Lagoon | Venice: I am not making this up

Why her? Why here? Why any of it?

February 8, 2014 5 Comments

The only way to make the Lido look beautiful is to add lots of sky. That is, something non-Lido. But it looked like the perfect place to settle their little evidence problem, even if they did have to travel 167 miles (269 km) to get there. — The only way to make the Lido look beautiful is to add lots of sky. That is, something non-Lido. But it looked like the perfect place to resolve their little evidence problem, even if they did have to travel 167 miles (269 km) to get there.

Let’s admit that “Death in Venice” is — I’m sorry to say — one of the greatest titles ever. It’s better than “Catch-22” or “Atlas Shrugged,” and it’s probably better even than “Of Human Bondage” or “Naked Lunch.”

You can see why. If sadness and Venice appear to be destined for each other, like Victorian lovers, death and Venice seem doomed to be linked forever, thanks to a genius title that connects two of the most emotion-laden words that exist. If the book had been called “Farewell, My Lovely” — which would have been kind of cool, though it would have put Raymond Chandler in a fix — at least Venice could have escaped the “death” search term.

Enough musing. A recent tragedy has shown that there’s nothing romantic about either death or Venice, even when you put them together. And you don’t have to actually die here to benefit from the Venetian element. It’s enough to be discovered to be dead here for the whole affair to seem even worse than it is. Whatever that means.

Here’s what happened. And I warn you that the tragic element, which is real, will play a relatively small part in a story which is made up of idiocy of a magnitude to dwarf even the ten most idiotic things that have ever happened here.

At about 1:40 AM on January 28, a water-taxi driver went home to the Lido and was tying up his boat at its usual place in the canal that flanks via Antonio Loredan. It was dark, obviously, and this street isn’t especially well-lighted. But he saw something floating in the water.

The “something” was the body of a woman, who was clad only in a single necklace.

But the necklace wasn’t the important clue.

It was the fact that a young Indian couple in Milan had reported her missing.

That turned out to be a huge technicolor clue, because they were the ones who killed her. This is the first indication of the level of intelligence at work here (idiocy, as mentioned). If I had murdered someone, I don’t think I’d feel like trotting over to the police to say, “She’s disappeared and I don’t know anything about it” if, in fact, I knew all about it. I’d feel like getting on a plane back to India, which is what exactly what they’d had in mind, but they didn’t do it fast enough.

Her name was Mahtab Ahad Savoji, and she was a 31-year-old Iranian student who had gone to Milan two years ago to study art. She moved into an apartment at #5 via Pericle with Rajeshwar Singh (29), a hotel night porter, and his girlfriend, Gagandeep Kaur (30), a chambermaid.

Life was not tranquil. Contrary to her supposition of sharing the apartment with only Gagandeep, she found herself living with her boyfriend too. The place was so small that Mahtab slept on a cot next to the sofabed where the couple had no second thoughts about getting it on whenever they felt like it. She told her friends that Rajeshwar had begun hitting on her, that Gagandeep wanted to involve her in a menage. Strife escalated.

Fed up, Mahtab packed her bag and told them she was moving out. Then she asked to be reimbursed for her part of the security deposit. As far as I can tell, this is when things went south, possibly aggravated by their feelings of rejection regarding the missed menage. In any case, they killed her.

It was 2:00 PM on January 27. The autopsy revealed that she died of “atypical strangulation,” which has yet to be further elucidated. However, her demise was not caused by a cord, as Gagandeep claimed, nor was it caused by drinking herself to death, as Rajeshwar maintained.

It’s now about 2:30 and the two Indians have a dead body they need to get rid of. They strip her, fold her up, and put her in a big rolling suitcase. Then they head to Lecco, a town 31 miles (50 km) away. The plan was to dump her body in beautiful Lake Como, but they decided against it because “there were too many people around.”

An aerial view of Lecco. Does this look like a place that would have too many people to make disposing of a body awkward? — An aerial view of Lecco. All that water would be perfect for disposing of a body, but there is that little problem about the thousands of people living there. (Pawel Kierzkowski)

People? The town has 47,760 inhabitants, plus tourists, and it was still daylight, too. Sharp.

So they dragged the big suitcase back to Milan (presumably by train — it’s less than an hour from Lecco), and took a train for Venice.

Why? you ask. Why Venice? The Po River is much closer to Milan than Venice, and I doubt that they were impelled by the well-known romantic connection between the Queen of the Seas and the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

They went to Venice simply because Rajeshwar had worked in a hotel on the Lido for a brief period, so apparently it came to his mind that all that water would be just the place to leave her remains. Or some sort of reasoning like that. If he had worked in a hotel in Geneva, maybe he’d have lugged the girl’s corpse to Geneva.

They got off the vaporetto at 8:04 PM under a pounding rain; the video surveillance cameras filmed two people pulling a big suitcase. They walked a third of a mile (595 meters) to the first canal to the left, and found a nice dark spot to unburden themselves of their naked former friend.

The pair left the Lido at 9:56 PM (I can’t understand how it took them two hours to accomplish their task, but the video doesn’t lie). But when they got to the station, it was past 11:00 PM, and the last train for Milan was gone. So too was the now-empty suitcase.

Undismayed, they walked over the Calatrava Bridge and asked a taxi driver how much he’d charge to drive them to Milan, because they had to be at work the next day. (First rule of escape: Be as inconspicuous as possible.) (Second rule: Evaluate seriously how important it is to show up on time for work, when you are shortly going to be sought by the police.)

The driver said 650 euros, they said fine, and off they went. The video cameras at Piazzale Roma filmed this also.

At 2:30 AM they were back in Milan. And by now the body had surfaced.

It didn’t take the police all that long to find their way to via Pericle to ask the couple a few questions about their former roommate, thanks to their having reported her missing. At which point they began to just throw remarks every which way, like Eddie Izzard on lying: “I was on the moon. With Steve.”

First, they told the police that they’d gone out for a walk at 10:30 on the day of her disappearance, and when they returned at 6:00 PM, she wasn’t there.

Then they said that they had awakened suddenly at 8:00 AM to find her naked and dead lying on the sofabed next to him; they assumed she had drunk herself to death the night before. (So then they went out for a walk?)

The autopsy hasn’t found any evidence of this yet. On the contrary — the Indians stated that Mahtab had been eating potato chips and chickpeas with her bottomless bottle of whiskey, forgetting that the autopsy would easily reveal what she had really consumed. For the record, it was rice and vegetables, her lunch on the day of her death.

Then Rajeshwar said they hadn’t killed her, they’d only disposed of her body. (Don’t try to make sense of this. “Our friend is inexplicably dead! Gosh, let’s take her clothes off, haul her body to Venice and throw her in the lagoon so nobody thinks we did it.”)

Then Gagandeep said “Rajeshwar killed her with a cord which he threw away.” Then she said, “No, he didn’t kill her, I killed her.”

Then the police found that Rajeshwar had booked a direct flight to India for February 2, and that 5,500 euros were stashed in the sofabed.

Just think; Instead of going all the way back to Milan, they could have gotten on a plane at Marco Polo airport at 6:20 AM and been somewhere in India by 11:40 that night. I’m all for showing up for work, but I think they got their priorities slightly scrambled.

So Rajeshwar and Gagandeep are in jail in Milan, and Mahtab is in the morgue in Venice. Her aunt has come to identify her remains, and when the coroner has clarified all the remaining unclear points in the attempt to establish the definite cause of death, Mahtab will go back to Teheran.

And Rajeshwar and Gagandeep will be going back and forth from their cells to the court for quite a while.

And the good people of the Lido can go back to thinking of how to induce tourists to come to the beach and the golf course. God knows nobody wants the Golden Isle to start being known for a new kind of tourism.

Venetian Problems

Taking a closer look at New Year’s Eve

January 5, 2014 2 Comments

The Piazza is big, but it's not THAT big. I still don't grasp how 80,000 people got in there. Or got out. — The Piazza is big, but it’s not THAT big. I still don’t grasp how 80,000 people got in there. Or got out.

Probably nobody is thinking about New Year’s Eve anymore, no matter where they spent it. But here in Venice it’s not over yet, as the papers continue to publish a cascade of ever-more-detailed articles, personal stories, and editorials on how things went.

In a word: Badly.

So I’m going to back up from my earlier post and try this report again. Because in case you don’t know, the three most beautiful words in the English language are not “I love you” (though they’re not the worst, either).

Nope. The three MOST beautiful words are “You were right.” And in my case, its close cousin: “I was wrong.”

I admit that I felt uneasy writing that sunny little post about New Year’s Eve. Even as I wrote it, I had the strange feeling that I was unaccountably speaking in some unknown language from the planet where life is beautiful all the time.

I must have inadvertently disconnected my internal smoke-detector, because the news is demonstrating, in ever more lurid detail, why I will never go near the Piazza San Marco on the night of Saint Sylvester. And how inexplicably incapable the city is of organizing big events in some reasonable manner. And when I refer to the organization of big events, I have some small experience elsewhere; for example, the Fiesta of San Fermin at Pamplona, which I have attended twice. And I’d go back again, no matter how much I hate crowds, and one of many reasons is because it is organized and maintained in the most dazzlingly intelligent and diligent manner for nine solid days and nights. And a mere twelve hours drives Venice to its knees.

From 9:30 PM, rivers of young people arriving by train filled the streets heading toward the Piazza, smashing bottles and setting off firecrackers as they went.

Far from being a scene of frolic and light-hearted conviviality, as the night dragged on the Piazza San Marco (and Piazzale Roma, whence thousands tried eventually to depart the most beautiful city in the world) resembled a war zone, or a frat party of intercontinental dimensions. Words such as “assault,” “devastation,” and “outrage” highlight the reports of the night, and the morning after.

Piles of shattered glass bottles and pools of biological fluids from either or both ends of homo stupidus prostratus were only some of the abundant remains. There were also the bodies of comatose sleeping revelers scattered around the streets, lying where they fell when the fumes ran out.

People are fascinated by the damage water can do to the Piazza, but somehow the maxi-posters and the maxi-mobs have slowly come to seem normal. The water is normal, too, and has been normal for longer than there's been a city here. — People are obsessed by the damage that water can do to the Piazza, but somehow the maxi-posters and the maxi-mobs have come to seem normal. So millions have been spent to control the water, but virtually nothing to resolve what in fact should be much easier to deal with. I don’t get it.

The story in figures:

80,000 partyers, 10,000 more than the past two years. Most of the yobbos weren’t Venetian, but from everywhere else — what in New York are called “bridge and tunnel” people. I’ve seen them there at the St. Patrick’s Day parade, and it’s not lovely. It’s no lovelier here.

50 interventions by the 45 emergency medical personnel from the Green Cross, Civil Protection, and SUEM, the ambulance entity; most crises related to alcohol drunk, alcohol spilled (rendering the already wet pavement dangerously slippery), cuts by the broken glass of bottles blindly hurled into the air, blows to the head, and panic attacks caused by the mob and the explosions of firecrackers at close quarters.

100,000 euros ($135,868) the estimated cost to the city, excluding fireworks. This approximate number comprises: 60,000 euros for the collection and removal of 135 cubic meters (4,732 cubic feet)of garbage, of which 20 cubic meters (706 cubic feet) were of glass; 15,000 euros for the 60 Municipal Police agents on security duty. And the cost, not yet quantified, of the extra transport personnel (50 bus drivers and an unspecified number of vaporetto pilots). And the fuel required by the 20 garbage barges.

60 extra buses coming into Venice from the mainland; 123 extra buses between midnight and 7:00 AM from Venice to the mainland. Does this sound like a lot? Au contraire; the ACTV, in its wisdom, put on extra vaporettos, which worked well, but reduced the basic number of bus runs on a holiday eve. Because it’s, you know, a holiday, and the drivers want to be at home. New Year’s Eve in Venice, with reduced bus service. Explain this to the masses of tired, cold, exasperated people who were trying to get back home, who even overwhelmed the relatively few taxis in Piazzale Roma. Explain it to anybody, if you can. And I still can’t figure out how 50 extra bus drivers were sent to work if there were fewer buses. Or were they put to work scrolling the “Out of service” sign onto the buses’ forefronts?

The story in voices:

“It was hard, if not impossible, to move. Funky air, a mix of piss and drugs, the pavement “mined” with bottles, cans, and every sort of garbage…The Piazza was a disaster. Electronic music at full volume incited the crowd that was already drunk and out of control. A great number of young people had taken over, armed with every type of alcohol…the center of the Piazza was an inferno. Not just fireworks, but young people, Italian and foreign, were competing in a new entertainment: the launching of bottles…I didn’t see any security agents that would have forbidden this behavior…The day after, the marks remained on our city, heritage of humanity, devastated by barbarism.” (Margherita Gasco)

“According to a recent international survey, the night between the last and first of the year shows Venice to be among the principal capitals of the festivities on the planet. This shouldn’t prevent us from … reflecting critically on how these events are carried out — if they’re worth the trouble, if they still have their original sense.” (Gianfranco Bettin, the assessore for the Environment).

“Such a high number of people wasn’t predicted, nor predictable,” said Angela Vettese, the assessore of Culture and Tourism Development. (It wasn’t predictable? Does she not read tourism surveys?). “In the future, more prudence is necessary to protect the Piazza, and to invest in more surveillance, so that the police can check, count, and keep access to the Piazza within a determined limit. Furthermore, it’s necessary to organize only high-quality events, with spectacles that involve the public (more involved than they already were?), maintaining greater tranquillity.” She’s still new on the job, or she wouldn’t be talking like that; all these things have been said before, and before, and even before that.

Social network comments were divided between those who think New Year’s Eve in the Piazza is the greatest thing ever, and those who think the care and protection of the already fragile city is more important; those who insist it was just a normal night of festivity, and those who characterize is as another example of sheer lunacy.

“I urge the church to make itself heard, seeing that the civil authorities don’t feel any special need to safeguard the Piazza San Marco…Can we imagine an event like last Tuesday in the Piazza San Pietro in Rome?” (Franco Miracco, art historian).

“San Marco can’t be the only stage for events” (Mons. Antonio Meneguolo, diocese of Venice). “It’s not the number of people which creates bad behavior,” he said. “We can increase the security but it would be better to organize other activities elsewhere, and remove the emphasis of the publicity for “New Year’s in the Piazza,” seeing how the event ends up.”

“Venice continues to be seen as a city to exploit touristically down to the bone,” said Lidia Fersuoch, president of Italia Nostra. “More than limit access to the Piazza, it’s necessary to limited access to the city itself, because it’s impossible to contain more than a certain number of visitors.”

“Certainly, if we take as the limit the Pink Floyd concert of 1989, anything even just barely below that is considered tolerable…But hurling bottles, explosion of firecrackers, people who urinate and vomit in the streets, are these part of the normal course of public socializing? For some people, yes, but for us, no. Especially if it happens in the Piazza San Marco, which isn’t just any piazza, but a monumental area, as it was defined when concerts were stopped (because they have an excessive impact on the Piazza itself)… But why no to concerts, and yes to New Year’s Eve? We speak of “outrage” precisely because it’s a monumental area; you can’t remain indifferent seeing people climbing up the 16th-century columns of the Loggetta of Sansovino at the feet of the campanile. The piazza has always been the place for socializing, for events. But what events?” (Davide Scalzotto)

I think the Piazza looks wonderful like this. It's not that I'm anti-social, but on days like this it looks peaceful, and clean, and safe. I don't mean I feel safe, I mean it looks safe from us. — I think the Piazza looks wonderful like this. It’s not that I’m anti-social, but on days like this it looks peaceful, and clean, and safe. I don’t mean I feel safe, I mean it looks safe from us.

Here is what I ask myself and anyone who might be listening: There is a Superintendency of architecture, of art, of treasures. There is the Polizia di Stato, the carabinieri, the municipal police, the Guardia di Finanza. There are ordinances forbidding almost every dangerous and tumultuous form of behavior and the hazardous objects associated with them. Why is there no evident point at which any of these elements meet? The behavior and objects are at Point A, and any uniformed persons authorized to intervene are at Points Q, X, and Z. All told, there may have been more garbage collectors than anybody else at work in the Piazza, which seems backwards, to me.

In theory, if there were more agents of public order on duty, there would be less need for the First Aid stations, not to mention the ambulances and garbagemen.

But let me move on to a much more distressing thought.

Venice is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which, unlike many of the 981 sites on their list, is a real place where real people live and move and have their being. This presents special problems which nobody seems able to anticipate, or resolve. I am at a loss to say why, except that with ten fingers per city councilor, there’s plenty for pointing at other people.

There are 49 UNESCO sites in Italy, more than any other country on earth. So far, none is marked as being “in danger.” I think Venice should be. I cannot conceive of shenanigans such as New Year’s Eve in the Piazza San Marco being tolerated in Angkor, or Machu Picchu, or the Alhambra, or the Red Fort Complex, or the Etruscan Necropolises, or the Potala Palace, or the Galapagos Islands. And this is not the first time. And yet, it goes on.

And I’ll say one more thing, as long as I’m on the subject: Of all the “properties” on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites, only two, so far, have been de-listed. The reasons are given on this page of their website.

Between the catastrophes visited upon Venice under the ever-fresh rubber stamp of the Superintendency of Architectural Treasures (the tormented issue of the maxi-posters in the San Marco area has only been moderately resolved, among other things), and the continued abuse of the lagoon, which is also part of the World Heritage designation (from the Canale dei Petroli to MoSE and now to the imminent approval of the digging of the Contorta canal), I don’t think it’s inconceivable that eventually Venice could see itself de-listed from the UNESCO panoply.

This is not the most improbable scenario I’ve ever come up with. Except that I’d love to be able to say “I was wrong.”

Uncategorized, Venetian Problems

The more things change….

August 15, 2013 2 Comments

The sun is shining but the sky is dark. I know it happens everywhere but here it has a sort of metaphoric vibe.

People sometimes ask me — or ask themselves, standing next to me — why the government of Venice doesn’t do one thing or the other to resolve the city’s problems, which are right out there for everybody to see. It seems impossible that nobody has come up with any ideas for what to do to make it cleaner, safer, more efficient (well, that might be a reach) — or just generally spiffed up and functioning. How can it be that no long-term solution is found for something — anything?

If we were to take the proverbial legal tablet and write the proverbial two comparative lists, one would be titled “Problems” (it would be a very long list), and the other “Solutions” (which would also be long). But there are almost no points at which they recognize each other and embrace, like twins separated at birth.

But guess what I just found out? People were raising red flags, launching the lifeboats, pulling out handfuls of hair in 1970 about the very same problems everyone complains about today. That’s 43 years of standing in one place. If I were a city, I’d be tired by now.

This would be a characteristic glimpse of Venice -- not so much due to the water, but the history of the house on the right. The windows have changed several times -- being opened, being bricked up, being put wherever there's a free spot. Lots of changes, none of which essentially changes anything. Yes, I'm definitely on a symbolism streak today. Bonus: a glimpse of the future, which isn't pretty: The missing block of stone beneath the lowest window, which has left the stone above it just hanging in empty space, waiting to fall down. You can see it, you can understand it, you can even know what to do about it. Except that you don't. — This would be a characteristic glimpse of Venice — not so much due to the water, but the history of the house on the right. The windows have changed several times — being opened, being bricked up, being put wherever there’s a free spot. Lots of changes, none of which essentially changes anything. Yes, I’m definitely on a symbolism streak today. Bonus: a glimpse of the future, which isn’t pretty: The missing block of stone beneath the lowest window, which has left the stone above it just hanging in empty space, waiting to fall down. You can see it, you can understand it, you can even know what to do about it. Except that you don’t.

As I have long suspected, it’s not ideas that are missing here. (I mean, constructive, forward-looking, beneficial-to-everybody ideas). It’s execution.

Tides of ideas flow through Venice from all sides, but like the lagoon tide, they go out again. Most of them. To return again. Most of them. Some of them begin to be realized, then they stop. Then they start again. You get the idea. (Sorry.)

Here are some of the most telling bits from a big article in the Gazzettino last Sunday, written by Pier Alvise Zorzi. It might be useful to know that the Zorzi family is documented to have been in Venice since 964 A.D. That doesn’t mean he knows more than anyone else, I’m just saying he’s not the latest person to see the fireworks of the Redentore and decide to stay here forever.

Mr. Zorzi reports that back in April, 1970, veteran journalist Indro Montanelli dedicated virtually the entire month to articles about Venice and its problems — its particularity, its fragility, the housing depression, the political bungling, and so on.

“THE ILLS OF VENICE? THE SAME WERE REPORTED BY INDRO 43 YEARS AGO. From depopulation to the risk of the touristic monoculture, from the sublagunare project to the problems of housing.”

“I have in hand a page from the Corriere della Sera (April 23, 1970) with the headline: ‘The Youth Front for Venice,’ with the subtitle “On the lagoon one breathes the air of the Titanic — the discouragement which by now pervades the Venetians is the main danger to face – to break this passivity a movement of young people has arisen without any political label ready to support at the next elections anybody who defends Venice.”

Under some emblematic photographs are these succinct quotes from 1970, which read like telegraph messages from the front lines. It’s deja vu again, and again, and again.

“Tourism: The city can’t live only on hotels and restaurants.”

“Housing: Too many uninhabited palaces and the cost of rent is through the roof (as they say here, “to the stars”).”

“Dignity: Enough of sterile complaints: each person needs to get involved.”

He continues: “A young person who was interviewed complained of the progressive abandonment of the city…the problem of housing, which is not only decrepit but at much higher rents than on the mainland…And the culminating point, ‘We don’t intend to raise tourism to the level of a monoculture. A city like Venice can’t live only on hotels, trattorias, tips. It will become degraded.'”

And the solutions these young people suggest are also, by now, hoary and draped with cobwebs: More artisans, for example, or linking highly specialized institutions to the world of production and cultural foundations in Europe and America.

The Front eventually fell apart, but the old problems are still here, and have been joined by some new ones: “The ‘hole’ of the Lido (endless construction projects that are badly conceived, worse realized, mercilessly expensive); the ghost of corruption on the MOSE project (more about this in another post), the mega-billboards which continue in spite of new ministerial regulations.”

But wait -- I see repairs going on! A few years ago the bridge over the rio dei Mendicanti was in clear and imminent danger (imminent being the only kind of danger that gets attention) because motondoso was, as you see, breaking the link between the steps and the balustrade. This is not an unusual sight -- you can find similar large fissures between fondamente and the walls of houses as the walkway begins to break off and slide toward the water. But it is nice to see it being fixed. Until you've been here long enough to realize that without fixing the cause, the same problem is inevitably going to come back again, and again, and again, and again. Is that enough "again"s to make my point? — But wait — I see repairs going on! A few years ago the bridge over the rio dei Mendicanti was in clear and imminent danger (imminent being the only kind of danger that gets attention) because motondoso was, as you see, breaking the link between the steps and the balustrade. This is not an unusual sight — you can find similar large fissures between fondamente and the walls of houses as the walkway begins to break off and slide toward the water. But it is nice to see it being fixed. Until you’ve been here long enough to realize that without fixing the cause, the same problem is inevitably going to come back again, and again, and again, and again. Is that enough “again”s to make my point?

Zorzi acknowledges a few positive signs lately, small and tentative though they may be. But the essential character of the situation is not only unchanged, but maybe even unchangeable. “The problem,” he says, and so do lots of people here, “is that everyone who is able to make the decisions is so tied up in the webs of common interests, either political or economic (but aren’t they the same?) that they move only with extreme, sticky slowness.

“The risk? That 40 years from now we’ll still be right there, at the same spot. I don’t want my grandchildren still to be reading, for example, about the Calatrava bridge, that economic abyss … or the suspected speculation on the renovation of the Manin barracks. Or the hospital. Or the eternal MOSE. Or all the usual things which the national newspapers don’t bother with anymore because everybody’s fed up with Venice’s constant whining.

“I want Venice to have the dignity to save herself on her own, thanks to the citizens which consider her not as something to exploit, but something to invest in. I want the Venetians to denounce the little local mafias, instead of trying to join them in order to gain something for themselves. I want the multinationals who buy the palaces to invest in the city and not merely in their own image. I want that each person, even in their own little way, should do something to safeguard our special character. If I were to live for a hundred years, I’d like to read something new about Venice.”

You know what’s too bad about this cri de coeur? I’ve heard it before.

Which degradation is more disturbing? The kind shown here? (Anyone who considers the condition of this once-beautiful wrought iron to be charming can skip to the next question)....... — Which degradation is more disturbing? The kind shown here? (Anyone who considers the condition of this once-beautiful wrought iron to be charming can skip to the next question)…….

IMG_1006 victory — Or this? Mass tourism creates blowing trash and cattle-car transport and other unattractive things which could be considered degradation. But you don’t need a mass of tourists to feel depressed. You can manage with just two, if they’re like this pair, relaxing in front of the church of San Zaccaria.

So I look for things that nobody can spoil. Like the sky.

Or real human contact, of which there is still a heartening amount.

As you see. People lurking in crannies as the avalanche of uncontrolled tourism and uncontrolled everything surges over the city yet another day.

I didn't get close enough to listen in, but these Venetians are almost certainly talking about something that's either gone wrong, is going wrong, or will be going wrong. If I had ten cents for every time I've heard a Venetian say "Poor Venice," I'd be living in Bora Bora by now. The elderly gentleman, on the other hand, is saving his energy by merely reading about the day's problems in the newspaper. — I didn’t get close enough to listen in, but these Venetians give several signs that they’re talking about something that’s either gone wrong, is going wrong, or will be going wrong. (Perhaps it’s about work, or the mother-in-law, or the car. But eventually it will almost certainly be about Venice.) If I had ten cents for every time I’ve heard a Venetian say “Poor Venice,” I’d be living in Bora Bora by now. The elderly gentleman, on the other hand, is saving his energy by merely reading about the day’s problems in the newspaper.

This is a view of what I think we need. I don't mean the doge (especially not this one, Francesco Foscari, who had enough calamities of his own). I mean the lion. I want this lion to come back and take the situation in hand, in tooth, in claw. He looks like all he needs is a signal from somebody. — This is a view of what I think we need. I don’t mean the doge (especially not this one, Francesco Foscari, who had enough calamities of his own). I mean the lion. I want this lion to come back and take the situation in hand, in tooth, in claw. He looks like all he needs is a signal. First thing he’ll do is throw the book at everybody.

Boatworld

The Saga of the Lost Oar

July 8, 2013 4 Comments

These are "Cherub"'s oars in happier days. — These are “Cherub”‘s oars in happier days.

I toil for two weeks every May in the registration office of the Vogalonga. And every year, something interesting occurs. This year, that “something” was more than usually diverting. It had to do with the search and rescue of a foreign oar.

Everything started with an e-mail a week before the event, sent to the office from an English rower, Dr. Adrian Hodge; he was planning to come with his Thames skiff, “Cherub,” and a group from his rowing club (Norfolk Skiff Club). As it was the first time they were undertaking this little quadrille, he wanted information on the parking and boat-launching facilities, which I took it upon myself to supply, along with a batch of my usual unsolicited observations and comments, no extra charge.

Technical digression: “Cherub” is 8 meters/26 feet long, is said to date from the 1890s, and was built at Richmond on Thames. Unfortunately all the records of the company which built her were destroyed when the boat yard was sold in the 1960s, so Adrian doesn’t know who was the original owner.

So they came, they rowed the Vogalonga, they pulled “Cherub” out of the water, loaded it on the trailer, drove the 1,700 km (1,056 miles) home to Norfolk, and unloaded the boat.

Following is a highly condensed version of the most pertinent of the numerous e-mails that ensued.

Dear Erla,

The journey back to England was uneventful, apart from the weather, and I have just inspected the skiff to make sure that she had returned unscathed. To my horror I discovered that we have lost a scull (oar). A moment’s thought and I remembered that we had used a scull to position the lifting strops for the crane on Monday. I suppose that someone put it down on the ground and we simply left it behind. It was beside the orange painted fixed crane and Michele was in charge of the crane team. I’m sorry to lose it because it is antique and carries the monogram of a previous owner of the boat, so, if you have the opportunity to put the word around, and if it turns up, keep it somewhere and I hope that it can be repatriated next year. I’m sending you a picture too, so that if you see it decorating a bar, you will know where it came from! Since the photos it has lost its copper end and had some repairs to the tip.

Although I dislike disasters, I do enjoy a challenge, so I leapt into action.

Dear Adrian:

I have spoken with the organizers of the Vogalonga and they say they know nothing, and have heard nothing, about your oar.

However, they did suggest that you tell me where you took the boat out of the water. If you would tell me this detail, I will attempt to contact whoever is responsible for that area.

He replied: We lifted the boat out at the quay just before the bridge to Tronchetto. There were three cranes and we used the centre one which was painted orange and had Scalo Fluviale and a number 2 on it. Michele was in charge. He was driving the forklift truck.

I called the Scalo Fluviale, and they knew all about the oar. “Sure, we have it,” they told me. Why should there be panic, stress, visions of mayhem? “It’s right here.”

OAR FOUND!!!! I e-mailed Adrian. I love good news, especially when it’s unexpected.

You are incomparable, he replied. (I liked that bit.) My prayers to St. Anthony of Padua have been answered. My next plan was to get some real Catholics to pray to him too.

On the practical front, the oar is 290cm (9.5 feet) long and weighs 2.0 kg (in fact, a bit less). Normal parcel post is restricted to 1.5 meters (4.9 feet). I think that the most practical method will be for me to fly out and collect it, but first I must make sure the airline will carry it and that I can get it to the airport.

That was an interesting aspect of the project. How was that going to work? Simple: It wasn’t, as Adrian quickly discovered.

The airlines put it in the same category as a vaulting pole and won’t carry it. (I haven’t found time yet to satisfy my newfound curiosity about how vaulting poles make it from home to the Olympics.) DHL will carry items up to 300 cm long, so that must be the default method. I can fly to Venice Tuesday morning, collect the item, wrap it, and deliver it to a DHL collection point, then fly back Tuesday evening.

The day before his arrival, I went to the Scalo Fluviale to locate the oar. There it was, propped against the office wall, looking pensive.

Some phone calls had already revealed that the nearest DHL collection point was at Piazzale Roma, a mere few minutes away. This was another happy surprise; I had had nightmare visions of some storefront in the heart of darkest Mestre. I went by to check on the details of the consignment. On the way home and I bought an exaggerated amount of bubblewrap (nightmare visions of coming up two inches short); unfortunately the bubbles were small, but there was no alternative. I wasn’t up to rigging a splint, and figured if we used enough (but not so much as to exceed the length limit), it ought to work.

Yes, I had become “we.”

Tuesday morning I went to Piazzale Roma to meet Adrian and his wife, Lynne, as they got off the bus from Treviso airport (sure, let’s add another hour and ten minutes each way to the day’s schedule…).

I'im holding 500 square meters of bubblewrap, or so it seems, while we examine the patient and plan our attack. — I’m holding 500 square meters of bubblewrap, or so it seems, while we examine the patient and plan our attack.

We walked to the Scalo Fluviale; the oar was brought out, we wrapped it, we distributed bottles of wine dripping with gratitude to all and sundry (for the record, it was Enrico who had found the oar). We carried the oar, like some titanic assegai, back to Piazzale Roma and the DHL office, where we created a moment of consternation.

Paperwork completed, payment made, oar consigned, deep sighs of relief and satisfaction breathed, we went to a nearby trattoria where Adrian and Lynne treated me to a sumptuous and princely lunch.

On our way toward Piazzale Roma, we presented Enrico (center) with a bottle of wine. Unfortunately not vintage, but I think it was probably amusing nonetheless. The bubbly oar is still standing at attention.

But hold the happily-ever-after. “We must expect reverses, even defeats,” Robert E. Lee remarked, though not to us personally. “They are sent to teach us wisdom and prudence, to call forth greater energies, and to prevent our falling into greater disasters.” I’ll make a note of it, because…..

The oar arrived at 3:15, Adrian e-mailed me, but the end, complete with monogram, was smashed to pieces. I tried to fit it together like a jigsaw, but the wood was crushed too much….It must have been crushed under something heavy, because the wood is deformed. I can’t save this limb and must amputate. I’ll make a sloping cut straight across where the wood is sound and glue on a new piece of wood. Then I’ll shape a new end. Many oars are made like that from new. Unfortunately the monogram will be lost. I’m debating with myself whether to fake that. In general my policy is one of honest repair rather than renovation, preserving as much of the original as possible, but clearly showing any new material.

Adrian is currently involved in some other, more urgent projects, so I haven’t seen the final version yet. But as any pulverized oar will tell you, the worst is clearly over.

I guess now you could say we’re at happily-ever-after. In any case, the adventure has been immortalized in a clip which is on the club’s website (and on YouTube) — set to the tune of the irrepressible Jimmy Durante singing “The Guy Who Found the Lost Chord.” For e-mail readers, here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Kby8OYXyUtQ

Lynne is holding the oar and the delivery-driver seems at peace with the world. But now that I look closer, the part of the oar that's touching the ground looks a little wrong. As indeed it was. — Lynne is holding the oar and the delivery-driver seems at peace with the world. But now that I look closer, the part of the oar that’s touching the ground looks a little wrong. As indeed it was.

And yet, the oar, rising phoenix-like from the woodshavings, will row again.

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