April has some of the best skies ever. Actually, so do the other eleven months.
However you may have been observing the past six weeks of penitence, Easter is now steaming into port with the pilot onboard and will be here in three days.
Special Spring Bonus: Click here (11042001) if you would like to hear a small soundtrack of the blackbird chorus outside the window every morning before dawn.
Older Venetians remember a bit of rhyming versification which highlighted each Sunday of Lent by attaching it to one of the miracles of Jesus.
I have no information whatever on how this started, who came up with it, or anything else other than its now-fading existence. By doing some random research (fancy way of saying “asking around”), I discover that children are no longer taught this bit of lore. In fact, so far I haven’t been able to nab anyone of any age in this neighborhood who’s ever heard of it, so perhaps it’s a relic of life in long-ago Dorsoduro.
Therefore this missive may be one of the few places to acknowledge this fragment of tradition before the last traces are gone.
It goes like this: Uta, Muta, Cananela/Pane e Pesce, Lazarela/ Oliva/Pasqua Fioriva.
It is pronounced: OO-ta, MOO-ta, Canna-NAY-a/ PAN-eh eh PEH-sheh, YA-za-RAY-ah/oh-YEE-va/PAS-kwa fyoh-REE-va.
The significance of these gnomic utterances is as follows:
Uta: I don’t know. This is a bad start, but I am still researching this curious word by means of any elderly Venetians and/or priests I can find. It hasn’t been easy, which only proves that this verseology is on its last legs. Perhaps “uta” refers to one of the many healing miracles: bleeding, or blindness, or demon-possession, or paralysis, or dropsy. You can take your pick until further notice.
Muta: The healing of the man mute from birth (Mark 7: 31-37).
Jesus and the Samaritan woman in a window at Bolton Priory (photo by Lawrence OP).
Cananela: My sainted sister-in-law (age 82) maintains that this refers to the meeting of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well (John 4: 4-26). She is very firm on that, even though it wasn’t technically a miracle, but seeing as the reading for the Third Sunday is, in fact, that passage, I think we can consider the matter settled.
Lazarela: The resurrection of Lazarus (John 11: 1-46). Makes a nice rhyme. Also worth remembering for its own self.
The raising of Lazarus, in a mosaic of the basilica of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna (6th c. AD).
Oliva: “Olive.” Although here, as in many other places, they call the Sunday before Easter “Palm Sunday” (Mark 11: 1-11; Matthew 21: 1-11; Luke 19: 28-44; John 12: 12-19), or “Domenica delle Palme,” the fronds distributed in church aren’t palm, but olive. This is very lovely, considering the ancient link between the olive branch and peace, and the various Gospel accounts only agree on the fact that clothes were spread on the ground before Jesus’ feet. Obviously nobody has ever thought of calling it “Clothes Sunday,” so I’m just going to leave that alone. We get olive twigs, take it or leave it. In Latvia they use pussy willows.
At the entrance to the church of San Francesco di Paola (as in most, if not all, the other churches here), olive branches are set out in two forms: wild and natural, or small and packaged. One keeps the branch till next Palm Sunday; in the old days, to treat a really serious wound or illness you would have burned the branch and used the ashes as prescribed by your neighborhood wonderworker.
This is the convenient packet which fits easily into your purse, glove compartment, or wherever you feel it belongs.
The first Palm Sunday procession, containing all the important details, as depicted in the basilica of San Marco.
A central arch in the basilica of San Marco shows the most concise illustrations imaginable of the Easter story, from trial to crucifixion. In the center is the crowning moment, without which there would be no Easter: The empty tomb.
"Flowering Easter" is represented in our neighborhood by a veritable mob of blooming botanicals. Here, redbud ("Judas tree") and laurel.The wisteria is totally out of control.
What the sea pines may lack in color they certainly make up for with pollen.
A bit of meteorological magic holds that “Se piove sulle olive/ Non piove sui vovi” (If it rains on the olives, it won’t rain on the eggs). Meaning that if it rains on Palm (excuse me, Olive) Sunday, it won’t rain on Easter. Much as it distresses me to give any credence to this sort of thing, I have seen it turn out to be true something like 95 percent of the time. I can’t explain it.
And what would Easter be without cute animals and chocolate?
Or better yet, cute animals OF chocolate.
Our neighborhood is a veritable Easter menagerie. Here, an existentialist Easter bunny who looks apprehensive and somehow estranged from his fellow furry harbingers.
The Ur-hen, the prototype of Paschal poultry. Now we know where all those eggs come from.
Children nowadays don't know how lucky they are. When I was a kid, Easter frogs hadn't been invented. I think frogs themselves hadn't been invented.I discern a link between milk chocolate and an Easter cow. But what is an Easter squirrel bringing to the table? Easter acorns?
I wonder how many Venetian children risk being traumatized by devil-spawn Persian-green rabbits clutching their tiny progeny?
Let's get back to something we can all agree on: Chocolate. And no squabbling over "dark" versus "milk." The Ur-hen is ambidextrous. Anyway, there are enough sugar-flowers here to send everybody into shock.
The following event was so peculiar that naturally I have to tell you about it.
Protagonists: One (1) mother, one (1) 3-year old son (hers), one grandmother, one ambulance, and a couple of bystanders. Jesus said that “Ye have the poor always with you,” but I think he could have just as well said “bystanders,” at least in Venice.
As reported by the Gazzettino, Lucia, the mother, is a 39-year-old Moldovan who works as a waitress in a restaurant at the node where via Garibaldi reaches the lagoon.
The scene of the drama. The restaurant where Lucia works is immediately to the left of the bridge. The point where the plunge occurred is on the other side of the ramp. Which only raises another awkward question, which is how Lucia managed to see, "out of the corner of her eye," that a woman and stroller had fallen in. There are just too many things about this that I can't make fit together. However, you can see that there is more than enough room on the fondamenta to accommodate a brigade of perambulating grandmothers.
Last Friday, the afternoon was sunny and beautiful, so naturally anybody who had the chance was wandering along the Riva dei Sette Martiri to enjoy the rays, the breeze, the lagoon view, etc.
Among these wanderers was the grandmother, pushing her little grandson in his stroller, sharing some quality time till mom got off work at 3:00. Alessandro had been to the pediatrician that morning for a check-up after a week with bronchitis — an interesting detail considering what happened next.
Everything was proceeding in the most predictable way, with the grandmother ambling along the fondamenta, when suddenly she tripped on one of the myriad uneven, busted-up paving stones. I note that these stones did not start to shift and break up overnight; it’s been a long and continuing process and unfortunately anyone could see it if they were looking.
She tripped and lost her balance, and she must have been strolling on the very edge of the pavement because she fell overboard, pulling the stroller and grandson with her, down into the lagoon. By a strange stroke of good luck, she had not strapped Alessandro into the stroller, otherwise he would have gone straight to the bottom with his fatal vehicle. His grandmother managed to grab him.
All this happened in nanoseconds, but at that VERY INSTANT, Lucia came out of the restaurant and saw, a mere few steps away, that a woman and a stroller had just fallen into the water.
Without an instant’s hesitation (though she later confessed to having a desperate fear of the water), she raced to the brink and dove in, grabbing the little boy. At which point she discovered to her shock that the child she was saving from imminent drowning was, in fact, her own.
She started screaming, “It’s my son! It’s my son!”, and managed to get to one of the nearby wooden pilings, to which she clung for dear life.
Cue the bystanders. A few of them managed to pull Alessandro up onto dry land, while someone else called the ambulance, one of which miraculously happened to be nearby. It zoomed up, the rescuers proceeded to rescue the two women and the boy, and whisked them to the Emergency Room. Lucia and Alessandro were dismissed (evidently the bronchitis conceded the right of way in the face of a larger threat), but the grandmother was checked in for an injury to her leg. All told, though, you could say that everybody was going to live happily ever after.
Except that I wonder about that. The fact that it was Lucia’s mother-in-law would almost inevitably have a certain bearing on life chez Alessandro till both women pass away, and possibly after. Because I would bet money that the family’s future is going to be composed of daily doubts, half-uttered recriminations, dark silences, and about a million spiky little questions before anybody goes out the door anymore.
And Alessandro, who may or may not remember much of this, and who certainly qualifies as a bystander as much as any geezer down the way fishing for seppie, is doomed to live the rest of his life trapped in this family drama like a trilobite in slowly hardening mud.
In case you were to be tempted to think this event too improbable to be true, a reality check is provided by the immediate finger-pointing and blame-assigning which followed.
Let me ask who you think is to blame for this near tragedy?
If you said “The city of Venice, because they let the pavement deteriorate to such a state that a grandmother with a stroller is virtually destined to trip and fall, risking her life, the unthinking cads,” you’d be in line with Lucia, who stated that it is shameful that people can’t walk along the riva without risking their life, though she didn’t specify at which point on the riva a rational person (the very edge?) might be likely to meander.
The Gazzettino has interpreted this event in the same way, concluding its report by observing that this kind of disaster was practically inevitable, given the constant degradation of the pavement which the city continues to ignore, except for occasionally slapping some cement on the worst problem spots.
On the other hand, if you said, “The grandmother,” you’d be in line with me.
I realize that in most situations, one’s first impulse is not to blurt, “Crikey, I totally screwed up, what was I thinking?” But while I am usually several steps behind the last person to defend the city from its innumerable instances of neglect and indifference, I think it’s a bit of a reach to criticize the paving stones for where you put your feet. Or, for that matter, your entire body (plus stroller and grandchild).
The Riva dei Sette Martiri is about 70 feet (22 meters) wide. I don’t believe that walking along its center would put your life at risk. Why would anybody (who wasn’t fishing for seppie) feel the urge to walk along its very edge? It’s like somebody walking along the shoulder of a six-lane interstate highway stumbling on some gravel and then blaming the city because a truck nearly ran them over.
They’re all alive, though, so I guess the city doesn’t have to scramble the fighter repair crew. Until something really, really serious happens, the administration tends to take the “It seemed so real, but thank God it was just a bad dream” approach to the city’s problems.
But let me respectfully point out to any future grandmothers that whether the stones are smooth or jagged, there will always be water in the lagoon.
An early spring morning swathed in diaphanous air, to aid and assist in the swathing of the filmy trees.
Spring here is in constant evolution, as it is anywhere else, so it’s slightly silly to talk about it at all, considering that by the time you read this, things will have changed. A few of the earliest (and therefore best) highlights are already gone, making way for subsequent highlights, and so on till we get to summer, which would probably like to have highlights except that the heat and humidity kind of destroy them. Or at least destroy my will to notice or care about them.
When we lived at the other end of the city, near Santa Marta, my spring herald was a small weeping willow tree that drooped over a brick wall bordering the rio di Tre Ponti (canal of Three Bridges). Its first minuscule leaves created the faintest conceivable film of pale tea green, or pale celadon, or pale eau de nil, or pale honeydew melon, or probably a combination of all of these. Maybe I should call it “pale first leaves of weeping willow” green.
I would check up on this little tree as if it were on probation. But all my watching didn’t reveal its very best moment, I’m sure, because the tree always seemed to leaf too fast. I suspect it was working at night, like an illegal Moldovan bricklayer. In any case, it passed its exquisite birth stage and grew up far too quickly for my taste. It should have lasted just two days longer and I’d have been happy. But no.
Seeing that there are no willows in our current area, I've decided to concentrate on the progress of this little plum. Its beauty is even briefer than the willow's; you really need to get up early to see spring here.
Now we live at the other extreme of the city — as of everything else — and instead of a willow tree my heralds are one little plum tree, and a whole slew of blackbirds who seem to be able to sing everything up to Elizabethan motets.
There are also the flying heralds: I’ve seen scatterings of bees, of course, and unexpected little apprentice herald showed up today in the form of a roaming fly that buzzed through the house. He seemed to be on some sort of reconnaissance mission.
Bring on the wisteria -- not that it needs any invitation, or encouragement, either.
The plum and cherry blossoms have come and gone; the wisteria is just beginning to take their place, to be followed by the magnolia, and the jasmine. It sounds as if I’m living on some Veneto-Byzantine tropical plantation.
Flowering Venice: I hope you’ll add this to your list of images of this city, along with the bridges and canals and ogee arches.
Obviously not flowers but they bloom all year long.Sunset in early spring. The colors change, but the mist hangs on. And the seppie, along with all the other fry, are on their way into the lagoon again. You have to imagine that, I can't show it to you.
If you’ve either flown into/out of Venice, or driven into/out of Venice, you already know that the mainland (a/k/a “the rest of the world”) involves a surprising amount of farmland. Or fields, anyway. It’s not Kansas, true, but there is a noticeable amount of cultivation going on.
Back in Venice, we have a first-rate country option which doesn’t involve going over the bridge. Or getting in a car. We go there in a small boat, rowing.
It’s the island of Sant’ Erasmo — the largest island in the lagoon (3.26 km/s, or 1.25 square miles), though that isn’t what makes it worth knowing about.
It’s farms. Or better, market gardens, though some of them are larger than what we usually think of as gardens, unless the garden were to be Longwood or Stourhead or the Villa d’Este.
We pull the boat onto the beach at #13, where the two brothers labor in their spare time. The "Sapori di Sant' Erasmo" is slightly inland from #12.
I have mentioned Sant’ Erasmo from time to time — odd, perhaps, when you consider that it isn’t on the way to anywhere, and that if you’re not interested in vegetables or biking or mosquitoes, there isn’t much reason to come all the way over here.
Ninety-eight percent (I made that up) of the island consists of comfortably large plots of grapevines, artichokes, peas, asparagus, and whatever else is likely to grow in its appointed season.
The words “Sant’ Erasmo” scribbled on signs stuck among the produce at the Rialto Market always means something special (fresh, local, really good). I eventually discovered that (A) the label isn’t always accurate (fancy way of saying “untrue”) and (B) that I can get them at the source itself. This has made me insufferably demanding now. That may seem a little silly when discussing mere vegetation, but I can taste the difference, and I can really taste how much less expensive they are than at the vendor’s stall in the Big City.
Shopping for vegetables is also a great excuse for an excellent row across part of the lagoon.
We have two sources, so far.
Our first option is a modest but flourishing commercial operation called “Sapori di Sant’ Erasmo” (Flavors of Sant’ Erasmo — not a bad name unless you’ve come here often enough to associate the island with the flavor of mosquitoes). It belongs to Carlo and Claudio Finotello and there is virtually always someone there, ready to sell you some of their produce. If you’re lucky, also a bottle or two of their wine. I don’t drink, but I’m very happy that there’s a place where you can get some real local Raboso.
Sant' Erasmo has canals too. This one leads from the lagoon toward the "Sapori di Sant' Erasmo."If the water weren't so turbid today, you could see what this string is doing: It's attached to a moderately large rubber tube maybe two feet long, which is lying on the bottom waiting to trap any passing eel. Eels check in but they can't turn around and check out. Either red or white grapes make a very appealing local wine.Just looking at all this chlorophyll makes me feel healthy and strong. This little mascareta has been reincarnated as a flower bed. Waste not, want not. And speaking of wanting, as far as I can see, Sant' Erasmo was (and maybe still is) one of the few places on earth where hunger would be virtually unknown. Apart from the fruit and vegetables, there are the fish in the lagoon (or in small fishponds), wild ducks to be hunted, chickens and pigs and goats and anything else you can either find or cultivate. Venice? We don't need no stinking Venice.
The second option is the modest but variegated plot belonging to a man — actually, his aged parents — two steps from where we pull the boat onto the beach near a rumpsprung bar/restaurant called Da Tedeschi. He’s been known to buy artichokes from him that he’s just cut off the stalk for us. Tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, eggplant. Only problem is, he isn’t always there. And/or there’s nothing growing that’s ready or that we even slightly want.
The other morning we went ashore near the second option: The plot near the beach, where we found the man (I still don’t know his name) and his brother (ditto) tilling the soil by their parents’ house. Parents nowhere in sight. This is what kids are for.
The older man got to talking with us as we watched his brother working the soil with a broad hoe, preparing it to be sown with tiny little Ukrainian onions all ready to take root.
He imparted the following fragments of information: He retired three years ago after 45 years as a master glassmaker on Murano, work which he started when he was 12 because back then, not so many people went on to study and besides, he didn’t like studying all that much.
That there used to be a big acacia tree right over there (pointing toward the beach) that put out pink blossoms in the spring. They would pick the blossoms, then bread them and deep-fry them, the way people do more commonly now with zucchini blossoms. His expression as he remembered this delicacy told me that it was worth experiencing and that he misses it. I’ve never tried fried acacia flowers, but after having seen his face, I resent the fact that I never had the chance to.
Artichokes: Everyone, even I, knows that Sant’ Erasmo is famous for its “violet” version, and that the salty soil is one factor in their flavor. What I didn’t know is that one plant will put out roots to create four or five other plants, and that a normal plant will produce up to 21 artichokes.
Near the beach, the two brothers (well, one, anyway) are preparing to plant onions.The little Ukrainian onions waiting to return to the soil.
I have now also learned that they can’t be grown in hothouses. You’ll be glad to know I can’t tell you why (we’d be here all day, at this rate), but I believe him when he says that under the big top the plants grow unnaturally tall, produce fewer artichokes than normal, and that the artichokes they do produce are kind of — he made a soggy, wilting sort of grimace — what they would call “fiapo” (FYA-poh). Fiapo is what happens to your grilled-cheese sandwich when you have to leave it to go answer the phone. People can also be fiapo, usually in August.
Unfortunately, artichokes from Sant’ Erasmo have one thing in common with pieces of the True Cross: There are too many of them to be real. In fact, artichokes from Livorno, which are trucked over to Venetian markets, come in so much earlier than the Sant’ Erasmo product that labeling them as local eventually caused serious protest. Telling that little fib will get you a fine, if you’re caught.
Then there was the year of the Big Freeze: His friend had 1,300 peach trees on Sant’ Erasmo. They were all destroyed.
The "violet" artichokes from Sant' Erasmo are famous. The little morsel that's left when you remove those leathery outer leaves is utterly delectable.
But then there was this: The year of the Big Acqua Alta (Nov. 4, 1966, as all the world knows), was the only time Sant’ Erasmo has gone underwater. In fact, he said, the island was like a semi-submerged barena. Nobody had ever seen this happen, but there were two results.
One: All the crops were totally ruined by the salt water soaking. No surprise there.
Two: The following year, they had a mythically great harvest of just about everything. Whatever the Adriatic had taken away with the flood, it more than gave back the next year by means of whatever elements it had brought in. I don’t believe it was just salt, because salting the fields has been a time-dishonored way of destroying future crops for several whiles.
Lino supports my theory that the tide brought something that the salt couldn’t vanquish, because he said that when you raise a sunken boat out of the lagoon, it’s covered with the finest conceivable layer of some kind of material. I’m imagining melted earth that’s been clarified, like butter.
Anyway, that’s just my theory — obviously the fields knew what was happening, so let’s move on. What we do know is that the next summer, the memory of the lost winter harvest had been transformed into a glowing realization that life is, indeed, good.
At least on Sant’ Erasmo.
All the plum trees (Prunus domestica) have bloomed at virtually the same moment. You can't see them but there are hundreds of bees gorging themselves in these blossoms. Later, we'll be eating the fruit, known here as baracocoli (roundish and golden).
