Anyone out there in the cybersphere who has been  actually reading my blog may have noticed that I have not posted anything for nearly a month. One reason for this hiatus was the return of my wife and daughter from a trip home to the U.S. Thanks to China's rather draconian policies on the swine flu (referred to here as the H1N1 flu, so apparently not to offend Muslims by referring to "swine"), my daughter was not allowed to return to her preschool for a week, to ensure that she wasn't infected (she wasn't). This meant that I had to put in some baby-sitting duty. Another reason was an avalanche of student papers that fell upon me the very day my wife and daughter returned. While my daughter has now returned to preschool, my struggle with a pile of essays on The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus and "The Devil and Daniel Webster" has not yet reached its end. Nevertheless, I hope that in the coming days and weeks I'll be able to find some time to return to blogging. Stay tuned...