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No Posts Until Next Week (and a Poem for Thanksgiving)

It’s Thanksgiving in the United States this Thursday, so I am enjoying all this “free” time to catch up on things unrelated to teaching. As a consequence, there will not be any new posts until November 26.

In the meantime, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I was recently reminded of John Donne‘s famous Meditation 17:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Famous, of course, because Ernest Hemingway used it as the epigraph to For Whom the Bell Tolls.

So with that said, remember to be grateful for all the good things in your life and to realize that you depend on others more than you realize.