lovely day

It's not merely drizzly. It's not something we call "a small portion of cabbage soup", either.

It's pouring with rain, and the sky is the colour that toilet paper used to have in the old times when goods were rationed in shops, and in order to get your toilet roll you had to queue for an hour in a crowd of people. When "they threw it" (the paper) onto the shelves, of course, which did not happen all to often.

For these dramatic weather conditions, which undermine everybody's morale and make people think of moving southward, the only solution is to organize ourselves into some sort of support group, with "non-professional and non-material help".

So, here's to you:

homework

The life of a teacher abounds in surprising events. I hope to read some account of that in Frank McCourt's Teacher Man, the third part of his memoirs that I read at a breathtaking speed last year and mourned the author's death right on my birthday, on 19 July 2009. But at the moment I'm reading three other books in slow motion, unable to find the so called "free" time bewteen family, work and household.
I don't know for what reasons the other people like their jobs, but I can't imagine NOT teaching, and not teaching groups. A course group is like a chemical compound, to which every element adds some unique feature. And some sparkle of inventiveness, too.
Take yesterday, for instance. That's how one of my students sent me her homework. In the jpg format. I was impressed by that combination of old paper&pen tradition with high-tech.

brutal share of bad luck

Controversial, but insightful:

A nation haunted by demons

bereft

Polish news from The Independent and from The Guardian

saturday April 10 - the rest is silence

British news about the tragedy in Smoleńsk - here.