Class Procedures and Reminders
Blogs and "Favorite Places." Thanks so much to all the people who already created their blogs and posted about their favorite places. You can see the latest Favorite Places Blog Posts if you are curious. Very cool! If you have not done that assignment yet, make sure you do that today, Tuesday. You can find all the week's assignments here: Orientation Week.
Subscribe to announcements by email. There are new announcements every day, and if you want, you can subscribe to the announcements by email. There's a sign-up box in the sidebar of the blog. You'll also see the announcements blog show up as the homepage whenever you log on to the course at Desire2Learn.
Monday announcements. If you did not read Monday's announcements, make sure you take a look at those now too!
So Many Books. I'm guessing there are plenty of you who can relate to the image in this fun graphic! That's how I felt putting together the Un-Textbook for the Myth-Folklore class this summer. :-)
Foreign Words in English: Today's Indian word in English is AVATAR. For details, see this blog post. The Ramayana is about one of the god Vishnu's most famous avatars: Rama. The image below shows Vishnu's other avatars, starting in the upper left with Matsya, The Fish.
Featured Storybook: Karma's Courthouse. Gods and humans alike come before the judgment of Karma in an eerie, otherworldly courtroom. What judgment will Karma pass on Rama, Sita, Maya, and Indra? Are any of the defendants strong enough to challenge Karma's ruling?
FREE Kindle eBook: Myths and Legends of All Nations by Logan Marshall. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. This collection of stories from around the world features one of my favorite stories from Poland: "Twardowski, the Polish Faust." Meanwhile, the illustration below shows the hero Beowulf battling a fire-breathing dragon:
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is For one whose foot is enclosed in a shoe, the whole surface of the earth is covered with leather (an Indian proverb from the Hitopadesha). Details at the Proverb Lab. This proverb is quite the mind-bender, one that bears thinking about!
Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image is Sita, in the form of a puppet from an Indian puppet theater in Andra Pradesh.
Tuesday Event on Campus: There will be free watermelon in the Union First Floor Lobby from 11:30AM - 12:30PM (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.
August 19: Gene Roddenberry. On this day in 1921, Gene Roddenberry, the visionary creator of Star Trek, was born. As a lifelong Star Trek fan, I am very happy to celebrate Roddenberry's birthday, and I hope that some cosmic event has transported him in time and space to another great adventure (he left this life in 1991). You can read more about Roddenberry's life and many accomplishments in this Wikipedia article. Roddenberry is third from the right in this photo (to the left of Leonard Nimoy), watching the Space Shuttle Enterprise rolling out of the Palmdale manufacturing plant in 1976 (image source).
Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed — and you can check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day.
