Thursday, August 29

Today is Thursday of Week 2, and here is a link to the Week 2 assignments. For many of you, this will be a day of storytelling: I hope you will have fun as you choose one of the stories from the Anthology to retell in your own way!

Class Procedures and Reminders

Story stream. A lot of people will be writing stories today, and there are also people who have written their stories already (plus there are a few Week 3 stories already too). It might give you a creative boost to browse and explore the stories so far, so take a look if you are curious: Myth-Folklore Stories and Indian Epic Stories.

Blog comments. The Week 2 blog comment assignment is ready to go where you will be commenting on other people's Introductions, and the Week 3 blog comment assignment is also ready now too, where you will be commenting on people's stories. Plus, if you like doing blog comments, there is an extra credit blog commenting option each week. Visiting other people's blogs is a great way to get ideas for your own stories and also to see different ways you might want to customize your blog design too.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. Here's a wonderful "favorite place" picture from Natalie: she's at the Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas; details at her blog.

Twitter Stream. Here's a mythological item from the Smithsonian Magazine Twitter stream; there are special rules for naming the moons of Jupiter: Astronomers Name Five of Jupiter’s New Moons.

Story of the Day. Today's aetiology is about how the horse became tamed by human riders: The Horse and the Stag. It's an Aesop's fable, and see below for more about Aesop's fables.

Storybooks. Here's a Storybook that is based on Aesop's fables: Lions of Aesop. And yet more Aesop's fables if you carry on reading below. :-)

Indian Epics Today. Today's character is AGNI, the god of fire. His name is related to the Latin word ignis, which gives us the English word "ignite," i.e. to set on fire! Agni will be an important character in both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. More about Agni. Here is Agni in a scene from the Ramayana:

Indian Epics. Here's an Agni fact sheet from Amar Chitra Katha:

India Video. This is an Epified video about Swaha, Agni's wife:

Writing. That connection between "Agni" and "ignite" is because Sanskrit and Latin and English are related languages, part of the Indo-European language family tree. Here's a great illustration by Minna Sundberg:

Writing Video. Here's a video from John McWhorter, one of my favorite linguists, about languages not on that family tree: Are Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki and Na'vi real languages?

Mindset Cats. When you create your story this week, the mindset cat urges you think outside the box.

Event on Campus. This evening is the first meeting of the OU History Club. History, plus tacos: 6PM in Ellison Hall 132 (details)

August 29: Joseph Jacobs. Today marks the birthday in 1854 of one of England's greatest folklorists: Joseph Jacobs. You can read about his life and career in this Wikipedia article, and you can see many of his books feature at the Freebookapalooza. Some of you may be reading Jacobs' book of Aesop's fables in the Myth-Folklore class next week:

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