Good morning!

A new working day is gonna start. Still not completely awake, i go to open the door to the terrace/garden and i let the dogs out for any kind of answer to the call of Nature, and i put the coffeepot on. I go back to the bathroom and i finally get awake with some cold water on my face. When i go back in the kitchen the coffee is ready.

Today's breakfast

Some of my blogger friends know that i am under a diet, but the breakfast, it's known, is the most important meal of the day, so, there i am to set a healty plate to start the day in the best way.

Here it is my breakfast for today: one peach, a kiwi, some corn flakes, some yogurt, a cup of coffee (i like it black with no sugar) and a couple of toasted bread. Sometimes i add also a glass of fruit juice, a few of milk, a slice of cake or a couple of cookies.
Obviously the type of fruit depends upon the availability of the fridge and the season: cantaloup, plums, apricots are common variations. It will be more difficult to find some alternative during the winter.

Considering that since few times ago i couldn't swallow anything else than the cup of coffee, this is a big qualitative leap, isn't it?

What do you like to eat for breakfast?

Chagrin d'école

Who would ever believe? Daniel Pennac, the teacher, when he was a boy he was a dunce.

But not a dunce-genius, like Einstein, who was bad at school because he had in mind something more important and creative. A dunce because he was not capable of understanding.
The self-analysis a posteriori of this experience helps the teacher Pennac to find out the dunce-saver teaching method. That, in fact, doesn't look like a great revelation. One needs only to identify in the dunce and find a stimulus for him, since he, alone, obviously cannot find any.
The problem is that as one understands less, the more he keeps on not understanding. He is not helped by school to comprehend subjects, but instead accused of not committing himself, or even to do it on purpose.

Daniel Pennac

The student for sure doesn't do it on purpose (he's no fool!). Instead he tries to find the way to understand, but, if not well driven, his path will be crowned with such failures to make him believe to be too stupid to do this. And this presumed stupidity discourages him to the point to give up trying to learn.
For the teacher, the epitome of the student is the intelligent young man that grasps subjects all of the sudden, asks interesting questions, and, enthused by the lesson, studies and prepares for the next one. The real function of school, instead, shouldn't be applied only to that student, but most of all to the dunce. The one that doesn't study because he didn't even understand how to study. In a school where the teacher feels rewarded by the easy success with the intelligent student, there is no space for the dunce, who will then feel excluded. He, himself, should instead be the one that needs school more!
The process of intellectual growth consists (also) in accepting the rules. But passively accepting the rules doesn't mean growing at all! So, an educative method based on the imposition of rules is doomed to fail. And for this, Pennac says, we need a thing that sounds almost like a blasphemy, in pedagogical environment: love.

In my school career i was very good in some subjects. I could say that on my behalf, the epitome mentioned above could be applied. But in other subjects i was terrible, and the reasons were exactly the ones described by Pennac in his book. If i had some teachers that showed me the way for History and Literature i could have an easier school-life. Nowadays i like those subjects. I can understand them! But at those times i didn't know i could. And i didn't know because nobody ever told me.
I can remember now the Italian and Latin teacher, and the English one (i was very good in Latin language and i had a good property og language in English, but Italian, Latin or English Literature!!!). I remember also the teacher of History and Philosophy. What a pain!
This last, in particular, was completely hopeless in teaching (upon Pennac's measure), but her enthusiasm for the subjects she taught could almost be touched in any of her lessons.
I couldn't understand, neither History nor Philosophy. Then, on a good day, i had a test about the philosopher Pascal (of which now i've completely forgotten). I remember that that day, instead of trying to repeat the lesson like a parrot, i decided to strongly support my own point of view (i always had a silent one), unfortunately it was never the orthodox one). Even though i would have a bad valuation, it was worth making use of my pride. I remember the surprised and incredulous expression of the teacher discovering my critical mind. In the beginning she looked almost condemning of my "arrogance", but then with the test going on, her belief that i was dumb begun to disintegrate. I remember that she asked The Nerd of the class to participate, and then it came out a discussion between me and him, under the disbelieving eyes of the rest of my classmates. It was the first good valuation in Philosophy. The first of a long list.
This episode for sure helped me in the average valuation for Philosophy, but it didn't modify anything in my results on Italian, Latin and English Literature or History. In those subjects i continued to be the usual dunce. It helped me, instead, to grow my self-esteem. I understood that if i wanted, i could make it.
But the English teacher, the Italian and Latin one, and even the the History and Philosophy teacher were so obtuse! My success in Philosophy clearly showed, in their mind, that i was a dunce because i didn't study enough. I did it on purpose! Not worthy enough for them to consider the idea of helping me!

It would have been nice to have a teacher like Pennac.

"Diario di scuola" ["Chagrin d'école"] is essentially the description of the educational method, applicable to the role of a teacher, but in my opinion also to the one of a parent. Sometimes the flow of the book becomes too much simplified: i don't believe that the teaching world could clearly be divided in goods and bads, and i don't even believe that "dunceness" is so easily definable. School and, in general, the young world is more complex than how Pennac shows. Anyway, in my opinion it's a book that is worth reading. The former dunces can stop to feel alone in their dunceness and discover that it is an experience common also to other people. Parents and teachers can be driven in the difficult task to help the dunce. Everybody else can see that they have been only a little bit more lucky not to suffer such a condition.

And what about you? Were you dunces or nerds? Or, like me, "so and so"?

By Pennac i've already read (twice!) the whole hexalogy (in the original language it was an eptalogy) of di Benjamin Malaussène: "Il paradiso degli orchi" ["Au bonheur des ogres"], "La fata Carabina" ["La fée carabine"], "La Prosivendola" ["La petite marchande de prose"], "Signor Malaussène" ["Monsieur Malaussène"], "Ultime notizie dalla famiglia" ["Monsieur Malaussène au théâtre" and "Des Chretiens et des maures"], "La passione secondo Thérèse" ["Aux fruits de la passion"].
Moreover i read also "Signori Bambini" ["Messieurs les enfants"], and the comics "Gli Esuberati" ["La débauche"].

I liked everything that i've read by this author.

Demonstration

Today there is the demonstration against the "processes lock" law by Berlusconi at 6:00pm, Piazza Navona, Rome. Too bad not being able to be there.
Besides the promoters, Furio Colombo, Paolo Flores d'Arcais, Francesco "Pancho" Pardi, also Antonio di Pietro, Dario Fo, Andrea Camilleri, Margherita Hack, Sabina Guzzanti, Ascanio Celestini, Moni Ovadia, Rita Borsellino, Marco Travaglio, Dacia Maraini, Gianni Vattimo will participate.

MicroMega.

Even George W. Bush looks like he understood the real nature of The Dwarf!

Ingrid Betancourt is free!

La Repubblica
Corriere della Sera
Cnn
Time
The New York Times
BBC
El Expectador
El Colombiano
El Tiempo
Le Monde
El Pais

Grandpa Gino's apricots

I read some place that visual memory, in human beings, is more persistent than the one coming from the other senses.
The colors of summer in my grandparents' garden, for example, are still alive in my mind, after more than thirty years.

One detail, in that garden, almost summarizes my childhood: the apricot tree.
An ancient, huge tree, that matched in similar size a fig tree at the opposite end.
Grandpa's apricot tree used to produce tons of fruits that matured all contemporarily in few days, and in those days incredible amounts of fruit were shared with relatives, friends and neighbors because in those times, nothing was to be wasted. The excess that still remained after the distribution was transformed by my mother and the other women in the family into so much jam that one could swim in it, and came into good use for the rest of the year.
The picture of that fruit is really evocative to me, but i thought i had forgotten its taste. It's been awhile that i've eaten apricots that taste like apricots. Possibly around thirty years since the ones i eat now are bought only at the supermarket. They don't taste like anything because, for commercial reasons, they had been picked still green and matured on the shelves.
The other day i bit into an apricot bought at the GAS i was speaking about in the previous post. All of a sudden my memory flew to grandparents' garden with myself, knees all dirty and greasy, playing with my brother as if it happened yesterday.

Here, our second shopping list at the GAS:

• 1kg [2lb and 3.27oz] homemade bread loaf with walnuts - 3.95€
• 1kg bread loaf with spelt, pumpkin seeds and oats - 3.95€
• 1kg "Pugliese" bread loaf, with flour 0 and wheat bran - 3.10€
• 1kg "Tranvai" bread loaf, with flour 0, rasins and apricot - 2.50€
• 500g [1lb and 1.63oz] organic apricots - 2.10€
• 1kg organic nectarines - 3.40€
• 1kg five grain cereal - 3.55€
• 1l [2.11pt] dish detergent - 1.50€
• 1.470kg [3lb and 3.85oz] cantaloupe - 4.70€

Total: 28.75€

In particular, beneath the apricots, the cantaloupe and the loaves are very good.
This time the shopping was ordered in advance, and i collected it in another place, convenient because of the close proximity to our home (even if still reachable only by car). Unfortunately this is only a pick-up location, and dry and surplus products are not available to buy with no reservation.
The waste of packaging was almost nothing: one (parcially broken) carton box, saved from some product supply, two used paper bags for the bread, one used plastic bag for the apricots and one for the cereals, one used plastic bottle for the detergent, to be returned. Peaches and cantaloupe with no packaging.

GAS

Don't worry! This post is not about fuel for your car nor flatulency; it's the unfortunate acronym of "Gruppo di Acquisto Solidale" ["Solidarity Shopping Group"].
This acronym identifies pretty much the spontaneous and organized associations of people who, tired of the philosophy of consumer consumption at any rate, decide to give an ethical stamp to their purchases.
It's a while since i've discovered this concept by chance, and i began to become informed through the Internet that there is plenty of GAS located all over Italy (this is the website that collects all of them).

Fair trade bananas campaign

Not far from home i found three of them, and i decided to visit the nearest one (la Comunità della Sporta), which looks, among them, also the best organized.

The concept is simple: since a big part of the cost of a product is given by the intermediate trades from hand to hand between the producer and the consumer, simply removing those trades, the product dissipates less in its value. Therefore, GAS tries to use that savings to give ethical dignity to those goods.
The peculiarities of this type of commerce can be listed essentially in these points:

• The producer is compensated the right amount. The GAS doesn't "fleece" the producer as it often does the traditional trade. This feature may not be very important for some Italian producers, who can choose the best offering. But certainly it is for those in Third World counties where labor is overworked, if not reduced to slavery, and even involves children. GAS guarantees that their products do not rise from these practices.
  
• For those products where it applies, local sources are preferred. This philosophy allows to cut the (economical and ecological) costs to move the goods. Beneath the expense, infact, pollution given by the transportation must be considered. Of course for some products this principle doesn't make sense, for example tropical fruits cannot obviously be bought at the Italian producer, but for the majority this cost can be eliminated.
  
• Agricultural goods and their by-products are of optimum quality with the importance stressed on being environment-friendly. GAS infact prefers organic products, and by compensating producers with fair earnings, it allows them to conform to this type of cultivation. Product tracking is made easier by the proximity between producer and consumer, as well as direct contact (they also organize tours to the producers' farms and factories). Moreover, shortened delivery time favors nature's biological cycles (fruit matured on the tree is much better than the one matured on the shelves of the supermarkets).
  
• In GAS they also try to reduce the use of unnecessary packaging, decreasing the obvious waste and polluting materials within the environment. To tell the truth, for some products, this is not always possible, but under this point of view the situation is drastically better than the traditional distribution. For example some detergents are sold "on tap", and one can buy them only if he brings his own proper container. There is, moreover, a careful attention to biodegradability of sold products. For example, the detergents sold at "la Sporta" are all 100% biodegradable.
  
• GAS also tries to minimize the waste of perishable goods. I suppose that every Gruppo d'Aquisto Solidale adopts different methods to obtain this goal. At "la Sporta" fresh products are distributed in 2-week cycles: during one week one can pick up products that have been reserved two weeks before. Often there is excess of fresh products available that can be bought also without any reservation, but it is just a minimum part.

It is possible to shop at "la Sporta" after subscribed to the association (the fee is 9€ a year or 3€ a four-months period). Whoever is subscribed is given a user name and a password that allows online shopping. Who manages the shop does it as a voluntary service. In fact, at the time of the subscription one undertakes atleast twenty hours a year to help manage the service (receive the providers, welcome the customers, manage the store, the website, prepare the reserved goods...)
An encouraging principle is that unlike the traditional channels of consumer trade, nothing is gained from offering one product over another.

A thing that, indeed, i find a little "uncomfortable", in the GAS (at leat at "la Sporta") is the need of reservation in advance for the perishable products. It's difficult to be ready to satisfy a sudden desire of strawberries and cream if the strawberries have to be reserved eight-fifteen days before! But i suppose this is the price to pay to allow us to avoid useless wastes.

An obvious critic to this type of commerce is in the fact that, eliminating the intermediate trades of the goods between the producer and the consumer, one eliminates also those jobs that within those trades receive their profits. If i buy peaches at the GAS that stocks up from the produce next door instead of the supermarket that buy them in Spain, it is obvious that those peaches don't need to be transported, with obvious loss to the truck driver.
This is true. The price that is paid for buying the product goes almost entirely to the producer and who is involved in the production cycles, and so that value is redistributed less within the population.
But this is another reason i like philosophy of GAS. Uselessly dispersing the value of a good is typical of consumerism. Clearly GAS put much less money in circulation than how traditional trade does, and it is absurd to think to place this problem only to who has the misfortune to be employed in one of the jobs that can be reduced. But it is also true that the wealth that is used to finance those jobs is the one that does not produce any useful good (or service).
In other words, buying a useless product provides the society exactly the wealth just enough to finance the production of that useless good (or service). In order to exist, consumerism imposes us to work to acquire a wealth that we need to buy what somebody else produced. And so we are driven to buy it even if we don't need it.

Let's work less. We will be poorer and we won't have enough money to buy useless things. Somebody can like this or not, but for sure it saves resources on a global scale, it pollutes less, and, if widely applied, it reduces the differences between the poor and the rich because it allows everyone to buy what they really need.

Anyway, I like GAS because, if widely appplied, it revolutionizes the system in favor of a more just, sustainable, impartial, ecological economy.

It would be nice to progressively substitute consumeristic economy with the one of GAS, but to do this, prices must be kept competitive with the traditional trade, because the consumer (sometimes understandably, some other times less) at the end must deal with his wallet.
As much as i can say from my experience, today, the products at "la Sporta" have about the same prices one can find at the grocery stores, but they have a bigger value given not only from the quality point of view (they are all organic products), but also the ethical one.

Here it goes our first shopping-experiment at the GAS:

• 530g [1lb and 2.69oz] of fair-trade bananas AltroMercato - with no packing (2.56€ a kg [5.64€ a lb]).
• one kg [2lb and 3.27oz] loaf of "pugliese" artisanal organic bread, natural rising, with flour 0 and wheat bran - with no packing (3.10€ a kg [6.83€ a lb])
• one pack with 51 toasted bread slices Il Fior di Loto - packed in a plastic sheet with a paper label (3.35€ a 450g [15.87oz] pack).
• 2 bottles of rice oil "delicate and natural" from organic agriculture Zibra - in glass bottles, with paper label and metal cap (2.40€ a 0.5l [1.06pt] bottle - 30% off because close to the expiration date).
• one pack of organic rice noodles - plastic bag (2.85€ a 500g [1lb and 1.63oz]).

Total: 13.85€.

Since it was the first shopping, made when subscribed, it was not possible to reserve the two weeks before, and in fact the goods we bought are long-life products or dry goods, except bread and bananas that were a surplus.
We are now waiting to get next shopping, reserved online last weekend. I'll tell you about it.

Osteria Burligo

Among the restaurant we choose from the SlowFood guide, rarely it happens to visit one a second time.
On one side we like infact to try new restaurants, in order to taste different cookings, on the other side often it happens to choose restaurants situated very far from home, or because we are so attracted by the description to decide to drive alos several kilometers, or because it happens more often to go to the restaurant when we are on holiday.

An exception is Osteria Burligo. It is enough close to home, but that's not for sure the main reason we visited it for the third time.
Burligo, a village of Palazzago, is enough close to Bergamo, but somehow far from the main roads: impossible to go there by chance. If one arrives till here, it's because he really wants to come.
The environment is very simple. There is an entrance hall where there is the bar, and the main dining room, where there are about ten tables. More than that, in the good season one can also take a seat outside on the terrace. It's in front of the road, but it is pleasant because the road is never busy, and there is a nice view on the front mountain side.
This time we sit in the dining room.
Norma usually is in the kitchen, while the guests are welcome by Felice, excellent host, apart from being a great wine expert.

Synthesi
Aglianico del Vulture
by Paternoster

The cooking is extremely simple, and the elegance of the flavors is given mostly by the quality of the ingredients and the masterly matches. Speaking about simplicity, in a previous visit of ours i was impressed by a salad of caulifleurs and broccoletti, steamed and arranged on the plate like a crown, on which there was a sauce of olive oil and anchoves. Minimalist, but terrific.
This time we had only one hors-d'oeuvre made of a steamed bell-pepper divided in four and pealed, with a sauce of capers and tuna, very tasty.
As first plates we had tagliolini d'ortica (with nettle in the dough), with pancetta (pork underbelly) and sheep ricotta, excellent, very delicate, and lasagnette with salami paste (unfortunately they were out of lasagnette, so they substituted them with more tagliolini d'ortica), a more definite flavor given by the ragu of salami meat.
Then we shared a second plate: boiled tongue with sweet-and-sour vegetables, very good that too.
The wine selection is well furnished. We chose an Aglianico del Vulture "Synthesi" by Paternoster, which well matched to the courses.
One dessert (strawberries and gelato) and one coffee completed our dinner.
58 euros.

Osteria Burligo
Via Burligo 12,
Burligo, Palazzago (BG)