Professorial proverbs

Breakfast is a very interesting part of my day at the UPS. O Dio! That does not mean that the breakfasts are somehow outstanding in terms of the food selection. Here we have the usual continental breakfast which is made up of hot milk and coffee (the original caffelatte, or simply latte, as Starbuck fans have come to call it), bread, cheese, jam, some fruit… and because of our international makeup, there are usually some selections of cold cuts (salame, mortadella or perhaps prosciutto cotto) and yogurt.

What is special about breakfast, however, is not the servings but the conversations. While the student communities all go to their regular dining rooms for breakfast, the three professor communities join in a single little dining area. Most eat very quickly and go to get ready for class, but a few take a little longer (those who take advantage of the mortadella, you understand). The topics are always very interesting: scholarly pursuits, scientific discoveries, political contrasts, liturgical usage, international events… and often some cross cultural comparisons. Oh yes, like the student body, the body of professors at the UPS is quite diverse and international.

Today I heard something fascinating from Pio Scilligo, professor emeritus of psychology. He comes from the Tri-Veneto region, precisely from Alto Adige (Tirol for the Austrians). He was saying that as a boy he spoke his dialect only until he went to secondary school with the Salesians. As a young Salesian he volunteered for the missions and was sent to Hong Kong. There he learned Cantonese and English. He said that he found English very simple because it was very close to his dialect for syntax and vocabulary. It was easier for him to learn, he says, than was Italian… and of course, he is Italian by birth.

This is why he had no difficulty in studying at Stanford in the area of psychology: the language was easy for him. Amazing when you think of it. A little valley in the Italian Dolomites where the dialect was an old German that was closer to English than to German or Italian!

Well, across from Don Pio was Signor Pio dal Pozzolo, who is Piedmontese. The two began to repeat an old Venetian rhyme that was famous in the years when they were young. I'll repeat it here in Italian:

Padovani: gran dottori;
Veneziani: gran signori;
Vicentini: magnagatti,
Veronesi: tutti matti.

Translated, the little poem would mean this:

The people of Padua are all learned…
the people of Venice are refined and dignified…
The people of Vicenza are all cat eaters…
The people of Verona are all mad.

Cat eaters? Ah yes. In the history of the town, when once besieged by famine, the people of Vicenza eat cat to survive. This causes mirth among the rest of Italy to this day… and this makes the poem quite funny, since the term magnagatti is in Venician dialect, not Italian.

But the history is beside my point right now. I recall the little poem (and the political appraisal of the people of the Veneto region) not for the content but for the image that remains in my mind. There we were at table with the two old men, both in their 80s and both named Pio, who went from one old proverb to the next: a professor emeritus of pyschology and the retired plant manager for the university. The rest of us were all laughing at the folk humor and enjoying how the two elder Pios told their stories. We did not hurry from the breakfast table. Instead, we refilled our cups with more caffé latte.

A great way to start the day.