Venetian-ness

Life in LinoLand

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Tell me Lino went to school with somebody who built the basilica of the Salute, and I’d believe it.  Jesting aside, the photos today have no special links to the topic at hand.  Just wanted to send you a small supply of images of Venice to tide you over till you can come back.

It’s probably just me, but after years of seeing Lino run into people he knows for one reason or event or phase of life over the past eight decades, it strains belief to think that there could be people in Venice who don’t know him.  In my opinion, we should probably just rename the most beautiful city in the world LinoLand.

Late one morning we were riding the bus down the Lido toward Malamocco.  Lino nabbed a seat near the back — he got the aisle, and a youngish man reading a book was sitting by the window.  The bus was crowded, there was the muted tension of people clumped together in the summer heat.  The bus pulled up at a stop, the man closed the book and moved to get off.  Climbing over Lino on his way out, he said “Ciao, Lino.”

Instant of silence; everyone was wearing masks, so recognition stalled. Then he lowered his mask and it was smiles all round.  Not only had Lino collaborated for years with the man’s father on the Committee of the Festa de la Sensa, but yep — Lino taught him (man, not father of) to row when he was a lad.

Parking is a problem in the canals as much as on land. At the end of via Garibaldi on a busy morning, everybody just decides to make it work. The barge demonstrates what I’d call sufficiently parallel parking.

Change of scene: A few weeks ago we were struggling home on a Sunday evening from the regata at Murano.  After the races people literally disappeared because a deluge had struck the city that had evidently swept every other humans either home or out to sea.  Lino and I trudged through drenching gusts of rain (umbrella?  Of course not!), and climbed aboard the vaporetto heading toward San Pietro di Castello.  Cold.  Soaking wet.  Must mention that this is far from the first time Murano has celebrated its big day with Noye’s Fludde — two years ago it was an apocalyptic hailstorm.

Miserable, waterlogged, we were just stepping ashore on the dock at San Pietro di Castello when the vaporetto pilot pulled down his landward window, leaned halfway out, and called out “Ciao Lino!”

So, yet again, I saw that neither snow, nor rain, nor dead of night, etc., stop people from saying hi to Lino.  In this case, the man was not someone Lino had taught to row — astonishing, I know — but instead is a former naval seaman at the Military Naval School F. Morosini where Lino teaches rowing, as all the world knows by now.  So of course he would have seen Lino thousands of times.  Lino doesn’t remember his name, but names are optional in these encounters.

There are many oases of peace and quiet out in the lagoon.  So far no fish have surfaced to say hi to Lino. They’d be more likely to surface and say “You caught my grandfather’s great-uncle’s cousin’s father-in-law but you’ll never catch me.”

Speaking of Morosini, we were there one afternoon a few weeks ago, working on some of the boats.  The sun was shining, the cadets had gone home for summer vacation, officers were only intermittent.  Around the corner came one of the commandants with an older couple and grandon in tow, obviously a prospective student being shown around.

They all stopped for the usual brief introduction (“And yes, we also offer Venetian rowing to the students,” etc. etc.).  The grandfather looked at Lino and said, “Wait.  I know you.  But how?”  The briefest checklist of where/who/when revealed that they grew up in the same neighborhood mere streets apart.  Lino was a few years older than this person, but not by much.  So we all took a break to listen to them riffle through who they knew, who their relatives were, EXACTLY where their houses were located, and so forth.   This was one of those rare cases where teaching somebody to row wasn’t the link.  It was something better: Family!  Childhood!  Memories!  Neighborhood!

The House of the Rising Clams.
Top row are various exemplars of the capatonda or “round clam” (Cerastoderma glaucum), also known as “cuore di laguna,” or “lagoon heart.” Lino says that the black item in the lineup is a very old capatonda.  On the other hand, because I am not an expert, I have run aground on this because these look convincingly like Rudicardium tuberculatum.  Both of these species belong to the cockle family, so I’m going to leave the subject there.  Further information welcome because I have exploded my brain researching this to little avail.  Bottom row: On the left is a clam “that you find all over the beach, sometimes they’re very big,” says Lino.  That’s all I know.  On the right, a fasolaro (Callista chione)
From the bottom, moving clockwise:  I haven’t yet been able to identify this pale smooth creature, so let’s move on to two capetonde.  Lino states that the blackish object in the center is the shell used by a hermit crab (Pagurus bernhardus).  I’m in no position to argue about it, but I’d like to see one of these in the wild to understand it better.  Meanwhile, it has been given pride of place amongst the mollusks. The last two in the upper right corner are a young capatonda and the twin of the unidentified clam in the first photo.  It’s been a long two days on this.  I may end up just ringing the person’s doorbell.

Let’s go back in time — it doesn’t matter how far, because these chance meetings have been going on forever.  In fact, LinoLand is everywhere.  Take Mogadishu, Somalia, just to pick a place at random.  Lino was living there for four months in the mid-Sixties, with a crew from the Aeronavali which was repairing and maintaining airplanes and teaching (I think you might say that was what was happening) local mechanics how to take over when the group went back to Venice.

Lino and his colleagues were billeted at a modest hotel run by a couple from Bologna, the kind of place you’d expect to find flight crews from Alitalia on layover.  And yes, one day a young man in Alitalia uniform stopped in the lobby.  “Ciao Lino!”  Who was he?  They’d been in the Boy Scouts together.  They didn’t say “So it’s here that we meet again, bwahahaha.”  They said some variation on “What the heck are you doing here?”  And together they could have replied, “I’m working.  What are YOU doing?”

If the sun’s up, it’s time for laundry. No sun, also laundry.
Look closer.  Here is a detail of what is hanging out the window, evidently supported only by whatever cables keep it alive.  Air conditioner is on its own here because for probably many reasons a support has not been constructed.  Guess they’ll haul it in when winter comes, like some sort of midwater longline set out for tuna.
Speaking of hanging things up to dry, out in the lagoon the fishermen hang out their nets. It’s kind of like laundry, but smells different.

And while we’re ranging far afield, let’s go to Muggia, a village on the east coast of the Adriatic just below Trieste.  Lino knows it well, so we decided to take a daytrip one freezing Epiphany a few years ago.  The voyage took much of the morning.  We get the bus in Trieste.  We get off the bus in Muggia.  We walk to the small central piazza (Piazza Galileo Galilei, if you’re playing along at home) where the very economically sized duomo sits sideways.  Pretty.

“Ciao Lino!”  It came from behind this time.  Turning around, we see one of our favorite ex-cadets from the Morosini coming toward us.  Gad!  We’re 176 km (109 miles) from Venice and yet even here there’s SOMEBODY WHO KNOWS LINO.  Since we last saw him he’s become a naval officer, has commanded a submarine, and gotten married to a girl from Muggia, which now explains everything.  It’s not like people follow Lino around by satellite tracking.  It’s just that they seem to be everywhere.

You cannot convince me that they’re not talking to each other.  I mean all three of them.

And in conclusion…What was probably the first of these numberless experiences was the day in Lino’s early adulthood during the five-year period when he worked at Ciampino Airport in Rome, repairing and maintaining planes.

He was riding on a bus somewhere in the central area of the city.  The bus was crammed full of people, naturally.  All of a sudden from the back of the bus comes the ebullient voice of a woman in the broadest possible Venetian accent: “OH VARRRRRREMENGO, VARDA CHI CHE GHE XE!” (“Good Lord have mercy” — a hopelessly bad translation but I’m trying to convey the intensity of the amazement because va a remengo is the absolute maximum Venetian exclamation.)  “LOOK WHO IT IS!”  These were the days before “Ciao Lino” took over.

Everybody turns to look at Lino, who has instantly gone tomato-paste red with embarrassment.  She didn’t stop.  “XE EL FRADELO DE LA VANDA!”  (“It’s Wanda’s brother!”)

“TI SA CHI GHE SO MI?” she cheerfully demands.  (“You know who I am?”)

Tiny embarrassed voice responds: “La Gegia.”  The lady’s name was Teresa, but the nickname in Venetian is Gegia (JE-ja.)

That’s where the story ends; I guess he got off at the next stop, whether it was his or not. He doesn’t remember further details, but that voice has been incised in his brain.  Little did he know normal all this was going to become for him.  Now he just turns to me and either tells me who it is, or asks me.  Me?  You think I know?  As they say here, I just got here tomorrow.

Somebody has just had a baby boy. Part of a new batch of people who’ll be saying “Ciao, Lino”?
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Venetian Curiosities, Venetian History, Venetian-ness

Pay the midwife already!

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This little campiello  tucked away across the canal from Campo San Zan Degola’ is named “Campiello de la Comare.” As far as my explorations have revealed, it’s the only place in Venice still physically bearing this name, despite the official list of streets which claims there are five or six.
They don’t make it any easier by whitewashing over it.

It’s sheer coincidence that what I want to say about offspring comes right after my little cadenza on nuptials.  Though I suppose it’s preferable to my having done them in reverse.  I’m so old-fashioned.

So now we’ve come to the subject of “Children: birthing of.”  Midwives were the norm here up until the Forties, anyway.  My husband was born in 1938, at home, with the aid of a midwife.

Midwife, in Italian, is levatrice.  But in Venetian, it’s “comare” (co-MAH-reh), which I deconstruct as “co-mother,” which is pretty nice.  (For the record, it also means matron-of-honor and official female wedding witness.)

Though midwives are no longer common, an old quip hangs on in occasional usage today: “Xe nato a lugio per no pagar la comare” (zeh nahto a LOO-joe pair no pa-gahr ya co-MAH-reh).  It literally means “He was born in July so as not to pay the midwife.”  It’s one of many affectionate ways to describe a boy or man who could be called a rascal, scamp, rapscallion, etc.  What the connection could possibly be between July and the midwife and her accounts payable isn’t clear at all.  Even Lino can’t tell me. In general, I suppose it’s meant to show how the individual from the very first moment revealed himself to be more than usually scampish.

Speaking of paying the midwife, or not, I always laugh when I listen to a particular riff (thanks to YouTube) which was broadcast and recorded in 1973 by a then-famous, now-forgotten comic named Angelo Cecchelin (check-eh-YEEN).  This hilarious sketch is called “Una Questione Ereditaria” (A Question of Inheritance), in which he plays the part of a man who has been summoned to a judge’s office, he knows not why, but is already on the defensive for fear that he’s going to get trapped into having to pay somebody money.  The fact that he is from Trieste, accent and all, stresses the stereotype of people from the Northeast, especially Friuli, of being spectacularly stingy.  I digress.

It starts off like this (translated by me):

Judge:  Name?

Cecchelin:  Giuseppe Sante fu Giuseppe fu Anna fu nata Paoli. (The old-fashioned way of giving one’s provenance via the parents’ names.)

Q:  Born?

A:  Yes.

Q:  I mean where and when were you born!

A:  I was born in Trieste on October 23 1894 in Via delle Zudecche number 19 fifth floor door number 24 on Wednesday morning it was raining cats and dogs and the midwife still has to be paid.

Back under the Venetian Republic, though, these women were not Hogarthian hags with hairy warts using God knows what as instruments and God had no idea what as medication. In those days, being a midwife was a real profession.  I love any discovery of how forward-thinking the old Venetians were.

Here is what Giuseppe Tassini says in his peerless book, “Curiosita’ Veneziane” (translated by me):

“One finds that in 1689, on September 26, the Magistrate of Health established certain norms for the women who wanted to practice the profession of midwife.

“First of all, he ordered that they had to be able to read, and that they take as their text a book entitled ‘On the Midwife“; that they had to produce a document to certify that for two years they had attended anatomical demonstrations relating to their art, and another to certify that they had spent two years of practical experience with an approved midwife; and finally that they had to undergo an examination which was conducted by the Protomedico in the presence of the Priors of the College of Physicians, and also two distinguished midwives, each of which could add her own questions to those of the Protomedico…

“In the field of obstetrics, the surgeon Giovanni Menini particularly distinguished himself, and he had built, at his own expense, an obstetric chamber so well-supplied and correct that the Venetian Senate acquired it for public use, calling Menini in 1773 to teach obstetrics not only to the women who wanted to be midwives, but also to surgeons.  From that time on, surgeons began to attend women in childbirth, something which had previously happened only rarely, and with unhappy results.”

The “Ponte de l’Anatomia,” or Bridge of the Anatomy, leads into Campo San Giacomo dell’Orio.
This building on the campo was once the celebrated school of anatomy, where medical students and midwives alike attended dissections and lectures.

And now a fragment of memory comes fluttering across my mind: Some years ago, I read in the paper that the parish priest of Pellestrina — or maybe it was San Pietro in Volta — anyway, a village down along the lagoon edge toward Chioggia — made a radical suggestion. He remarked that everybody was accustomed to a bell ringing to announce a death.  I’ve heard this bell too — it’s dark and lugubrious and yes, you can ask for whom it is tolling, because plenty of people always know.

But what this priest suggested was that they also ring the bells to announce a birth.  I think it was a brilliant idea, and certainly the bells would have been cheerier than the funeral tolling.  Louder, in any case.  At the least loud enough to drown out the sound of the newborn’s shrieking and wailing, possibly caused by the ringing of the bells.

On the morning of November 8, our local fishmonger opened with this fabulous fanfare of welcome to his new son, Matteo. The blue bows are the customary festive announcement for a boy (pink for girls), but this is the first time I’ve seen so many bows as well as photos of the baby.
“Welcome Matteo!”  Matteo has the typical stunned. groggy look of the just born, perhaps increased by the awareness that he’s drawn a dad who’s going to be doing things like this. Or maybe I’m just imagining that.
Speaking of boys, a friend of ours had her first baby on November 13, in Vienna. So we put the blue bow on her boat.
Bows or not, evidence of little people (not to be confused with The Little People) is everywhere. I have no idea what sodality was meeting here this afternoon.  Maybe it was the Pink Bicycle Marching and Chowder Society.
This family either has ten children, or one child who has to change clothes five times a day.

In any case, bring on the kids!

 

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Summer vacation starts — and ends — in the car

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As I’ve often remarked, one of the things I love about being here is the faithful return of certain events — moments — throughout the year.  Of course there are events everywhere upon which one may confidently depend — tax deadline day comes to mind — but I’m talking about here.

One occurrence which is so predictable that I don’t even have read the paper, much less even wake up, to recognize it is the double-edged event known as THE EXODUS.

Trieste is only 7 km/4 miles from the Croatian border. From then on, time and distance take on new meanings.

No, it has no Biblical overtones, unless one is thinking of the famous Plagues. In fact, now that I think about it, this could possibly be a worthy candidate to join the frogs and the flies that afflicted Pharaoh.  But since we’re living in a democracy, this little plague afflicts everybody going on vacation. And everybody goes in August.

So the first weekend of August inevitably sees an outbound migration  of massive proportions clogging the highways — The Exodus.  On the last weekend of August, there is the equally appalling Return Exodus.

This is what Croatia looks like from the Italian side of the border. You can be sitting and looking at this for quite a while. But of course, you're not seeing this, you're seeing what it represents: Fabulous beaches, great food, maybe even no people.

We could call it the Plague of Traffic.  Or, if you’re sitting on the highway in a monster backup, the Plague of Everybody Else on Earth.  And the only thing that changes from one year to the next is the length — from unbearable to inconceivable — of the backups at the Italian borders and Alpine tunnels.  Last Saturday the backup at the border dividing Slovenia from Croatia reached about 40 km/25 miles.  Ah yes, Croatia: Gorgeous! Near! Irresistible! Cheap! Also: Small! Mountainous! Not Many Roads!

This Exodus traffic is funny to people who aren’t there, like me, and to people who are funny wherever they are, like Lino Toffolo.

Lino Toffolo is an actor/standup comic  from Murano who writes a column every Sunday in the Gazzettino.  He’s usually right on top of the main subject of the day, which last Sunday was The Exodus.

Here is what he wrote (translated by me):

Instead of facing the usual five kilometers of tailback [in Italian, merely “tail”] to go to Jesolo, why don’t we go to Croatia or Dalmatia or along down there, where there are bound to be fewer people?

Perfect idea!  Let’s go!  40 kilometers of continuous tailback!  Basically, when the last person gets there he just turns around because his vacation is over.

Every year, right on schedule, other than the drama of the “checking the stomach on the beach I swear I’m never eating again” is the  one — unsolvable — of “where to go” and above all, “when to leave.”

The imagination is unchained!  At night, at dawn, at mealtimes like telephone calls [local people scribbling ads often say “call at mealtimes”].  Every so often somebody has the idea of the “intelligent departure,” which they reveal only to their friends who — as with all true secrets — they pass along to one friend at a time, even on Facebook.

The result: Everybody is stuck in the backup, everybody is complaining.

Grandpa Tony thinks that the laborers working on the highway are tourists who just got bored sitting still and figure this way they can at least be doing something…. Sometimes you can watch plants growing.  

“But — it is obligatory for us to do this?”  “No!  That’s exactly why we’re doing it!  If it were obligatory, we’d all stay home!”  

And the Croatians?  Where do they go?  Italy? Gorgeous!  Near! Irresistible! Expensive!

This is a glimpse of the Croatian coast. Worth the voyage, as the Michelin Guide might put it.

 

This is the Italian coast in Puglia.

 

Croatia.

 

Italy. The only difference I can see that might make it worthwhile to sit in a car for hours to get to one instead of the other would be that Croatia is currently a hot destination, while Puglia has always just been there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Nature

March blows into Venice

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We were all peacefully plodding along toward spring when March burst through the door. Did the famous month come in like a lion?  More like a pack of enraged jaguars.

On Monday night (February 28) the wind began to pick up.  A very special wind, the bora, blowing from the northeast with gusts up to 54 km/h (33 mph).

At Sant' Elena, looking toward the Lido.

This went on all day and night for the following two days — as I write, the wind is finally subsiding to a polite 20 km/h (12 mph).

The scirocco, the fetid breath of the southeast, can impel acqua alta, but if you stand sideways to the bora it will blow your brain out of your skull. Not that you’ll be needing your brain at that point, because the survival instinct will have taken over the controls.

We could hear the powerful roaring noise with the door and windows shut. Women didn’t hang out their laundry, which told me more than even the messages being tapped out on our window by the desperate Venetian blinds. Normally you’d like a real breeze because it gives you a boost in the drying-laundry department, but here your housewife would have risked either seeing her underwear being ripped out of the clothespins and soaring away toward Sardinia, or clinging to the clothesline while being rent to rags, like a flag in a hurricane.

For me, not seeing laundry is more ominous than the dog that didn’t  bark in the night.

The bora making its point along the Fondamente Nove.

But while all this is very exciting for Venice (well, for me, though it’s certainly not the first bora I’ve experienced), it set a record for Trieste, the city as famous for its wind as Venice is for its canals.  They haven’t had a zephyr like this since 1954.

The Triestines endured this bora with gusts up to 163 km/h (101 mph). This is a speed which isn’t even on the Beaufort scale, and creates more damage and danger than 76 acqua altas put together. Some people in Trieste were literally blown over, suffering serious head injuries.  The houses and trees went through something of the same thing.  It’s quite a place where the weather person can breathe a sigh when he tells the viewers that the wind is dropping and that now it’s only at 70 km/h (43 mph).

Here is a view of the bora in Trieste at 150 km/h.  This occurred in 2005, but it gives some idea of what 163 km/h might look like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itcaETv705Y&playnext=1&list=PL35DE065227480E8F

Interesting fact that sounds like folklore, except that I can confirm that it’s true: No matter how many days the bora may last, it always ends on an odd-numbered day. Like today. Strange, I know.

I stayed home and made my once-a-year batch of galani, to gorge on today (“Fat Thursday”).  They didn’t come out as well as they did last year, and I am convinced that I changed nothing.  Of course we’re eating them, but they fall short of sublime, which is disappointing.  If I’m going to eat slivers of fat and sugar, they ought to be at least irresistible.

The galani this year. Next year, even better.

Call me deranged, but I’m blaming the bora.  Cold high pressure from Russia meeting warm low pressure from the southwest right over our little hovel. I’m just glad that the roof tiles didn’t get blown away.  Though I suppose I could have glued some galani on in their place.

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