Commenting on Storybooks. Every week from now through Week 12 of the semester, you will be commenting on people's writing at their Storybooks. During these weeks as you comment on people's Storybooks, please provide as much detailed, specific feedback as possible! It's nice to get compliments, but it is also really good to get feedback about what things could be improved, especially now, early in the semester. So, do not hesitate to say when something is confusing, or when something seems repetitious, or if you think something is important is missing. Every semester, students tell me that they wish they had received more detailed feedback on their Storybooks, rather than just generic compliments. So, try to be a really careful and attentive reader of each Storybook you visit, providing detailed, useful feedback in your comments, describing your own specific, personal experience as you read the Storybook.
Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned an assignment in on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday, your assignment 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. Friday at noon is the deadline if you want to get comments back from me about your Storybook before the weekend.
Thursday Events on Campus. Tonight and over the weekend, there will be one more round of University Theater performances of William McNulty's dramatic adaption of Bram Stoker's Dracula; for more information, see the article in the OU Daily (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Thursday at the Campus Calendar online.
September 29 2011: Rosh Hashanah. Today is the first day of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah (which means "Head-of-the-Year" or "Top-of-the-Year"). Like many religious holidays, this one is based on the lunar calendar, so it falls on a different day each year, depending on the cycle of moon. According to Jewish tradition, this is the day of the year on which God created Adam, and it is also the day of the year on which the Last Judgment will take place. One of the rituals on Rosh Hashanah is the blowing of the shofar, the ram's horn, to awaken the faithful before that coming judgment. You can read more about the holiday at Wikipedia, and below you can see the blowing of the shofar as shown here in an illuminated Hebrew manuscript:
