Wednesday, August 22

Today is Wednesday of Week 1. Here is a link to this week's assignments, and the assignment for today is exploring the Storybook projects from past semesters. I hope that will start to give you some ideas for your own project in this class!

Class Procedures and Reminders

Blog network. The blog stream is very lively now, full of new posts. There's a "blogs" link in the Canvas left-hand navigation menu, so you can take a look and see what people are posting (and you can also see links to the latest posts in the sidebar of this blog). Soon, starting in Week 2, you'll be commenting on each other's blogs too.

My comments. My goal this week is to comment on all the favorite places posts, and also to comment on as many of the Introduction posts as I can. I really enjoy getting to know everybody, and I hope the rest of the Orientation week posts will help you feel confident about blogging and ready for next week's assignments.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. Here's another fun "favorite places" picture; this time it's Julia at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France.

Featured Storybook. You'll be looking at Storybooks as your assignment today, and I'll also be sharing a past Storybook each day in the announcements. Today, it's Horses Divine, which combines both Hindu and Buddhist stories of cosmic horses: Uchchaihshravas, Hayagriva, Valaha, and Devadatta.

Myth Video. Here's one of the Crash Course Mythology videos: The Great Goddess (you might recognize Mike Rugnetta from yesterday's Thor video).

Myth Item. And here is a proverb about the Roman gods Bacchus and Neptune (Dionysus and Poseidon to the Greeks), who stand here for wine and for water: Bacchus has drowned more people than Neptune (source).

India Video. This is a video from Epified TV in India about the goddess Kali: Through Many Eyes.

Writing. Here's a thought about writing and pictures: Emojis as Hieroglyphics.

And here's a thought about reading: dreaming with open eyes.

Plus one of my favorite videos about readers and books: Unread Book: Just Read... yes, really: it's Bruno Mars's Uptown Funk in a library!

Event on Campus. There will be a Howdy Week free showing of Coco in Cross Residential Hall at 8PM (details).

Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

August 22: Ray Bradbury. Today marks the birthday of the great American writer, Ray Bradbury, who was born on this day in 1920; he died in 2012. I recently re-read his book The Martian Chronicles and was amazed by the wild creativity of this project — I had not read the book since junior high school, and I am so glad that I read it again. Here is the cover of the first edition of Martian Chronicles as published in 1950:

This is a quote from another book by Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451: The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

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