Friday, January 30 - Sunday, February 1

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.

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, February 2, 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.

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-through-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. I'm available via email Friday to help you with any problems you run into as you publish your first webpages. 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, in time for you to finish up the assignment over the weekend.

Storybook assignments over the weekend. If you want to receive comments from me about a Storybook assignment before the weekend, please turn it in by noon on Friday. I always do my best to read and reply on Friday afternoon to all the assignments turned in before noon. If you turn in an assignment on Friday afternoon or over the weekend, I'll be updating the list again on Monday. So, on Monday morning, you can check the list of assignments in the Stack and you'll be able to make sure I received your assignment.

Friday, January 30: Assassination of Gandhi. On January 30 in 1948, Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated. The image below shows the memorial in New Delhi where Gandhi's body was cremated. Written on the stone you can see what were reportedly Gandhi's last words: "Hey Ram" (Oh Rama!) - his invocation of the god Rama will definitely mean something to the students in the Indian Epics class. Although it is a matter of some controversy as to whether those were Gandhi's last words, here is something he wrote in December 1947, just weeks before his assassination: "In the end it will be as Rama commands me. Thus I dance as He pulls the strings. I am in His hands and so I am experiencing ineffable peace." If you look closely at the photograph, you will see the words written in Devanagari script, gold letters on the black stone, just behind the burning stick of incense:

Thursday, January 29

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. In particular, you might want to review the different options for Adding an Image to Your Post. It's important that the image be the right size - if you have a giant-sized image, use this Technology Tip to Resize Images (and get extra credit for it!).

Week 2 blog comment assignment. The Week 2 blog commenting assignment is not available yet; it will be available starting on Friday, January 30. The blog commenting assignment is the only assignment you cannot complete early, because people will still be adding posts to their blog today, Thursday. Then, right after midnight on Thursday, the list of blog assignments will become available and you will have Friday-Saturday-Sunday to complete that Week 2 assignment.

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), and I hope to get the stack cleared out by the end of the day on Thursday. If you want comments back on a Storybook assignment BEFORE the weekend, make sure you get that turned in by Friday at noon. I'll do my best to read and reply to anything turned in on Friday morning before the end of the day on Friday.

Neil Gaiman wins Newberry. I know I am not the only fan of the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman (author of the genius novel American Gods, among much other great work), so I thought I would share the good news here that Gaiman was just awarded the Newbery Medal for Children's Literature for his Graveyard Book! You can read the news in the Washington Post, and Gaiman also maintains a marvelous website - NeilGaiman.com - where you can find out more. Congratulations, Neil Gaiman!

Wednesday, January 28

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. For those of you who are working ahead, both Week 3 and Week 4 are available at this time!

Continuing bad weather in Norman. I'm sure you have all received the email announcement that campus will be closed again on Wednesday. If you do have to be out and about for some other reason on Wednesday, please be careful! One of the things I like about teaching online courses is that it does not require you to leave the warmth and comfort of your home during the treacherous winter weather. Be safe!

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 working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in a Week 1 assignment (Myth-Folklore and World Lit), you should have comments back from me now. For those of you who have turned in an early Storybook assignment for Week 2 or Week 3 or Week 4, your assignment might still be in the stack waiting for me to get to it. You can check and make sure your assignment is in the Storybook stack here. Please make sure you wait to get my Week 2 comments back before you move on to the Week 3 Storybook assignment, and if you turned in Week 3, please wait on my comments before you move on to Week 4. I hope to read and reply to all the assignments that have been turned in by the end of the day on Wednesday!

January 28: William Butler Yeats. Today marks the anniversary of the death of the great Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, who died on this day, January 28, in the year 1939. You can read more about Yeats' life and career in this Wikipedia article. Those of you in the World Lit. or Myth-Folklore course may have encountered William Butler Yeats in your research for the class so far, because Yeats was a crucial figure in the revivial of Irish popular culture in the 19th century and you can find many of his works online at the Sacred Texts Archive. The image below shows Yeats' gravestone in a cemetery in Drumcliff, County Sligo, Ireland; the simple inscription - "Cast a cold Eye / On life, on Death. / Horsemen pass by!" was what Yeats himself asked to have carved on the stone.

Tuesday, January 27

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 2 of the class. That means you are starting Narayan's Ramayana in the Indian Epics class, while it's Buddhist Jataka Tales in the World Literature class, and it's Ancient Near East week in Myth-Folklore. I really hope you will enjoy the readings! For those of you who are working ahead, Weeks 3 and 4 are also available!

Bad weather in Norman. I hope everybody who was on campus on Monday got safely home after they decided to close the campus in the afternoon. I also hope you are safe and warm at home as you read these announcements, and that you won't have to go out while the weather is still hazardous. If you do have to go out in the weather, be cautious and careful!

Week 2: Myth-Folklore. For those of you who are in the Myth-Folklore class, you will be choosing ONE reading option - either Gilgamesh OR Egypt. You will take the Background quiz for the unit you chose (and not the other one), and you will do the Reading quiz for the unit you chose (and not the other one). This will lead to some blanks in your Gradebook, but that doesn't matter at all - the only thing that matters is accumulating 30 points per week. You can get all the points you need by doing just one Background quiz and one Reading quiz each week.

Storybook Stack. A very large number of Storybook assignments came in over the weekend, and I've been reading through those in the order that they came in. If you turned in a Storybook assignment before Saturday at 8PM, you should have comments back from me, with points recorded for you in the Gradebook (check and make sure!). If you turned something in later on Saturday or on Sunday, it 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.

Storybook Comments via email. When I send back Storybook comments to you via email, you will see that my comments are inserted into your email, and are marked with ==> to make them easy to find. The comments for each week should help you when you do your assignment for the next week, and possibly in future weeks, too, so make sure you save the emails that I send back to you about your Storybook assignment so that you can consult them later as needed.

Publishing Your First Webpages. This week, your Week 2 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.

January 27: Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day of January 27 has been designated by the United Nations and many other countries as a day in remembrance of those who died in the Nazi Holocaust of World War II. The person I hold in my special remembrance for this day is Janusz Korczak (Wikipedia), a visionary educator of the 20th century, who organized the Jewish orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto. In 1942, the Nazis raided the orphanage and sent the children to the death camp at Treblinka. Although Korczak's Polish friends begged him to escape and hide with them for the rest of the war (Korczak was a famous radio celebrity in Poland before the war), he would not leave the children, and died together with them at Treblinka. This image from shows the Yad Vashem Memorial for Korczak and his children:

Monday, January 26

Today is Monday, and Week 1 of the class is now over. Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the Week 1 assignments that were due on Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Week 2 will begin tomorrow - and it will be the real start of the class, focusing now on the content of what you will be studying all this semester. In addition, the Week 3 assignments are available too, if you want to really get ahead of the schedule. (For those of you who are already working ahead, Week 4 will be available starting on Tuesday.)

Monday morning: emails ANSWERED. As you can imagine, my email inbox is very full on Monday morning. I have now replied to all the emails that came in - NOT counting the Storybook assignments (see below) - so you should have an answer from me to any email you sent me this weekend. If not, please check with me about that! OU email is notorious for putting important emails into people's Junk Mail Folders, for example, and all kinds of other problems that sometimes interfere with the email - so, if you were expecting to get a reply from me and have not gotten one yet, please let me know! I will now start in on the big stack of Storybook assignments, working through those in the order that they were turned in.

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 Week 1 Storybook assignments from Myth-Folklore and World Lit., plus early Week 2 and Week 3 assignments from all three classes. 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. For those of you who are working ahead: please do not go on to the Week 3 Storybook assignment until you get Week 2 comments back from me. Thanks for your patience with that!

January 26: Republic Day honors Sundarlal Bahuguna. On this day in 1950, the Indian Constitution came into force, making India officially a "Republic," and so January 26 is celebrated as "Republic Day" in India. You can read more about the holiday at Wikipedia. Each year on Indian Republic Day, heroes of the nation are celebrated and one of the heroes being celebrated this year is the environmental activist, Sundarlal Bahuguna, a member of the Chipko movement fighting to preserve the forests in the Himalayas. The image shows Sundarlal Bahuguna standing in front of a painting that depicts his meeting with the Dalai Lama (source):