Monday, November 18

Today is Monday. Week 13 is now over. Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Friday or over the weekend. The next week of class will begin tomorrow - and those assignments are available now if you want to get started!

Update: Storybook Ballot available.

Thanks to everyone for your nominations!

Class Procedures and Reminders:

Storybook stack. As usual on Monday, the Storybook stack is very large! First thing on Monday morning, I will update the contents of the stack, and I will begin working my way through the stack based on the order in which things were turned in.

Week 13 Internet assignment. After people finish turning in their Storybook nominations for the Week 13 Internet assignment today at noon, I'll prepare a ballot with the most-nominated Storybooks for you to vote on. I will do my best to get that ready on Tuesday, with voting to take place this week, and winners to be announced on Friday. Thanks to everybody who turned in their nominations!

Thanksgiving Break. (repeat announcement) You will be getting a full week off for Thanksgiving in this class. Thanksgiving falls on November 28 this year, which means it is very late in the semester. So, you will have all the regular assignments in Week 14, with those Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday assignments due on November 19-20-21. After Thursday, the remaining Week 14 assignments are not due until after Thanksgiving, with the usual grace period on Monday, December 2. I hope that makes sense; if you have any questions, please ask!

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Suggestion Box. You might have noticed the link in the sidebar of these announcements to the anonymous Suggestion Box. This is a way for you to share feedback with me about the class - what's going well, what I could improve, etc. Thanks in advance for any suggestions you can offer!

Featured Storybook: Dharma: Stories of Duty and Truth. Aneesh has built a time machine for his Storybook this semester, allowing him to visit the royal city of Ayodhya and also the battlefield of Kurukshetra.

FREE Kindle eBook: The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan by William B. Laughead. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book which is one of the sources for the "American Folk Heroes" unit in Myth-Folklore this coming week.

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is All the buds upon a bush do not blossom (a proverb from India). Details at the Proverb Lab. This is a proverb among the people of Kashmir.

Mahabharata Image: Today's Mahabharata image is Arjuna and Krishna. The image below shows Arjuna riding out to meet Karna in battle; Krishna is serving as his charioteer.

Monday Event on Campus: There will be a workshop in "Eating for Success: Food for Finals" from 4PM-5PM in 245 Wagner Hall (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

November 18: William Caxton. On this day in the year 1477, William Caxton produced the first printed book in England! The first printed book in Europe, the famous Gutenberg Bible, had been printed in Germany in 1453, and it was about 25 years later that William Caxton started printing books in England. You can read more about William Caxton's life and career in this Wikipedia article. I am interested in Caxton because one of the other books he published was the first printed edition of Aesop's fables in English in 1484! The image below shows an image of Aesop from that edition; each of the objects around Aesop suggests an incident from his life:

Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.