Wednesday, February 12

Today is Wednesday of Week 5. I hope you are enjoying this week's reading! Here is a link to the Week 5 assignments.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. If you turned in your project before 6PM on Saturday, you should have comments back from me. I'll keep working on the Saturday items today and start on the Sunday items. As always, you can check the stack to make sure I received your assignment.

Use the Suggestion Box. If there is something I can be doing to improve this class, you can let me know, either by email or via the Suggestion Box. I have gotten a lot of good ideas for improving this class from past suggestions. You'll see the Suggestion Box here in the sidebar of the blog, and it's also a menu item there in Canvas. And if you want to give Canvas some feedback too, there's a Tech Tip Canvas Survey. We all need feedback!

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. People have been doing some very cool microfiction experiments, and I wanted to share this one that showed up in the blog stream yesterday from Dani; see the blog post for the thoughts that went into these two Arthurian two-sentence stories:

Here's that microfictions extra credit option if you are curious trying to write some very tiny stories of your own: Microfiction.

Twitter Stream. From the stream of DrMCar (one of my favorite OU Twitterati!), came this sad news from South Africa: Joseph Shabalala, founder of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, has died; listen to the story at NPR.

Myth-Folklore Video. Some of you in Indian Epics are watching Nina Paley's film Sita Sings the Blues, and last year she released a new film: Seder Masochism. Here's the trailer, and you can watch the full film online at Vimeo. You'll recognize some similarities in animation style with Sita Sings the Blues.

Storybooks. This is a Storybook about the Greek gods and goddesses, all told from the point of view of the god Hephaestus.

Myth-Folklore. One of my favorite memes is "distracted boyfriend," which is very similar to the ancient Greek Choice of Heracles, as you can see below, where Heracles must choose between Virtue and Vice. Someone last year made this distracted boyfriend meme for this class ha ha:

Indian Epics Today. The character of the day is the mighty warrior Indrajit, the son of Ravana. More about Indrajit, and here's a video about Indrajit's array of weapons.

100-Word Stories. Today's story is a folktale from India: The Elephant King and the Mice (click title for more info).

Writing. Some great advice from Neil Gaiman; let your imagination run wild!

Mindset Cats. The mindset cat knows that you have to ask questions:

Writing Video. So, for example, here's a question that can help you in telling a story: What Makes a Hero?

Event on Campus. There will be a talk by Julia Adeney Thomas tonight at 7:30PM in the Dale Hall Community Room: The Historian's Task in the Anthropocene (details).

February 12: Charles Schulz. Today marks the anniversary of the death in the year 2000 of the American cartoonist, Charles Schulz, creator of the famous Peanuts cartoon characters (he was born in 1922). You can read more about Schulz's life and career in this Wikipedia article. Here is an image showing the whole Peanuts gang:

And here's a video of Schulz drawing:

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