Thursday, February 21

Today is Thursday of Week 6. Here is a link to the Week 6 assignments. Some of you will be writing a Story post today, while some of you will be doing Story Lab: I hope you will enjoy the experience whichever choice you make.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Subscribe to the announcements. There's useful information (I hope!) in the announcements each day, and you can subscribe to the announcements by email. It's even a Tech Tip: Subscribe to Announcements.

Project Stack. If you turned in your project assignment before 3PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me by now, and I'll keep working on the Sunday assignments today. Meanwhile, you can check the stack to make sure I received your email.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. Those of you in Indian Epics are probably getting a sense of why people like to compare the Mahabharata to Game of Thrones, and Victoria took that idea and ran with it for a great new story she wrote this week: The Eyrie.

Free Book Online. Today's free book is Indian Fairy Stories by Donald A. Mackenzie (1915), with illustrations by Maxwell Armfield. (Some of you may recognize Donald Mackenzie as the author of a short version of the Ramayana too!)

Free Audiobook. Today's free audiobook is also a Book of Fairy Tales, this one by S. Baring Gould, one of the great English folklorists.

Featured Storybook. Here's a lovely Storybook about some supernatural birth stories from the Indian epics: Dai Dreaming: A Collection of Birth Stories. This dai (midwife) has watched the birth goddess herself, Shashthi, in vivid and dramatic dream visions, both beautiful and terrifying.

India Video. I've shared Amy Burvall's mythological mash-up videos, and she even has one about the Mahabharata! The Mahabharata ("Abracadabra" by the Steve Miller Band).

Myth Video. This is a Crash Course video for all you psychology majors: Freud, Jung, Luke Skywalker, and the Psychology of Myth:.

Myth Item. Luke Skywalker's story definitely fits the model of The Hero's Journey.

Writing. And here's Tom Gauld's take on Archetypal Heroines. Of course I want to be the Time-Traveling Victorian. And a Cave Woman!

And yes, there is room for weird heroines and heroes: Make your weird light shine bright.

Growth Mindset Cats. Growth mindset means you learn from mistakes: I allow myself to do things imperfectly.

Here's a helpful growth mindset video from Eduardo Briceño: The Power of Belief — Mindset and Success.

Event on Campus. The History Club will be showing Hidden Figures at 7PM in 132 Ellison Hall, with snacks too! (details)

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

February 21: Mother Language Day. This is a United Nations holiday celebrating everyone's mother language. The date has a special connection to south Asia, as the United Nations website explains: "The date represents the day in 1952 when students demonstrating for recognition of their language, Bangla, as one of the two national languages of the then Pakistan, were shot and killed by police in Dhaka, the capital of what is now Bangladesh" (image source).

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