Another book: The Botany of Desire

Must just be luck, but I've been reading some pretty enjoyable stuff recently. Just finished a book called The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan. It introduces four plants that illustrate four different human desires. The plants are apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes, and they illustrate desires for sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control, respectively.

His own love of plants is infectious, and his interpretation of the history of the plants exposes as much about humans' desires, weaknesses and ingenuity as it does about the plants. It is an brilliant roll reversal where we wonder, who is controlling whom.

Farewell to English Club grads

On Saturday we had a goodbye party for the graduating members of the English Club. This year's grads are the main body of students who helped create the club. They will be sorely missed. They are all going on to interesting lives.

Teaching is rewarding, but I have days when I wonder if it wouldn't be more rewarding to be hammering nails into wood, building houses for a living. When those days happened to me on Monday, I always know that I can get a lift from the English Club.

Thanks to the graduates. Peace.