Venice: I am not making this up

See you at the next St. Peter

July 6, 2011 2 Comments

IMG_0503 sp — When the sunlight looks like this, it's time for the party to start.

The dust has now settled on the festa of San Piero de Casteo and everyone is recovering (or not) from the toil, excitement, racket, and nearly suffocating odors of frying fish and charring ribs.

Fine as all this may be, it used to be, in many ways, even better. Lino Penzo, president of the Remiera Casteo (our very local rowing club), was born in the next campo over, an open space named Campo Ruga. And he remembers it the old way.

“There wasn’t anything here,” he said, looking at the stretch of grass in front of the church. The party was in Campo Ruga where, to hear him tell it, as many people lived as in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Families everywhere. Kids everywhere. Drama without any pause for station identification. “We used to put cushions on the windowsill,” Lino said, “and just watch what was going on outside. It was like the theatre, it never stopped.”

There was the day a certain man went across to the osteria to drink some wine. Evidently his wife expressed the opinion that he was doing this far too often, so he locked her in the house and went anyway. So she fixed up a bedsheet and let herself down through the window. I don’t know if she chased him around the campo brandishing a rolling pin, but I can imagine it.

And there was a woman whose nerves would give out whenever there was a fight in the family (evidently she preferred the “flight” option of the famous pair of possibilities), and she’d suddenly go into a swoon. Everybody knew this, so when anybody heard the sound of nearby strife the men in the cafe would put out a chair for her. They knew she’d be needing it to fall onto, sooner or later, so they got ready.

And there were shops everywhere. The series of doors we see today, many of them shut forever, belonged to a collection of every enterprise necessary for human life. Two (two!) bakeries, fruit and vegetable vendors, a butcher, a cheese and milk shop, a cobbler, probably also an undertaker, though he didn’t mention it. I don’t remember the rest, but they were all there. You didn’t have to go more than 20 steps from home to buy everything you needed. As in most Venetian neighborhoods, going to San Marco was unknown, mainly because it was pointless. This was the world.

IMG_0792 sp — This is Campo Ruga on a typical morning. True, there are usually people traversing it on their way to hither and to yon, but the lone trattoria is now the only reason to stop. We just have to imagine this with a few thousand people in it, night and day, like every other campo used to be.

As for the festa, it was celebrated in the campo, and involved mostly eating. Long tables were set up, where everyone sat and ate tons — “tons” — of bovoleti, and sarde in saor, and other traditional Venetian food.

Eventually one day somebody suggested moving over to the big empty grassy area in front of the church, and put up a little stand with some food. From there, the festa just got bigger and bigger, and ultimately never went back to Campo Ruga.

So now we have live music and big balloons and grilled animals and gondola rides, and a big mass with the patriarch, and even a cake competition. It’s like the county fair, without quilts.

IMG_0061 sp crop — I wish I could know what she was telling him. Whatever it was, he was paying attention. Obviously he hadn't yet been crazed by sugar, fat, and all the stuff the other kids had.

IMG_0094 sp — Greta was creating with the concentration of an icon-painter. Evidently knowing her creation was going to be gone tomorrow had no importance whatever. She's obviously destined for greatness.

IMG_0515 sp — There was a lot of this going on. It was great.

IMG_0207 sp — One man was producing these tumuli of french fries, but it took four people to study the numbered bits of paper to figure out which desperate customer got the next boxful.

IMG_0130 sp — This lone woman stood over vats of boiling spaghetti like the Delphic oracle, and after five nights of this she could probably have made a few prophecies herself.

IMG_0234 sp — The last ray of light in a dying universe will be the gleam of the cell phone of a teenage girl.

: This useful sign may look completely at home here, except for one thing. Why isn't it in Italian? If they'd wanted to look really cool, they ought to have written it in Latvian. DARBINIEKIEM TIKAI. That certainly would have gotten people's attention..

Venetian Events

St. Peter’s weather report

June 30, 2011 1 Comment

I knew two days ago what the weather was going to be last night. I knew it without checking the barometer, or the online weather forecast, or the newspaper. In fact, I knew it a year ago.

All I have to do is check the calendar.

June 29 is the Feast of St. Peter, as you know. And as everyone else knows — at least around here — that means there will be thunder. Probably rain. Possibly even hail, but that’s not so common.

Someone unknown to me has undoubtedly long since figured out why this is. All I know is that St. Peter likes thunder. They tell frightened children he’s cleaning the wine barrels. As time goes on there probably won’t be any children left who know what a wine barrel looks like, but I suppose St. Peter could be cleaning barrels full of discounted, slightly damaged designer handbags.

What St. Peter also oversees is one of the best festivals in Venice. Maybe anywhere. The festa of San Piero de Casteo, held on the greensward in front of the eponymous church (for centuries the cathedral of Venice), is a great moment in the neighborhood year. It’s five evenings of fun, frolic, and food, and dogs and kids and free gondola rides and also loud music that goes on far into the night. (St. Peter cleaning the Bose amplifiers?)

The proceeds, the fruit of phenomenal labor by squadrons of scouts and parishioners, some of whom in other places might have been expected to be doing nothing more strenuous than changing channels, are donated to all sorts of charitable causes.

IMG_0005 sp — The first people come with some semblance of tranquility and control. It doesn't last long.

Last night, being Wednesday, and the first night, the crowd was reasonably small, which meant you could still see grass and bits of walkway. The big event was the performance of “I Rusteghi,” one of the many famous Venetian comedies by the extremely famous and important Carlo Goldoni (1707 – 1793). A live performance of a certified classic — and for free. You can’t get that every day.

We wandered over there last night to get in the mood for the next few days; we (or at least I) needed to start strengthening my mental muscles to confront Friday and Saturday night, the peak moments of this event.

IMG_0019 sp — One of life's great mysteries: That it's more interesting to look at the person sitting next to you on a screen than it is to just turn to look at him or her for real.

It’s not so much the blasting music, which we can hear from our little hovel 293 meters/962 feet away, because eventually the band packs up and goes home.

It’s the enthusiastic shouting of overexcited people walking home, all of them funneling down the street which is just outside our bedroom window. It’s like having 2,000 people yelling good-night for an hour standing right in front of the bed.

We shut the windows and turn the fan on “high.” The only other solution would be to go to the mountains every night.

Still, if for some reason this didn’t occur, I’d be sorry. It would be like not having thunder or lightning or hail. It would be wrong.

And yes, it did rain last night, but only some time after midnight so as not to spoil the party. St. Peter thinks of everything.

Venetian Curiosities

Ciao Capitano

June 28, 2011 8 Comments

The other afternoon, as I was lolling on the embankment of our rowing club lightly toasting my skin and reflecting on how monotonous the sound of the surf was, surf caused by the incessant passing of every conceivable type of motorized boat, I noticed something unusual.

Immag016 marella — All I had was my cell phone, so the quality of this picture is regrettable. The wreath is evidently gifted with total protective coloration (they ordered a wreath the color of bricks and busted-up pilings?). It is sitting on the edge of the water at the point closest to the viewer, just to the left of the big chunk of concrete. What a place to run aground.

Just a few yards away is a mass of rocks, sand, bricks and other detritus which over time have created a small sort of beach, and on it there was something alive. Well, it had been alive, in the sense that its flowers were only slowly fading. But while it’s not all that strange to find a vaporetto route sign (the kind they hang on the side of the boat to list the stops) floating in the lagoon, I’d never seen a funeral wreath before.

Naturally, the vision of a floating funeral wreath inspired a backwash of mournful thoughts, loaded with other bits of detritus from all those somber poems and short stories they make you read in school. But then I became curious.

Why would a wreath be floating in the lagoon? It should have been removed from the casket and left at the cemetery. Did it fly off the hearse (naturally, a motorboat) on its way to eternity? Did a person or persons deliberately cast it upon the waves, in an uncharacteristically romantic gesture to the recently departed? These wreaths cost real money. Who would have spent all that for a wreath that was going to have a shorter life than the funeral leftovers?

I went to discuss all this with Lino, and when he came over to investigate, we saw that the waves had pulled the wreath away from its temporary resting-place and had drawn it seaward, right into the center of the straps attached to the crane which puts our boats into the water.

Seeing it there inspired a small, ancillary rush of half-baked melancholy thoughts. But curiosity won out.

We took the boathook and pulled the dedicatory ribbon around to where we could read it. It said: “CIAO CAPITANO.” Goodbye, Captain.

I’ll spare you my next batch of thoughts (gone down with the ship? Lost at sea?). Lino had a better theory.

Just a few days ago, a man named Anacleto Marella died. His funeral was held on June 20 (Saturday) at the church of San Francesco della Vigna, roughly just around the corner from our club. So this must have been borne by the tide from there.

Marella had been employed for years as one of the many “captains” of the ACTV, the public transport company — a vaporetto driver, in other words.

But don’t imagine that they all get wreaths, floating or otherwise.

Some investigation has revealed that Capt. Marella was hugely famous, an extraordinary person who had been deeply involved for decades in the struggle to help the handicapped. Specfically, those suffering from muscular dystrophy. And he was one of the driving forces, along with Dr. Diego Fontanari and Mrs. Luciana Sullam, in the founding of the local chapter of the UILDM, the Unione Italiana lotta alla Distrofia Muscolare (Italian Union in the fight against Muscular Dystrophy).

According to the story published in the newsletter of the association, back in 1966 or so, Marella noticed that every day at a certain time, a young man with muscular dystrophy boarded, with tremendous effort, his vaporetto. Struck by the man’s tenacity and courage, he began to urge the bus company (as I think of it) to improve its accessibility to the handicapped, particularly by creating specific spaces designed for wheelchairs. This was revolutionary work, especially when you consider the cost of retrofitting all those vehicles. Did I mention that the transport company is public? That means it was born to say “We can’t afford it.” But Marella seems to have been born, as his grandson once remarked, with “Duracell batteries.”

He didn’t stop with the vaporettos. He organized a medical conference on neuromuscular diseases. He raised funds by participating in telethons. He accompanied groups of tourists with MS in tours around the city, not to mention on trips out in the lagoon.

He even convinced the 66 other vaporetto drivers to donate part of every paycheck to the UILDM. In fact, they still do. I want you to stop and think about that for a minute. Yes, it is unbelievable. But there it is.

Immag019 marella — I think roses are absolutely beautiful for a wreath, and not all that common, either. At least not for a man.

Small digression: When I first came here, and for years, the vaporettos all displayed several discreet but noticeable square stickers with a design of a person in a wheelchair, with a small note encouraging the public to remember the UILDM and its mission. I used to wonder, “Why MS? If the public transport company is publicizing one disease, why not all of them?” Now I know the answer. Because Anacleto Marella asked them to, and it was nobody could say no to him.

“My father’s enthusiasm and tenacity overwhelmed everybody,” his son, Giovanni, remembered. “He involved entire families in his initiatives. Nobody could stop him.”

Yes, he was left fatherless as a boy, and had to start working early to support his family. Yes, he was a wounded veteran of World War II. But these experiences don’t inevitably make pioneers, much less heroes, nor do they guarantee any skill in navigating the immense sea of bureaucracy and lethargy. As far as I can tell, he had no relatives with any physical disabilities. What he clearly had was a large heart, a clear mind, and a spectacularly hard head.

He would have been 94 on July 1. Ciao, Capitano. If you had ever wanted to round Cape Horn with your vaporetto, I’ll bet you could have gotten everybody to sign up.

Boatworld, Venetian Events

Vogalonga photo op

June 21, 2011 2 Comments

In my last post on the Vogalonga (though I suppose it would be more accurate to say that this is my last) I acknowledged the lack of any photographic evidence of our excellent — and rapid — circuit of the northern lagoon.

As I had hoped, a kind soul did in fact take some pictures of us, and that kind soul knew some friends of ours, who sent them along. Perhaps there are more such souls out there, but I don’t know them or their friends. So here’s a big shout-out to the club Voga Fortuna Berlin, and Sandra, who chose to work the camera rather than the oar.