Wednesday, March 4

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 8. Wednesday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you did not finish the Writing Review blog post that was due on Tuesday — and if you missed them yesterday, here's a link to Tuesday's announcements.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. I'm still working my way through the enormous stack of Project assignments that people have turned in. To check to make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here. Please wait to get my comments before you go on to the next Project assignment — although you can certainly keep working ahead on other assignments in the class! The Project assignment is the only item each week where you need to wait for my comments back to you. If you have not turned in your Week 7 Project assignment yet, you can still do that today.

Your announcements. (repeat announcement) If you are involved in any campus or local event that you would like me to include in the announcements, please let me know — I will be glad to do that! Send an email with details, along with a link to additional information online and/or a publicity poster. There is so much going on that does not show up in the OU Calendar, so I'm glad to know about any good events coming up that might be of interest to people in these classes!

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Writing Tip: Inflated v. Concise. This is a handy chart from Amanda Patterson.


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


Featured Storybook: Ancient Generals: Bragging at Elysian Fields. Alexander the Great awakens to find himself in the Elysian Fields, enjoying the company of the great generals of classical Greece: Themistocles, Leonidas, and Miltiades. The question naturally arises: who is the greatest of them all?


FREE eBook: Sacred Tales of India by D. N. Neogi. This blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book; it is one of the books I want to include in the UnTextbook for Indian Epics this summer!


Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago; the second-best time is now (a Chinese proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. This is true of trees and all kinds of other long-term projects!


Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image is Rama's Return to Ayodhya where he will finally be crowned as king.


Wednesday Event on Campus: There will be a Harp Studio Recital at 6PM in Pitman Recital Hall, Catlett Music Center (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

March 4-5: Purim. Today at sundown is the beginning of the Jewish festival of Purim, which celebrates the events described in the Book of Esther in the Bible (and which is part of the "Bible Women" unit in the Myth-Folklore UnTextbook). In that Bible story, Esther saved her people from the evil Haman, who was plotting to destroy them. You can read more about Purim in this Wikipedia article. The image below shows some yummy Hamantaschen - "Haman's pockets" - a special pastry that is baked in honor of Purim:



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.