Class Procedures and Reminders:
Storybook Stack. There are still MANY Storybook assignments in the stack and I am making my way through them in the order that they were turned in. If you turned something in before 6PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me already. If you turned something in later on Sunday or on Monday or Tuesday, it is probably still in the stack. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.
Spring Break information. If you did not read the Monday announcements, make sure you do that now; there is important information there about Spring Break and the schedule for this class.
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Writing Resource: Story Structure. Grant Snider here takes the metaphor of the "structure" of a story and crosses that with architectural structures. The result is delightful!
Foreign Words in English: Today's foreign word in English is Zen, a Japanese word which comes from Chinese chan, which in turn comes from Sanskrit dhyana, "meditation." For details, see this blog post.
Featured Storybook: The Fairy Tale World. Cinderella, Snow White and other fairy tale heroines are kidnapped by modern-day TV show producers who compel them to participate in a reality TV show: The Fairy Tale World - but the heroines just want to go home!
FREE Kindle eBook: King Arthur by Charles Morris. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. This is part of Morris's monumental "Historical Tales" book series.
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is At a round table every seat is first (a German proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. The image shows the "Round Table" negotiations for Polish freedom in 1989.
Mahabharata Image: Today's Mahabharata image is King Pandu and the hunt that changed his life forever.
Wednesday Event on Campus: The Young Playwrights Festival will be presenting six short plays at 8PM in Lab Theater in Old Science Hall (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.
March 12: Jack Kerouac. Today, March 12, is the birthday of Jack Kerouac, the great American novelist of the "Beat" generation of writers; he was born in 1922. You can read more about Kerouac's life and career in this Wikipedia article. He is most famous for his novel On the Road, which he wrote in a burst of inspiration during the month of April in 1951, at the ripe old age of 29. In order to keep pace with his writing style, he taped pieces of paper together in a continuous roll of paper that was 120 feet long which he could then feed into the typewriter without having to stop to put new pages into the typewriter. Just imagine what he could have done with a word processor, eh? The actual scroll has been preserved, as you can see here:
Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.
