Titanic Soundtrack My heart will go on – Celine Dion

Every night in my dreams

I see you, I feel you

that is how I know you

go on...

Far across the distance

and spaces between us

you have come to show you

go on...

Near, far, wherever you are

I believe that the heart does go on

Once more you open the door 

and you're here in my heart and

my heart will go on and on

Love can touch us one time

and last for a lifetime

and never let go 'til

we're gone...

Love was when I loved you

one true time I hold to

in my life we'll always

go on...

Near, far, wherever you are

I believe that the heart does go on...

Once more you open the door

and you're here in my heart and

my heart will go on and on

You're here, there's nothing I fear

and I know that my heart will go on

We'll stay forever this way

you are safe in my heart and 

my heart will go on and on

Book review: “Signs grammar”

     Whoever has studied communication, knows the key aspects useful to realize that. Sender, message, and recipient can communicate through a shared code. And the organ that makes possible the information transfer is the channel. This element conditions the communication. It can be verbal or physical (optical, acoustic, electric...).

     The communication process has different levels of analysis:

- langage: it’s a set of cognitive processes derived from a psychic activity that is determined by  social life that regulates learning, acquisition and actual use of any language;

- langue: is the social product that is the result of social conventions used to communicate. It’s a system that articulates meanings;

- parole: it’s the concrete linguistic execution. But not for everyone. Not for the deaf-mute (deaf and dumb). Not for the deaf community, deaf people which have lost one of the senses. However, we shouldn’t consider it a defect, but rather an open passage on the possibility to develop and popularize a new language: the Italian Sign Language (LIS).

     The L.I.S. isn’t valid only for the insiders, but for all people who wish to learn this new code ferrying information through a new channel that is visual-gestural. Going back to the Greek and Latin etymology, we can discover the deeper meaning of communication i.e. the participation and the sharing.

     Furthermore, in an opening social context that is striving to new perspectives, can be useful or just interesting learning signs language that is a language for all effects.

     The book allows to get in touch not only with a new language, but also with an entire cultural system freeing ourselves from the everyday life of hearing people.

     Recall that ... the pioneer of the deaf language is the american linguist William Stokoe who published the first dictionary in the ’60s.

     This work presented, in the opening, historical outline about the evolution of observations on the deafness condition and of educational models adopted. 

     Author Orazio Romeo, Signs Grammar, Zanichelli, Bologna 1997, p. 160.

Bench with ice cream sticks

Book review: “Dictionary of collocations” Zanichelli

     In time of crisis (economic, moral and social) we invest more and more in frivolous areas, related to the appearance. As for education, we acquire qualifications which can’t boast a serious study, steady and responsible. What we need more, the salvation element is in us and is just waiting to be fed over time. But once it’ll be solid, no one will steal it. I speak about small instruments of lawful power, I talk about what breaks that horrible spiral of uniformity that’s so fashionable today.

     We demonstrate great care in choosing garments that we wear for a business dinner, gala or to face a job interview. But we pay as much attention to the words which, well combined, make winning our speeches? The answer is no. We care the outward appearance, but not the lexicon which is inexorably impoverished. The turnaround, however, is possible but not without a strong will to implement it. If you’re looking for a motive, I double, I’m offering two: the power of the word isn’t an urban legend, the linguistic fluency is a beauty which differs from the aesthetics one and clothes one for eternity and economy.

     The Dictionary of collocations, complete with CD–Rom, is an indispensable guide to building an effective and always unique lexicon because words are like Lego, can be combined in many ways generating a variety of linguistic constructions.

     The collocations are those linguistic expressions composed by two or more words that give life to phrases that will allow you to convey effective messages to all your interlocutors. This book is a small universe of Italian identity because it contains the typical collocations. It’s valid for native language and even more useful for foreigners who want to learn Italian.

     With this adventure companion you won’t be simple speeches organizers… you’ll become the undisputed manager of them and the best compliment that you’ll receive won’t affect the hairstyle or what you wear, but will be closer to “speak as well!”, “which lexical mastery!” and maybe it will be followed by “could you start on Monday?” (the context is obvious).

     Author Paola Tiberii, Dictionary of collocations, Zanichelli, Bologna 2012, p. 640. 

     Source: “La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno”, an italian newspaper, April 19, 2014, p. 24. 

Carvings. Bouquet with pineapple tutf

Bouquet with pineapple tutf and roses with citrus and apple peels

Time is a tyrant, don’t waste it!

Exactly two minutes before the official start, Mario Monti recites the opening speech of the 76th edition of the Fiera del Levante. The peculiarity of the ceremony leads us to reflect.

Have you ever wished you could exercise control over the time? Think about it, it’s possible and we already do it. And I’m not referring to the photograph or the cinema that allow us to travel back and forward in time evoking memories and scenarios of other times. I point the finger at the way we deal with everyday situations. When I ask for five minutes of time, will never occur a contraction, but an expansion of the same time that will diverge from what is required. Let’s think now to public offices: lethal, for employees, would be if they opened with a slight advance in order to dispose a row more than compact, it’s more likely that the office doors drawing an arc, opening, but always late. Let’s Teleport with the imagination at a conference. Start at 9.00 am on the poster, real start at 10.00 am, the time zone of another European city. The plot twist is in the middle of the conference, after the speakers were widely complained about the delay, because at some point we need a little break to reinvigorate the attention. It’s propose 10 minutes and will spend 30. The listeners, in the waves of public, notice of the time warp, but they don’t emit a breath. The deadline was set for 13.00, when by now people don’t think of anything else except the dish at the table, but it’s here that, using technical jargon, we go out of time.

Einstein argued that time ran in a subjective manner, meaning that it’s our perception of the passage of time that varies depending if the activity is more or less pleasant. In the archipelago of “Arturo’s Island” seems almost as if time has stood still for the meticulousness of details used by Elsa Morante in the descriptions. One of the sonnets of Petrarch’s Canzoniere opens with “Life runs and doesn’t stop an hour”. Life and time are equated. Life and time flows inexorably, for this is in that fleeting moment that we should strive to embed the joys of life. I propose Horatius Flaccus for the grand finale: “As we speak, the envious time will be escaped. Carpe diem (seize the moment), and of tomorrow trust as little as possible” (Odes, I, 11). Let’s meditate on these words that to the flow of time tyrant have resisted and let’s employ our energies in an exercise: to make sure that never a minute of our daily lives go to waste. It’s a matter of lancets. 

Source: “La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno”, an italian newspaper, September 17, 2012, p. 18.

Balloon sculptures. Corsair’s saber

Brain drain. Better play at home or go away?

     Not long ago the individual belonging to a developed country was aware of one thing: to live in a society based on the idea of solidarity and assistance, a society that offers the opportunity of an economic rise equal or higher than that of their parents. Access to the labor market was less opposed than today, but equally challenging. We worked hard and came home tired but able to appreciate the little things of everyday life. Then something changed. It’s now past the dreamlike idea that believe in themselves and strive allowed to reach the targets aspired. Today to the young person who crosses the threshold of university output aren’t made promises or encouragement, but addresses him/her an invitation to be flexible and competitive. Must be able to constantly update and mature novel ideas, even if this suggestion fails to calculate the physiological human limitations. In addition, we are encouraged to move away, not exactly volunteer, from their land of origin.

     Why resign ourselves to the "brain drain"? Away from home, from our native town, from our affection/attachment, seeking personal affirmation, forgetting that what is at stake is our identity, tied precisely to the roots. Even the sport teaches us that a team playing at home is stronger. About the question of "youth exile" I’m dually deployed.

     On the one hand I agree with the likely ideas that, if acquired abroad and developed at homeland, will determine new opportunities of growth for the country. In this regard, I remember the story of Giovan Battista Pirelli: son of a printer, he got a scholarship to go to France for six months in Michelin, where he studied the evolution of the rubber. He came back with a bag of notes about rubber industry and in 1872, with the help of bank investments, rose Pirelli industry.

     On the other hand, I urge readers to struggle ceaselessly to realize what has really worth for them. Believe in yourself, be bold, courageous, do not give never defeated. Make sure that the observation is not reduced to resignation, but feed your critical mind. Confront you with interlocutors who have many readings, qualifications and living and working experiences, and you will find, over time, that something makes you unassailable: your unyielding determination. 

     Source: "La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno", an italian newspaper, December 30, 2010, p. 42.

Carvings. Shark with watermelon

Don’t smile, now you can say it

Slutty attitude, becoming spinster (male or female)...

Don’t smile, now you can say it

The greek philosopher Heraclitus, who lived before the year zero, realized that everything flows, everything is in flux. He formulated the famous maxim, “You can’t step twice into the same river”. It was an amazing intuition since, by comparing the life of the fifth century BC and the life of the twenty–first century AD, the first would be steeped by rallenty effect. There’s nothing that can be static. Not even the language. It represents a communication system in which manifests the language, the set of cognitive processes common to all peoples. Language is a social product, the result of conventions of which word is the concrete linguistic execution that differs from country to country and even within it, as there are linguistic diversity: the dialects (vernacular languages). If the society is in constant evolution, the language reflects the inexorable flow too. There are extinct or death languages, have come to the terminus. They can be a subject of study, but no one talks using its words. However, to understand the etymology of a lemma, we go back to the old language in which every modern word has its roots.

Every year we wait it like a mystical event. This is the Zanichelli press release that announces the new Zingarelli edition with peculiar new words.

As society changes with dizzying pace, Zingarelli 2014 includes new words. Some of them make us smile, as “slutty attitude” and “becoming spinster (male and female)”, while others have the aura of a patent, as “hashtag” or “self publishing”. The vocabulary of the Italian language is enriched by neologisms, some acquired by Anglo–Saxon matrix. As in a quiz game we can have fun trying to guess the correct definition of “scrap dealer”: who propose to replace an executive team considered outdated. Enter the field also linguistic inventions such as “spread”, “feminicide”, “spending review”, “esodato (a worker without job and retirement)”. If you meet a person aged between 20 and 30 years old, he/she isn’t a young adult, but an “adultescent”. Because today’s society has made him/her a late teenager with precarious life and work conditions and with a perpetual student condition. Pathological gambling and compulsive is widespread? Let’s appeal to the “gambling addiction”. The human soul is always more prone to corruption and unscrupulous? We need an “ethicist”. Are you lost? Don’t panic, there’s the “geolocation”. Microsoft Word is underlining all the new words, will have to learn that can’t listen twice the same language. 

Source: “La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno”, an italian newspaper, Novembre 1, 2013, p. 24. 

Carvings. Calla lily with fennels and carrots

Book review: “Manual of writing and communication”

     In a social context in which the writers (often presumed) dominate, in numbers, the readers is necessary a manual as a guide to unravel the intricate world of everyday written and spoken communication. It’s a “vademecum” specified for the university and the company, but I would add for our life. Knowing how to write or speak in an appropriate way to every situations is often an underestimated subject, but omnipresent. Our son have to summarize a tale, the completion of a competition provides the writing of an essay, at the university is vital to know how to take notes for each lesson; at the end of academic studies we must realize a thesis, which involves choosing a topic, planning, gather information by reading books and articles, the final dissertation in public, we begin to hunt for a job armed with résumé; we drag grammar doubts as an Achilles’ heel, we are struggling with letters of different mold which imply different ways of writing, if sent them, or decryption, if received them, and then there’s the advanced Italian, a door of heaven for which not Peter, but your culture will allow you to open it and cross it.

     We facilitated by telematics which makes rapid communication, but it’s our task to overcome the insurmountable difficulties that arise from a neglected language. 

     Authors F. bruni – G. alfieri – S. fornasiero – S. tamiozzo goldman, Handbook of writing and communication. For the university and the company, Zanichelli, Bologna 2013, p. 544.

Crochet Barbie dress

Venture Capital: I understand what is the missing figurine

     The flexibility on the one hand deny us the conclusion of an employment contract for an indefinite period or turning on a mortgage, not to mention raising a family, and on the other hand requires us to wide-ranging shift, possibly abroad, to looking for a job.

     We contracted the virus that is globalization that has weakened our immune system, making us unable to respond to change, with the promise that the world-wide integration combined with the development of the Web would offer more job opportunities.

     History teaches us that the United States has been a beacon (lighthouse) for Europe, especially after the devastation of World War II, and it’s often from the United States that we have learned new ideas. I’m reminded one. Venture Capital are firms or entrepreneurs who are dealing with finance innovative ideas of those who can’t afford the costs associated with the start of the project. Finance and don’t ask for money, but enter into society and then gradually detach. It’s to a Venture Capital who have turned the young students founders of Google. In Italy there are thin forms, you could say in its embryonic phase.

     As a child I had an album that still guard jealously. I could not finish it, but I found the solution on the last page: "The publishing house Edigamma ensures that you have put up for sale figurine rare. The whole series was printed in the same amount and put on sale at the same time, so the album should be completed very easily. However to facilitate the completion of the album the Edigamma gives the possibility to request the missing figurines". I found the missing figurine "Venture Capital". Can I apply it? 

     Source "La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno", an italian newspaper, March 23, 2010, p. 27.

The normal heart soundtrack More than this – Roxy Music

I could feel at the time

There was no way of knowing

Fallen leaves in the night

Who can say where they're blowing

As free as the wind

And hopefully learning

Why the sea on the tide

Has no way of turning

More than this - there is nothing

More than this - tell me one thing

More than this - there is nothing

It was fun for a while

There was no way of knowing

Like dream in the night

Who can say where we're going

No care in the world

Maybe I'm learning

Why the sea on the tide

Has no way of turning

More than this - there is nothing

More than this - tell me one thing 

More than this - there is nothing

The exhausting hustle of being a woman

On the flap of the first book I reviewed there was an inscription: «Being a woman is a great mystery». That won me over immediately, but to my amazement I had to precede the professional need to understand the deep meaning to do reviewal justice to a text that propose to give voice to many of those women prey of cultural backwardness of their country. The feminine condition includes the mystery of life with the magic of pregnancy. Woman is a guarantee of reproduction and continuity in a world that has never given them a place of honor on the social convoy. With a quick and concise digression I’m trying to draft the stages experienced in the historic itinerary  stained with pink.

In the past the woman was subjugate by men (father, brother, husband) and too often abused. With the evolution of society, the fair sex has found itself immersed in a context that condemns it. Like a tightrope walker the modern woman, always busy, achieves high levels of study; pursues the ambition of being a worker, with her eyes fixed on her biological clock, finds a presumed life partner and gives birth to the offspring; sees reduced the time available for her, but she can’t count on the collaboration of her husband (is rare). The Italian society doesn’t grant services that permit the reconciliation of the many areas of her life because Italy is the tail–end in Europe in terms of family policies. For example is very small the number of business nurseries, real circles reserved for few elected. In addition, the qualifications obtained with sacrifices, not yet allow her to occupy important job positions, a clear sign of androcracy.

Recently, it has outlined a new phenomenon that seems not destined to end. This is the feminicide. It’s unclear if we can speak of a degeneration of sexism that pragmatically demonstrated the physical superiority of men over women. However, it’s a gender violence, domestic and otherwise, perpetrated against women which is/was connected. Statistics have now developed macabre bulletins, in newscasts never fails the news that we wouldn’t want to hear. What’s happening? Often the woman has agreed to stand as an object of desire with the help of the media system, but there’s an insurmountable barrier that every mother should tell to their son: respect towards women. On this you mustn’t discuss, ever. 

Source: “La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno”, an italian newspaper, March 22, 2014 , p. 24.