Class Procedures and Reminders
Storytelling posts. Most of you will be writing a story today, based on the reading you did this week (Biblical-Classical in Myth-Folklore, the start of the Ramayana in Indian Epics). When you format your blog post, pay special attention to the links and images. You will find additional information here: Formatting Blogger posts. If you have any questions as you work on that, let me know!
Week 2 Project Feedback. For those of you who are working ahead, I wanted to let you know that the Week 2 Project Feedback assignment is available now. This week, the assignment is to start practicing some of the techniques you can use when you give feedback on people's stories. I know that giving this kind of feedback is probably a new experience for most of you, and this assignment should help you feel more confident about that: Project Feedback assignments.
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Word-Unit Palindromes. You've probably heard of palindromes, which are the same whether the letters are read from left to right or from right to left. You can read more about palindromes at Wikipedia. Here are two examples of word-unit palindromes:
Words to Watch: Today's words to watch out for are PEDAL and PETAL. For details, see this blog post.
Free Book Online: Age of Fable by Thomas Bulfinch. This blog post provides additional information about the book which provides a survey of Greek and Roman mythology.
India Comic Book: Kubera: The Lord of Wealth. This blog post provides a detailed reading guide for this comic book which is on Reserve in Bizzell Library. You can learn a lot about Kubera here, and also about Ravana!
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. (an English proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. Specifically, the gift you should be wary of is a so-called "Trojan horse," which is how the Greeks managed to invade the city of Troy and destroy it. You can read more about the Trojan Horse at Wikipedia.
Today's Video: Narayan's Secret. This video is an explanation of an image in a book by Devdutt Pattanaik, an Indian author who is part of the reading for the Indian Epics class, and his perspectives on mythology might be of interest to students in Myth-Folklore also. The god who is the subject of this video is the supreme god, Narayana, who is also known as Vishnu.
Growth Mindset. Today's growth mindset cat urges you to keep going, even if you are afraid: Just keep going; action overcomes fear.. Details at the blog.
Event on Campus: There will be a Judaic Studies Lunch Talk at noon in Gould 330 — Dr. Alan Levenson on The "Golden Age" of Advertising: The Jewish Mad Men (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.
September 2: Death of J. R. R. Tolkien. Today, September 2, marks the death in 1973 of the great English author, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, who is best known for creating the marvelous fantasy world of Middle Earth, in which he set his novel The Hobbit and the trilogy known as Lord of the Rings. You can read about Tolkien's life and career in this Wikipedia article, which is also the source for this drawing that shows Tolkien's own design for the covers of The Lord of the Rings trilogy:
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.
