Saturday, October 4

Today is Saturday of Week 7. I hope you are having a nice weekend! If you did not finish up the end-of-week assignments on Friday, you can do that this weekend.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Week 7 UnTextbook Report. Thanks as always to the people who filled out the Google Form with your comments and feedback about the second week of Asian and African units. I've written up the results here: Week 7 UnTextbook Report. There's no new reading for Week 8, but you can move right on to the reading for Week 9 — Native American — if you are craving some stories! And the same is true for Indian Epics: you are done with the Ramayana, but Narayan's Mahabharata awaits you in Week 9.

Storybook Stack. Much to my own surprise, I got through the stack on Friday! So, if you turned something in before Friday, you should have received comments back from me by now. Any assignments that came in on Friday are at the top of the stack for Monday. I don't update the Storybook stack as often on the weekends, but you can check there to make sure I received your assignment; I'll update it at least once or twice over the weekend. If you want comments back on your assignment sooner rather than later, turn your work in today or on Sunday morning. If you wait until Sunday evening, you will be farther down in the stack and will have to wait longer for my comments back to you.

Week 8 Assignments. (repeat announcement) For those of you who have been working ahead, those Week 8 assignments are now available. There is no new reading in Week 8, and instead there are just some review activities. You can see how that works in the Week 8 chart on the assignments page for the class you are in: Myth-Folklore and Indian Epics.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Writing Humor: Grammar Lessons with Food. My favorite is the man-eating chicken!


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


Featured Storybook: Monstrous Beings of Greek Mythology. This Storybook features fire-breathing bulls made of bronze, savage bird-women called "harpies," and the twin perils of Scylla and Charybdis, notorious monsters of the sea.


FREE Kindle eBook: Mythical Monsters by Charles Gould. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book which has several chapters on dragons, along with sea-serpents, unicorns, and the phoenix.


Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is He that hunts two hares will catch neither (a French proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. It's a proverb about the perils of multitasking!


Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image is Rama's Return. In this detail, the four brothers greet their mothers.


Saturday Event on Campus: There will be a performance of Mozart's La Finta Giardiniera in the Reynolds Performing Arts Center at 8PM (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

October 4: Saint Francis - World Animal Day. Today is the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi. Because of the special love that Francis had for every creature in the animal kingdom, October 4 has been designated World Animal Day. You can learn more about Saint Francis at Wikipedia, and the image below is from the World Animal Day website. The purpose of the holiday is "to celebrate animal life in all its forms, to celebrate humankind’s relationship with the animal kingdom, to acknowledge the diverse roles that animals play in our lives, and to acknowledge and be thankful for the way in which animals enrich our lives." Happy World Animal Day! Celebrate animal life!



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.