too.

As things stand now, he and his partner will only get the “training subsidy,” a symbolic little payment which is the city’s consolation prize. For the other races this payment would be around 200 euros, which might cover the cost of gas for his motorboat for a month. But for the Storica it’s 1,427 euros ($1,854.11). More than nothing, sure, but for a professional gondolier, which both of these men are, it is, how you say, chicken feed. Going home with only this batch of change in your pocket is unthinkable.

And then there was Tezzat’s threat to not even try out for the race at Burano next Sunday, which is popularly regarded as the Revenge of the Storica. It sounded good, but he and D’Este showed up, as expected, for the eliminations, and so will be confronting the Vignottini one last time this year. Yes, that sound you hear is daggers being sharpened to a scalpel’s edge.

Boatworld, Events, History, Tourism, Venetian-ness, Water

Another day, another Storica

September 7, 2010 1 Comment

The "bissone," the large decorative boats brought out for serious ceremony, are the centerpiece of the boat procession, and look just the way you want fancy boats to look in Venice.

Day before yesterday (Sunday, September 5, for the record) was the day of what is arguably the most important — certainly most spectacular — race of the Venetian rowing season: the Regata Storica, or “historic regatta.” Or, as I also think of it, the Race that Launched a Thousand Postcards — which depict, not the race(s) themselves, but the decorated boats loaded with rowers in costume. If you skrinch your eyes and don’t think, you could imagine you were seeing something from centuries ago. Sort of.

The commandant of the Morosini Naval School, Enrico Pacioni, and his wife are transported to the reviewing stand aboard an exact replica of the 18th-century gondola seen in paintings by Canaletto. — The commandant of the Morosini Naval School, Enrico Pacioni, and his wife are carried to the reviewing stand aboard an exact replica of the 18th-century gondola seen in paintings by Canaletto.

We were there, as usual: Lino in a boat (one of the red launches used by the judges, though which one depended on which race he drew), and me also in a boat (this year in the six-oar balotina, “Katia,” of the Remiera Casteo). Lino’s role was to administer justice; my role was to participate in the corteo, or boat procession, preceding the races, then to tie up somewhere convenient in a spot where we could get a good view of the races, then to scream our lungs out, if and when the spirit moved us. (It did.)

The balotina is essentially a largish gondola, but looks very fine from any angle.

Every year, obviously, is different, though there are equally obvious similarities. Boats of all types and persuasions, from tiny one-person s’ciopons to honking big motorized barges carrying entire clans and enough food and drink to support them till Christmas.

And of course there were the spectators — official estimates said 90,000 — massed together at certain key points: sitting on the steps in front of the church of the Salute, in temporary bleachers just beyond San Toma’, and in rows of chairs at the Rialto market. Maybe somewhere else further on that I didn’t discover. I’m not very clear on how 90,000 people fit into those very limited spaces, but I imagine the estimate includes all of us in the boats lining the Grand Canal, and the relatively few, those happy few, partying on the balconies of the palaces. In any case, there we all were. however many thousand we might have been.

IMG_0741 stor comp — I like the less grandiose boats better, like this mascareta belonging to the firemen.

I suppose it’s exciting to watch from the shore, wherever you find a space, but if you were ever to be in Venice on the first Sunday in September, I’d strongly urge you to smash the old piggybank and hire a gondola for two or three hours and watch it from the water. Don’t suppose you can just imagine how it would be. It’s not just the fact that you’re floating, it’s the fact that being in a boat makes you a participant in a way you can’t be if you’re merely pasted along the sidelines, waving.

Two things distinguished this year’s edition. One was the unexpected anarchy (I think it was unexpected, though murmurings a few days earlier may have been a sort of warning) that overwhelmed the corteo near the Rialto Bridge.

Or this pair, who I presume are father and son.

The Master Plan, as devised by tradition and the Comune (not always the same thing), was for the corteo to splash along all the way up to the train station, then return to the vicinity of the finish line at the “volta de Canal,” or “bend of the canal,” by Ca’ Foscari.

The first few years I engaged in the corteo, that’s what we did. Then the Comune, responding to the pressing programming needs of the RAI television wallahs, and who knows what other dark urges, decreed that we all stop on the return leg at the entrance to the Cannaregio canal to let the first one and a half races pass by. It was like shuffling a deck of cards, to get the corteo and the races organized in such a way as to leave not a second of the dreaded dead-air time in which people could, God forbid, get bored or something.

This was the mob in front of the church of the Salute. I'd have taken more pictures, but I had to pay attention to my rowing responsibilities.

So we did this for a few years, then increasing numbers of boats began to turn around and head back downstream before they got to the station. Then they began turning around even earlier, and so on, till we reached last Sunday, when suddenly it seemed as if some animal instinct urged the migrating boats to virtually all begin turning around just after the Rialto Bridge (which is where the last serious group of spectators are clustered, after which it’s just scattered random boats and who really cares who’s hanging around in front of the train station?). Or turning, as in our case, before the bridge, because the mass of confused retreating boats made forging ahead difficult, as well as pointless. The general atmosphere amid the boats could be summed up in the rude Venetian phrase, “Si ciava” (see CHA-vah, or “screw this/them/it”).

So that was entertaining. I’ve spent years here listening to rants from certain elements among the organizers about how it’s the Venetians’ festival and we should do it the way we want to, not how They tell us to, but this was the first time I’ve ever seen what “Take Back the Night” would look like in real life. It was kind of cool, actually. For anybody, of whatever race or clime, who is annoyed by being treated as a spear-carrier in somebody else’s drama, it was highly invigorating.

This dude had one of the best seats in the house, all by himself and his two oars. All that seems to be missing is a case of beer.

Not sure what the Comune has to say about it, though, because the Gazzettino was awash yesterday in the floods of rancor and glee from the four men contending for first place in the race of the gondolinos. Which brings me to the second thing that distinguished this year’s edition.

These “four men” would be cousins Igor and Rudi Vignotto, on the yellow (canarin) gondolino, and Ivo Redolfi-Tezzat and Giampaolo d’Este on the blue (celeste). To give you some perspective on this rivalry, the “Vignottini” have been rowing against d’Este and Tezzat since 2002, and against d’Este with other partners since 1995. And that’s just the big races; they all started this as kids. Speaking of being able to imagine things, I myself can’t imagine what fifteen years of battling in seven races each year adds up to when the crunch is on in the Grand Canal. But it could not, as the saying goes, be pretty.

Thirst, hunger, or loneliness were not problems facing the extended family on the barge behind us, who color-coded their loyalties.

So what happened was that the eternal triad (including the purple, or viola, gondolino of Andrea Bertoldini and Martino Vianello), entered the Grand Canal in a virtual dead heat, and remained so until the Rialto Bridge: celeste, canarin, and viola. And it’s not merely that they accomplished this feat, it’s that they did it for two miles (3.2 km). At top speed, or about 7 mph (12 km/h).

“When I saw those three entering the Grand Canal side by side like that,” Lino told me later, “I got a lump in my throat. It gave me goose bumps.” He and the judges in the other boats following the race literally could not hear each other through their walkie-talkies, even yelling, because however many thousands there were who could see the boats were all screaming their brains out. It was thrilling.

IMG_0802 stor comp — The three first gondolinos pass -- any ordinary mortals would long since have begun to fade, but not these titans.

This is a view of the race course. It's further than it looks, and all that twisting and turning means you've got all sorts of different tidal conditions to deal with, going and coming back.

Then, as usual, Something Happened. Last year it was Tezzat falling overboard and taking d’Este with him as their boat (celeste, as it happens — coincidence???) capsized. This year it was Something up toward the temporary piling in front of the station which marks the turnaround point.

The details are still coming out, and of course they’re as dissonant as a quartet by Charles Ives. The judges warned Tezzat more than once to alter something he was doing to the detriment of the “Vignottini,” which Tezzat evidently ignored. (I’m not taking sides here, I’m just trying to give the outline.)

When a racer does not obey the judge, after a certain number of calls the racer is disqualified. And that’s what happened. Three-quarters of the way through the race, suddenly one of its biggest stars was off the field, never to be seen again. At least not that day.

While down at the waterline, folks are chilling in their own special way.

One of the boys from the children's race consoles himself for losing at the last minute by eating several pieces of cake. It helps, at least for a while.

The next day the Rage of Tezzat reverberated through the pages of the Gazzettino; if this matter isn’t resolved (the “matter” being the injustice and infamy of the judge’s action), he says he’s going to hang up his oar, as they say, and quit racing. He won’t even show up to try for the final race of the year at Burano in two weeks.

To which one might reasonably reply, “Knock yourself out.” (“Fa di manco,” would be the closest Venetian equivalent, or “So don’t bother.”)

If there are any developments worth wasting electrons to report, I will do so.

Otherwise, I want to leave you with the joy of the bellowing, shrieking, hysterical crowds who got to see, if only briefly, one of the most dazzling moments in big-time racing anyone has witnessed for quite some time. That’s what I’m going to remember.

Food, Nature, Water

Something fishy

July 17, 2010 No Comments

Last night we had an especially delectable dinner, focusing (as often happens) on fish.

Sometimes we buy them, sometimes we catch them, and sometimes they thrust themselves upon us.

Two gilthead sea bream (orate) on the left and center, and the very strong, daring, not very clever gray mullet on the right. It was an impressive jump, but our plate was not his original destination.

As in this case: “Orate” (gilthead sea bream) are highly prized around Venetian restaurants, and are vigorously cultivated in the various lagoon fish-farms. We bought these two specimens from our neighborhood fisherman a few hours after he snagged them.

The other little guy, the slender one at the right edge of the plate, is a cefalo (“siegolo” — SYEH-go-yo — in Venetian), or gray mullet. Very delicious, but very snobbed these days by restaurants who prefer to offer the very trendy orata, at preposterous prices.

Your basic gray mullet, or cefalo. They come in various sizes and variaties, and we catch them with a simple gillnet when they're not practicing for the high-jump event in the fish olympics.

A few hours before the picture above was taken, our little siegolo had been swimming blithely along, zipping through the water thinking whatever busy ichtheous thoughts oppress teenagers of the Mugilidae family.

Suddenly, he felt like leaping. This happens to mullet of all sizes, I don’t know why, but it strikes usually in the morning, sometimes in the dead of night. You can be rowing along and they’ll just bounce out of the water as if there were a trampoline down there somewhere. And it is not at all unusual for them to land, not with a splash, but a thud, as they hit the bottom of our boat.

The first time this ever happened to me, we were rowing in a four-oar sandolo at midnight back from Sant’ Erasmo all the way to the Lido. Summer nights are luminous in the lagoon and back then there weren’t quite so many motorboats tearing around all night, or at least not enough to drown out the pensive voice of a nightingale that came out of the dark woods as we rowed along the canal between the two islands called the Vignole, or the lovely, solitary note — just one — of the owl they call a soeta. It was magical.

Suddenly there was a thump in the bottom of the boat, and it kept thumping. In the dark I thought it was a bottle or something similar that had fallen over in the midst of our various voyaging detritus. But no — it was a fish. A big, strong mullet, who evidently had rejoiced as a strong man to run a race to see just how high out of the water he could hurl himself. He found out how high, but he hadn’t calculated on the landing. Fish don’t get to go home again any more than people do, at least not those who launch themselves anywhere near us. His future was pretty simple at this point: The skillet and a slather of extravirgin olive oil.

Anyway, sorry as I am to see a mullet’s morning, or evening, ruined by being taken prisoner and then executed, I know we appreciate him more than a lot of people do. Maybe more than his friends and family do. (Do fish have friends?)