Venetian Cat - ALWAYS on Santa's Team!

Muran Glass Christmas Tree
by Simone Cenedese

(Venice, Italy) I don't know who wrote this little Christmas story -- not me -- it was sent to me by an old school chum from Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. If anyone knows who the author is, please tell me so I can give credit where it is due, but apparently it's been floating around cyber space for years. 

Enjoy:

I remember my first Christmas adventure with Grandma. I was just a kid. I remember tearing across town on my bike to visit her on the day my big sister dropped the bomb: "There is no Santa Claus," she jeered. "Even dummies know that!"

My Grandma was not the gushy kind, never had been. I fled to her that day because I knew she would be straight with me. I knew Grandma always told the truth, and I knew that the truth always went down a whole lot easier when swallowed with one of her "world-famous" cinnamon buns. I knew they were world-famous, because Grandma said so. It had to be true.

Grandma was home, and the buns were still warm. Between bites, I told her everything. She was ready for me. "No Santa Claus?" she snorted...."Ridiculous! Don't believe it. That rumor has been going around for years, and it makes me mad, plain mad!! Now, put on your coat, and let's go."

"Go? Go where, Grandma?" I asked. I hadn't even finished my second World-famous cinnamon bun. 

"Where" turned out to be Kerby's General Store, the one store in town that had a little bit of just about everything.  As we walked through its doors, Grandma handed me ten dollars. That was a bundle in those days. "Take this money," she said, "and buy something for someone who needs it. I'll wait for you in the car." Then she turned and walked out of Kerby's.

I was only eight years old. I'd often gone shopping with my mother, but never had I shopped for anything all by myself. The store seemed big and crowded, full of people scrambling to finish their Christmas shopping. For a few moments I just stood there, confused, clutching that ten-dollar bill, wondering what to buy, and who on earth to buy it for. I thought of everybody I knew: my family, my friends, my neighbors, the kids at school, the people who went to my church. 

I was just about thought out, when I suddenly thought of Bobby Decker. He was a kid with bad breath and messy hair, and he sat right behind me in Mrs. Pollock's grade-two class.  Bobby Decker didn't have a coat. I knew that because he never went out to recess during the winter. His mother always wrote a note, telling the teacher that he had a cough, but all we kids knew that Bobby Decker didn't have a cough; he didn't have a good coat. I fingered the ten-dollar bill with growing excitement.

I would buy Bobby Decker a coat! I settled on a red corduroy one that had a hood to it. It looked real warm, and he would like that. "Is this a Christmas present for someone?" the lady behind the counter asked kindly, as I laid my ten dollars down. "Yes, ma'am," I replied shyly. "It's for Bobby." The nice lady smiled at me, as I told her about how Bobby really needed a good winter coat. I didn't get any change, but she put the coat in a bag, smiled again, and wished me a Merry Christmas.

That evening, Grandma helped me wrap the coat (a little tag fell out of the coat, and Grandma tucked it in her Bible) in Christmas paper and ribbons and wrote, "To Bobby, From Santa Claus" on it. Grandma said that Santa always insisted on secrecy. 

Then she drove me over to Bobby Decker's house, explaining as we went that I was now and forever officially, one of Santa's helpers.

Grandma parked down the street from Bobby's house, and she and I crept noiselessly and hid in the bushes by his front walk. Then Grandma gave me a nudge. "All right, Santa Claus," she whispered, "get going." I took a deep breath, dashed for his front door, threw the present down on his step, pounded his door and flew back to the safety of the bushes and Grandma. Together we waited breathlessly in the darkness for the front door to open. Finally it did, and there stood Bobby. 

Fifty years haven't dimmed the thrill of those moments spent shivering, beside my Grandma, in Bobby Decker's bushes. That night, I realized that those awful rumors about Santa Claus were just what Grandma said they were, ridiculous.  Santa was alive and well, and we were on his team.

I still have the Bible, with the coat tag tucked inside: $19.95.

May you always have LOVE to share, HEALTH to spare and FRIENDS that care. And may you always believe in the magic of Santa Claus!

Merry Christmas! Buon Natale! Happy Holidays to All!

Ciao from Venice,

Cat -- ALWAYS on Santa's team!

Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog

Romeo & Juliet at the Teatro Goldoni in Venice

(Venice, Italy) William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has been making audiences weep for more than four hundred years. Still humanity does not learn this lesson. When the play opens, two warring families, the Capulets and the Montagues, have already been fighting for centuries.

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Photo by Marta Ferranti

It is not a private battle. They are both important families and their hatred spills into the streets, disturbing the peace of Verona. 

The citizens are tired of the constant fighting and step in themselves, shouting "Clubs, bills, and partisans! Strike! Beat them down! Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues!"

Prince Escalus himself appears on the scene and commands the warring families to stop. 

Since we all know the ending, the only thing that causes the two patriarchs to finally shake hands and declare peace is the agonizing death of their own children. The passionate love of Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet culminates with them dying in each other's arms. Perhaps they are together in Paradise.

I caught yesterday's matinee at the Goldoni Theater where Romeo e Giulietta is playing from December 16 through 19, with excellent performances by Lucas Waldem Zanforlini and Eleonora Tata in the starring roles. Giuseppe Marini directed a condensed version.

In this production, the Ladies Montague and Capulet were nowhere in sight, making it truly a war between patriarchs. 

The theater was almost sold-out, the boxes overflowing with young people all the way up to the ceiling, both male and female, who really seemed to enjoy the show. That is what is great about Romeo & Juliet; I remember studying it myself when I was about fourteen-years-old. In fact, I stuck it in my first novel, Harley, Like a Person.

Photo by Marta Ferranti

The vibrant costumes by Mariano Tufano were a delight for the eyes — a mixture of Johnny Depp in Alice in Wonderland, and The Importance of Being Earnest meets A Clockwork Orange — top hats and checkered pants mixed with rich royal velvets. 

Nicolò Scarparo was a stand-out as Friar Lorenzo (Laurence), floating seamlessly across the stage an inch above the ground. The set was sparse, but effective.

Romeo and Juliet has been produced an infinite amount of times, in zillions of languages, in ancient and contemporary interpretations. It has been filmed and made into operas, ballets and Broadway musicals. Switch-blades have replaced swords; hypodermic needles have replaced poison. 

According to Wikipedia:

The play is sometimes given a historical setting, enabling audiences to reflect on the underlying conflicts. For example, adaptations have been set in the midst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,^[124] in the apartheid era in South Africa,^[125] and in the aftermath of the Pueblo Revolt.^[126] Similarly, Peter Ustinov's 1956 comic adaptation, Romanoff and Juliet, is set in a fictional mid-European country in the depths of the Cold War.^[127] 

At the end of the play, Prince Escalus laments after too many good people have died for no good reason:

Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!
See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.

And I for winking at your discords too

Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd.

Photo by Marta Ferranti

Dec 16 & 19 at 4:00pm

Dec 15, 17 & 18 at 8:30pm

Teatro Goldoni

San Marco 4650/b

Venezia

041.2402011

Ciao from Venice,

Cat
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog

Madonna of the Sun - Venetian Cat - December 8 Anniversary Blog

Here's the traditional Madonna of the Sun blog for Wednesday, December 8, 2010 
Tuesday, December 8, 2009

The Madonna of the Sun

THE MADONNA OF THE SUN

(from 8 dicembre 2006)

Today, December 8th, is the birthday of my protagonist, Harley Columba. It is also the day that John Lennon was assassinated. When I was creating Harley, I wanted her to have a deep connection to John Lennon, so she was born in the same hospital where John Lennon died.

December 8th is also a holiday here in Italy, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. This is the day Mary, the mother of Jesus, was conceived.

One wonders how that came about... since most Christian holidays turn out to have more ancient meanings.

It turns out that December 8th is also Bodhi Day, the day the Buddha became enlightened.

It is the Festival of Neith, the Egyptian goddess who gave birth to Ra, the Sun god; it is celebrated by the Feast of Lamps. Neith, in turn, transforms into Isis, the "woman clothed with the sun," wife and sister of Osiris and mother of Horus.

It is the day that Amaterasu, the Japanese Goddess of the Sun, was born.

On December 8, 1941, the United States declared war on Japan. The Japanese royal family is descended from the Sun Goddess.

On December 8, 2009, Cat Bauer woke up inside her apartment on the Grand Canal. 

***

On December 8, 2010, Cat Bauer woke up outside her apartment on the Grand Canal, from which she was forcibly and violently evicted again on June 11, 2010. This year, however, the gas and electricity are in my name. To read the Madonna of the Sun blog from last year, 2009, complete with comments, please click HERE.

Ciao from Venice,

Cat 

Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog

http://venetiancat.blogspot.com

News Flash! The Querini Stampalia wins Prestigious Award

(Venice, Italy) The Querini Stampalia happens to be where I am sitting right now, and this press release just came over the wire, as they say, so I thought I would announce it immediately:

Querini STAMPALIA, 

Cesare De Michelis,

Department of Culture of the Veneto region,

University of Warwick and 

ANCI Veneto 

are awarded

XII VENICE PRIZE FOR CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

"The Venice Prize for Cultural Communication, now in its twelfth edition, which in recent years has recognized journalists, cultural personalities, institutions and major cultural events, returns this year at the XIV Salone dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali, or the 14th Heritage and Culture Fair. 

The prestigious jury is chaired by Luigi Rossi, a businessman and president of the Academy of Fine Arts, and composed of Adriano Donaggio, vice president and curator of the award, Ileana Chiappini Di Sorio from the University of Ca' Foscari of Venice, Philip Rylands, Director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and Bruno Bernardi, also from Ca' Foscari. 

The jury has confirmed the decision to award a prize to a Venetian institution of international importance: la Fondazione Scientifica Querini Stampalia (Scientific Foundation Querini Stampalia), not only for its remarkable library, which is open to the public at times when other libraries are closed (evenings and holidays), but also for the wide range of contemporary books, and up-to-date local, international and foreign newspapers. 

Through the years the Querini has emerged as meeting place for students and young scholars who live in Venice, while also operating as a museum with great works of art inside an ancient Venetian palace. Palazzo Querini Stampalia has preserved its history thanks to a historic restoration by the renown Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa with the significant involvement of Mario Botta. Also considered were the important cultural conferences and exhibitions offered by the Querini Stampalia."

***

Since I basically live at the Querini Stampalia these days, I am thrilled that they won this award. I just told some of the staff, and they were thrilled, too. 

The Querini is truly one of the most unique places on the planet. It is a beautiful, ancient palace, originally built by the Querini family in the early 1500s. A third story was added between 1789 and 1797. It remained in the family until Giovanni Querini, being without an heir, donated it to Venice in 1868, with very unusual instructions: he wanted it open when the other libraries were closed, and that is just how it is today. 

I think Giovanni must have been quite brilliant because he knew that writers, scholars, students and other people of culture have to do many other things before they get into the library to work, and he gave everyone the time to do it. The Querini is open from 10:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night, and it is open on Sundays from 10:00am to 7:00pm! It is only closed on Mondays.

from Michael Caldwell - Strange Details - MIT Press

Then, from 1961 to 1963, the distinguished Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa came along and restored bits and pieces of the palace in a way that can only be described as genius. Since the water level of Venice is always ebbing and flowing, instead of fighting the water, he allowed it to come inside. 

I just ran downstairs to take a quick refresher look, and Scarpa's work was so far ahead of the time that we are only now catching up... or perhaps, at the rate the world is going these days, we will never catch up to Scarpa.

(I found an excellent description, as well as that image, at a blog called 3six0 where: "“At 3six0 the craft of architecture is practiced as an art.")

What’s exciting in this work is Scarpa’s understanding of water as an unsettling force – as a medium caught between the solidity of the earth and the volatility of the sky.  Water is at once dependable and volatile – it is present like the earth, but in constant flux like the sky.  And as Cadwell points out, Venice embodies this precariousness.  “In Venice, buildings do not spring from the earth – they tether themselves to the mud below, or they hover above it” (8-9).  This aquatic quality, this precariousness, pervades Querini Stampalia through details that unsettle and keep us on edge.

Click HERE to read the entire article.

Next I dashed upstairs and took at look at the older section again. My feelings about both floors, the modern and the ancient, were similar -- that Giovanni Querini and Carlo Scarpa were two men of compassion, intelligence and foresight, influencing humanity with the highest, noblest principles. This description is from the Comune of Venice:

The Querini Stampalia Museum is on the second floor of a 16th century palace, rich in stucco works and frescoes, which used to be the home of the Venice patriarch.

The museum holds a wide collection of 18th-century Venetian paintings - 100 paintings, 30 of which are genre-scenes by Pietro Longhi and 67 are landscapes by the minor painter Gabriel Bella, an imitator of 17th and 18th-century works.

The Querini Stampalia Museum is conceived as a house-museum, where the visitor is immersed in a typical sumptuous 18th-century scenario.

I looked at the scenes by Pietro Longhi again, which are sort of like contemporary picture postcards from the 18th century, and tumbled back into the 1700s. There was Banco Giro at the foot of the Rialto Bridge, established back in 1587 as the world's first credit bank (after ancient Greece) buzzing with bankers and traders, and there were the masked players at Il Ridotto, Venice's gambling house, which I wrote about HERE.

Gimme Some Good, Honest Gambling - Il Ridotto in Venice

The Querini also has a very cool gift shop, a dining room, and a bar, and holds contemporary art exhibits up on the third floor, as well as down on the ground floor where Scarpa can be felt; he also designed a very Zen garden. 

It also holds conferences, and has a good-size auditorium. Yet, funding was cut by 30,000 euro for 2010, and the Querini actually closed its doors for the first time this summer from July 1 through August 26. Opening hours have been reduced (if I remember correctly, they used to stay open until midnight), the entrance ticket to the museum section has been raised by two euro. The four-times-a-week free classical music series has been reduced to one every Saturday afternoon at 5:00pm. 

The Fondazione Scientifica Querini Stampalia provides a necessary function for the jewels of the earth, and hopefully Il Premio Venezia alla Comunicazione Culturale will illuminate this precious gem in the Venetian crown. 

"Talentum tolerate" Designed by: Joseph Kosuth

The artist godfather of the first edition of Stampalia Querini - FURLA for art is Joseph Kosuth. His design is based on the origin of the word talent. The work plays on two aspects: the first is our concept of ability that is linked to its ancient meaning of "a sum of money." The second aspect is "tolerate", "support" in its original Latin.

Ciao from Venice,
Cat
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog

From the Querini's website:

In the heart of Venice, a stone’s throw from Piazza San Marco, is one of the most interesting cultural complexes in the city of lagoons: Palazzo Querini Stampalia, the home of the Foundation of the same name created in 1868 by Count Giovanni, who died the following year without direct heirs. The Library, Museum and an area for temporary exhibitions are housed there. The Library is of a general nature and provides around 340,000 volumes for public use, including 32,000 directly accessible in the rooms, which are open according to the Founder’s wishes until late at night, including public holidays. An agreement with the City of Venice defines it a Civic Library of the historical centre, in recognition of the role that it plays on behalf of the city which is widely recognised by the Venetians.

Among the collections, the oldest section is composed of manuscripts, incunabula and 16th century printed books, geographical atlases and maps, which together with the private archives of the Querini Stampalia family provide precious historical testimonies
for scholars. 

In the museum with its eighteenth century and neoclassical furniture, porcelain, bisque, sculpture, globes and paintings from the 14th to the 20th century, most of which are from the Venetian school, an atmosphere of a noble residence is bestowed by mirrors and lamps of Murano glass and fabrics woven to historical designs. Amongst the works on display are paintings by Giovanni Bellini, Lorenzo di Credi, Jacopo Palma il Vecchio, Bernardo Strozzi, Marco and Sebastiano Ricci, Giambattista Tiepolo, Pietro Longhi, Gabriel Bella and a sketch by Antonio Canova.

A place of many places, of a thousand differences - they can be read in its history, architecture, and the variety of its activities - the Foundation is a field of cultural production based on the study and enhancement of the historical heritage of the museum and attentive reflection in gathering the most advanced contemporary propositions. To this end, with the Conservare il futuro project, future contemporary artists are invited to compare Themselves to and interact with the Foundation’s collections, drawing inspiration from them for new expressions of vital experimentation.

Similar lines of investigation have been opened in the sectors of literature, poetry, theatre, dance, design and graphics. An intense programme of educational activities offers various publics – schools,families, senior citizens- ever new interpretations of the Museum, Library exhibitions and architecture of the building itself, through laboratories and educational courses.

Within the 16th century residence, on the ground floor, is the area that was restored in 1963 by Carlo Scarpa, which has recently undergone rigorous conservation work. The work of the architect from Ticino, Mario Botta, a pupil of the Venetian master who designed the site’s new service area around an evocative covered courtyard, is also nearing completion. The rooms of the Cafeteria open onto it, welcoming the public for a break, snack, working breakfast or dinner in an unusual atmosphere, facing the windows of the Bookshop which, together with a sophisticated choice of design objects and carefully selected volumes on historical and contemporary art, also offers a section dedicated to specialists working in museums, libraries and archives.

The new Auditorium completes the construction of this unique, complex and flexible structure where historical rooms next to areas equipped in a modern fashion offer a stimulating and functional setting for individual study, cultural initiatives and special events.