If you're a central Mainer wishing you had something to do on a Saturday night, you might consider coming to see Doughty Hill in Dexter on October 24. We are thriving again now that we've returned to being a four-piece band. Dan joined us last winter as a drummer but has quickly advanced into singing and playing bass; and it turns out that Sid, Dan, and I have a surprisingly effective vocal blend. The timbre of the whole has delighted us. We are having so much fun figuring out how to do what we do best, and it would make us very, very happy to sing and play for you.

Here we are at a house party last weekend:

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Now I'm going to switch to the subject of teaching poetry. My article on the Academy of American Poets website, "Teaching Poetry: The Reading-Conversation-Writing Cycle," is getting a fair amount of airplay, especially on Twitter (which is very odd because I hate Twitter and avoid it when at all possible). My hope is that this will transfer into added exposure for the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching. If you care about the conference and/or have your own circle of teachers, poets, and lovers of poetry, please consider sharing the article with them as a way to reinforce the value of what participants and faculty are doing during our week together. Let's do everything we can to keep this flame burning.

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Finally, let's talk about National League baseball. Mets versus Cubs? How am I supposed to decide between them? Somebody help me out!