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PRIVATIZATION – Yes, there is such a word in English, and its meaning is exactly the same as in Portuguese: act of making private, act of transferring control from governmental to private powers (also privatisation).

After reading an article about the 32nd anniversary of PT written by Councilman Adeli Sell, published in this site last week, I couldn’t help reproducing the text below written by Edna Simão, from Agência Estado:

Infraero bancará 49% do ágio pago pelos vencedores do leilão dos aeroportos
O dinheiro será repassado em parcelas anuais, corrigido pelo IPCA, ao Fundo Nacional de Aviação Civil para financiar a aviação regional do País.

Edna Simão, da Agência Estado

BRASÍLIA - A Empresa Brasileira de Infraestrutura Aeroportuária (Infraero) vai bancar, indiretamente, 49% do ágio médio de 348% pago pelos consórcios que venceram o leilão dos aeroportos de Guarulhos, Viracopos e Brasília. O governo arrecadou R$ 24,535 bilhões na concessão dos três aeroportos à iniciativa privada.

Isso vai ocorrer porque o valor da outorga será pago pela Sociedade de Propósito Específico (SPE), que é formada pelo consórcio vencedor, que detém 51% do controle, e pela Infraero com 49%. O dinheiro será repassado em parcelas anuais, corrigido pelo IPCA, ao Fundo Nacional de Aviação Civil (FNAC) para financiar a aviação regional do País.

É o jeito dos companheiros de privatizar. A estatal infraero vai bancar 49% do ágio. A estatal foi formada com o dinheiro da União, ou seja nosso, somos nós que estamos pagando o ágio enquanto o consórcio vencedor vai colocar o restante, mas o lucro majoritário fica no privado. Stanislaw Ponte Preta, codinome de Sérgio Porto, dizia que se "Privatizavam os lucros e socializavam os prejuízos".

Ô Amaury Ribeiro Jr. não vai escrever agora o livro a "Privataria Petista"? O enredo está aí, é o jeito companheiro de privatizar.

Love Lotteries and Origins.

Last Friday we mentioned the expression Love lotteries, in an article about Saint Valentine’s Day (February 14th). If you look up in a dictionary, you will probably not find such expression, but it means pretty much what you may be imagining that it means. To make it clear, I made a little research and found the following text about it:

• The Roman love lotteries happened on February 14th, the eve of the feast of Lupercalis, when boys drew names of girls to honor Juno, and couples were formed for the year.

• Lupercalia, the Roman feast that took place on February 15th, was a feast of "lovemaking and licentiousness.

O verbo TO DRAW, DREW, DRAWN tem muitos significados, mas, no parágrafo acima, ele significa TIRAR (de uma urna, um nome).

• Lupercalia is based on Lupercal, a wolf deity, who was tied to the legend of Romulus and Remus, Rome's founders who were nursed by a she-wolf.

• Young men would tie goat skins around their loins, and run around the city laughing (a symbol of life), striking young women with goatskin straps to increase their fertility.

• St. Valentine lived under the Roman emperor Claudius II "the Cruel." Since young men could avoid joining the Roman army by marrying, Claudius outlawed marriage temporarily. However, Valentine the priest secretly conducted marriages. Once he was caught and sentenced to death, young visitors came to him in jail, giving "him flowers and slipping him notes expressing shared feelings lauding love over war." Rumors that he fell in love with his jailer's daughter and signed a note "from your Valentine" were added on, later.

• Valentine was stoned and decapitated on February 14 in A.D. 269-the day devoted to old Roman love lotteries.

• All three catholic saints named Valentinus have their festival on February 14th, making it impossible to know which Valentine is THE Saint Valentine.

• The Catholic church changed the love lottery to a saint's day lottery, putting saint's names in the urn, encouraging young people to emulate the behavior of the saints whose name they pulled.

• In the Medieval era, St. Valentine was the saint of emergencies. St. Valentine became a matchmaker again in the 14th century.
Sources:

Anthony F. Aveni, "February's Holidays: Prediction, Purification, and Passionate Pursuit" in Book of the Year : A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays. New York : Oxford University Press, 2003.The Catholic Encyclopaedia, xv. p. 254.
The Catholic Encyclopaedia, xv. p. 254

Valentine's Day in America

• Valentine's Day finally made its transition from an European immigrant's celebration to a proper American holiday starting in the 1840s.

• As more and more commercially available Valentine's Day cards became available in the US in the 1840s and 1850s (and postage grew cheaper), hand-made Valentines also grew in number (this period marks the peak of Valentines collections in the US).

• American publishers cribbed liberally from their British counterparts to produce collections such as "The New Quizzical Valentine Writer" which appeared in New York in 1823 and seems to be the first American Valentine's Writer.

• Much like today, American publishers took liberties with the titles of their Valentine Writers, adding words such as "new, original, improved" regardless of the well-worn content.

• Certain vendors tried to extend the season until March 1 allowing for the receipt and response to Valentine's Day cards with yet more cards-this may be related to the beginning of the extended Christmas and Easter shopping seasons.

• By 1860, US merchants had managed to transform Valentine's Day into a holiday where everyone exchanged cards, siblings, friends, aunts and nephews…

• By making Valentine's Day less romantic and more familial, and by focusing it on women's expectations (both mothers and young girls grew accustomed to receiving cards), merchants attracted women shoppers and changed American shopping culture. Where stores were once "an arena where men went to trade and fraternize" they became "a place where women would go to shop and browse." In a sense, modern shopping as a feminine hobby can be tied to Valentine's Day.

• Throughout the 1800s, every year brought its own valentine's fad: "satin, lace, perfumed, and gilt-edged valentines; painted and lithographed valentines; acrostic and arabesque valentines; cameo or box valentines; mechanical, cobweb, and banknote valentines; Leap Year valentines…"

• Mock Valentines also were a large part of the market, and equal time was devoted to comic rhymes in the Valentines Writers. In 1858 Harper's Weekly reported the sales between romantic and mocking valentines as being split.

• Valentine caricatures were particularly popular in the US through the 1840s-a lot of these mock valentines were aimed at women who broke with societal convention-paralleling the beginning of the women's rights movements in the 1840s and 1850s.

• Every Leap year, women were allowed to make the first move and send out Valentine's of their own.

• Even in the 1800s, people complained about the commercialization of sentiments and the loss of sincerity.

• By 1930, Valentine's day was the second largest retail spending day after Christmas in the US.

Sources:

Leigh Eric Schmidt. "The Fashioning of a Modern Holiday: St. Valentine's Day, 1840-1870." Winterthur Portfolio, Vo. 28, No. 4 (Winter 1993), 209-245.
Anthony F. Aveni, "February's Holidays: Prediction, Purification, and Passionate Pursuit" in Book of the Year : A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays. New York : Oxford University Press, 2003.

Roberto Henry Ebelt é professor, escritor, produz uma coluna semanal para o Jornal do Comércio de Porto Alegre deste 2001 e é diretor do curso HENRY'S BUSINESS ENGLISH desde 1971.

Seu mais recente livro, O QUE VOCÊ DEVE SABER ANTES DE ESTUDAR INGLÊS, pode ser encontrado nas livrarias Disal, Cultura e SBS ou à rua Hoffmann, 728 em Porto Alegre.

E-mail: roberto@henrys.com.br
Fone (51) 3222-3144
www.henrys.com.br