Monday, April 13

Today is Monday. Week 12 is now over... and Week 13 has begun. Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you did not finish the final Week 12 assignments. This week's topic in the Myth-Folklore class is European stories, and in Indian Epics, you will be reading Buck's Mahabharata or your choice from the India units of the UnTextbook. I hope you will enjoy the readings!

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. As always on Monday, I will have a huge bunch of assignments in the stack that were turned in over the weekend. The first thing I will do on Monday morning when I get to work is to update the list of items in the Project stack. So, after 9AM or so on Monday, you will be able to check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment.

Finishing the semester. Now that there are just three weeks of the semester left (Weeks 13-14-15), it is really important that you have a plan for finishing up with the points you need for the grade you want (410 for an A, 360 for a B, 320 for a C). You can use the D2L Gradebook to see what points you could use to reach your goal, and if you have any questions about that, please ask me now!

Week 15. Week 15 is a review week (like Week 8), and there are some review blog posts in that week where I would really like to get your thoughts and feedback about the course. So, if you are close to finishing and want to jump ahead to the Week 15 review week, those assignments are available now. I would be really glad if those of you who are close to finishing want to use those review assignments to get the points you need!

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.

Mythology Words in English: Today's mythology word in English is ATLAS, the Titan god who holds up the cosmos on his shoulders. For details, see this blog post.

Featured Storybook: The Heroes' Diaries. Who will turn out to be the real hero: the Monkey King, Sindbad the Sailor, King Arthur, or Perseus? Read their diaries to reach your own decision.

FREE eBook: Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks by W. T. Larned (adapted from La Fontaine). This blog post provides additional information about where to find this delightful book online which is one of the sources for the La Fontaine unit in Myth-Folklore this week. There's even an audiobook version!

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is An untouched drum does not speak (a Liberian proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. Let your drum speak!

Mahabharata Image: Today's Mahabharata image is Krishna and the Pandavas. They are consulting with Sanjaya.

Monday Event on Campus: Su Fang Ng will be giving a talk on "The Islamic Alexander in Southeast Asia" at noon in 145 Hester Hall (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online. This is a talk I wish I could attend, as the Islamic Alexander is a topic I am really interested in. Maybe some of you can go! You can read about Alexander the Great in the Quran here at Wikipedia; the image below is an Iranian depiction of Alexander the Great and the jinn building the wall against Gog and Magog:

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.