Venice: I am not making this up

Saint Martin strikes (Venice) again

November 11, 2010 1 Comment

: Classic weather for the feast of San Martino, probably designed to send you indoors to eat the classic roasted chestnuts.

As I may have said before, one of the many things I love about being here is the way life crosses the stream of the year by stepping on a series of metaphorical stones, which are the assorted holidays and feast days of some saints I hardly knew (that means “never knew”) existed. Now I know more about them than could ever be regarded as useful or even, dare I say it, interesting.

I used to think it was so exotic the way that people in the Middle Ages, according to assorted novels, would always be talking about events according to their nearest feast day: “We’ll plant the corn after St. Swithin’s Day,” “The marriage took place before Candlemas,” and so on. Now I’m doing it too.

For example, everybody knows that you don’t broach the new wine until St. Martin’s Day, which is today, November 11. The seppie begin to head out to sea after the Feast of the Redentore (third Sunday in July). I could go on, but St. Martin is getting restless.

The essential costume must include headgear, usually a crown. This item deftly connects all the symbols, which is San Martino with a sword on his horse. — The essential costume must include headgear, usually a crown. This item deftly connects the essential elements, which are San Martino, a sword, and a horse.

The festivities almost always take place on the eve of the official date of whatever the event may be. Therefore, yesterday via Garibaldi was strewn with small children in their “San Martin” garb — clever crowns, sometimes capes, often a bag for the candy they strongly urge people to give them — and carrying whatever bits of kitchenware such as pots and pans (or their covers) to bang and clang as they sing the vaguely threatening San Martino song. The gist of this ditty is that if you don’t give them candy, they will invoke a variety of unpleasant reprisals. Pimples on your butt is one of the favorites.

The essential elements for the traditional cookie are pastry dough and candies stuck on with icing. This is the minimalist version, reduced, simplified, symbolic. And small.

I like to think about all these people who stroll across the Venetian calendar. The Befana (Jan. 6), Santa Lucia (Dec. 13), the Madonna della Salute (Nov. 21), San Marco (April 25) and now San Martino (Nov. 11). Of course there are many more, when you add in every parish’s patron saint. Just imagine them all getting together at their annual convention: “International Marching and Chowder Society of Saints of the Venetian Year, this year meeting in Mobile, Alabama. Before registering, make sure you’ve paid your dues.” It’s just an expression. Saints, by definition, have long since paid them.

Where was I? Via Garibaldi. So yesterday afternoon hot chocolate and the crucial cookie called a “Samartin” (Sa-mar-TEEN) were distributed to the children by the good men of the Mutual Aid Society of the Caulkers and Carpenters. When they ran out of children they gave cookies to everyone else, mainly grandmothers and aged aunts who had been circling like buzzards.

Today, the late morning was clanked and clattered by groups of schoolchildren, manic little locusts in impromptu costumes swarming the shops and vendors. They were banging on their cookware and singing the San Martino song, or at least some of it.

The onslaught begins as the older children head for the next shop --which in this case will be a fruit and vegetable vendor.

It's nice to see the horse getting some recognition. All he did in the original story was stand there.

They had also prepared a series of posters depicting San Martino at his greatest moment, the encounter with the freezing beggar by the road and the division of his cloak with his sword.

A little tourist girl meets San Martino -- or more precisely, the beggar on the ground. — A little tourist girl meets San Martino -- or more precisely, the beggar at his feet.

I believe he did a few other things in his life which had deeper and longer-lasting importance, but they don’t make anywhere near as good a story. Or poster.

Considering the ludicrous prices of the cookies on sale around town — a rough estimate tells me that regardless of size they cost 250% more than last year, when the prices were already too high — I think San Martino ought to cut the cookies in half.

Funny how in these pictures it's never winter. That sort of mitigates the whole freezing-to-death part of the story. But this is obviously prettier.

41 euros is $56. The size of this supposedly mega-cookie (#5) can easily be understood if you know the size of a Perugina "bacio" chocolate. (Hint: It contains one hazelnut.) I realize that 14 chocolates are not cheap. But if you're going to spend $50 on something, I wouldn't be thinking of chocolate but something more in the precious-metals line. Gad. — 41 euros is $56. The size of this supposedly mega-cookie (#5) can easily be understood if you know the size of a Perugina "bacio" chocolate. (Hint: It contains one hazelnut.) I realize that 14 chocolates are not cheap. But if you're going to spend $56 on something, I wouldn't be thinking of chocolate but something more in the precious-metals line. Gad.

Boatworld

Medal medley

November 10, 2010 1 Comment

Reader Tim Reinard in California asked to see a wider shot of Lino’s medals surrounding our barometer. Glad to oblige. These are only a few of the medals he has won or been awarded over the years as a Venetian rowing racer, or race judge, or participant in a number of major foreign boating events.

Nature, Problems, Water

Acqua alta update

November 10, 2010 No Comments

Watching the various weather signs yesterday morning as closely as a jungle tracker (or desert tracker, or suburban mother looking for a parking place at the mall), I realized fairly early that the Warnings which I was following were turning out to have been perhaps slightly excessive.

Caution is a superb thing and we should all have more of it, except for when we shouldn’t, I mean. But I have the sensation — and so does Lino — that a certain amount of exaggeration has crept into the whole business of predicting acqua alta. Why?

This is what water announced by the siren plus one tone looked like at 11:30 outside our house. The tide was just about ready to turn.

One reason, and I’m just hypothesizing here, could be that the people in the Tide Center (particularly its battle-hardened director, Paolo Canestrelli, who would feel perfectly at home with Field Marshal Montgomery) are up to here with the shrieking imprecations from people inconvenienced by a change in the situation from the earlier prediction to the reality suddenly underfoot.

As I have already noted, the weather picture can change. Get over it.

Another reason — here, let me move that firing-range target to the side and stand there in its place — could be the relentless need for the many forces involved in the MOSE project to instill public dread of water on the ground. Even brief articles in the Gazzettino which mention a (not “the,” but “a”) possibility of high water the following day don’t bear down too hard on the word “possibility.” They like the effect the words “acqua alta” have on people, if put in a way that makes it sound as if you need to head for the storm cellar.

In any case, just remember that any article that you may read that implies, or even says, that “Venice was flooded” is a bit excessive. We didn’t get any water on our ground and we’re in Venice. Is San Marco’s high water better than ours? Prettier? Wetter?

If you have any interest in the damage water can seriously do to people, places and things, don’t get fixated on Venice, but look at other areas of the Veneto such as Vicenza and Verona, and even in Tuscany, over the past few days. Torrential rains, bursting riverbanks, highways and roads blocked and even broken by racing water, mudslides obliterating houses and the helpless people within them (like the mother and her two-year-old son whose bodies were dug out of their mud-filled house, still clinging to each other) — these are events involving water which deserve more publicity than they get.

Actually, “mudslide” is too innocuous a word for what happened in Tuscany after days of rain. Essentially a huge chunk of melting mountain just broke off and fell on this family’s house. Just like that. No warning sirens, no time to do anything except die. There are many families who have lost everything. Some people have drowned.

Parts of the Veneto have now been declared disaster areas. Venice was not on the list.

Venetian-ness, Water

Waiting for acqua alta

November 9, 2010 4 Comments

I’m sitting here at 7:30 waiting to see what the water is going to do.

This is not the first time this fall that water has come ashore (as it probably will), but it’s the first time I’m taking it slightly more seriously — and by “seriously” I don’t mean I’m pulling the tarps off the lifeboats preparing to abandon ship, so to speak; I mean that I believe that the official prediction may be close to accurate. That alone would be worth writing about.

The accuracy is interesting only for the same reasons that any weather prediction is interesting — Did they get it right? And does this mean I should take future predictions really seriously?

There are several indications that they may be onto something this morning, most of which do not require their intervention because I have the tools at hand to understand and evaluate the probabilities all by my big-girl self.

On an ideal day, the hand would be pointing in the opposite direction.

First, the barometric pressure. It has been impressively low for the last 12 hours, if not more. Low pressure means high water, a rule so simple even I can remember it.

Checking the barometer is one of the first useful things to do, and this is what impressive low pressure looks like. Note that whoever put those generic terms on the instrument’s face (“fair,” “change,” “rain”) didn’t consider putting “impressive high water” in the lower right-hand space. But that’s okay, because depending on where you live they would more usefully have had to put “monsoon,” “tropical cyclone” and other events not likely to occur here. So never mind.

Second, the wind direction. The garbin (gar-BEAN) was blowing strongly from the southwest yesterday afternoon, which is good because it impels the water to move northeast, or out into the Adriatic where it can do whatever the heck it wants to. Then it veered around to the north — even better.

But now it has veered to a scirocco, or southeast wind, which has the opposite effect of pressing the water into the lagoon, as I rustically think of it — or at least of creating enough force to block the tide’s normal retreat.

Third, we are now on the verge of the 24-hour period of the “morto de aqua,” or “death of the water,” when the tidal variation is minimal. This 24-hour period falls twice a month and doesn’t particularly influence the height of the high tide, but it does mean that since the tides are not especially strong, the weather is almost always unstable. Which means don’t count on anything except some kind of unpleasant weather. In the summer we can get huge thunderstorms during the “morto de aqua.”

If I had a shop near the Piazza San Marco and didn’t know any of the above, instead of wailing to the city about paying me for the damage or inconvenience I had suffered, I ought to be paying them for my preposterous ignorance. Hm — that would be an entertaining project: Setting a scale of penalty payments for preposterous ignorance. The mind absolutely sparkles at the thought.

Fourth, if you don’t know any of the above three basic facts of life in the lagoon, you can decide to depend on the city’s system of warning sirens, which sound an hour before water is expected to start rising through the drain system. If you live more than an hour away from San Marco, of course, this system doesn’t do you much good.

Or you might go online and consult the prediction from the city’s Centro Maree, or Tide Center.

It’s interesting to see the variation between the normal tidal flux (the lower, light red line) and the real-time prediction (upper blue line). The only problem with this tool is that its usefulness depends heavily on being updated in a timely fashion.

The forecast hasn't changed since last night, but I still don't understand why this chart wasn't on the Tide Center's website at 7:28 AM. — The forecast hasn't changed since last night, but it would have been nice to have seen it before 7:28 AM.

Really timely updates are available through the text-messaging system. However, if you have signed up with the Tide Center to get the prediction via your cell phone, you still might want to consider a fall-back position. A few days ago the Gazzettino reported that thousands of users had indeed received the necessary warning, but only several hours too late. The city blamed the mobile phone company and its incapacity to send thousands of simultaneous text messages. (Oh good — something even less dependable than weather predictions: cell phone efficiency). The city has since — they say — changed companies.

I have not signed up with this service because, well, we’ve got the barometer, which is incapable of lying and doesn’t depend on any human agent whatsoever. What a scintillating thought that is.

Update: The sirens have just sounded. And instead of the two tones which “code orange” would require, there was only one tone, meaning the maximum ought to be a mere 110 cm (43 inches)above normal sea level, not the earlier prediction of 115 cm (45 inches). This doesn’t mean they were wrong, it just means that something changed. Whatever it was, I’m for it. Two inches makes an inordinate amount of difference..