Saturday, September 19

HAPPY WEEKEND! Today is Saturday of Week 4, and I hope you are enjoying your weekend. Here is a link to Week 4 and also to Week 5 if you are ready to keep working on ahead this weekend. (Working ahead is always good!)

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. Yesterday I replied to almost all the projects in the stack, and the ones that were left in the stack on Friday will be at the top of the stack on Monday. I'll update the stack periodically over the weekend so you can check the stack to make sure I received your project.

Extra credit anytime. This is just a reminder that there's lots of extra credit available every week, and you can do that any time during the week. This semester is probably going to get more weird as the weeks go by, so if you have a chance to do some extra credit now, that will come in handy later on. Here's the Week 4 extra credit, and the same options are available every week.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog stream. A lot of people explored the different kinds of microfiction for the Story Lab this week, and Anusha made a really cool comparison between microfiction and blackout poetry; here's her post.


Twitter stream. I know there are some coffee-drinkers in the class, so you might enjoy this very informative LARB book review: On Dinah Lenney’s “Coffee”


And in honor of Rosh Hashanah (see below), here's something cool from JSTOR about India: High Holy Days in Mumbai.


Storybook. Yesterday I shared a Star Wars fandom project, and here's a Harry Potter fandom for the Indian Epics class: Ancient Relics of Borgin and Burkes.


100-Word Stories. Next week the Middle East weeks are starting in Myth-Folklore, and if you want, you can do some Nasruddin stories as the reading option. Here's a fun one: Nasruddin's Eggplant Necklace.

And here's a fun language item: medieval texting abbreviations!


Plus language humor even farther back in time: The Earliest Ancient Texts.


Plus a video about emoticons: Are Emoticons the Future of Language?


September 19: Rosh Hashanah. Today marks the start of the Jewish holiday of the New Year, Rosh-Ha-Shanah ("Head-of-Year"). In Jewish tradition, this is the day of the year on which God created man. One of the rituals on Rosh Hashanah is the blowing of the shofar, the ram's horn. You can read more about the holiday at Wikipedia, and below you can see the blowing of the shofar in an illuminated Hebrew manuscript:


And here's a fun Rosh Hashanah video from The Fountainheads (lyrics at the YouTube page):




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