Wednesday, January 19

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 1 of class. Wednesday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Tuesday.

Class announcements. You should be reading the class announcements every day. If you did not read the Tuesday announcements, please make sure you do that now: Tuesday announcements. There was important information in the Tuesday announcements that will help you complete your various assignments for this week.

Your announcements for the class. If any of you are involved in campus activities that you want me to publicize with the rest of the class, please let me know. I'll be glad to include them here in the class announcements! Send me specific information about day-time-location, and also a link to a webpage or any additional online information you have about the group or activity.

Wednesday assignments. You have assignments due today, Wednesday, that will get you ready for the creative kinds of story re-telling you will be doing in this class. Please make sure you complete today's assignments; these first week assignments are MANDATORY and must be completed if you want to remain in the class.

You REALLY can call me Laura
. As you've seen from the way I sign my email, you can just call me Laura - really! I'm not a professor (I'm just an instructor) - and since I'm going to be calling you all by your first names, it makes sense that you should call me by my first name too. :-)

January 19: Edgar Allan Poe. Today, January 19, marks the anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe in the year 1809, just over 200 years ago. You can read more about Poe's remarkable and tragic life in this detailed Wikipedia article. Because his books are in the public domain, you can find them in many different online editions. Among Poe's many claims to fame is the invention of the detective story, with The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Below is an image of the cover designed by the famous illustrator Gustave Dore for Poe's famous poem, The Raven: