Venice, the City of Love (Lost?)

According to a survey by Teletext Holidays, "Venice is one of the worst cities in the world for romantic bust-ups"! (from The Press Association: Holiday bust-up hotspots revealed)

Can the Venetian Carnival Become Any More Irrelevant for Venetians?

I've dissed Carnival before... and Venetians hate it. (Oh, and while we're at it, they despise masks too, and most of the ones you'll ever see were made in China, so there.)

And just in case you needed any proof that Carnival is completely irrelevant to the 60,000 or so Venetians (whose average age is somewhere in the 50s... Not a joke, a fact!)



Usually, a small fake dove (as you can see on the embedded video, when it works) flies down on cables from Saint Mark's belltower and release confetti from its insides to inaugurate the start of Carnivale. This year, it was apparently instead the rap star Coolio! (You can even see the picture at Venice Daily Photo.)

I'm (nearly) speechless!! And I don't even want to know how he released the confetti. Nothing against him personally, but it's not like all the resident octogenarian little old Venetian ladies I know are huge fans of hip hop!

Ladies and gentlemen, the Venice Carnival is now officially a sham...

VIDEO: Thousands of balls released on Rome's Spanish Steps

Longtime readers of MMC will remember that I'm completely enamored of the Sony Bravia commercial in which a quarter of a million super bouncy balls were released on the steep streets of San Francisco.

First, there was the beautiful original... (which you can't even fully appreciate unless it's in ultra high resolution!)

(How'd they do it? You can see here!)

Then there was the great British Tango fruit juice parody...


Now it's been done on Rome's famous Spanish Steps (strangely, as what is apparently an incredibly abstruse political demonstration to protest the ongoing appalling garbage crisis in Naples)

(via Decio: Il Blog)

My comment (#27) about this prank should be appearing any minute here on Boing Boing.

'Bout Time!

Venice to put speed cameras in canals - Telegraph

Hopefully, they'll have better luck with enforcement than the Italian automobile traffic cameras do!

UPDATED: The Cute Little Self-Interested Pets of Neatorama

I've just really discovered Neatorama (which somehow had never really managed to hold my attention before...)

There, they have an ongoing theme about the adorable self-interestedness of pets, both cats and dogs. Indeed, this may be why I'm now so taken with them, since this past year we acquired our own self-interested cat (pictured at left). Very sweet, excellent-dispositioned, but we foster no illusions: she loves us because we know how to open the pantry.

About once a day (after breakfast even!) she goes on a long meowing jag... at which point, I ask her, "What's wrong, Isabella? What are you trying to tell me?? Did Timmy fall down the well?!" (I don't think she appreciates the sarcasm.)

But Neatorama knows what I'm talking about! Firstly, in "The Lassie Experiment: Will Fido save you in an emergency or just let you die," even Lassie's legendary reputation of poor, unfortunate (or is that just plain klutzy?) Timmy's well-saving is called to task!

"'Timmy fell down a well' is perhaps the most quoted line from the Lassie TV show. So much so that Jon Provost the actor who played Timmy titled his autobiography Timmy’s in the Well. However, although Timmy endured many calamities during the show - including falling into a lake, getting caught in quicksand, and being struck by a hit-and-run driver - he never once fell down a well."

Such disillusionment! But what if he had?? According to Neatorama's "Go Fetch Paw!"

Surely, that's unfair, you may say! What about those valiant beasts who are frequently recognized for having saved their masters' lives, like Winnie the Cat?

"A 14-year-old domestic shorthair named Winnie [pictured at right] saved the Keesling family of New Castle, Ind., in March from carbon monoxide poisoning by jumping on a bed and meowing wildly as poisonous carbon monoxide fumes filled the family’s home from a faulty gasoline-powered water pump in the basement. Winnie woke up Cathy Keesling by nuzzling her ear and caterwauling."

God forbid this should ever happen in my household, but if so, a CO-leak might just be completely coincidental, as this fantastically funny Neatorama animation so accurately demonstrates...

Then again, maybe the wonderful, all-wise and all-knowing Nicole Hollander (who, if you don't already know, is the world's singlemost knowledgeable expert on cats, along with pretty much everything else!) has it so right here and here... that the curse of these poor, misunderstood felines is to have their heroic and altruistic actions constantly horribly misinterpreted by us humans of little faith!

Either way, I'm sure our cat will take pretty good care of us... (at least until she learns how to open that pantry!)

UPDATED: "Venice kisses in New Year Eve"

Ah, Venice! Sounds lovely... Certainly better than catching a flying prosecco bottle to the head, which is what you normally risk on New Year's Eve in Saint Mark's Square!!

"TENS of thousands of people took part in a giant New Year's kiss in front of Saint Mark's Basilica in the romantic Italian city of Venice.Under a sky lit with fireworks some 60,000 people kissed in the 'Love 2008' event, organiser Marco Balich said.The city staged the event so people 'begin the New Year with a gesture of love, peace, brotherhood, and passion', it said on its website."

(Article from Agence France-Presse, via news.com.au)

UPDATE (1/5/08):

Apparently, I wasn't far off with the prosecco bottle quip! Here's a great comment on this post that I thought I'd go ahead and cut and paste into the original...

Miss Expatria said, "I love your blog! I read Cat Bauer's myspace blog as well - she lives in Venice - and she wrote a really interesting take on what happened AFTER the kissing stopped."

Wow, what a story! I'm sorry that Cat had to face all that, but frankly it's why I stopped going to New Year's Eve in Piazza San Marco years ago... It's too damn dangerous! Please don't get me wrong... as Cat suggests, Venice is a notoriously safe and mild (almost to the point of being dull!) city 98% of the time. This however changes with the addition of vast quantities of alcohol...

Now, Venetians themselves are famous throughout Italy for their habitual drinking. Typically, any "Foster Brooks" style character on Italian television often has a nice, strong Venetian accent. But Venetians still do not approve of boisterous hooligan-type drunkards or dangerous behavior... They just start early in the morning with a caffe' corretto (espresso with a shot of grappa!), may nurse a slow buzz all day with a periodic spritz, and then down a bottle of wine with dinner (which is supposed to be okay healthwise, as long as it's not the cheap stuff!)

Which reminds me of an anecdote... According to the Xenophobe's Guide to Venetians (from the great Xenophobe Guides series), a Venetian water-bus captain once had his annual checkup in which the doctor asked how much wine he drank a day. The captain replied [in Venetian dialect], "'Na roba normal... un litro, un litro e mezo ma solo queo bon" (that is, "Oh, just what's normal... a liter or a liter and a half, but only the good stuff!")

Anyway, FYI... One only tends to encounter out-of-control, completely blotto drunkards in Venice on just three occasions:

1. Any random night in Campo Santa Margherita (which has become the local partying mecca for students who want to tie one on...)
2. Carnivale
3. New Year's Eve

It doesn't mean however that these occasions should be entirely avoided necessarily... It can be worth seeing once, if just for the people watching. You might consider bringing a hardhat with you, though!

P.S. Before anybody worries about the safety of Venetian transportation, fear not! I know from my Venetian friends that public transport drivers are not allowed to work if they test positive for alcohol in random testing, so accidents are no more frequent on public transport than they are in the U.S.

Venice is Numero Uno! (Or is that #101??)

Venice is not an easy city to live in. But the tremendous cultural offerings and great food (which you'd be hard-pressed to find in another city of just circa 60,000 people!) make Venice number 1 for me! And apparently I'm not alone... From VeniceWord's "Buongiorno Venezia" newsletter:

"The economic daily Il Sole-24 Ore presented the usual yearly results about the quality of the life in the Italian provinces. The results for Venice are in ups and downs. Generally speaking, in comparison with 2005, the city moves up the table by sixteen places and now is forty. More particularly, Venice occup[ies] the first place for its cultural offer and exhibitions as well as the food-and-wine connoisseurship. It is located in the middle for business, health services, quality of transports and standard of living. Unfortunately, it brings up the rear as regards the public order and, above all, the cost of houses: Venice is next to last (place 101 out of 103 provinces in all)."

Wickles in Maine!!

I don't get too much occasion to food-blog when I'm not in Italy, but I just can't resist broadcasting the wonderful news! Wickles, made in Alabama and called by my folks "the world's best pickles," are being sold in Hannaford's supermarkets right here in Maine, the land of the "wicked good"!!

As their website attests,

Using a secret 70-year old family recipe differentiates Wickles products from all others... Wickles (short for "Wickedly delicious pickles!") are a unique blend of dill, garlic, and sweetness with just enough spice to keep you reaching for more.

And it's true! Southern, sweet and spicy... What more could you ask for?!

In Search of Islamic Venice...

"INSPIRED BY THE Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition 'Venice and the Islamic World, 828-179'” (see July 2007 Washington Report, p. 43), this reporter recently traveled to the canal-laden city to seek out the art, in situ, which was influenced by the Islamic world..." (more at Travel Tips: In Search of Islamic Venice)

My "Footnote to History" on MetaFilter

Poor "Michelle's Mental Clutter"! It has been a bit neglected recently... not because I have no more mental clutter, but instead cuz I've got more places I'm spreading it all around!

These days, most of my history posts are going directly up on my Facebook page (in the vain hope that my students might actually read some of them that way!) Anything super-major important I go ahead and post first on Metafilter, which is a community weblog that ranks around 50 in the world's top-read blogs (whereas my blog, ahem, is not quite that well-read!)

That just leaves my more idiosyncratic musings for MMC, usually involving strange news about Venice and Italy that filter through to me while I'm stateside... And that's why my previous blogstorm has slowed down to a trickle!

Still, I'm not ready to join the multitudes of ex-bloggers... It's just a question of there being a place for everything and everything in its place, even if it is ultimately just mental clutter!!

So, today I'm sharing here the link for my most recent post on MeFi about original historical documents available for free through "Footnote"... Footnote to History on MetaFilter. Enjoy!!

The truth behind the Heineken Jammin' Festival?

Remember the disaster at the Venetian "Heineken Jammin Festival" this past summer that I posted about earlier? Well, according to "Buongiorno Venezia"...

The first analyses to assign responsibility for the collapse of the stage during the Heineken Jammin' Festival in S. Giuliano Park this past 16 June have been released. Wind tunnel tests that simulated the atmospheric conditions of that day revealed that there wasn't any unusual atmospheric event that contributed to the collapse of the stage's towers (confirmed by meteorological readings taken that day at nearby Marco Polo Airport). Besides, some parts of the structure, which were higher than those that collapsed, remained intact, thus contributing to the hypothesis that the whole structure was improperly constructed.

UPDATED: The High Cost of Pigeons!

Okay, it's been a while... but you can always count on Venetian pigeons to raise their ugly, vermin-ridden little heads sooner or later for a good blog post! :-)

NEWS. Last week in Ravenna, there was a conference about a common subject in Venice -- the overpopulation of pigeons. The findings of the congress contradicted what the municipality of Venice concluded a month ago that the solution to the problem was to abolish the sale of grain in St. Mark's Square. The only substantial remedy, in the opinion of the experts, is the distribution of grain containing sterilising drugs. During the same conference, it was announced that research conducted in eight Italian towns calculated that, just for cleaning and repairs, each pigeon costs the town about thirty euros a year, not including health-related expenses. Venice, currently, has more than 70,000 pigeons.

(from Buongiorno Venezia)

For those who are counting, that's more pigeons residents than Venetian human residents left in the city...

(Coincidence???)

UPDATED: This just in...

A centuries-old tradition - throwing rice at the bride and groom as they emerge from the church ceremonies to ensure the newlyweds' fertility and happiness - is to be made illegal in Venice, the romantic Italian city of gondolas and canals...

The mayor of the historic city has taken this step because, whatever it may be doing in terms of ensuring the fertility of the bride and groom, the rice is causing an explosion in the local pigeon population. The 120,000 feathered creatures now outnumber the local human population by two to one - and their droppings and messy nesting habits are destroying the historic Baroque and Renaissance architecture which - along with the canals and colourful gondoliers - are the city's major tourist attractions. Feeding the pigeons in St Mark's Square, another popular tourist occupation regarded as a ‘must' photo opportunity by many visitors will also become illegal.

"Throwing rice at the bride and groom brings hordes of pigeons who then wait around until the next ceremony. The situation has become unbearable," says Marco Agostini, the city's police chief.

And it is not only the corrosive droppings that are damaging the city's buildings, according to the city's Superintendent of Architectural and Cultural Heritage. "The birds attack the marble and stucco facades of many of the buildings to get at scraps of food and birdseed blown onto and into the buildings," says Renata Codello. "Enough is enough. The studies we have commissioned show that the pigeons are causing incalculable damage to our artistic and architectural heritage," she said. Attempts to lace birdseed with contraceptive chemicals had no affect, she added. he
pigeons were carrying out attacks "like kamikaze pilots, or something out of the Hitchcock horror film ‘The Birds'," said a recent city council report.

Residents were banned from leaving grain or bread for the pigeons ten years ago; however, as part of the city's tourist package, 18 vendors were licensed to sell birdseed in St Mark's Square. Those licensees have been revoked, though the authorities have promised to find alternative employment for the 18 who will lose their present livelihoods.

(via VOX)

Well, lemme tell you... lots of little old ladies still feed those pigeons their day-old bread, and I'm not so sure that those feed vendors are going to go quietly. (They never have before!!)

Yikes... The Birds!

"Recently, following a research report from the veterinary sector of USL, the local health authority, the most pressing problem in Venice has become the pigeons. Eight birds out of ten are carriers of toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that can occasionally be fatal, while others transmit salmonella, fungal diseases, or ticks. According to the monthly tests, their health is getting worse. The primary reason is related to their excessive number -- more than 70,000 -- which is greater than the human population of Venice. In the opinion of experts, the maximum should be less than 30,000 but, to obtain this result, as has been said many times before, it would be necessary to eliminate the St. Mark's street vendors who sell grain to tourists who, in turn, feed it to the birds."

(from Buongiorno Venezia - The News from Venice)

On a side note, strangely, I seem to post my rare news items on Venice's notorious pigeons on the same day each year...

The Prize Inside

The Prize Inside: Lovely prose on food, family, traditions and origins from this month's Utne Reader. Enjoy!

Garibaldi held hostage by turtles!

CURIO. At the entrance to the Public Gardens in the Castello district, there is a bronze monument to Giuseppe Garibaldi. The monument, created more than 120 years ago, and the fountain that surrounds it are in very poor condition and the municipality has decided to start restoration work in the next few days. Such activity is normal in an old town like Venice, but it is not without problems. Over the years, the fountain has been populated with turtles -- more than two hundred-- that Venetians brought there and abandoned. The firm in charge of the restoration, however, hasn't been able to find anyone who wants to care for the wayward amphibians and, without a home to go to for the duration of the project, the municipality won't authorise it to begin.

(from Buongiorno Venezia)

[where: Via Garibaldi, Venice Italy 30122]