1510 Mamma Margaret filmstrip revisited
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either disintegrated by now or if not, nobody can find a machine to show them with....and then there is the problem of outdated text.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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