Thursday, September 19

Today is Thursday of Week 5. Here is a link to the Week 5 assignments. For a lot of you this is Storytelling Day, so I hope you will have fun with that (let your imagination run wild!), and then tomorrow I'll be able to add all the new stories into the randomizer.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Introduction Comments. As I mentioned earlier this week, I've finished commenting on all the Introduction posts (I think!), but if I missed somebody, please just let me know. I don't comment a lot on the blogs once the semester gets going, but I definitely want to read and comment on everybody's Introduction. :-)

Project Stack. If you turned in your project before 6PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me, and you can check the stack to make sure I received your assignment. Meanwhile, I'll keep working today on the assignments that were turned in Sunday evening.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. I thought this was so funny: Cody was going to make a Ravana meme, but he saw Jackie's Ravana meme here in the announcements yesterday... so he ended up making a meme about the meme! Details at his blog post. Here's the result:

Indian Epics Today. The character of the day today is a member of Ravana's family: his giant brother, Kumbhakarna. This beautiful illustration shows Kumbhakarna falling in battle; you can see that the artist has drawn it like an animation, showing you the fall as if it were frame by frame:

Twitter Stream. And today is Thursday, which means you will find cool things being shared with the #FolkloreThursday hashtag. The theme for this week's event is harvest, in celebration of autumn:

Story of the Day. This is an unusual origin story from Nigeria: what we know now as lightning used to be a bad-tempered ram and the thunder is his mother rebuking him: Lightning and Thunder.

Storybooks. Some of you in Myth-Folklore are reading about Egypt this week, so here's an Egyptian Storybook from last year: The Egyptian Goddess Isis.

Myth-Folklore Video. Here are some more goddesses, this time from Crash Course: Fire and Buffalo Goddesses.

Words. And here's a word in English that comes from the name of a god, Morpheus, the god of sleep: morphine. This fresco shows the god Morpheus together with the goddess Night:

Writing. If you're writing a story today, you might enjoy this fun infographic: Seven Steps to the Perfect Story.

Mindset Cats. The mindset cat has some advice for creative writing: start by making observations.

Writing Video. And here is some all-purpose writing advice: Beware the Zombie Nouns!

Event on Campus. There will be a presentation by Dr. Nahid Siamdoust, Singing in Fear: Female Vocalists and Cultural Securitization in Iran, at 1:30PM in Farzaneh Hall (details here).

September 19: Rackham. Today marks the birthday of the great illustrator Arthur Rackham, who was born in 1867 (he died in 1939). You can read more about his life and career in this Wikipedia article, and here is one of his illustrations for Alice in Wonderland.

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