Bossi blows through

A view of the riva dei Sette Martiri. You must imagine a floating platform where the innocent little sailboat is tied up, and hordes of people ashore. The storm was last year -- so far the sun is still shining.

One of the things I love most about Venice is its voluptuous, velvety silence. Many writers over the past few centuries have commented on this, though they have also commented (as do I) on the noise that is generated during the day by working people, their vehicles, and their voices.  But hey, it’s daytime; people are supposed to be working, or at least doing things.  “Get out of the house” is always good advice for physical and mental health, except where the mental health of your neighbors might be concerned.

In any case, people used to go home at night and things eventually got quiet.

The novelty in the past few decades is the noise by night.  Summer, and now early autumn, is especially prone to nocturnal racket, what with kids zooming around the lagoon, and the city’s canals, in boats with motors of 40, 90, and even more horsepower.

Lino can’t figure it out: “It used to be that the only people who were out at night were fishermen,” he said this morning.  “Now it’s everybody.”

Last night the situation took a turn for the worse.

We had already endured the usual nightly yelling and running (and yelling and standing still) of families going up and down the street outside our bedroom window.  I’m not saying they ought to be home at 9:00 with the shutters bolted (though it would be nice if they’d do it by midnight).  I’m merely saying that stopping to talk with loud voices about things ranging from what they’re going to do tomorrow up to and including their upcoming operation to remove their ovaries (not made up) is tiring and obnoxious.  To say nothing of the man somewhere upstairs who, when the lights go off around the neighborhood, takes a handkerchief that must be the size of a tablecloth and begins giving two long honking blows of his nose, separated by a silence of about 18 seconds, followed by two long blows, etc., for way too long.  It’s like the foghorn code, except he’s not warning anybody away.  We’re stuck here.

I’m not saying he should be forbidden to blow his nose.  I’m saying he might consider closing the window.  Of course, we could close our window, but that would mean suffocating to death.  So maybe closing his window means he would suffocate?  Let’s just stop right here.  I’m saying he could get some treatment for whatever this condition is, because it can’t be all that enjoyable for him in any case, after the first forty minutes or so.

So what does a certain Umberto Bossi have to do with all this cacophony?

He is the leader of a political party known as the Northern League, whose mission in life is to slag anything and anybody south of the Po River, and to promote the secession of said northern area (the regions of Veneto, Lombardy, and environs) from the rest of Italy.  He and his cohorts want to establish a new entity known as Padania, an independent, financially and politically self-sufficient entity, in order to be rid of all of the injustices which a national government inflicts on the productive, honest, disciplined, hard-working, right-thinking northerners.

Unable, so far, to accomplish this goal, he and his cohorts spend most of their time in parliament blocking other parties’ initiatives.

So what do he and his followers have to do with the most-beautiful-city-in-the-world, and Erla’s nightly efforts to slumber?

Because every September he stages a huge rally here. Why here? Because the Po River, the aforementioned geographical and emotional frontier between Us and Them, flows into the sea not far away, and because Venice is the greatest stage set imaginable, perfect for publicity.  You can’t imagine a serious rally being put on in, say, Rovigo, though they do have a very nice stadium.

This rally draws the faithful from all over, who come to hear his incendiary speechifying, and to witness his emptying of a flask of Po River water into the Lagoon.  Great theatre, though I still don’t quite grasp its meaning.  From 1600 to 1604, the Venetians cut the Po in half to send it southward; if it had continued to debouch into the Lagoon, by now Venice would be sitting in the middle of cornfields.  But this is a detail.  The Po belongs to Bossi and he wants to bring it to Venice.

So yesterday, in the build-up to today’s Big Event, there were clashes between groups demonstrating against Mr. Bossi and his League and the police who were trying to contain their destructive enthusiasm.

And last night, at about 3:30 (when silence was, in fact, reigning over our streets and canals), we were all blasted awake by a new and appalling noise.

A motorboat was going down the canal with an amplifying system brought from some exploded star. And it was playing music: “Faccetta Nera,” a marching song adopted by the Fascists (though it predates them), full of racist and colonialist overtones.  Everybody over the age of two — even I, by now — know that it is hugely incorrect politically to play “Faccetta Nera” or any of its companions such as “Giovinezza” (Youth).

But there it was, ripping the night asunder a mere five steps from our front door. It faded away as the boat proceeded, presumably in a tour around most, if not all, of the city.  But I wasn’t sure.  I lay there awake for a while expecting it — them — to come back, thinking about how glad I am that whoever these people might be have the right to make so many people miserable. Democracy is indeed a great thing.

This morning, a sunny Sunday, the streets around here are full of police and carabinieri in riot gear, waiting to form up and get to work.  Lino begged me not to make photographs, so I didn’t.

The enormous floating platform with its banners and podium, is tied up, as usual, at the riva dei Sette Martiri, between Arsenal and the Giardini.  Police helicopters are rumbling around overhead.  But I know at least some people are happy. Two bakeries are open — something unheard-of on a normal Sunday — because they also sell snacks and cold drinks, and the faithful are going to really need these items, especially if they do a lot of shouting.

Non tutti i mali vengono per nuocere,” as the saying goes: It’s an ill wind that blows no good.

Perhaps the promised thunderstorms will indeed strike this afternoon.  They would ruin the regata at Burano, true, but it could be worth it, to wash away all this detritus.

 

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Ciao Capitano

The other afternoon, as I was lolling on the embankment of our rowing club lightly toasting my skin and reflecting on how monotonous the sound of the surf was, surf caused by the incessant passing of every conceivable type of motorized boat, I noticed something unusual.

All I had was my cell phone, so the quality of this picture is regrettable. The wreath is evidently gifted with total protective coloration (they ordered a wreath the color of bricks and busted-up pilings?). It is sitting on the edge of the water at the point closest to the viewer, just to the left of the big chunk of concrete. What a place to run aground.

Just a few yards away is a mass of  rocks, sand, bricks and other detritus which over time have created a small sort of beach, and on it there was something alive. Well, it had been alive, in the sense that its flowers were only slowly fading.  But while it’s not all that strange to find a vaporetto route sign (the kind they hang on the side of the boat to list the stops) floating in the lagoon, I’d never seen a funeral wreath before.

Naturally, the vision of a floating funeral wreath inspired a backwash of mournful thoughts, loaded with other bits of detritus from all those somber poems and short stories they make you read in school. But then I became curious.

Why would a wreath be floating in the lagoon? It should have been removed from the casket and left at the cemetery.  Did it fly off the hearse (naturally, a motorboat) on its way to eternity?  Did a person or persons deliberately cast it upon the waves, in an uncharacteristically romantic gesture to the recently departed?  These wreaths cost real money.  Who would have spent all that for a wreath that was going to have a shorter life than the funeral leftovers?

I went to discuss all this with Lino, and when he came over to investigate, we saw that the waves had pulled the wreath away from its temporary resting-place and had drawn it seaward, right into the center of the straps attached to the crane which puts our boats into the water.

Seeing it there inspired a small, ancillary rush of half-baked melancholy thoughts. But curiosity won out.

We took the boathook and pulled the dedicatory ribbon around to where we could read it.  It said: “CIAO CAPITANO.”  Goodbye, Captain.

I’ll spare you my next batch of thoughts (gone down with the ship? Lost at sea?).  Lino had a better theory.

Just a few days ago, a man named Anacleto Marella died. His funeral was held on June 20 (Saturday) at the church of San Francesco della Vigna, roughly just around the corner from our club. So this must have been borne by the tide from there.

Marella had been employed for years as one of the many “captains” of the ACTV, the public transport company — a vaporetto driver, in other words.

But don’t imagine that they all get wreaths, floating or otherwise.

Some investigation has revealed that Capt. Marella was hugely famous, an extraordinary person who had been deeply involved for decades in the struggle to help the handicapped. Specfically, those suffering from muscular dystrophy. And he was one of the driving forces, along with Dr. Diego Fontanari and Mrs. Luciana Sullam, in the founding of the local chapter of the UILDM, the Unione Italiana lotta alla Distrofia Muscolare (Italian Union in the fight against Muscular Dystrophy).

According to the story published in the newsletter of the association, back in 1966 or so, Marella noticed that every day at a certain time, a young man with muscular dystrophy boarded, with tremendous effort, his vaporetto.  Struck by the man’s tenacity and courage, he began to urge the bus company (as I think of it) to improve its accessibility to the handicapped, particularly by creating specific spaces designed for wheelchairs. This was revolutionary work, especially when you consider the cost of retrofitting all those vehicles.  Did I mention that the transport company is public?  That means it was born to say “We can’t afford it.”  But Marella seems to have been born, as his grandson once remarked, with “Duracell batteries.”

He didn’t stop with the vaporettos.  He organized a medical conference on neuromuscular diseases.  He raised funds by participating in telethons.  He accompanied groups of tourists with MS in tours around the city, not to mention on trips out in the lagoon.

He even convinced the 66 other vaporetto drivers to donate part of every paycheck to the UILDM.  In fact, they still do. I want you to stop and think about that for a minute.  Yes, it is unbelievable.  But there it is.

I think roses are absolutely beautiful for a wreath, and not all that common, either. At least not for a man.

Small digression: When I first came here, and for years, the vaporettos all displayed several discreet but noticeable square stickers with a design of a person in a wheelchair, with a small note encouraging the public to remember the UILDM and its mission. I used to wonder, “Why MS? If the public transport company is publicizing one disease, why not all of them?” Now I know the answer.  Because Anacleto Marella asked them to, and it was nobody could say no to him.

“My father’s enthusiasm and tenacity overwhelmed everybody,” his son, Giovanni, remembered.  “He involved entire families in his initiatives. Nobody could stop him.”

Yes, he was left fatherless as a boy, and had to start working early to support his family.  Yes, he was a wounded veteran of World War II. But these experiences don’t inevitably make pioneers, much less heroes, nor do they guarantee any skill in navigating the immense sea of bureaucracy and lethargy. As far as I can tell, he had no relatives with any physical disabilities.  What he clearly had was a large heart, a clear mind, and a spectacularly hard head.

He would have been 94 on July 1.  Ciao, Capitano.  If you had ever wanted to round Cape Horn with your vaporetto, I’ll bet you could have gotten everybody to sign up.

 

 

 

 

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Vogalonga photo op

In my last post on the Vogalonga (though I suppose it would be more accurate to say that this is my last) I acknowledged the lack of any photographic evidence of our excellent — and rapid — circuit of the northern lagoon.

As I had hoped, a kind soul did in fact take some pictures of us, and that kind soul knew some friends of ours, who sent them along. Perhaps there are more such souls out there, but I don’t know them or their friends.  So here’s a big shout-out to the club Voga Fortuna Berlin, and Sandra, who chose to work the camera rather than the oar.

Here we are returning to the club to get our numbered bib. If you ask where are all the hordes of rowers waiting for the starting cannon to fire, I can tell you they're behind us. Where most of them stayed all morning. The crew this year was a sort of mixed fishfry. (L to r): Sandro Graffi, his 12-year-old son Davide, 14-year-old Filippo Novello, Antonio Borgo, me, and Mike O'Toole, a/k/a/ "Otolini," master and commander of Gondola Getaway in Long Beach, California. Lino is sitting on his starboard side, as navigator and co-pilot, though he rarely intervened.
And our return, down the incredibly spacious Cannaregio Canal. Somewhere around Murano we reshuffled the squad: Antonio is now in the bow and Sandro is at #4. Lino has moved from the stern to sit in the bow, which was undoubtedly more comfortable but which reversed his view of the proceedings. What you can't hear, unfortunately, is all of us saying some variation on "Holy Sacrament, I can't believe how few people are here. I'm never going back to the old way."

 

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Voga-not-so-longa

Considering how well my personal Vogalonga went this year (along with my six boatmates), it’s taken me this much time to find anything to say about it other than that.

Also, I have no photographs whatsoever of us, for one reason which explains both these little paragraphs. We didn’t start in the Bacino of San Marco.

A glimpse of the Bacino of San Marco on or about the start this year, which we didn't see. This image is even more beautiful for that very reason. (Thanks to the unnamed photographer who took this picture, which I found on the web.)

The tradition in any boat I’ve been in that includes Lino (all but one — the first year — of the 16 editions I’ve joined) is that we start in the Bacino of San Marco when the cannon fires and all the bells ring.  It’s thrilling and I love this moment, which is all too brief because we then commence rowing, along with a mass of boats surrounding us like migrating krill.

This means that while we have the chance to savor the richness of the moment — boats, cannon, bells — the krill create many well-known problems along the way. Such as at what I think of as the “death corner,” the first turn at the point of Sant’ Elena, where any number of non-Venetian rowers suddenly discover some problem which they hadn’t planned on facing — such as a tricky current, or some boats around them also having problems, or, I don’t know, existential lack of nerve, like cragfast climbers.  You can expect to see at least one capsized vessel here, and a batch of confusion from the mass of boats trying to avoid it.

Then there are the snaky curves along the flank of Sant’ Erasmo, also excellent territory for making miscalculations of available space, relative speeds, and wind direction and force.

Then, of course, there is the every-year-more-difficult (I meant to say “ghastly” but changed my mind) passage into and through the Cannaregio Canal, where inexperience, fatigue, and lack of common sense create packs of boats like Arctic ice.

This year we didn’t have any of that — I mean, ANY of that — for one surprising reason.  We forgot our boat’s number, without which the boat can’t be checked at various points along the way and hence acknowledged as officially doing the course.

So when the cannon/bells/confusion began at 9:00 AM, we were back at the boat club behind Sant’ Elena digging the numbered bib out of Lino’s locker.

Which meant that we joined the scrum after the “death corner,” and — this was unexpected — in some way near the head of the herd.  Please note that this does not mean we started early, as some unsporting people tend to do.  We slipped into the traffic stream at 9:10, roughly the same time it would have been for us at that point even if we’d started in the usual place.

The result of all this being that not only did we cover the entire course in record time without even breaking a sweat (three hours — unheard of), we were able to do it in unearthly tranquillity.  Yes, there were other boats, but noticeably fewer at that stage.  We slithered along Sant’ Erasmo as if there wasn’t anybody else around, and we entered the Cannaregio Canal (over which I always see an invisible sign saying “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”) as if it were a normal day, only better: The reasonable number of boats ahead of us were proceeding in a reasonable way at a reasonable speed and behaving, well, reasonably.  I had never imagined I could see such a thing.

The only flaw in the ointment, as a friend of mine used to say, was that we were also ahead of the photographers.  We missed the departure, which is always good for spectacular pictures, and we missed the mass return, ditto.

So unless some unknown photographer makes him- or herself known, I’m just going to have to keep my memories dusted and polished, because there isn’t anything else I have to show for this event.

It was so wonderful that I’m already trying to think of ways to convince the crew to leave before 9:00 next year.  If all goes well, I’ll be able soon to report that we finished the course before the others had even started it.

Crazy?  Unsporting?  Simply wrong? Yes indeed.  But now the rot has set in.

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