Tuesday, April 17

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 13 of the class. That means it is time for the Pandavas to hide at the court of King Virata in Indian Epics, while in Myth-Folklore, the topic is Native American legends. I've moved the Week 13 quizzes up to the top of the quizzing area in Desire2Learn. If you have not turned in your Week 12 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit.

Week 13 Internet assignment NOW AVAILABLE. Now that Week 13 has begun, the Week 13 Internet assignment is available: you will be nominating your favorite Storybook projects in various categories, and you will also leave some thank-yous for the people whose comments were most helpful to you this semester. Then, on Monday afternoon, April 23, when everybody has submitted their nominations, I will put up a ballot based on the most nominated Storybooks. For information about the Week 14 Internet assignment, see Monday's announcements.

Storybook Stack. As usual at the beginning of the week, there are still LOTS of Storybook assignments in the stack. If you turned in an assignment on Sunday before noon, you should have comments back from me by now. If you turned something in later on Sunday or Monday, it is probably still in the stack. You can check on the contents of the stack here. If you need just the points for the Storybook assignment you have turned in in order to finish up the class, send me a SEPARATE email with "Storybook Final Points" (or something like that) in the subject line so that I'll put your Storybook assignment at the top of the stack.

Tuesday Events on Campus. From 11AM-1PM you can Tie-Dye a Free T-Shirt on the South Oval as part of Green Week (time/location/details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

April 17: Benjamin Franklin. Today, April 17, marks the anniversary of the death of Benjamin Franklin in the year 1790; he was born in 1706. I find Franklin to be a fascinating character and there is plenty of wonderful reading in this long Wikipedia article about his life and various careers. In particular, it includes words written by Franklin when he was only 22 years old, pondering what he would like to see as the epitaph written on his tombstone: The Body of B. Franklin Printer; Like the Cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be wholly lost: For it will, as he believ'd, appear once more, In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and Amended By the Author. There is also a wonderful Latin verse composed in Franklin's honor by the French statesman Turgot: Eripuit caelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis, "He ripped the lightning from the sky, and the sceptre from the tyrants." You can see the verse included in the portrait of Franklin below: