Monkey Business

They say times are hard for restaurant owners in Tokyo - that may be true for most places but apparantly not for this dining place - they found a gimmick: a monkey who helps bring out the dishes...wouldn't it be nice to have such a helper at our school..how would we dress it?and what would we ask them to do:HOMEWORK!!!

The Art of Lurking

WOW! I have just discovered a great new blog for myself and my students: it is called:Think and Dream in English. It offers tons of new ideas and examples that we will be able to incorporate into our lessons.Just click on URL address on the top at your right. Here is a six minute video from that blog on how to best learn the Present Perfect tense....and there is - built into it - wahrscheinlich unbemerkt - a glitch...the demonstrating teacher is first using present perfect regular and then without notice he switches to the present perfect continuous!! That can of course be quite confusing to the learner! So - there are new resources out there on the Web - and yet: we need to be careful and cautious.

Life is short

In late May 2004 my present and cherished author Eckhart Tolle conducted his Findhorn Retreat at Findhorn a small spiritual community in Northern Scotland.These lectures are on DVD and on CD - I own both versions and while driving to work I am listening to these CDs - great materials to beat traffic.

Towards the end of the seminar he mentions a 45 seconds film: Life is short...and he is puzzled about the intention of the film..he speculates that maybe people wanted to sell more beer thru it - nevertheless it is a remarkable film about the human condition at this day and age: we seem to be hurtling through life on our backs ( to avoid looking at the misery we have created in the world of form on this planet ? ) and screaming in pain all the way - right into our grave!! What a crazy journey - and I wonder what role the field of education plays in this......and am I making my students "scream" as well by encouraging them to be future-oriented instead of grounding themselves in the present moment? Good question.

Free and Easy in New York City

The photo was taken exactly forty-four years and one month ago - it shows me in front of the famous Lorelei Dance Bar and Restaurant in "German Town" on East 86th Street in Manhattan......Steuben Parade.....I am standing next to the Lorelei owner Mr. Schröder ( sunglasses ) with my beau-tie and suspenders.....everybody is watching the parade and drinking in public is still permitted.

At that time I had two jobs: a day - time one at Ungar Publishing Company - we published dead serious books and Erich Fromm was our best known author. My second and more interesting job was at night at the Lorelei.I never got home before midnight and it was my duty to seat the customers and to sell them the so-called minimum cover charge tickets....3.00 USD dollars during the week and 3.75 USD dollars on weekends.These tickets could be redeemed for food or drinks - that way every guest was "forced" to spend at least that minimum.

I received tips, free meals and one glass of free German beer.I loved both jobs - the day one stretched my brain - the evening one was good for my body.New York was an electrifying place for me - the City had only one big drawback: it was impossible for me to meet "the girls" I mean real American girls - although the Lorelei was well known as a meeting and pick-up place - I never scored!! In the end I considered myself quite lucky - for it was as the song goes: no woman - no cries.....I was meant to be free and easy in Manhattan.

We are almost there

Good news: There are 22 students in my class and as of today 21 of them have started on their blog writing adventure....You are invited to click on their names for their interesting contributions....the idea is to report on a regular basis and thus witness the individual progress - so welcome to blogspot and to our new platform: the world of bloggers.

You are also encouraged to click on the Voice of America site....it provides us with lots of articles. A learner can not only read and print these texts...many of them are also available in audio format - in other words: it is not only possible to READ them but also to HEAR these documents in clearly spoken and authentic American English - what a great opportunity for all of us to improve on our present skills......I told my students to be proactive and to GO for it! They heard me say this many times - it was even on the blackboard under Habit number 7: Sharpen the Saw .....but who of them will follow through?? In other words: who will be ready...?

Yes - we can friends be

Ja, wir können Freunde sein - so why can we not just say: yes - we can friends be?? Or why couldn't we just say: where live you? Why do we have to struggle with: where do you live?

Someone told me that Mark Twain wrote a short article once on how to improve the German language - and apparantly one of his suggestions was to put the verb pretty close to the subject like: we can be friends ....so instead of saying : wir können Freunde sein he proposed: wir können sein Freunde. So let us not just be friends - maybe we should also become more flexible in how we use our mother tongues...

Letting go of "the story of me?"

Over the last weekend I - Jay - ( Dozent ) flew to Graz to finally meet with my Austrian friend Ernst( Jurist im Bereich Umweltschutz ) and my German friend Rainer ( General Konsul der Bundesrepublik Deutschland ) - it was a reunion of three "oldies" who originally had first met in the Fall of 1969 at the University Aix - Marseille in Aix-en-Provence.

I hadn't seen Ernst for about 37 years - and he and Rainer had said good-bye to each other almost 38 years ago.It was through the Internet that we rediscovered each other in 2007.Now about almost a year later Ernst warmly welcomed us at the regional airport of his home town.We shared nice memories and enjoyed an uplifting reunion.

The purpose of this entry,however,is not to reflect about our special weekend in Graz as an event - but rather to become clear what my present spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle and others before him advise about how to deal with one's life story or "the story of me"....we all have a story ( Dozent;Jurist;General Konsul ) and most of us seem to derive our sense of who we are from the contents of our individual story.... I certainly did and it was easy because my life story has been a rather positive story and I get positive strokes when I talk about its highlights...so up to now I saw nothing "wrong" in equating the "story of me" with my own identity.....those experiences are mine,they helped to create and shape the person I am today - I thought they made up my personal beingness...

Now I am learning that there is nothing more beautiful than a failed human story - yes dear students: a failed story.....because a failed story makes it much less appealing to cling to it - easier to let go of it, to not even try to derive a sense of self from that failure....well although mine wasn't a failure I nevertheless are invited to let go of it and to look elsewhere for my true self - for the underlying essence,for the consciousness out of which my "story" has unfolded.

It makes sense to me for I trust that a far greater intelligence arises out of that formless consciousness than the world of forms could ever produce ......like our trip to Graz, our professions or a successful Abitur etc. etc.

I will shortly try to relate these insights to my students by discussing Karsten's second posting - and in the meantime you are invited to click on his link for that text.

Congratulations - Mr. President

We now know who the next President of the USA is going to be: Barack Hussein Obama - a black Senator from Chicago,Illinois.This is good news for all of us here in Europe as well - and the next time he will speak in Berlin there will be even more people listening than the last time...so my original Berliner Bär of the Steiff Collection extends his greetings as well - the question I wonder about is - how will this new President affect human consciousness? Will his presidency help so that more and more folks will begin to wake up and thus break out of humanity's vast negativity? In other words - will Mr. Obama and the rest of us find new ways to begin to live together on this planet - in harmony and peace?

And the winner is....

Today Americans will finally cast their votes....the two year campaign will have come to an hopefully happy end.Tomorrow - Wednesday morning - we will know which party will govern for the next four years.....I hope for the Democrats to not only get a huge majority in both houses - but to also show the Republicans that they are - indeed the party of "yesterday"...

And I believe none of my American friends will have voted for them anyway....when I was a college student in Ashland,Oregon I had joined the Young Democrats ( see photo ) - not a large group on campus then - but we had a brilliant history professor as our advisor.

At times I felt odd sitting there with my fellow American students talking politics - afterall I was NOT allowed to vote although I had that magic green card.The good thing was that nobody seemed to mind...I was accepted in their small group and I felt that I had "arrived".