January 18, 2005

Well, things are starting to look up. I actually have three classes this week. Not only that but I am giving private English lessons to a Russian Au Pair. I am also swapping English lessons for German lessons with Dagmar. It is amazing how often I’ve learned and forgotten German. For some reason none of it really sticks in my head. Anyway, Dagmar speaks English quite well, but her main goal is to be able to read in English. So, knowing that she had studied philosophy and religion in University I whip out Winthrop’s “A Modell of Christian Charity.” (This is where you, the reader, are supposed to groan and say to yourself, “what the hell was she thinking, launching right into that in the first lesson?”) It is very difficult to read. Can I say that again? It is very difficult to read. Even harder to understand. But, if you do manage to understand some of it, it is very interesting. Maybe I will introduce it as a category on my Forum. Yes, that literature forum to which no one posts. Anyway, I believe that so much of current American political thought can be traced back to this sermon. Winthrop lays the groundwork for the American idea of social responsibility. So Dagmar and I struggled through three paragraphs of it and then we had a nice conversation about it. I think after we finish that I am going to start us on Beowulf. In Old English.