La Donna Partigiana Memorial Gets Scrubbed Up

They've been cleaning the memorial to the women partisans of Venice located off the Viale dei Giardini Pubblici the last couple of afternoons. Sculpted by Augusto Murer in 1961 and set upon what was intended by its designer Carlo Scarpa to be a floating base beside a grouping of istrian stone viewing platforms fixed at varying heights, the joint venture has never quite worked, nor been seen, as intended. Or at least not for very long, as corrosion caused by the lagoon's salt water essentially sunk the floating base and the city council opted to make it as stationary as the istrian cubes alongside it rather than sink funds into repairing and maintaining the base in lagoon-worthy ship-shape. The council also decided, probably wisely, that allowing tourists to clamber upon the istrian stone cubes-- many of them slippery with algae--along the edge of the lagoon presented the prospect of unending lawsuits, in addition to whatever views Scarpa may have envisioned. To this day visitors are kept at a good distance from the work by barriers and warnings.

Not having seen anyone clean the work before, I asked the project supervisor how often they did this: "Ogni anno?" I ventured.

The smile he responded with conveyed both a certain embarrassment and a certain fatalism; he leaned toward me a bit, confidentially, tilting one hand back and forth in a gesture of very loose (and futile) estimate, and said, "Eh, no, due--o tre..."

Or maybe even longer, I understood.

"There's no money," he said simply in Italian. "We use only water in the pressure sprayer," he added, "no chemicals, nothing else, but..." He trailed off into a tilt of the head with which most discussions of the way public funds are managed in Venice conclude: a slight disgusted nod toward how things stand--or lie--and the suspicion that those responsible for running the city aren't exactly partial to its actual residents, nor their monuments.  

And you think you've had some rough pedicures!

The Sunset Season Begins (4 Views, 2 Evenings)

In what seemed to be a pretty transparent ploy to delay his bedtime, Sandro suggested after dinner tonight that we go outside to see the sunset. I wasn't sure that I should give in too easily, as I wouldn't want to stifle his creativity when it comes to delaying bedtime and the old sunset strategy seemed a bit too easy; I was sure he could come up with something better. But he seemed like perhaps he really was interested in seeing the sunset, so downstairs we went and had taken just a couple of steps out the door of our apartment building when the portion of sky we could see--just a bit of it, not the sunset itself--was so impressive that we decided we'd better run, so as not to miss any of it. 

One of the curses of the digital age is the ease with which images can now be absurdly over-processed, whether done in camera--with the ever-dangerous "Vivid" setting that many cameras offer--or with editing software. I assure you, Dear Reader, that the above image has no such heavy-handed processing, no "Vivid" setting was used, no ready-made image filter called something like "Orange Crush" was applied. The sky was something very much like that--as a likeness is all we can truly ever get through any means of reproduction. Only better. And it reminded me tonight of something I'll pass along to you (though many of you probably not have forgotten it, as I did): that the best season for sunsets in Venice has now begun.

Yes, the days are growing rapidly shorter, but the consolation here throughout the winter months is that even the most meager and reduced of them can go out, against all expectations, symphonically. With a full range of color and drama that would bring smiles--if not (new) noses to replace those hacked off by vandals--to the busts of Verdi and Wagner overlooking the lagoon not far from where the above picture was taken.

ADDITION to original post:

The sunset of the next evening, that is, last night (19 September), offered its own more tempered drama and beauty. I attach 3 images below as further evidence that the season really is underway.

 

Sustainability Fair on Zattere This Weekend

Attendees of the 2nd annual Fiera per la Decrescita talk on the Zattere, with Palladio's church of Redentore in background

The full name of the open air fair taking place this weekend on the Zattere in the sestiere of Dorsoduro is Il Fiera per la Decrescita e la Città Sostenibile, or what might be translated as the Degrowth and Sustainable City Fair. Degrowth of course is an odd-sounding word in English, and flies in the face of that most cherished of terms in contemporary Capitalism, growth, which the corporate world and the puppet governments they own pursue with all the blindly fanatical self-interest of cancer cells. Indeed, as far as I know cancer cells are the only entities in nature in which infinite uninterrupted growth serves as a guiding principle.

In any case, this weekend's fair on the Zattere is committed to alternative visions of economic and social life based on something other than the fantasy of ever-increasing production and consumption. There are workshops for adults and for children, meetings and talks, live performances, and booths selling food and goods produced in a manner consistent with the fair's ideals.

At the very least, if you happen to be the neighborhood I suggest picking up a package of the pasta di semola di grano duro biologica--a high-protein pasta made from organic durum wheat--that is native to the Puglia region. I used it last night to make Pasta alla Norma and it was delicious.

A full schedule of this weekend's events in Venice, as well as next weekend's fair in Mestre, may be found below (for some reason, the earlier-scheduled Venice fair appears on the 2nd page of the pdf):

http://www.altrofuturo.net/Portals/0/Documents/Comunicati/pieghevole%20Altro%20Futuro%202013.pdf

Some of the fair's many tents lined up along the Fondamenta delle Zattere yesterday evening

A discussion in the tent of the Venetian community garden group Spiazzi Verdi (http://spiazziverdi.blogspot.it/)

A discussion takes place in the left half of the Libreria Marco Polo tent, independent publishers' books are for sale at right (http://www.libreriamarcopolo.com/)

Fair-goers look over various products made from organic almonds

2 Views of Early Evening Light, and Life, on Via Garibaldi

Castaway Style on the Beach at Lido, or DIY Capanne

A hint of Robinson Crusoe, and perhaps Lina Wertmuller's Swept Away, on Lido

The summer season on Lido officially ended yesterday: le capanne, which people had rented from the end of May, had to be cleaned out and their keys returned. There were, however, still plenty of people on the beach late this afternoon when I visited and, well south of Hotel Excelsior where the jetties begin, a fair number of capanne, too--though of the DIY kind.

These appear regularly every June, made by many anonymous hands of driftwood and vegetation that grows along i murazzi (or sea walls) and other found objects, and occupied by whomever claims them first on any given summer day. I asked (in Italian) an older man I encountered if there was any particular name for these huts.

No, no, he replied in Italian, those structures are not native to Venice--as if I thought there might be a particular Venetian term for them. I actually would have settled for an Italian one, but he said there was none that he knew of. Then he emphasized again that they had nothing to do with Venetian tradition: they didn't originate from the huts of fishermen or anything like that.

"The kids make them each summer," he told me.

"Have they made them for a long time?" I asked.

He shrugged, then reminded me that the jetties themselves had not been there for all that long: only 20 or 30 years. And even the particular sea wall we stood beside had only gone up in the 1960s or '70s.

He thought that there were more huts built in recent years (I saw at least a dozen today, though got nowhere close to most of them because they were occupied and I didn't want to be the kind of guy who lurks around sunbathers with a camera). Then he added that if I wanted to see some really well-constructed ones I should visit Malamoco.

Having grown up in California where huts of this sort wouldn't be allowed to stand for more than a day on one of that state's beaches, much less the entire summer--and well aware of all the regulations on ordinary construction in Venice--I struggled to figure out how to ask in Italian if there were authorities of any sort that objected to these temporary structures. Is there anyone who tears them down at the end of the season? I asked. The police, for example?

No, he said with a slight smile, the sea and winter weather usually take care of that.   

A reservation for the above capanna is perhaps optimistically written on the long plank at the right foreground of the photo: "Capanna prenotata x merc 11 Sett dalle 11 a 21:30 (grigliata)"

This young couple were kind enough to let me photograph the small hut they occupied at the end of a jetty, but not so kind as to vacate it for a couple of minutes while I did so

In addition to sea air and a great view of the Adriatic, this capanna also includes a swing

The plastic ties that bind

How Do I Look? On Via Garibaldi This Evening

I usually think of the street stalls around town as being oriented toward tourists, but this evening I was reminded by the scene above that this is not always the case; at least not on Via Garibaldi.

The woman above is trying on a dress from the stall over her own clothing. In an inversion of the Greek myth of poor Paris who was burdened with the sole responsibility of judging whom among three goddesses was the most beautiful, our protagonist in this scene has the benefit of three judges. Which doesn't mean it won't also lead to conflict--but probably not on the scale of the Trojan War (I hope).

Don't Look Now...

Three visitors to the British Pavilion at the ongoing Venice Biennale ponder the program notes to the artist Jeremy Deller's work--one of which appears ready to catch them all unawares

...but starting tomorrow--jet-lag, internet connection, and other things willing--this Venezia Blog will return to something like its usual frequency of posts. After nearly four weeks of traveling, I'm finally back in Venice.