Venice: I am not making this up

Exodus but no promised land

November 17, 2009 No Comments

Esodo. (EH-zo-do.) It means “exodus,” but this simple term — like “Fort Sumter” or “potato famine” — is freighted with history and emotion.

When a Venetian refers to the Esodo, he or she is referring to a Gordian convolution of elements of which the Mother Strand which is knotting up everything else is this: Everybody’s leaving. Not all at once, obviously, but at a fairly steady rate of 1,500 a year. This has been going on for decades.

In 1981, the population of the "historic center" was just below 95,000. On December 31, 2008, it was touching 60,000. (Source: Statistics and Research Service, Comune di Venezia.)

In 55 years (1951-2006), the “historic center” (“postcard Venice,” as I put it) has lost 65 percent of its population. It shrank from 171,808 residents to 63,925. At this writing, the population is 60,311 and still falling. I’ll pause to let that sink in.

If “exodus” seems to be a dramatic word, calling to mind haggard refugees plodding toward the horizon, the reality it connotes is not less dramatic, and potentially fatal to the city’s future. “‘Save Venice’ is passe’,” professor Fabio Carrera, a Venetian, told me, only slightly in jest — ” We need ‘Save the Venetians.'”

The reason the city doesn’t look like the desolate wasteland it is becoming is partly because the casual visitor doesn’t miss what he/she/they never knew. If you’re just walking around for a day, everything looks fine. Self-suggestion is a powerful force, and if you believe that Venice is inhabited by Venetians, you probably won’t notice much to contradict that idea, even though it’s mostly tourists who are filling up the empty spaces, both on the streets and in the apartments.

Economic pressures generated and intensified by the steady increase in tourism (3 per cent a year, till this year), have conspired to cause something resembling forced migration. Venetians have been packing up and moving out for many reasons: Lack of jobs here (businesses closing, even as you read this, due to rents which keep rising, and competitivity which keeps falling), the exaggerated cost of housing, the general cost of living, and even the nature of ordinary daily life (“fatiguing,” demanding,” “inconvenient,” even diehard Venetians will admit).

Over the past 20 years, the proportion of families in the historic center made up of only one person (most often a widow) has reached almost half of the total. Not a factor conducive to a long and prosperous municipal future. (Source: Statistics and Research Office, Comune di Venezia.)

To consider each of these points more closely, let’s look at the last first. Living in Venice, beautiful and fascinating as it may be, is not for everyone. Living here is a vocation, like being a priest, and it too involves sacrifices (and rewards). Considering how heavy — and even impossible — some of those sacrifices have come to be, I can understand why the city can’t keep its kids at home. Not everyone wants to walk five miles a day shlepping the shopping, wedging themselves and their kids onto vaporettos crammed with tourists and their inconceivable luggage, paying prices for even the simplest items which you know cost half as much on the mainland.

Leaving Venice — apart from being carried out in a pine box — has usually meant a move to the mainland towns. First it was Mestre and Marghera, then the territory of Venetian exiles expanded to a series of smaller sub- and exurbs such as Zelarino, Chirignago, and Favaro Veneto. I think of it as Venice’s “near abroad,” the way Russia refers to its former republics. Except some of these settlements were mere wide spots in the country roads winding through fields till the Esodo began.

Mestre and Marghera have been part of the municipal entity known as the Comune di Venezia since 1926. In 1951, the proportion of inhabitants between Venice and its mainland component was 55:21. In 2006, it was 23:66.

Second point: Cost of housing and of living. Here again, the pressure of tourism works against the city’s ultimate well-being (as a city, I mean, not as a theme park). There is very little residential space for rent (for many reasons, one of which is laws which heavily favor the tenant), and the passion which non-Venetians have for buying a place here has led to phenomenal real estate speculation, pushing prices so high a normal Venetian can’t even spell them, much less pay them. The Giudecca has replaced Tuscany as your well-off Briton’s favorite Italian place for a second home.

The future of a real Venice needs to have many more of these.

Depending on the neighborhood, a modest dwelling can cost up to $5,000 per square meter (or 10 square feet). For the same amount of money (assuming you might have that much), or even less, you could get a place on the mainland that was multiple times larger, in better condition, with an elevator, and a garage, and a garden, and so on. If you’re a young family on a budget, you’re going to delete “romance” from your list of domestic requirements and go west.

And finally, the first point: Lack of jobs. Until the middle of the last century, Venice was a city that worked. The Arsenal was still going strong, repairing ships; the colossal Molino Stucky was making pasta, from grinding the wheat to boxing and shipping the final product; there were 20 printing presses; there were factories in Venice and on the Giudecca making cigarettes, cotton thread, asphalt, clocks, pianos, fireworks, beer, and luxury fabrics. I’m probably leaving something out. If you needed work, you’d have had to stay in bed to avoid finding it.

The cost of everything has not only forced out families, but also businesses. They keep closing, or moving, taking their jobs with them. Now, some 20,000 people commute to work on the mainland every morning.

So while “esodo” is what everybody calls it, I’d compare it more to a Class III hemorrhage, caused perhaps by several events but which, taken together, damage the vital functions and left unaddressed will probably kill you.

I know a number of ex-residents — they would still call themselves “Venetians” — who have moved to Mestre. (If you’re a native of Mestre, you’re referred to as a “Mestrino/a.” If you go anywhere outside the Veneto region, though, you will almost certainly tell people you’re from Venice. Technically, it’s not a lie, but your listener will be imagining you in a gondola and not stuck in traffic on the way to the airport.)

The older these exiles are, the less willing they were to make this move. One of them, a guy I know who belongs to a boat club over there, makes a point of rowing over here with his buddies as often as he can.

They stopped in the canal outside one afternoon and rang my doorbell. We had a little schmooze, but he ignored his three companions’ pleas to get going because he had to — HAD TO — show me something. Because his grandparents used to live in our building, and when he was born — he dragged me around the corner — his grandfather immediately took him to this very canal (he showed me the very steps going down into the very water) and dunked him three times. “This red bandanna,” he pointed to his neckerchief, “means I’m from Castello.” His friends were rolling their eyes, but to him it was something utterly crucial about him, about the city, about the world the way it used to be, a world that doesn’t and can’t and won’t ever exist on the mainland.

I’ve met ex-Venetians who come over from Mestre on Sunday afternoon just to stroll around, just to be here. Like going back to the old home place. On a personal level, it is pure pathos, which doesn’t primarily mean “sad,” it means “suffer.” I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a transplanted Venetian say, “Life is so much better since we left Venice.” I have heard some say, “We really, really miss it.” The emotional reality of this erases much of the importance of factors such as cost of living, crowded vaporettos, and all those other drawbacks I mentioned above.

In many ways, Venice is an excellent town for older people; lots of human contact, and you are compelled to walk, whether you feel like it or not. But as the shape of families changes, more of the elderly are living alone.

The city government is not oblivious to what’s going on. There are spasmodic attempts to get a grip on some appendage of this monster, and a recent recalculation shows that the departures have slowed, if not stopped. New apartments built or renovated to be made available at advantageous prices to Venetians was an excellent idea, then it was discovered that there were Venetians buying them in order to re-sell them. Jobs? Nobody seems to know where more might be found. I think I saw one around here the other day, but I can’t remember where.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be the mayor of Venice and go abroad to some big international conference of mayors. And someone asks, “So, how are things in your city?” (I overlook his probable first response which would be “Fine, except that the people are morons.”) I imagine him saying “Fine,” period. Or maybe, “Well, could be better.” Or maybe, “We’re evaluating some exciting new projects,” or however mayors phrase it.

It would be much harder to have the nerve to admit, “There are a lot of great things about my city, except that nobody can live there. I’m mayor of a city in which it is becoming literally impossible to live.” What response could anyone give to that statement? It would be like asking a ship’s captain about his vessel and hearing him say, “She’s in great shape, except for that large hole in the hull.” Nor would it make much sense for him to say, in effect: “Hey! At least we’re still floating!”

In the end, there may not actually be any compelling reason to halt this hemorrhage. Mestre is big and modern and loaded with taxpayers with disposable income. Venice is little and decrepit and not really self-sufficient. If I block the emotional component, it may make more sense to just keep the patient on life support (tourists, sponsors, etc.) than attempt to return it to health and vigor.

It bears some thinking about. In fact, now that this radical thought has occurred to me, it’s going to be bothering me a lot.

Events, Problems

Funeral of Venice?

November 16, 2009 No Comments

This is Adam and Eve after paying for their Venetian abode.

On Saturday a moderately publicized event was staged here which was billed as the “Funeral of Venice.” It was organized by a local group/social site called venessia.com. (This is the way Venezia is spelled in Venetian. Disclosure: I’m signed up but I hardly ever visit.) I didn’t attend but I was aware of the drumbeats leading up to it and cast my eye over the assorted coverage in its wake.

The event consisted of loading a fuchsia-tinted casket onto a six-oar balotina and carrying it, followed by a sort of funeral cortege of boats, down the Grand Canal from the train station to Ca’ Farsetti, or City Hall, by the Rialto Bridge. There was also an enormous floral wreath with the traditional ribbon from the bereaved donor: “Venetian Citizens,” it read.

The casket was carried into the atrium and a sort of funeral oration was declaimed. Then some people kicked the casket to pieces and a flag with the symbol of the phoenix (rebirth, hint hint) was taken out. At least they didn’t dig a grave somewhere out along the sidewalk and bury the thing. All this was moderately covered by the local press, it being Saturday and evidently a slow news day. But it was covered more extensively by the foreign press, perhaps being tired of covering the usual stories of death and dismemberment from around the world. So they came for a different story of death and dismemberment, the municipal variety.

The motivation for this moderately unusual gesture was to draw the world’s attention — or if not the world, the city government — to the fact that the population of the city had just dropped below 60,000. Of course the city government already knew that but didn’t interpret it in the same way as the protesters. I’m not sure the government interpreted it at all.

What’s so significant about 60,000? Because this is the number at which a settlement is defined as a “city.” Therefore, having fewer, Venice has now become a town. After which a village, I suppose, then a hamlet, then a hermit’s refuge.

“The city doesn’t want to resign itself to becoming a modern Pompei,” said actor Cesare Colonnese as part of his oration, to the assembled multitude of foreign reporters — according to the Gazzettino, there were four taxis full of journalists, and a barge with somebody playing the piano. “Danse Macabre” would have been a good choice. (Actually he was playing “Funeral March” by Chopin.) All in all, the account as given sounds more like something concocted for Carnival than anything else. Needless to say, no politicians showed up.

At a mere two days’ distance it’s hard to make a judgment on the impact this event might have had on public policy and the future of the city. If discernible, it too would be moderate, I’d guess. It mostly had the aroma of the sort of wailing and gnashing of teeth that goes on here for almost any reason you can come up with, said wailing and gnashing being totally justified and virtually always ineffective. And not really all that satisfying, I believe, because like anything else it can become a habit and therefore loses much of its pleasure.

In any case, the city government has never responded to wailing and gnashing. Where mere citizens (and not economic sectors) are concerned, it is wail- and gnash-proof.

Lino, who belongs to the class — Venetians born and bred — which some believe ought to be first on the barricades, was massively uninterested. Not that the fate of his city doesn’t interest him, but scenarios like the casket seem to come with futility and foolishness already installed, making them useless for any serious work that has to be done.

This price does not indicate a luxury dwelling at $895 per square foot. — $939,362 for 1,035 square feet does not indicate a luxury dwelling.

First of all, he noted that of the people who responded, a large contingent were foreigners. No disrespect intended, but when a call to arms, however well-meant, comes more from without than within, it’s a symptom that something is already out of kilter. If the city government doesn’t respond to its own citizens, who presumably have a long-term stake (fancy way of saying “pay taxes”), it’s unlikely that it will respond to those who mostly don’t.

But the story is simpler than all this. Lino ran me through it:

“A lot of the Venetians who moved to the mainland used to live in cellars,” he stated. Venice doesn’t have cellars, but it’s as close as I can come to the real word he used — magazzini — those humid, moldy street-level areas never intended as dwellings because of their propensity to flood, but which are universally useful as storage space for anything that isn’t bothered by humidity or mold. But people lived in them all the same because they didn’t have anywhere else — this large cohort not being nobility, obviously, or even the middle class, but what once was a large working class and whoever is below that.

Many Venetians of his era –say, from before World War II to something like ten to 15 years after it — remember how much miseria there was. “Miseria” is a very useful word because it not only connotes poverty, but everything physical and emotional that goes along with it, which could also be called “misery.” A friend of mine remembers the family that lived upstairs, who sometimes came down to their apartment to get warm. His mother would occasionally give them meat. He remembers houses that smelled of “cold ashes.”

This jewel only "needs refreshing" of its 2 bedr, 1 bath, living room, eat-in kitchen, 1000 square feet for a mere $1,043,735. Why not take two?

“It was a dirty, provincial, poverty-stricken backwater,” Time magazine noted in a review of an exhibition in 1936. The unnamed reporter was referring to the city in the 18th century, but not so very much had changed by the 20th. In 1900 a cholera epidemic broke out; not difficult in a city surrounded by water, but a classic threat to those weakened by malnutrition and general crud. “Death in Venice” was written not long afterward(1911), and although the title reeks of romance, the death itself merely reeks. It was cholera, a disease which has no aesthetic component whatever even if the protagonist was staying in a fancy hotel on the Lido.

In reporting on the 1836 epidemic, a British medical journal said this: “The proportion of cholera patients in the poorest to those in the wealthiest parishes in Venice is 100 to 15,” it stated. People who were especially susceptible were “persons of irregular habits and diet… using bad food…affected with chronic complaints…poor…over-worked…dirty.”

Lino remembers children with lice, scabies, typhus. Not that the city was some huge slum, but it wasn’t exactly an autoclave, either.

“When people got the chance live in something better, of course they took it,” he went on.

It’s common knowledge now, as it has been for decades, that the cost of real estate in Venice is fabulously high and just keeps going higher. So if anybody had the slightest opportunity to trade up, they took it.

“For what they would pay for a small magazzino here, they could get a big apartment on the mainland, with a garage and garden and elevator and everything.” But they didn’t count on the emotional element, and he says that many of these transfers had the chance to come back, they’d do it in a flash.

So why don’t they?

Here we have 650 square feet for $700,794 -- 2 bedrooms, 1 bath WITH WINDOWS, but also a balcony and a storeroom. Not bad, but still pretty steep.

“The plain fact behind all this is that the cost of real estate has now reached a level which is unattainable for most people,” he said. “And don’t forget” — here it comes — “it’s also Venetians who are the cause. If someone has an apartment to sell, he’s obviously going to put the highest possible price on it. A price which only a foreigner could pay, even if they only come here a few days or weeks of the year. Just walk around — there are so many houses that are shut up.”

This is true; it’s not uncommon for people to ask me what’s up with all the closed shutters.

Venetians, knowing all this, are at a loss to find a handhold on the situation. But this Saturday-morning ceremony was a worthy attempt and it did make for a moderately dramatic interlude at City Hall. The city intermittently devises some new plan to address this situation, but as they say here, “The law is made, the loophole is found.” A number of those new apartments on the Giudecca a few years ago that were supposed to be reserved for Venetians? Certain conditions weren’t imposed on the terms of sale, so Venetians were buying them — and then reselling them at inflated prices.

The Councilor for Housing, Mara Rumiz, had the grace to hold a press conference at which she discussed some initiatives to confront the housing situation. I feel that ought to be acknowledged.

Cesare Colonnese, an actor who gave the discourse, had this to say on his website (in Italian and at the end in Venetian): “…I don’t want to get into discussing politics and I don’t know if talking about responsibility is always correct. I think in this case the responsibility should also be on the part of all of us. It’s also up to us to do something for Venice, it’s also up to us to set a good example…. We Venetians shouldn’t always present ourselves as complainers and never content. Each one of us, from the artisan to the glass-maker, from the baker to the pizza-maker, has a craft in his hands and the potential to show themselves and others that Venice is a strong city that’s capable of being reborn. Venice doesn’t have to lose its characteristics and traditions. We have to raise our children teaching them to love these customs and traditions because they will be the future of this city [Note to Cesare: Are you going to stem the mania for celebrating Halloween here, which nobody has any idea what it is except some new fad the kids insist on pursuing? I’d vote for starting here with the old defend-our-traditions project]. It’s useless to leave with our tails between our legs, because by leaving we lose contact with this reality as well as, in my opinion, the right to complain. Who says that Venice is dead? It’s time to quit this talk while just sitting around. So get up! Get up! You too, go and do something!” Like what? SOMETHING. I’ll get right on it!

The Gazzettino reported a smattering of comments across the spectrum of onlookers. One 70-year-old Venetian man said, “Nobody has worked right down to the bottom on the issue of residentiality for Venetians,” he said. “We need to bring Venetians back to the city and this should be the work of a good administration.” Affordable housing, in two words.

“I think it’s silly,” remarked a young Venetian woman who moved to Mestre. “I’d never move back to Venice. I come here to work, but it’s better to stay away from the city, which at this point has more disadvantages than luxuries.” Points for candor.

“I’d never have thought we could reach this point,” commented a retired grocer — “a demonstration about being able to live in Venice. I’d like to put the politicians in the casket.”

A jeweler who lives on the mainland thought it was a joke. “The destiny of Venice is the same as all the ‘art cities,'” he said. “It’s a world in evolution.” And in fact I have heard this from others — that many of Venice’s problems are also problems in Florence, and elsewhere. The residents are under siege wherever tourism has unhinged the economic equilibrium.

Well, at least this time the story about Venice sinking isn’t about water or tourists. What would it be sinking beneath? Just about everything except gluttony, although when the ceremony was over there were refreshments. As everyone is fond of observing, “All the psalms finish with the Gloria.” The happy ones, the tragic ones — whatever is going on, make sure you’ve got snacks. Oh, and drinks. They had Prosecco, naturally. No point in suffering needlessly.

Food

San Martino: the Ur-cookie

November 12, 2009 2 Comments

As I was waxing lyrical about the cookies shaped in the silhouette of San Martino on his horse with his sword, I neglected to include a photograph of the most extraordinary version I’ve seen this year, or any year. It isn’t that big — just about an adult hand’s-breadth (how often do I get a chance to use that word) — but if you can discover anything about it resembling a saint, horse, or sword, please let me know. It’s like the cookie version of Charles Laughton as Quasimodo.

So I’ve decided this must be the primeval Ur-cookie, the formless plasma from which all other Sammartini have developed over the eons. I would gladly have bought it but I don’t think I would have had the courage to eat it. It is so completely and fundamentally cookie that if I were to destroy it I have no idea what species would die off and go extinct. Maybe Girl Scout cookies would be first, followed by Famous Amos — do those still exist, or did he join a death pact with Mrs. Field? — and then Oreo would go, and on and on down through Scottish shortbread to ginger snaps to nameless oatmeal-raisin disks to the last holdout, the Petit Ecolier, whom not even his chocolate shield could save.

So just look at it, don’t even touch it. It would be the end.

Events, Food, Venetian-ness

Martin: the next milestone on the trek to sainthood

November 11, 2009 3 Comments

I realize that a mere ten days have passed since we officially festivized All Saints, which to my literal mind means we’re good for another year with everybody who has ever been beatified or canonized. But of course that isn’t the case, at least not here. Happily, saints often come not only with their often inscrutable life stories, but — as you may have noticed — with their own particular provender.

St. Martin in his greatest moment, here in a relief sculpture on the facade of the eponymous church near the Arsenal.

November 11 is the next case in point: It’s St. Martin’s Day (that would be St. Martin of Tours, if you’re looking for him — not the Caribbean island). And even though you may feel as if what’s left of the year is unspooling in a meaningless way — let’s just get to Christmas — there are several milestones on the way and he is one of the most important.

The man himself (316 to 397 A.D.) was born in what is now Hungary, and although he was drawn to Christianity at the age of ten, he followed his officer father and joined a Roman unit of heavy cavalry. He was pious but that didn’t seem to interfere with the performance of his duties, whatever those might have been. So everything was going along in a normal Roman-cavalry-unit sort of way until one day, near his base at Amiens, France, he had a life-changing experience, followed by a vision, which has become the most famous (usually only) thing which we remember about him. I refer to the Episode of the Cloak.

In the words of his hagiographer, Sulpitius Severus, “In the middle of winter, a winter which had shown itself to be more severe than ordinary, so that extreme cold was proving fatal to many, he happened to meet at the gate of the city of Amiens a poor man destitute of clothing. He was entreating those that passed by to have compassion upon him, but all passed the wretched man without notice, when Martin…recognized that a being to whom others showed no pity, was, in that respect, left to him.

A child's version of events painted on a plate which says "Viva San Martino" (long live St. Martin). I think he might have liked this blithe little version of events.

Yet, what should he do? He had nothing except the cloak in which he was clad, for he had already parted with the rest of his garments for similar purposes. Taking, therefore, his sword with which he was girt, he divided his cloak into two equal parts, and gave one part to the poor man, while he again clothed himself with the remainder. Upon this, some of the bystanders laughed, because he was now an unsightly object, and stood out as but partly dressed. Many, however, who were of sounder judgment, groaned deeply because they themselves had done nothing similar. They especially felt this, because, being possessed of more than Martin, they could have clothed the poor man without reducing themselves to nakedness.”

The first time I heard this story, I was slightly perplexed by the fact that he hadn’t given the man his entire cloak, him being such a good person, and then I figured he’d miraculously be given a new one (or something). Cutting it and keeping half seems so intelligent — hard to believe he became a saint with that approach to problem-solving.

But obviously I don’t know my saint. “In the following night” (Severus continues) …Martin…had a vision of Christ arrayed in that part of his cloak with which he had clothed the poor man…he heard Jesus saying with a clear voice to the multitude of angels standing around — “Martin, who is still but a catechumen, clothed me with this robe.”

Martin immediately went to be baptized, and two years later he left the army to begin a lifetime of good works and miracles. Many of his reported exploits seem somehow generic — no disrespect intended, I have no doubt these occurred or ought to have occurred (converting a robber to the Faith, restoring someone who had been strangled, destroying heathen temples and altars, casting out devils, curing the sick, preaching repentance to the Devil). He wouldn’t have been a saint if he hadn’t done at least two of those things. But clearly others also recognized his intelligence and made him Bishop of Tours, and then he became a national saint of France and also of soldiers. (I think that’s a fine thing to remember on Veterans’ Day.) But what remains fixed in millions of art works, and in most garden-variety minds, is the cloak-and-beggar story.

A wineshop announces (in Venetian) the happy news: The torbolino has arrived!

I can remember much of this because everyone here refers to that brief pause in the oncoming winter weather (known elsewhere as Indian Summer) as “St. Martin’s Summer.” It is underway even as I write, having arrived two nights ago, girt with smiling sunshine, after three days of ferocious cold, wind and rain. I also remember much of this because the kids go a little crazy.

This is an important date (unrelated to Martin, as such) because this is when anyone who made wine in September begins to decant the first stage, or “must,” a barely fermented fluid which here is called torbolino (tor-bo-LEE-no) because it’s turbid, and is born to be consumed with roasted chestnuts. And while the adults may be swallowing turbid wine and burning their fingers, the children head straight for sugar and noise.

The kids appear in approximately organized groups, and go up and down the street banging whatever they've got to bang on or with and wearing certain costume elements. I don't know why the crown is considered an important attribute of St. Martin, but anybody wearing it certainly feels like celebrating.

The tradition is for children to go around the neighborhood banging and clanging on pots and pans with spoons or something, and carrying a small bag (sacco — sack. Sachetin — little sack. Sa-keh-TEEN). They sing at least the lilting refrain of a little song whose verses variously request any adult they stop to give them some kind of treat, and specifying the revenge they wish to see visited on anyone who refuses. “Pimples on your butt” is the best one. These are innocent little maledictions — nothing anyone could actually inflict, unlike Halloween tricks.

The correct term for this activity is “battere San Martino,” or “to beat St. Martin.” This simply means going out to make a racket in his honor. The refrain: “E co nooooooostro sachetiiiiiiiiin, Cari signori xe San Martin.” (And with our little sack, dear sirs it’s Saint Martin’s Day.)

Obviously this kid has reached a whole new layer of cool. Nice to get the horse involved, too. — Obviously this kid has reached a whole new level of cool. Nice to get the horse involved, too.

The littlest contingent was the only one which wore something resembling cloaks.

They go in and out of whatever shops may be open — this is a late-afternoon/early-evening project — and may well score some kind of small candy or even bits of money. They are usually accompanied by squadrons of mothers.

Then there are the cookies called “Sammartini.” This is a newfangled post-war invention which played no part in the lives of children of Lino’s vintage. The dense buttery cookie dough is cut out by metal forms of various dimensions in the silhouette of a man on horseback holding his sword aloft. Then the pastry-makers go into a sort of frenzy decorating him with icing of various colors and sticking pieces of candy onto it before it dries. The price of these cookies varies according to size but also, I imagine, according to the elegance of the candy. An M&M is one thing, a Perugina chocolate is another. And then they add up the cost of the ingredients and multiply by, oh, a thousand. For the first time, I just saw some in the ordinary old supermarket, a triumph of economy over romance. It was bound to happen.

Speaking of economy, don’t worry too much about how much money the pastry-bakers could be losing on their unsold cookies the day after. They break them up into pieces and sell them by weight. That is really the triumph of economy over romance and I’m all for it. You know what? Fragments of saint taste just like the whole saint.

A pretty nice "Sammartin," it's true. But 28 euros? That's $40! If Saint Martin found out you had that much extra income to do something in his honor, I'm going to step up and say he wouldn't want it to be a cookie. My view of saints is that they're fine with fun, but not with insanity. — A pretty nice "Sammartin," it's true. But 28 euros? That's $40! If Saint Martin found out you had that much extra money to spend on something in his honor, I'm going to step up and say he wouldn't want it to be a cookie. My view of saints is that they're fine with fun, but not with insanity.

This was my cookie and it was excellent. I think all horses should have M&M's for hooves.

For the first time the neighborhood hired a local man who put on quite a puppet show. It didn't have anything to do with St. Martin, but it did involve lots of hitting and rude remarks, all in Venetian. The kids loved it.

Back in the days when children were still made to memorize poetry, they were taught “San Martino” by Giosue Carducci ( Nobel Prize for Literature, 1906). It’s a bucolic little ode to this autumnal interlude — nothing about cloaks, saints, or sacks, small or otherwise — but naturally the new wine works its way into it with no trouble at all.

The poem comes rolling out of Lino’s memory even after all these decades; he just started reciting it yesterday as we were walking over the bridge on the way to the vaporetto. It’s more a hymn to the season than anything related to saints or miracles and it reminds me, in a way, of those lines from Stephen Vincent Benet’s “John Brown’s Body” (“Fall of the possum, fall of the ‘coon/And the lop-eared hound-dog baying the moon./Fall that is neither bitter nor swift/But a brown girl bearing an idle gift/A brown seed-kernel that splits apart/And shows the Summer yet in its heart…”). It’s a season that definitely brings out something in poets, maybe even more than spring.

La nebbia agli irti colli/piovigginando sale,/e sotto il maestrale/urla e biancheggia il mar;

Ma per le vie del borgo/dal ribollir de’ tini/Va l’aspro odor de i vini/l’anime a rallegrar.

Gira su ceppi accesi/lo spiedo scoppietando:/sta il cacciator fischiando/sull’uscio a rimirar

Tra le rossastre nubi/Stormi di uccelli neri/Com’esuli pensieri/Nel vespero migrar.

The mist on the bristly hills/rises drizzling/and under the northwest wind/the sea whitens and howls.

But in the village streets/from the fermenting tubs/Comes the pungent odor of the wine/to cheer the spirit.

Above the burning logs/the spit turns, popping;/the hunter whistling in the doorway/takes aim again

Among the russet clouds/flocks of black birds/like exiled thoughts/migrate at vespers.

By the way, Carducci was born in a Tuscan mountain village called Valdicastello (now Valdicastello Carducci, pop. 1000), so he wasn’t some urban creature sitting downtown inventing some fantasy out of the Georgics. He heard and saw (and smelled) what he was writing about. That’s why I like it. I wonder how old he was when the idea of “exiled thoughts” came to him.

Signing off for the Daily Saint and Cookie.

The men in the fish shop thought all this was wonderful.