A dog and human feet. Not a good combination after all the kibble has been consumed.
The streets of Venice are paved with trachyte, and often are marked with something less durable. Venetians have always loved dogs, and many of their owners do indeed clean up after them. But a rancid few are perfectly fine with their dog’s biological functions. So fine that the popo’ (the polite term that corresponds to “poop”) the dog leaves behind magically becomes invisible to them.
No need to take up space describing the disgust both the product and the barbaric dog-owners inspire in everyone. But one woman struck back.
Anna da Schio (Anna from Schio — no last names on this one!) wrote to the Gazzettino on January 28 describing how she finally dealt with one dog-owner’s nonfeasance (translated by me):
I’m struck by the desperate appeal of Signor Marco Panfilo to the mayor that he should banish the dogs of Venice because their owners are uncivil. It would seem more correct to me to banish the uncivil owners, more animals than their animals.
Anyway, I’d like to note that one can defend oneself against even these.
A few years ago, Signor Sempronio lived near me (“Sempronio” is the equivalent of “John Doe”), the owner of a very beautiful and very big boxer, which, however, left behind him mountains of popo’. I got fed up and I decided to act.
So, they arrive — Sempronio and Fido — just like every morning. Fido leaves his little mountain right in the middle of the sotoportego under my house, where it is super-easy to step in it because the area is dark.
Sempronio looks at the sky, pretends not to notice anything, and moves on toward the Corte Santi. I watch this act (by Sempronio, not by Fido), and I follow them: Corte Santi, Calle del Monastero, Rio Tera’ San Vio, Calle del Sabbion, Fondamenta Zorzi and then Calle de le Mende, and I’m still behind them.
At this point the good Sempronio begins to have some doubts, and walks faster, and I’m still behind. When we reach the Campiello degli Incurabili, he suddenly turns around and asks why I’m following him.
I reply that I’m waiting to see him return to clean under the sotoportego. Sempronio assures me that this is completely his intention, but in the meantime walks briskly toward the Ramo degli Incurabili, and I’m still following.
We come out, a little out of breath, at the Zattere. Fido is thrilled because this walk is a lot longer than usual, but Sempronio is visibly altered, and uncertain what to do: He doesn’t want to let me follow him all the way home, because I’d discover where he lives. He makes a rude but eloquent gesture in my direction, heads down the Zattere almost running, and I’ll spare you the rest of the marathon, but we reach, flying, the sotoportego where, fortunately, the “mountain” is still intact.
Sempronio, who till now has considered it useless to carry the necessary tools for dealing with this, sacrifices a page of his newspaper, cleans it up, and departs with his odorous package.
I’ve often seen Sempronio and Fido, but I’ve never found any more mountains of popo’ near my house.
I see this dog thinking, “If only I could pick up my own poop — I’d try anything to make everybody’s life better.” The owner perhaps imagines that it has already been done.
Venice has been compared to many things, or has suggested or inspired many things, but I have only now discovered that she also makes an excellent base for board games. Two have been created by Italians (I don’t know their provenance) and one American, but they all live, or lived, on the Giudecca.
A new board game called “Venetia,” created by Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitello, is based on Venetian history. (Disclaimer: I have received absolutely no remuneration or even offers of dinner for the following notices — I just think they’re worth knowing about.)
It appears that the ability to speak Italian (or German?) is going to be important, so this post may have value only in letting you know that such a thing has been invented. Or, it may be a great way to practice your Italian.
It is subtitled “The Rise and Fall of the Serenissima,” and the idea, as outlined on their site, is to “compete with your friends to become the most influential family in the history of the Republic of Venice…The hegemony of Venice is threatened by many enemies. The Republic faces the rise of other powers, from the rival Republic of Genoa to the Kingdom of Aragon to the west, to the Byzantine Empire and Ottoman Turks to the east. Century after century, take part in the struggle that formed the long history of the Republic of Venice. ‘Venetia’ contains historic notes on the Serenissima, her politics and wars, complete with biographies of some of the most important personages in the history of Venice.”
Stand back, though — this isn’t going to be just any little fandango. You get the board and the rule book, of course, but you also get a booklet of historical notes, 7 dice, about 200 wooden pieces (function not specified), almost 200 segnalini (no clue, but they must be important), and “more than” 80 cards. It’s for 2-4 players. The notes say it lasts 90 minutes. That sounds optimistic when you’re dealing with 13 centuries of derring-do, but fire when ready, Gridley, as Doge Leonardo Loredan didn’t say.
Then there is “Inkognito,”a veteran in the game world, created in 1988 by Leo Colovini and the late Alex Randolph, and now out in its third edition. It’s a spy game played on a board displaying the map of Venice. Such non-Venetian characters as Lord Fiddlebottom and Col. Bubble roam the streets of the Queen of the Seas, spying. A more detailed explanation (in English) is given on the site I’ve linked to.
I think I’ve seen some of these characters, on the #1 vaporetto going toward the Lido.
Now somebody could get to work on a board game in which you earn points by finding the one vaporetto with an available seat, getting to Venice on the tram with no more than one breakdown, crossing the Piazza San Marco at noon on a Sunday in July without touching anyone; you lose points by carrying more than one piece of luggage, buying an illegal handbag or a bag of corn to feed the pigeons, or leaving your empty beer can or ice-cream cup on a windowsill.
Actually, that doesn’t sound so much like a game. Forget I mentioned it.
The church of San Geremia, with its splendid tower and even more splendid invisible clock, seen looking up the Cannaregio Canal. (Canaletto, Wikiart.)
Before wristwatches, there were bells, usually in towers. But for the bells to be useful, somebody had to know what time it was, so a clock needed to be lurking somewhere — preferably attached to the bells. Of course, clocks didn’t have to have bells. But bells were irrelevant without a clock.
So if ingenuity appeals to you, I suggest you go to the church of S. Geremia, near the train station, to observe one of the oldest clocks in Europe; it is the still-functioning mechanism that kept their two bells ringing — with a 70-year interlude — ever since the 1500’s. (No, there doesn’t seem to be a definite date to the clock’s arrival; I have turned the booklet’s information inside and out, and now it’s my brain that feels like a piece of origami. So “1500’s” will have to do for now.)
(For those whose minds can never be at rest, let me add that the first public clock in Italy was installed in the tower of the church of Sant’ Eustorgio in Milan between 1297 and 1306.) (I will not be reporting anything about Sant’ Eustorgio.)
Here is the creature, alive again. The pendulum is visible as a dark disk in front of the wound-up cord on the right. Sorry the picture doesn’t convey the TICK TOCK which some writers poetically compare to the beat of the human heart, which of course is just another machine.
The tower of S. Geremia has a clock, but no clock-face. In fact, only a few churches in Venice whose bells still alert us to the time also display a visible clock. Clock-faces became common in the 1500’s, the result of I don’t know what impulse, because when you think about it, the striking bells told you everything you needed to know without a visual aid. The belltower of the church of the Carmini, whose bells told me the time for the ten years I lived nearby, has no clock face. I never thought about that till this moment. Just hearing the hour and quarter-hour struck was enough to keep me oriented over the course of the day (and night). But because somebody had to know exactly what time it was, there was a sundial, still visible, on the tower of S. Geremia, which enabled this person to calibrate the works, by hand, exactly at noon. I’ll explain the importance of that in a minute (sorry).
This mechanism is probably one of the simplest, but it still impresses the hoo out of me. Not being literate in the language of wheels — cog, fly, escape, Catherine — I’m not convinced that it was made by an engineer and not by an alchemist or general all-purpose thaumaturge. The important point is that it was maintained in working order till 1950. At that point it went into retirement, until a restoration project brought it back to life in 2015.
From a few steps away, the clock mechanism doesn’t look so very complicated. Up close, you begin to appreciate the precision involved in making every single component.Here is the brief biography, helpfully placed behind the clock. A 32-page booklet by Francesco Zane, which explains literally everything, is left out on a table, but the text is only in Italian. Pay attention to VIETATO TOCCARE — it is forbidden to touch. Why would anyone want to touch it? To see if it’s really working? It must be the same urge that impels people to climb into bear enclosures.And while we’re speaking of signs, a shout-out to the restoration project: “For the generous munificence of the F.I.G.C. (Italian Soccer Federation) and the Venice chapter of the Italian Association of Referees the centuries-old clock of the tower of S. Geremia now lives again after a long silence marking the ringing of good seasons.” Perhaps it sounds better in Italian than English, but it’s all true.
Venice was a city of towers and there were many more than there are today. In 1601, a certain Franz Schott, writing a guidebook entitled “Itinerario d’Italia,” stated that Venice contained 27 public clocks, and “towers for church bells 114.” Today, there are 84. We can thank Napoleon for this devastation.
Schott, being German, made those useful distinctions because they weren’t all clock-towers — some were watchtowers, or signal towers, or showing-off towers built by especially rich people.
Venice in its towery days looked pretty much like this. Compliments to Michelle Lovric and her book, “Talina in the Tower.” (Orion Children’s Books, 2012)
The need for clocks (have you never reflected on why there was a need for clocks?) seems to have begun in the Benedictine monasteries, to ensure the correct timing of the Liturgy of the Hours throughout the day — and night. But there was also a need for order in arranging the day’s activities out in the profane world, so people got used to organizing themselves according to the bells rung for religious purposes.
Here is how a typical medieval day in Venice rolled along, at least until the 1500’s, from the comprehensive booklet written by Francesco Zane (translated by me):
“Until the 1600’s the devout custom continued of following the divine offices during the night, and the doge never missed attending in his chapel, just as the Greek emperors (I presume he means Byzantine emperors) and the French and Longobard kings. (The “divine offices during the night” would have occurred at midnight and 3:00 AM. No wonder he dozed off in meetings.)
“As the sun rose behind the campanile of San Marco, at the sound of a bell each person got busy working, and seeing that the most numerous artisans were the carpenters, in Venice called marangoni, they named that bell the Marangona. The magistrates seated and the workshops already buzzing, not a few patricians … gathered at Rialto beneath the porticoes, which are to the right as you descend the bridge, for the sole purpose of seeing each other and talking together, while at the same hour and in the remaining porticoes (was) a crowd of merchants — Florentine, Genoese, Lombards, Spanish, Saracens, and of whatever nation of the world was involved in major business. They stayed there till noon, when it was time for lunch.
“…lunchtime was brief, only half an hour after noon had struck, when another bell … struck for a half hour calling everyone back to work, so that the entire time allowed for the pause was only one hour. When night fell, work and public business necessarily ended, but it wasn’t unusual whenever and where it was requested or needed that the magistrates would continue to work on state business.
If you’ve ever noticed the bell ringing every day at 2:00 PM from the campanile of San Marco, that was the signal ending the lunch break for the Arsenal workers.
“Finally, at the third hour of the night (Compline, or 9:00 PM), another bell was rung … after which you could no longer walk around the city … nor could you keep fires burning in shops and houses on pain of a fine of 100 soldi, by which provision the habitations, which were, for the main part, of wood, were preserved from fire. But in the 1400’s it was permitted for barbers and small food shops to remain open after “terza della notte” (6:00 PM).
All these are times that correspond to the canonical hours, which persisted till the 1700’s. Slightly confusing, because the day was considered to begin at sunset. “Prime” was 6:00 AM, “Terza” was 9:00 AM, “Sesta” was 12:00 PM, and “Nona” was 3:00 PM. Documents often refer to meetings and other events as occuring before or at or after a certain named bell. Everybody knew what “Nona” meant, just as I’ve gotten used to knowing what “Candelora” and “l’Immacolata” mean in terms of dates.
Another view of the belltower of S. Geremia by Canaletto, this time looking across the Cannaregio Canal. The church is the small building in the center distance;
It fell to the bells to keep a city of 100,000 people functioning efficiently; the Venetian government needed to ensure that everybody knew what time it was, and S. Geremia was one of four churches which officially sounded the time for any governmental meeting, especially the Great Council. (The other official churches were the Frari, San Francesco della Vigna, and, of course, San Marco, all the highest towers in Venice and all necessarily synchronized, which is where the sundials came in.) Seeing that the Council numbered some 2,000 members who lived all over the city, these four strategically placed belltowers totally removed any chance for someone to arrive late saying he hadn’t heard the summons. Being sure of a standard citywide time enabled the office timekeeper to define what “showing up late” meant, which made it easy to impose the appropriate fine.
Out in the parishes, when the bells rang for Prime (dawn) every morning, the appointed persons would open the thousands of public wells, which had been covered at night. (Reports of the occasional suicide make it clear why this was desirable.) This practice was maintained, perhaps toward the end without the bells, until the acqueduct from the mainland was built in 1884.
Also at Prime, every day from 1516 to 1797, the bells from S. Geremia signaled the guards to open the gates to the Ghetto. At the bell of 6:00 PM the gates were closed and bolted, and the night patrol began its circuit — in boats, naturally — of the walls of the Ghetto.
Who paid for this clock? S. Geremia didn’t have a monastery to justify or fund it; its use was entirely secular, and the parishioners paid for it. San Geremia was one of the largest parishes in Venice, and by the late 1200’s had developed both economically and socially well beyond its poor, marshy beginnings. There were many businesses which depended on knowing what time it was — for example, the foundries.
The city’s oldest foundries were in the parish of S. Geremia, in the area which later was assigned to the Ghetto. The period between the 13th and 14th centuries saw rapid innovations throughout Europe, and one writer says that it was no coincidence that the first artillery and clocks began to appear at the same time. Among other things, the Venetian foundries cast bombards, or early cannon, as well as creating the alloys used for other assorted weapons. Foundry workers were required to live in the parish. I give this as a fact, though I can’t provide the reason, except for the fact that virtually everyone resided near their place of work.
To return to the clock: There are signs that it was cast by the “Dondi” foundry. Several generations of Dondis distinguished themselves in the realm of timepieces. Clock people (of whom I am not one; I’m just passing through) venerate the name of Giovanni Dondi Dall’ Orologio (“of the clock”), who in 1364 completed work on his Astrarium, a complex astronomical clock which one source calls “one of the most important machines of all time.”
To sum up: Artisans and engineers at the pinnacle of their skill collaborated to make this sturdy, unstoppable instrument. I have no doubt that they looked upon it and saw that it was good, though they might not have imagined it would keep going for 500 years. That’s a heck of a lot of TOCKs.
The belltower of the church of the SS. Apostoli (Holy Apostles) still looks like this today, long after this portrait by Canaletto, with bells and clock-face and everything. Tassini, who is never to be doubted in any way, records the Harold-Lloyd adventure of the church’s aged priest, Domenico Longo, who in 1672 was up in the belltower, slipped, and fell out, being saved from instant death by his clothes becoming snagged on the “spheres” of the clock. He hung there till help arrived (method of help not specified, nor the number of onlookers who must have crowded around the scene almost instantly.)Saved by the spheres! Or points, or whatever. Notice the numeral “1” written as “J,” which I have only seen on the island of Burano. Sharp-eyed reader Robert Fusillo has informed me that it is the Roman numeral for “1” and I have subsequently discovered that “j” is a “swash variant” of a “lower-case Roman numeral” for 1. I’d never heard of a lower-case numeral, but life just keeps pushing information into my brain. (Photo: Didier Descouens, detail).The church of San Francesco di Paola in via Garibaldi also sports a clock — or did, until some time during WW 2 it stopped working. Rather than repair it, the parishioners removed it and left its shadow behind. Too bad — a clock that worked would be extremely useful there.And as we see, here too the renowned “1” in the shape of a “J” appears. If the image seems slightly out of focus, it’s thanks to the fog this morning.
Being by yourself can be great, if the sun is shining and there isn’t too much wind.
Several readers have written their reactions to my post about Ricky. And in answering them, I have sifted through my brain and realize that I neglected stressing some important points in my account of the hideous homicide, the main point being why I wrote about it at all.
I let myself get somewhat carried away by the grisly details (like every reporter currently working in Venice, evidently — the newspapers have surrendered entire pages to this epic). That was wrong.
The reason I did this was because (A) like almost everybody, I’m fascinated in a repulsive way by stories like this, but (B) more to the point, I reacted to him as somebody I sort of know.
Venice is a village, as I often point out, and you get caught up in dramatic stories involving people you know, or (more often) to people known by people you know. Ricky is only ten years younger than Lino, and his family home was a few doors down from where Lino lived. They’d see each other here and there, and while he was obviously somewhat unbalanced even when young, Ricky was just part — obviously a somewhat unusual part — of the neighborhood.
Lino says Ricky had a generous streak (the Mestre neighbors keep repeating how he always tried to do things for people). Lino remembers one day he was slaving away in his boat, trying to get the outboard motor to start. Ricky stops and says “Hey, I’ve got a motor inside. Come get it, you can borrow it. You can have it.” Lino didn’t take the motor, but he remembers the offer.
The story continues to unfold, producing more terrifying details, but I’m not going to repeat them because what it is is sad sad sad. I didn’t make that clear. He was born crazy, and he has spent his life either struggling against his craziness or sometimes giving in. This is not an excuse, but everyone quoted in these endless articles talks about what a solitary person he was. He was “tremendously alone,” as one person put it; he didn’t have anybody watching out for him. Whether or not you’re taking your meds, loneliness is a killer.
No more about Ricky from me, unless it’s something we all need to know. Of course I feel bad for the woman and her family, but I also feel bad for uno dei nostri — one of ours.
