Tuesday, March 8

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 8 of the class, and I've re-arranged the Quiz area in Desire2Learn so Week 8 is on top. Yes, this means the semester is now about half over! In the Indian Epics class, you have a Ramayana review week before you start the Mahabharata in Week 9, after Spring Break. In Myth-Folklore, the choice is Africa or Jamaica, and in World Literature, it's another trip to the underworld - this time with Dante! If you have not turned in your Week 7 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit.

Storybook Stack. As usual at the beginning of the week there are still LOTS of Storybook assignments in the stack. If you turned something in on Friday afternoon or on Saturday, you should have comments back from me already. If you turned something in on Sunday or 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.

Week 8 Internet assignment. The Week 8 Internet assignment is now available. Once again, you will be commenting on the Storybooks that already have at least one STORY available for you to read. Most of the Storybooks do now have at least one story, since most of the folks who did not publish a story in Week 6 did publish a story for Week 7. Check the assignment instructions for more details - the process for finding the Storybooks to read this week is completely different from last week or the week before. :-)

SPRING BREAK. (repeat announcement) For Spring Break, you will have the entire week off as you can see on the Semester Calendar here. You will have your regular Week 8 assignments due this week on Tuesday-Thursday. Then, I would encourage everybody to finish up the final Week 8 assignments this Friday, March 11 - but if you want to wait and do them on the weekend after Spring Break, you can do that, too. The grace period for wrapping up Week 8 will be on Monday morning, March 21, after Spring Break.

My Spring Break. Yes, I will be taking a break for Spring Break also! If you are curious, here is the project I am working on: Anecdota Latina. I won't be doing any Storybook grading over the Spring Break, so if you want to get ahead and receive comments back from me before the Spring Break begins, please get your early assignments turned in by this Friday, March 11, at noon. If you can get a Storybook assignment turned in by Friday at noon, I will get comments back to you before Spring Break; otherwise, if you turn something in after noon on Friday or during Spring Break, it will go into the stack for Monday, March 21, when classes resume.

March 7: Mardi Gras. Today marks the famous holiday of "Fat Tuesday," or Mardi Gras in French, a traditional time of celebration before the Lenten fast begins on Ash Wednesday. You can read about the holiday of Mardi Gras in Wikipedia. For a great mixture of Mardi Gras and mythology, I highly recommend the AMAZING Brazilian film Black Orpheus, which is set in Rio during the extravagant Mardi Gras Carnival which is held there every year:


A clip from the film: