A messed-up world
Tonight, Karin and I watched The Big Lebowski. … And right now, as I type this, I’m listening to one of its best songs: “Gnomus,” from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
This week, I had an especially good session with my eighth-grade tutee. We discussed the religious differences among Britain’s thirteen North American colonies. This required me to explain the relationship between being a Puritan and being a Protestant, which necessitated a survey of the Reformation.
First, I explained about Lutherans (led by Martin Luther) and Calvinists (led by John Calvin). “And then,” I said, “the English church also split away from the Roman Catholic church. This was so that King Henry VIII could divorce his wife.”
“That’s messed up!”
“Yes.”
“Who was the leader of that church?”
“King Henry VIII. He also cut off some of his wives’ heads.”
“That’s messed up!”
“Yes.”
Then, I explained how Puritans and Quakers, among others, emerged from the Church of England.
“The Quakers settled in Pennsylvania. They allowed other Christians to settle in Pennsylvania, too.”
“Were different kinds of people allowed to settle in the other colonies?”
“Not all the colonies permitted more than one kind of Christian group. The Puritans kept Massachusetts pretty much just for the Puritans.”
“That’s messed up!”
“Yes.”
Then, we went over Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” – line by line, just about, because my tutee didn’t understand a lot of the vocabulary.
As she grasped the meaning of each sentence, she exclaimed: “That’s messed up!”
But I had trouble getting her to finish reading the story.
When she told me she’d gotten to the end, I asked her how the narrator had killed the old man.
“I don’t know.”
So we checked the relevant passage, and I told her what its words meant. “So,” I explained, “the narrator held the bed against the old man’s face until he couldn’t breathe anymore.”
“That’s messed up!”
“All right, now: where did the narrator hide the body?”
“I don’t know.”
For someone so taken with the messed-upness of the world in general, and of the story in particular, my tutee was remarkably incurious about the story’s major plot points.
Which, I thought, was a little messed up.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
This week, I had an especially good session with my eighth-grade tutee. We discussed the religious differences among Britain’s thirteen North American colonies. This required me to explain the relationship between being a Puritan and being a Protestant, which necessitated a survey of the Reformation.
First, I explained about Lutherans (led by Martin Luther) and Calvinists (led by John Calvin). “And then,” I said, “the English church also split away from the Roman Catholic church. This was so that King Henry VIII could divorce his wife.”
“That’s messed up!”
“Yes.”
“Who was the leader of that church?”
“King Henry VIII. He also cut off some of his wives’ heads.”
“That’s messed up!”
“Yes.”
Then, I explained how Puritans and Quakers, among others, emerged from the Church of England.
“The Quakers settled in Pennsylvania. They allowed other Christians to settle in Pennsylvania, too.”
“Were different kinds of people allowed to settle in the other colonies?”
“Not all the colonies permitted more than one kind of Christian group. The Puritans kept Massachusetts pretty much just for the Puritans.”
“That’s messed up!”
“Yes.”
Then, we went over Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” – line by line, just about, because my tutee didn’t understand a lot of the vocabulary.
As she grasped the meaning of each sentence, she exclaimed: “That’s messed up!”
But I had trouble getting her to finish reading the story.
When she told me she’d gotten to the end, I asked her how the narrator had killed the old man.
“I don’t know.”
So we checked the relevant passage, and I told her what its words meant. “So,” I explained, “the narrator held the bed against the old man’s face until he couldn’t breathe anymore.”
“That’s messed up!”
“All right, now: where did the narrator hide the body?”
“I don’t know.”
For someone so taken with the messed-upness of the world in general, and of the story in particular, my tutee was remarkably incurious about the story’s major plot points.
Which, I thought, was a little messed up.