Saturday, February 15

Today is Saturday of Week 5. I hope you are having a nice weekend! If you did not finish up the end-of-week assignments on Friday, you need to do that today or tomorrow, Sunday.

Class Procedures and Reminders:

Storybook Stack. Much to my own surprise, I managed to get through the Storybook stack on Friday, so everybody who turned in a Storybook assignment last week before Friday should have gotten comments back. Thanks for all your good work on the Introductions, and I hope you enjoy looking at each other's coverpages for the Week 5 Internet assignment! If you turned something in on Friday or later, I've put into the stack, and I'll update that list periodically over the weekend.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Image Resource: I thought you might enjoy these OU Wallpapers, courtesy of the nice folks at OU Public Affairs.

Writing Humor: Interview with a Semicolon. The semicolon is one of my favorite punctuation marks, but it's not easy being a semicolon, as you can learn from this interview.

Foreign Words in English: Today's foreign word in English is siren, from the man-eating monsters called "Sirens" in Greek mythology. For details, see this blog post.

Featured Storybook: Tales of Kailasa. In this Storybook, you get to meet Kailasa himself, the mountain, and listen to him share his stories with Shiva, the mountain's most famous resident.

FREE Kindle eBook: The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles by Padraic Colum . Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book, which includes the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts, along with stories of Theseus, Heracles, and Orpheus.

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Bacchus has drowned more people than Neptune (an English proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. In other words, more men have died from drinking (Bacchus, the god of wine) than were shipwrecked at sea (Neptune, the god of the sea).

Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image shows Rama, Lakshmana and Sugriva. As you can see, Rama and Lakshmana are dressed in leaves, the clothing of their forest exile.

Saturday Event on Campus: There will be a free showing of the film Gravity at 7PM and 10PM in Meacham Auditorium (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

February 15: Matt Groening. Today is the birthday of Matt Groening, who was born on February 15 in 1954. Groening is best known for being the creator of The Simpsons... but before there was Bart Simpson, there was "Life in Hell" and the rabbits! The "Life in Hell" cartoons are truly brilliant and were a staple of my undergraduate college life; you can read about them here in this Wikipedia article. Below is one of the panels from the "School is Hell" series. Happy Birthday, Matt Groening!




Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.

Friday, February 14

HAPPY FRIDAY! You have reached the end of Week 5! The Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now. Friday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you did not finish the assignments that were due on Thursday.

Class Procedures and Reminders:

Storybook Stack. If you turned in a Week 4 Storybook assignment on Sunday, you should have gotten comments back from me now, with points recorded in the Gradebook. If you turned something in during the grace period on Monday or later in the week, it may still be in the stack. I'm still hoping I will get to the end of the stack today, but if I don't manage to finish everything today, I will get comments back to you on Saturday (anything turned in on Friday will go to the top of the stack for Monday).

Week 5 Responding. For the Responding assignment, you should be looking for the Week 5 essay and story — which means you may need to scroll down if someone in your group is working ahead. There is also an extra credit option where you can read some other students' "Famous Last Words" posts. For more information, see the link in the regular assignment instructions!

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Writing Tips. Today's writing tips come from one of my favorite English authors, George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm. Of his six rules for writing, one of the most famous is: "Never use a long word where a short one will do."

Writing Resource: Interjections. Interjections can really bring your writing to life, and if you are not sure how to punctuate a sentence with an interjection, check out the Interjections help page. You might also enjoy this old Grammar Rock video that explains how interjections work:

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

Featured Storybook: Siren, City in the Clouds. Welcome to the world of Siren, a city in the sky, founded in the year 2433, which hovers on a floating island. It may be far away from the Earth, but the adventures of the city's inhabitants echo the fairy tales of Earth's ages-old storytelling traditions.

FREE Kindle eBook: The Aeneid translated by John Dryden. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the book. John Dryden was one of the great poets of 17th-century England. Here is how he rendered the famous opening lines of the poem: Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate, / And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate / Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Good books are true friends (a quote from Francis Bacon). Details at the Proverb Lab. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was one of the most important figures in the history of science.

Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image features Jatayu, shown here with Rama (blue) and his brother Lakshmana.

Friday Event on Campus: There will be a workshop on Inclusivity as part of The Race Card Project at 3:30PM in the Harlow Room of the History of Science Collections in Bizzell Library (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

Valentine's Day: Green M-and-M Legend. In honor of Valentine's Day, here is a Valentine's Day Legend from Snopes.com. In 2008, the Mars Candy Company promoted the distribution of packages of all-green M-and-M candies because the green candies are supposedly an aphrodisiac - true or false??? Well, Snopes.com tells us that is true that Mars promoted the green candies for Valentine's Day, but as to whether the green M-and-Ms really are an aphrodisiac, Snopes.com is not saying! Other legends about the candy colors are as follows: orange ones are good luck, brown ones are bad luck, and if you get a red one last out of the bag, you should make a wish and it will come true. As for the green M-and-Ms being an aphrodisiac, no one is quite sure how this rumor got started, but it has been circulating since the 1970s! Happy Valentine's Day!

Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.

Thursday, February 13

Today is Thursday of WEEK 5. If you have not turned in your Week 4 Storybook assignment yet, you have until noon today to turn that in for partial credit. Thursday morning, until noon, is also the grace period if you did not finish the assignments that were due on Wednesday.

Class Procedures and Reminders:

Missed Assignments and Extra Credit. Especially if you have midterms going on in your other classes right now, you might miss some assignments in this class. That is not a problem; you can make up missing assignments later on with extra credit when you have more time — that is what the extra credit is for. To see how you are doing week by week, there is a Grading Chart here that I hope will be helpful. If you have questions about that, let me know.

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the very large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment before 11PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in later on Sunday or on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, it is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. You can check to make sure I have your assignment by looking at the contents of the stack here. I will do my best to respond to everything in the stack before the weekend, but this week is one of the busiest weeks of the semester for me, so I might end up doing schoolwork on Saturday morning (something I try very hard to avoid...). We'll see how it works out this semester!

The following items are for fun and exploration:

New Tech Tip: Last week I added two new Tech Tips to the Tech Tip list, a Pinterest Basics tip, and also this one about creating a Pinterest Portfolio. I've been adding some items to the class portfolios I made, and it's definitely a very fun way to bookmark and save things online!

Writing Humor: As a follow-up to yesterday's video about emoticons, I thought you might enjoy these 19th-century emoticons. They come from the American humor magazine Puck.

Foreign Words in English: Today's foreign word in English is Singapore, which means "Lion-City," a name that comes from Sanskrit. For details, see this blog post. The image shows the famous mer-lion that is one of the symbols of the city:

Featured Storybook: Indian Horror Story: Tales of the Lingering Souls. This haunted house was owned by a mysterious man named Yash, whose eerie portrait has presided over a series of grisly deaths that echo the episodes of the ancient epics.

FREE Kindle eBook: Folklore of the Santal Parganas by Cecil Henry Bompas. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. The Santhal people live in eastern India.

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is When the house is built, the carpenter is forgotten (a proverb from India). Details at the Proverb Lab. I was glad to find this Flickr photo of Indian carpenters to use for the poster since the proverb likewise comes from India!

Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image shows Ravana abducting Sita. You can see her dropping her jewelry while the great bird Jatayu confronts Ravana.

Thursday Event on Campus: As part of Black History Month, there will be a screening of Spike Lee's School Daze in Meacham at 7PM (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.

Wednesday, February 12

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 5. If you have not turned in your Week 4 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit. Wednesday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you did not finish the assignments that were due on Tuesday.

Class Procedures and Reminders:

Week 5 Internet assignment. If you did not read yesterday's announcements, make sure you take a look at them now, especially the information about the Week 5 Internet assignment, which is available now. I hope you will have fun looking at other people's coverpages!

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 by Sunday at 6PM, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in later on Sunday or on Monday or Tuesday, it is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.

The Writing Center. The OU Writing Center has something to offer everyone, whether you need help in learning how to proofread, planning a research paper, or improving your resume. Now that you are working on more formal writing assignments for your Storybook project, I hope you will take advantage of the services that they offer, especially if you have any questions at all about punctuation and other features of formal written English. They have various locations and extended hours (including some evenings and weekends) to accommodate you. Check out the Writing Center website to learn more!

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Thoughts about Writing. This YouTube video offers some thoughts about emoticons by Ben Zimmer, a linguist and one of my favorite language commentators:

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

Featured Storybook: Hotel California. In this eerie Storybook, Daphne and Felix Cross check into the Hotel California and - just as you would expect - they can check out any time they like, but they can never leave . . .

FREE Kindle eBook: Laos Folk-Lore by Katherine Fleeson. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. This book contains all kinds of stories from Laos, including wonderful story about the man in the moon.

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Not even Apollo keeps his bow always at full stretch (a Latin proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. In other words, you need to take a break every once in a while... or else you will snap!

Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image shows Ravana and Maricha. The painting is done in the Kangra style.

Wednesday Event on Campus: There will be a Star Party at 6:45 PM on the roof of the Asp Avenue Observatory as there is every Wednesday night when OU is in session; check the Star Party website to confirm the event 3 hours before it starts for cancellations due to weather or cloud cover.

Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.

Tuesday, February 11

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 5, and I've re-arranged the Quiz area in D2L so the new week is on top. Also, the Internet assignment for this week is now available. This week's topic in the Myth-Folklore class is Vergil's Aeneid or Ovid's Metamorphoses, and in Indian Epics you'll start off with Rama's exile. I hope you will enjoy the readings! If you have not turned in your Week 4 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit.

Class Procedures and Reminders:

Week 5 Internet assignment available NOW. For the next eight weeks (Week 5 through Week 12), your Internet assignment will consist of reading people's Storybooks and leaving comments for them. This is an assignment that you cannot do early, but on the first day of each new week — that is, on Tuesday each week — the Internet assignment becomes available, and you have the rest of the week to complete it. So, the Internet assignment for Week 5 is available starting today and through the rest of the week and weekend. I hope you will enjoy looking at other people's coverpages and giving them some feedback!

Storybook Stack. The Storybook stack is HUGE this week. If you turned in an assignment before noon on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in later on Sunday or on Monday, it 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.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Procrastination Humor: I know the semester is really starting to get busy for many of you, so I thought you might enjoy this Procrastination Flowchart. Do people still play Farmville? Either way, the chart is still very funny!

Writing Resource: Every Book is a TARDIS. You don't have to be a fan of Doctor Who to appreciate the joys of reading! :-)

Foreign Words in English: Today's foreign word in English is shawl, which comes to English from India. For details, see this blog post.

Featured Storybook: Paranormal: The Ayodhya Files. Right here, right now, the brothers Rama and Lakshmana are battling demons in Boston and New York, unaware that they are caught up in a thousands-year-old battle being fought all over again.

FREE Kindle eBook: Stories from Virgil by Alfred Church. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. This will be of special interest to any of you who will be reading the Aeneid this week.

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is If Jupiter hurled his thunderbolt as often as men sinned, he would soon be out of thunderbolts (from the Roman poet Ovid). Details at the Proverb Lab. For those of you who study Latin, here are Ovid's own words: Si, quotiens peccant homines, sua fulmina mittat / Iuppiter, exiguo tempore inermis erit.

Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image shows Sita being tested in the fire, while the gods come down from heaven to watch: Indra rides on his elephant, Brahma on his goose, and Shiva on his bull (and Parvati is riding with him).

Tuesday Event on Campus: You can see The Vagina Monologues performed in Meacham at 7PM (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

February 11: Frank Herbert. Today marks the anniversary of the death of the science fiction writer Frank Herbert in 1986 (he was born in 1920). His novel, Dune, published in 1965, is one of the most popular science fiction novels ever written. Below is a cover for a paperback edition of Dune, showing one of the mighty sandworms!



Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.

Monday, February 10

Today is Monday. Week 4 is now over. Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you didn't finish any of the assignments that were due on Friday or over the weekend. The next week of class will begin tomorrow - and those assignments are available now if you want to get started!

Class Procedures and Reminders:

Storybook Coverpages. I'll be updating the list of Storybook websites for Myth-Folklore and Indian Epics on Monday afternoon when people have finished turning in their Week 4 coverpages. You can continue to experiment with your coverpage design all semester long, of course! Starting tomorrow, Tuesday, for the Week 5 Internet assignment you will be looking at and commenting on each other's Storybooks via the class list. I'll have more to say about that in tomorrow's announcements.

Storybook stack. As always on Monday, I will have a HUGE bunch of assignments in the Storybook stack that were turned in over the weekend or on Monday morning. The first thing I will do on Monday morning when I get to work is to update the list of items in the Storybook stack. You can then check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment. This is usually the single busiest week of the semester for me, but I will do my best to get comments back to everyone by the end of the week.

Alternate Email Addresses. (repeat announcement) As the OU D2L and email outage showed last week, life can get complicated when email stops working. Since the folks at IT are not yet sure what caused the outage, I'm worried that we might have another one. So, it might come in handy if I had an alternate email address from each of you that I could use in case of a prolonged OU email outage. I've created a Google Form to collect the addresses. If you have a minute, please fill out the online form here: Alternate Email Address Form.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Pinterest Tech Tip: For those of you who are already using Pinterest or who want to give it a try, there is a new Pinterest Tech Tip. I've become quite a fan of Pinterest over the past few months, and I would really like to know what you all think about it too!

Writing Humor: Serial Comma. Because, hey, we all need some punctuation humor! If you don't use the serial comma (a.k.a. the Oxford comma) in the sentence below, things get seriously weird!

Foreign Words in English: Today's foreign word in English is panic. This comes to us from the Greek god Pan. For details, see this blog post.

Featured Storybook: I Am Not my Brothers' Sister: A Changeling's Journey. A young girl suspects that she is a changeling and embarks on a long journey to find out more about changeling legends . . . and more about herself.

FREE Kindle eBook: Ovid's Metamorphoses translated by J. J. Howard. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. Ovid will be one of the reading selections this coming week in Myth-Folklore.

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is A barley corn is better than a diamond to a cock (an English proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. This is another one of the many proverbs derived from Aesop's fables.

Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image is Rama in exile, accompanied of course by Sita and Lakshmana.

Monday Event on Campus: As part of "I Love Yoga" week at Huston Huffman, there will be a Harmony Yoga class at 8:45AM in Studio B, along with more yoga classes on Wednesday and Friday (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

Thoughts about Philip Seymour Hoffman. I don't know about the rest of you, but I spent a lot of time this week thinking about Philip Seymour Hoffman, both about his death and also about his many wonderful films. I noticed that Char wrote her Famous Last Words for this week about this, and I wanted to share that link here, both because it is a great post and also in case anybody wanted to add their comments. I don't participate a lot in the Ning, but I see the posts go by and sometimes I just feel compelled to comment, as I did this time. (image from Wikimedia)

Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.

Sunday, February 9

Today is Sunday of Week 4. The Read and Respond assignment, along with the Internet assignment and Storybook assignment, are due today. So, if you have not finished those up already, now is the time.

Class Procedures and Reminders:

Storybook Stack. (repeat announcement) 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.

Week 4 Responding. (repeat announcement) For the Read and Respond assignment, there are new groups this week! Plus, there is another extra credit responding option this week too. You'll find that information at the bottom of the regular assignment instructions.

Alternate Email Addresses. (repeat announcement) As the OU D2L and email outage showed on Wednesday, life can get complicated when email stops working. Since the folks at IT are not yet sure what caused the outage, I'm worried that we might have another one. So, it might come in handy if I had an alternate email address from each of you that I could use in case of a prolonged OU email outage. I've created a Google Form to collect the addresses. If you have a minute, please fill out the online form here: Alternate Email Address Form.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Writing Humor: A Quick Brown Fox. This famous sentence - A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog - is an example of a pangram containing all the letters of the English alphabet. And here it is in animated gif form:

Words to Watch: Today's words to watch out for are BOARD and BORED. Both very common words that have the same pronunciation but different meanings. For details, see this blog post.

Featured Storybook: Desperate Goddesses: Life on Mythological Lane. Izanami-no-Mikoto, the Japanese goddess of creation, has left the world of the living long behind, but she still watches over the desperate goddesses of Mythological Lane - Aphrodite, Pele, Ishtar, and Devi - and shares their stories with you.

FREE Kindle eBook: Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit by S. M. Mitra and Nancy Bell. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. This is a book intended for use in school, with questions to go along with the stories; for any of you who have children of your own or who work with young children, you might want to take a look at this one!

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is A lion may be beholden to a mouse (an English proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. This is a proverb inspired by the Aesop's fable about the mouse who rescued the lion from the snare.

Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image shows Rama and Bharata, with Sita, Lakshmana, and Hanuman standing nearby. Notice Rama's sandals on the throne!

Image Resource: Some of you may have read about the Abused Goddesses campaign in India last year which sought to raise awareness of domestic violence. Below is the image of Saraswati, goddess of knowledge and the arts, shown as the victim of abuse.

Sunday Event on Campus: The OU Symphony will be giving a concert at 3PM in the Sharp Concert Hall (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

February 9: Paul Laurence Dunbar. Today marks the death in the year 1906 of the great African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dunbar was born a free man, in the state of Ohio, in the year 1872, but both of his parents had been slaves. His father served in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, a black regiment of the Union Army whose story is told in the film Glory. There is a special section of the Library of Congress website dedicated to Dunbar's poetry - it is definitely worth browsing through! The image below shows a poster advertising a public reading by Dunbar of his poetry (Ohio Historical Society):



Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.