I was strolling through the neighborhood park yesterday when I became aware of that sign beyond the trail. The large 'P' stood out amongst the surrounding trees, and for whatever reason, it reminded me of an incident from back when I was a graduate student at UCLA. I was working part-time at the art library (the art department had its own slide library for the use of art history professors). It may have been just my imagination due to the fact that I was the lone painter surrounded by art historians every day, but during my stint there I always felt a subtle competitive attitude existed between the fine arts majors and art history majors -- that the art history majors were smug about the academic nature of their field and dismissive about the studio majors as unintellectual daubers and cobblers, and the studio majors considered themselves the creators of things of honesty and lasting value, without which the whole subject of art history would not exist.
Anyhow, one day something happened that was fairly trivial in itself, but it served to cement my belief in the mutual friction. I don't remember the exact context, but one of the regular patrons, a graduate student, was having a discussion with another member of the staff, and happened to mention that in modern Italian the letter 'J' is not used. So I chimed in to correct her, pointing out that the Neapolitan dialect does use the letter. And... she turned to me with a Look of Pure Hatred and said Yes, but it's not pronounced like the English 'J', to which I almost responded Yes, I know that, but we were talking about the letter itself, not its pronunciation, that she had suddenly changed the 'universe of discourse' -- almost, but I held myself in check. Because... well, she was obviously not used to being contradicted and I didn't want to inflame her further, and besides, what would it have accomplished for me to press the point? It would only have made me look petty.
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