The Casa de las Carcasas in the Merceria (the name does not refer to carcasses, but to cellphone cases) wants “Peace for Ukraine.” Emotions remain on high simmer around here.
Recently there have been intermittent donation drives here, as in so many places, in aid of Ukrainian refugees. (As of today, nearly 60,000 have arrived; their main destinations are Milan, Rome, Naples, and Bologna.) So far, at least in via Garibaldi, these drives have been organized by Caritas, the charitable wing of the diocese of Venice.
They needed toiletries, toiletries abounded. (Don’t forget children’s toothbrushes.) They needed clothing, we decimated our closet. Boxes have been left, meanwhile, in various churches to encourage the ongoing accumulation of goods.
But this coming Saturday there will be a big new all-day drive, and frankly, I’m kind of intimidated. This is far beyond toothpaste and socks; this effort seems to be gearing up to furnish a hundred M.A.S.H. units.
I translate: “In our churches we are gathering in specific containers the following sanitary materials until Sunday 10 April. PRODUCTS TO MEDICATE WOUNDS: Sterile and non-sterile gauze, surgical drape in microfiber, various bandages (sterile, self-adhesive, iodoformic), bandaids of various sizes, set of reusable plates, materials for sutures, suture removal kit, hemostatics (to stop bleeding), tourniquet, sterile and non-sterile gloves, first-aid kit for treating injuries, scalpel, tweezers and medical scissors, medical equipment (aspirators, oxygen concentrator, PAO gauge, glucose meter with strips), kit for bladder catheterization with disinfectant, or venous catheters, IV tube setup, normal and luer-lock syringes. OTHER MEDICINES: Antibiotics, pain relievers, anti-hemorrhagic medicine, fever reducers, antihistamines. Saturday 9 April there will be a special collection in via Garibaldi all day … thank you.”
I’ve studied Amazon wish lists, I’ve pored over wedding registries, I’ve even looked occasionally at Dear Santa letters, but this cry for help beats them all.
But let us not be daunted! You can get lots of these via amazon.it. Many of them are very cheap. If you should have ever felt any desire to send scalpels or iodoformic bandages or luer-lock syringes to anybody, this is your moment. (I am addressing any local people whose hearts may be moved by this exceptional appeal.)
Otherwise, plain old donations will never go out of style.
You can’t even walk out your front door without stumbling over ways and means to donate to Ukrainian relief. At the checkout counter at the Coop (I admire the logo they came up with), this poster appealing for aid takes front and center. Curious that the big word HELP is in English but I’m not going to stop to quibble. “We have no more words. Only a gesture. Coop help the civil population of Ukraine with a collection of funds to confront the humanitarian emergency. You too can participate with a donation: you can give 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 or 100 euros. #coopforucraina Ask the register operator. Coop favoring UNHCR Sant’ Egidio Doctors without Borders.”This is practically haiku. Here it’s a new little boy, but every baby is a cry for peace.
I’m very glad to have had so many responses to my last post about seeing/not seeing the photos on my blog. There seems to be consensus on the theory I had begun to form.
In the words of one reader: “I have a simple solution, I just scroll to the bottom of your post and click on the link “Venice: I am not making this up” and it takes me to your blog page and I read your post there.”
Other readers, you’ll see in the Comments, have said the same. Would any previous non-seers let me know if this solution works for them?
We had to switch doctors, so I went to visit one candidate for the first time. This is the door to his office, seen from his waiting room. Was I wrong to leave?
A few readers have written to me from time to time telling me that they are not seeing the photographs in whichever post had just come out.
This is distressing, of course; I spend a lot of time working on the text, but just as much time on the images. I never thought I’d reach the point where I’d even hint that without pictures my writing is meaningless, but here we are.
I thought the problem might be caused by the reader perhaps reading the post as an email, without clicking on the post’s title and being mysteriously transported to the realm of the real blog (on what I refer to as my glamor site). But that may not be the reason at all.
I asked my blog tech wizard, and he wrote a very simple reply: “It could be that the email service provider they are using does not allow large images to be received. Some email service providers have odd restrictions.”
If I were to optimize the photograph, the problem might very well be solved. But this is a process that requires several steps and considering how many images I sometimes include, I honestly can’t see myself optimizing them all to resolve a problem affecting so few people.
So I apologize to anyone who can’t see the pictures. If there’s something you can do at your end to resolve it, I’ll be grateful.
Jacopo Dei’ Barbari published this phenomenal map in 1500 after three years of hard labor. It remains the gold standard for maps of 16th-century Venice; he has managed to include every single building and canal then in existence. The only drawback is the lack of extensive labels, That, and the reluctance, for whatever reason, to include the entire island of Sant’ Elena.
Reader Christopher has written the following Comment: I am perplexed and maybe you can help me. The Chiesa di Sant’Elena was built in as early as 1060 by some accounts. Saint Helen was brought to the lagoon and interred in her eponymous church in 1211. It’s curious that the church is not shown on the earlier maps. Any idea why this might be? ….
If I understand your question to be why isn’t the church dedicated to Sant’ Elena shown on maps prior to the arrival of her remains, I can only reply that I think there could be several reasons.
One reason is that there aren’t many maps of Venice prior to 1211, and those that do exist are not very detailed. Even 17th-century maps don’t show everything. Also, Venice has plenty of churches named for saints whose remains are not in residence. There’s no reason why a mapmaker with limited space would choose to show a church if it didn’t contain its tutelary saint. Which raises the interesting question, which I had never considered till now, as to who decides what to include in a map and what to leave out.
As to the dates you mention, “…the first chapel dedicated to St. Helen was built in 1028 and entrusted to the Augustinian order, which constructed also a convent. In 1211 the Augustinian monk Aicardo brought to Venice from Constantinople the presumed body of the empress. Following which the Augustinians enclosed the chapel within a larger church.” More confusion arises from the statement that there was a “hospital” dedicated to her, built in 1175 — 36 years before the saint arrived — maintained by the Augustinian order, for the care of the poor.
In the 15th century the convent and the church passed to the Benedictine monks, who rebuilt it in 1439. A century later, in 1515, the church was consecrated by the bishop of Aleppo and became an important religious center, with vast property and notable works of art. So evidently three centuries, all told, had to pass before her church (or let’s just say “she”) became sufficiently important to warrant identified inclusion on a map.
These sources don’t identify where the church was located, but I’m going to suppose it was on the island of Sant’ Elena.
Some maps, from the 1400’s onward, show at least part of an island floating off the eastern shore of Castello, just below Olivolo, where the church of San Pietro di Castello stands. So something was there, even if it isn’t identified. Yet if her eponymous original church was there, it does seem strange that so many cartographers didn’t show it, or if they did, why they didn’t always label it.
Benedetto Bordone made this map in 1539. Granted, Dei’ Barbari had carried off the palm in Venetian map-making. You have to admire anybody who’d try to come onstage after him. My point is that this map was less detailed than its predecessor, which kind of goes against the notion of map evolution, However, he gets points for clearly outlining the island of S. Helena, something Dei’ Barbari hadn’t done.
I think it’s evident that no map except Dei’ Barbari’s (1500) could claim to show everything. A good number of maps show only a smattering of churches, even though we know that there were many more. But he gives a only glimpse of the island, going so far as to cover half of it with a cloud-bedecked cherub. And yet the island, not to mention the mother of the Emperor Constantine, were hardly a secret.
If I ever find out why she was snubbed so often, I’ll let you know.
Dei’ Barbari modestly covered what was probably the island of Sant’ Elena with a cherub-bearing cloud. Why would he do that? I wish I could tell you.In 1559, this map shows not only one, but two islands below Olivolo. Map-makers clearly have plenty of leeway in deciding what goes in and what stays out.Dutch cartographer Joan Blaeu prepared this map in 1624. There is the island in the lower right corner, with a church and convent and vegetable patches, unlabeled and unsung just like so many other religious sites in the lagoon. Even San Giorgio Maggiore is without a name.
