Week 11 Responding: Check your groups. The groups for Blog Responding are basically the same as last week, but there have been some small adjustments, based on the folks who are finished with the class. So, before you do the blog responding assignment, double-check on your group to make sure you are responding to the right folks.
Week 11 Internet: Visiting the other classes. (repeat announcement) For the Week 11 Internet assignment, you will see that the instructions are VERY different from previous weeks: you will be visiting the Storybooks in the other classes. So, please make sure you read the instructions for the Week 11 Internet assignment before you start reading the Storybooks for your Week 11 Internet assignment. There is also an extra credit option for Week 11 so that you can read some more stories in the Storybooks if you want.
Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in this week. If you want to check to make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here. Everyone who turned in a Week 10 assignment on time should have gotten that back from me; if you turned in a late Week 10 assignment or an early assignment for Week 11 or later, I will do my best to get comments back to you on Friday. This is one of the busiest weeks of the semester for Storybooks because it is the week when there is the largest number of late assignments - so please be patient; I'll do my best to clear out the stack on Friday as usual.
Grading and the end of the semester. (repeat announcement) Please make sure you read Monday's announcements, if you have not done so already - you will find important information there about grading in this class, along with information about the end of the semester and also about "mixing and matching" to choose the assignments you want to do as you finish the semester.
November: Thanksgiving Break. (repeat announcement) You will be getting a full week off for Thanksgiving in this class. Thanksgiving falls on November 25 this year. Week 13 will start as usual on Tuesday, November 16 and you will have your usual Week 13 Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday assignments; I would urge you to finish up Week 13 on Friday, November 19. Then you can have the entire next week off from November 20 - November 28, with the Week 13 grace period on Monday morning, November 29. See the class calendar for more details.
Friday, November 5: Guy Fawkes Night. In England, the night of November 5 is celebrated as Bonfire Night - Guy Fawkes Night commemorating the occasion when the so-called "Gunpowder Plot" of 1605 was prevented. So, even though the holiday is named after Guy Fawkes, the holiday is not in his honor: Guy Fawkes, a Catholic, was involved in a plot to blow up the House of Parliament in England as a protest against the Protestant government's persecution of Catholics. The plot was discovered, and Guy Fawkes, along with the other conspirators, was condemned to death. In the celebrations of Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes is often burned in effigy; those of you who have read T.S. Eliot's poem The Hollow Men may remember the line, "A penny for the old Guy" - and the origin of our English word "guy" actually goes back to this use of the word. The film V for Vendetta made the Guy Fawkes mask familiar to many of you, I am sure!
