Monday, October 20

Today is Monday. Week 9 is now over... and Week 10 has begun. Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you did not finish any of the Week 9 assignments. This week's topic in the Myth-Folklore class is Native American stories once again, and in Indian Epics you will be finishing Narayan's Mahabharata. I hope you will enjoy the readings!

Class Procedures and Reminders

Storybook stack. As always on Monday, I will have a huge bunch of assignments in the Storybook stack that were turned in over the weekend. The first thing I will do on Monday morning when I get to work is to update the list of items in the Storybook stack. So, after 9AM or so on Monday, you will be able to check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment.

Week 9 UnTextbook Report. (repeat announcement) Thanks as always to the people who filled out the Google Form with your comments and feedback about the Native American units! I've written up the results here: Week 9 UnTextbook Report. You might find some helpful information there as you make your choice for reading this week, and you might also have gotten some ideas from reading other people's blogs this weekend!

Indian Epics: Weeks 11-14. (repeat announcement) In the Indian Epics class, you will be finishing the Mahabharata this week. Then, for Weeks 11-14 you will have a choice of what to read: Buck's Mahabharata OR Indian reading units from the Myth-Folklore UnTextbook. You might want to start thinking about that, especially if you might need to order a copy of Buck's book. I've put up some information here that I hope will be helpful: Indian Epics Reading Choice.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

OU Resource: OU Libraries Top Ten. I thought this promo piece about the OU Libraries was so charming! You can see the video at YouTube:

Words to Watch: Today's words to watch out for are RIGHT and RITE. For details, see this blog post.

Featured Storybook: Finals Week: Death Notes. Finals week is hard enough — and just imagine how much harder it would be if you were being haunted by a banshee in the depths of Bizzell Library . . . or worse!

FREE Kindle eBook: Mahabharata translated by K. M. Ganguli. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. This is a complete, literal English translation, so if you want to get a sense of what the Mahabharata is like in the original, take a look!

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is The basket that has two handles can be carried by two (an Egyptian proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. Two handles are better than one!

Mahabharata Image: Today's Mahabharata image is Baby Ganesha, held in the arms of his mother the goddess Parvati.

Monday Event on Campus: The Union Programming Board has free drinks as part of a Harry Potter Celebration from 11:30AM to 12:30PM on the first floor of the Union (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

October 20: National Day on Writing. The National Council of Teachers of English and the National Writing Project are celebrating writing today — writing in all its forms! You can tweet links to your writing by using the #WriteMyCommunity hashtag. Find out more at the Day on Writing website.

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.