Lullaby of Birdland

Oh, lullaby of birdland, that’s what I
Always hear when you sigh,
Never in my wordland could there be ways to reveal
in a phrase how I feel

Have you ever heard two turtle doves
Bill and coo, when they love?
That’s the kind of magic music we make with our lips
When we kiss

And there’s a weepy old willow
He really knows how to cry,
That’s how I’d cry in my pillow
If you should tell me farewell and goodbye

Lullaby of birdland whisper low
Kiss me sweet, and we’ll go
Flying high in birdland, high in the sky up above
All because we’re in love

song of the week englisch lernen mit liedern

I’m clearly not the nicest Anne Hodgson online.

One of my nephews thought I was another Facebook Anne Hodgson. She looks that much like me.

Now, being confused with namesakes or similarly named people doesn’t worry me in the least. On the contrary, there is safety in numbers. Here are my favorites:

• The similarly named Ann Hodgman has written children’s books with great titles like “The French Fry Aliens” and “My Babysitter Bites Again”. Please feel free to confuse me with her.
• Ann Hodgson is a professor of Education at the University of London, with a special focus on 14-19 education and training and life-long learning. I’ve found her in connection with IATEFL. I’m afraid she’s got qualifications I’ll never have.
• Anne Hodgson & Co, a group of lawyers headed by my namesake, lends a touch of class to our dogsbody name.

No, what really has me worried is what happens when I type my tag annehodg into the internet. I did so last night for a laugh,  and looking over all the links gave me a bit of a shock. I work hard to create a professional online presence, only, and to protect the privacy of people close to me, and I’ve been relatively successful. But using Twitter in particular means that the things I’ve written all over the place this past year do come together in a rather disconcerting way.

I’m turning over a new leaf for the sake of privacy. I’m off Twitter for anything but professional networking, for one, and it’s time to change my tag.

Biedermeier style, brought to the bourgeois world of housing modest clothing with light bloom sentimentality. Later, arrogant style of the era gave this tongue-in-cheek nickname “Biedermeier” (the word “Biedermeier” – “Mr. Meyer bravy” – as a synonym for philistinism introduced into use Eyhgodt poet).

From the cold, aristocratic Biedermeier Empire inherited the basic principles of building and laconicism. Bourgeois consciousness meet such style format in which the emphasis was on practicality. The measure of household belongings, furniture, considered, above all, the qualities of strength, sound, comfort.

In the era of Biedermeier furniture, we can already find most of the modern types. Never before has the furniture was not so “furniture” in nature, that is free of architectural forms and alien decor. The measure of quality furniture now considered forms of comfort and impeccable carpentry work.

Ease of furniture offset by bright colors and obivok curtain, ornamented motives pornography treated flowers. In this era emerged and the so-called “clean room” (living). The space forcing a large number of rooms of furniture, which seek grouped in the center and besides, so that emptiness remained as little as possible.

There’s nothing like a translation program to mangle language – and to produce an entirely new and exciting pornographic era of design inherited from the cold, based on strength, sound and comfort! Yes! Man, those Biedermeiers must have known something.

Tallest Man on Earth: I won’t be found

Well if I ever see the morning
Just like a lizard in the spring
I’m gonna run out in the meadow
To catch the silence when it sings

I’m gonna force the Serengeti
To disappear into my eyes
Then when I hear your voice is callin’
I’m gonna turn just inside now

Well if I ever get to slumber
Just like a mole deep in the ground
Well, I won’t be found

Deep in the dust forgotten gathered
I grow a diamond in my chest
I make reflections as the moon shines on
Turn to a villain as I rest

Well if I ever get that slumber
Just like a mole deep in the ground
Well, I won’t be found

I know there is a hollow
I need to fill it with a draft
Of all the words I have to say
And with a quiet whisper
I send a curse upon the day
That never used the sun to see
The light

I’m gonna float up in the ceiling
I built a levee of the stars
And in my field of tired horses
I built a freeway through this farce

Well if I ever get that slumber
I’ll be that mole deep in the ground
And I won’t be found

song of the week englisch lernen mit liedern

This particular blog carnival came into being when Carl Dowse was rounding up blogs dedicated to Business English in a links list for BESIG, the Business English Special Interest Group of IATEFL. The conversation brought to light that there are just a few blogs that focus completely on business, like Evan Frendo’s “English for the Workplace“, Jeremy Day’s “Specific English“, the Business Spotlight blogs by Deborah Capras, Helen Strong and Robert Gibson, or Jeffrey Hill’s “The English Blog: Business“. But even writers for and teachers of Business English will treat non-business topics in their blogs; just think of Vicki Hollett’s “Learning to speak ‘merican” or Karenne Sylvester’s “Kalinago English“. Then, teachers of general English are highly respected and much read in the BE/ ESP community, like Alex Case of “TEFLtastic“, Larry Ferlazzo of “Websites of the Day” or Jamie Keddie,  etc. etc. Plenty of teachers – including many readers of this blog! – cross over on a daily basis between teaching young learners, giving general English classes and handling business English groups, and they must have interesting lesson ideas to share to introduce themselves to a more specialized, business-focussed readership. The round-up of blogposts will also be published on the BESIG website – so new readers are guaranteed!

So I’d like to extend a very warm invitation to all of you, from the specialist to the generalist, to contribute to this upcoming event. Just make sure that your entry is indeed geared to Business English or ESP, that is: the English people need at work. Have a look at the form, please, and let me know whether you’ll be joining us.

They did.

Heck, I would have given it to them, too.

But my heart is broken.

We’re both completely and utterly exhausted. Time for a vacation.

Anyway, we’re moving to Potsdam, a big flat on the third floor in a quiet street close to one of the train stations and just around the corner from Sanssouci. Helmut has really lovely colleagues living in Potsdam and Babelsberg. The lakes are great. Potsdam is attractive, and in fact may be an easier place for me to find work. A lot of research going on out here, the kinds of things I’m interested in, too. But it’s a three-quarters of an hour train ride from Helmut’s place of work, and (let’s face it) I really wanted to move to Berlin. Friedrichshain. Leonhardtstraße.

One week is way too short to find a place to live.

Who knows: Maybe Fortuna knows something I don’t.