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machine to show them with....and then there is the problem of outdated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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