Wednesday, March 24

Big email problems Wednesday morning at OU that may affect your ability to log on to Canvas also. Check alerts.ou.edu for the latest info. For anybody who was trying to use the grace period this morning for Tuesday reading, just let me know if you need me to record something for you manually in Canvas when they get this fixed. (I'm logged in to Canvas, but it sounds like if you were logged out, you can't log in at this time; also, email is not deliverable and is being returned to sender.)



Today is Wednesday of Week 9. Here is a link to Week 9, plus a link to Week 10 for people who are working ahead. Also, I hope you will consider taking advantage of this opportunity to get vaccinated on Friday; you can register here: CovidVaccine.ou.edu. Everyone should have gotten an email with details!


Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. I made good progress on the stack yesterday! If you turned something in before 2PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me, and I'll keep working on the Sunday afternoon items today. As always, you can check the stack to make sure I received your form.

Microfiction Storytelling post. For those of you who might be doing your storytelling for the week today, I wanted to remind you about the microfiction option: instead of a 300-word story, you can always write some 100-word stories instead! That's actually all I write these days myself; here's my Week 9 Storytelling post with three stories each told in 100 words: The Adventures of Anansi. You might give it a try and see what you think. For me, thinking about stories in terms of short episodes has really given me a new perspective, and it's also helped learn to appreciate the power of each and every word.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog stream. I really enjoy seeing the artwork that people include in their reading notes, like this gorgeous sun-and-moon in Chris's post about the Nigerian sun-and-moon folktale.


Twitter stream. Yesterday was National Puppy Day, so there were all kinds of lovely dog and puppy items in the Twitter stream, including this from Professor Nair in OU's History of Science department: The Seizure Dog.


And perhaps you have heard of Cerberus, the three-headed hound of hell in Greek mythology? Well, here is puppy Cerberus! :-)


And from Cherokee Nation Twitter, greetings for Spring!


Here's a thread of art from Svetlin Vassilev, a Bulgarian illustrator based in Greece. This is his Daedalus and Icarus: wow!


And here is an amazing depiction of the Goddess-as-Kali:


Plus some nitty-gritty writing advice: Comma Types That Can Make Or Break a Sentence.


March 24: William Morris. Today marks the birthday of William Morris in 1834. He was one of the most gifted designers in the English tradition, as well as being an author and activist. You can read all about his life and career in this Wikipedia article, and here is one of his paintings, La Belle Iseult:


He did a version of The Tale of Beowulf which you can read free online:


And here is a free audiobook online: William Morris's Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems




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