Mythology Blog

Author's note: I wrote this story after reading Pygmalion and wanting to develop on the statues story. So this story gives the statue a back story, and rewrites some of the original tale, in the form of my character named Ivory. I hope you enjoy it.  In ancient Greece there was a woman named Ivory that had grown up in a village far from any city. Her family farmed the land around their home and raised livestock. When she was older, her father would take her with him on the long journey to the city when it was time to sell their crops at the market. One year at the market, Ivory met the most beautiful man she had ever seen. This man’s name was Deveron, and he was known widely for his charm and beauty. Soon after they met, Deveron and Ivory fell in love and were married.  They built a small home on the land Ivory’s family owned and continued to farm the land and live good lives that seemed to be blessed by the gods. They were so happy in their love and in their life th...

Hello!  I couldn’t quite decide how to start these notes, so I decided I would stick with that theme and take style notes over how the stories in the anthology were started. Many of them started with some form of “ once upon a time,” or “one day” this included the stories in, The divine, Tricksters, and the Fairytales sections. This is a beginning I think a lot of us are familiar with from fairytales and has almost become a cliché in some ways. Unless I was going to write a fairytale, I don’t think that I would use this tool to start a story and even then, I might not. The other stories in the anthology had what I called a “ cold start ,” to distinguish them from the stories that used the “once upon a time” start. There were a few similarities that I noticed. The stories in the Origins section were a very cold start. For instance, “ The Man in the Moon ” only states that there was a blacksmith that didn’t like his job. We don’t learn anything about who he is as a p...

Hi there!  Over the last two years,  I have gotten into a podcast habit and have listened to all of the episodes available of more than a few podcasts in that time. In fact, I have listened to all of the “Lore” podcast by Arron Mackie, on Spotify and, although the it tended to center more often on European stories, consequently I have heard quite a few stories from around the world. So feeling like I had already heard a lot of stories, I was surprised to see just how many unfamiliar units there were in the UnTexbook. Although many of them are interesting to me, I think that I would like to focus on units that I am less familiar with. Three that really stood out to me are the Indian Fairy Tales , the Russian Folktales , and the Filipino Popular Tales . These units come from areas that I don’t really remember hearing stories from, and whose culture interests me. "Globe Gores by Giovanni Maria Cassini, Published in Rome, 1790"  Photo from in sight  

Hi again! Here we are. It is Sunday night and just like the professor said not to, I am sitting and doing all of the Friday Assignments in one sitting. How appropriate then that this assignment is about time management. This is irony at its finest here folks. Seriously though, who is good at time management? I would like to think no one, but I have met at least a few  people that do it better than me. How they do it is a mystery to me, but that is what this post is going to be about: How to have some better time management so that this semester doesn't eat me alive. Do I sound panicked? I hope not. Anyway, my schedule is supposed to be Saturday : 2 hours. Reading A, Reading B Tuesday : 2 hours. Story, Blog Comments Friday : 2 hours. Project, Project Feedback Which turned out to be a great plan, in theory. Although I do generally spend time on Saturdays doing homework, in the past it has been reserved for group meetings where I work on specific homework with my classm...

Hi there! As an engineering student I am pretty used to picking up a new software or two for some classes, but I don't think I have ever seen a software list like the one for this class! Granted, I may not be using all of them this semester, but it is still quite the list. As evidenced by my posts, and possibly their plane nature, I have managed to learn the basics of Blogger, and I am looking forward to learning more. Some of the tools that seemed the most interesting to me were the    Writing Laborator y and the  Freebookapalooza   because they both sound like they could be extremely useful in the future. As I work through the class I am sure I will find uses for many of the other sites as well. Photo via Pixabay by  ar130405  (Technology)

Hello again! "Light Reading" After looking over the core assignments and the extra credit assignments, I am looking forward to the work for this semester with a mixture of excitement and apprehension.You know that feeling of reading something you wrote a long time ago? The one where you cringe a lot? I am having that feeling currently and we haven't really even started writing. While more enjoyable reading and creative writing will be a welcome change to the routine of my normal semester, it has been a while since I have had to really sit down and write anything worth reading. So I hope you can all bear with me through this experience and hopefully provide some feedback, so we can all cringe a little less in the future.  Wish me luck! Photo via flickr by  quattrostagioni

Hi there! Today I want to talk to you guys about the growth mindset videos that we watched. Over all I liked the ideas that Mss. Dweck was presenting but the presentation of her research makes me question the scientific backing of her research. As I watched the first video “The Power of Believing That You Can Improve,” I thought about my own struggles with education and challenging work. Miss. Dweck’s talk kind of hit home for me as someone who has been obsessive about my grades from a very young age and finds challenging course work more and more intimidating as I have moved through my education. I identified emotionally with a lot of the things she was saying, but when she would show photos to represent her research they didn’t seem to be the most convincing. The photo of the head scans is a very simplified all or nothing photo, which is unusual in research. Additionally, the photo that showed a graph of students grades with and without the growth mindset showed only tw...

Hello!  My name is Cat and although this will be a blog about mythology and folklore, today I want to tell you all a little bit about myself and my summer. So, to start off I am a civil engineering student here at the University of Oklahoma. I will be graduating in December, but I will be staying on for another year to complete my master’s degree, also in civil engineering but with a focus on structural engineering. Civil engineering includes the design of buildings, infrastructure, water supply systems, waste water treatment systems, and traffic control systems to name a few.  Over this summer I had the opportunity to work as an intern for a civil engineering company and learned a lot from the experience. I learned to design pump stations, outline drainage areas, how to do the runoff calculations for inlets, culverts and drainage ditches, and a bunch of stuff about low impact development, but most importantly I learned that I don’t like doing any of those things....

Today I want to tell you all about some other blogs that I found inspiring recently. The first blog is “ The Witches of Oz ” this one drew my attention because the Wizard of Oz was one of my favorite movies as a child and I love tales that put a spin on familiar stories. I think that doing a similar “spin off” approach might be a fun direction to take my own project in. As I looked through the bog the next thing that drew my attention was the beautiful layout. The dark green background added nice color without being overwhelming. The lightened picture used for the header of the introduction was also a really great touch and might be an interesting thing to incorporate into one of my blog posts. The next blog that caught my attention was the “ OTHER ” blog. Having read quite a few fairy-tales, I thought this blog was likely about changelings or fairies and was excited to see how this was incorporated into a blog. The intro of this blog included information on how the ideas...

Although I don't get to go often, my favorite place has always been the ocean. My parents took me to see the east coast and the west coast before I had turned 10, and I was in love. From then on, any time my family went on vacation, I pulled hard for the beach. When it worked, I would spend all day in the water and get unbelievably sunburned. To this day, I take any opportunity I can to go back.  Photo of the North Sea  at Sunset by  kordi_vahle.

Hello! Just checking to make sure my blog is working before really getting started! I'm looking forward to a great semester!