Thursday, October 9

Today is Thursday of WEEK 8. If you have not turned in your Week 7 Storybook/Portfolio assignment yet, you have until noon today to turn that in for partial credit, and Thursday morning until noon is also the grace period if you did not finish the Famous Last Words replies. And if you missed them yesterday, here's a link to Wednesday's announcements.

Class Procedures and Reminders

OU-Texas Weekend. I'm guessing a lot of you will be out of town this weekend (BOOMER SOONER), so I've made the blog responding available a day early, on Thursday, which means that it's ready now! This week it's a little different than usual: since there are no Storytelling posts for Week 8, you can just choose ANY Storytelling post from the blogs of the people in your group. You'll see details in the assignment instructions.

Storybook Stack. If you turned in a Week 7 assignment on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now; if you turned something in after Sunday, it is probably still in the stack. If you want to check to make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.

Spring Enrollment. (repeat announcement) Enrollment will be starting soon for Spring classes, and the online classes fill up really quickly. If any of you would like to enroll in MLLL-3043 Myth-Folklore or MLLL-4993 Indian Epics for Spring, please let me know by noon today so that I can save you a space in the class for Spring.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Imagine the Box. Here is some advice, not so much to think "outside" the box, but instead to IMAGINE the box ... is not a box.


Indian Words in English: Today's Indian word in English is GURU, which comes to English from Sanskrit. For details, see this blog post. The image below shows Parashurama ("Rama-with-an-Axe") who was the guru to the heroes of the Mahabharata: Bhishma, Drona, and Karna.


Featured Storybook: Tokyo Underworld. Orimi works for the Urban Legend Department of the Tokyo police force, and she has a gruesome murder to solve. You'll have to pay close attention while she interrogates Teke-Teke, Tanuki, Kuchisake-Onna, Jinmenken, and The Professor ... if you want to find the murderer!


FREE Kindle eBook: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. If you only know the movie, then you should read the book: it is different from the movie in so many wonderful ways... most importantly of all: in the book Oz is real, not just a dream.


Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Without curiosity, there is no wisdom (a Polish proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. This is one of my favorite Polish proverbs: Bez ciekawości nie ma mądrości.


Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image is The Battle of Lanka, as depicted in a stone sculpture from a temple at Angkor in Cambodia.


Thursday Event on Campus: It's International Student Game Night in the Hester Hall Library from 7PM - 9PM, and friends of international students are welcome too (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

October 9: Sukkot. Today marks the first day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot (it began at sundown on Wednesday evening). This festival is usually known as "Feast of the Booths" or "Feast of the Tabernacles" in English. During the festival, people build special huts in which to celebrate the holiday. You can read more about the Festival of Sukkot at the BBC website and at Wikipedia, which is also the source for the image of a festival booth below:




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.