Friday, Feb. 3 - Sunday, Feb. 5

HAPPY WEEKEND! This is the end of Week 3. The Week 3 Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now, and the remaining Week 3 assignments are due on Friday or, if you prefer, on Saturday or Sunday - please make sure you get started on those assignments soon. Also, if you have not kept up with the announcements during the week, please take a minute to look at the announcements you missed; here are all the announcements for the past week.

Week 3 Responding. For the Responding assignment, you should be looking for the Week 3 essay and story - which means you may need to scroll down, because some people are working ahead. So, if you do not find somebody's Week 3 blog posts at the top of their blog, just scroll on down until you find what you are looking for. For information about what to do if someone does not have the posts you are looking for, see the instructions at the assignment. Also, be sure to check your blog group - they are mostly the same, but with some small adjustments based on enrollment.

Storybook Stack. On Friday, I hope to be able to finish reading and responding to every Storybook assignment in the stack turned in before Friday at noon (contents of the stack). I don't do any grading over the weekend, which means that if you turn something in after noon on Friday, it will go into the stack. I'll start working through the stack first thing on Monday morning, in the order received. If you want comments back next week sooner rather than later, don't wait until Sunday to turn in your assignment! The earlier you turn in the assignment, the sooner you will get comments back.

Friday Events on Campus. Film screening of Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer, at the Art Museum Theater, 7PM - and here is a Wikipedia article about Muybridge and his zoopraxiscope (time/location/details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

February 4: Sri Lanka National Day. This Saturday, February 4, is the holiday that celebrates the day - February 4, 1948 - when the island nation of Sri Lanka gained independence from British rule (India had gained its independence about six months earlier, in August of 1947). For those of you who are in the Indian Epics class, Sri Lanka is a place of special interest, because it is the legendary home of Ravana the rakshasa king. You can read more about Sri Lanka in this Wikipedia article. The image below shows a mountain in Sri Lanka, Sri Pada, which supposedly is marked by the footprint of the Buddha (according to Buddhist tradition), the footprint of Shiva (in Hindu tradition) or the footprint of Adam (in Islamic tradition):

Thursday, February 2

Today is Thursday of WEEK 3 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 2 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit until noon today. For those of you in Myth-Folklore, Thursday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Wednesday.

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in a Storybook assignment on Sunday, you should have comments back from me. If you turned in something on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, it is probably still in the stack (contents of the stack). Please check to make sure!

Week 3 Read and Respond assignment. The Week 3 blog commenting assignment is not available yet; it will be available starting on Friday. The blog commenting assignment is the only assignment you cannot complete early, because people will still be adding posts to their blog today, Thursday. So please wait until midnight tonight when people should have finished their Week 3 blog posts, and then on Friday (starting tonight at midnight if you want), you can do the Read and Respond assignment.

Thursday Events on Campus. Animal Volunteers Alliance Meeting from 7PM-9PM in the Union's Alma Wilson Room - bring a pair of old jeans! (time/location/details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

February 2: Imbolc. In the Wheel of the Year holidays, February 2 is celebrated as Imbolc (sometimes spelled Imbolg), the cross-quarter day which is in-between the Winter Solstice (shortest day of the year) and the Spring Equinox (when the day and night are of equal length, with the days growing longer). Because the seasons of the year are opposite in the northern and southern hemispheres, when it is Imbolc in the northern hemisphere, it is the holiday of Lughnasadh in the southern hemisphere! Here is the Wheel of the Year showing the four main holidays at the solstices and equinoxes, along with the four cross-quarter days:

Wednesday, February 1

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 3 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 2 Storybook assignment yet, 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 enormous stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment before 3PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in later on Sunday or on Monday or Tuesday, it 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. It usually takes me most of the week to return all the Storybook assignments. The sooner you turn the assignment turned in, the sooner you will get comments back - and you do need my comments before you go on to the next Storybook assignment, although you can continue to work on the other class assignments, of course!

Tech Tips emails. Quite a few people sent in Tech Tip emails over the weekend, which is great! Please feel free to work ahead on those extra credit tips now, since some of them can be really useful for the rest of the semester. I'll reply to all those emails, but not until I get through the Storybook stack (in fact, the Tech Tip emails sometimes turn into a two- or three-week backlog). You don't need to wait on my reply before you do the Tech Tip Declaration; as long as you have sent me the email as instructed, that's great - you can go ahead and do the Declaration without waiting on a reply from me.

Wednesday Events on Campus. In honor of Black History Month, there will be a showing of "Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North" in the Cate Main Social Lounge, 347 Cate Center Dr. at 7PM (time/location/details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

February 1: Langston Hughes. Today, February 1, marks the birthday of the African-American poet, Langston Hughes, who was born in 1902. He was one of the luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance, and you can read about his remarkable life and career in this Wikipedia article.

(cover of Weary Blues, 1926)

Here's a video interpretation of "Weary Blues" that I found at YouTube.com.

Tuesday, January 31

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 3 of the class, and I've re-arranged the Quiz area in Desire2Learn so Week 3 is on top. In Indian Epics, this week you will be finishing up Narayan's Ramayana. In Myth-Folklore, it's the Hebrew Bible, with a choice between the stories of Noah and Babel, or the stories of Samson and Daniel. If you have not turned in your Week 2 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit. (See note about that below.)

Tuesday schedule. I will be out of the office on Tuesday afternoon, which means I will not reply as quickly as usual to any emails you might send me during the afternoon. I'll get back to anything urgent on Tuesday evening, and then I will get caught up on any remaining Tuesday emails on Wednesday morning. So, don't hesitate to send me an email with any questions you have - but don't be surprised if you don't get an answer right away on Tuesday afternoon. :-)

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the HUGE stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment on Saturday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in on Sunday or on Monday, it 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. I read the assignments in the order that they are turned in, so the later you turn in the assignment, the longer you'll need to wait to get the comments back. It usually takes me all week to get comments back on all the Storybook assignments people have turned in! So, please wait for my comments before going on to the next Storybook assignment - and to get comments sooner, turn in your assignment on Saturday rather than Sunday or Monday.

Late Storybooks. (repeat announcement) Each week, the Storybook assignment is the only assignment that can be turned in late for partial credit. Since I cannot get all the Storybooks graded and returned immediately, you can turn in the Storybook late for partial credit. If you want full credit (10 points) you must turn the Storybook in on time, that is, over the weekend or before noon on Monday. If you turn it in late, you can receive partial credit, as follows: turn it in on Monday after noon and you can receive up to 8 points; on Tuesday, you can receive up to 7 points; on Wednesday you can receive up to 6 points. If you turn the Storybook assignment in on Thursday before noon, you can receive up to 5 points. No late Storybook assignments will be accepted after noon on Thursday.

Tuesday Events on Campus. There will be a Forum with Student Study Abroad Alumni from 7PM-8:30PM in the Cate Main Social Lounge, 347 Cate Center Dr. Free pizza, too! (time/location/details) Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

January 31: Alan Lomax. Today marks the birthday of Alan Lomax, one of the most important figures in the history of American folk music. He was born on January 31 in 1915 and died in 2002. You can read about his life and career at Wikipedia. After he graduated from college, Lomax began working in 1937 at the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress. He traveled all over the country recording folk singers and recording interviews with musicians like Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Jelly Roll Morton. In the 1950s, he began collecting folk music from all over the world and produced the influential multi-volume record series, Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music. Check out the Alan Lomax Collection at the Library of Congress online, and you can read in in this NYTimes article about the efforts to digitize Lomax's work AND make it available for free streaming! Exciting! The image below is an album cover from his collection of Prison Songs:

Monday, January 30

Today is Monday, and Week 2 of the class is now over. Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you have not completed the assignments that were due on Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Week 3 will begin officially tomorrow - and those Week 3 assignments are already available now if you want to get started!

Monday, January 30: Final day to drop with refund. (repeat announcement) Today, Monday, January 30, is the final day to drop a class and get a full refund. So, if you are finding out that this class does not fit into your schedule after all, or that the workload is too demanding, you can still drop the class and get a refund. Monday is the last day to drop with a refund!

Monday: Your chance to get ahead. Although being able to set your own schedule is one of the biggest benefits of an online class, the majority of the people in these classes are doing the assignments on the same day that they are due. Yet we all know that life is full of surprises, both good and bad. So please try to work ahead and that way you are ready for any surprises that might come up! If you can take advantage of Monday to get ahead on the Week 3 assignments, that will give you a lot more freedom and flexibility, making this class a lot easier to manage.

Storybook stack. As always on Monday, I will have a huge bunch of assignments in the Storybook stack that were turned in over the weekend or on Monday morning. The first thing I will do on Monday morning when I get to work is to update the list of items in the Storybook stack. So, after 8AM or so on Monday, you will be able to check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment. I will then start reading the assignments in the order they were turned in. Please do not go on to the Week 3 Storybook assignment until you get Week 2 comments back from me (and the same is true for those of you who have turned in Week 3 or Week 4 assignments - please do not go on to the next Storybook assignment until you get my comments). I'll be updating the stack as I make my way through the assignments!

Late Storybooks. Each week, the Storybook assignment is the only assignment that can be turned in late for partial credit. Since I cannot get all the Storybooks graded and returned immediately, you can turn in the Storybook late for partial credit. If you want full credit (10 points) you must turn the Storybook in on time, that is, over the weekend or before noon on Monday. If you turn it in late, you can receive partial credit, as follows: turn it in on Monday after noon and you can receive up to 8 points; on Tuesday, you can receive up to 7 points; on Wednesday you can receive up to 6 points. If you turn the Storybook assignment in on Thursday before noon, you can receive up to 5 points. No late Storybook assignments will be accepted after noon on Thursday.

Monday Events on Campus. Quy Nguyen, from OU Student Life, will be leading a "Connecting on Campus" workshop from 4PM-5PM in Wagner Hall 245 (time/location/details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

Friday, January 30: Assassination of Gandhi. On January 30 in 1948, Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated. The image below shows the memorial in New Delhi where Gandhi's body was cremated. Written on the stone you can see what were reportedly Gandhi's last words: "Hey Ram" (Oh Rama!) - his invocation of the god Rama will definitely mean something to the students in the Indian Epics class. Although it is a matter of some controversy as to whether those were Gandhi's last words, here is something he wrote in December 1947, just weeks before his assassination: "In the end it will be as Rama commands me. Thus I dance as He pulls the strings. I am in His hands and so I am experiencing ineffable peace." If you look closely at the photograph, you will see the words written in Devanagari script, gold letters on the black stone, just behind the burning stick of incense: