Wednesday, October 5

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 7 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 6 Storybook assignment yet (adding your first story), 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.

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 before 5PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in later on Sunday or on Monday or Tuesday, your assignment is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check to make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.

Week 7 Internet assignment. (repeat announcement) For the Week 7 Internet assignment, which is available now, you will be reading Storybook Introductions AND a story from each Storybook assigned to you. Since you have more reading to do this time (three stories and, possibly, a couple of Introductions also), you will have just THREE Storybooks that you comment on - and you need to make sure there is a story to read at each of those Storybooks. If the Storybook does not have a first story published yet, please skip it and go to another one instead. You can definitely do the assignment now; no need to wait! So, if you are trying to finish up your work this week early (see next announcement), you can indeed do the Week 7 Internet assignment now.

OU-Texas Football. (repeat announcement) Although it is not an official school holiday on the University calendar, Friday is indeed an unofficial school holiday (GO SOONERS!). In this class, you have nothing due on Friday, so there is no need to adjust the schedule. For those of you headed down to Dallas, I would strongly recommend that you finish up your Week 7 assignments before you leave town so that you can have a totally fun time and not be worrying about your work for this class. The Friday morning grace period for Thursday assignments remains unchanged.

Wednesday Events on Campus. Through October 21, the art exhibit "Satan's Camaro" by Justin Strom and Lenore Thomas is showing in the Lightwell Gallery of the Fred Jones Jr. Art Center (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Wednesday at the Campus Calendar online.

October 5: Isaac Bashevis Singer. On this day in 1978, the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Singer was one of the greatest Jewish writers of all time (he wrote in Yiddish), who won acclaim for his amazing novels and short stories about Jewish life in Poland and in America. He was born in 1902 in Poland, emigrated to the United States in 1935, and died in 1991. You can read about his life and career at Wikipedia and at this online exhibit at the Library of Congress. You can also read Singer's Nobel Lecture online, where he had this to say about writing in Yiddish: "Yiddish has not yet said its last word. It contains treasures that have not been revealed to the eyes of the world. It was the tongue of martyrs and saints, of dreamers and Cabalists - rich in humor and in memories that mankind may never forget. In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened and hopeful humanity." The image below shows Singer's tombstone; meanwhile, you might also be interested in this list of Yiddish words used in English.