Mythology and Folklore

Photo of a man carrying his dog from alamy One day, the animals and men lived far apart from one another. The people would never venture to far away from their camps while the animals were always in hiding from the humans. The animals were told by their ancestors that long ago they fought the humans and were badly beaten by how fierce and mean they were. This story was passed down through many generations among many different animals. One group that was no stranger to the story were the dogs. They had always heard how awful the men were. The story of war had been told countless times to Charley, the prince of the dog clan, from his father. He would always say, “Son you know that these humans can never be trusted, we must always be on the lookout and with our nose’s in the air that way we will not be caught off guard”. Charley was not thought to be the bravest of all the dogs in the pack by any means but he was however the most curious and adventurist. One day he went out of the t...

Cat living with Humans For my second reading I honed in on the story "How the Cat Came to Live with Man" and it comes from the Khasi folklore. I chose this story initially because it was, of a sort, more or less a creation story. Not exactly how the animal itself came to be, but instead how it came to be where it is today, which I think can be classified as a creation story. Secondly I chose this story because it has to do with cats and I myself have a cat who is the best cat in the world so I HAD to read about how she came to be able to live with us humans. In the story the cat initially lives in the jungle with he kin folk, the other species of cat. The leader of them as well as other animals is the Tiger. Tiger is not portrayed as a good king in the story. He is seen to be selfish and only looking out for himself. This then comes to bite him in the rear. In the latter end of the story he becomes ill and many villager animals come to visit him. It is customary of a good...

Tiger and Monkey This week for my reading notes I have chosen the tale from Khasi folklore "The Tiger and the Monkeys". This was a well told out tail that kept building on itself from the beginning. Being very easy to follow it was easy for the reader to stay engaged without the story skipping around. I found the character choice to be perfect for the location that the story is found. The monkey persona thought to be so mischievous but cunning as well, and the tiger such a great force of strength and power that he can let it get to his head. I thought how the plot unraveled was well done. Allowing the tigers persona to develop in the beginning then leading to the introduction of how the monkeys love to play and trick. Unfortunately for them, this trick went to far for them. If this story could be made into a modern day tv show I would think that it would closely resemble the series "Catfish". In this show people make fake social media accounts to meet people...

Snake and Mouse One time, long before people were on the earth, there was a snake and a mouse that had become good friends. This may seem odd to those reading the story but at this time of the world the snake had only had grass of the prairie and leaves of the tree in his belly. The mouse and the snake were almost inseparable, spending all of their free time together. Because they were such good friends and spent all that time together the snake figured why not get married and live with each other from now on. All of snake’s friends told him that was a great idea because they knew how well they got along. Now this did seem like a grand idea, however little did snake know that a co-worker of the mouse has thinking the same thing. Snake got wind of this and quickly went to miss mouse’s house to beat him to the punch. As he burst in the door and was getting down on one knee to ask for her paw in marriage he got the bad news. No, she was not engaged yet but snake found himself stuc...

Santal: The Jackal and the Chickens This was by far my favorite story of the part B readings. It was, it seemed at first, going to be an origin story of some sort. This however was not the case as I soon found out. Instead it seemed to be a trickster story, where the jackal would be a cunning character and win over many others, causing them to look silly. This also was found out to not be the case. Instead this story was more of a cartoon that I would have watched when I was younger. It had a striking resemblance to “Tom and Jerry”, the cartoon where the cat is always trying to chase and eat the mouse, but the mouse in cunning and smart so it always gets away. Just like that cartoon, the jackal was always trying to get his paws on some fowl to eat, but the young chicks were smart and made the poor jackal look silly. Finally, the jackal got what was coming to him and was beaten to death by villagers after being tricked once more. I found a few parts of this story to be rather hilar...

Santal: Ramai and the Animals I very much enjoyed this story of the man Ramai and the animals that he acquired in order to save them. It was a tale, to me, about at kind hearted man that due to his willingness to intervene was rewarded and able to live a lavish life. I do feel however that there were meaningless spots to the story. For instance, the number of animals and kinds of animals had no meaning which could be changed. Also the father had killed them all off, except the snake that is, very quickly and for no apparent reason as well. Instead maybe I could see Ramai returning home to find his father about to slaughter his new pets and uses the ring to save them, punishing his dad. Or perhaps better yet he would turn his father into an animal that he despises to show him what life is like for that animal in this way he has a better appreciation for it. I do enjoy the fact that Ramai lives out his days well thought, after he took his own earnings and time to save the animals ...

Here is the link to my storybook.

Fox and Coyote       This was an interesting tale by the Native American people of the British north American region. It was an origin story about how fox got his beautifully and priceless silver coat. Of course, we are talking about the silver fox here. For me it was somewhat of a strange lay out/plot for an origin story, not much like others I have read. It began with coyote finding people that he had never seen which made me think that they would be an integral part of the story, but they played no role really. The only reason I can think about why the first part of the story was created, that is when fox ate all coyotes meal he was cooking, was to allow fox and coyote to run into each other. Then afterwards they went their own way. I would not have used this in the origin story myself. The main basis of the story I found was pretty much the ending. This is when coyote took a coat fox had made that was of beautiful silver. Coyote was jealous and stole it but in...

Canvas in general is not my favorite compared to the old ozone. I know I probably sound old and dated but it is true. I am getting more used to it as time passes, and some features are nice. I just don't like how there can be so many different tabs spread out over different files. The dashboard however is nice. It is easy to surf from class to class. I haven't done a whole lot to customize it besides adding easy to know names for each of my classes. I think canvas has this part of its site right.

1) Swami Vivekananda at the Parliament of the World's Religions     I first chose this topic, well mainly because of the photograph in the twitter feed. The staircase with colorful sayings written on the face of each stair just seemed to pull me in. The Wiki article was about how the Swami traveled to the west in 1893 and visited Chicago's Art Institute for the Parliament of he World's Religions. 2) Hinduism     It, being the religion background of the Swami, I decided to dive more into Hinduism next. This Wiki article delved into many facets of where and what the Hindu religion is. The belief revolves around certain aspects, these being;  ethics, continuing of the life cycle, karma, and that each has his or her own path to walk. 3) Karma     I continued on my search with clicking on a link to karma. I am not a follower of the Hindu religion by any means. I am however a believer in karma. As I believe and what the article discussed about was ho...

Property Brothers One day long ago in a land that is far, far away there lived two brothers. They both grew up together in the usual way that most brothers would that live together. In all that they would do, they would compete against one another. The youngest brother, Allen, always wanted to look better than his older brother George. This attitude carried over to the way he lived as well, always looking for the “better things in life”. As they grew this only became more evident. This was perhaps why, when they started a business together it grew quite beautifully. Most people of the community thought that since they were opposites of one another that it would fall on its face, but in the contrary they brought out the best in one another. Allen dealt with the ascetics of the operation while George would take care of everything else to keep the company moving along smoothly. Now there came a day when the two brothers found themselves owning a very successful business that m...

The peacock and the crane along with the leopard and the fox fables. It is nice to have things that look nice but they may not be the best to use or in real life circumstances is the main message from the peacock and the crane story. For it may look nice but not be of any help or may be extravagant and yet not practical. The message being made in the leopard and fox is that exterior beauty is not always the most sought-after beauty. These two stories’, as can be seen, are very similar. These messages could be portrayed in many other ways. One could be two brothers that are building a house. One may spend his share of money to make something that is extravagant and very pleasing to the eye while the other brother is wise and uses his money on something that is stable and for everlasting. Although the pleasing objects got much attention and marvel they soon withered away not being placed among a chief corner stone, whilst the other object withstood the harsh environments and elements...

I took a great interest in the readings of Homers Iliad and the battles of the Greeks and men from Troy. It is hard to do notes over just a section from this reading because all come together to form a cohesive story. I guess I will begin with why I chose this for my first readings of week 4. I had just recently watched a movie on the FX channel on TV. The movie was called Achilles and was based upon this story. Primarily the plot is the same with Achilles becoming angry and leaving the fight. But instead his cousin secretly puts on the armor of Achilles and leads his men to battle, them thinking it is Achilles himself. He then gets slayed by Hector and as his head falls to the ground the helmet comes off his face and shows that it is in fact not Achilles. The next morning Achilles finds of the news and is enraged by what Hector has done and decides to go and slay him which he does. I believe that that was a wonderful take on the story. Because of this I will most likely not do my stor...

Feedback as I alluded to last week is complicated. This is why there are professions just in this category, aka editors etc.. After the brief introduction to "feedforward" I decided I wanted to learn a little more one the topic. I believe that this is good way to go about feedback and the principle is a nice one to use, however it cannot be used in all cases. For instance, when instructing a class and an assignment is handed in, unless the student is unable to resubmit the assignment the feedforward approach gives him or her no help on the current assignment. Most often also the next assignment will be different and use a different way of thinking about a set material. That being said, for this class it works great. This is a creative class, so one's style or opinion should be put down because it is different than their owns. Instead just give encouragement and "tips" on how they may want to take a story next time. In the "Try Feedforward Instead of Feedbac...

I believe I am going to go with Trickster stories as the basis of my storybook. There are so many different directions you can take these types of stories. They can be used to display a message like a fable or just be light fun altogether. I have had a few different ideas on how to take my storybook but I was given a great idea, that is the top tricksters from Native American tales merge paths, and perhaps duke it out in a "battle of the tricksters" if you will. I am not 100% positive that this is the way I will go but it seems like a good idea and a fun storybook idea. Another opition that may take more effort is to mash up tricksters of different tales (i.e. Native American trickster vs. English trickster). Although there is overlap this may be more difficult to accomplish but still interesting and could be fun. I found a great list of trickster stories to start looking at and choosing from here at free booka paloosa. One path I could take would be to start with "T...

One day, a long time ago in a land far away there lived a young las named Polly. Polly, ever since an early age, had always dreamed of growing up and leaving her small farm, ran by her father and mother, for a beautiful large castle in Westeros. This was no easy feat to accomplish however because Polly’s family was quite poor and from low stature. So, Polly decided one day that she would make a plan to make some money and run away from her homestead and find her castle in the West.                 It wasn’t long after she had decided that this was the path in life she would take, an opportunity arose for her to act upon. He mother asked her to please go into town and sell some of the cow’s milk for some flour they desperately needed because the crops had not faired so well that year and wheat was in scarce quantity. Polly exclaimed, “Yes ma’am, I will surely do it!”. She ran out to the barn and began colle...

“The Milkmaid and Her Pail” is such an iconic fable and has been told all throughout the world in many different versions, which is an indicator of just how good fables are at telling a message. I have known this tale ever sense I was a young boy. The silly young maiden trotting to town to sell her milk for profit. The most interesting things I find about this story are how large the pail must be, how she counts the money, and the attitude of the maiden. First is the pail that the maiden must have been carrying on her head. It must have been huge! To be able to sell enough milk in one setting to have enough money to sell for two birds that were of egg laying quality.   I would think that milk would be cheap compared to that of egg laying chickens for example. It would be better to start as something smaller and less expensive to buy then work her way up to the hens or something entirely different that will still maker her profit. The next aspect that I pondered upon was how she...

1) Will-O-Wisp          I started here because of a post on our class twitter page. It was a post compiled of many different moonlight/nighttime lighting events and the pictures were catching my attentions. I chose the will-o-wisp over other frankly because I had never heard of it before and I had heard of others, for instance the northern lights. 2) Chir Batti        I then was navigated to this site. I was taken here by a link underneath the image below because, well I mean look at it. It's crazy! The site had to deal with folklore in the Asian region that had to deal with the will-o-wisp light. crazy will-o-wisp picture 3)  Will-O-Wisp      I then clicked on a link that was suppose to go into detail about scientific reasoning's behind the strange light. This took me back to the original will-o-wisp story but prompted me to the bottom of the page. Here I read about certain molecules that when in the right co...

Lion In Love Notes Flip “the Lion in Love story” around so that it is an animal that is nerdy and harmless such as a turtle or something and gets made fun of and then has the end laugh when he asks for the woman’s hand and slays the parents and takes off with his bride. It would change the meaning of the story, but only slightly. In the original story, it is quite sad to see that the lion was tricked into such a being of helplessness. Love will indeed make one do crazy things and for this new story perhaps make love also make them do many different things that they wouldn’t do. Also in the story, it talks of the lion being attacked to the beauty of he maiden. Possibly this is a good route to stay on if using a main character that had no chance at a lady in that fine of stature. Then flip the end of the story where he finds the maiden was not as fair as he may have thought, finding out there are a multitude of ways to look at beauty. This could add another aspect and lesson to...