Friday, October 3 - Sunday, October 5

HAPPY WEEKEND! You have reached the end of Week 6! The Week 6 Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now, and so is the Week 6 Internet assignment (Storybook commenting), along with the remaining Week 6 assignments that are due on Friday or on Saturday or Sunday - please make sure you get started on those assignments soon. If you have not turned in your Week 5 Storybook assignment yet, you may turn it in BY FRIDAY AT NOON for partial credit. Also, Friday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Thursday.

Friday drop deadline. Today, Friday, October 3, is the last day to drop the class with an automatic grade of W on your transcript. For more information, see Wednesday's announcements.

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. My goal is to get comments back to everyone by the end of the day Friday for assignments turned in before Friday at noon. Friday noon is also the deadline for turning in a late Week 5 Storybook assignment for partial credit. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here. Anything you turn in after noon on Friday will be in the stack on Monday. The sooner you turn in your Storybook assignment, the sooner you will get comments back from me next week.

Technology Tips. Right now the Technology Tip extra credit assignment is available for Week 6, Week 7 and Week 8. Here are some tips I would recommend for your attention if you have not done them already: organizing your Ning page, adding a YouTube video to your Ning page, resizing images with Picnik.com, or using the WordCountPlus plugin for Firefox.

October 3: Gore Vidal. Friday, October 3, marks the birthday in the year 1925 of the great American author, Gore Vidal. You can read more about Gore Vidal in this Wikipedia article. My favorite of his novels is without doubt his amazing historical novel Julian, about the 4th-century emperor Julian, nicknamed "Julian the Apostate," the last of the pagan emperors of Rome (although I am also a big fan of another of his historical novels, Creation, too). Here is the cover of a recent edition of Julian:

Thursday, October 2

Today is Thursday of WEEK 6 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 5 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit. 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.

Ning blog pages. Those of you who have chosen a "theme" for your Ning Profile page may have noticed in the past few days that this theme does not work on your blog page now. My apologies for that! This is a change that Ning made across the board for all the Ning communities when they added some new features this past weekend. Personally, I think it's a terrible decision: I really enjoyed seeing the blogs look different ways based on the themes people chose! I've written a complaint to Ning, and many other people have complained as well, so I am hoping they might set it back to the way it was previously. Anyway, don't be surprised if your blog page looks different now. People will still see your chosen theme when they visit your Profile page to add comments at your Comment Wall, but they will not see your theme in your blog. (At least, not until Ning is convinced to change that back: fingers crossed!)

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment on or before 10AM on Monday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in after 10AM on Monday or on Tuesday or Wednesday, your assignment is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.

Friday drop deadline. This Friday, October 3, is the last day to drop the class with an automatic grade of W on your transcript. For more information, see yesterday's announcements.

Journey to the Sea: Rumi and Aesop. Many of you in the Myth-Folklore class are reading about the Sufi mystical writer Rumi this week, and as luck would have it, I published a brief article in the new October issue of Journey to Sea about Rumi and Aesop - it's something you might want to look at if you are curious about Rumi and/or about Aesop. Also, I wanted to let you all know about this journal since it is a project that was started by a former student in this class! Randy Hoyt was a student in Myth-Folklore many years ago (Fall 2003). He has since graduated from OU, and is now working as a webmaster for Blockbuster. Yet even as he climbs the corporate ladder, he has remained fascinated by the world of mythology, and this past summer he decided to start a journal in order to pursue this interest. He asked me to write some articles as the journal was getting started, and he has also been soliciting articles from other academics and writers and artists who study mythology. It's a great project - and just goes to show what one person can do thanks to the power of the Internet! You can find all four issues of the journal so far at JourneyToTheSea.com.

Wednesday, October 1

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 6 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 5 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit. Wednesday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Tuesday.

Friday drop deadline. This Friday, October 3, is the last day to drop the class with an automatic grade of W on your transcript. If you drop after Friday, you will end up with an F on your transcript (the only way to drop with a W after Friday is if you are passing the class when you drop, but if you were passing the class, you probably would not be dropping it, right?). So, for any of you in the class who are really having trouble keeping up, please take note of this deadline. With midterms coming up and more and more work being due in your other classes, you need to decide if you will be able to keep up with the workload in this class for the rest of the semester. If you have any questions about this, please make sure you contact me either on Wednesday or Thursday so I'll have time to answer your questions before the Friday deadline.

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment on or before Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in on Monday (including the wee hours of the morning on Monday) or on Tuesday, your assignment is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here. Meanwhile, if you want to work ahead on the Week 6 Storybook assignment, please go right ahead - you don't need my comments back on your Week 5 assignment in order to get started on Week 6, adding your first story to the Storybook!

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.

October 1: E.B. White. Today, October 1, marks the death in the year 1985 of the American author, E.B. White, the author of such marvelous children's books as Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web. You might also recognize his name as being the "White" in the famous guide to English composition, The Elements of Style, a book originally written by William Strunk in 1918, and substantially updated and edited by E.B. White in 1959, so that the book is often referred to as "Strunk & White." You can read more about E.B. White's biography in this Wikipedia article; meanwhile, here is a book cover for the Latin translation of Charlotte's Web into Latin: Tela Charlottae and, yes, as some of you are probably figuring out, I am a big fan of children's literature in Latin! :-)

Tuesday, September 30

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 6 of the class. For those of you who are working ahead, Weeks 7 and 8 are also available! If you have not turned in your Week 5 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit.

Week 6 Internet assignment available NOW. Now that Week 6 has begun, the Week 6 Internet assignment is also available - this week, you'll be commenting not just on some Storybook coverpages, but also reading some Introductions. You'll find detailed instructions at the Week 6 Internet assignment page - just like last week, you have two assigned Storybooks to read, and you can pick two of your own choice. If you want to go back to a Storybook you looked at last week and read the Introduction, that's great - or you can pick something totally new from the class list. It's up to you! You can complete this assignment any time during the week or over the weekend, if you prefer.

Storybook Stack. As usual at the beginning of the week there are still LOTS of Storybook assignments in the stack. If you turned something in before 11 AM on Saturday, you should have comments back from me already. If you turned something in later on Saturday or on Sunday or Monday, 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.

Vivid storytelling - Jatayu's flight. Sara Pyle in the Indian Epics class has finished up a really excellent story that I wanted to share with everybody. I can't think of a better example that shows the power of third-person narration: there is vivid description, lots of action, dialogue, and the inner thoughts of the central character, the great bird Jatayu. If you are in search of a storytelling style to inspire you, this is definitely one you should look at: A Hero's Death: Jatayu.

September 30: Navaratri. Today marks the beginning of the autumn observance of the "Nine Nights" Festival (and ten days) which are dedicated in Hinduism to the worship of Devi, the goddess in all her forms, especially as Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati. There is a Navaratri festival in fall, and again in the spring. The date of Navaratri (also called Navratri) depends on the lunar calendar, and in 2008, the fall Navaratri begins on September 30. You can read more about the festival at Wikipedia and at About.com: Hinduism. Here is some Navaratrai wallpaper!

Monday, September 29

Today is Monday, and Week 5 of the class is now over - and that means you have completed one-third of the semester. Wow! Week 6 will begin tomorrow - and those assignments are available now if you want to get started. The Week 7 assignments are also available now, too! (Week 8 will be available tomorrow.) Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Friday/Saturday/Sunday.

Storybook stack. As always on Monday, I will have a huge bunch of assignments in the Storybook stack that were turned in over the weekend or on Monday morning. The first thing I will do on Monday morning when I get to work is to update the list of items in the Storybook stack. So, after 8 a.m. or so on Monday, you will be able to check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment. I will be reading and reply to the assignments in the order they were turned in, beginning with the assignments turned in on Friday or Saturday.

Images and webpages. For those of you who are interested in different ways to work with images and text on your webpages, you can find some basic tips here on Aligning Images and Text in Composer. Keep in mind that not everybody will have the same size monitor that you do, and they may choose to have their browser window larger or small than you do, so don't worry too much about trying to find the perfect alignment. Instead, you need to think in general layout terms that are flexible enough to look good at different widths. One thing you can do is to make sure that the images you are using have been cropped and sized so that they fit your page nicely. You might want to try this Technology Tip for Picnik.com, a FREE online service you can use for editing images. If you learn how to crop and resize images, you can easily make a coverpage for your Storybook like this wonderful coverpage with four equally sized images, one for each story in the Storybook: Clash of the Heroes.

Monday, September 29: Eve of Rosh Hashanah. This Sunday evening, at sundown, marks the beginning of the Jewish New Year holiday, Rosh Hashanah. Like many religious holidays, this one is based on the lunar calendar, so it falls on a different day each year, depending on the cycle of moon. According to Jewish tradition, this is the day of the year on which God created man, and it is also the day of the year on which the Last Judgment will take place. One of the rituals on Rosh Hashanah is the blowing of the shofar, the ram's horn, to awaken the faithful before the coming judgment. You can read more about the holiday at Wikipedia, and below you can see the blowing of the shofar as shown here in an illuminated Hebrew manuscript: