Wednesday, November 13

Today is Wednesday of Week 13. Here is a link to Week 13, plus Week 14 if you are working ahead and/or mixing-and-matching as you finish up the class — and yes, any combination of assignments you want to use to finish the class is good!

Class Procedures and Reminders

Thanksgiving and Dead Week. Some of you probably have seen this on the class calendar, but I wanted to make sure you all know that there is a full week off in this class for Thanksgiving: Class Calendar. If you have been keeping up with the assignments, you should be done at the end of Week 14 (i.e. before Thanksgiving Break), but if you need some points during Dead Week (Week 15) to make up for any assignments you missed, there is a full week of work available then too.

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

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. I was excited when I saw this picture in Karissa's extra reading post; she's doing some research into African stories to use for her Storybook, and of course I recognized this story about the trickster rabbit right away: this same story with the rabbit tricking the snake shows up as a Brer Rabbit story in the United States. Here's Karissa's post: The Rabbit and the Animal Wizard.

Twitter Stream. If you are interested in digital storytelling, you will enjoy this article that I found at Twitter yesterday: Teaching digital fiction: integrating experimental writing and current technologies (link to the article).

Myth-Folklore Video. For your viewing pleasure, here's a Crash Course on... Monsters!

Myth-Folklore. More monsters! Here's a cool map of Lake Monsters of America...  including the giant octopus that is supposed to live in Lake Thunderbird right in Oklahoma:

Story of the Day. The "why" story of the day is about a creature that does not like the sun: the bat. It's a story from Nigeria about Why the Bat Flies by Night.

Indian Epics Today. Today's character is Surya, the Sun-God, who is also the divine father of the Mahabharata hero Karna. More about Surya. And here's an Epified video about the Sun Temple at Konark:

India Video. Here's another Epified video to ponder: Mahabharata meets Game of Thrones.

H.E.A.R.T.. And speaking of Game of Thrones, here are some thoughts about books and reading from Tyrion Lannister:

Writing Video. Plus one more video: this one is about my favorite punctuation mark, The Semicolon.

Event on Campus. Come by the main floor of Bizzell Library to see a new installation by the students in Dr. Nair's Introduction to Disability Studies, a course in the History of Science department (details).

November 13: Vine Deloria. Today marks the death in 2005 of the Sioux Indian author and political activist Vine Deloria, Jr. (he was born in 1933). You can read more about Vine Deloria's life and career in this Wikipedia article. Deloria is most famous for his 1969 book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. You can listen to an interview from 1972, and then another interview in 2005 filmed shortly before his death.

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