Saturday, January 19

Today is Saturday of Week 1: welcome to the first weekend of the semester! If you didn't finish up the Week 1 assignments yet, you can do that this weekend; here is a link to the Orientation assignments. And for those of you who are working ahead, here is a link to the Week 2 assignments.

Class Procedures and Reminders

THANK YOU! I want to say a big thank-you to everybody in the class; we now have an awesome blog network full of ideas and images. I know that blogging is new to a lot of you, and I hope you will enjoy all the opportunities to connect and share that a blog network makes possible.

My schedule. Over the weekend I do not answer emails as quickly because I'm not at my desk like during the week, but as soon as I am back online, I'll reply to any questions you have! You can also look through the past class announcements from this week where you might find answers to questions that come up.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. Here's another beautiful picture that someone shared in their favorite place post; this one is a picture of Lion's Head Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa. Find out more at Hannah's blog post: Cape Town, Jaipur, Tokyo.

Free Book Online. Today's free book is a beautiful collection of stories from India: Indian Fables and Folklore by Shovona Devi.

Free Audiobook. In honor of Edgar Allan Poe's birthday (see below), today's free audiobook is Poe: Poems and Short Stories.

Featured Storybook. This is one of my favorite projects from last year: How to Join an Immortal Girl Gang. The goddess Artemis travels the world, from Greece to Sumeria and finally to India, hearing stories along the way.

Myth Video. Here's another one of those Crash Course videos, this time with an overview of the study of mythology: What Is Myth?.

India Video. And here's a video from my favorite mythologist, Devdutt Pattanaik: India is Not Chaotic.

India Item. This is another word from India that we now use in English: AVATAR. This Sanskrit word means a "descent" as when a god descends to earth and takes on an earthly form. This image shows the Dashavatara, the Ten-Avatars, of Vishnu, and one of those avatars is Rama, the hero of the epic Ramayana.

Writing. There are stories everywhere, even on your keyboard: Control and Escape.

And here's some advice from Anne Lamott for your weekend: Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes... including you.

Growth Mindset Cats. This cat agrees with Anne Lamott: Take time to recharge.

Yesterday I shared Pharrell Williams's "Happy" video, but this is actually my favorite of his videos (one of my all-time favorite music videos in fact): FREEDOM. You can find out more about the video at Wikipedia.

Event on Campus. It's the final event of Winter Welcome Week: a Harry Potter Party at Volare on Campus Corner starting at 7PM (details).

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

January 19: Poe. Today marks the anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe 210 years ago in the year 1809. You can read more about Poe's remarkable and tragic life in this detailed Wikipedia article, and the Penn Online Books page contains a list of his books which are available online. Below is an image of the cover designed by the famous illustrator Gustave Dore for Poe's famous poem, The Raven:

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