Boatloads of Venice

As entertaining as something like Carnevale may be for visitors, I think the life of a city is more truly found in the everyday rather than in spectacle. Indeed, Carnevale has become so completely divorced from the actual resident life of the city that Venice's non-resident mayor bumbled into a rare moment of lucidity when he recently suggested that the most popular spectacles of Carnevale--eg, the Flight of the Angel from the campanile of San Marco--be moved to sites on the mainland better able to host the huge crowds. For what at first sounds like just another one of his moronic (and usually self-interested) suggestions, turns out to aptly depict the degree to which Carnevale has become so largely an alien presence (some would say, alien nuisance) to resident life here that it might as well be held anywhere else. Any living cultural ties that bind it specifically to this city are gone (at least for most Venetians over the age of 8 or so.)

And yet, in spite of those ruling interests which seem only too happy to wipe out all of resident life in order to better host spectacle, daily life here subsists--and it still tends to involve boats. As in the image above of a boatload of books.

Or the one below: which shows how we moved our bed last year from our old apartment to our new one.

Alas, I've noticed none of the benefits from transporting our bed this way that I'd speculated about some years earlier: https://veneziablog.blogspot.it/2014/03/miles-to-go-before-i-sleep.html