I have been surprised and glad to get such a lively reaction to my two latest posts about Venice’s wells, and drinking water in general.
More is on the way, including, I hope, some answers to a few interesting questions readers have raised. Meanwhile, there will be a brief pause while I dig deeper (sorry) and proceed with further scribbling.
The wellhead on the canal side of the church of San Trovaso has two unusual features. One, it’s sitting in the middle of grass. That is clearly a recent innovation. Two, the line dividing white and gray was caused by the infamous acqua alta of Nov. 4, 1966, showing how high the water rose (and remained for 24 hours). Lino says that discoloration wasn’t universal among the city’s wellheads, though many experienced similar immersion. Various factors were the type of stone used for the wellhead, and how clean/dirty the water was in a particular area — many ground-level dwellings were heated by kerosene.
One of the best things about Venice is how, the minute you walk outside, you are surrounded by curious and beautiful and surprising and amusing things. It used to be that most people would notice at least some of them; now that 98 percent of humans spend all their time staring at or listening to electronic devices, I suppose most of the aforementioned curious, etc. things could just move away and live somewhere else, like Turkmenistan, and nobody would notice. “Hey! Where’d Venice go? I was just checking my email/Twitter feed/Facebook quagmire/WhatsApp” (by the way, nothing is app), and the city’s just gone.” Of course, for the same reason they probably wouldn’t notice in Turkmenistan that a World Heritage Site d/b/a “the most beautiful city in the world” had suddenly sprung up in their midst.
But I still wander around looking at things, and here are a few I came across recently:
A highly superior dog exploiting his master’s feet on the 5.1 vaporetto.You thought he couldn’t be any cooler? How about this?And speaking of vaporettos, I don’t know if the doll gets a special rate, but she certainly has been given a great seat. I’m not sure I’d have had the liver, as they say here, to ask to sit there.I finally noticed, after years of passing the church of San Trovaso, that above the door to the belltower a guardian being was long ago installed to ward off evil spirits. He’s not the only one in Venice, but he does have a certain charisma.However, if I were an evil spirit this face would more probably cause me to ask “Do you feel like talking about it?”There are many other canines to be found around Venice, in a variety of breeds and material. If this pooch is supposed to be scaring away evil spirits, he’s got a funny way of doing it. Maybe he plans on wagging and licking them to death.A bit of worldly wisdom in a shop window, expressed perfectly in Venetian: “When I talk, they don’t listen. When they listen, they don’t understand. When they understand, they forget.”And while we’re on the subject of understanding, there is something so complicated about three dimensions in a small space that it defeats people’s comprehension. This image needs no further comment from me, though I had several ready at the time. When you and many other people need to disembark, they have to squeeze through the backpacks here like hot pig iron through rollers. (One point, though, to the man on the right for color-coordinating his pack and jacket. Point deducted for the vileness of the color.)Two stuffed toy rats in a training potty. The world is a great and imponderable place and Venice is doing its best to keep up.
