Monday, January 13

Today is Monday of Week 1, the first day of the new semester! There is an Orientation Week to help you learn about how this online class works, and you can find all the assignments here: Orientation Week assignments. You have some work due on Tuesday, so I hope you can get started today.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Two Classes | One Set of Announcements. These Announcements are for BOTH the Myth-Folklore class AND the Indian Epics class. Each class has its own reading materials, but the weekly assignments are the same. So, these shared announcements are a way for those of you in Myth-Folklore to learn more about India (a great land of stories!), and also for the people in the Indian Epics class to learn about other storytelling traditions from the Myth class.

Please call me Laura. I will be on a first-name basis with all of you, and I hope you will feel comfortable just calling me Laura.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. I'll be sharing items from the blog stream each day, so here's a beautiful photograph that Ryan took of Lake Bled in Slovenia (from his favorite place post). Not sure where Lake Bled is? or Slovenia? Wikipedia to the rescue! :-)

Twitter Stream. Each day I'll also share something I saw in the class Twitter stream too. This tweet is about indigenous ecology, and it goes to this article online: Indigenous song keepers reveal traditional ecological knowledge in music.

100-Word Stories. There will also be a tiny story each day, just 100 words long (you can see more of these tiny stories in the sidebar at random). Today's story is from Greek mythology: Arion and the Dolphin (click title for more info).

Indian Epics. From India, here is Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom and learning. I think that makes her a good character to preside over the first day of class!

Indian Music Video. As Saraswati is the goddess of music, I thought I would share this music video from Maati Baani, a tribute to India's farmers: Saccha Mitr.

Myth Video. This Crash Course Mythology video might be of interest to those of you in both classes:

Myth-Folklore. From the world of Greek mythology, here is the origin of a word we use today in English: cereal is from the name of the Roman goddess of agriculture, Ceres:

H.E.A.R.T.. As you'll soon figure out (if you have not figured it out already), I am a big word nerd, and I love to read. I hope you will have fun with the reading in these classes too. Here's a Reading-is-Fun poster from Maurice Sendak:

HEART Video. And as a big fan of books, I am of course also a big fan of Bizzell Library. Here's a fun video they made a few years ago about some of the great things you can see and do there (and this video predates all the new spaces and services they have added in the past several years):

Event on Campus. It's CAC's Cocoa and Canvas... no, not Canvas the software; this is actual painting on canvases tonight at 7PM in the Union. Here's the complete CAC Winter Welcome Week schedule.

January 13: Shivkumar Sharma. Today is the birthday of Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, who was born on this day in the year 1938; he is one of the world's great santoor players. You can find out more about his life and career at Wikipedia; here is a video of him performing: Shivkumar Sharma and Hariprasad Chaurasia in Search of Peace, Love and Harmony.

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