Heaven Can Wait. Maybe... : Movie Review (Scripted)



Video version of an old post (as I explained about HERE)
For the original post, see:
https://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2007/11/heaven-can-wait-maybe.html

English World 4 Unit 1 Review Doraemon Game

(Supplementary Materials for Specific Textbooks--English World 4)

Google: drive, slides, pub

Life Elementary 2C Global Objects p.26-27

(Supplemental Materials for Specific Textbooks--Life Elementary)

Google drive folder HERE
Backs to the Board Slideshow (Reviews vocabulary from 2A, 2B, and 2C): slides, pub

Tora! Tora! Tora! : Movie Review (Scripted)



Video version of an old post (as I explained about HERE)
For the original post, see:
https://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2007/11/tora-tora-tora.html

Introduce Yourself Listening and Speaking Exercise

(TESOL Worksheets--Speaking, Listening)
Google: docs, pub
[Notes: In my own class, I used this with Life Elementary lesson 1E Introduce Yourself p.17.
Originally in my own class this contained all authentic information about my own life.  I've gone back and changed all the information to a fictional teacher named Kevin John Smith for a couple reasons.  The main reason being caution about publishing too much personal information on the web.  The second reason is so other teachers can use it more easily.
Anyone wishing to borrow this activity for their own classes has a choice.  They can present the fictional character Kevin John Smith, or they can re-write it for their own life.  I think student interest is generally higher if the teacher re-writes it for their own life.
I did this in five stages:
Stage 1: Gist Listening.  I read out the information, and the students count how many people are in my family.
Stage 2: Detailed Listening: I hand out the blank chart.  Students listen to the information again, and fill out the chart.
Stage 3: Fill in the Gaps: I hand out the gapped listening, and then readout the information again.  Students fill in the gaps.  (I've deliberately tried to draw attention to the small words that I think students have a tendency to get wrong in their own production.)
Stage 4: Give out another copy of the blank chart.  Students fill it in with their own details.
Stage 5: Students introduce themselves to each other in mingle activity.


First name


Middle name


Surname


Job


Place of work


Family













University


Subject of study


Languages



My first name is Kevin.  My middle name is John.  My surname is Smith.  I am 33 years old.  I’m from England, but I live in Japan now.  In the past, I have lived in England, Spain, and France.
I work as an English teacher at the International School
My family lives in England.  They live in a city.  My father works as a teacher, and my mother works as a doctor.  I have one older sister and one younger sister.  My older sister works as a shop assistant, and my younger sister works as a chef.
My older sister has 2 boys, so I have 2 nephews, and my younger sister has 3 girls, so I have 3 nieces.
I am married.  My wife is from Spain.  She used to work as a business woman, but now she works as a teacher. Her name is Maria.
When I was a student, I studied at Central University.  I studied Math and History.
My first language is English.  I can speak Spanish as a second language.  Right now, I am learning Japanese.


_____ first name _____ Kevin.  My middle name is John.  My surname is Smith.  I _____ 33 years old.  I’m from England, _____ I live in Japan now.  In the past, I have lived in England, Spain, _____ France.
I work as an English teacher _____ the International School
_____ family lives in England.  They live in a city.  My father works as a teacher, _____ my mother works as a doctor.  I have one older sister and one younger sister.  My older sister works _____ a shop assistant, and my younger sister works as a chef.
My older sister has 2 boys, so I have 2 nephews, and my younger sister has 3 girls, so I have 3 nieces.
When I was a student, I studied _____ Central University.  I studied Math and History.
I am married.  My wife _____ from Spain.  She used to work as a business woman, _____ now she works as a teacher. _____ name is Maria.
My first language is English.  I can speak Spanish as a second language.  Right now, I am learning Japanese.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Movie Review (Scripted)



Video version of an old post (as I explained about HERE)
For the original post, see:
http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2007/11/harry-potter-and-order-of-phoenix.html

Patton: Movie Review (Scripted)



Video version of an old post (as I explained about HERE)
For the original post, see:
http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2007/11/patton.html

Life Elementary 1F World Party p.18-19

(Supplemental Materials for Specific Textbooks--Life Elementary)

Google drive folder HERE
Backs to the Board Slideshow (Reviews vocabulary from 1C, 1D, 1E and 1F): slides, pub

The Last King of Scotland: Movie Review (Scripted)



Video version of an old post (as I explained about HERE)
For the original post, see:
http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2007/11/last-king-of-scotland.html

Life Elementary 1C The Face of Seven Billion People p.14-15

(Supplemental Materials for Specific Textbooks--Life Elementary)

Google drive folder HERE
Backs to the Board Slideshow (Reviews vocabulary from 1A, 1B and 1C): slides, pub

Being Wagner: The Triumph of the Will by Simon Callow

(Book Review)

Started: April 2, 2020
Finished: May 14, 2020

Why I Read This Book
Confession time: I have no ear for classical music at all.  (It's one of my many failings. I've tried to develop an appreciation for it in the past, and just couldn't do it.)

But, as a history nerd, I still sometimes take an interest in the biographies of famous composers.  Particularly if the lives of those composers intersect with the historical and political events of their time.
Wagner is an excellent example of a classical composer whose biography is fascinating reading, even to those of us who aren't musically inclined.
Wagner's politics were a fascinating contradiction.
On the one hand, Wagner collaborated with the socialists and the anarchists.  Wagner was one of the leading figures in the Dresden uprising in 1849 in which he collaborated with none other than Mikhail Bakunin (the father of modern anarchism).
But on the other hand, Wagner also posthumously became Hitler's favorite composer because of Wagner's ideas of German nationalism, and his rabid antisemitism.  And so nowadays, it's impossible to talk about Wagner's legacy without mentioning the Nazis.
So who was the real Wagner?  Was he a progressive revolutionary, or a reactionary anti-semite?  Seems like it would make a fascinating biographical study either way, no?

But politics aside, as a fan of fantasy and mythology, I was also interested in Wagner's epic mythological 15 hour Ring Cycle.  I wanted to know more about, but I also wanted someone to summarize it for me.  Because there was no way I was going to sit through 15 hours of opera.

From Wagner's Die Walkure.  This looks pretty epic.  But could I get the Cliff Notes version, please?

For these reasons, about 12 years ago, I was actively looking for a readable biography of Wagner.  I didn't want anything academic.  What I really wanted was a readable mass-market biography--the kind of book that might be sold in airport bookstores.    To that end, I looked in bookstores, I searched Amazon.com, but I couldn't find anything resembling what I wanted.  (In fact, I had a hard time finding any biographies of Wagner at all on Amazon.com (1)).

In the end, I ended up reading Wagner: A Documentary Study just because that was the only book I could find.  (I was still living in Japan at the time, so I got it from Oita Prefectural Library).

2009 Review HERE

It was a collection of authentic documents related to the life of Richard Wagner.  Which was about as boring as it sounds.  To quote myself from my 2009 review:

I did learn interesting bits and pieces about Wagner's life from this book, but it was a poor substitute for a biography. It was just a series of fragments, and the reader had to guess at the gaps.
Moreover, most of Wagner's letters have to do with the techniques of music, which were unappreciated and uninteresting to an unmusical person like me.
I didn't find this book at all enjoyable actually. It was one of those books where I couldn't even get through a single page without my mind wandering off at some point.
I stuck through the entire book simply out of determination.

 Okay, so it wasn't an enjoyable reading experience.  But it did largely satiate my curiosity.  I stopped looking for another Wagner biography after reading that one.
And then, a few months ago, I stumbled upon this book in the bookstores here in Saigon.  A nice breezy biography of Wagner written for a popular audience.  This is exactly what I had been looking for 12 years ago.  (It was published in 2017, so it's no wonder that I couldn't find it back in 2008.)
I initially left it on the shelves.  Sure, it would have been nice if I had found this book 12 years ago.  But now I had already read about Wagner.  My curiosity had been satiated.
But then, when working through my scripted review series, I filmed a video re-capping my old review of Wagner: A Documentary Study, and on camera I found myself re-telling the story of how 12 years ago I had wanted to find a readable biography of Wagner, couldn't find it anywhere, but then just recently saw it in the bookstore and didn't buy it.  And I found it hard to justify in words why I hadn't bought it.  And then I found myself on camera saying that I would buy this book if I ever saw it again in the bookstores.

Wagner: A Documentary Study edited by Herbert Barth, Dietrich Mack, Egon Voss



...well, after having committed myself on camera, I decided I should really buy this book after all.  So the next time I was in the same bookstore, I checked to see if this was still on the shelf.  It was, so I grabbed it, bought it, read it, and here I am with the review.

The Review
So, yes, this is the Wagner biography I'd been looking for all along.  It's light, easy to read, written in a breezy style, and written by someone more concerned with the interesting biographical details than the technicalities of music composition.
I had wanted something that was for a popular audience and not scholarly, and this was it exactly.
Of course, the trade-off with these kind of books is that there are lots of gaps, omissions, and over-simplifications.  (And I'll get around to complaining about some of those in a minute.)  But it was fun and easy to read, so that's the big take-away.

The author, Simon Callow, is actually a professional actor.  I'd never heard of him before, but when I looked him up on Wikipedia, he has indeed been in a number of famous movies that I've seen (2). I was worried that this would mean that he couldn't write, but in fact his prose is perfectly readable.
Simon Callow in the forward gives the background to his obsession with Wagner, and why he was motivated to write this biography.  He also makes the disclaimer: "I am not a musician, either as performer or musicologist.  I am a well-informed music lover, but it would be entirely inappropriate for me to attempt musical analysis" (p.xvi).
So much the better, in my opinion.  I didn't want to get bogged down in a lot of musical analysis.

At only 200 pages (plus indexes) this is hardly the definitive biography of Wagner.  And it's obvious even to the casual read like myself that a lot is being cut out.  [At the end of the book, there's a chronology of the major events of Wagner's life (p.201-205) and it was noticeable that some of these events weren't even in the main text--like the death of Wagner's beloved sister Rosalie in 1837.]  And yet, the text does a good job of exploring what were the major influences that made Wagner tick.

A lot of what drove Wagner was not entirely rational. Wagner was driven by ego, emotions, romanticism--and also Simon Callow implies that some hallucinations and an over-active imagination also shaped the way Wagner told his autobiography.
But at the same time, there are intellectual developments, and Simon Callow does a good job of tracing these in a way that's very readable.
Wagner was always sympathetic towards the revolutionaries.  (As a young man, he participated in the student riots in Germany that accompanied The Revolutions of 1830 (W)).  Initially Wagner had to temper his radicalism in order to obtain royal patronage,  but Simon Callow does a good job of tracing how exactly Wagner ended up at the center of the Dresden Uprising (W). During The Revolutions of 1848 Wagner was driven towards more radicalism by his associations with his associate conductor socialist August Rockel (W) and Bakunin.  It also appeared that he got swept up in the emotions and revolutionary excitement of the 1848 days.
Wagner's participation in the Revolution cost him his job and his royal patronage, and he appears to have regretted his involvement.  But he did continue his liberal education by reading Hegel (who he didn't understand)  and Feuerbach (W) (who made a great impact on Wagner).
On pages 92-97, there's even some attempt to reconcile Wagner's liberal views with his reactionary anti-Semitism.  As author Simon Callow explains, Wagner had a view of humanity as being happiest in the state of nature, but being currently unhappy because of the oppressiveness of modern civilization.  All of this sounds very 1960s flower-child-esque, but such a philosophy inevitably has a hidden dark side--it requires the existence of certain people who are keeping humanity from this happy state of nature.  And Wagner latched on to the Jews.
But despite this brief attempt to try to explain the antisemitism, Simon Callow usually treats it as completely irrational, and frequently describes Wagner's relentless anti-Semitism almost as if it were an illness.

...Wagner's anti-Semitism ... was more than a bizarre peccadillo, beyond a prejudice: it was an obsession, a monomania, a full-blown neurosis.  No conversation with Wagner ever occurred without a detour on the subject of Judaism (p.185)

There's also a fascinating epilogue in which the history of Wagner's legacy is briefly discussed.  It turns out that it was not inevitable Wagner would become a Nazi symbol--the immediate heir to Wagner's legacy was his liberal son Siegfried who attempted to distance his father's opera house from anti-Semitism.  But, as a twist of history would have it, Siegfried died in 1930, and Siegfried's wife became heir to the Wagner legacy and the opera house.  And Siegfried's wife was a huge Hitler fan.  And Hitler was a huge Wagner fan, so an alliance was made.

So all of that was fascinating, and for the most part I got exactly what I wanted out of this book.  I felt like I understood Wagner's conflicted politics a lot more after finishing this book.

The only thing I didn't get, that I would have liked, was more analysis of Wagner's Operas, particularly his epic Ring Cycle.
Simon Callow does give plot synopses of many of Wagner's early operas and these are interesting for showing Wagner's fascination with the epic and with the macabre.  But then by the time we get to the part of Wagner's biography where he is writing the Ring Cycle, we don't get much insight into the plot of the work.  Simon Callow mentions its something about dwarfs, dragons, gods and heroes, but he talks about it only in the vaguest of terms, and I didn't really feel like I had much of an idea of what the opera was actually about.
It's not that Simon Callow doesn't write about the Ring Cycle--he writes plenty about Wagner's struggle to get it produced--but the reader is given very little information about what happens in the Opera.  Instead, he alludes to themes rather than explaining them.
When discussing The Rheingold (the first opera in the  Ring Cycle), Callow writes:

...it embodied with amazing dexterity, within its unbroken two-and-half hour span, Wagner's tragic critique of modern capitalism, grounded in his understanding of Feuerbach, and channelled through figures derived from the ancient myths of the German people. (p.104)

Well, that all sounds fascinating.  But what was Wagner's critique of modern capitalism?  How did he embody it in The Rheingold? What myths did he use?

Even more tantalizing is the description of the ideological conflict that The Ring of Nibelung caused the Nazi party.  You see, Hitler loved the opera, but his commanders? Not so much.

...the more intellectually acute of the [Nazi] high command pointed out that The Ring of Nibelung was a proto-Marxist text, and that Parisfal was dangerously close to a religious experience, which was equally repugnant to the Nazi ethos. (p.197) 

So there's something really interesting being hinted at here, but wouldn't it be nice to know why the Nazi high command thought that The Ring of Nibelung was a proto-Marxist text?  But we get none of that in Simon Callow's book.
Oh well, I guess that's what I get for deliberately choosing the easy-reading version.  I suppose there's always Wikipedia if I need a plot summary of The Ring cycle.

Other Notes
* Mike Duncan, in his podcast on the feud between Marx and Bakunin (which I linked to last July) mentions the anti-Semitism that was present in Bakunin's accusations against Marx, but also cautioned against drawing too much from this, because in the 19th century every ideology was tainted by anti-Semitism.  After hearing this, I was wondering whether or not Wagner's anti-Semitism should also be considered in the context of is time.  But Simon Callow makes it very clear that Wagner's anti-Semitism was extreme even for its day, and was recognized as such.  Even in his day, there was a big backlash to Wagner's infamous article "Judaism in Music".  (And actually, while we're on the subject, Francis Wheen thinks Bakunin's anti-Semitism was also extreme even for its day.)

*... and speaking of Bakunin:
On page 78, Simon Callow describes Bakunin in these words:
"It was the Russian anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, the most notorious terrorist in the world, the Osama bin Laden of his day..."
This strikes me as extremely unfair.  Granted, no one would ever describe Bakunin as a pacifist.  He believed in violent insurrection.  But I think there's a distinction to be made between an insurrectionist and a terrorist.  Bakunin was all for fighting on the barricade, but he never would never have thrown a bomb into a crowded coffee house, nor did he endorse such behavior.  (Although granted, after Bakunin's death several of his later followers would turn to terrorism.  But that's different.)
I think I get what Simon Callow is going for.  He's trying to convey to his readers (many of whom may be ignorant of 19th Century history) that Bakunin was really really notorious in his day, and he's trying to do it in as few words as possible, because Bakunin only gets a handful of sentences in the whole book.  (Although Bakunin's association with Wagner was infamous, it was also very short-lived).  Nonetheless, I thought the comparison to Osama bin Laden was tasteless.

* I had no idea before reading this book, but it turns out Wagner and his wife were intimately connected with Friedrich Nietzsche as well.  So that's yet another giant figure of the modern world that Wagner was connected to.

Connections with Other Books I've Read
* Rupert Chistiansen has a blurb on the backcover: "He [Simon Callow] sees the man plainly and he sees him whole, without excessive veneration or excoriation".
For my review of Rupert Christiansen's book, Paris Babylon, see HERE.

* From page 144:

First he [Wagner] moved into a magnificent new house in town; not only did he furnish it to the very height of luxury, it was minutes away from the house once lived in by Lola Montez, the hated mistress of Ludwig's deposed grandfather, Ludwig I. The locals drew their conclusions: Wagner was quickly named Lola II or Lolotte.

So who was Lola Montez?  She gets talked about in Revolutions of 1848 by Priscilla Robertson, and she also has a major role in the fictional book Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser as well as the movie of the same name.

Footnotes (docs, pub)
(1) It's interesting that in his bibliography, Simon Callow lists loads of biographies of Richard Wagner.  I wonder why I couldn't track these down 12 years ago?  I think the mistake I made was I assumed that everything was available on Amazon.com.  If I couldn't find it by searching on Amazon.com, it didn't exist--or so I reasoned to myself.  But I think I've come to realize over the years there is a lot of books that actually aren't on Amazon.com--particularly stuff published by university presses, I think. I probably would have much better luck if I had searched through inter-library loan or something.  (Although at the time, I was living in Japan, so that wasn't really an option.)

(2) Specifically of Simon Callow's filmography I've definitely seen: Amadeus, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Jefferson in Paris, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Shakespeare in Love, and The Phantom of the Opera.  All of them were before I started my movie review project, so no reviews on this blog for any of them.  A few others on his filmography list are might-have-seens (the memory gets a bit hazy).

Video Review (Playlist HERE)
Video review HERE and embedded below:



Link of the Day
The great Noam Chomsky and the super Stephen Krashen on April 6, 2020.

Brave Story: Movie Review (Scripted)



Video version of an old post (as I explained about HERE)
For the original post, see:
http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2007/11/brave-story.html

Mid-Course Needs Analysis

(TESOL Worksheets--Needs Analysis)
Adult General English Class: docs, pub
Teens General English Class: docs, pub
[Notes: A pre-course needs analysis is something that is emphasized by every book on curriculum design, but in my experience, I usually find the mid-course needs analysis to be more useful.  In the pre-course needs analysis, the students have a hard time visualizing what activities they like and don't like.  But with a mid-course needs analysis, they usually have definite opinions about what is working or is not working.
The sample for the adult class I designed two years ago.  I recently had to make a mid-course needs analysis for a teens class, and I just copied over the same format from the adult course.  So I thought I would post my format here for anyone else who was interested in copying it.  The actually items, of course, will need to be edited for your particular class.]

Activity	I find this activity useful.  Please continue doing it.	I don’t find this activity useful.  Can we please use this time do do something else?
Grammar homework and question time
Pronunciation activities
Proverbs
Going over mistakes from the homework
Telling Your stories
Textbook

Here are some other activities that we could be doing more of in class.  However, please keep in mind that classroom time is limited.  If you want to do more of one activity, we have to do less of another activity to make room for it.

Activity	I want to do more of this activity (yes/no)	If you say yes, then what activity would you like to do less of in order to make time?
More Textbook
More speaking/classroom discussion
More games
More Project Work

**********************************************************

Activity	I find this activity useful.  Please continue doing it.	I don’t find this activity useful.  Can we please use this time to do something else?
Playing Quizlet Live
Party Game Riddles
Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh
Garbage Man
Board Races
Grammar Practice
Vocabulary Practice
Using the textbook in class
Using classroom time to work on our project

In the space below, write any other activities that you would like to do more of in the class:

Shall We Dance? : Movie Review (Scripted)



Video version of an old post (as I explained about HERE)
For the original post, see:
http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2007/11/shall-we-dance.html

Board Race: Used to and Would

(TESOL Materials--Used to, Would+base form)
Google: slides, pub
[Note: The first 4 slides in this presentation were designed from a co-worker, and not originally mine.  She, in turn, had taken them from Close-Up C1. The next 3 slides are my own addition, although they were also taken from grammar exercises in Close-Up C1.  Then the rest of the slides are self-plagiarized from a previous board race I had made with used to. In some of these later slides, the distinction between past action and past state gets a little bit ambiguous.  (e.g.  technically "sell" is an action verb, but I almost feel like "he used to sell cars" is describing a state of employment rather than a repeated action).  Nevertheless, for the purposes of this slideshow, I've gone with a broad interpretation of action verbs.
The set-up is a standard board-race: The students are put into 4 teams.  The teacher gives the students prompts (either visually, or written, or oral).  And the students race to the whiteboard to write the correct sentence.  The first team to write the correct sentence gets 4 points, the next student gets 3 points, etc.]

Youth to Kill: Movie Review (Scripted)



Video version of an old post (as I explained about HERE)
For the original post, see:
http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2007/11/youth-to-kill.html

Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves by Cher: "used to" and "would" for repeated actions in the past

(TESOL Worksheets--Used to, Would+base form)
Worksheet: docs, pub
Slideshow (for pre-listening): slides, pub
[Notes: I had previously used Son of a Preacher Man by Dusty Springfield for would + base form for repeated actions in the past.  But upon reflection, I've decided that I actually like Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves better.  It has a story-line that's easier to identify, and thus easier to talk about the difference between repeated actions and single actions.  And it has instances of both "used to" and "would" so it works good for introducing both grammar points.  It's a melodramatic song, admittedly, but sometimes over-the-top is good for the EFL classroom.  (Subtlety is not good for EFL students).  Although there is teenage pregnancy in this song, so use with caution in conservative environments.
In my lesson, I first used the slides to elicit from students what they knew about gypsies.  In my class, the Vietnamese students didn't know much, so I used the pictures to help guide them, and also supplied relevant vocabulary from the pictures (e.g. wagon, travelling show).
(I felt a bit worried that I was playing too much into stereo-types here, but the song relies on these stereo-types, so what are you going to do?  I believe in its day, this song was regarded as a sympathetic portrayal of Gypsies.  I'm not sure--is this song politically incorrect nowadays, or is it still okay to use? )
Then, I told the students that the song was a story about a girl born in one of the Gypsy wagons.  I told the students the song was going to be the story of what happened to her when she grew up, and  asked the students to talk about what they thought was going to happen with a partner.  Predictions are then elicited onto the board.  Then we played the song, and checked the predictions.  Then I handed out the lyrics sheet, the students listened again and sorted out the verbs into past actions that happened once, and past actions that happened repeatedly.  They checked with a partner, I gave them the answer sheet, and then I elicited from them which structures are used to talk about repeated past actions in English.]

Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves by Cher

I was born in the wagon of a travelling show

My mama used to dance for the money they'd throw

Papa would do whatever he could: preach a little gospel, sell a couple bottles of doctor good

Gypsies, tramps, and thieves

We'd hear it from the people of the town

They'd call us gypsies, tramps, and thieves

But every night all the men would come around and lay their money down

Picked up a boy just south of Mobile

Gave him a ride, filled him with a hot meal

I was sixteen, he was twenty-one

Rode with us to Memphis

And papa would’ve shot him if he knew what he'd done

Gypsies, tramps, and thieves

We'd hear it from the people of the town

They'd call us gypsies, tramps, and thieves

But every night all the men would come around

And lay their money down

I never had schooling but he taught me well

With his smooth southern style

Three months later I'm a gal in trouble

And I haven't seen him for a while, uh-huh

I haven't seen him for a while, uh-huh

She was born in the wagon of a travelling show

Her mama had to dance for the money they'd throw

Grandpa'd do whatever he could: Preach a little gospel, sell a couple bottles of doctor good

Gypsies, tramps, and thieves

We'd hear it from the people of the town

They'd call us gypsies, tramps, and thieves

But every night all the men would come around

And lay their money down

Gypsies, tramps, and thieves

We'd hear it from the people of the town

They'd call us gypsies, tramps, and thieves

But every night all the men would come around

And lay their money down

Verbs for a single action in the past

Verbs for a repeated action in the past

Answers:

Single Action in the past	Repeated action in the past
I was born [We] Picked up a boy [We] Gave him a ride [We] Filled him with a hot meal [He] Rode with us to Memphis She was born	My mama used to dance they’d throw Papa would do whatever he could: Preach… sell… We’d hear it They’d call us all the men would come around and lay their money down Her mama had to dance Grandpa’d do whatever he could

Other Structures

State verbs (past)	Mixed Conditional	Historic Present
I was sixteen, he was twenty-one I never had schooling	Papa would’ve shot him if he knew what he’d done.	I’m a gal in trouble I haven’t seen him (present perfect)