Class Procedures and Reminders
Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment before 9PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in later on Sunday or on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, your assignment is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check to make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.
New Responding groups. The blog responding groups for Week 7 will be ready tomorrow, on Friday as usual, with everybody in random groups once again. More information about that in tomorrow's announcements!
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Art by Anirudh Sainath. These contemporary works of art depict the gods of the Indian tradition using the style of comic books and video games, very different from the traditional iconography, but still very recognizable. Here is Rama, riding Hanuman into battle:
Indian Words in English: Today's Indian word in English is CHAKRA, the Sanskrit word for a circle or wheel. For details, see this blog post.
Featured Storybook: Lost in Fairyland. Imagine that you slipped and fell in a puddle — and then fell through the puddle and into a fairyland. . . how would you get home? Having a fairy map and a fairy compass might help!
FREE Kindle eBook: South African Folk-Lore Tales by Sanni Metelerkamp. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book, which will be of interest to those of you who want to explore more stories from Africa.
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Don’t put all your eggs in one basket (an English proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. This is a proverb that is still going strong in the 21st century!
Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image is The Battle of Lanka, and you can see Hanuman slaying the three-headed rakshasas named Trisiras.
Thursday Event on Campus: There will be pumpkin decorating and other free food from 11AM until 2PM in the Cate Rock Garden (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.
October 2: Birthday of Gandhi. The great Indian spiritual and political leader, Mohandas Gandhi, was born on October 2, 1869, 145 years ago. On January 30 in 1948, after having led the fight for India's independence from the British Empire, Gandhi was assassinated. The image below shows the memorial in New Delhi where Gandhi's body was cremated. Written on the stone you can see what were reportedly Gandhi's last words: "Hey Ram" (Oh Rama) - his invocation of Lord Rama will definitely mean something to the students in the Indian Epics class. Although it is a matter of some controversy as to whether those were Gandhi's last words, here is something he wrote in December 1947, just weeks before his assassination: "In the end it will be as Rama commands me. Thus I dance as He pulls the strings. I am in His hands and so I am experiencing ineffable peace." If you look closely at the photograph, you will see the words "Hey Ram" written in Devanagari script, gold letters on the black stone, just behind the burning stick of incense:
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.
