Mythology Blog

Hi There!  This week I chose to read the Pacific North West Unit. I took notes over "Why There Are No Snakes On Takhoma," "Chinook Wind," and "How Silver Fox Created the World"  because I thought they would be the stories that I could adapt well. Of those I have included here my notes over "Chinook Wind" that I took while reading.  Chinook Brothers (5): Warm Wind Lived on Great River Walla Walla Brothers (5): Cold Winds Walla Walla = “the meeting of the waters”         Grandparents live at Umatilla “the place of the wind-drifted sands” The brothers fighting caused hardship for the people. “blew down trees and raised great clouds of dust” Walla Walla Brothers suggested they wrestle and whoever loses gets their head chopped off Coyote was the judge of the contest Coyote told the Chinook Grandparents to put oil on the ground Coyote told the Walla Walla grandparents to put ice on the ground The ground was slippery...

Hi! This week I chose to read the Blackfoot Unit. Of the stories, I enjoyed the "The Wolf Man" and "The Camp of the Ghosts" the most. In both of these stories I enjoyed the morality and lessons that the plot seemed to support. They reminded me of Aesop's Fables although they seemed to be more complicated lessons than those addressed by Aesop's. For a story this week, I would like to use similar plot lines to convey similar lessons and morals. Additionally, the view into Blackfoot society and culture was interesting. I would like to do my best to maintain the aspects of their culture in my story. I think that to make it original I could gender swap the characters, or modernize the tale. I have paper notes that I took while reading the stories that I can review when it it time to write my own story. Here are just some of the plot points that I wrote down for each of the stories.  "The Wolf Man" The two wives are lazy and only socialize Th...

Once upon a time,  there was a middle school in a big city in the middle of a small country. At this middle school, there were there was a boy named George who was in the 7 th grade. One day during algebra, George was asked by the teacher to go over to the other building and ask the receptionist for more paper. George hopped out of his desk obligingly and started down the long corridor that lead out of the building and into the other one that housed the administrative offices. When David was almost there, Jared, the school bully, stepped out from behind a corner. Jared was a big kid, almost the size of a 12 th grader, and he never let anyone forget it. He walked over to George and plucked him up by the collar. Jared said to David, “Where do you think you’re running off to? I told you that from now on you owe me lunch money.” George didn’t know what to do. His mom had only given him a dollar for lunch and if he gave it to Jared it would be a long time before he could ea...

Hi there!  Previously I had read the first half of the Japanese Mythology Unit. I liked the stories and was interested to see how Yamato’s adventures turned out. So, for this reading I decided to finish up the unit.   This time though, I was not as fond of Yamato’s stories as I was of the other stories in the unit. Yamato treated his poor wife Tacibana so badly. It really made me sad even though it made for a good story. I wish that at least in the end Tacibana would have just abandoned Yamato, but instead she sacrificed herself for him. Like I have said in many other posts, I feel like women are just really getting the short end of the stick in so many of these stories. The few instances were women don’t get taken advantage of it seems like they are generally portrayed as mean, evil, or nasty in some way. What a horrible dichotomy. Evil or victim. Of the other stories I read for this unit I enjoyed “The Jewel of Heart’s Desire” the most. Although it played into th...

Hi!  Let me just say that I really enjoyed this unit! One of the things that I have liked the least from other readings is how they aren't very just. The bad guy keeps winning. So, reading these stories and getting to see the bad guy lose at the end of most of them was so refreshing.  I also liked that in the stories about the Jackals some characters overlapped, like the hedge hog and the greyhound. Especially since it gave more meaning to the actions in the later stories by creating a more complex backstory than I have seen in other readings. This isn’t something that is easily recreated in a story for my blog just because there isn’t a guarantee that anyone reading the story has read any of the other stories and putting two plots inside one story would be a lot for a blog post.  For a story this week it would be interesting to see what could be done with the first story about Motikatika. I think that I would probably stick to my general theme of mak...

Feedback In While I can read my stories and see plot holes or other thematic issues, I am really bad at catching things like grammar. So, the feedback that I have found the most helpful from students would be that pertaining to my grammar and other technical parts of my writing. Feedback Out I would like to think that my feedback is of at least decent quality. I use the "WWW" feedback strategy for most of my feedback and I think it has been working well. I like that gives me an outline to start with. It is even easy to remember so I don't have to pull up another window to work on feedback. Blog Comments I have enjoyed the blog comments, and I think that my blog is a decent place to learn about me. I think the one thing about the blog comments I would change is that it is mostly randomized. Thinking about it in terms of a physical classroom, people generally talk to the people sitting around them most often and other classmates less. While this doesn't let yo...

Hello! Thus far I have really enjoyed the reading and assignments for this class. Having something new to read each week has kept me interested, and the writing assignments are an enjoyable way for me to exercise a part of my brain that I don’t get to use much. Although I always feel pressed for time in completing these assignments, I look forward to the time I get to spend on them more than the work for any other class. I think the things I am the proudest of right now would be the look of my blog and the introduction to my story book. As for my introduction, I don’t know how long I spent just staring at a blank word document before I got up the courage to write it. Creative writing like that, specifically storytelling, was never something that was emphasized in any curriculum I have had. It has all been centered more towards technical writing or academic writing. So, this was new territory for me, and anyone that knows me well at all knows I hate being bad at things and tha...

Hi! I missed the second reading for this week, so I am making it up today with these reading notes over Japanese fairy tales. This reading included three stories, one of and Ogre, a Goblin, and a Princess not unlike the story of Cinderella. All three of these are from Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki, who is pictured above with her husband. Out of the three stories, I liked the story about the Princes Hase the best, so I took notes over that story specifically. Here are those notes. The story of Princess Hase is told from a third person perspective. In the story there is very little dialogue. In fact, the only dialogue in the pieces, is that of the step-mother right before her poisoning attempt backfires and at the end when Hase’s father finds her hiding in the mountains. I think that this sparing use of dialogue at the worst and best point in the story is an interesting style choice that creased a stronger connection to the story at those points. I think that ...

Hello! Earlier in the semester I got to read one of the stories from the Japanese Mythology Unit and really enjoyed it. So, when it was on the list of options for this week I was excited to get more into it. So, I chose it for my part A reading. I think the neatest part about these stories is that they start out with the creation of the earth and the gods and then continue through time to explain the creation of humans, Emperors, and then stories of the Emperor Yamato. Out of all the stories I think that I enjoyed the stories of Yamato the best. At the beginning of his story, I liked it because there was something relatable about him dreaming of a beautiful mermaid and a cave that he never found after waking up. To me it reminded me of when you are having a great dream, you wake up, and although you try to remember what made you wake up feeling so happy, you can’t. It feels like if you just tried hard enough maybe you could find the memory, but you can’t. That is how I imag...

For this week's review I chose my favorite video as the African Pantheons and the Orishas from Crash Course,   which you can watch below!  I think that throughout school we learn quite a bit about the ancient Roman and Greek gods, but not many other mythologies so I am always interested in the Mythology Crash Course videos that have to do with other cultures' mythology. I really enjoyed this video specifically because the mythology of the Yoruba which the video features, have a story that explains the way in which their deities, the Orishas, came to have their powers. Like the video mentions, Greek and Roman deities seem to just be born with theirs which doesn't seem as interesting. My favorite graphic from this week was definitely the " Do it Anyway " graphic below from ConTessaRocks. This graphic really embodies part of my personal beliefs and guiding principals, and I love seeing it expressed by others.