Fearsome Sky Over the Grand Canal

Summer tempests sweep into the lagoon swiftly--and usually move on just as quickly. But if you find yourself in a small open boat on the lagoon in one, it's not very pleasant. Much nicer to watch the drama from someplace inside with a good view. (24 July 2017)

Ferry to Lido

14 July 2021

On Indefinite Hiatus: Something of an Explanation

13 October 2017

 

After regularly posting to this blog for 14 years, last April I found I no longer felt the urge to do so. Given the cruelty, criminality, and corruption of the American regime that had taken power in January, I found it both painful and pointless to back look over both a past and a place that I very much missed. I thought this feeling might pass. But as the cruelty, criminality, and corruption have only intensified since then, it has not.

Of course the Venice that now exists is no longer the Venice I lived in for nearly 11 years. When I visited in the summer of 2024--for the the first time since leaving in summer 2021--I was dismayed by its further degradation. Napoleon had famously threatened to be "an Attila to Venice" and wipe it out, but it has been Luigi Brugnaro, a predatory self-serving businessman from the mainland, who has carried that threat out. 

In sharp contrast to his long ago campaign promise to pursue policies designed to increase the city's resident population by 30,000, the city's population has continued to dwindle as he has gutted--or attempted to gut--vital services upon which residents depend. Last summer I found that more than a dozen people I knew, most of whom still worked in Venice itself, had moved to the mainland. People I'd never imagined would ever leave the city no longer saw the point in living in a place steadily being scoured of all local life and businesses. 

It seems, in fact, that Brugnaro's actual promise in that long-ago campaign was to reduce the city's resident population to 30,000. 

On that promise, he's made significant progress. He's now gotten it down to less than 48,000, and continues to be hard at work. 

Last summer the Rialto market was a ghost town, with just 3 or maybe 4 legitimate produce sellers--by which I mean, stalls that stock a wide range of fresh produce. The few other stalls that exist sell packaged soup mixes and little else. Like all the mask shops and other garbage businesses that now fill the city, it's hard for me to believe they function as anything other than money-laundering fronts, so meager is their inventory. 

Perhaps some day this sad state of affairs in Venice will make my documentation of the last years of local daily life in Venice of some interest. But at present what people seem to want see of Venice is the same old fantasy world of lonely streets and moody, romantic decay--or class-porn, envy-inducing accounts of luxury living. I'm happy to leave that to others. 

Meanwhile in America the seriousness of the authoritarian steps being taken cannot be overstated--even as the only people to whom Americans seem to listen is late-night talk-show host comedians. Public discourse is degraded and corrupted, devoid of critical thinking, which is of course exactly as the regime would like it to be: after all, the goal, in the words of one of its most successfully-self-promoting architects, is to "flood the zone with s--t."

In such a "flooded" country, in which every utterance and observable occurrence is dismissed as "fake", the only measure of meaning is is the brute power to impose one's agenda. The only "true" statement, the only fact, is whatever the dictator declares. Which of course, can be altered in the very next sentence--and still remain the only "truth." 

This is not new in this country. As Judith Butler discussed in her vitally-important (but little read) 2004 book, Precarious Life,  it was George W. Bush who first openly claimed the divine infallible right to obliterate the existence of any given individual he chose without troubling to present even a shred of evidence, much less go to trial. It sufficed for him to simply declare one an "enemy combatant" to disappear that person from the land of the living, to an unreachable realm in which neither national or international law held any sway. (The masked paramilitary force called ICE is now exercising a similarly unchecked power.)

America's current authoritarian has expanded this divine (or demoniacal) right--with the blessings of America's Supreme[ly corrupt Catholic kangaroo] Court--beyond all limitations. He declares a boatload of people drug smugglers ("narco-terrorists") and they are immediately murdered in violation of both international and American law. 

His administration has now intensified their practice of labeling American citizens "terrorists", and intensified their harassment of them. 

The administration has declared certain American cities "war zones" and "terrorist havens" and sent in the military and National Guard. If Americans had any memory of simply their own recent history--much less world history (which, of course, is too much to ask), they wouldn't have much trouble figuring out where this is heading.  

But of course they won't get much help in doing that from the US media, since 6 conglomerates have owned 90% of American media since 2011:

GE/Comcast (NBC, Universal), News Corp (Fox News, Wall Street Journal, New York Post), Disney (ABC, ESPN, Pixar), Viacom (MTV, BET, Paramount Pictures), Time Warner (CNN, HBO, Warner Bros.), and CBS (Showtime, NFL.com). Almost all of which have shown a remarkable willingness to succumb to the (often extortionate) demands of the current regime. 

In 1984, 50 independent media companies owned the majority of media interests within the United States.

I'd like to imagine any American who believes in the country's supposed commitment to a Free Press and the free market, would find this extremely troubling. 

In any case, this is why the blog is on an indefinite hiatus. 

A few months ago, a friend asked me if I had any recommendations about what to do in Venice that she could pass along to a friend of hers who was to visit it last July. Because the first thought that popped into my head was "Don't bother to go," I didn't say anything at all.

As for visiting America? Given the "detainment" (that is, jailing) of a number of visitors to America on the slightest pretexts, I'll leave the decision to you. 

The Conversation, Campo Santo Stefano

I've posted this image before, but I'm still trying to get its colors right (11 April 2018)

Calcio, Campo Santa Margherita: 8 April 2012

These kids are now adults--I wonder how many of them still live in Venice. And I wonder if kids today can still play like this in the campo, as a few years ago non-resident/Mr-conflict-of-interest Mayor Brugnaro began to crack down on play in the public spaces, since so much of the space had been given over to restaurants for seating. In other words, in order to allow tourists the "authentic experience" of dining in a Venetian campo, what little remained of spontaneous, authentic Venetian life had to be eradicated. This is the perverse and destructive logic of mass tourism. 

 

 

 

 

Entrance Stairs, Ca' Fornoni

31 March 2018

Ritratto di un Uomo Libero: Gigi Miracol

21 March 2014

Gigi Miracol, who, like Odysseus, might truly be called a "man of many ways" (in the ancient Greek sense of abilities/skills) and who was an important contributor to many of the events I covered in this blog--as in this winemaking video, for example, in which he provides the live accompaniment, and for the celebration of the spring equinox above--is now the eponymous subject of a documentary whose Italian title I've borrowed for this post itself (Portrait of a Free Man, in English). 

It's been recently screened in Venice and other places in Italy, and you can watch its trailer here. 

Life Amidst Death: Pruning Time on San Michele

Those many people who can only conceive of Venice as a symbol of death and decay have obviously never been behind the walls of the historic city, nor of those on the cemetery island of San Michele, where an old vineyard has been lovingly restored and is producing wine. You'll find a list of links to posts about such goings on and about the group responsible for them at the end of this post about the man who was the original driving force behind it: Flavio Franceshet. (6 March 2014)

 

 

 

 

Misty Morning, Grand Canal

30 January 2017

I haven't posted here for quite some, and have actually not been inclined to do so since the American election in early November. My disgust over its outcome was such that it took up much of my attention, and left little available to think about Venice and my life there. The past seemed irrelevant given the nightmarish present and the alacrity with which the American media bowed down to even the most fascistic impulses, statements, and acts of the incoming administration. (Of course, this is the obvious danger when 90% of America's media is owned by 6 corporate conglomerates. Freedom of the press quickly becomes a thing of the past, as do broader freedoms.) I also had two manuscripts I was in the process of revising. One of them, my second children's picture book, sold in December to a US publisher who hopes to bring it out in spring of 2026. The other, a novel for adults, I've just finished revising and given to my agent. 

In any case, I'm going to make an effort to return to combing through my much-too-large collection of un-posted and unedited images of Venice, in spite of the concerns that come with living in a country in the midst of becoming a mafia state, in which corruption and extortion and the threat (and use of) violence against the most vulnerable of the country's very own citizens are openly practiced and boasted about by those occupying the highest offices in the land. 

But that's enough about all that for now. The above is an image of what was my family's regular morning view for the last 5 years of our life in Venice. Do I miss it? Very very much.

Fascism Obliterated (and Reborn)

St. Mark's lion and his open book on one side of the flag pole base in Campo San Polo.

As America's Republican Party has now gone fully fascistic in his embrace of eugenics, scapegoating of ethnic minorities, threats of violence, promises of retribution and imprisonment of political opponents and all those it declares its enemies, censorship, and relentless dissemination of known lies (both big and small), it seemed like a good time to share something a friend of mine pointed to me out about the recessed blank circles you can find carved around Venice and always paired paired with a second circle of the same size with a relief of St Mark's symbol inside it. 

Sometimes, as in the example below, the surface within the circle will have been ground smooth. Other times the surface within the circle will be rough, showing clear evidence of something having been chipped off.

In either case, what was once carved into the stone, and what was subsequently obliterated, was the fascio (or bundle of rods) symbol of the Fascist Party, my friend told told me. As such these now-empty circles, along with the pietre d'inciampo or brass "stumbling stones" set into the pavement before the doors of those Jewish Venetians whom the Nazis deported and murdered, serve as reminders of one of the darkest periods of Venetian and European history. They are very easy to miss, but worth keeping an eye out for, as a reminder that Venice is not merely a theme park, or a touristic or aesthetic fantasy land. As a reminder, too, of the vigilance needed to forestall the recurrence of such criminal parties and the violence they inevitably commit against humanity. 

A vigilance, however, that seems to be largely lacking in both America and Italy these days, where both Trump's fascists and Meloni's neo-fascists threaten to reawaken the kind of horrors that World War II was supposedly fought to vanquish.

The other side of the flag pole base, in which the fascio (or bundle of rods) symbol of the Fascist Party has been obliterated (both images from 2 August 2024).

A Delicate Balance, or, Fall Equinox Celebration in Front of Church of San Giovanni in Bragora

21 September 2013

 

Towed Homeward Toward a New Life

Our friend's larger heavier sanpierota tows our new boat homeward yesterday evening, with our six-year-old son (barely visible behind the 9.9 hp engine) driving. (11 July 2014)

NOTE: I came upon the above image today and didn't remember if I'd ever posted it before. It turns out that I had, almost exactly a decade ago, and I re-post below the original text I put up with it back then.

Our neighbor, a native Venetian, saw me on the street last week and greeted me with a smile and a handshake and congratulations, saying "It will change your life." From his manner he could have been responding to the news that we were expecting a second child but, in fact, he'd heard that we'd agreed to buy a boat.

Jen and I had been thinking about it for at least two years, as I've written about here before, and almost exclusively in terms of what we'd been told was the most practical and inexpensive of boats to buy: a cofano. A cofano is usually about 5 meters long, usually made of fiberglass (which requires much less maintenance than wood), and there's no shortage of used ones around for sale at reasonable prices.

And yet after all those months of envisioning our practical fiberglass cofano, it is a wood sanpierota that we ended up buying yesterday and towing from a sailing club in Mestre, where its very kind owner had used it, to Venice proper. A sanpierota is also a traditional Venetian craft, but unlike the typical contemporary fiberglass cofano, it can be rowed or used with a sail--rather than just an outboard motor. Ours measures 5.8 meters in length, and is made of compensato marino (or plywood), which means it's very light. It came with a pair of forcole (oarlocks) and remi (oars), which we do know how to use, and a sail, which we do not (yet). A 6 horsepower engine will be arriving for it next week, which is plenty large for such a light boat.

Of course there is nothing very practical in general about living in Venice--not in the opinion of many visitors, at least a couple of whom have told me outright that it strikes them as simply the most impossible inconvenient place they've ever seen. Perhaps this was an argument in favor the more practical choice of a cofano, and yet it was the possibility of rowing and sailing the boat that made it impossible for Jen and I to resist, regardless of any other considerations. For the way we hope to use the boat, only a sanpierota would do.

But I'm afraid I don't even have the time to shape this post into any final form, there's still much to do with the boat--tonight--the details of which I'll spare you. Instead I'll close with something I jotted down in a notebook in April as I watched, as I like to do, boats returning from a day out on the lagoon, something I'm sure contributed largely to my sense that the sanpierota is what we wanted:

"... a group of no fewer than ten people, of all different ages, in a beautifully-painted (red and white) large old underpowered wooden sanpierota. Looks to be about a 6 horsepower engine on it, an ancient one that sounds like a mosquito, and the boat plows slowly, uncertainly among the waves--wavers its way through the waves, you might say, so unsteady and tentative and almost plaintive its lack of power renders it, as it leaves the calm of the Canale di San Pietro and turns into the deep busy waterway of vaporetti and car carriers and big ships leading toward Piazza San Marco.

A woman onboard looks a little sheepish at the quality of their progress and waves vaguely in my direction where I sit on the bench quayside watching, a gesture motivated it seems more by embarrassment than friendliness or recognition, as it's no one I know. As if the gesture will distract my attention from how the boat lopes and loops and sidles and almost waddles its way along. But she has nothing to be embarrassed about. I stare enviously at the beautiful boat, full of family and/or friends, with its four kids sprawled across its foredeck, blissfully at home in the late warm sun, the soft breeze, the amniotic movement."

The Less Serene Side of "La Serenissima"

Five years ago today the police and carabinieri were out in full force (and riot gear) to keep a huge protest against cruise ships in the Venetian lagoon from taking place in Piazza San Marco. At some point after this it would be declared that cruise ships would no longer pass through the basin of San Marco (right past the Doge's Palace and Piazza San Marco). But, of course, this had been declared years earlier, to international acclaim, and yet the cruise ships had continued on the same route. As of spring 2023, however, it seems the largest ships have been forbidden from making this passage--but not from entering the lagoon. The damage that massive ships cause to the lagoon, both in themselves and because of the deep water channels which have been (and will be) dredged to allow their passage, is well-documented. But a real and complete ban of them has consistently been resisted, and protests against them subjected to sometimes perilous degrees of intimidation (as when police boats and helicopters intentionally menaced protesters rowing small traditional flat-bottomed Venetian boats, threatening to overturn them). (photos: 8 June 2019)

 

 

Clam Diggers, North Lagoon

22 May 2016

Evening Giretto, Grand Canal

8 May 2020

Under The Bridge (Ponte della Libertà)

Though countless people travel over this bridge every day on wheels or rails, few of them suspect how many people travel beneath it in boats: among them, in this image, my son, piloting with an oar a racing row boat being towed back from a regatta on the north side of the city to its cantiere on Giudecca. (15 June 2019)

 

3 Scenes of A Short Sweet Life on the Grand Canal (Snow in Venice)

28 February 2018: These are shots of what I believe was the last snowfall we had in Venice until the time we left in August of 2021. When we first moved to the city in 2010 we tended to get one snowfall with some accumulation each winter, but I think we had none for the last 3 years after this day pictured--and you can see the accumulation was minimal at that. (Gee, if only there were some hypothesis about why temperatures have risen and extreme weather events are becoming ever more common, then humankind would certainly do something about it.) In any case, the small snow man above perished not from warming temperatures but from a fall into the Grand Canal from his perch when the wind came up: ashes to ashes, dust to dust, water to water, in this case. But he seemed to enjoy the view for as long as he had it.

 

Through A (Plexi)Glass, Darkly

12 February 2014

I'd forgotten entirely about the above image, taken from the twin pontile of the one you see in the right corner of the image, while I waited for the #1 line vaporetto to take me in the direction of the Lido. (You can see a bit of a reflection from the glass through which I took it on the center of the bridge and other places.)

I never seem to have the time to describe the sense of, for lack of a better word, domesticity, that one eventually comes to feel after living in Venice for a long time. Constructed as it has been over many centuries, with not an inch that was not formed by human hands, everywhere one goes in the city eventually begins to feel lived-in, like a home. But a home with an infinite number of details to discover, tones and traces of innumerable lives not one's own, and nothing like one's own, as well as those still managing somehow to make their lives there, in spite of a mayor and a broader social and economic context that can see Venice and its lagoon only in terms of quick profits and resources to be exploited unto literal collapse.

But this image brings that all back to me, and some time in the future I might get around to writing more about that, and how it extends even out into the lagoon, if one has one's own boat. 

Contrary to the age-old banalities spewed by foreign visitors about Venice being a city of melancholy and death, to live in Venice, and to raise a child there, is to be struck by the unique kind of life possible in the city and the lagoon--life like no place else on earth. I wish more people, and more children, could experience it, before it is obliterated. Only if more people were actually resident there might it stand a chance to avoid obliteration.

Festa della Madona della Salute, 21 November 2014

For more on this important Venetian feast day please see:

https://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2013/11/festa-della-madonna-della-salute-and.html

 https://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-ritual-dish-for-la-festa-della.html

Header, Murano

I don't even know how one would reach the above field on foot: it's on the northern edge of Murano, and a small canal passes by it just before it leads one out into the wide lagoon. I only ever saw the field from our boat, and only if I was standing on its prow while my son (7 years old when this pic was taken) drove. I seem to recall that this was how this image (which I'd forgotten all about until coming upon it today) was captured, with my son at the tiller and me standing on the prow--though, given the tricks of memory, it might also be possible that I clambered ashore for a few minutes to take it). (29 November 2015)