Saturday, January 17

Today is Saturday of Week 1. I hope you are having a nice weekend! If you did not finish up the last assignments for the Orientation Week on Friday, you can do that this weekend — and if you missed them yesterday, here's a link to Friday's announcements. And yes, there are new announcements here on Saturday and on Sunday; most students are doing their work for this class over the weekends, so I want to make sure there are new announcements on these days too!

Class Procedures and Reminders

My Weekend Schedule. I know a lot of you are doing schoolwork over the weekend, but I'm usually not at work on the weekends; I try really hard to finish things up each week on Friday. I do check email on the weekends, but not as often as during the week; if it is something urgent, I'll reply as soon as I get back online!

Assignment Stack. You can check the stack to make sure I received your proofreading assignment (or Storybook assignment, if you are working ahead). I'll be getting to those when school opens again on Tuesday.

Monday holiday. Monday is a holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., and the OU campus will be closed. I've extended the Monday morning grace period for the Orientation Week Friday/weekend assignments till Tuesday, and the Week 2 Monday assignment has also been moved to Tuesday. I would urge everybody to get ahead this weekend, though, if you can. In fact, now would be a great time to Design Your Own Schedule.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Alphabet Monogram. In this animated gif, you can find all the letters of the English alphabet, and numbers too!

Mythology Words in English: Today's mythology word in English is Saturday, which takes its name from the Roman god Saturn. For details, see this blog post.

Featured Storybook: Once Upon An Antiques Shop. Our modern-day heroine Lilly visits a mysterious antique shop and hears the story of "Beauty and the Beast" as told in many different countries, each story conveying a message of its own and told by a surprising new storyteller each time.

FREE eBook: Aesop for Children with illustrations by Milo Winter. This blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book, which is the source for one of the units in Myth-Folklore this coming week.

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is When one door shuts, another opens (a Scottish proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. A good proverb to think about at the beginning of a new semester!

Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image is Hanuman. This is a mural in Bangkok, Thailand. The story of Rama (and Hanuman) is not just famous in India; it is the national epic of Thailand under the title Ramakien.

January 17: Benjamin Franklin. Today is the birthday of Benjamin Franklin, polymath and politician, who was born in 1706. For more about his remarkable life and accomplishments, see this Wikipedia article. There is also a delightful bit of Latin verse composed in Franklin's honor by the French statesman Turgot: Eripuit caelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis, "He ripped the lightning from the sky, and the sceptre from the tyrants." The painting below shows "Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky," by Benjamin West (Philadelphia Museum of Art).

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.