Thursday, April 8

Today is Thursday of Week 11... and that means it will be a Storytelling day for a lot of you: let your imaginations run wild! Here is a link to Week 11, and you can find links to all the weeks at the class calendar.

Class Procedures and Reminders

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

Finishing early. (repeat announcement) For those of you who are on track to finish early, I've put the "Finished!" form right there in Canvas. When you're done, you can fill that out to let me know your final grade (410 A, 360 B, 320 C), and that's it: you're all done for the semester. :-)

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog stream. It's so fun seeing the images that people include with their reading notes, and for his notes on a story about Bear and Coyote, Christian found this picture of a bear and a coyote! Here's Christian's blog post.


Twitter stream. Here's an interview with the wonderful Indian author, Usha Narayanan: Of Mystery, Magic and Mythology.


And news from the British Museum about a new exhibition: Exploring the Silk Roads.


Here's a heartwarming graphic from Molly Hahn at Buddha Doodles:


Plus a glimpse into the world of ancient Buddhist nuns: Poems by the first Buddhist nuns.


And something from the genius Tom Gauld (larger view): Some Advice on How to Cope in These Tough Times... and, yes, Morrigan really is a war goddess.


And something new from Grant Snider: Hopscotch (larger view).


April 8: Yom Ha-Shoah. Today is the Yom Ha-Shoah, the "Day of the Holocaust," in remembrance of the victims of the Nazis. You can read more about this memorial holiday in Wikipedia, and also learn about the term Shoah. This holiday is observed throughout the state of Israel, with special ceremonies taking place at Yad Vashem, which is the official Holocaust memorial in Israel. This image below is the Hall of Names from Yad Vashem:


The person I hold in my special remembrance for this day is Janusz Korczak (Wikipedia), a visionary educator who organized the Jewish orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto. In 1942, the Nazis raided Korczak's orphanage and sent the children to the death camp at Treblinka. Although Korczak's Polish friends begged him to escape and hide with them for the rest of the war, he would not leave the children, and he died together with them at Treblinka. This image below shows the Yad Vashem Memorial for Korczak and his children:


There is a film about Korczak by the Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda; here is the trailer (it's streaming at Amazon):



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