Sunday, October 5

Today is Sunday of Week 7. The blog commenting assignment, along with the Storybook/Portfolio commenting (Internet) assignment and the Storybook/Portfolio assignment, are due today. So, if you have not finished those up already, now is the time! And if you missed them, here's a link to all the earlier announcements for this week.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Storybook Stack. I don't update the Storybook stack as often on the weekends, but I'll update it at least once or twice. If you want comments back on your assignment sooner rather than later, turn in your work earlier on Sunday rather than waiting until later. 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 7 UnTextbook Report.  (repeat announcement)  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, and Narayan's Mahabharata awaits you in Week 9.

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.

Designing Your Class Schedule. (repeat announcement) I've drawn up some sample class schedules that show exactly how you can arrange this class like a M-W-F- class OR like a T-Th class OR a weekend-only class. There are other possibilities, too, of course — the options are really unlimited. The fact that there will be no new reading in Week 8 is a perfect opportunity for you to get on your own schedule with this class, instead of letting the daily deadlines determine when you do the work.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Word Humor: Wanna Live Forever? Become A Noun. This charming video from NPR features a fun song about the people whose names became nouns: sandwiches, leotards, shrapnel, and more!


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


Featured Storybook: The Real Arabian Nights. You may know the heroes of the tales of the Arabian Nights, characters like Aladdin and Ali Baba, but in this Storybook you will see things in a new way as the evil magician from the story of Aladdin shares with you his own version of these famous tales.


FREE Kindle eBook: Philippine Folktales by Clara Kern Bayliss. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. This is yet another collection of Filipino folktales, different from the book used for the Filipino unit in the Myth-Folklore class. It contains stories from the Tagalog, Bagobo, and other tribal traditions of the Philippines.


Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is If I laugh not, how can I live? (a proverb from India). Details at the Proverb Lab. This is a proverb among the Kashmiri people of northern India.


Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image is Sita's Departure, as she is received into her arms of Mother Earth, while Rama, Lakshmana, and her two sons look on.


October 5: Isaac Bashevis Singer. On this day in 1978, the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Singer was one of the greatest Jewish writers of all time (he wrote in Yiddish), who won acclaim for his marvelous novels and short stories about Jewish life in Poland and in America. He was born in 1902 in Poland, emigrated to the United States in 1935, and died in 1991. You can read about his life and career at Wikipedia and at this online exhibit at the Library of Congress. You can also read Singer's Nobel Lecture online. The image below shows Singer's tombstone; meanwhile, you might also be interested in this list of Yiddish words used in English.



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.