Class Procedures and Reminders
Portfolio/Storybook stack. I had all kinds of red-tape bureaucracy stuff to do on Tuesday, so there is still a huge bunch of assignments in the stack. If you turned in an assignment before Sunday, you should have comments back from me and points recorded in the Gradebook. If you turned something in on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday, it is probably still in the stack. You can check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment.
Week 15 available. As you reach the end of the class, I hope you will include doing the Week 15 assignments as part of your "finishing up" plan. Like in Week 8, Week 15 is a review week with no new reading, and for the blog posts I'm looking for feedback and suggestions to improve the reading and writing activities in these classes next semester. Any ideas you have would be very welcome! So, as you get close to the end, you can do those Week 15 assignments; there's a link to the Week 15 assignments on the regular assignments page now. Thanks in advance for your input!
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Just for Fun: Medieval Beasts That Cannot Even Handle It Right Now. This is my favorite Buzzfeed of all time! Here's just one example: This dragon has LITERALLY NOT ONE CLUE why everybody has frogs coming out of their mouths.
Indian Words in English: Today's Indian word in English is SUTTEE, which comes to English from Hindi sati. For details, see this blog post. In Hindu mythology, the practice is associated with the goddess Sati, the first wife of the god Shiva.
Featured Storybook: Fairy Godmother: Diary Thief. There are all kinds of fairy godmothers out there, and the fairy godmother you will meet in this Storybook is a kleptomaniac. More precisely, she steals diaries! Thanks for her bad habit, you can take a peek into the private lives of fairytale characters, finding out what they thought and felt as the fairytale events unfolded.
FREE Kindle eBook: More English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. This is another one of the books you can choose as a unit in Myth-Folklore this week or next!
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Weeds spring up where we do not sow them (a proverb from India). Details at the Proverb Lab. This is a saying of the Kashmiri people.
Mahabharata Image: Today's Mahabharata image is Ganesha. It's a statue made for the Ganesha Chaturthi festival in Hyderabad, India in 2008.
Wednesday Event on Campus: Haunt the Union is happening in the Union on Wednesday evening from 7PM to 9PM; it's UPB's first Haunted House (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.
October 29: Bill Mauldin. Today marks the birthday in the year 1921 of the American cartoonist William Henry "Bill" Mauldin who is best known for his World War II cartoons featuring "Willie and Joe" (Mauldin died in 2003). General George Patton once tried to get Mauldin thrown in jail for his satirical cartoons. Mauldin himself had his own thoughts about Patton: "I always admired Patton. Oh, sure, the stupid bastard was crazy. He was insane. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn't like that attitude, but I certainly respected his theories and the techniques he used to get his men out of their foxholes." For more on Mauldin, see this Wikipedia article; below is a stamp issued by the U.S. Post Office honoring Mauldin:
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.
