Venice: I am not making this up

Boatworld, Problems, Venetian-ness, Water

Motondoso, Part 2: The Why

January 12, 2010 No Comments

Read Part 1: The What; Part 3: The How; Suck It Up; Part 4: The lagoon’s-eye view

If civilization has reached the stage where most people generally agree that it’s wrong to strike a woman, a child, even a dog, it’s not easy to explain, much less excuse, why an entire city should have to submit to this kind of abuse, a city which depends as much (or more) on its people than the people depend on it.

But then again, it is easy to explain. Sloth, egotism, and a resistance to contradiction tougher than corrugated iron induce almost all the people with motorboats of whatever size or purpose either to deny that they are creating waves, or say that other perpetrators are far more guilty, or accept it with Zen-like resignation.

All of these put together foster a situation in which a recent newspaper article could make a serious reference to the “numerous reports (to the police, of excessive traffic/waves) by Venetians who when they go out in their motorboats have to work miracles to avoid ending up in the water because the waves are so strong.”

People in motorboats complaining about waves. Let me stop and think about that for a minute.

You'll find virtually any kind of boat with a motor in the Giudecca Canal, usually in a huge hurry. Here we have taxis, one of countless barges, the Alilaguna airport waterbus, and a hotel launch. What's missing here at the moment, strictly by chance, are innumerable private motorboats of all sizes, as well as the vehicles of public transport: vaporettos, motoscafos, and the ferryboat carrying cars to and from the Lido. — You'll find virtually any kind of boat with a motor in the Giudecca Canal, usually in a huge hurry. Here we have taxis, a tourist launch, one of countless barges, the Alilaguna airport waterbus, and a hotel launch. What's missing here at the moment, strictly by chance, are (among others) the garbage scows, innumerable private motorboats of all sizes, as well as the vehicles of public transport: vaporettos, motoscafos, and the ferryboat carrying cars to and from the Lido.

Waves don’t really care who causes them or why, but each one acts as a hammer hitting anything it reaches. A study more than 10 years ago revealed, via sensors in the Grand Canal, that a wave hit a wall every 1 1/2 seconds. One pauses to imagine what the public response might be in a city — say, Rome — in which a heavily loaded truck ran into a building, especially a monument, every 1 1/2 seconds. Zen-like resignation doesn’t come to my mind.

For some reason, waves just don’t sound that bad. But they are. And even though they’re right out there in plain view, solutions — and many have been proposed, and re-proposed — have the doomed allure of the classic New Year’s diet: feasible, yet somehow impossible.

One reason is a lethargy at City Hall of spectacular dimensions caused, among several factors, by the lack of ability or desire on the part of the city’s administrators to resist the inevitable shrieking and ranting from any sector which feels threatened by any suggestion of limits. Example: The recent succumbing to pressure by the taxi drivers, and the awarding of 25 new taxi licenses. These will not be taxis which do not create waves, but they will be taxis traveling the same routes which already are suffering the most devastation.

These licenses were granted by the same officials who in other situations solemnly invoke the “battle against motondoso.” Hard to get anywhere with a battle when most of your officers are collaborating with the other side.

One of many signs in the lagoon notifying boaters of the speed limit, here in the Canale delle Scoasse along the Lido. Note that the speed is given in kilometers (not knots) per hour. If anyone is going this slowly it's either because he's just spotted a policeman up ahead, or his motor has died and he's being towed.

Of course there are laws — plenty of them. But they are only sluggishly enforced, especially those concerning speed limits. There are sporadic police “blitzes” which snag a certain number of offenders (it’s like shooting fish in a barrel), but these blitzes change nothing, not even for the people who have been handed fines. Taking your chances is part of the Mediterranean worldview, and laws are meant to be ignored. Fines are part of the annual budget for many waterborne enterprises. Confiscate your taxi? We’ve got more. One taxi owner invited some city politicians to the launching of his new one.

Down here at the waterline, I can tell you that one of the biggest obstacles to reducing waves is contained in three words: “Io devo lavorare” (Literally, “I have to work.” Figuratively, “Get off my back, do you want my wife and children to be thrown out onto the street to beg?”)

This phrase is lavishly used, on the assumption that it’s a free pass to whatever the person speaking it feels like doing. And when gondoliers stage one of their periodic protests, which are always dramatic because gondolas are inherently harmless, the little red “Danger: Irony” light starts to flash. Gondoliers spend all day carrying people around through waves that range from “unpleasant” to “dangerous” to “life-threatening” (not an exaggeration; occasional passengers have risked drowning, and some have succeeded). But several gondolier cooperatives do a very lucrative business owning and operating a fleet of mega-tourist launches.

My favorite little moment was when two gondoliers went to a meeting of Pax in Aqua, the citizens’ group committed to combating motondoso. They went in a motorboat.

It’s not that they should have swum there. I’m just saying.

The gondola race at Murano is one of the most important Venetian-rowing races ever. Here is a small part of the motor-driven horde, lovers of the oar, which turns out to cheer on their friends and relatives. Some of these fans will also be gondoliers.

I’ll tell you when I gave up. It wasn’t the Sunday afternoon we barely made it back alive rowing our little Venetian topetta from Bacan’, one of the most popular lagoon summer spots to hang out in boats, which means motorboats. The waves were heavy, frantic, aggressive; they came from every direction as boat wakes smashed into each other. So: No more Bacan’ for us. We can just stay home and take up paper-making. Problem solved.

No, I could hear the air seep out of my capacity to hope on another Sunday afternoon in 2002, I think it was, when we were walking along the rio di San Trovaso — a very narrow canal which is always busy because it’s one of the shortest cuts between the Giudecca Canal and the Grand Canal.

For weeks, maybe months, long warning strips of red and white tape had been strung along parts of the fondamenta bordering the canal because it had become so unsafe to walk on. The waves from the constant traffic had done their inevitable work weakening the sidewalks’ foundations, in which you could easily see cracks, cracks that were widening thanks to the waves rushing in and out, pulling the soil from beneath the paving stones. The whole walkway was ready to cave in.

In that period, the then-mayor Paolo Costa had tried a novel approach to the problem: He had appointed himself Special Commissioner against Motondoso, which gave him extraordinary powers to deal with the deteriorating situation and also — well, why not? — get an extra paycheck.

His idea was that the bureaucracy had proved incapable of dealing with the waterborne anarchy which is obviously destroying the city, and the police hadn’t been noticeably effective in enforcing the laws (which you could understand, seeing that there are so few police and so rarely are any dedicated to monitoring speed limits). Therefore a sort of instant dictator would have to step in to impose order.

Even a classic boat, such as this Burano-type sandolo, almost always have motors clamped onto them. It might be only 15 hp, but that's irrelevant. A motor there must be. — Even classic Venetian boats, such as this Burano-type sandolo, almost always have a motor clamped onto them. It might be only 15 hp, but that's irrelevant. A motor there must be.

The resulting special decree (Ordinanza n.09/2002, prot. 38/2002, February 21, 2002) outlines speed limits, and boat specifications, and canals name by name, to a degree which makes it clear that if every regulation were to be obeyed wars would cease, hunger would disappear, and illness and poverty would become but an ancestral bad dream. I’m sorry it’s only in Italian, it makes genuinely inspiring reading.

Suddenly we saw a motorboat come screaming down the canal, faster than any boat I’d ever seen here, hurling walls of white water against the trembling embankments. We stopped, stunned. Everybody walking along had stopped. Then the boat stopped. We heard voices. A few people on the sidewalk were talking to the people in the boat. And then it became clear.

They were filming “The Italian Job,” and this was just one of many sequences the city was to witness over the next few days or weeks (I can’t remember). Boats were racing up and down canals in a way that not even taxi-drivers could have dreamed of. Of course, if a taxi driver were to go this fast, he’d have to go to jail, or hell. For a movie, though — that’s something else entirely.

And who gave the permission for this film and these high-speed chases, and these walls of white water? The mayor. Excuse me, I meant the Special Commissioner against Motondoso.

I wish I could say I made that up, but I didn’t.

Boatworld, Problems, Venetian-ness, Water

Motondoso: Waves Gone Wild, Part 1: The What

January 11, 2010 1 Comment

Just one of the countless waves (here, the Giudecca Canal gives an uppercut to the Zattere) which are reducing Venice to rubble. — Just one of the countless waves (here, the Giudecca Canal lands a left hook on the Zattere) which are reducing Venice to rubble.

Slapping. Punching. Thudding. This is the sound of what things have come to. For 1,795 years, Venice celebrated Ascension Day with a ceremony in which the doge threw a golden ring into the sea and intoned the words: “Desponsamus te, O Mare, in signum veri perpetique dominii.” (“I wed thee, O Sea, in sign of true and perpetual dominion.”) In this case he was referring to the Adriatic, and possibly even the Mediterranean, and the Venetians did an excellent job of this for a long time. But the Venetian lagoon is a body of water which resists domination. It is not a happy marriage.

IMG_9378 motondoso 3 comp — The gondoliers at the Molo, on the Bacino of San Marco in front of the Doge's Palace, finally installed a breakwater at their own expense. It's not the perfect solution, but it's better than nothing.

Over the past 50 years, the complex rapport between land and liquid, hitherto marred by only occasional bickering — an engineering misunderstanding, say, or some meteorological outburst — has now reached the stage of open battle.

But contrary to the general impression the world has of Venice’s rapport with its waters, the most serious problem does not involve acqua alta, or high tide. It is motondoso (sometimes moto ondoso), or the waves caused by motorboats, which is literally killing the lagoon’s erstwhile spouse. And unlike other forms of pollution or pressure, waves are a little hard to keep secret. The sight and sound of crashing water has become nearly constant.

Venetians routinely refer to motondoso as “the cancer of Venice.”

If you’re not impressed by the roiling high seas surrounding the city (try stepping between the leaping and plunging dock and vaporetto after the motonave — or better yet, the Alilaguna, the yellow airport “bus” — has just passed), give a glance at any canal at low tide.

You’ll see walls with chunks of stone and brick gone, stone steps fallen askew, cracks and fissures snaking up building walls from the foundation to the second floor, and even higher. It doesn’t take many canals before you begin to wonder how the city manages to stay on its feet. There are palaces on virtually every canal which have holes in their foundations bigger than hula hoops — dank caverns stretching back into the darkness. I have seen them with these very eyes. And if I’ve seen them, so has everybody else. But it just keeps getting worse.

Several years ago the fondamenta on the Giudecca facing the eponymous canal was finally completely repaired. Years of pounding waves were causing it to literally fall into the canal. But the waves continue as before — on the contrary, they’re increasing. The force, the height, the frequency, pick what you will. It’s all bad. (One study has stated that the highest waves in the entire lagoon are in the Giudecca Canal.)

Therefore the fondamenta is beginning to weaken again in the same way, which you can check by looking at the point at which a building is attached to the fondamenta. Cracks are opening up. Again.

So fixing — or saying you’ve fixed — a problem doesn’t count for much if you haven’t, you know, actually fixed it.

On the Giudecca: The green is dangerous to people above, the waves are dangerous to the fondamenta below. Waves can damage just about anything they can reach. — The constant spray from the waves creates the ideal environment for a type of algae which is spectacularly slippery. And in the winter, spray turns to ice. You're on your own.

It's not hard to find scenes like this, or worse, below the waterline. Here, a house near Campo Santa Maria Formosa. And just imagine how happy the owners of this house must be. Who pays for repairs is a saga unto itself. (Credit: Italia Nostra Venice Chapter) — Low tide here is an appalling revelation. One of the primary causes of this damage are enormous iron workboats. If one bumps into a wall even slightly, it opens a crack (or hole) which the waves keep eroding. Hey, it's not their wall. (Photo: Italia Nostra)

This is one version of the intermediate stage, here on the Riva dei Sette Martiri facing the Bacino of San Marco. The waves are working away underneath and eventually gravity will take over. This picture is a small illustration of how this phenomenon fits into real life: It's just normal by now. No warning sign or barrier to keep people away, no indication whatever that anything is going wrong here. This silent catastrophe is just sitting here peacefully in broad daylight as people wander by. — This is one version of the intermediate stage, here on the Riva dei Sette Martiri facing the Bacino of San Marco. The waves have been pushing and pulling underneath and gravity has begun to take over. Just imagine if this were happening under your house. And yet, this is normal by now. There are no warning signs or barriers, no indication whatever that anything is happening here. This silent catastrophe is just sitting here peacefully in broad daylight as people wander by.

Waves working night and day will eventually produce a result like this ruined fondamenta facing the Scomenzera canal just behind Piazzale Roma. The pavement looks like a dead parking lot but that is because it's undergoing renovation. This is almost certainly necessary because the pavement was giving way due to the waves in the canal weakening the soil upon which it rests. The stone border makes it eminently clear what that eventually means. The fondamenta will eventually be new, but the waves will continue â€“ narrow as it is, this is a major canal for vaporetto and barge traffic. — Waves working night and day will eventually produce a result like this ruined fondamenta facing the Canale di Santa Chiara just behind Piazzale Roma. The former walkway looks like a dead parking lot because it's undergoing renovation, work almost certainly necessary because the pavement was giving way due to the pounding waves in the canal. The fondamenta will eventually be new, but the waves will continue â€“ not only is the canal narrow, it is a major route for vaporetto and barge traffic.

Next: Part 2: The Why

Part 3: The How

Suck It Up

Part 4: The lagoon’s eye view

Boatworld, Events

The Befana, racing

January 7, 2010 1 Comment

Out in the countryside you may only need some twigs, a match, and a jug of wine to make a party, but in Venice you’ve got to have boats. Boats that race, to be precise. And before she finally moves on, the Befana has to get rowing.

Last year we rowed from the Lido to Venice with a strictly regulation street-sweeper's broom attached to the bow of our six-oar caorlina. Just to blend with the decor, so to speak.

Ever since darkest antiquity sacred festivals have included some form of athletic competition. The Olympic Games spring to mind, but even the tiniest hamlet lost in the mountains may still organize a foot race, or horse race, or something else, when their saint’s day comes around. In ancient Greece some events, such as the funeral of a woman, would require a race reserved for women.

On Epiphany they held the 32nd edition of the Regata de le Befane, the race of the Befanas, in the Grand Canal. It’s fun to watch, doesn’t take long, there are free refreshments — they even hang an enormous calza caena, filled with only God and they know what, from the Rialto Bridge. In fact the only people who take it seriously in any way are the five Befanas.

Who are these hags? Men over 50, members of the Bucintoro rowing club, who have passed the eliminations for a place in the five-boat line-up. The event is limited to five because more can’t fit abreast in the Grand Canal. It’s just a sprint; the official schedule allots fifteen minutes to the race, but it really only takes about five. Maybe eight. But they are minutes filled with drama, at least for the participants.

The boats: Mascaretas, each rowed by one person with one oar.

The course: The aforementioned Grand Canal, from the major curve in the Grand Canal (the “volta de Canal”) at the Palazzo Balbi between the Accademia and Rialto Bridges to just before the Rialto Bridge.

Last year's victor, Giovanni Rossi, known as "Specene'." He finished second this year. Even Befanas aren't immune to disappointment.

The garb: Strictly Befana, the men decked out in wigs and Dogpatch skirts and crocheted shawls, with scraggly brooms and weird teeth (often their own).

It takes a while to get them reasonably lined-up — it’s a “flying” start, which means each keeps inching forward while waiting for the starting gun. This gambit often means a longish wait as the judge attempts to make them stay even, at least for a second. They also have to wait for a break in the vaporettos coming and going, which isn’t so easy nowadays considering how many there are at any given point/moment.

They’re off! The tide was going out — good, in a way but, as with all Venetian races, the luck of the draw which determines the positions in the starting line-up was a powerful factor in the outcome. Because while they were all rowing against the tide, due to the shape of the canal some had more of it against them than others. The man closest to the shore, if you will, had to confront slightly less current than the ones rowing more toward the middle (and, in fact, he’s the one who won).

It's harder than it may appear to get five boats lined up straight and ready to race.

But closer to the shore means that you have to work your way around the San Toma’ and San Silvestro vaporetto docks while the others are trying to get as close as possible to the left as well. Sure it seems like a doofwit little diversion, five guys in costume flailing away with their oars like Mixmasters, but they take it as seriously as rowers take any race here. Simmering rivalries, some having nothing to do with rowing but with club/personal/childhood events, can also heat up the competition. Small world — long memories.

What I like best about all this isn’t so much the race itself as wandering around the Grand Canal in our boat waving to and trading badinage with our friends. It may seem like a touristic event (and certainly there are plenty of bemused tourists and their kids lining the fondamentas and jamming the Rialto Bridge, enjoying the free drinks and galani and hard candies) but like many rowing events it has a pure neighborhood vibe. Everybody knows everybody — everybody has always known everybody here — and even slight changes in rowing partners can excite comment, as can everything in a neighborhood.

And unlike tennis, or chess, or sumo wrestling, you don’t have to know anything about it to enjoy it. That Befana — she’s quite a girl. Or, you know, whatever she is.

The free refreshments are overseen by a phalanx of Befanas.

Events, History, Venetian-ness

The Befana: Panevin tonight

January 5, 2010 3 Comments

The Befana, that bountiful old beldam, has more work to do than just to bring goodies to the kids and carry away the holidays.

On January 5 (the eve of the feast of the Epiphany — the eve being the day on which the profane elements of a festival are usually celebrated) several ancient rituals are observed in Italy going under various names. In the Veneto these customs are knotted together under the generic term panevin (pan-eh-VEEN). And the focal activity isn’t bread and wine — though there are naturally comestibles — but to brusar la vecia (broo-ZAR ya VEH-cha). Burn the old woman.

If you were to be in Venice on the night of January 5 and smelled smoke, you might want to check with someone before calling the firemen. Tonight, in fact, if the wind is from the east, I will be able to step outside and smell the smoke coming from bonfires along the lagoon’s farming coastline.

Technically speaking, this sort of agricultural festival would more appropriately be observed toward March, closer to the beginning of the annual cycle of cultivation, and not during what is still pretty much the dead of winter. In a few communities they do wait till the exact mid-point of Lent to “burn the old woman.” I suspect it’s because by then they’re desperate for some kind of festivity.

The central element of panevin is a bonfire composed of pieces of dead wood (from grapevines, olive trees, or anything else you have pruned or otherwise dismembered to encourage its growth), and atop this bonfire, tied to the stake which holds the mass of leftover wood together, is the effigy of an old woman, the Befana. Yes, she too is intended to go up in flames.

This photograph, not taken by me, shows the size of the bonfire in Novoli as well as the beginning of the blaze, which is set from within this mountain of wood. The burning figure is of St. Anthony Abbot.

Then again, in some towns, such as Novoli, the people burn their bonfire, a phenomenal ziggurat 36 meters [118 feet] high of dead vine branches, on January 17 in honor of St. Anthony Abbot, a major agricultural deity — sorry, I mean saint. I have my own memories of being there in 2003 researching “Italy Before the Romans” (National Geographic, January 2005). They let me climb to the top, the first woman — and an American, no less — ever to be permitted to do this. The next night the fire fizzled almost completely and I got out of town early, to avoid any recriminations of having brought bad luck. But back to the vecia.

Naturally any custom that strikes roots down to this level of antiquity contains several aspects, some contradictory, and not easy to confirm. But the general consensus is that bonfires played a central role in the ancient rituals of the Celts, who left other marks on the Veneto; the fire evoked, if not incited, the return of the sun from the solstice and the gradual lengthening and warming of the days. In the Christian religion, Epiphany was the day on the Julian calendar which coincided with December 25 on the Gregorian. (I know that December 25 is not the winter solstice, but I didn’t invent these customs.) And then the idea was planted/grafted/germinated spontaneously to hold the bonfire on Epiphany in order to light the way to Bethlehem for the Three Kings, who had traversed a bit too afar and gotten lost.

So we have to have fire, partly to represent/propitiate the sun, and partly because we’ve got loads of dead wood and other useless stuff that has to be incinerated anyway. Lino remembers when people would improvise their own bonfires right here in the city, in the neighborhood campos. As you can imagine, the firemen eventually put a stop to that.

Somebody or something has to serve as the sacrificial figure — deities require sacrifice — and an old human easily represents the old year, the old sins, the old crud and detritus and misfortune of the year just past. Some theories posit that the figure represents winter. Throw it all on there; all this stuff needs to be destroyed and fire in itself, besides being impressively effective in the destruction department, contains large amounts of symbolic meaning focused on purification.

Why does the figure have to be a woman? I’m still seeking the reason(s) for that one. One of the few I’ve found so far says that the female figure represents the Celtic priestess. There is also the point that Strenia (or Strenua), a Sabine goddess of strength and endurance adopted by the Romans, was venerated at the beginning of the year (one custom was the exchange of gifts; a Christmas gift is still called a strenna). Hence a woman. Let’s move on.

So we’ve got a fire, therefore naturally we’ve got smoke. And sparks. There will be a breeze. Now we come to the core of the ceremony, which is to study the direction the sparks are blown in order to predict how this year’s crops will fare.

The video above was made in Vittorio Veneto, a town about 80 km [50 miles] from Venice, toward the mountains. One hint are the men with the single black feather in their wool hats who are distributing the refreshments; these are members (or ex-members) of the Alpini, the mountain regiment of the Army. I’m sorry about the fruity TV music — it isn’t anything you would hear played at this event.

There are versions of the prognostication formula in scores of regional dialects, but the one I hear around Venice goes like this: “Se le falive (fa-EE-veh) va a marina/tol su saco e va a farina/se le falive va a montagne/tol su saco e va a castagne.” “If the sparks go toward the sea (east), take your sack and go to make flour (wheat); if the sparks go toward the mountains (west), take your sack and go gather chestnuts.”

Thus: Eastward-blowing sparks mean a good year is coming. If they head west, you’re going to be reduced to making your flour (bread, sustenance) from chestnuts, which is pretty much your last resort before starving. The fact that some not-bad dishes can be made with chestnut flour doesn’t change the fact that wheat is much, much better.

Let me note that the formula of divination in some areas, while being essentially the same, carries the opposite meaning: East is bad, west is good. So don’t blame me if your sparks don’t turn out to have told the truth.

Naturally all this burning and auguring is an excuse for a party (very few things here are not). We went one year to a small town on the mainland to celebrate the panevin, and after we had studied the sparks and coughed a while from the smoke, we went to the makeshift tables where vin brule’ (hot spiced wine) and pinza were being offered.

Wine needs no justification, and drinking it hot in sub-zero darkness is a great thing. If you haven’t got alcohol you haven’t got a party, and you can find easily find vin brule’ all winter.

But this is the only time of year you’ll get pinza. It is essentially the traditional winter-Veneto-panevin fruitcake, the only difference being that people actually eat pinza. This was the classic Christmas sweet before panettone horned in; it involves cornmeal, wheat flour, dried figs, anise seeds and bits of candied fruit. My trusty cookbook of old Venetian recipes includes raisins, sugar, pine nuts, and two eggs. Other recipes invoke walnuts, fennel seeds, and grappa. (Traditional offerings to Strenia were figs, dates and honey). However it’s made you won’t want a big wedge, it’s got a specific gravity rivaled only by mercury.

I hope you have a superb 2010, no matter where your sparks blew.