Acqua Alta

Why blame anybody?

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The peak tide forecast for last night at 11:20 PM was 130 cm.

At around 8:30 we heard the siren, with three tones.  Not a happy sound, but one that does not portend water in our house.

About an hour later, sirens again, with four tones.  Not happy at all, though we still have a chance of staying dry. Evidently the scirocco had gotten stronger.  In fact, we could (as usual in these cases) hear it making its customary deep roar out along the Lido’s Adriatic beaches.

At 10:00 PM, a look out the window revealed water ambling inland.  It had just gone past our first step, which is fine because as long as it’s moving forward it’s not moving upward (at least, not much).

At 10:30 PM, another look showed that the water wasn’t ambling inland anymore.  It was just sitting there, with a few little ripples here and there. And no longer did we hear the wind roaring, which meant the wind had either dropped or changed direction.

Reprieved!  Because the fact that the tide was due to turn in less than an hour (an imprecise prediction, but that’s what we were going by) meant that at 10:30 the tide was already entering the phase known to us as “stanca,” or “tired.”  Slowing down.  Losing headway. Coasting in neutral.  However you want to think of it.

Therefore the tide wouldn’t be rising much more, if at all, before it began to go out.

At 11:00 PM, the tide was visibly receding.  Early!  I’ll take it!

So, instead of getting water nearly up to our top step, as per the warning sirens, it didn’t even make it halfway up the first step.  My guess is that it would have been a two-siren height, at best.

The traditional conundrum: Which is worse?  When the Tide Center’s prediction turns out to be right?  Or when it’s wrong?

If you saw this, would your first instinct be to call some city office to find out if it might be going to rain?

I haven’t read today’s newspaper’s account of all this because they become pretty monotonous. One truly monotonous component is the assortment of complaints from people about how inaccurate the forecast was, and the weary reply from the Tide Center that with the few coins a year they’re allotted as financing, it’s a wonder they get anything done at all.

I’d like to add another viewpoint in support of the Tide Center, run by the exemplary Paolo Canestrelli, who has been dealing with this for decades.  (I would bet money that when he retires — the prospect of which must be the one thing that keeps him going — he is going to go live in a yurt on the steppes of Outer Mongolia.)

Here is my viewpoint: Why cast blame on the Tide Center? It was established in the early Seventies in order to alert the city to possible exceptional high tides — a decision clearly inspired by the Infamous Acqua Alta (IAA, to me) of 1966.

But there had been plenty of high waters up until then. Venetians had grown up with it, and most of them could recognize the signs of impending high water. They didn’t need a siren to tell them what was going on.

Or did they?

I said “most of them.” Lino’s brother-in-law, Roberto, for some reason, seems to have been born government-tropic, leaning instinctively toward what officials say and not what his eyes transmitted to his very own brain.  This was unfortunate, because Roberto lived on the ground floor below Lino’s apartment.

Lino remembers that on that fateful November 4 there had been heavy weather all day (wind, higher-than-usual tide, all the usual markers).  He knew when the tide was supposed to turn, therefore he noticed immediately that it had not, in fact, turned.  Which meant that six hours later, when it was supposed to rise again, it was going to begin rising from a much higher level than usual.

While he was evaluating all this, he looked up at the cable (phone? electricity?) strung high up across his street.  He saw a rat running along it.

That’s when he knew it was time to start preparing for serious water.

So he went to his brother-in-law and said, “Hey Roberto, we’re in for really high water — we’ve skipped a tide turn and the water’s not going down.  I’ll help you get your furniture upstairs.”

To which Roberto replied, “No no, nothing’s going to happen.  The city (I don’t know what office that would have been back then) says that blah blah we’re going to be okay blah blah.”

To which Lino said, “Listen, it’s not looking good AT ALL.  I will help you carry your things upstairs!  Let’s get on it!”

To which Robert replied, “No no, blah blah they said nothing’s going to happen blah blah.”

To which Lino replied, “Suit yourself.”

And so, two days later, Roberto had to throw out virtually all of his furniture, which was so full of lagoon water it would never be usable again.

I wasn’t there, but I knew him years after this event, and he was still not the type to say, “Boy, did I ever screw up.  Why didn’t I listen to you?”  He was the type, of which there is now an over-supply, who would have blamed the city for having erred in its prediction.

It strikes me that people nowadays have come to use the Tide Center as a crutch.  By which I don’t mean everybody should take a course in meteorology, or that the Tide Center is incompetent, because it isn’t.

What I mean is that there are too many variables in the weather (such as the wind suddenly dropping) for the Tide Center to keep up with, minute by minute, to ensure that every single person in Venice is going to know, every single minute, what to do.

There was a life before the Tide Center, and when there was acqua alta most people  were well aware it was on the way.  When Lino was a boy, people didn’t even wear rubber boots. Who had money to spend on boots?  You went barefoot, as I occasionally have done.

Now there’s a Tide Center, and instead of helping people act more intelligently (its fundamental purpose), its mere existence seems to have given people an excuse to behave like quivering bewildered rabbits.

The Tide Center isn’t there to save you, people.  Only you can do that.

If the Tide Center is predicting high water, why do so many people put their garbage bags out on the street? Does that mean they don’t believe the forecast? Or do they just not care? If they don’t care, then I think that pretty much closes the discussion on how distressing acqua alta is.  This event was December 1, 2008, but nothing has changed except the varying heights of the water.
This is a man willing to brave the ferocity of the elements to get the serum through to Nome. Sorry, I mean to get the boots somewhere to people who are evidently stranded. Funny thing is, by the time he gets home and they get the boots on, the water will be gone.
These people are dangerously irresponsible. Don’t they know they’re supposed to be frantic with worry and indignation?

 

 

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Acqua Alta

The water missed the exit

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The acqua alta which was anticipated for this morning at 9:40 — and which was announced with the necessary and appropriate siren plus three tones at 6:15 — didn’t make it ashore.

That is to say, I imagine there was some H20 in the Piazza San Marco, but the maximum height the water reached was 103 cm above sea level, not the expected 130.

I felt I ought to report on this, to reassure anyone who might have thought I’d be shifting furniture at dawn, but even more to reassure people that weather forecasts here can be just as imprecise as anywhere.  If that’s reassuring.

Faithful reader Debi Connor asked for pictures, so here goes.  I know that this is not the scene she expected.  It’s not the scene I expected either, but it’s a lovely thing to behold.

The water at the edge of our street, at 9:50 AM.
And the street across the canal. All quiet on the high-water front, at least in our neighborhood.

There is another high-water alert on for the next peak tide, tonight near midnight.  Naturally we will be paying attention.

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Acqua Alta

Water? Oh, that again.

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We’re looking to get more of this on Wednesday.  Heigh-ho.

November 11, if you’ll cast your minds back, was a day with more than the usual high water.  By “usual,” I don’t mean as in “happens every day” — I mean as in “doesn’t seem strange.”

The international press took a small recess from its daily barrage of stories of bombing, war and death and swerved its attention to acqua alta.  Exciting stories about high water were hurriedly written by people whose brains were sending out sparks, like old Communist-era light switches.

As I sit here this evening, I can’t help noticing that 15 days have passed without a drop of water sneaking out of place.  But that’s not interesting, so nobody reports on that.  It’s more fun to treat each acqua alta as if it were the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse.

So here’s a bulletin: Another high water is forecast for Wednesday, which is more than likely because a large low-pressure system is bearing down on us, and a really strong scirocco will be blowing, and the moon will be full.  (There are also thunderstorms thrown in, no extra charge.) If I can know this two days in advance, so can all the people out there who keen and ululate when their stuff gets wet.

But what is really on my mind about acqua alta isn’t how normal it is, how there have always been acquas alta, ever since there was a lagoon.  I’m evaluating proportions.

The lagoon covers about 212 square miles.  The city of Venice covers about three square miles.  The lagoon has been here for 5,000 years.  The city of Venice for about 1,500, give or take.

The city and the lagoon were both designated as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO in 1987, hence were considered worthy of the same attention and concern.  Not to mention all those blue ribbons awarded the lagoon by the RAMSAR Convention on Wetlands.

Yet when the tide rises, suddenly the lagoon doesn’t matter anymore.  Even people who think of themselves as lovers of nature and defenders of the environment seem to blank out on the fact that the lagoon is one of the most important wetlands in Europe; that it is one of the most important coastal ecosystems in the Mediterranean Basin, that it plays a crucial role in the life of aquatic birds all over Europe.  That high tide might be normal; that the lagoon might matter as much as Venice.  Nope.  You get a foot of water on the ground and suddenly it’s all about the city.  I think that’s wrong.

I really love acqua alta outside the city, where all the barene get to have a deep, luxurious soak for a few hours. It makes me feel good too.

I was thinking: What if we took an enormous batch of wilderness (say, Yellowstone National Park).  Then we decided to put a city there.  Why?  Well, just because we decided to.

Then the wilderness starts to be bothersome to the people in that city.  Therefore the wilderness has to be fixed so it won’t be so bothersome.  We’ve got to cut back on bears, and on wolves, and on antelope; let’s get those pesky (fill in the blank here) under control. There are too many (fill in here), so let’s send them away.  There is too much (fill in here) right where we want to (fill in here), so let’s fix that.  We need more space to park cars.  We need more electricity. And so on.  Day by day all that world that was doing fine before we got there becomes more and more of a problem.

I am not romanticizing the past, nor am I proposing that we all get in the car and drive back to Eden.  I know that the Venetians did plenty of jiggering with the lagoon in the olden days.  But they were actually on the lagoon’s side.  They understood it, they profited by it, they needed it.   Their main concern wasn’t having too much water, but too little — they diverted entire rivers, including the Po, to prevent the lagoon from silting up.  They liked the water.

Of course there were occasionally extreme acqua altas which caused extreme problems (such as ruining all the freshwater wells).  But no Venetian of the Great Days would have proposed anything like MOSE — inconceivably vast, and expensive, and demonstrably destructive to the lagoon, and utterly irreversible.  Anyone who damaged the lagoon, according to an old declaration, ought to be compared to someone who damaged the defensive walls of their city — an enemy of the state.

Conclusion: We’ve got a city where it really doesn’t belong, though we’re all really glad it’s here.  But the lagoon, not to put too fine a point on it, is just as valuable, and as irreplaceable, as the city.

So I want everybody to just get off the lagoon’s case.  I’m going to get the boots out, and then I’m going to bed.

 

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Venetian Curiosities, Venetian History, Venetian-ness

Pay the midwife already!

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This little campiello  tucked away across the canal from Campo San Zan Degola’ is named “Campiello de la Comare.” As far as my explorations have revealed, it’s the only place in Venice still physically bearing this name, despite the official list of streets which claims there are five or six.
They don’t make it any easier by whitewashing over it.

It’s sheer coincidence that what I want to say about offspring comes right after my little cadenza on nuptials.  Though I suppose it’s preferable to my having done them in reverse.  I’m so old-fashioned.

So now we’ve come to the subject of “Children: birthing of.”  Midwives were the norm here up until the Forties, anyway.  My husband was born in 1938, at home, with the aid of a midwife.

Midwife, in Italian, is levatrice.  But in Venetian, it’s “comare” (co-MAH-reh), which I deconstruct as “co-mother,” which is pretty nice.  (For the record, it also means matron-of-honor and official female wedding witness.)

Though midwives are no longer common, an old quip hangs on in occasional usage today: “Xe nato a lugio per no pagar la comare” (zeh nahto a LOO-joe pair no pa-gahr ya co-MAH-reh).  It literally means “He was born in July so as not to pay the midwife.”  It’s one of many affectionate ways to describe a boy or man who could be called a rascal, scamp, rapscallion, etc.  What the connection could possibly be between July and the midwife and her accounts payable isn’t clear at all.  Even Lino can’t tell me. In general, I suppose it’s meant to show how the individual from the very first moment revealed himself to be more than usually scampish.

Speaking of paying the midwife, or not, I always laugh when I listen to a particular riff (thanks to YouTube) which was broadcast and recorded in 1973 by a then-famous, now-forgotten comic named Angelo Cecchelin (check-eh-YEEN).  This hilarious sketch is called “Una Questione Ereditaria” (A Question of Inheritance), in which he plays the part of a man who has been summoned to a judge’s office, he knows not why, but is already on the defensive for fear that he’s going to get trapped into having to pay somebody money.  The fact that he is from Trieste, accent and all, stresses the stereotype of people from the Northeast, especially Friuli, of being spectacularly stingy.  I digress.

It starts off like this (translated by me):

Judge:  Name?

Cecchelin:  Giuseppe Sante fu Giuseppe fu Anna fu nata Paoli. (The old-fashioned way of giving one’s provenance via the parents’ names.)

Q:  Born?

A:  Yes.

Q:  I mean where and when were you born!

A:  I was born in Trieste on October 23 1894 in Via delle Zudecche number 19 fifth floor door number 24 on Wednesday morning it was raining cats and dogs and the midwife still has to be paid.

Back under the Venetian Republic, though, these women were not Hogarthian hags with hairy warts using God knows what as instruments and God had no idea what as medication. In those days, being a midwife was a real profession.  I love any discovery of how forward-thinking the old Venetians were.

Here is what Giuseppe Tassini says in his peerless book, “Curiosita’ Veneziane” (translated by me):

“One finds that in 1689, on September 26, the Magistrate of Health established certain norms for the women who wanted to practice the profession of midwife.

“First of all, he ordered that they had to be able to read, and that they take as their text a book entitled ‘On the Midwife“; that they had to produce a document to certify that for two years they had attended anatomical demonstrations relating to their art, and another to certify that they had spent two years of practical experience with an approved midwife; and finally that they had to undergo an examination which was conducted by the Protomedico in the presence of the Priors of the College of Physicians, and also two distinguished midwives, each of which could add her own questions to those of the Protomedico…

“In the field of obstetrics, the surgeon Giovanni Menini particularly distinguished himself, and he had built, at his own expense, an obstetric chamber so well-supplied and correct that the Venetian Senate acquired it for public use, calling Menini in 1773 to teach obstetrics not only to the women who wanted to be midwives, but also to surgeons.  From that time on, surgeons began to attend women in childbirth, something which had previously happened only rarely, and with unhappy results.”

The “Ponte de l’Anatomia,” or Bridge of the Anatomy, leads into Campo San Giacomo dell’Orio.
This building on the campo was once the celebrated school of anatomy, where medical students and midwives alike attended dissections and lectures.

And now a fragment of memory comes fluttering across my mind: Some years ago, I read in the paper that the parish priest of Pellestrina — or maybe it was San Pietro in Volta — anyway, a village down along the lagoon edge toward Chioggia — made a radical suggestion. He remarked that everybody was accustomed to a bell ringing to announce a death.  I’ve heard this bell too — it’s dark and lugubrious and yes, you can ask for whom it is tolling, because plenty of people always know.

But what this priest suggested was that they also ring the bells to announce a birth.  I think it was a brilliant idea, and certainly the bells would have been cheerier than the funeral tolling.  Louder, in any case.  At the least loud enough to drown out the sound of the newborn’s shrieking and wailing, possibly caused by the ringing of the bells.

On the morning of November 8, our local fishmonger opened with this fabulous fanfare of welcome to his new son, Matteo. The blue bows are the customary festive announcement for a boy (pink for girls), but this is the first time I’ve seen so many bows as well as photos of the baby.
“Welcome Matteo!”  Matteo has the typical stunned. groggy look of the just born, perhaps increased by the awareness that he’s drawn a dad who’s going to be doing things like this. Or maybe I’m just imagining that.
Speaking of boys, a friend of ours had her first baby on November 13, in Vienna. So we put the blue bow on her boat.
Bows or not, evidence of little people (not to be confused with The Little People) is everywhere. I have no idea what sodality was meeting here this afternoon.  Maybe it was the Pink Bicycle Marching and Chowder Society.
This family either has ten children, or one child who has to change clothes five times a day.

In any case, bring on the kids!

 

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