And five more

1.
My classes spent a little time with Eliot recently. After reading Heart of Darkness, it seemed like "The Hollow Men" was the logical next step with them.

And overall, I think it went pretty well--it's a difficult poem for students to make meaning of, since they're often more comfortable with work that's narrative in its structure. Of course, there is certainly an almost hypnotic lyric quality to the poem:

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

But it's far from narrative. We spent a good bit of time working through the images in the poem, trying to get a sense of the way those images stagnate and eventually collapse.

After listening to Eliot read the poem, one of my students started every class with the "prickly pear" lines, done in his best imitation of Eliot's reading.

2.
Do you have one of these?

I highly recommend it. Melissa got me a Hario grinder for Valentine's, too, so we've been drinking some pretty fine coffee around our place.

3.
Track season is officially underway.

We've had two meets so far, with our big home invitational coming up on the tenth. Things are going well so far--we're looking for several of the school records for distance events to fall over the next few weeks.

4.

5.
And I know that I've been plugging it regularly, but you really, really should listen to this album.

Also, you should watch this video.