Being polite

I found this German page with a listening exercise and activities on how to be polite when in Britain. Maybe you won't understand everything, but try it anyway :-)

(As always, thank you, Cris) ;-)

Prospero's Books

In Shakespeare's famous play The Tempest, the main characters land (actually their ship wrecks) on an island where magical things happen. There is a savage creature -or a monster- living there who is subjected by Prospero, a magician and man of science. Prospero's power comes from his books.

Christopher Marlowe was another English playwright. One of his plays, Doctor Faustus, is about a man who uses his knowledge to sign a contract with the devil. When the time for judgement comes, he cries, "I'll burn my books", but it is too late, and the devil drags him to hell.

Both The Tempest and Doctor Faustus are excellent works of art. In both of them books are shown as powerful instruments for their owners. It is logical that in Shakespeare's and Marlowe's times (when lots of people could not read) books were considered so important. But it is also true that 400 years later books are still the main means of cultural transmission. Just think.

This week we celebrate the World Book Day. So please, don't burn your books ;-)

I still have a dream

Due to the Easter holidays this year we have not been able to reflect on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination on 4 April 1968. He was a preacher and a fighter for African-American civil rights in the USA, where there was still racial segregation and discrimination. He got the Nobel Peace Prize for his activities in 1964 (the youngest person to receive that prize until then), and was murdered in 1968 when he was protesting against poverty and the Vietnam war.

There is another post about him on this blog. I am linking again to his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, this time subtitled. If you click on the Martin Luther King tag on the left, you can read the old post, too.