We were headed for St. Mark’s Square in Venice earlier today — knock that one off the must-see list, might as well — when the foot traffic seemed ridiculously thick. The back of a stage loomed ahead. Everyone was young, well-dressed, and many of the women were carrying nice bouquets of flowers or wearing laurel wreaths.
Then we stepped around the edge of the stage and saw what was happening: Graduation day. Giorno della laurea.
The Università Ca’ Foscari was sending its latest crop of graduates into the world. It looked like all graduation ceremonies: Fun and happy. We walked to the end of the square, to the waterfront of St. Mark’s, and marveled at what it must have been like to pull up to this particular quay when the Republic of Venice swung serious weight in the world, to see those twin pillars, the lion and St. Mark, the breathtaking cathedral, the ducal palace, all of it.
Then the graduates — ‘scusi, the laureates — broke up and dispersed to the hundreds of cafes and restaurants in the city to celebrate. Individual pods would periodically break into a filthy song; it went like this:
Dottore, dottore
Dottore del buco del cul
Vaffancul! Vaffancul!
As far as I can tell, it translates to:
Doctor, doctor
Doctor asshole
Fuck you! Fuck you!
But everyone laughed about it, and Alan postulated the real meaning is: Don’t get too full of yourself, now that you’re a fancy-pants college graduate. That sounds about right. The celebrations were fun to watch. We ate a late lunch/early dinner at the table next to Emily’s. Here’s Emily:
Isn’t she adorable in her laurel wreath? Note the bottle of rose taped to her hand. “They want me to drink,” she told me in perfect English, appropriate for a linguistics scholar. Obviously. The poster behind her is another tradition: It’s basically a memory collage of her college years; not sure if the crossword is standard or not. Her whole family was there, everybody sang the Doctor Asshole ditty, several times. The weather was perfect. A good omen for Emily.
And that’s where we are for our final week, in a quieter neighborhood. Right on a canal, not a heavily traveled one. On our morning wander, I took pictures of work boats.
The news this week is the new daily tourist tax being charged to visitors — 5 Euro per head per day. There was a big protest on day one, and I agree with the protesters that it won’t do much good, but lordy, this is a city about 1,500 years old, built on logs, and 20 million annual visitors takes a toll. Every one of them needs to be fed, housed, amused. Each one drinks, eats, poops and pees. (Yes, I’m including myself in that group.) So it was interesting to watch the morning deliveries along the canals — the food, the drinks, the inevitable Amazon boxes.
Honestly, I don’t see how they do it. But they do, somehow. I’m impressed.
Jeff Gill said on April 30, 2024 at 3:52 pm
Seems fair, the $5 or so fee.
Have you read “Nate in Venice” by Richard Russo? It’s a Kindle Single, and appeared in his short story collection “Trajectory” as “Voice.” The former might be a touch longer, but maybe not. A novella either way, but a quick read. Set mostly in Venice with flashbacks in US (but while in Venice, the story entirely taking place there).
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Sherri said on April 30, 2024 at 4:32 pm
Seems reasonable to charge a fee for Venice, where it’s difficult to build infrastructure to support lots of people for a variety of reasons.
I love the Commissario Brunetti mysteries by Donna Leon, which are set in Venice.
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Sherri said on April 30, 2024 at 4:35 pm
This Japanese town took an Instagram-unfriendly approach to over tourism.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/to-fend-off-tourists-a-town-in-japan-is-building-a-big-screen-blocking-the-view-of-mount-fuji/
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alex said on April 30, 2024 at 10:22 pm
Each one drinks, eats, poops and pees. (Yes, I’m including myself in that group.) So it was interesting to watch the morning deliveries along the canals — the food, the drinks, the inevitable Amazon boxes.
For shipping out the shit and piss?
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Sherri said on April 30, 2024 at 11:11 pm
Columbia, then and now.
https://buttondown.email/theswordandthesandwich/archive/history-repeats-itself-at-columbia/
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Deborah said on May 1, 2024 at 4:48 am
Ditto Sherri, on the Commissario Brunetti mysteries by Donna Leon, love those.
Nancy, have you been to Harry’s Bar? When we were there we saw the artist Robert Rauschenberg sitting nearby. When a friend was there, Keith Richards was seated right next to him.
But I found Venice to be smelly, even though to my husband it’s his favorite city. Can’t beat the art.
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Suzanne said on May 1, 2024 at 10:23 am
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/campus-cancel-culture-university-boards
“The modern American university is a right-wing institution. The right’s dominance of academia and its reign over universities is destroying higher education, and the only way to save the American university is for students and professors to take back control of campuses.”
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FDChief said on May 1, 2024 at 10:41 am
The graduation sounds like a great way to tourist; putting context to the scenery, if you will.
Maybe I’m just old, but the campus Gaza rallies just depress me. The reaction both from the various administrators and the usual wingnut suspects are predictably vile. The pointless acts of performative rage from the black bloc are irking. But mostly remember marching against the Iraq war. What did we accomplish? What will these except give the Right coverto whatabout J6?
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Jeff Borden said on May 1, 2024 at 11:04 am
We were in Porto, Portugal six years ago at college graduation time. The graduating students were allowed to harass and hassle the underclassmen, so we witnessed dozens of “super soaker” squirt guns dousing the unfortunates. As in Venice, it was a beautiful, warm and sunny day. It was great fun sipping a beer along the riverfront and watching the kids.
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Julie Robinson said on May 1, 2024 at 11:16 am
Good morning all from Gilead, where all women are now Ofron. Blessed be the Fruit. May the Lord open.
Anyway, I also woke up to seeing our daughter quoted in the NYT, about the battle to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution, via Amendment 4. She spoke with the reporter three times and in the end, the reporter used her least inflammatory quote, almost a milquetoast statement. Here’s the story: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/us/abortion-ban-florida.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok0.boC-.gYLtDDY6PCiN&smid=url-share.
98% of her church shares her opinion, but the 2% could make life uncomfortable for her. We will see.
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Jeff Gill said on May 1, 2024 at 3:38 pm
Not to one up Venice, but I just got to greet Dorothy in person at the Rt. 13 exit of I-71 south of… Mansfield, Ohio!
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brian stouder said on May 1, 2024 at 4:22 pm
Jeff for Thread Win, indeed!
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Sherri said on May 1, 2024 at 4:26 pm
Another depressing things about the campus protests is that Biden seems to be trying to LBJ his way through them. He’s been really tone deaf to younger voters.
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Sherri said on May 1, 2024 at 4:35 pm
On a different note, about five years ago, a friend asked if I recommended buying a Tesla. I said absolutely not, for many reasons, a primary one being that I wasn’t sure Tesla would still be around in 10 years. Given that it’s market cap at the time was larger than all other car companies combined, that may have sounded crazy to my friend, but I’m still feeling pretty good about the prediction, after Musk just fired the entire new product team and the supercharger team. The supercharger is the best thing the company has done.
The stock price never made sense based on the actual company revenues, and Tesla has never really made money manufacturing cars.
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Mark P said on May 1, 2024 at 5:08 pm
About Tesla — there’s the fact that Musk is a vindictive, crazy-ass right-winger who might decide to personally remotely brick your car if you look at him sideways.
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Julie Robinson said on May 1, 2024 at 6:44 pm
Musk is just looking for a government handout. The other automakers announced they’ll be using the Tesla charger interface for their cars in the future. He figures Biden won’t want to let it die. Just grubbing for $$$.
If anyone cares, I can tell you that Kevin Leininger has found his calling, writing for the Fort Wayne Lutheran, a tabloid put out by the dour Lutherans, LC-MS.
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Suzanne said on May 1, 2024 at 7:34 pm
I remember when KevIn L quit the Fort Wayne News Sentinel to work for the Lutheran Seminary and lasted only a few weeks.
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nancy said on May 2, 2024 at 3:50 am
I think it wasn’t even a few, but more like two weeks. That was a strange interlude in N-S history. Ironic that he would be the literal last man standing in that newsroom.
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Dorothy said on May 1, 2024 at 7:48 pm
Oh dang, Jeff beat me to it! It was so fun to get out of my friend Cynthia’s car and glance over and recognize that handsome, lanky fella across the parking lot. It was a nice bonus to an already nice day spent driving from Columbus up to Uniontown, OH to visit a folk art quilt store. My first time, and Susan’s first time (she made up the trio of us in the car) to that store. Wowweee it was a great store. And Cynthia told us that the store is moving to a new location three times the size of this one. Good thing it’s almost three hours away from my house.
This is not the first time we bumped into each other which I find amazing and fun.
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Sherri said on May 1, 2024 at 9:15 pm
If he were just grubbing for government dollars, something Musk has done plenty of in his career, he wouldn’t fire the entire supercharger team. I think he’s decided that he can’t pump up the stock price of a car manufacturer anymore, because manufacturing cars is an capital-intensive, low margin business, and he’s reached the point where he has no new designs, he’s facing lawsuits from employees over discrimination and health and safety concerns, and real cars require repairs, and he doesn’t have a dealer network to dump them off on.
So, he’s going to pivot to AI and robotaxis, which are total fiction, but they’re software, so less capital intensive, and the cool thing right now, so he can play his game of “I’m the future” and get the suckers to buy his stock. Maybe. His fundamental problem is the stock got big enough that it got put on the S&P 500, and now a bunch of institutional investors hold stock in Tesla. We’ll see if they are as fanboy as he needs them to be.
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Sherri said on May 1, 2024 at 9:17 pm
A second Boeing whistleblower has died unexpectedly. Does Putin own stock in Boeing?
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/whistleblower-josh-dean-of-boeing-supplier-spirit-aerosystems-has-died/
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Sherri said on May 2, 2024 at 12:29 am
I just heard about another close friend whose young adult son experienced a psychotic break. That’s the third among my close friends, all young men, now all diagnosed as bipolar. There is no significant family history of mental illness, all are from very stable families (parents happily married 30+ years, good jobs, well-educated). I know of others who suffered from suicidal ideation, and one who did kill herself.
This is why I have a hard time with Haidt’s smartphone diagnosis. These are people who grew up before smartphones were ubiquitous; these young men did not have smartphones in high school. They did grow up with school shootings. One of them was 4 when Columbine happened, and he suffered nightmares for weeks about it. They were in elementary school when 9/11 happened. The oldest came out of college in the wake of the financial crisis, and they all had to manage the pandemic as young adults. Not to mention Trump.
I know my mental health has suffered the last several years, and it’s been a struggle to manage it, even with all the tools I have accumulated. I don’t know why a cluster of young men that I regard as family have all gone through this, but maybe it has less to do with smartphones and social media and more to do with the fact that we’ve all been going through a lot, and our systems, both personal and institutional, are not coping.
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Jeff Gill said on May 2, 2024 at 8:13 am
Working in and around juvenile court & with attendance policy and schools since 2005, and I’m putting my bets on sleep. Smartphones intensified an existing trend toward the ongoing social experiment around how little sleep can we all get by on and avoid psychotic breaks or incremental steps in that direction, but I agree they aren’t the causal factor, per se. The stats on correlation Haidt musters are strong, and worth attention, but my sleep hypothesis isn’t hurt by his data — and may be reinforced by it.
We ALL need more sleep (and more water, a different subject, but not unrelated).
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Deborah said on May 2, 2024 at 10:18 am
DeSantis has banned lab grown meat. While that doesn’t sound very tasty what would be the reason for banning it? Are farmer and meat processing companies lobbying? GMO concerns?
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Sherri said on May 2, 2024 at 1:10 pm
There are a few nonnegotiables in my stay sane routine, and sleep is one of them. Lots of exercise that requires me to focus on nothing else is another, which is where lifting heavy weights comes in.
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