This picture has no relevance to this post. I haven’t got the strength to make pictures that would demonstrate all the salient points, and they’d be depressing anyway. So we’ll just look at lovely things to remember how wonderful it is to be here.
The statement has long since become a cliche’: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
But the saying doesn’t hint at the means by which the insanity is inflicted. I can enlighten you.
It’s bureaucracy. Which makes sense, considering the apparent skills of the many people (I am pointing no fingers, nor naming names — they know who they are), the individuals, groups, political parties, sewing circles, volleyball teams, whoever it may be that creates ever more complicated regulations for achieving the simplest ends.
Naturally I have a personal case study to submit as evidence. And it will not surprise anyone to hear that it involves the ACTV. The public transport — I hesitate to call it a system, much less a service — organization is like an enormous special-needs class (no disrespect meant to the real thing).
We have known for years that the ACTV issues a free monthly pass to Venetians who are 75 years old or more (note: there will be a catch to this, because it is too simple). I knew it when Lino reached that landmark, and when he passed the subsequent landmark. I became obsessed with the fact that we were paying for something each month that he could get for free.
So what was holding me, him, us back? The application process. Because while the ACTV may say that they want you to have this benefit (something they have never said, but let’s pretend), they struggle painfully against providing it.
Other Venetians who have the free pass, including some of our close relatives, have pounded on us several times a year with the hammerblows of “It’s really easy to get.” I knew that couldn’t be true.
But guess what? I found out this morning that it was, in fact, easy to get — up until Dec. 31, 2014. But we started the application process on January 28, just after a mass of new regulations went into effect, and discovered ourselves at the foot of the bureaucratic equivalent of the North Face of the Eiger. Yet another example of the “You should’ve been here yesterday” that haunts my life.
But we didn’t know that detail when we turned for succor to one extremely tired but meticulous and conscientious man in an office dedicated to helping citizens with various forms of paperwork — an office run, not by the city, may I note, but by one of the many labor unions. Say what you will about unions, this is one spot on the globe where generations of sacrifice and effort have borne some kind of fruit.
I may have mentioned that the applicant has to be 75 or over. Now comes the catch. It’s not enough to be old — you also have to be poor (a maximum annual income of 16,631.71 euros, or $18,757.60). Happily, I guess, we are in that category. But don’t take our word for it. They want proof.
Here is what Lino had to bring to the sainted man embroiled in completing our application process for the ACTV free pass:
His ID card (to confirm date of birth, also residency, also citizenship, I guess).
His codice fiscale (like a Social Security number).
A statement from the bank summarizing our average monthly balance.
A document from the bank detailing our mortgage, our monthly payments, and when it will be paid off.
A many-page document from our accountant which itemizes his income and outgo for 2014, as sent to the Income Tax people.
The document registered with the “catasto,” a city agency for which I cannot find an intelligible translation. This details the precise dimensions of our domicile and assigns an official assessment of its value. Just to make sure that we’re not buying an apartment the size of a Welcome mat for 800,000 euros (not the price) on an income that’s below the poverty line. You know how sneaky those rich people are, pretending to be poor, which in fact is not a joke. I give the ACTV slight credit for attempting to ensure that we’re not in that category of person, although that category of person often manages to find a way to — as the saying goes here — have their wife drunk and the cask of wine still full. If you get my drift. I say, Make the rule Age or Destitution, but not both. But no.
My ID card.
My codice fiscale.
Acquiring these documents entailed two trips to the bank, one trip to the accountant, and two trips to the union office, where we had to wait for most of one morning for our turn, like sitting in a hospital emergency room without a serious emergency.
NOW we have to wait 15 days, then call the sainted man to find out if he’s got the approval, so we can take the ACTV application form to the ACTV office and get the pass. Lino says the two-week wait is because all our information will be sent to some federal office where our data will be compared with their data, just in case Lino turns out to be one of those devious rich people who tries to pull a fast one.
I might be inclined to applaud the organization’s efforts to avoid being exploited, but there are so many loopholes through which the rich easily pass that it seems ludicrous to devastate everybody’s gonads just to show that you can.
But I may not be seeing this the right — I mean the ACTV — way.
Just give him the pass already.
January is an excellent month in the lagoon — the typical extreme low tides bring all sorts of birds to the exposed mudflats. There is always one grey heron to be seen here, though rarely this close. He was born with his own transportation, lucky him.
Winter here is just the best. One day you have fog…..
As a freelance journalist, I have written about many things for many publications over the eons. Though I’m publishing less frequently at the moment than in days of yore, I have just written a small piece on Venice for National Geographic’s online News.
Most readers will recognize familiar themes, but I thought I’d provide the link here anyway. At the least, it’s something for you to read while you’re waiting for the water to boil and I’m whipping up another post.
One of several reasons why there has been a lapse in my postings is that there is an atmosphere of lethargy in the city which translates into “not very much to write about.”
Of course there’s always plenty if one wants either to dig far enough, or continue blotting the spindrift from the waves of unsolved, or unsolvable, problems. But since the city government collapsed in a heap last June, the many problems which continue to afflict the city are almost always reduced to “Money, lack of.” And writing about Money, lack of is not only monotonous, but also pointless. And depressing.
Of course, “no ghe xe schei” has been the convenient phrase inserted into every situation for years, even when there was money; it was an excuse which the city administrators could turn on and off at will, as if it were the radio. Then we discovered that there really wasn’t any money anymore, because it had been given to most of the participants of the MOSE project. You know that sound when you’re sucking on a straw to get the last drops of your drink? The silence I’m referring to is the sound of ever-longer pauses between the municipal mouth and the municipal funds. Not many drops left, but if you stop sucking it means you’ve given up, and we can’t have that.
Apart from what it signified, I’ve enjoyed this somnolent January. We’ve had beautiful weather, and very few tourists. But now that Carnival is bearing down upon us (Jan. 31 – Feb. 17), that’s about to change. Thirty days of tranquillity isn’t enough, but it’s all we get.
The tranquillity induced us to take a few uncharacteristic aimless strolls. You know, like tourists do, and this confirmed what tourists know, which is how lovely it is to wander and what interesting discoveries you make in the process.
Here, in no particular order, is a small, confetti-like scattering of what I’ve seen recently.
On a small, unremarkable side street which leads to essentially nowhere, we came upon this very remarkable neighborhood sotoportego which local piety had turned into a shrine. The inscription over the doorway explains everything…It says: “Most holy Virgin Mary of Health, who repeatedly preserved immune from the dominating mortality the inhabitants of this Corte Nuova especially in the years 1630 – 36 – 1849 – 55 (NOTE: FIRST TWO DATES ARE PLAGUE, SECOND TWO DATES ARE CHOLERA) and from the bombs of the enemy airplanes 1917 – 18 Benevolently accept their grateful vows and the vows of all of this parish Deign to extend your protection which we trustingly implore on all your devout followers (word obscured by underbrush is “devoti” — thanks to reader Albert Hickson who saw it before the bush began to grow).Two impressive capitelli, or small altars, survive, but several large empty spaces hint that they might once also have supported more. Even here we find the inevitable graffiti, which if it could be deciphered almost certainly would not be of a sacred, or grateful, nature.If you have ever walked along the Fondamenta dell’Osmarin between Campo San Provolo and the Ponte dei Greci, you may well have noticed this tablet. It represents San Lorenzo, for whom the nearby fondamenta, former church and current home for the elderly are named. How do I know this (other than having found the information in a book)? It’s because — according to the custom of depicting a saint with the instrument of his/her/their martyrdom — here we clearly have a man holding a grate, and we all know that San Lorenzo was grilled to death like a steak on the barbie.For anyone curious about the chalice he is holding in his right hand (which looks oddly like a crescent, but it may be just the optical effect), legend maintains that he was able to spirit away the Holy Grail to Spain, and it is now venerated in the cathedral of Valencia.There is a longish brick wall fronting the canal of the Arsenal, which faces the wooden bridge at the Arsenal entrance. This imposing marble sculpture is one thing which you can easily admire, or not, as you choose. But the little bronze plaque to the viewer’s left has been defeated by time and by being placed so high that you can’t read it anyway. But I have persevered, and while it doesn’t contain the secret to turning straw into gold, it’s worth revealing what seemed so important at the time.This is my translation: “On the VI centenary of the death of Dante Alighieri the Naval Commandant of Venice, Admiral G. Pepe, restored and beautified the entrance facade of the Arsenal. On that occasion the marble monument of the XVI century, placed here at the side, which after many transfers found itself incomplete and defaced on the crumbling wall of the old workshop was restored and completed and transferred to the public view. Venice September 1921.” Of course a noble work like this would be hard to accomplish today, seeing that there is no money.Enough exploration. Carnival begins on Saturday and my friend, Dino, who is a retired baker, makes the most divine fritole on this mortal earth. He gave us eight, just out of the vat. They are smaller and lighter than the bocce balls sold as fritole in the pastry shops. These are little candied sugared slightly greasy clouds. I wait all year for these works of art and they are among the few things that make Carnival worthwhile. Sorry, they’re all gone now.
This is what was floating by the dock at the Giardini: a television. But that’s not the really funny part. What baffles me isn’t that somebody threw it into the water — we all know how that goes — but that it has floated here in this exact spot for more than 24 hours. Have the tides gone on strike?
One thing that everybody loves about Venice is that it seems so old. Of course, it is old. It’s kind of like a Byzantine/Renaissance/Baroque/Neo-Classical Lascaux Caves, except that it’s inhabited.
I pause to say that I know there are at least 14 continuously inhabited cities in the world that are far, far older than Venice. I was just making the point that many visitors are struck with astonishment at the fact that Venice was ever created, an emotion I believe the cave paintings also elicit. But I’m getting off the point.
One thing that makes it feel old when you’re living here is the endless cycle of the same old things, and when I say that I don’t mean the Befana (with its utterly predictable brief annual cluster of highly-charged articles about the dangerous effects of the air pollution caused by the bonfires’ smoke), or the feast of the Redentore, or other celebrations.
By “same things” I mean issues that just keep coming up, that continue to be transformed in a shape-shifting way by assorted groups, interested parties, and random changes of circumstance, but that never get settled. Even in the rare instances when a problem appears to have been resolved, before long we discover that it has spawned new problems. And the cycle begins again.
In the few days since 2015 began, the Gazzettino has filled its pages with a new crop of the old. Such as:
Adriatic (“mare”) to the right, the lagoon to the left. The conca, or basin, is item #4. The scogliera, or protective barrier, is #5. I had to take geometry twice in order to pass, but this still looks awkward to me. The ships’ captains tend to agree.
MOSE: No, this time it’s not about the gates themselves, nor about the billions that were stolen to pay off its many participants, collaborators, and well-wishers. Now it’s about the conca, or basin (#4 on the image above), which was dug at the inlet of Malamocco to permit the passage of ships on the occasions when the gates are raised.
For one thing, it’s too small.
It has been designed to accommodate ships up to 280 meters (918 feet) long and 39 meters (128 feet) wide. These dimensions are already too small for the largest cruise ships, the ones that certain groups want to compel to enter the lagoon by way of Malamocco instead of by the Bacino of San Marco. So a mega-cruise ship wanting to come to Venice would have to hang around outside in the Adriatic until the tide turned and the gates were lowered, to let them continue with their plan to unload thousands of passengers and take on more. Having to delay entry sounds like a new problem has just replaced the old.
But it gets worse. The fundamental problem isn’t size. It’s the positioning of the scogliera (skoh-LYEH-ra), or protective barrier, in relation to the basin. Stick with me here, because in the world of engineering “oops!” this is kind of special. And whatever you may think about cruise ships, we now have to consider the needs of real grown-up working ships that haul containers and petroleum and grain and coal (for the power station just on the edge of the mainland); these are ships for which time really is money.
The curve and position of the barrier built to shield the basin from wild stormy water (the kind you might well have if there is an exceptional acqua alta underway) makes it difficult — in some cases, perhaps impossible — for even smaller ships to navigate themselves into a perfect straight line to enter the basin.
“About 2,000 vessels (note: That’s nearly six per day) enter and exit the lagoon each year,” said Alessandro Santi, president of Assoagenti Veneto, the maritime agents’ association. “Of these, at least 350, in the current state of things, would be prevented from entering the basin.” They’d have to wait outside till the tide turned and the MOSE gates were lowered to allow them to enter by the usual channel.
Solution! Construct an additional rubber barrier (I have no further details) against which the ships could lean — a sort of fulcrum — to help them position themselves to enter the basin. I’m referring to the ships which can, in fact, enter the basin, which as you see isn’t going to be all of them.
Projected cost: 15 million euros ($17,669,900). That’s one heck of a patch.
Speaking of cost, the news has just come out that the completion date for MOSE has yet again been postponed. It is currently predicted to be finished in mid-2017, and will cost an additional 2 billion euros ($2,355,980,000). Unless it turns out to cost more, of course.
So why is this an old subject? Because it’s yet another aspect of a project that wasn’t planned correctly, but construction just went merrily along anyway, and now everybody is having to find ways to resolve problems that didn’t ever have to exist.
Encrustations — paper, in this case — to rival the pilings in the water at low tide. This wall is at Rialto, but the phenomenon is all over the city.
DEGRADO: The terse but expressive and useful term degrado (deh-GRAH-do) means “degradation,” and it finds innumerable uses. And I will keep this entry short because the subject deserves a post all of its own, if I could find the strength.
Degrado is a hydra-headed monster composed of graffiti, broken pavements, disintegrating nizioleti, and now strata of aging posters stuck up all over walls. The city of Venice, and myriad individuals, put up these pieces of paper with or without permission, and these announcements of all sorts of events, needs or offers stay there because once the moment has passed, who cares?
The city says it cares, and since 2012 has spent 856,000 euros ($1,008,360) to pay a private company named A.R. Promotion to affix posters and also to strip away the accumulated crud. But evidently the announcements breed at night and produce more old posters, or somehow the private company isn’t keeping up. Or perhaps even starting, who knows?
Even the vertical pipe to the right has been pressed into service.
Breakdown of payments made: At the end of 2012 A.R. Promotion won the bid to do this work for one and a half years for 456,000 euros. A few years later, the same company got the job for about two years for 400,000 euros. The age of some of the posters indicates that in either one or other of these periods, the company somehow didn’t catch everything.
Let me say that having to hack away layers of gummy paper over a period of years does not speak well for the paper-hangers. Because while one could criticize the ability of A.R. Promotion to remove paper, one could much more justly criticize the cretins who put up the pieces of paper in the first place.
But back to the subject of payment for services rendered, or not: Cecilia Tonon, president of the volunteer group Masegni e Nizioleti, has raised her hand to ask why the city is paying for a service which evidently isn’t provided, when squadrons of members have turned out more than once to do a large amount of this very work for free. (I participated in one clean-up project, which I’ll write about another time.)
No answer has yet forthcome.
Intermission: News from the trial of the Indian couple who murdered their Iranian roommate, Mahtab Ahadsavoji, and dumped her body in the lagoon. The Indian girl has been identified as the culprit, and has been sentenced to 17 years in prison. Her boyfriend got a smaller sentence because he merely helped dispose of the evidence. Appeals will drag on.
BUDGET: For years now we’ve had to listen to the municipal choir singing the Anvil Chorus, financial version, whose refrain is “No ghe xe schei” (there is no money).
We found out last year that the reason there was no money was because it had all been gift-wrapped and given to politicians and businessmen involved in the MOSE project.
So now there really is no money.
After working his way upstream through heavy fire from outraged city employees facing drastic cuts, attempting to make the budget balance in some miraculous way (“miraculous” meaning “money from Rome”), the emergency governor, Vittorio Zappalorto, has had to say it isn’t working. The city is 60 million euros ($70,855,800) in the hole.
“The situation is unsustainable,” he said. “We’ve reached a point of no return, The next mayor is going to have” (I freely translate) “one hell of a hideous job.” The Casino’, once an endless font of funds, is also now crouching over its begging bowls. The sale of palaces is almost the only option for raising money, but so far they are being sold at slashed, fire-sale prices, or not being sold at all.
The island of Poveglia (www.verdieuropei.it)
POVEGLIA: Remember the popular groundswell, funded by citizen contributions, to acquire the island and restore it for the use of the Venetians rather than let it be sold to one of those terrible foreign companies which would transform it into a hotel?
All stuck in lawyer-land. The city put the island up for bids; the highest bid, from a private businessman, was snubbed by the city as being ridiculously low. To which the bidder has replied, “But you had no higher bids in this auction. So?”
In any case, the groundswell of Venice-for-the-Venetians emotion hasn’t been heard from in quite some time, considering that since last June 4, when the sky fell on Venice, much bigger problems have overcome everybody. It would be extremely difficult, in the current climate, to get anybody excited about an abandoned island.
BIG CRUISE SHIPS: This is an issue that’s so photogenic that it cauterizes people brains, rendering them incapable of thought. In battling to ban the ships from passing in the Bacino of San Marco, the enthusiasts have created a much larger problem, which is how to keep the port economy going when some cruise lines have already canceled their plans to come to Venice in 2015.
The no-big-ships people haven’t given any sign of caring much about the port itself, but they are baffled as to how to they feel about the digging of the Contorta Canal (officially named the Canale Contorta S. Angelo). But it seems clear to almost everybody that deepening the canal will create so many more problems than it solves that it makes my teeth grind all by themselves.
The tug of war about approving the Contorta canal is going to continue for an unspecified time. Another year, anyway, I have no doubt. There will be flourishing crops of claims, counter-claims, and recriminations.
Meanwhile, due to the canceled cruises, 300,000 fewer passengers are expected this year. This means people may very well be laid off or fired, and all the rest of the ripple effect that doesn’t need describing. There is also the loss of income from the taxes paid by the ship companies to be considered. Nice.
But what I don’t understand is why the ships are vilified as ugly, and therefore deserving of death, when everyday ugliness like graffiti just keeps rolling along, singing a song.
Old? New? Is there a difference?
In case you’re wondering what a “hydra-headed monster” might look like, here is an image of the mythological Hydra being demolished by Hercules. For every head that was cut off, two grew in its place. It’s kind of a metaphor. (“Hercules,” by John Singer Sargent, 1921. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.)
