Friday, September 5 - Sunday, September 7

HAPPY WEEKEND! You have reached the end of Week 2. The Week 2 Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now, and the remaining Week 2 assignments are due on Friday or on Saturday or Sunday - please make sure you get started on those assignments soon.

Working on the weekend. As many of you discovered, it is sometimes hard to squeeze assignments for this course into your busy weekday schedule. So, you might want to consider doing all your work for this course over the weekend. To do that, just finish up the Week 2 assignments this weekend, and do the Week 3 Tuesday-thru-Thursday assignments this weekend also. That way, you can take the week off, and then get back to work the next weekend, finishing up Week 3 and starting on Week 4. If you take this approach, not only will you find the workload easier to manage, you can get Early Bird extra credit for working ahead.

Week 2 Internet assignment: Publishing webpages. As I mentioned in Thursday's announcements, it's a good idea to give yourself plenty of time when publishing your first webpages for this class, especially if you have never published a webpage in your OU webspace before. I'm available via email Friday to help you with any problems you run into. Over the weekend, I am not as quick to answer email - so please make sure you get started on that assignment on Saturday at the latest. That way, if you run into trouble, you can contact me on Saturday and there will be time for me to send you a reply on Sunday. I can't guarantee that I'll answer emails the same day on the weekend, but if you send me a question on Saturday, I'll definitely get back to you early on Sunday, which will still give you plenty of time to finish the assignment.

Refund reminder: Monday is the last day. For those of you who are still deciding whether or not you want to stay in the class, Monday is when you need to make that decision. You can still drop on Monday and get a full refund. After Monday, you can drop the class with a W on your transcript, but the university will be keeping your money.

September 6: Birthday of Robert Pirsig. Saturday, September 6, marks the birthday of Robert Pirsig, who was born in 1928 and who is still with us today: Happy birthday, Robert Pirsig! For those of you who have not already had your lives changed by his amazing book, Pirsig is the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I first read this book when I was 16 years old and I've read it again pretty much every year or every other year since then - let's say twenty times or so. I just finished reading it again two weeks ago, as a matter of fact. You can learn more about Pirsig in this Wikipedia article - and truly, if you are interested in life itself (and who is not interested in life, eh?), then I recommend that you give this book a try. It's the only book I don't think I will ever catch up with - every time I come back to it, it seems a little more far out, in the best sense of that phrase, and I keep running right on after it, learning new things every time. The novel itself is about a motorcycle journey that Pirsig took across the country in 1968 together with his young son, Chris - here's a picture from the trip showing the two of them on the bike:

Thursday, September 4

Today is Thursday of WEEK 2 of the class. For those of you in Myth-Folklore or World Lit, Thursday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Wednesday. (Indian Epics has no Wednesday assignments, so no Thursday grace period is needed.)

Ning blogging tips. Many of you will be posting at the Ning tonight, Thursday. If you need reminders about images and links in blogs, just check in the Ning FAQs and Tips section on the main page of the Ning, left-hand column, and you should be able to find the information you need.

Week 2 Internet Assignment: Webpages. This week, your Internet assignment will be to publish your first webpages. I am available during the day on Thursday and on Friday to help you with this if you run into any technical difficulties. So, if this is your first time to publish webpages in your OU webspace, please make sure you get to work on this assignment now, and do not put it off until the weekend. I check my email less frequently over the weekend, so in order to make sure you are able to ask questions and get help if needed, please get started on publishing your first webpages now.

Storybook Stack. There are just a few Week 2 and Week 3 assignments in the Storybook stack (you can check the contents of the stack here). Please make sure you save the Storybook assignment emails that I send back to you with comments, because you will need those comments for the Storybook assignment in the following week! My comments are marked with ==> in the body of the email. This is the only assignment during the week for which I record the points for you in the Gradebook, and I record those points at the same time that I send the comments back to you. If you ever have any question about the comments I send back to you (for example, if I don't explain something clearly) or if I forget to record the points (it does happen sometimes), please just let me know!

Week 2 blog comment assignment. The Week 2 blog commenting assignment is not available yet; it will be available starting on Friday, September 5. The blog commenting assignment is the only assignment you cannot complete early, because people will still be adding posts to their blog today, Thursday. At midnight tonight, the list of blog assignments will become available and you will have Friday-Saturday-Sunday to complete that assignment. I know that might be inconvenient for some of you based on your complicated schedules, which is why there is extra credit available every week: if for some reason you are not able to complete the blog commenting assignment during the allotted three-day time period, you can always make it up with the available extra credit assignments, no questions asked!

September 4: Mary Renault. Today, September 4, marks the birthday of the English novelist Mary Renault who was born in 1904 and died in 1983. Renault wrote novels based on ancient Greek mythology and ancient Greek history. She wrote a pair of novels about the mythological hero Theseus (The King Must Die, Bull from the Sea), as well as a trilogy of novels about Alexander the Great. It is the middle novel of that trilogy - The Persian Boy - which is my own personal favorite of her novels. The novel is narrated by Bagoas, the Persian boy whom Alexander notoriously took as his lover. Renault was one of the first historical novelists to write openly about homosexual love in ancient Greece, and the story she tells in The Persian Boy is intense, dramatic and unforgettable. Highly recommended!

Wednesday, September 3

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 2 of the class. Wednesday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Tuesday.

My Wednesday schedule. I do most of my work during regular business hours on Monday-Tuesday and Thursday-Friday, while scheduling my out-of-office commitments on Wednesdays. That means I may be a bit more slow to respond to your emails on Wednesday than on the other days of the week - but if you send me an email during the day on Wednesday, I'll definitely get back to you by the end of the day.

Storybook Stack. I'm still making my way through the stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment before 5 PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me. If you turned in an assignment after 5 PM on Sunday, it is probably still in the stack. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here. I read and reply to the assignments in the order that they are turned in, so if you want comments back sooner, try to turn in your assignment before the final due date. The majority of people turn in the assignment on the last day it is due, and that means it sometimes takes me several days to get comments back to you.

September 8: Final day to drop with refund. Monday, September 8, will be the final day to drop a class and get a full refund. So, if you are finding out that this class does not fit into your schedule after all, or that the workload is too demanding, you can still drop the class and get a refund. The Week 2 assignments will give you a sense of what the regular weekly assignments will be like for the rest of the semester, so you will have a good basis on which to make your decision.

September 3: Ganesh Chaturthi 2008. The Ganesh Chaturthi holiday honors Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god. You can read more about the Ganesh Chaturthi festival, which lasts for a total of 10 days, in this detailed Wikipedia article. Ganesha is the god who bestows blessings on the beginnings of things, and he is known as a remover of obstacles, so we are very fortunate to have his festival come at the beginning of the semester. This image shows part of the elaborate festival celebration in the city of Mumbai:


Here is a sand sculpture of Ganesha made by Sudarsan Patnaik, a famous sand artist from Orissa state, on India's eastern coast:

Tuesday, September 2

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 2 of the class. For those of you who are working ahead, Weeks 3 and 4 are also available!

Ning Comments. Thanks for the great job you all did with the comments on the Ning blogs! Each week, you will be assigned different blogs to read and comment on. I hope this will be a good way for you to get to know the other students in the class. Later on, you will also be reading each other's Storybook projects, in addition to reading each other's blog posts. (The first Storybook commenting assignment will come in Week 5, after everyone has had a chance to start publishing pages of their Storybook online.)

Storybook Stack. A very large number of Storybook assignments came in over the weekend. Tuesday morning I will start reading through those assignments in the order in which they were turned in. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.

Myth-Folklore: Gilgamesh OR Egypt. Those of you who are in the Myth-Folklore class will have a choice of readings each week. This week, the choice is between Gilgamesh OR Egypt. You will do only one set of readings, and take the background quiz and reading quiz based on your choice Gilgamesh OR Egypt. This means that will end up with some blank items in the Gradebook; please don't worry about that. Your goal is to get 30 points per week, and if you do the quizzes for just one of the reading selections, you will end up with the points you need.

Publishing Your First Webpages. This week, your Internet assignment will be to publish your first webpages. Although this assignment is not due until the weekend, I hope you will get started on it early. I am available during the week to help you if you run into any snags as you create and publish your first pages, but I am not as easy to reach over the weekend. So, especially if this is the first time you have published webpages in your OU webspace (as it is for most of you!), please get started on this assignment now if possible, and don't put it off until the last minute.

September 2: Death of J. R. R. Tolkien. Today, September 2, marks the death in 1973 of the great English author, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, who is best known for creating the marvelous fantasy world of Middle Earth, in which he set his novel The Hobbit and the trilogy known as Lord of the Rings. I first encountered Tolkien when my fourth-grade teacher read The Hobbit to us in class, and I spent all of junior high reading and re-reading The Lord of the Rings. The recent films by Peter Jackson brought a whole new audience to these books, and I am very curious what the forthcoming film of The Hobbit directed by Guillermo del Toro will be like! You can read about Tolkien's life and career in this Wikipedia article, which is also the source for this drawing which shows Tolkien's own design for the covers of The Lord of the Rings trilogy:

Monday, September 1: LABOR DAY

Today is Monday, September 1 - Happy Labor Day! You do not have any assignments that are due today, so there is no special adjustment to the class schedule for the Labor Day holiday.

Week 1 of the class is now over. Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Friday/Saturday/Sunday.

Week 2 will begin tomorrow, Tuesday - and those assignments are available now if you want to get started. The Week 3 assignments are also available now, too! (Week 4 will be available starting on Tuesday.)

Storybook Stack. Because of the Labor Day holiday, I will not be working on the Storybook stack until Tuesday. If you want to check and make sure that I received your assignment, you can view the contents of the stack to make sure your assignment is there!

A cartoon from Guy & Rodd in honor of OU's football victory.
(Click on the image for a larger view.)