This is a view of the typical vehicle (in England known as an articulated lorry, if that helps; in the US, it has various names, such as tractor-trailer). The situation here is another trip and boat, but I wanted to set the scene: water, crane, truck. Olindo is somewhere nearby, just outside the frame.
A few readers have asked how the Venetian boats travel to and from these foreign locations I keep jaunting off to.
In three words: Trucks, cranes, and Olindo.
In my first expedition with a traveling gondola, however, which we had taken to the lake of Bolsena for a big festival, we had the truck and Olindo, but no crane. I don’t remember how we got the boat into the water, but a whole bunch of us had to turn to in order to get the gondola back up into the truck by hand. When I saw what we were about to do (it was early in my shipping life), I thought it was impossible. When I think back on it, it still seems impossible. And yet, we did it.
I should mention that there were about ten of us per side. Maybe more. And at least two people — Olindo and Lino — understood the geometry and physics of the operation, so we weren’t relying solely on brute strength.
Obviously, picking boats up and pushing them around by hand is not ideal — for the boat, I mean, the heck with us. There are always plenty of XY-chromosome people hovering nearby, eager to show how strong they are. But we had no choice.
So the plan is simple. You row or tow your boat to Punta San Giuliano, on the edge of the lagoon where the bridge touches land.
Because there are three boat clubs there, there are also three cranes, of which I have only ever used the biggest. And the trucks will arrive, often driven by foreign nationals, often from somewhere in the Balkans. These drivers communicate by means of international truck-language, which is based on an assortment of gestures and shouts.
And there will be Olindo. He is the magus of boat transport, the scion of Chiarentin Trasporti, founded by his father in 1922 when boats still FAR outnumbered motorized vehicles. And because his father’s blood was condensed and consumed by hauling boats up the Brenta river by means of his own arms (until he could afford a horse), Olindo has inherited a mystic capacity of knowing exactly how to handle any sort of boat — positioned, braced, lashed, counterpoised, and otherwise settled for a long truck ride in such a way as to come out looking better than when it left. Or certainly not worse.
Some people understand animals, some people even claim to understand women. Olindo understands boats. The boat has yet to be born so big, delicate, or valuable that can ruffle him in any way. Usually it’s the amateurs who are trying to HELP that drive him over his recommended personal rpm’s.
So sending the boats to Orleans was pretty routine. The only thing that was different from other trips was the size of the crane brought in by the city to pluck many of the boats from the Loire and send them home. Its hydraulic arm could have been measured in football-field-lengths, and it could lift a maximum of 25 tons. I thought the Diesona was big; the crane thought it was a splinter.
The only living thing I know that could match that crane for strength, inch for pound for atmospheres, would be Olindo, actually. If they ever made him hydraulic, we wouldn’t need Archimedes’ proverbial fulcrum and level — he could move the world by himself.
Too bad there wouldn’t be a truck big enough to hold it. Though the shouts and gestures would probably be the same.
Here an eight-oar gondola is hoisted, ready to be placed on the truck which is about to back up for loading. The boat isn’t lifted over the side of the momentarily topless truck, but slid into it from the rear. This phase is accomplished very slowly, aided by shouts and gestures which essentially mean “go slowly” and “stop immediately.” Olindo is ready to grab the boat, arm already outstretched.So far, so good.The spare tires are strategically placed to brace the boat against jouncing.You can see why it’s important to calculate the boat length correctly. In this case, it was enough to unscrew and remove the heavy metal “ferro” on the bow of the boat. We were prepared for that.One small detail of the many strappings and lashings involved, none of which is at random, or accomplished with anything resembling “Well, let’s hope for the best,” or “It looks like that ought to do it.” More geometry, more decades of experience at work.On another trip, we had to use the famous metal sawhorses in order to carry two gondolas at once. More straps, more lashings.A rare glimpse of Olindo’s face (left); he’s usually moving too briskly and looking elsewhere to allow useful portraits.Last phase: Closing the truck’s top and sides.In Orleans, we weren’t there for the unloading, but we all stood by for the loading for the trip home. The mythic crane is in position, halfway between the river and the street, where a line of trucks was waiting for their cargo.
These men weren’t Olindo, but they got the job done with no wasted time or motion.The “Diesona” has been disassembled, and is ready to be lifted onto the truck. From here on, the process followed its immemorial phases.
The interval of silence that has passed between my last post and this was not caused by my retreat to a Carthusian convent, though the thought has often appealed to me.
No, we skipped out to Orleans — the old, not the new — for the Festival de Loire, a five-day traditional-boat festival on the cobblystoned banks of the river.
This is the waterfront before the arrival of all the boats. The water nearest the embankment is a sort of deviation of the Loire, which is flowing behind the line of trees and joins this offshoot where the trees end. This side of the trees the channel is always navigable; on the other side, the river is largely sandbank.The Venetian fleet: From the shore outward, the “Diesona,” or ten-oar gondola; a gondola “da fresco,” a battella a coa de gambaro (shrimp-tail battella), and a gondolino. All but the battella belong to the Settemari rowing club.Other boats begin to appear. I never saw them arrive. Maybe they rose from the deep.
Every two years, the City of Orleans puts on this fiesta, with stands and food and games for the children and demonstrations of crafts and lots of stuff for sale (like cases of the local wine, to pick an example at random). It is a massive undertaking, and what with logistics and cost I can see why they need a year to recover.
Here is what I can tell you about Orleans, from what I remember:
It’s the first city that Joan of Arc liberated from the English stranglehold, after a hideous siege, in 14something; it was the capital of France for a long time, before (fill in King Name here) decided he liked Paris better; the historic center is beautiful and extremely clean; the cathedral is really high, and I can say that because I stopped counting the stone steps on the way to the pinnacle after about 852; the local dish is andouillette (an-doo-ee-YET), an alarming sausage-like creation composed of the internal organs of either pig or calf.
If I’d ever gotten downwind of chitlings I might have been prepared for this, and I have to admit I’ve never tried haggis, which conceivably could be even more alarming. But as for andouillette, the odor alone is enough, as it approaches your face, for you to think again about biting into it. (Actually, you don’t have to think about it at all. The mouth shuts without any prompting.) It’s something like the aroma of a slaughterhouse in summer which has never been inspected or cleaned. Apologies to people who love andouillette or haggis.
I did in fact read up briefly on this extraordinary invention, just to see if I was being needlessly finicky. After all, I love tripe, and I have consumed brains and kidneys and pig’s feet, so how bad could this be? “It has a strong distinctive odor related to its intestinal origins and components” — my source tactfully puts it — “and is stronger in scent when the colon is used.” I rest my case.
These are andouillettes, hot off the grill. They look normal, it’s true, and they were selling like crazy.I will admit that I could have been tempted to try something prepared by Cyrano de Bergerac. Just not that.Cyrano’s son is studying at a university in Louisiana, hence the jambalaya recipe on the apron. I don’t know if he has ever made it in Orleans. They probably would think it’s uneatable. As they chomp into their fourth andouillette.
On other hand, I discovered real smoked herring (not the salty little pieces of herring-jerky known as kippered herrings in England), which is now my new favorite thing and which I don’t imagine ever eating again, short of a trip to the Netherlands or some Viking country. Lino says it used to be very common in Venice; small gobbets went very well with polenta.
The herring production system is simple, but time-consuming. One man has already beheaded, gutted and skewered the herring. The fish are then hung over a slow fire to dry. When the moment is right, they are muffled between the blankets on the iron drum at the left, in which burning sawdust is creating clouds of smoke. I can’t explain at what point, or by what alchemy, the fish come out of their swaddlings gleaming like copper, but it obviously works fine.Ready to be eaten. Please notice that smoking is forbidden. They don’t want your smoke to clash with their smoke.This is lunch, with its delicately smoldered flavor and its long-chain Omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA and Vitamin D.
We went to Orleans to represent Venice, the guest of honor for the 2013 edition of this mega-fest, bringing four Venetian boats and 20+ Venetian rowers from the Settemari club and Arzana‘, a smaller organization dedicated to the conservation of old boats. We are members of the latter, though there are several people who belong to both.
Our duties consisted of rowing the boats up and down the stretch of river fronting the one-kilometer (half-mile) stretch of festival stands and hordes. We did this for a while in the morning, and another while in the afternoon. We were there to look beautiful and fascinating, and so that’s what we did. Between eating and drinking, that is. And climbing the cathedral.
Now we’re all back to the most beautiful city in the world, where our absence wasn’t noticed, and neither is our presence, usually. Still, if I had to choose between Venice and Orleans, my choice is clear. It’s true that Orleans has a phenomenally efficient and clean tram system. But we have the vaporettos, which are administered by highly-paid people who obey the instructions transmitted by alien beings through the fillings in their teeth.
So I’m sticking with Venice. What’s mere efficiency compared to that?
A few boats of various sizes were also brought from Cesenatico, down the Adriatic coast from Venice. The big bragozzo never left its moorings, but the smaller craft went up and down, sails spread, motors running, just like everybody else except us.There were plenty of traditional Loire transport boats. I love their sails, they look like something off the Bayeux Tapestry.Man did not live by boats alone. Two Ardennes draft horses were brought to recall the epoch (probably about 3,000 years long) in which such creatures were crucial in towing the boats against the considerable current when the wind dropped or the water rose, or when the cargo was especially ponderous, such as sand.
We took a few hours to visit the cathedral of the Holy Cross (photo: Andrew Lih, Wikipedia).
One of our group had discovered the priest responsible for the cathedral, Father Girault, who agreed to escort us up to the top. What was I thinking?But we made it, some of us impelled by the desire to touch the angel’s feet, which the good padre told us was traditionally believed to bring good fortune. Me, I just wanted to see if I could get there. The fact that he was right there with us impressed me no end, as did his spontaneous blessing of us and the city of Venice from this vertigenous shelf.Then he invited us to his residence nearby for snacks and drinks. He told us some very funny stories, even while deftly rolling one cigarette after another.Back to the river. On Sunday morning, some good soul organized a trip four miles (7 km) up the river in four traditional boats.We anchored by throwing the anchors ashore) at Combleux, a village at the entrance to a canal, now abandoned, which was the route to the Seine and eventually Paris for innumerable cargo boats in days of yore.The Loire Valley is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but they can’t fix everything up.The masts can be extended horizontally, for obvious reasons.
The pennants are traditionally attached to the masthead with distinctive carved symbols representing the owner, the cargo, and other distinguishing characteristics.We took a few musicians aboard for the return trip, and their songs of the rivermen of the Loire practically made me get up and dance.
Here are two clips Voce036[1]Voce035[1]recorded on my cell phone; remember we were all floating down the river, so this is not studio quality. It was sort of superlative-moment-in-ordinary-life quality.
It was one those interludes that you can’t resist, and Massimo Rigo (president of the Settemari rowing club) and his wife Barbara didn’t especially try.We didn’t learn many details, but it’s clear that the owner of the chateau had no intention of letting the Loire in spate damage his property. The neighbors on either side are on their own.And speaking of acqua alta, these marks on the walls show the height of several catastrophic inundations — strangely, we all observed, in years ending in “6.” This street, may I note, is very high and 150 feet (45 m) from the river.Saturday night was the height of the festivities, complete with these strange floating drifting constructions which seemed oddly benign. The big moment, which drew something like 20,000 spectators, was the fireworks spectacular, choreographed with music. It was thrilling. No pictures — I was concentrating on being thrilled.And colored lights played over the boats and river. It was magical. I’m going to end the story here. We all lived happily ever after.
The house of Aldus Manutius in Venice appears to be inhabited, but we can only gaze upon the plaque and meditate on his brilliance from the street.“In this house that belonged to Aldus Pius Manutius the Aldine Academy gathered and from here the light of Greek letters returned to shine upon civilized peoples. The department of Greek letters of the University of Padua in the year 1876 1877 wished to designate this famous place to future generations.”
As all the world knows, Venice used to be one of the most important cities in Europe for printing — books, music, heretical works banned by the Catholic church. Even in the last century there were still 20 printing presses in Venice.
If one were to want to know more, it’s pretty much enough just to read the story of Aldus Manutius (Aldo Manuzio, in Italian), who singlehandedly midwifed the Renaissance by printing (and translating) many of the Greek classics which survived antiquity, few as they are. Do I exaggerate? It’s thanks to him we non-Greek-speaking people can read Aristotle, Thucydides, Sophocles, Herodotus, Xenophon, Euripides, Demosthenes….
He also invented the pocket-sized book, and italic letters. You see how many things we take for granted?
But this is not a post about Aldus. It’s about Antonio Gardano and Johannes Buglhat and their big battle of the woodcuts.
They were part of the brigades of other excellent printers hard at work in the 15th and 16th centuries, and these printers were not all drinking buddies. Being merchants, they had to keep a sharp eye on their competitors. Sometimes very sharp eyes.
A friend has sent me an article by David Plylar, from the Library of Congress blog, which deals with the woodcut slanging between the aforementioned publishers.
Rather than reprint it here, the author has suggested that I only give the link. I myself think it’s pretty funny. But you decide.
Gardano’s printer’s mark featured the lion and bear of his patron, Leone Orsini.
Simple little gold, otherwise known as Au, or 79. I don’t know how much this is worth, but I know I could use most of it. So could Venice, but I”m not sharing. (Dallas Refining)
Money in Venetian is known as schei(“skay”). It is also known, by extension, as the thing we need most and have least. In fact, we have none. We never have any. There isn’t any. We can’t pay for anything because we haven’t got anything to use, not even bricks of salt or boxes of tulips. We’re broke, and proud of it.
I’m broke because no money comes in. The city is broke because money comes in but then it goes out again, somewhere, lots of somewheres, all according to accounting systems that bear more resemblance to Advanced Squad Leader than simple little double-entry bookkeeping, which was invented in Venice, by the way.
It’s something astonishing. Venice can’t pay for the Regata Storica. It can’t pay for the city hospital. It can’t pay for repairing (fill in name of favorite monument, church, work of art here). It can’t pay to build a new cinema for the Film Festival. It can’t pay to correct the errors which were paid for with money which it didn’t have. It’s trying to sell the Casino because the once-flourishing cash cow is running out of butterfat. Somebody wrote to the Gazzettino that the best way to settle the evergreen conflict about whether the Italian Region of Alto Adige is really the Austrian Region of South Tyrol is to sell it to the Austrians. Conflict over, coffers bursting.
The only way to confront snaggly streets and exhausted bridges and anything else that needs fixing is to seek a sponsor. The word “sponsor” has acquired the lonely, sacred, unattainable significance of “Holy Grail.” “We have to find a sponsor” is the most annoying, monotonous, “I got nothin'” phrase since “Have a nice day.” It means “We have to find an oil field,” “We have to find a rhodium mine,” “We have to find something that doesn’t cost us anything and gives us everything.”
But money there is, because it keeps popping up where it isn’t supposed to be — not only in Venice, but all over Italy. Bribes. Payoffs. Fake blind people imbibing state subsidies for disabilities. (A woman has just been nabbed for having requested — and received — a 300-euro contribution to pay for her children’s schoolbooks. She claimed to have only 6,000 euros in this world. But in fact, she turns out to have 480,000 euros in this world.) One man who has finally been cornered for some malfeasance I haven’t been tracking was discovered to have 238 bank accounts. Is that a lot? I have no way of knowing.
If it’s hard to earn gold to spend on cars and clothes, think of how hard it is to earn gold in Olympic medal form. This is from the Winter Olympics of Cortina d’Ampezzo, 1956.
I do know that there were long, convoluted negotiations between the city and Pierre Cardin about the “Palais Lumiere,” the cyclopean ultra-modern glass skyscraper he wanted to build on the edge of the lagoon. Everybody but the two aforementioned entities thought it was a terrible idea and finally he gave up and took his idea and went away. Which means that now the city suddenly doesn’t have the 30 million euros (I believe it was) which they had already happily scribbled onto the “Income” side of the ledger. Which means that now they haven’t got enough to pay for extending the tram across the bridge from Mestre to Piazzale Roma. Evidently the phrase “You should have thought of that sooner” applies to more situations than to five-year-olds in the back seat of the car who suddenly have to go to the bathroom.
As usual, everyone is wailing about taxes and many are wailing about the cost of government. (Feel free to wail in your own language.) But if anybody has the sensation that the taxes are going nowhere, it’s possible to discover at least some of the wheres. Such as running the government. We heard on the radio that the cost of government in Germany is 4 euros per person; in Greece it’s 6 euros per person; in Italy, it’s 27. It’s expensive to keep 630 people in Rome arguing all day about the other parties’ members and mistakes.
Am I going somewhere with all this? Certainly.
I am reading a very diverting book entitled “A Book of Scoundrels,” by Charles Whibley (1897), which delineates the careers of England’s most notable highwaymen and other sorts of thieves and criminals. Short version: In spite of their faults and failures as humans, he was basically on their side as long as they had panache, originality, and/or great clothes.
I offer the following segment in honor of all the fiscal frivolity that crowds the newspapers and the courts. This may be the only period that I’ve ever wished I were a lawyer; I’d be fixed for life.
And there was that little unpleasantness about the Golden Calf. Based, as I recall, more on its calfness than its goldenness. A detail, and not one that would get me out of jail. (The Nuremberg Chronicle, Vanderbilt University).
The characters: James Hind (1616 – 1652) a notorious highwayman of Royalist sympathies who happened to get his clutches on John Bradshaw, the judge who had condemned King Charles I to decapitation. The scene: The luxurious open spaces of Dorset, near Sherborne.
First, Hind took all of the judge’s money, told the bodyguard (who had judiciously decided to suspend his active service) to take off his hat, and then delivered the following discourse on gold:
“This is that incomparable medicament, which the republican physicians call the wonder-working plaster. It is truly catholic in operation, and somewhat akin to the Jesuit’s powder, but more effectual.
“The virtues of it are strange and various; it makes justice deaf as well as blind, and takes out spots of the deepest treason more cleverly than castle-soap (sic) does common stains; it alters a man’s constitution in two or three days, more than the virtuoso’s transfusion of blood can do in seven years.
“‘Tis a great alexiopharmick, and helps poisonous principles of rebellion, and those that use them. It miraculously exalts and purifies the eyesight, and makes traitors behold nothing but innocence in the blackest malefactors.
“‘Tis a mighty cordial for a declining cause; it stifles faction or schism, as certainly as the itch is destroyed by butter and brimstone.
” … The very colour of this precious balm is bright and dazzling. If it be properly applied to the fist, that is in a decent manner, and a competent dose, it infallibly performs all the cures which the evils of humanity crave.”
Thus having spoken, he killed the six horses of Bradshaw’s coach, and went contemptuously on his way.
Take that! And that! Hind’s scorn might be wasted on the prime exemplars of modern brigandage here in the cradle of the Renaissance. Not that they’re unfamiliar with scorn, and some irony manages to make itself heard from time to time, but discourses such as Hind’s would lack flourish in Italian, where utterances often depend more on blunt instruments (words such as “shame”) than the whetted poniards of true rhetoric.
But I feel better now. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because it shows that there’s no point in struggling to be better people. It’s been this way forever. Here we are, and here we’ll stay. Evolution is over.
So let’s revert to mythology, when life was simpler, if shorter. Danae met Zeus in the form of a golden shower, the story goes. James Hind could only dream of this. The gold, I mean, not the girl. (Orazio Gentileschi, c. 1621, Cleveland Museum of Art).
