Wednesday, March 10

Today is Wednesday of Week 7. Here is a link to Week 7, and I hope you are finding some good story material you can use from the reading this week to use in your own story! It's a storytelling week again this week (and then a review week next week).

Class Procedures and Reminders

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

Feedback randomizer. I did a big update to the feedback randomizer thanks to all the Storybook Introductions that people have published, so the Week 7 Feedback assignment has lots of projects. In addition, those of you who are working ahead will find the feedback assignment is ready to go now for Week 8 and Week 9 and so on. Especially now as the projects are just taking shape, your feedback is really valuable, and I hope you will also get good ideas for your own writing as you read and respond to other people's stories.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog stream. David was doing some research for his Storybook, and shared this gorgeous ancient mosaic showing Phorcys and Dynamene; find out more at his post.


Twitter stream. Via the Smithsonian, some more ancient Greco-Roman art: Colossal Statue of Atlas Will Rise Again.


And inspired by that giant Atlas statue, I wanted to share this video about a giant statue honoring Jatayu in India, the great bird-hero of the Ramayana, now familiar to everyone in the Indian Epics class:


And at the New Inquiry, a fascinating article about the Ramayana in modern India: All The Factory’s A Stage.


And a traditional dance from India: The Bamboo Dance.


Plus urban monkeys in India via Twitter:


And another fun very-short-story from OU's Jeff Provine at Twitter:


From Grant Snider, a comic about Chatter... and the birds in your brain (larger view).


March 10: Bulgakov. Today marks the anniversary of the death in 1940 of the great Russian writer, Mikhail Bulgakov. Bulgakov is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita (here's a synopsis); some of the characters include the Devil himself, a black cat named Behemoth, various and sundry witches, as well as Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ. Below is a statue of the cat Behemoth in the city of Kiev (now the capital of Ukraine), where Bulgakov was born in 1891.


Here's a TED-Ed video about The Master and Margarita:


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