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Dear Telekolleg students,

The traffic situation in the town I live in is quite terrible: The residents in the centre of the town continually complain about the noise and pollution which the cars cause. What has the town council decided to improve the situation? A big by-pass (Umgehungsstraße), which unfortunately will mean that a large part of our beautiful forest and some meadows will disappear. It is, therefore, a pleasure to read about an American community, which has found ways of ‘taming’ the car: Kentlands. Judging from (nach….zu beurteilen) the short report in Arbeitsbogen 23 – 26 (Why go anywhere?), it seems to be a really nice place to live in. The distances between
a) shops and houses, b) the houses themselves and c) the houses and the sidewalks* are smaller than in traditional towns. The sidewalks are narrower than elsewhere and everywhere you see the famous ‘pocket parks’ or miniparks as they are sometimes called – small areas of grassy land and trees, including one on Main Street. The town is built on an old farm which was owned by a Mr Otis Beall – yes, you’ve guessed - KENT. Mr Kent’s old barn is now a theater* and art gallery, his old firehouse is a small office. Other buildings have also been converted, but some of the atmosphere of the old farm remains. The result is an attractive alternative to the automobile*-centered*, spread-out towns that were developed in the USA after the Second World War. If you go to the following address in the Internet, you’ll see some really beautiful parts of Kentlands:
http://www.beyonddc.com/features/kentlands.html

It seems that most people who live in Kentlands like the sense of community that exists in the town. One resident said to the Washington Post: “It feels like many people are kin.(= part of a big family)We’ve supported each other through divorce, deaths, severe illness and organ transplants. When one mom lost her hair from chemotherapy, all the dads, including me, cut our hair so her son wouldn’t be scared.” However, as you can imagine dear Telekolleg students, some people in Kentlands would like more privacy. One resident complained: “We’re so close, we can see what the next-door neighbors* are having for dinner.” **. In the USA most towns and cities do not look like Kentlands. If you walk along the sidewalks, in many of America’s towns and cities, a large number of people – including many policemen! – will think your behavior* is rather suspicious. Bill Bryson, in his interesting book: Notes from a Big Country (London 1998) tells the sad story of Laconia, a town in New Hampshire. Laconia decided to make the center of its town, a beautiful pedestrian precinct, so that the residents of Laconia and the visitors to the town would enjoy walking to and from the shops. They had beautiful brick paving stones for the pedestrians to walk on, tubs of geraniums, lovely trees and benches for the shoppers to sit on. The center* looked wonderful – but it was a big FLOP. Why? The shoppers didn’t want to walk from the car park to the center, so they drove to the suburbs where they could park their cars outside the shopping malls (centers)!
You won’t believe this, dear Telekolleg students, but in the end, Laconia got rid of the
geraniums, brick paving, decorative trees and benches and now the center of Laconia looks like it did before. Now, at last, both the automobile drivers and the shopkeepers are happy: The poor drivers can park their cars outside the shops and need not walk for five to ten minutes from the car park to the shops, and they again buy a lot of their goods in the shops
in the center of Laconia. Sad, but true.
In Arbeitsbogen 23-26. There are two small exercises on the future perfect simple and the future continuous. As you know, the present continuous is used for an action which is still continuing in the present:
Angry father: “Tom, what are you doing? “
Tom: “Nothing.”
Angry father: “And Mary, what are you doing?”
Mary: “I’m helping Tom.”
The future continuous is used in the same way for an action that is unfinished (im Gange) in the future:
Peter: “You can come to my party on Saturday, Tania.”
Tania: “Oh great! Where do you live?”
Peter: “At 43 Mersham Road. Come at 8 pm and ring the bell with your nose.”
Tania: “My nose?! Why with my nose??”
Peter: “Well, you’LL BE CARRYING my presents in your hands, won’t you!”

If you want some examples of how to use this tense, just close your eyes and think of your holidays in August and what you WILL BE DOING then!: “Just think- this time in August I’LL BE LYING on the beach at Brighton in England. I’LL BE ENJOYING myself with my Telekolleg homework. My wife WILL BE MAKING me a cucumber sandwich…. The future perfect simple is probably used more frequently. It’s not too difficult to understand, as in German we have a similar form to express something that will have been done before a certain time. To illustrate this form here are a couple of jokes:

The professor is giving a lecture to his students.
“The earth WILL HAVE FALLEN (wird…gestürzt sein) into the sun in thirty million years’ time.”
“In how many years?” a student shouts.
“In thirty million years,” repeats the professor.
“Phew! Thank Goodness!” says the student. “I thought you said in thirteen million years.”

Johny is only nine years old, but he wants to drink some of his grandfather’s beer.
“I’m sorry,” says his grandfather, “but you’ll have to wait until you’re eighteen years old!”
“But, you’LL HAVE DRUNK (wirst… ausgetrunken haben) the beer by then!” says Johny.