- I was baptised on Christmas day 1990, aged 8 (if I err not). I kept the certificate with my Sheffield City Council 50m and 400m swimming certificates for some time. Little bit of filing humour for you there.
- I was nicknamed 'Dino' in my GCSE sociology class. Ostensibly this was because I resembled a pterodactyl.
- I am continually bewildered by polarisation; why, for example, can't orthodox and liberal Catholics find more common ground? Why, for example, are left-wing concerns so different to right-wing concerns?
- Contrary to what may appear to be the case, I don't hate Robbie Williams and Davina McCall. I just think life would be better if they were out of the charts, the news, the telly, the radio - as applicable. Fortunately in Italy no-one's heard of Davina McCall.
- Mmm. Russian classical music. Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev... so good.
- I really miss my old choir at Sacred Heart.
- I can't quite get over the fact that PCs still exist and Amigas don't. An injustice that is quite emblematic of what is wrong with the world, to my mind. I even took an Amiga to university to write my essays with (of course) but I did cave in and got one of Bill Gates' soulless boxes before the end.
- Since I married in August, I have slept in a real double-bed on but one occasion.
- Monica is envious of my eyelashes. Apparently they look as though I use mascara on them. For the record, I don't.
- I really appreciate confession. I had cottoned on to it's practical utility well before I entered the Church. I feel a bit sorry for those who live their Christian life without it, for whatever reason.
- I went through a phase at university of leaving the house barefoot, especially to go to Mass at the university chaplaincy when it was practically across the road. Monica found this fascinating at the time, but she would never let me do it now we're married. I can only assume she doesn't want other young women exposed to the raw sexual magnetism of my naked feet.
- For more or less the duration of my teenage years, I wrote music on my computer. It's here.
- I can't click my fingers. I seem to get by all the same.
- For a while I've nursed a vague desire to eat a locust. Not any locust in particular. That probably sounds very grim, but they're a bit like flying prawns I suppose, and I've no trouble with them. I have no desire whatsoever to eat anything's testicles however; that's a delicacy too far.
- I think 'Ulysses' by Joyce is not worth my time. He can write a boring, impenetrable lump of words if he wants to and then expect the adulation of the modern world, but balls to him if he wants me to read it.
- Although I think (and this is not a consensus view) that I'm generally pretty laid-back, I can get very competitive. On the other hand, this only occurs when I think I have a realistic chance of winning. If I'm not good at something, I tend to just leave it to other people. I suppose this isn't a very sporting attitude.
- Probably my favourite grammatical error is the double superlative a) because it sounds funny when you hear one and b) because it has a nice name.
- I am (or was in England anyway) continually disturbed by the number of men that don't wash their hands after going to the toilet. Euggh. I think we're talking about a majority here.
- Crisps: what the hell is the point of crisps? They don't fill you up, they're unhealthy, and every flavour is disappointing. Write to your MP.
- For several years now, I've wanted to own a filing cabinet. Not ardently, you understand, but consistently nonetheless.
- I'm very sceptical about the religious benefits of faith-schools. I don't think (all other things being equal) that I want my children to go to one.
- When I buy a new bit of kit, I like to read the instructions fully. I don't like the idea of not being fully appraised of all the functionality that I've just shelled out for. I did think that this was just a man thing, but it seems to me that a lot of men prefer not to read manuals. Perhaps this is because they feel that if they work out how to use it on their own, they're as good as whoever invented it.
- When I was young and foolish, I decided to commit 'Shine Jesus Shine' to memory. Happily, those days are behind me.
- My earliest memories (which may be lies, dreams, or both) involve me falling (or perhaps being pushed) down the stairs and a horde of ladybirds flying into my eyes.
- I thought I had brown eyes until Monica said they were green. Brown, green, it's all good.
Monday, 9 February 2009
25 Random Things
Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
Prayer Request
Monica's mum has had an accident. She fell and fractured a vertebra. Now she's got a month of ceiling-staring to look forward to, with attendant problems.
Could you send a few prayers her way? Thanks.
Could you send a few prayers her way? Thanks.
Sunday, 1 February 2009
St. Anthony again
Hi etymology fans,
Not every day that the church newsletter gives you an etymological factoid, but this week, yes:
Not every day that the church newsletter gives you an etymological factoid, but this week, yes:
For those who have come recently to Offagna, [the feast of St. Anthony] remains little understood because they don't know the meaning of the distribution of the blessed bread. In a time in which bread is not highly regarded, it should be a symbol of brotherhood and union. The word 'companion' ['compagno'] derives from bread: The Latins said "Cum pane", that is, being in agreement and being friends because they ate the same bread; we should be like this as well.
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Doxology
When Catholics and Protestants pray the Our Father together, there's usually an awkward moment at the end when the Catholics stop praying and the Protestants carry on. That's because we treat the doxology separately from the prayer itself. I recall seeing a footnote in one bible of mine that said that the doxology wasn't found in the earliest texts, which probably explains it in part. In a mass, they're both said quite close together anyhow. I don't intend to do a proper analysis of the doxology here, but I'll give a Young's Literal Translation style treatment.Padre nostro, che sei nei cieli,'Yours is the reign, yours the power and the glory in the ages.'
sia santificato il tuo nome,
venga il tuo regno, sia fatta la tua volontà,
come in cielo così in terra.
Dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano,
e rimetti a noi i nostri debiti
come noi li rimettiamo ai nostri debitori,
e non ci indurre in tentazione, ma liberaci dal male.
Tuo è il regno, tua la potenza
e la gloria nei secoli.
e non ci indurre in tentazione, ma liberaci dal male. #2
inPadre nostro, che sei nei cieli,
sia santificato il tuo nome,
venga il tuo regno, sia fatta la tua volontà,
come in cielo così in terra.
Dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano,
e rimetti a noi i nostri debiti
come noi li rimettiamo ai nostri debitori,
e non ci indurre in tentazione, ma liberaci dal male.
I'm not sure if there's even a corresponding Italian word for 'into', here they use 'in', meaning 'into', in any case.
liberaci
The imperative of 'liberare' ('liberate', 'free') and the same pronoun as last time, meaning 'us' - 'liberaci'
(il) male
Now, I haven't really checked this, but it often happens that in Italian, if you stick the definite article before an adjective, it works thusly:
bello - il bello
beautiful - the beautiful one
In the biblical Greek, I seem to recall, you can legitimately translate into English as 'deliver us from evil' and 'deliver us from the evil one', so I wouldn't be surprised (even though 'male' means 'badly' and consequently is an adverb rather than an adjective) if the Italian gives the same pleasing ambiguity.
Amen.
Friday, 23 January 2009
e non ci indurre in tentazione, ma liberaci dal male.
non indurre
sia santificato il tuo nome,
venga il tuo regno, sia fatta la tua volontà,
come in cielo così in terra.
Dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano,
e rimetti a noi i nostri debiti
come noi li rimettiamo ai nostri debitori,
e non ci indurre in tentazione, ma liberaci dal male.
The negative form of the imperative using the 'tu' form (that is, 'you' - familiar) is spectacularly easy: you put 'non', which usually means 'not', in front of the infinitive (usually the -are, -ere, and -ire forms of the verb) and you're done.
'indurre' means 'induce' or 'lead', so 'non indurre' means 'don't lead'.
ci
It seems I can't get away with not running through the direct object pronouns. We looked at 'lo', 'la', 'li' and 'le' last time. I shall have to fill in the gaps. Here's the table again:
| Subject Pronouns | Unstressed Direct Object Pronouns | Unstressed Indirect Object Pronouns | Stressed Indirect Object Pronouns |
| io | mi | mi | a me |
| tu | ti | ti | a te |
| lui | lo | gli | a lui |
| lei | la | le | a lei |
| Lei | La | Le | a Lei |
| noi | ci | ci | a noi |
| voi | vi | vi | a voi |
| loro | li, le | gli | a loro |
So the 'ci' we have here is the one in bold above, and means 'us'.
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
The News from Lake Wobegon...
...where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.
I was introduced to Garrison Keillor through BBC 7 radio, who started broadcasting his shows, a mix of music, storytelling, sketches and other shenanigans a little while ago in England. He is an American with a very soothing voice, and one of my favourite sections of his shows was The News from Lake Wobegon, where he talks about the goings on in his hometown.
Now it's available as a podcast. Hooray!
I was introduced to Garrison Keillor through BBC 7 radio, who started broadcasting his shows, a mix of music, storytelling, sketches and other shenanigans a little while ago in England. He is an American with a very soothing voice, and one of my favourite sections of his shows was The News from Lake Wobegon, where he talks about the goings on in his hometown.
Now it's available as a podcast. Hooray!
come noi li rimettiamo ai nostri debitori,
noi
sia santificato il tuo nome,
venga il tuo regno, sia fatta la tua volontà,
come in cielo così in terra.
Dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano,
e rimetti a noi i nostri debiti
come noi li rimettiamo ai nostri debitori,
We've come across 'noi' before, with the first verb conjugation. I won't check, but I will have said that even though 'noi rimettiamo' means 'we remit', the 'noi' part meaning 'we', usually the 'noi' would be omitted.
In this case it isn't left out. Our forgiveness is dependent on the fact that we "forgive [our] brother from [our] heart", and consequently the 'noi' emphasises that we have to forgive before we can expect any forgiveness from God.
li
More pronouns for you:
lo, la, li, le
Those are some unstressed direct object pronouns. There are more, but these ones can be looked at together quite independently, so I will.
You remember I hope that direct objects are the ones directly affected by the verb? That is, in the following example, the word 'it' is the direct object.
He gave it to me.
'lo' and 'la' can both be translated as it, but 'lo' can also mean 'him', and 'la' can also mean 'her'. Of course, you use 'lo' where the pronoun stands for something masculine, and 'la' for something feminine.
More simply, 'li' and 'le' can both be translated as 'them', referring to both people and things. 'li' for masculine (in the plural), and 'le' for feminine (in the plural.
So 'li' means 'them'. 'li' here stands for the 'debiti' that we forgive our debtors.
Monday, 19 January 2009
Sunday: Autism
Just a little note to say that there's an item on autism in Sunday this week, involving a minister with an autistic son, on the issue of pre-natal screening. I don't know if I'm recommending it as such, but I thought perhaps Neil or someone else might like to know.
St. Anthony
A little while ago, James blogged about a tradition of marking homes with blessed chalk for Epiphany, and that, being Catholics in (post-post-modern?) England, they had no idea about it until it was too late for this year. (I imagine that further google-based research resulted in him finding this.)
I think it was Ella who then asked me via e-mail (I imagine a hopeful tone in her voice) whether we at least did it here in Catholic-land. (We didn't.)
Rather, in England, you've (presumably) all missed out on the St. Anthony celebrations!
The Italians seem to like St. Anthony, and celebrate his feast in various ways, none of which is on English wikipedia, so maybe I'll put something there.
The first thing, chronologically, would be that many hundreds, and thousands, and other units of number, of bread rolls are made, by hand if I understand correctly, by volunteers for the occasion, blessed in the churches and distributed door to door. It's customary to give an offering to the parish, and you then get a number in the raffle (I know, I know) with such solidly Italian prizes as meat and wine.
The rolls are basically eaten just like any other bread rolls would be at dinner, with the cold meats, and used as a means for recovering residual olive oil from one's plate. I was told this, but the idea that blessed bread would probably have some kind of low-key ceremony was quite fixed in my mind, so I waited to see what everybody else did with theirs before I committed myself. If I had any sense I would have taken some photos of all this, but it seems that I don't.
It was good bread.
You also get fried sweets around this time, a bit like doughnuts. Castagnole, they're called, and Monica and her Mum made some. The closest thing I can think of is ring-doughnuts, but perhaps they're a little more dense, and the dough is flavoured somehow.
Next thing would be that, after the 11:00 mass, people come to the piazza to have their stuff blessed. I use the word "stuff" for exactitude. St. Anthony would seem to be a patron of quite a lot of things. People bring their pets to be blessed (with those holy water sprinkly things) because he's the patron of all animals. Some of the dogs didn't seem to want to bless each other though. Children bring their toys to be blessed - I don't know why. People also bring their tractors. Until the moment I actually saw them I thought I had perhaps misunderstood, for I had been advised of this also, but no, there were proper agricultural tractors parked up by the piazza for the holy water treatment. Again, no photos - silly me. Because this is Italy, while a hardcore group of people tried to listen to the blessing and the prayers and work out when they were meant to cross themselves, the rest got down to the serious business of having a chat.
Later on in the same day was a little, um, event, in the youth club. There was more than one apprently. We went to the one that was not marked out as being for youth. There were many older Italian ladies there. I was certainly bucking the trend. There were some drinks and slices of pizza and cake and stuff, and a man performing Italian folk music for people to dance to. He had a squeezebox. From what I hear of Italian folk music, it's mostly more cheery and cheesy than ours, and I daresay it's identical to the kind of thing they play in the tourist traps.
And that's the way we roll around here.
I think it was Ella who then asked me via e-mail (I imagine a hopeful tone in her voice) whether we at least did it here in Catholic-land. (We didn't.)
Rather, in England, you've (presumably) all missed out on the St. Anthony celebrations!
The Italians seem to like St. Anthony, and celebrate his feast in various ways, none of which is on English wikipedia, so maybe I'll put something there.
The first thing, chronologically, would be that many hundreds, and thousands, and other units of number, of bread rolls are made, by hand if I understand correctly, by volunteers for the occasion, blessed in the churches and distributed door to door. It's customary to give an offering to the parish, and you then get a number in the raffle (I know, I know) with such solidly Italian prizes as meat and wine.
The rolls are basically eaten just like any other bread rolls would be at dinner, with the cold meats, and used as a means for recovering residual olive oil from one's plate. I was told this, but the idea that blessed bread would probably have some kind of low-key ceremony was quite fixed in my mind, so I waited to see what everybody else did with theirs before I committed myself. If I had any sense I would have taken some photos of all this, but it seems that I don't.
It was good bread.
You also get fried sweets around this time, a bit like doughnuts. Castagnole, they're called, and Monica and her Mum made some. The closest thing I can think of is ring-doughnuts, but perhaps they're a little more dense, and the dough is flavoured somehow.
Next thing would be that, after the 11:00 mass, people come to the piazza to have their stuff blessed. I use the word "stuff" for exactitude. St. Anthony would seem to be a patron of quite a lot of things. People bring their pets to be blessed (with those holy water sprinkly things) because he's the patron of all animals. Some of the dogs didn't seem to want to bless each other though. Children bring their toys to be blessed - I don't know why. People also bring their tractors. Until the moment I actually saw them I thought I had perhaps misunderstood, for I had been advised of this also, but no, there were proper agricultural tractors parked up by the piazza for the holy water treatment. Again, no photos - silly me. Because this is Italy, while a hardcore group of people tried to listen to the blessing and the prayers and work out when they were meant to cross themselves, the rest got down to the serious business of having a chat.
Later on in the same day was a little, um, event, in the youth club. There was more than one apprently. We went to the one that was not marked out as being for youth. There were many older Italian ladies there. I was certainly bucking the trend. There were some drinks and slices of pizza and cake and stuff, and a man performing Italian folk music for people to dance to. He had a squeezebox. From what I hear of Italian folk music, it's mostly more cheery and cheesy than ours, and I daresay it's identical to the kind of thing they play in the tourist traps.
And that's the way we roll around here.
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
e rimetti a noi i nostri debiti
e
sia santificato il tuo nome,
venga il tuo regno, sia fatta la tua volontà,
come in cielo così in terra.
Dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano,
e rimetti a noi i nostri debiti
'e' means 'and'
rimetti
'rimettere' is a verb that means lots of things. One of the things it means is relatively similar to the English, 'remit' This clearly isn't the most quotidian verb in this sense, but the verb it's formed from, 'mettere' is, and apparently it's regular, so I'll give you the conjugation.
Now, there's something I ommitted to mention previously, when I said that 'santificare' was a regular verb. The thing is that there is more than one regular verb form. There are 3 (or 4, or even more depending on how you look at it). For the sake of clarity I'll put three examples side by side:
| santificare | (ri)mettere | dormire |
| santifico | (ri)metto | dormo |
| santifichi | (ri)metti | dormi |
| santifica | (ri)mette | dorme |
| santifichiamo | (ri)mettiamo | dormiamo |
| santificate | (ri)mettete | dormite |
| santificano | (ri)mettono | dormono |
You can see that in the 'I', 'you' and 'we' form, regular verbs conjugate in the same way, but in the other forms there are variations depending on whether the infinitive form ends in '-are', '-ere' or '-ire'.
This 'rimetti' is, again, the imperative form.
a noi
Do you remember when I said that you didn't have to worry about the 'Unstressed' in "Unstressed Indirect Object Pronouns"? Well you don't really have to worry about the 'Stressed' in "Stressed Indirect Object Pronouns" either. I'll just add something to the table I gave earlier:
| Subject Pronouns | Unstressed Indirect Object Pronouns | Stressed Indirect Object Pronouns |
| io | mi | a me |
| tu | ti | a te |
| lui | gli | a lui |
| lei | le | a lei |
| Lei | Le | a Lei |
| noi | ci | a noi |
| voi | vi | a voi |
| loro | gli | a loro |
All you have to know, for practical purposes, is that 'a noi' means the same thing as the 'ci' to its left: that is '(to) us'.
Thursday, 8 January 2009
iBreviary & Praybook
I'm down with that, so I cleaned up the English a bit and gave it its own entry.
-
Dear Sirs,
Editing and Friends of iBreviary,
iBreviary, as you know, is a new application for the iPhone, available immediately in Spanish, French, English, Latin and Italian. iBreviary offers the possibility, simply and in perfect "Apple style", to pray on the go with the prayers of the Breviary.
It also offers the readings of the Mass of the day, as well as the principal Catholic prayers. The application, created by me together with the technician and developer Dimitri Giani, has received the praise and the encouragement of the Vatican.
iBreviary has now reached its third update. This update brings important changes:
- application available in Italian and English versions
- available readings in English, French, Spanish, Latin and in the Ambrosian Rite
- possibility to pray the Compieta of the previous day
The application is available from the app store for the price of 79 cents (Euro) which will go to charity. (www.dimix.it/ibreviary)
Also, Facebook will have its own "digital Breviary". Its name is "Praybook" and it's available as an application on the most important social networking site in the world. The application allows online prayer with the same prayers as iBreviary.
Thanks for everything.
father Paolo Padrini
www.dimix.it/ibreviary
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