Class Procedures and Reminders
Project Stack. I've read and replied to all the assignments turned in on Sunday, and I'll keep working through the Stack in the order that they were turned in. You can check the Stack to make sure I received your assignment.
D2L Outage Update: There was a D2L outage late Wednesday night and into the early hours of Thursday morning. If that meant you were unable to do a Declaration, please do that this morning if you can. If that is not possible, don't worry: you can let me know, and I'll record any missing points for you manually. My apologies for the inconvenience!
Blog commenting. After the grace period ends at noon today, I'll start putting together the new random blog groups for the blog commenting. I'll get that done this afternoon and will update these announcements when the groups are ready to go — the blog groups should be ready by 5PM at the latest.
Update: The Week 3 blog groups are ready to go!
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Role-Playing. You can think of the storytelling assignments for this class as role-playing... and role-playing is a valuable life skill!
Mythology Words in English: Today's mythology word in English is THURSDAY from the name of the Norse god Thor. Thank Thor it's Thursday! For details, see this blog post.
Featured Storybook: HGTV: Homer and Garden Television. Join Persephone as she redecorates both in heaven and in the underworld, while Zeus and Hera squabble on camera, and Odysseus goes house-hunting together with his loving wife Penelope — all part of the HGTV line-up for this season.
Free Book Online: Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends by Gertrude Landa. This blog post provides additional information about this fascinating collection of Jewish folktales and fairy tales, some with Biblical characters!
India Comic Book: Vishvamitra: The King Who Became an Ascetic. This blog post provides a detailed reading guide for this comic book on Reserve in Bizzell. There is much more to Vishvamitra than his adventures with Rama!
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is When knowledge is hidden away, it rots; when it is shared publicly, it grows (a medieval Latin proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. The Latin rhymes: Condita TABESCIT, vulgata scientia CRESCIT. As you can see, even in the Middle Ages, scholars understood the importance of Open Access!
Today's Video: Chad Gadya. The Chad Gadya is one of my favorite folksongs, and you can see it here with animated embroidery (wow!) by Nina Paley and Theodore Gray. You can find the words of the song at Wikipedia. This is what is called a "cumulative" type of story, and you can find more examples in the Myth-Folklore UnTextbook. The last verse has all the characters: "Then came the Holy One, and smote the angel of death, who slew the slaughterer, who killed the ox, that drank the water, that extinguished the fire, that burned the stick, that beat the dog, that bit the cat, that ate the goat." (You probably know the English cumulative rhyme about The House that Jack Built.)
Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat has heightened awareness: The higher you climb, the more you can see. Details at the blog.
Event on Campus.Here is an announcement from Michelle in Myth-Folklore: this Thursday is the first general meeting of the Vietnamese Student Association at 6PM in the Henderson-Tolson Cultural Center (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online. I really appreciate all the announcements people have shared with me to include here: keep 'em coming!
Note: You can page back through the 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.
