Monday, January 30

Today is Monday. Week 2 is now over... and Week 3 has begun. The new week's topic in the Myth-Folklore class is Classical and Biblical stories again, and in Indian Epics you will be finishing your first version of the Ramayana! You can find the week's assignments at the Class Calendar.

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 or on Monday morning. The first thing I will do on Monday morning when I get to work is to update the list of items in the Storybook 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. I will then start replying to the assignments in the order they were turned in. Please do not go on to the Week 3 Project assignment until you get Week 2 comments back from me; I will get comments back to you by the end of the week!

You really can call me Laura! No need to be formal and call me Dr. Gibbs, and since I'm not a professor, that title is actually not correct (I'm an adjunct instructor, no tenure, no tenure-track). So, given that I'm on a first-name basis with all of you, please do the same and just call me Laura!

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Mythology on Campus. Have you seen OU's Sphinx? Find out more here: Botero's Sphinx.

Language. I really like this linguistic family "tree" drawn by Minna Sundberg. As you can see more clearly in the full-sized view, the languages of India are among the left branches of the Indo-European tree.

Word from India. This is another famous word that comes to English from Sanskrit: NIRVANA.

Featured Storybook. This project is from the Myth-Folklore class: Three Voyages to Utopia. In this Renaissance adventure, our bold travelers visits the land of Cockaigne, the lost city of Langarrow (now lost), and finally the remotest Utopia of all: Shangri-La in China.

Free Book Online: Today's free book is The White Elephant and Other Tales from India by Georgene Faulkner. See the Freebookapalooza blog for links and the table of contents. The illustrations by Frederick Richardson are beautiful:

Words of Wisdom: Today's saying is Catch not at the shadow and lose the substance (an English proverb). Find out more at the Proverb Lab. Some of you have probably read the Aesop's fable that inspired this proverb: The Dog Crossing the Stream.

Video: The video for today is Pieter Bruegel's Tower of Babel. Find out more at the Myth-Folklore UnTextbook.

Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat is a curious cat: Curiosity is not sedentary and passive. You can find out more at the Growth Mindset blog.

Event on Campus: There will be a Women of Power Listening Party at 7PM in the Henderson/Tolson Cultural Center (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

January 30: Gandhi. On January 30 in 1948, Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated. The image below shows the memorial in New Delhi where Gandhi's body was cremated. If you look closely at the photograph, you will see some words written in Devanagari script: "Hey Ram" (Oh Rama!), which were reportedly Gandhi's last words, and here is something he wrote in December 1947, just weeks before his assassination: In the end it will be as Rama commands me. Thus I dance as He pulls the strings. I am in His hands and so I am experiencing ineffable peace.

Check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day, or click here for past announcements.