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