Saturday, January 18

Today is Saturday of Week 1: welcome to the first weekend of the semester! If you didn't finish up the Week 1 assignments yet, you can do that this weekend; here is a link to the Orientation assignments. And for those of you who are working ahead, here is a link to the Week 2 assignments.

Class Procedures and Reminders

THANK YOU! I want to say a big thank-you to everybody in the class; we now have a big blog network already full of ideas and images. I know that blogging is new to a lot of you, and I hope you will enjoy all the opportunities to connect and share that a blog network makes possible.

My schedule. On weekends I do not answer emails as quickly because I'm not at my desk like during the week, but as soon as I'm back online, I'll reply to any questions you have. You can also look through this week's announcements where you might find answers to your questions.

Favorite Places. I think I left a comment on each "favorite place" post, but if I missed yours, just let me know so that I can make sure to leave a comment next week. I'll be replying to Introduction posts next week.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. I thought it was so cool that there were two giraffes in the favorite places posts... Kennedee's giraffe lives in the Arbuckle Wilderness in Oklahoma, and Ida's giraffe lives in Nairobi, Kenya:



Twitter Stream. I know there are a lot of science majors in these classes, so I was excited to see this great item go by at Twitter; link to full thread. This Venn diagram shows why I hope that the creativity and curiosity in this class can apply to your science classes too!


Indian Epics Today. The character of the day today is the goddess PARVATI, whom you can see here with her son, the god Ganesha, when he was just a little one. You can find out more about Parvati here (and, yes, this is "Parvati" like the name of the character in Harry Potter).


Storybooks. And speaking of Harry Potter, here is a Hogwarts-inspired Storybook from Myth-Folklore last year: The Mystical Horses of Hogwarts.


Myth-Folklore Video. About horses, here is a Crash Course video: Mythical Horses.


Words. Any Parcheesi players out there? I loved this game when I was little, but I had no idea that the game and its name came from India; you can find out more here about the game "parcheesi" and the Hindi word pachisi:


100-Word Stories. Today's story is a jataka folktale from India: A Dressed-Up Donkey (click title for more info).


H.E.A.R.T.. Perhaps you are enjoying a wonderful weekend day of doing nothing... here's a Grant Snider cartoon about that nice weekend experience:


Mindset Cats. And today's growth mindset cat is also taking time to recharge.


HEART Video. For you readers out there, here is one of my all-time favorite videos, and it's perfect if you are spending Saturday night in the company of a good book: Bruno Mars Uptown Funk Parody: Unread Book.


Event on Campus. You can try out all the Fitness classes free this week! For example, there is Zumba on both Saturday and Sunday, plus yoga on Sunday (details).


January 18: Kipling. Today marks the anniversary of the death in 1936 of the British author Rudyard Kipling, who was born in Mumbai, India in 1865 and who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. You can read more about Kipling's life and career in this Wikipedia article. He is the author of The Jungle Book, and also Just-So Stories.



Kipling's books are classics of British colonialism, and I really like this contemporary response: Not-So Stories, edited by David Thomas Moore, a project which takes apart Kipling's colonial stories and puts them back together again in a new way, without the colonial baggage, as told by writers from formerly colonized nations.



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