Venice-Art-Tours Blog

Today is the day the Lord has made...

And it's not even Sunday... at 9:30 this morning my world famous novelist wife and I walked to nearby Campo S. Margherita to our usual outdoor cafe. We refer to the proprietor there as "the little man", a nickname we assigned him eight years ago based on his stature and rather sad demeanor (he is a moper, and only says Buon Giorno when we say it first). But we go there many mornings because he is at the far end of the campo where it is quieter and he doesn't attract any young, loud, smoking students, just old farts like us. But we think we have won him over. Also, he makes fresh every morning a delicious apple-ish-buttery pastry called sfoglia (flaky pastry).

Anyway, this morning was spectacularly beautiful, warm with a slight cooling breeze, solid blue sky with no hint of a cloud, old ladies buying their fish and vegetables, a few students drifting buy and a handfull of tourists gawking at one of the three fish stands in the square. It was a beautiful Venice day making up for all the annoyances I have written about in past blogs. For instance, the transportation strike this morning from 9AM to 12:30 PM, stopping all land buses, water buses, and trains.

Sick Bed?...There is a brand new hospital for Venice, situated in Zelarino, a few kms from Venice proper. It is meant to replace or off-load the old hospital in Mestre. It is a modern affair with a huge glass wall (see photo), slanting at about 30°to allow light to stream in. The area behind the glass contains the open corridors, fly-overs and the main waiting areas. It opened for business last week and, surprise, surprise, it gets very hot inside, in fact, oven hot. It seems the builders did not use special glass (as was specified in the design) to filter and reflect the sun's rays...they used vetro normale, ordinary glass and, thereby, created a furnace. Yesterday, as an emergency measure, they took the large canvas opening day sign reading "Il Nuovo Ospedale di Mestre" and repositioned it atop the glass to block part of the sun.

Finally, it seems some of the windows at the top can be opened and they were opened for hot air to escape. But a defect in the windows metal framing structure (it transpires) allowed the wind to cause the metalwork to vibrate so violently and loudly that people below thought an earthquate was occurring and they fled in panic.

   

Christos Vaskrase in Cambridge...

We were gone for 8 days to Cambridge for our Pascha week:  8 days of matins, vespers, liturgies, vigils, confessions, incense, singing, fasting, and related activities relating to Christ's Resurrection. We go every year, exchanging our place here in Venice for a house in Cambridge.                         Picture above of St Ephraim's 2007 Pascha

And every year is different. People have gone, but also new faces are everywhere. However, the joy of Pascha never changes. This year we were astounded at the number of Russians and Romanians at the services, especially at the Midnight Pascha Vigil. The Parish of St Epraim the Syrian uses the chapel at Westcott House which is a post-grad training school for Anglican clergy. The chapel there serves as our church on Sundays but at other days reverts to the needs of the Anglican students. It has pews which could accommodate a maximum of 50 people. For Pascha week, we remove the pews to create standing room. On Pascha evening attendence was approximately 250 people. Lights are all extinguished except for one candle for those reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Shoulder to shoulder: Russians, English, Romanians, Greeks, Serbs, all holding unlit candles as prayers and texts are read adumbrating the Resurrection. Readings are in many languages: English, Russian, Greek, Romanian, German, French, and there is a great sense of anticipation as midnight approaches. Just before midnight, the priest, deacon, readers, servers all shed their dark vestments while on the altar and vest themselves in bright Resurrection colours of gold and silver. At midnight, Father Raphael emerges with a lit candle from which all our candles are lit and he proclaims loudly, "Christ has Risen! Christos Vaskrase! Christos Anesti!" and we shout in reply "Indeed He has Risen! Vaistinou Vaskrase! Alithos Anesti!" and the choir sings in three languages the Easter troparion, "Christ has Risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs He has given life!"  Thick incense fills the air. We then all process around the grounds of Westcott House with our lighted candles, singing the troparion over and over, no doubt waking the Anglican soon-to-be-clerics. The service continues inside, now all brightly lit. Fr Raph then reads the Paschal Sermon of St. John Chrysostom:

If any man be devout and loveth God,
Let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast!
If any man be a wise servant,
Let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord.

If any have laboured long in fasting,
Let him how receive his recompense.
If any have wrought from the first hour,
Let him today receive his just reward.
If any have come at the third hour,
Let him with thankfulness keep the feast.
If any have arrived at the sixth hour,
Let him have no misgivings;
Because he shall in nowise be deprived therefore.
If any have delayed until the ninth hour,
Let him draw near, fearing nothing.
And if any have tarried even until the eleventh hour,
Let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness.

For the Lord, who is jealous of his honour,
Will accept the last even as the first.
He giveth rest unto him who cometh at the eleventh hour,
Even as unto him who hath wrought from the first hour.
And He showeth mercy upon the last,
And careth for the first;
And to the one He giveth,
And upon the other He bestoweth gifts.
And He both accepteth the deeds,
And welcometh the intention,
And honoureth the acts and praises the offering.

Wherefore, enter ye all into the joy of your Lord;
Receive your reward,
Both the first, and likewise the second.
You rich and poor together, hold high festival!
You sober and you heedless, honour the day!
Rejoice today, both you who have fasted
And you who have disregarded the fast.
The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously.
The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.
Enjoy ye all the feast of faith:
Receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness.

Let no one bewail his poverty,
For the universal Kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one weep for his iniquities,
For pardon has shown forth from the grave.
Let no one fear death,
For the Saviour's death has set us free.
He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it.

By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive.
He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh.
And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry:
Hell, said he, was embittered
When it encountered Thee in the lower regions.

It was embittered, for it was abolished.
It was embittered, for it was mocked.
It was embittered, for it was slain.
It was embittered, for it was overthrown.
It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains.
It took a body, and met God face to face.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and thou art overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.
For Christ, being risen from the dead,
Is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be glory and dominion
Unto ages of ages.

Then the Divine Liturgy is celebrated, punctuated by cries of "Christos Vaskrase! Vaistinou Vaskrase!"

By 3:30 AM we make it home, tired but happy, throats hoarse from crying "Indeed He is Risen!"

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Back to earth---I report on some more excesses of government regulation that we ran into in England's green and getting to be unpleasant land. There was the family who over-filled their rubbish wheelie-bin by 4 inches and who received a £40 fine for doing so. Then there was the Co-Op supermarket supervisor who was forced to resign (after 23 yrs on the job). Seems a customer tried to purchase 4 bunches of flowers, of which one was 2 days out of it's sell-by date. The check-out clerk asked the supervisor if it was okay to sell the out of date bunch. The supervisor's sin was to remove the bar code from the offending bunch and to give the flowers, gratis, to the customer, saying they were going to be tossed anyway. Oh-oh. Don't do that in England...the flowers were ... out - of - date, dammit. She was fired.  Let's all join in.... Land of Hope and Glo-ry! Mo-ther of the Free!...

Savonarola in Venice...

There is no historical evidence that Fr. Girolamo Savonarola (21 September 1452 to 23 May 1498) ever came to Venice. This past week I re-decorated my office and some of the clutter had to go and among it was my statue (almost life-size) of the Dominican priest which I constructed about a year ago. Savonarola is one of my heroes. I felt that outside our building, in Campo S. Pantalon, would be a suitable site to re-erect Fr. Giralamo. So at 6:35 yesterday morning, the deed was accomplished. I placed him atop a Venetian waste bin (see the photos). It was my gift to the city. When the streetsweepers (spazzini) arrived at 7AM, they were quite amazed and had a confab to discuss what to do. What they did was to (unceremoniously) remove him from his pedestal (boo!) and leave him to await the garbage boat.

Savonarola was the spiritual and political leader of Florence after Lorrenzo Medici died (1494). He is famous for his writings, his sermons (which Michaelangelo consumed while he was working on the Sistine Chapel) and his colossal dispute with the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI. Savonarola was pious, charismatic, a great orator, and a leader. Some would say he is infamous for his bonfires of the vanities upon which he invited citizens of Florence to toss their "obscene" artwork and books during the Carnival period. It is greatly unfair, however, to call him a "book-burner" as Florentines voluntarily surrendered their obscenities to the fire. There were only two bonfires, one each in 1497 and 1498. To hear people talk you would think there was a bonfire every night and that Savonarola's minions invaded houses looking for copies of Peyton Place.

In The Burning of the Vanities, historian Desmond Seward sums up Savonarola's life:

"If short lived, his achievements were extraordinary. Realising the Church was heading for disaster and finding himself leader in Florence, he tried to avert it by turning the city into  beacon of renewal through making men and women to live as Christians. The constitution he introduced (in Florence), however clumsy, was arguably the most representative in the period between antiquity and the American Revolution. Even if his clairvoyance failed him at the end, to a large extent most of his predictions came true...

In the last analysis, Savonarola had much in common with Francis of Assisi, although no two humans could have been more different. Like Francis, he was simply putting Christianity into practice, but while Francis appealed to the heart, the Dominican spoke to the intellect. In many ways Savonarola stood for Catholicism at its best, just as Borgia embodied Catholicism at its worst."

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While I am speaking of honorary statues, Laurie and I fabricated a life-size Dr. Samuel Johnson while I was living in London in 1998. When completed we had an unveiling in my garden and invited special friends including dignitaries. We invited the local MP, Norman Lamont, Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he was a no show. But the rest of us enjoyed Poonsh (as the Doctor would pronounce it) and a good handful of Johnson readings. Dr Johnson usually spent time indoors and he sat at the dining table. Often Laurie, Dr. J and I could be seen from the street enjoying our repast and engaging in witty table-talk (most of it Johnson's or Laurie's).

Here's the pic. Laurie likes this quote of his: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Laurie took the picture. 

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And in case you thought my rants in past blogs against British idiocy and political correctness were at an end, think again:This was a news item last week in England-

"Patriotic squaddie Craig Briggs has been barred from joining the police — because he’s got 'ENGLAND' tattooed on his arm.  

The Iraq veteran, 22, had wanted to be a cop since childhood and was advised to join the Army to get experience first. But when he applied to the cops he was told: “Unfortunately, some people feel intimidated by the word England.”  Craig, who has just completed 4½ years with the 3rd Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment, said: “I am shocked and disgusted. I don’t understand how it can cause offence. It is our country, after all.”

Craig applied to join Greater Manchester Police shortly before returning to civilian status this month. When he admitted he had a tattoo, he was asked to send a photo of the inch-high Gothic letters spelling ENGLAND on the underside of his right forearm. He was later told he had been rejected by the recruitment department. It wrote: “Home Office policy precludes applications with tattoos on lower arm, hand, face or neck that are prominent, which may cause offence and/or invite provocation from the public or colleagues.”

Craig said that the Manchester force’s senior recruitment consultant told him: “A family who aren’t of English origin who see "England" on your arm could feel you might discriminate against them.  We live in a diverse society and try to ensure we give everybody equality.”

Craig said, “I’ve been told I could get the tattoo altered so it doesn’t spell England any more".

The Sun

English notes and a wedding...

First the wedding of my step-daughter, Sinead Graham, to Edward Titheridge, near Brighton on 22 March. See proud mother and happy and beautiful bride. Bride and groom off to Africa, done deal. God Bless! Bravi Sinead, Ed, and Laurie. ...The wedding required our 6 day stay in cold Brighton which afforded us time for pre-wedding and post wedding parties, plus visits to the Pavillion and to Jane Austen's house in Chawton. Sadly, the numerous second-hand bookshops in Brighton which we frequented 11 years ago are all gone. But numerous curries, unavailable in Venice, and properly made fish and chips restored us to mental health.

Notes on the continued decline of the United Kingdom, or... there will not always be an England, that is certain.

Idiocy 1:

There was a report in The Daily Telegraph (22 March), that a public school fired its senior nurse, Susan Pope, because she smacked her 10 year old son, on his bottom (he wearing trousers) at home after he was abusive and refused to stop swearing at her. This smacking  was witnessed by her 15 year old son who promptly phoned the police to rat on his mother. The police duly arrived and arrested the mother and the father who both spent 32 hours in the slammer. Her employer, the public (private to American readers) school then fired her.  Mrs Pope said,"Smacking is not against the law in this country and I am a firm believer of physical chastisement within reason". "My son was behaving badly and I warned him if he swore at me again I would smack him." The police put the two children's names on the Child Protection Register which is an indictment of the parents.The school felt it had to protect its reputation and fired the nurse. Would you send your son to that school now?  I hope Mrs Pope gets lots of job offers. Sic transit gloria...

Idiocy 2:

The Sunday Telegraph's education correspondent reports this: Pupils as young as 10 are sitting on interview panels and rating teachers as part of the government's plan to give them a "voice" in schools. Children in thousands of primary schools have been drafted to interview new teaching staff. Also, one in ten schools allow pupils to formally rate teachers' lessons. These ratings are used in evaluating the teachers' performances. The government says that giving pupils a "say" in how the schools are run is part of the (socialist-labour) government's "Every Child Matters" agenda. As one of the teachers put it, "The lunatics have taken over the asylum."

Idiocy 3:

In Brighton we walked by a hair stylist salon which advertised in its window: extensions, weaves, straightening, etc.  Also, it advertised hair services for "Euro, Afro, and those of mixed parentage" (italics mine). So I guess one cannot use the word race in England. "Mixed racial parentage" is what they meant to say. But race as an adjective is equally abhorrent, apparently.To say "mixed parentage" is to state the obvious, man and a woman, tall and short, blond and brunette, stupid and smart, blue eyes and brown...but apparently the race word is verboten in England's green but unpleasant land.

Coda: A US acquaintance visited Venice a month or so back and saw numerous Nigerian bag sellers hawking their counterfeit Pradas on the street. He said, "Hey, look at all those African-Americans selling bags".

Basta.

   

Venice and other items...

Palm Sunday...On the way to church this past Sunday we walked through the Piazza S Marco as we usually do. It was 10AM and we happened to catch the procession of palms by the cardinal of Venice, bishops, clergy, and the parishioners of the Basilica S Marco. While processing the length of the Piazza, all were singing hymns which were amplified by portable loudspeakers. It was quite moving. The photo here shows Cardinal Scola, he wearing wearing a mitre. The palms carried were six feet long, whole branches, very impressive.  Our palm Sunday is 20 April so we have to wait, drat.

Judy Stires of Bay Head, NJ and a Venice resident has passed away after a 14 month battle with cancer. She was 76 and was one of the most vibrant, active, generous, upbeat and funny people we have ever met. She loved people and always spurned the Venetian ex-pat habit of gossiping, making her unique here. We have fond memories of her here in Venice and in the US. She leaves behind dozens and dozens of friends and we shall not see her likes again. We pray for her soul and also for Sidney and their children.

The good news is that we have gone to contract for the sale of our retreat in the Italian alps. See pic. We sold it because we found that we hardly ever retreated to it, alas. The first 2 years we did so 8 times a year, but, thereafter, the frequency diminished. So we sold it; took two years. Below is a view from the veranda and of the chalet itself perched on the side of the mountain. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

And what about Obama and Reverend Wright? Because Obama says he never heard Wright deliver racist, anti-American rants, is it, therefore, logical that Obama can exonerate himself from hiring him as an advisor and admiring him? Is this the logic that got Obama through law school or the LSATs? Obama did not know Wright held the view that America had 9-11 coming? How can this be? Hey, Obama, read his parish newsletter.

Can this man be president? Here's Obama with Sharpton. Says a lot about the company this man keeps. Obama should return to local community service. Soon.

Meet Novelist Peter DeVries...

Of course, some of you may already know him. Peter DeVries (1910-1993) worked as an editor for Poetry Magazine but mostly for the The New Yorker. He is chiefly remembered for his very funny (and serious) novels written from the late 40's through the 80's. His novels have an existentialist vein and he allows us to feel the irony and ambiguity which characterises living in the 20th century, especially suburbia, his milieu. He is always trying to square, in an dark humourous way, the absurdity of life while being born into God's creation. To quote him, "If God loves us, why is he giving us such a hard time?" As dark as the books are, they are immensely entertaining. He provides laugh out loud epigrams, reversals, and witticisms while exploring the puzzle of existence and how to best for us to come to terms with it. To him, the answer seems to be to soldier on.

DeVries scores against fundamentalists as well as against liberal ministers, one of whom in a book, made divorce a sacrament in his church… to enhance inclusiveness. He is passionately interested in man's relationship with God in  its ambiguities and degrees of belief and unbelief; but to me he often seems to want to believe, despite his dark moments. He doth protest too much. His novels examine marriage, parenthood, suburban living, sex, in ordinary middle class situations...and the books are very entertaining. Aphorisms and observations abound; here are a few:

• The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.

• The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds - they mature slowly.

• Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.

• Life is a zoo in a jungle.

• Let us hope, that a kind Providence will put a speedy end to the acts of God under which we have been laboring. (after a series of floods in one of his novels).

• It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.

• The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.

• We are not primarily put on this earth to see through one another, but to see one another through.

• Parenthood: when I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones.

• Writing: I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

• Words fashioned with somewhat over precise diction are like shapes turned out by a cookie cutter.

• The satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive and eventually releases him again for another chance.

• There are times when parenthood seems nothing but feeding the mouth that bites you.

• Celibacy is the worst form of self-abuse.

• DeVries likens the war between the sexes to two French nobleman fighting  a duel on  a battlefield upon which bombs are raining.

Here are DeVries’ twenty six novels (out of print but available through secondhand book websites):  But Who Wakes the Bugler? (1940), The Handsome Heart (1943), Angels Can Do Better (1944), The Tunnel of Love (1954), Comfort Me With Apples (1956), The Mackeral Plaza (1958), No, But I Saw the Movie (1959), The Tents of Wickedness (1959), Through The Fields of Clover (1961), Blood of the Lamb(1962), Reuben, Reuben (1964), Let Me Count the Ways (1965), The Vale of Laughter (1967), The Cat's Pajamas and the Witch's Milk (1968), Mrs. Wallop (1970), Into Your Tent I’ll Creep (1971), Without a Stitch in Time (1972), Forever Panting (1973), The Glory of the Hummingbird (1974), I Hear America Swinging (1975), Madder Music (1977), Consenting Adults, or The Duchess Will be Furious (1980), Sauce for the Goose (1981), Slouching Towards Kalamazoo(1983), The Prick of Noon (1985), Peckham's Marbles (1986).

This is a man you should read. I recommend starting with The Mackeral Plaza.

To learn more, here are a couple of links to articles on DeVries:

http://www.westportmag.com/media/Westport-Magazine/April-2006/The-Return-of-Peter-DeVries/.

http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1975/v32-1-article1.htm

Photo courtesy of Westport Magazine.

Castro...ugh!

Castro Retires...

The fascist-communist dictator of Cuba has retired, unfortunately, not under the ground. 

What a legacy:

• Castro invited Soviet missiles into Cuba to be pointed at the United States
• Castro instituted a socialist state economy which impoverished the Cuban people
• Castro installed a repressive Stalinist dictatorship so bad that thousands have in the past and even do today, risk their lives in ragtag boats and rafts trying to escape through dangerous shark-infested waters
• Castro ruthlessly represses his people, using torture, murder and imprisonment
• Castrol supported communist revolutions throughout the world with troops, money, and moral support - for example, Angola, Ethiopia, Nicaragua - financed by the Soviet Union.
• Castro enlists the support of stupid and gullible personalities to prop up his dictatorship - Jack Nicolson, Robert Redford, Naomi Campbell, Carole King and a barnful of others who gave him an undeserved credibility
• Who are or were his fans politically? Putin, Brezhnev, Hugo Chavez, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Pierre Trudeau, in other words, dictators, crypto-dictators, and others with far left and anti-US credentials.
• His coup's initial success is generally credited, if that is the word, to the New York Times whose reporter, Herbert Matthews, in 1957, apotheosized Castro in his dispatches from Cuba and elsewhere. All the news that's fit to tint. Or all the news that fits. The New York Slimes. 

Will no man rid us of this evil?

Venice in February...

Sure, it's a bit cold, around 10°C this morning, but there are relatively few people here, streets are quiet, vaporettos have light traffic. Add to this clear skies, sunshine and no street fairs and no outdoor concerts.

See photo right of a deserted Venezia from last year.

Speaking of Venice, we were lent a DVD of "The Italian Job" by someone who thought we should see the Venice scenes. Venice did look great in the film..but it has to be the dumbest film I have ever seen. Add to that, the worst actor in the world, Donald Sutherland, is in it. The plot is idiotic, the characters cardboard, the dialogue laughable. It is an action film with unlikely, actually impossible, action scenes. Dumb, dumb, dumb. 

For a Venice movie, try "Brideshead Revisited" (BBC) or "Death in Venice". Having mentioned Mr Sutherland, the movie "Don't Look Now", based on a story by Daphne Du Maurier, does visually capture the beauty, mystery, and charm of Venice, despite having the aforementioned actor as a star. The story of the movie makes no sense but it is a lovely look at Venice.

The Naples report card: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Went to Napoli for 5 days to escape Carnival here in Venice and to see the sights. So let's review Napoli in the sequence suggested by the blog's title.

The Good....

Pompeii and Herculaneum, San Carlo Opera House, the Capodimonte art museum, Mt Vesuvius, pizza.          

The ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum: extraordinary that the cities existed in the first place and that they have been uncovered and are visitable. They were both discovered in the late 18th century and began to be uncovered from approximately 30 or more metres of volcanic lava from the 79 AD eruption. Pic below of me in Pompeii with THE mountain at rest. Nearby Herculaneum is more visitable as its ruins are in good shape so that one can better see the interiors of houses, including lovely wall paintings and decorations.  Pompeii was practically deserted of tourists (and completely of residents). Herculaneum was totally ours. Only other people there were guides who, after you have informed them that you do not wish their services, follow you around and try to insinuate themselves into your tourist life. Sheeeesh! Guides! The picture of what looks like a kitchen is a kitchen. It was open to the public and those holes you see were warming areas for different foods. Beneath the holes were hot coals. Below is a cast of a child victim of Vesuvius. About 20,000 people lived in Herculaneum and most died in the eruption.

San Carlo is  lovely opera house, a little worn, but quite large. We heard Rossini's Stabat Mater with a large orchestra, the 4 soloists and a 100 member choir. Excellent. Some say it lacks the spiritual content of Pergolesi's Stabat, but it is very musical.

The Capodimonte is an enormous gallery built on a similar format and scale as the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna. It contains hundreds and hundreds of master paintings with strong entries from Tiziano, Raphael, Lotto, Coreggio, Carracci, El Greco, Palma the Elder, Parmigianino, Salviati, Fra Bartolomeo, Bruegel the Elder, Mantegna, Bellini, Vivarini, Van Dyck...well, you get the picture.

They say pizza was invented here. It is certainly ubiquitous. James Joyce quipped that a good puzzle would be to try to walk from the north side of Dublin to the south without passing a pub. In Naples one cannot walk down a steet, an avenue, a square without encountering a pizzeria every 25 feet. They are inexpensive and, of course, the pizza is terrific. The home of pizza, they do say.

The Bad...

Vesuvius you have to call bad. It is unpredictable, incredibily dangerous, imposing. And it is sitting...right there, over your shoulder, and some day it's going shoot off the really big one, again. O tempore! O mores!

The Ugly... 

I am afraid Napoli does ugly well. It's 18th and 19th century architecture is run down, disfigured by peeling and faded stucco and paint and by horrible, dated alterations. Then you have the postwar contribution of concrete highrises (5-8 stories) which are very run down and falling apart. There is absolutely no sense of planning, civic responsibility and direction.  The picture below (right) is the look of Naples today. We saw no part of Naples that was not like this.  

The real ugly of this city is the graffiti. No un-graffitied wall exists. Here are some images.  Especially egregious is the graffiti on the statue of Dante.                                        

 

   

The final ugly thing is the ubiquitous garbage. We saw dozens of scenes like those in the photos. Turn a corner, there it is, especially in the suburbs. Maybe another eruption would solve that problem?

Ridiculous to the sublime...

That was our week...the Sublime was the peformance of Die Meistersinger in the Staatsopera in Vienna. The ridiculous was the performance in the Italian senate during the debate on whether of shut down the current (Prodi) government, which it did.

Start with the ridiculous. Tempers flaring, heated exchanges, champagne flowing on the senate floor (literally on the floor) and a senator spitting in another's face. So if you wish to see an out of control country...click on these 3 You Tube clips to see  what passes for government here. These scenes occurred during the "debate" and the champagne business was at the announcement that the government had fallen. During the last clip, the president of the senate is yelling to the revellers that "this is not an osteria". Here are the clips:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3_F5JPHZxBc&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=IBEHZcwy_R4&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KMTbw_Ml6_E&feature=related

Now the sublime, Die Meistersinger. Fantastic singing, wonderful sets, full opera house, all elegantly dressed. 6 hours of pleasure. Bravo Wagner! Bravo Vienna! Hear and see Ben Heppner (who was not in this week's performance) singing the Prize Song sung by von Stolzing by clicking this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPAgTnmGF5Y .

Having beautiful weather here in Venice. Yesterday the "Angelo" flew down from the campanile in S Marco, recreating an traditional event at the first day of Carnival. Historically, it is a woman, dressed angelically, who floats down a wire to the base of the Campanile distributing sweets along the way. Usually she is accompanied by fairy-type music. My friend Frank took his 4 year old daughter to see this spectacle yesterday also witnessed by 40,000 people. Except... Frank tells me, the fairy was a black rapper in a black wrapper, who floated down to the accompaniment of rap "music". If any Venetians were at this business, well... perplexed would be a good word for them. Venice knows how to outdo itself in stupidity.