austraLasia
1510
Old idea, new
format - you may find it useful
ROME: 30th
March 2006 -- Back in the 1960's, Turin produced lots of filmstrips on
Salesian topics - included amongst which was a set on the life of Mamma Margaret
(which was, effectively, also the life of Don Bosco). The trouble is that
nobody shows filmstrips anymore, and if they are still lying around in
cupboards, they have either disintegrated by now or if not, nobody can find a
machine to show them with....and then there is the problem of outdated
text.
An enterprising Salesian in Recife, Brazil, is
dedicating his life to solving many simple communication problems, and he sends
out a weekly bulletin which I happen to receive. Even though it is
sometimes hard-going ploughing through Brazilian Portuguese (I have to be
careful as the Fr Scaramussa reads austraLasia!) I was delighted this morning to
see that Fr. Luiz de Liberali - the man from Recife - has taken the old
filmstrip about Mamma Margaret and turned it into a powerpoint
presentation. He has left out the bells and
whistles, but used a range of texts, including some of Teresio Bosco's
and the MO, naturally, to provide an improved textual backing for the set.
It wasn't such a difficult task to translate those slides into English, since
like most Salesians, I kind of knew the story off by heart anyway! And I use
translation software which halves the difficulty.
The
powerpoint set on Mamma Margaret is now available and can be downloaded from the
'Useful texts' page in Bosconet.
While it is not the kind of thing you'd be wanting to use for the next community
meeting, it would be excellent in a number of settings that I can think of
immediately - as an introduction for young people who know nothing about Mamma
Margaret; in lower grades at school (say age 12 or below); as a good story for
EOT (English as Other Tongue) classes of any age or stage, since the text is not
difficult and comes in brief paragraph form; in the context of a prayer service
for Mamma Margaret's birthday on 10th April. No doubt there could be other
uses. Enjoy!
GLOSSARY
bells and
whistles: a phrase referring to extra bits like sound tracks, fancy
effects with text dropping on and all the
rest.
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