Mythical Class

Miami Herald. Link .  After reading the AdviceToWriters interview page, I was interested in the biography of Carl Hiaasen . I started reading his Wikipedia page, and discovered that he started his career in journalism. This was a pretty significant shift in my opinion of him as an author. What really surprised me was that he worked at the Miami Herald in the 70's. I am a big fan of Dave Berry, so the south Florida paper really caught my eye. I was reading into the Herald and about its rise and fall in the economy. It seems that the newspaper has had a pretty tumultuous background. This is what led me to read about " Receivership ." I was familiar with the practice of putting struggling companies under the authority of an auditing body, but I was not aware what it was called. So when the Herald was almost placed in receivership, the term stuck out to me. While I was getting to know the name for a policy that I was familiar with, I got to the origins of it. That is ...

What a fantastic resource for writers. I crawled the site Advice to Writers ( link ) from Jon Winokur and am amazed. Not only is the information on the page itself helpful, but the whole website is a springboard to other material. I fell down a rabbit hole looking into interviews that are featured on the site, like T.S. Eliot's and Carl Hiaasen's. Reading these stories from such historic authors is a treasure. Some of them, like Eliot's, are on websites that have a paywall, so that was a little frustrating. But even the first half of the article was enticing, especially seeing the impact that he felt from small notions like notes of encouragements. T.S. Eliot. Link .    One of the main takeaways I got from Winokur's website itself is the size of human nature as a resource for writing. It is such an obviously relatable enterprise, with an endless amount of potential for storytelling and platforms on which to connect with the audience. Another is the importance of ...

I went ahead and got the Canvas Mobiel App to see if it would help to stay organized with classes. Seeing as I have already been enjoying the Calender , the mobile app is a great addition to the program. I can see at a glance what assignments I have coming up and see message strings that are happening over the canvas messenger. I was a little disappointed in the interaction limitations with files for my classes, but it is useful to be able to pull things up and view them at least. Plus, being able to take quizzes on the app if I am in a pinch is incredibly useful. Though, I hope I will never have to use it, as I would be too worried about my phone crashing to truly focus on the material!

Dreamcatcher Task  Continuing this week's chapter of Native American stories, I read the second part of the Heroes option. I had found the use of animals and non-specific creatures as characters so unique in the past section, though also characteristically folk, that I was pleased to see it continued with part B. These stories have characters that are so simplified that it allows the reader to focus entirely on the story itself. From Son-In-Law to Thrown-behind-the-curtain, the names of the characters provide just enough information to read the narrative, while not distracting form the story. As the latter navigated a series of stories that seemed to follow a single timeline, we don't garner TOO much information about Thrown himself. Instead we see his interactions with other players that are shed in a similar light. I think tomorrow I will take an attempt at writing in this style, specifically in the narrative of the Son-In-Law tasks. Wemicus' challenges seem very full...

John: Not the Gnostic  Completing the group of Gospels, my outside reading this week was the book of John. It is, of course, a highly important section of the Christian canon. What I found so interesting about it this week was its contrast with Gnosticism. When reading the scripture against this backdrop, almost the entire chapter is full of language that spoke of God as the creator of the cosmos, something that challenges Gnosticism. Reading the gospels this semester in a renewed light of practical investigation has opened my perspective to so many new views. I had never conceptualized these texts as pieces of writing that were actually created for a specific purpose. John, like Corinthians, is full of pieces of information that directly show the challenges faced by the early Christian church. Writing: John, Harper Collins Study Bible Image: Link . 

Ear This week I am stoked to be reading stories from the Native American unit. I chose to read the Hero tales because I was interested to see what kind of singularity would remain throughout these stories. The one that really stuck out to me was the final story of this reading, The Attack on the Giant Elk and the Great  Eagle. The story has fantastic character elements. Not only does it continue the use of animals as their own characters alone, such as "One day Lion was hunting when..." but things like body parts alone can be characters. In this story, the ear of the eagle is made to be an entirely different character, telling the eagle which direction to pay attention to. Story: The Attack on the Giant Elk from the Jicarilla Apache. Link .  Image: Link . 

This week's reading was something I have been looking forward too. I have always been a Brer Rabbit fan and remember some of these stories fondly. I was thrilled to see the way characters speak in the stories have not been changed. That was always a feature that I thought added character to the stories and gave them their own feeling from the beginning. It would be a great excersize to try and write a story using this dialectic style. Of course, the tar baby story brought back some real memories. The relationship between the narrator and the reader is very special in these stories. The language does such a great job of creating that familiarity, which translates into the draw that the stories have for us. Story Credit: Joel Chandler Harris's series of Brer Rabbit stories. ( Link ). Image Credit: Brer Rabbit. From Wikipedia Commons. 

I am pretty content with how the course is moving so far. I am staying about a week and a half ahead of "schedule," so if anything happens I won't be swamped. I think that things go wrong when people aren't expecting them to (duh) so I think of it like this- if I have the availability to get it done now, do it. You can't be sure what future circumstances will be. This is my go-to response when a friend asks if they should go to their lecture, read ahead in material, or do that week's discussion post- "There will be times in the future where you won't be able to, and a limited amount of 'passes.' So if you have the ability to think about it, just do it." Seems to work well. I set a goal to try and do one extra credit assignment in this class everytime I "log on." That way it just adds to my list of things to do and becomes less of an "extra." I have about a 30% success rate with this challenge. So, moving forward, I wou...

1. I have been getting some great comments from the class. It seems like everyone is invested in the material and show a genuine desire to help eachother improve. The most helpful comments I have been receiving are narrative based, including ideas that I had not considered to include in my stories. 2. I think I have been leaving some productive comments. At least, I hope so. I have been trying to offer constructive criticism where it is needed, while maintaining a reinforcing attitude when my peers show some great work. I have been learning a whole lot about new writing styles and tips, mostly through reading the work of my peers. 3. Yes! Engaging in the original introduction posts with each blog really helps connect the stories to my classmates. I think my introduction has been effective, though I would be interested to see how it would be if we updated the introduction post throughout the semester, almost as a progress post. That way it blends our introductions with our check...

I have really enjoyed the assignments in this course and the way that it is set up. The organization has allowed me to learn so much about writing, things that are really only possible through close readings of texts like these. Reading a collection of stories that have almost nothing in common besides their common thread of "folklore" has allowed me to explore such a wide breadth of writing styles. My favorite readings so far have been working through some of the Bible's books through this literature lense. The stories surrounding Sindbad also really caught my eye. That is why I have included the magic carpet picture from my notes on the Sinbad unit. There is not very much specifically that I need to do more of in order to get more out of the class. I think that what it really comes down to is putting words on the page. So whatever I can do to write the most amount of text will, I think, be the most productive at this point.  Image: (Sinbad's Carpet. From W...

Paul I read Paul's Letter to the Romans today, exploring what sort of message he was trying to convey to the city's people. This is one of those times when understanding the context was crucial to get the most out of reading. Paul was in the midst of experiencing a faction in the early days of the church. This all surrounded the "Gentile question," which asked how closely a gentile Christian needed to follow Jewish law. Letter to the Romans is set up in a brilliant argument where Paul makes the case that you can be a Christian without being Jewish. What impressed me most was his appeal to Abraham. The ancestor of the Jewish people, Abraham is definitely considered a righteous man. However, everything that he did was outside of the law. That is, his righteousness was granted to him by God for reasons other than whether or not he kept Kosher or was circumcised. The way he writes this direct letter and approaches just astounded me because I think it would be pretty d...

Lighting. Link .  A long time ago there was a charitable leader who wished for his great people to experience an abundance of health and safety. He and his family worked tirelessly to help their community and would go to great lengths to see it succeed. Often, this work was thankless and after a while, some of his family grew weary of it. When two of his sons left the community, the leader was left with his daughters, wives, and youngest son. In the time that followed, this group of dedicated public servants would work harder and longer than ever before. The slack was picked up and the community went on, though the leader's family found themselves even more tired than before. During this period, a great drought began in a neighboring village. The townspeople worried that this would spread and lead to famine, so they began to wonder what could be done to bring back the rain. They prayed and prayed, but no solutions could be agreed upon. Soon the leader gave the idea of digg...