Monday, February 9

Today is Monday, and Week 3 of the class is now over. That means the semester is 20% over already - wow! 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 4 will begin tomorrow - and those assignments are available now if you want to get started. The Week 5 assignments are also available now, too! (Week 6 will be available tomorrow.) For those of you who are working ahead, you will note that the Week 5 Internet assignment is not available yet; you'll need to wait on those until everybody has gotten their Storybook coverpages published online.

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 then start reading the assignments in the order they were turned in. Please do not go on to the Week 4 Storybook assignment until you get Week 3 comments back from me (and the same is true for those of you who have turned in Week 4 assignments - please do not go on to the Week 5 Storybook assignment until you get my Week 4 comments). Thank you for your patience as I make my way through the giant stack! :-)

Late Storybook assignments. Each week, the Storybook assignment is the only assignment that can be turned in late for partial credit. Since I cannot get all the Storybooks graded and returned immediately, it is fine with me if you turn in the Storybook late. A Storybook assignment turned in on Monday afternoon can receive up to 8 points credit; if it is turned in on Tuesday, you can get up to 7 points of credit, up to 6 points on Wednesday and up to 5 points if you turn it in by noon on Thursday. The absolute deadline for turning your Storybook assignment for partial credit is noon on Thursday. No late Storybook assignments will be accepted after Thursday at noon.

February 9: Tu B'shvat. Today is the Jewish holiday of Tu B'shvat, the "Fifteenth (day) in (the month of) Shevat," also known as the "New Year of the Trees," a holiday that falls in either January or February of each year, depending on the Jewish calendar, coinciding with the full moon. This year it falls on February 9. In Israel, the date is especially associated with the flowering of the almond trees, which you can see in the image below. On this holiday, people eat dried fruits and nuts, and new trees are planted, something like our on our "Arbor Day" holiday. You can read more about the holiday at Wikipedia, which is also the source for this image showing an almond tree in bloom in Israel: