Class Procedures and Reminders:
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 on Sunday before 5PM, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in on Sunday evening 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. Please wait to get my comments before you go on to the next Storybook assignment - although you can certainly keep working ahead on other assignments in the class while you wait!
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Featured Tech Tip: Add a You-Tube Video to your Ning Profile. This tip explains how to add a video to your Ning profile page. You might want to do this when you are updating your Ning profile page for the Week 3 Internet assignment. The video I have on my page is the Muppets performing Bohemian Rhapsody!
Featured Storybook: Rate My Rishi. This is surely one of the most creative storytelling styles ever used for a Storybook: Rate My Rishi is like RateMyProfessor.com, but for gurus and sages of the Indian tradition. Brilliant!
FREE Kindle eBook: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. Rudyard Kipling, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, was born in India, and many of his most famous novels and stories are inspired by Indian tales and traditions.
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is The birth of a golden deer is impossible; nevertheless, Rama longed for the chase (an Indian proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. Students in Indian Epics will recognize this proverb right away: even Rama, the god Vishnu incarnate, was fooled by the illusion of a golden deer. He did not know that "all that glitters is not gold" - gold can, in fact, be a demon underneath.
Wednesday Event on Campus: In an event worthy of a Myth-Folklore Storybook, go see if you can catch Sasquatch in the Food Court from 11:30AM to 12:30PM and get your picture taken with the mythical creature - you might end up on the Union PB's Instagram page! (details) Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.
September 4: Mary Renault. Today, September 4, marks the birthday of the English novelist Mary Renault who was born in 1904 and died in 1983. Renault wrote novels based on ancient Greek mythology and ancient Greek history. She wrote a pair of novels about the mythological hero Theseus (The King Must Die, Bull from the Sea), as well as a trilogy of novels about Alexander the Great. It is the middle novel of that Alexander trilogy - The Persian Boy - which is my own personal favorite of her novels. The novel is narrated by Bagoas, the Persian boy whom Alexander notoriously took as his lover. Renault was one of the first historical novelists to write openly about homosexual love in ancient Greece, and the story she tells in The Persian Boy is intense, dramatic, and unforgettable. Highly recommended!
Remember, you can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.
