History

Ripples from the Costa Concordia

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Dawn at sea on the Adriatic. Capt. Schettino isn't going to be seeing this anymore.

As you might imagine, during the past almost-week the shipwrecked cruise ship has taken over everybody’s thoughts and conversations here (as is probably the case in the rest of Italy).

Yesterday I got what I hope may be my final dose, as I sat in the doctor’s waiting room.  Because he only comes to the neighborhood two hours a week (one on Wednesday, one on Friday — no appointments), the room tends to fill up fast.  I suspect some of the old dears come over mainly to have the chance to indulge in a good long chinwag. They pretty much all know each other, and it’s better than a cafe’ because you don’t have to buy anything in order to sit and talk.  They rarely say anything new on any topic at all — but if you do it right, it can take quite a while to contribute all the comments, opinions, and third-party bits of information to the information-mulching bin.

From this interminable gabfest about the Costa Concordia, I came home with many interesting things to consider.

1. Castello is populated entirely by experts on navigation. I heard so many detailed analyses of  the fine points of the engineering, construction, and behavior of very large ships that I can’t believe they, including the grandmothers, aren’t all retired admirals.

2.  None of the people present would ever consider, not even for a moment, going on a cruise.  The implication is that they’re too smart to risk their lives on a vehicle and in a medium that is so inherently dangerous, and which any intelligent person would long since have known.

3.  The ship is too big to make any kind of sense — 4, 429 people on board! This fact naturally sent up warning flares, confirming the intelligent people in their decision not to have taken a cruise on it.

4.  The captain screwed up.

First prize for originality goes to the lady sitting next to me, whose observation was the following: “And they even had a climbing wall on the ship! What does anyone need with a climbing wall?”  This was said with a whiff of scorn, which gave me the unpleasant sensation that in her opinion, you can virtually assume that a ship with a climbing wall is going to come to a bad end.  I’m not saying that she believes it deserved to hit the rocks, or that the people who were on it were another race of people who require things that are obviously no earthly use to decent people who know enough to stay at home and hang out at the doctor’s office.  But to her, the climbing wall was ominous.

The subject of abandoning the ship also got a certain amount of attention because everyone — including me — is utterly fascinated and bewildered by Capt. Francesco Schettino’s behavior.  The exchange between him and Capt. Gregorio De Falco of the Capitaneria di Porto in Livorno is harrowing, right up to the point where De Falco orders the captain to return to the ship, and he refuses.

A few commentators (not in the waiting room) have confessed a sort of shame that a nation which had produced such immortal seamen as Columbus, Vespucci, Verrazzano, Da Mosto, Caboto, had come to this. Italy has, in fact, been blessed by any number of men who had — as the saying here goes — “balls squared.”  And they aren’t all world-famous.

Capt. Salvatore Todaro

There is one who is famous only among Italian and/or World War II buffs, whose name deserves to be added to the list if for no other reason than to provide a counterweight to the crushing gravity of the current situation. Of course I realize that a hero in Column A can’t do much to redeem a caitiff in Column B.  But I still want you to know about him.

His name is Salvatore Todaro (1908 – 1942), and I am not referring to Salvatore “Black Sam” Todaro, the mobster.  Our Salvatore (whose name means “savior” — keep this in mind) was a submarine commander and came from Chioggia, just down the lagoon from Venice.  Just to indicate that mariners from Chioggia aren’t necessarily limited to tying and untying the vaporettos at each stop.

He died in combat in 1942 with six medals for bravery, whose dedications contained such phrases as  “resplendent example of serene, intelligent courage,” and “a mystic devotion to duty understood in its highest and broadest sense.”

Here’s an example: The “Kabalo Affair.”  Off the island of Madeira on the night of October 16, 1940, he attacked and sank a Belgian ship. He then saved its 26 sailors, and towed them toward safety aboard a raft. When the towing cable broke after four days, he took them all into the submarine till they reached the Azores, where he put them ashore.

As Lino tells the story, Todaro recounted later to have prayed fervently not to encounter any enemy ship on the way because he would have been forced to dive, inevitably killing his enemy passengers because the only place he found room to stash them was in the compartments which, in order to effect a dive, are filled with seawater.  One of his few comments on the exploit was “I’m here to destroy ships, not men.”

I realize that you have to be born that way — they don’t teach it in Captain School.  But they must teach something rudimentary of that nature, which did not immediately come to the mind of  Francesco Schettino. Which in addition to the loss of life, makes me extremely sad.

What the world is going to look like to Schettino -- and, unfortunately, for his family -- for a long time.

 

 

 

 

 

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Nature, Water

The Befana was here and she took the lagoon with her

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One of the squillion Befanas that swarmed the stores. Snaggly teeth: check. Broomstick: check. Stockings crammed with candy: check. She’s good to go.

January 6, as all the world knows, is the Feast of the Epiphany in the non-Orthodox Christian calendar.  Here in Venice, as most of the world by now must know (if it’s been following my bulletins), the day is personified by a grizzled old woman with a broomstick. This cheerful hag is known as the Befana.

Her arrival and swift departure bring joy to overstimulated and overfed children, even if the joy is tarnished by the fact that she signals the official end of the holiday period — back to school, the party’s over.

Anyone walking around Venice will have noticed, even with only one eye open (not recommended, unless that eye is dedicated to scanning the pavement ahead where the remnants of canine overfeeding may well be waiting), that her distinguishing characteristic is candy — specifically, a stocking full of it known as the calza caena (KAL-tzah kah-EH-na).

But anyone who has foregone the city for an afternoon ramble in the lagoon during this period will have noticed that her distinguishing characteristic is exceptional low tide.  This phenomenon is known as the “secche de la marantega barola,” or the exposed-sandbanks-of-the-ugly-old-lady.

Our favorite patch of lagoon, between Sant’ Erasmo and the Vignole, at a classic late-December/early-January low tide. Here the vegetation is of the non-green variety, but it still reveals plenty of snacks for the birds.
The tide is still going out but the egrets have already started noshing. Among other wonders in this scene are what looks like scattered rocks: they’re the half-submerged scallops known as pinna nobilis, or “noble pen shell.” They are returning after not having been seen here for years.
A pinna nobile as we normally see them.

High tide, of course, is the star around here, inspiring in transient visitors (fancy term for tourists) a mixture of fear, loathing, terror, pity, catharsis, and whatever other epic emotions a couple of inches of water on the ground can stimulate.  High water also makes for interesting pictures, even if they are all pretty much the same.

But every year I feel much greater emotions inspired instead by the absence of water.  When the tide really, seriously goes out, as it always does in this little window of time, a concealed world emerges, to the joy of the foraging wildfowl and the marveling eyes of your correspondent.  I know it’s not magic — it just feels like it.

The same stretch of water on a summer afternoon. Not only is the water higher, the area is also swarming with trippers from the mainland who come in their motorboats and like to crawl around digging for clams. By the end of the summer they have left nothing behind, except the pinna nobiles. I think these mollusks must have a way of burying themselves, otherwise these savages would be taking them too.

The first time I saw this phenomenon I was taken completely  by surprise. Looking from the Lido across the lagoon toward Venice, I saw, instead of the usual expanse of grayish-greenish-blueish water, a vast swath of brilliant emerald green, dazzling marine vegetation gleaming in the sunshine.  It was like seeing Nebraska with bell-towers.  Of course I knew that the lagoon bottom wasn’t as empty and flat as the high-school swimming pool, but seeing it was astonishing.  I was hooked.

Why does January (or this year, also late December) always favor us with this phenomenon?  Myself, I’d just give the credit to the Befana and move on, but curiosity has nagged me into looking for a real answer.

After more research than I anticipated, most of which only led me dangerously deeper into the astronomical wilds, I will hazard a summary of the situation.

The high atmospheric pressure not only conduces to the lower tide, it also brings weather which is little short of celestial. Yes, it’s still chilly, but could anyone want to stay indoors when it’s like this out here?
The outgoing tide creates a sort of lagoon within the lagoon, dedicated exclusively to the birds.

It’s all based on the indestructible link between the sun, the moon, the earth’s orbit, gravity, centrifugal force,and probably other things as well.  (There is also a correlation between high pressure and low tide — the higher the first, the lower the second.)  But this only tells us what, not why.

One source explains:  “The gravitational forces of the Moon and the Sun both contribute to the tides. The sun’s gravitational force is greatest when the earth is closest to the sun (perihelion – early January) and least when the sun is furthest from earth (aphelion – early July).”

Basically, the sun’s pull can heighten the moon’s effects or counteract them, depending on where the moon is in relation to the sun.

The Moon follows an elliptical path around the Earth which has a perigee distance of 356,400 kilometers, which is about 92.7 percent of its mean distance. Because tidal forces vary as the third power of distance, this little 8 percent change translates into 25 percent increase in the tide- producing ability of the Moon upon the Earth. If the lunar perigee occurs when the Moon is between the Sun and the Earth, it produces unusually high Spring  (not the season Spring) high tides. When it occurs on the opposite side from the Earth that where the Sun is located (during full moon) it produces unusually low, Neap Tides.

Neap: from the Anglo-Saxon hnep, meaning scanty. I knew you were wondering.

It so happened that the day I took the most dramatic photographs was December 23, when the waning moon was one millimeter from being completely new, which it was on the following day. I maintain that the new moon has the same effect as the full moon, as described above.

To sum up: In January, therefore, I deduce that the relative positions of the sun (low) and moon (high) combine with other factors — such as the aforementioned high pressure — to produce the unusually low tide.

You can have your Bay of Fundy, and I’ll throw in Mont-St. Michel as well.  I wait all year for this moment to see the lagoon revealed in its spectacular variety and richness.

Postscript: Low tide in the city is also diverting, revealing banks of mud lining the canal walls which were churned up by months, even years, of passing motorboats. It also, may I point out, creates at least as many problems as high water — if not more — for normal life here.  If the ambulance or the fireboat doesn’t have enough water to get to your house, it’s arguably worse for the quality of life than whatever happens in acqua alta — for example, having to put on boots for a few hours. This aspect of the secche de la marantega  deserves a chapter of its own, but not today.

Between Sant’ Erasmo and Murano, the bottom is revealed to be of yet another sort, mounds of hard mud covered with something green. The boat belongs to an old fisherman who is off in the distance digging clams where nobody ever goes. The brown flat fuzzy tableland behind the boat is all that anyone usually sees here, just inches above the water.
More of the same area, at sunset. The tide is still going out.

 

If the barometer has gone up to this extreme, you don’t even have to look outside to know that the water’s going to be amazingly low.
People sometimes ask me, “How deep are the canals?” And I have to ask them, “When?” This canal at Sant’ Erasmo clearly reveals the mark of the normal water level. And, as you see, we’ve only got inches to row on.

 

Most people think the lagoon must be at its most beautiful in the summer. I beg to differ.

 

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Nature

Winter sunset

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The Befana has been and gone, the Christmas decorations are stored or lost or thrown away, and only a few hardy addicts are still eating panettone, making the most of the two-for-one discounts the stores always offer in an effort to get the things off their shelves and make room for the galani coming up for Carnival.

January is a superb month here.  Cold and empty.  By which I mean empty of the usual battalions of tourists, empty of racket and clutter, not empty of interest or beauty.  The lagoon, possibly even more than the city itself, is brimming with enchantment in the winter. Please do not mark your calendar to come to Venice in January. I will hunt you down and slay you.

The day before yesterday I was walking along the brink of the lagoon toward the southern end of the Lido, toward an area called the Alberoni.  I was on my way to perform a specific task but the reason I was walking instead of riding the bus was that I wanted to savor the moment.  Buses and cars prevent savoring in much the same way that an inner-tube prevents you from sinking. It’s against the laws of physics, or the laws of something.

Of course looking toward the setting sun is spectacular, but the scene is no less beautiful looking away from it.

At this point I was hoping to give you a few filaments of poetry on sunset — not written by me, God forbid.  Written by some genius.  A few of them worked the angle of comparing sunset to death, but that wasn’t even remotely related to the mysterious magic I was watching. It was like being able to see a sigh.

In any case, even geniuses can only approximate a rough translation of the transparent, transforming loveliness of this silent interval because they are forced to use words. Even Hawaiian words, which are mostly vowels, are too rigid to express either a winter sunset or a summer dawn. As a writer it pains me to acknowledge that, but it’s just the way words are.

Speaking of words, there are a good number of them which describe various phases of sunset — twilight, dusk, gloaming, nightfall, crepuscule — and they all have precise definitions.  But I couldn’t find a word for what was happening in front of me.  So, no words.

However, if I were forced to describe it, I’d say that the panorama looked as if it were made of  mother-of-pearl reproduced as glass.

But happily, I’m not forced to describe it.

 

I wonder if the fish know it's this beautiful on the other side of the surface. They probably just know that the lights are going out.

 

At this point I had to go inside, otherwise I'd still be there.

 

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Venetian Events, Venetian-ness

Christmas spirit

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This splendid relief carving surmounts the main entrance to the church of San Giuseppe (Saint Joseph) in Castello. There are two especially good things here: First, Saint Joseph is, as always, in the background -- even on a church dedicated to him. He must have been a remarkable person. Second, the three shepherds are as accurate as artist Giulio dal Moro (early 1500's) could make them. The first one, kneeling, not only has a small barrel attached to his belt (brandy?), but his upraised right hand is holding sheep-shears.

Venice at Christmas — it sounds as if the entire city ought to be refulgent with gleaming and sparkling, as if every fragment of its shattered splendor should come together and shine in an unearthly and glorious way.

Yes, it does seem that it ought to be that way.

Instead, scattered efforts at decoration all around the city make bright flickers, some bigger, some smaller, that don’t come together in any coherent way. Venice is littered with Nativity scenes, in paintings, in sculpture, not to mention other aspects of the Christmas story — the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi, the Flight into Egypt, and even the Massacre of the Innocents –yet the general attitude toward Christmas is not excessively devout.  It remains essentially a domestic holiday and I suppose that ought to translate, if depicted accurately today, into scenes of Mary in the kitchen wrestling with something heavy in the oven while Baby Jesus is busy trying to teach the cat how to swim, or of them looking desperately, not for a room at the inn, but for a place to park at the mall. Meaning no disrespect.

Punctually on December 1, the Christmas mailbox gets installed outside the tobacco/lottery/toy shop.

Little old people, as everywhere, are being wrangled into some extended-family configuration; and the children are, I think, essentially like children everywhere — eyes and spirits fixed, not on the Star, but on the imminent deluge of presents. And not brought by kings or wise men, but laid on by squadrons of adoring relatives, even in times like these.

Perhaps there are gala balls being held in palaces, but my sense is that anybody with a palace is probably already at Cortina.

Still, the framework remains the same, at least in our little hovel: Christmas Eve means risotto of go’ and roasted eel, the ripping open of the presents, midnight mass, the singing of “You Descend from Heaven,”  and slicing the panettone at midnight and popping the prosecco.

Christmas Day means the big mass at San Marco, some fabulous meaty lunch, then either sleeping on the sofa or visiting relatives, then more eating, and more sleeping.

The day after Christmas — the feast of Santo Stefano — is another holiday.  More gorging on food, this time with all of Lino’s family.

One quaint aspect of this holiday is that there are no newspapers for two days because the journalists and editors and printers don’t work  on Christmas Eve and Christmas. This is an antiquated practice that is even more exotic than bearing in the boar’s-head and drinking wassail.  Newspapers in the rest of the world come out as usual, but here, for some reason (and I do not believe it’s because the entire category wants to spend two whole days in church) the newspaper-producers just don’t work on Christmas.

To which I say: Who notices or cares?  The broadcast journalists are working as usual, and the news continues to flow to us in an unbroken stream via the television and the Internet.  But somehow print journalists feel themselves to be special, which, I presume, is fostered and sustained by the unions.  And then they complain that readership is falling.

But this is normal.

This homemade Nativity scene was created by the family on Sant' Erasmo where we go to buy our vegetables. Who says there were no apples and squash in the stable?

What is going to be abnormal this year for the holidays is: Minimal garbage collection.  Of any sort, whether recyclable (there’s a weekly schedule for the different types of material) or otherwise (clam shells, coffee grounds, orange peels, fishbones, half-eaten cupcakes, wine bottles, etc.).  And this will last for two days: Christmas Day, and Santo Stefano.

Two days with no garbage collection — this is a startling innovation in the festal folkways, especially in a city which purports to be world-class, or somewhere near it, and during a period which could be described as garbage-intensive.

The Gazzettino conveys the explanation given by the garbage company, which is nothing more than an arm of the city government with a different name: The garbage collectors are all going to be too busy keeping the streets clean to have time also to collect the bags which are daily left outside the doors of houses and shops.

The very best part is that, given this fact, the garbage company respectfully requests the good citizens to refrain from putting their bags of refuse outside for two days.  So the streets can be neat and tidy. And the interiors of the houses and stores can become kitchen middens.

This is only moderately annoying to us, but for families with children, it’s inconceivable.  I can tell you right now, sitting here with my eyes closed, that the streets are going to be FULL of bags of garbage.  Or maybe there will be a mass reversion to the Old Way, which involves a big splash.

To review: We are requested to not clutter the streets because the trash-teams are going to be busy keeping the streets clean.  But if we’re not putting out trash, why do the streets need to be cleaned? It’s like the definition of chutzpah: First you kill your parents, then you plead for clemency from the court because you’re an orphan.

I tell you, sometimes life in the most beautiful in the world makes my head hurt.

But let us return to the reason for the season, as they say.  Here is a small assortment of glimpses of Venice preparing for Christmas.  But of course, the most beautiful scenes of all are arranged and decorated and illuminated where you’ll never see them: In each person’s heart.  Compared to which glass angels and marzipan cake and all the strings of lights ever plugged in are as nothing.

Out on the eastern edge of Venice, the furthest bit of inhabited land, someone has chosen to put up a lighted little sleigh with one reindeer.
I'm still mystified by whatever is hanging on the fence below the sleigh, but it does seem merry and bright. Could it be an illuminated poinsettia?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The boathouse of the Generali insurance company's rowing club always has a Nativity scene of some sort. This year they made it float on the canal -- beautiful and evocative, though the waves from the endlessly passing motorboats during the day make it toss like a ship in a storm.
An enterprising bakery and pastry shop hollowed out a chocolate panettone and put in little figurines of Mary, Joseph and Jesus made of marzipan.
They also added a small light to represent the star. But if marzipan can be made to resemble real fruit and fish and so on, why did they make the Holy Family look as if it were carved out of soap? Lino says they already did plenty to make it look like this, and I should just zip it.

 

One of the innumerable variations on the Christmas cake. However they decorate it, the sentiment is always happily the same.
The Nativity scene in a hut in via Garibaldi has all the necessary components, down to the empty manger. In a startling flash of logic, the Baby Jesus isn't installed until Christmas Day.

 

The glow of Christmas on via Garibaldi, silently and majestically and completely upstaged by the moon. And to all a good night.

 

 

 

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