Saturday, April 27

Today is Saturday of Week 14. Here is a link to the Week 14 assignments plus the Week 15 assignments. If you can finish this weekend, that will give you a complete Dead Week in this class for all of next week.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Finishing the class. When you reach your goal (410 for an A, 360 for a B, 320 for a C), just fill out the "Finished" form you will see in the Canvas menu. If you kept up with the assignments so far, Week 14 should be all you need, but if you missed some assignments earlier in the semester, there is a complete set of Week 15 assignments that you can use to finish up too, and those are all available now.

Project Stack. On Friday I managed to send comments to everybody who needed those comments for their Week 14 assignment. If you have questions about just what your options are for the Week 14 and/or Week 15 project assignments, let me know, and as always you can check the stack to make sure I received your project email.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. There is a fantastic anecdote in Madison's blog from last week about Professor Barnes (and some of you have seen her TED talk on parasocial relationships with literary characters): Famous Last Words.
During a lab meeting last week, someone asked her if she formed parasocial relationships with the characters she writes in her books. Her immediate response was, “No, I am their god.” After we all finished laughing, she explained that writing a novel is more revision than actual writing, and it’s hard to form a relationship with a character who you can make disappear at a moment’s notice. Whether or not the character makes it to the final version of the book depends on what Dr. Barnes (and her editor) decide. 

Free Book Online. Today's free book is  Myths and Legends of the Bantu by Alice Werner.


Free Audiobook. Today's free audiobook is also by Walter Crane: The Frog Prince and Other Stories.





Featured Storybook. This Sita Storybook offers a wide variety of stories, including a Star-Trek-themed story! Sita, Sidewalks, Shadows, Stars.


India Video. Here's a lovely video from Manish Vyas about The Santoor.



Myth Item. This is a thought-provoking proverb from Japan: Someone who stands behind a wall can see nothing else.


 Myth Video. And here is someone performing the Sumerian Gilgamesh in a musical re-creation of the ancient story.



Writing. Pangrams use all the letters of the alphabet: English Pangrams. My favorite is: The five boxing wizards jump quickly. But the quick brown fox jumping over the lazy dog is the most famous:


Writing. If you're writing a story this weekend, maybe you can borrow some characters for your story from this Tom Gauld cartoon: Characters for an Epic Tale.


Growth Mindset Cats. Be curious! In order to learn, we must probe and poke.



Plus, here's some advice from Brene Brown for both writing and for life: don't worry about what people think.


And here's a lovely Brene Brown video about Empathy.


Event on Campus. There will be a performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at 8PM tonight in the Max Weitzenhoffer Theatre (details).
Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

Roman Floralia. Today beings the ancient Roman festival called Floralia, which lasts from April 27 through May 3. Flora was a goddess in ancient Rome, and she presided over flowers and all blossoming plants. You can read more about the Floralia here, and you can see the goddess in Botticelli's painting Primavera (Spring); the smiling goddess Flora is the one all covered with flowers (detail view):
Check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day, or click here for past announcements.

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