Class Procedures and Reminders:
Grades. If you did not read the information about finishing up the class and final grades in the Monday announcements, please take a minute to do that now. Two people have finished already, reaching 410 points for an A. Very exciting! Even if you have not been working ahead up until now, you can still manage to finish early by getting ahead and doing the extra credit assignments. As soon as you reach the points you need for your final grade, just let me know and I'll mark the grade for you in the D2L Gradebook.
Storybook Stack. There are still a lot of 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 on Sunday before 9PM, you should have comments back from me already. If you turned something in on Sunday evening 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.
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Writing Resource: PlainLanguage.gov. Did you know the U.S. government has a website dedicated to the use of plain language? It's called PlainLanguage.gov, "improving communication from the federal government to the public." It's a useful site, and it even has a humor section!
Words to Watch: Today's words to watch out for are DAIRY and DIARY. For details, see this blog post. Although these words do not sound the same, it's a typo that is very easy to make, and one that the spellchecker cannot help you with!
Featured Storybook: Death and Its Mysteries. Hannah's Storybook this semester offers a mystery for you, the reader, to solve: can you figure out what ancient myth she is retelling in her imaginary science-fiction world...?
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Heroism consists in hanging on one minute longer (a Norwegian proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. When I first started making these proverb posters a couple of years ago, this is the very first one that I made!
Mahabharata Image: Today's Mahabharata image is Balarama and his brother Krishna. The word "krishna" in Sanskrit means "dark" as in the colors dark blue or black.
Wednesday Event on Campus: Saudi Night, sponsored by the Saudi Student Association, offers Arabian food, along with traditional dances, starting at 5:30PM in the Jim Thorpe Center (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.
April 2: Hans Christian Andersen. Today, April 2, marks the birthday of Hans Christian Andersen in the year 1805. Some of you in the Myth-Folklore class may be reading Hans Christian Andersen's stories this week! You can find some background information about his life and career in this Wikipedia article. Andersen is probably most famous today for his story about "The Little Mermaid" - although his version is very different from the Disney film, which is only loosely based on Andersen's tale. Andersen is also the author of "The Princess and the Pea," "The Ugly Duckling," and many other wonderful stories. The image below is a photograph taken of Andersen in 1869; he died a few years later, in 1875, at the age of 70. You can read over one hundred of Andersen's stories in English at the Gilead.org website.
Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.
