Friday, April 16 - Sunday, April 18

HAPPY WEEKEND! You have reached the end of Week 12! The Week 12 Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now, and the remaining Week 12 assignments are due on Friday or on Saturday or Sunday - please make sure you get started on those assignments soon. Friday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Thursday.

Gradebook Declarations. (repeat announcement) Some of you are under a lot of pressure at the end of the semester with projects and tests in your other classes. So please, if you do not have time to fully complete one of the assignments for this class, just skip it, and make up the points later. Read each Declaration carefully and do NOT make the Declaration if you have not completed the work. You need to check your word count and other requirements BEFORE you do the Declaration. The penalties for making false Gradebook Declarations are serious; if you are not clear about this, please check the Honor Code for this class. Your Gradebook Declarations need to be accurate and honest; the whole grading system in this class depends on it.

Week 12 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.

Storybook Stack. There are still some Storybook assignments in the stack and I am making my way through them in the order that 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. As always on Friday, I will do my best to get comments back before the weekend to any assignment turned in before noon on Friday. Anything that is turned in after noon on Friday will be added to the stack first thing on Monday morning.

Sunday IT Maintenance. On the third Sunday of every month, IT does maintenance on its servers. There will be a maintenance window this Sunday, April 18. This often causes service outages, which may affect you if you are trying to publish webpages at students.ou.edu. The maintenance window is in the morning, and the maintenance should be completed before noon on Sunday. For specific information and updates, see the IT Alerts page at alerts.ou.edu (this is also a good page to check if you are experiencing problems with Desire2Learn, email, or other IT services).

April 16: Aphra Behn. Friday, April 16, marks the death in the year 1689 of Aphra Behn, one of the first professional women writers in the English literary tradition. You can read more about her life and career in this Wikipedia article. In addition to her literary pursuits, she even worked as a spy for King Charles II, under the code name "Astrea." She is buried, along with many other famous English writers, in Westminster Abbey, and her tombstone reads: Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be / Defence enough against Mortality. You can see the inscription on the tombstone below, along with a portrait of Aphra Behn in life:

Thursday, April 15

Today is Thursday of WEEK 12 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 11 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that BEFORE NOON TODAY 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.

Storybook stack. There are still quite a few assignments in the Storybook stack. If you turned in your assignment before 10AM on Monday, you should have comments back from me now. Assignments turned in later on Monday, or on Tuesday or Wednesday are probably still in the stack. You can check the contents of the stack to make sure I have received your assignment.

Writing Center. (repeat announcement) In addition to the writing you have been doing for this class, some of you probably have writing assignments, such as final papers and projects, which you will be turning in for your other classes. So, I wanted to remind you that for any kind of writing project you are doing in any of your classes, the Writing Center is the place to go for help. Whether you are struggling with the overall organization of your writing (finding a focus, working with paragraphs), figuring our research strategies for a research paper, or whether you have some basic questions about writing mechanics (especially punctuation), the tutors at the Writing Center can help. For hours and services, visit the Writing Center website.

April 15: Leonardo da Vinci. Today marks the birthday in the year 1452 of the remarkable Leonardo da Vinci, who was a genius in math, science and engineering, as well as being a famous painter and sculptor. You can read about his remarkable life and career in Wikipedia. To see someone paint the Mona Lisa using the simple art program MS Paint, take a look at this YouTube video - it's mesmerizing!

Wednesday, April 14

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 12 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 11 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.

UPDATE: MythFolklore Ballad audio recordings. For the Child Ballad audio recordings, I had to update the links on Wednesday morning, due to a reorganization of the Max Hunter Folk Song Archive at Missouri State University. If you looked at any of the class reading pages previously, you may have to press REFRESH in your browser to get the corrected version of the page to load. If you notice any of the links not working, let me know! I think they are all corrected now and my apologies for any trouble this may have caused if you were trying to access the recordings on Tuesday.

Storybook stack. There are still quite a few assignments in the Storybook stack. If you turned in your assignment on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. Assignments turned in on Monday or on Tuesday are probably still in the stack. You can check the contents of the stack to make sure I have received your assignment. If the points you will be getting for the Storybook assignment(s) you have turned in will give you the points you need for your final grade in the class, send me a separate note to let me know and I'll move your assignments to the top of the stack.

Grading and points. (repeat announcement) As you can see in the Grading Information page, you need 410 to get an A, 360 points to get a B, and 320 points to get a C. When you get the number of points you need, you are done! It is fine with me if you decide to stop doing work for the class whenever you have the grade you want to receive. My only request is that you please let me know when you are done so I can adjust the comment assignments accordingly!

My Wednesday schedule. I do most of my work during regular business hours on Monday-Tuesday and Thursday-Friday, while scheduling any out-of-office commitments on Wednesdays. So today I'll be away for part of the day, but I should be back in the afternoon and available to answer any email questions by the end of the day.

April 14: Ramana Maharshi. Today marks the anniversary of the death in the year 1950 of the great Indian guru, Sri Ramana Maharshi. You can read more about his life and career in Wikipedia, which also has a section of quotations from his works and teachings - for example, here's one about how getting to know yourself is like wearing a pair of shoes for the soul: "Wanting to reform the world without discovering one's true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes." There's even a Ramana Maharshi comic book in the famous Amar Chitra Katha series of comic books as shown below:

Tuesday, April 13

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 12 of the class, and I've re-arranged the Quiz area in Desire2Learn so Week 12 is on top. For those of you in Indian Epics, that means continuing with Buck's version of the Mahabharata (including the great legend of Nala and Damayanti), while it's a choice between fairy tales and ballads in Myth-Folklore, and this is the week of the Arabian Nights in World Literature. If you have not turned in your Week 11 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit.

Counting this week, there are FOUR WEEKS of class remaining (Weeks 12-13-14-15), which means 120 points of regular assignments, plus extra credit. That assumes you have not been working ahead; if you have been working ahead, you can look at the Gradebook to see just how many available points you can still earn in these last weeks of class.

Storybook Stack. As usual on Tuesday, I am making my way through the big stack of Storybooks turned in over the weekend. If you turned something in on Saturday, you should have comments back from me already. If you turned something in on Sunday or on 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.

Overview of Week 12 and Week 13 Internet assignments. (repeat announcement) For the Week 12 Internet assignment, you will be commenting on other people's Storybooks. Then, for the Week 13 assignment (available a week from Tuesday, on April 20), you will be voting on your favorite Storybooks for the semester. After you turn in your nominations, I'll set up a ballot so everybody can vote for the best Storybooks - it's not for a grade or anything, it's just for fun, and it gives the folks who have done really excellent work on their Storybooks a chance to get some well deserved recognition.

April 13: Seamus Heaney. Today is the birthday of the Irish writer Seamus Heaney, one of the world's great poets and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. Happy Birthday, Seamus Heaney! Some of you might be especially interested in the fact that he has done a version of the Beowulf poem in modern English. He has also written a play, A Cure at Troy, based on the ancient Greek tragedy Philoctetes by Sophocles. I am especially fond of his adaptation of the Laments of Jan Kochanowksi, a Renaissance Polish poet. You can read about Seamus Heaney's life and career in this Wikipedia article.

Monday, April 12

Today is Monday. Week 11 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 12 will begin tomorrow - and those assignments are available now if you want to get started. Weeks 13, 14 and 15 are also available for those of you who can see the goal in sight and want to start working ahead now to finish up the class.

Gradebook Declarations. Some of you are under a lot of pressure at the end of the semester with projects and tests in your other classes. So please, if you do not have time to fully complete one of the assignments for this class, just skip it, and make up the points later. Read each Declaration carefully and do NOT make the Declaration if you have not completed the work. You need to check your word count and other requirements BEFORE you do the Declaration. The penalties for making false Gradebook Declarations are serious; if you are not clear about this, please check the Honor Code for this class. Your Gradebook Declarations need to be accurate and honest; the whole grading system in this class depends on it.

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. You can check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment. I will be reading and replying to the assignments in the order they were turned in - if the points you will be getting for the Storybook assignment(s) you have turned in will give you the points you need for your final grade in the class, let me know and I'll check on the points total for you! :-)

Overview of Week 12 and Week 13 Internet assignments. Week 12 will begin tomorrow, on Tuesday, and you will be commenting on other people's Storybooks. Then, for the Week 13 assignment (available a week from Tuesday, on April 20), you will be voting on your favorite Storybooks for the semester. After you turn in your nominations, I'll set up a ballot so everybody can vote for the best Storybooks - it's not for a grade or anything, it's just for fun, and it gives the folks who have done really excellent work on their Storybooks a chance to get some well deserved recognition.

Katyń: April 10 2010. On Saturday (April 10, 2010), a plane crash took the life of the President of Poland Lech Kaczynski, along with many other important Polish officials who were on their way to the site of the Katyń massacre for a memorial service. Katyń is the name of a forest near Smolensk in western Russia, one of the locations in western Russia where over 20,000 Polish military officers and other Polish prisoners of war were executed by the NKVD, the Soviet internal security police, in the spring of 1940, seventy years ago. Saturday's plane crash is a tragic postscript to this grim event from Polish history. If you are interested in learning more about Katyń, there is a brilliant film by the great Polish film director, Andrzej Wajda, about the Katyń massacre and its cover-up by the Soviets. I highly recommend it; you can read a review I wrote of the film here.