Tag: Titanic

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Bocci

To learn a game, a coach comes in handy. In this case, I am referring to Bocci and how a small improvised Bocci court grew to have a sort of titanic influence on the people who casually used it.
I was working at a large folk heritage festival in the 1980s. The festival was a long national event, and its many presentations attracted national television and press attention.
As an anthropologist, I was “presenting”* Italian gardeners and members of several Saint’s societies. Several tents and small structures were part of the crafts, food, and music presentation. Off to one side, almost as an afterthought, was a Bocci court. For the uninitiated, Bocci belongs to a family of games popular since the Roman Empire’s days. There are two teams in a match. To simplify: The object is for one team to get as many of its balls as possible closest to the target ball, the pallino, then the opposing team.
There were schedules for cooking demonstrations, presentations in the gardens, woodworking, music, dance, and other things—Bocci kind of fell into an area by itself. None of the folklorists or anthropologists knew much about it. As a result, if you wandered over to the Bocci court, you were most likely met by an elderly Italian gentleman who would show you how to play the game. Word spread through the festival participants rapidly, and soon the spouses of participants who were accompanying wives and husbands began forming informal Bocci teams.

The court became one of the hidden successes of the festival. Because it was such a relaxed environment, staff began to take their off-duty moments at the Bocci court. Staff were drafted into teams, coached on technique, but allowed to play only when the game was very casual. There is nothing trivial about a match, no matter how relaxed the atmosphere. If you were spotted walking towards the court on a break, you might get asked, ” Going Bocci?” “Yeah, got a match.”
I don’t think the Bocci Court ever attracted the news organizations. It may have had more usage though than other areas of the festival. It was one of the elements that united many of those presenting and presented into a temporary community. This was so much so that many of their standout memories were of good times at the Bocci court.

*Pardon the colonialist usage of the word presenting. It implies that these very savvy people can’t speak for themselves, but it was part of the festival business’s terminology.

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Titanic

Salvaged from the Titanic, this carved panel still looks like the woodcarver finished yesterday despite having spent most of a century in the darkness of the North Atlantic.
I looked at the panel in front of me and lusted quietly after the skill that had created it. Have you ever wanted something so badly that it becomes a physical phenomenon? There had been an opportunity years ago to stay with my mentor and become an apprentice. Warburton had offered, I had declined. I wanted to go back on the road and bum my way to the west coast.
I might even be able to duplicate the panel now- given five years to do it in. My work turned in other directions, and the classical, neoclassical, and renaissance tropes I found engaging, but not enough to dedicate myself to learn.
When I did the Maine Boatbuilders show every spring, an older retiree would show up like clockwork at my booth. He had trained in a trade carver’s shop in France before World War II. Sometimes he’d take the opportunity to take over my bench. Once, he took a length of scrap, and using a small assortment of the tools I had there showed me how fast he could turn out two feet of fancy carved molding. Minutes. ” Once you learn, you’ll never really forget.” He smiled and left me hoping that he’d return the next day. Part of the difference between being self-taught and having worked in a craft/trade environment are all the methods you learn that make basic tasks easier, and basic tasks are the building blocks to the Secrets of the Masters.
It’s like going from the darkness of the North Atlantic into the light.