Wednesday, January 16

Today is Wednesday of Week 1. Congratulations to everybody for getting your blog set up! Here is a link to this week's assignments, and today you will be 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 popping up! There's a "blogs" link in the Canvas left-hand navigation menu, so you can take a look and see what people are posting in (almost) real time.

My comments. My goal this week is to comment on all the favorite places posts, and I will also comment on as many of the Introduction posts as I can. I'll finish commenting on the Introduction posts next week, while you all will start commenting on Introduction posts as part of Week 2 also.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. A lot of people have mentioned Colorado as one of their favorite places with so many great pictures, like this beautiful photo from Estes Park that Shaun took and shared in his blog post: Wonders of Estes Park Colorado.

Free Book Online. Today's free book is Ancient Calendars and Constellations by Emmeline Mary Plunket, which covers Greece and India and other ancient cultures.

Free Audiobook. Today's free audiobook is The Islands of Magic: Legends, Folk and Fairy Tales from the Azores by Elsie Spicer Eells. And if you're not sure where the Azores are, just ask Wikipedia.

Featured Storybook. You'll be looking at Storybooks as your assignment today, and I'll also going to start 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. As part of CAC Winter Welcome Week, it's College Bowl - Trivia from 5PM-7PM in the Union Ballroom (details).

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

January 16: Don Quixote. On this day in 1605 Cervantes published the first volume of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha). The first English translation appeared already in 1612. You can read more about this storytelling masterpiece at Wikipedia. The image below is a sculpture of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in Madrid:

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