Monday, April 20

Today is Monday of Week 14. I hope you had a good weekend! Here is a link to Week 14, plus a link to Week 13 which is also available all this week too (mega-grace period!).

Class Procedures and Reminders

Last week of class! Yes, this is it: Week 14 is the last full week of class, although there is also a Week 15 with a complete range of assignmetns too. Normally, that's Dead Week, but I've decided to call it Memorial Week... getting ready for finals, yes, but also taking some time to think about this impossible semester and the lessons it's brought. You can see all the weeks and dates at the class calendar.

Project Stack. As usual, the stack is big on Monday (thank you for all the stories!), and I'll be working through the projects in the order that they were turned in, starting with items turned in last week on Friday. Meanwhile, you can check the stack to make sure I received your project.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. I always enjoy seeing the microfictions that go by, and here's one from Jessica: Don't Mess with Dragons.

Twitter Stream. This was something really cool from Scroll.in:

And here's a Covid-related item for today... especially for any of you who have been homeschooling with children in the past month: it's a cartoon from Nathan Pyle:

Myth-Folklore Video. Here's a Crash Course video about an African hero cycle: The Mwindo Epic.

Indian Epics Today. The epic character of the day today is Yudhishthira, the eldest of the Pandava brothers. You can learn more about Yudhishthira here; this painting shows a critical moment at the end of his life: Yudhishthira and the dog. The dog is really Yudhishthira's father, the god Yama (Dharma), testing him.

Words. Here's a word origin that might surprise you: CALICO is a word that comes to English from India, specifically, from the city of Kozhikode (Malayalam Kolikodu) in Kerala, India. Originally it referred to patterned cloth from that city, and then to cats with a calico color pattern; details here.

Writing. As you're writing, you might want to make use of this fantastic punctuation resource: 69 Rules of Punctuation.

Yep, that's the comma with the most rules of all:

The Fat Cat Gallery is a great experiment in creativity. A lot of people have been doing writing mash-ups in this class; the Fat Cat is all about art mash-ups! Here are some mythological examples:

HEART Video. Philosopher Jesse Prinz has some thoughts on what it means to wonder about the world: WONDER.

April 20: Odilon Redon. Today marks the birthday of the French symbolist painter Odilon Redon in 1840. If you have never seen his paintings, take a look: they are marvelous! You can see a gallery at Wikipedia. Here is his painting called The Cyclops:

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