Myth-Folklore

(semi-shiny hermit crab. Source .) There was once a young princess who lived alone. People from the village would come and visit her, bring her goods, but no one ever stayed for long. The princess preferred a life in solitude because she was not blessed with the beauty of others. In fact, she was the most unpleasant to look at. She decided to lock herself away so that she was not a burden to others. As the years passed, she became bored, so late at night, when the villagers were fast asleep, the princess took long walks, ending up in a different place each night. One night she stumbled upon an old traveler resting against a sissoo tree.  "Hello, stranger," she said, "what brings you to my land?"  The traveler responded, "Oh, dear! I have lost him and my eyes are too poor to look through the tall grass for he is such a small creature."  Then the princess asked, "Sir, please tell me what have you lost, for I may be able to help you.&

I finished the second half of this week's readings of Twenty-Two Goblins translated by Arthur Ryder . As I said in the first set of reading notes, this story is amazing! I will definitely be doing a re-creation of it for this week's storytelling assignment. The end had an interesting plot twist, which gave me a million ideas. I also started to think of ways I could incorporate this story into my semester-long project. Now that I have read the rest of the story, I know the monk's intentions. It did not really surprise me that he was a deceptive character since it is such an odd favor to ask...I do not know about anyone else, but I would not go out and bring a corpse back to some stranger that brought me fruit with jewels; that would be accessory to murder after the fact. Of course, maybe with the story set in the middle ages that favor was not uncommon...? I kind of wanted to know more about the monk's story. What could one do with the power of becoming king of the f

Twenty-Two Goblins, translated by Arthur W. Ryder  is a collection of stories where a goblin, a mythical creature that inhabits human corpses, tells riddles to a King, who made a promise to a monk. The king must be truthful and tell the answer if he knows it, but if he does not know the answer the goblin will tell another riddle. The issue is that when the king gets the answer right the goblin transports back to the sissoo tree and the king has to turn around, get the dead corpse with the goblin and start the journey again. So far in the story, the king knows all the answers to the goblin's riddles. I like every bit of this story, so much so that I cannot help but continue to the second set of stories. What I like so much about these stories is how there is a goblin (an evil-trickster character, which is my favorite) and the riddles that he tells. (I also like that I can listen to the audiobooks.) One of my favorite things to do is try to figure out the ending of a TV show, movie

Jerry: The family who will be joining us today is struggling with a great deal of tension! Their disagreements have completely disrupted their relationship, and their search for answers ends today! People in the audience clap, cheer, and whistle.  Jerry: In a minute, we are going to have Siddhartha come out, but first, let us take a look at his side of the story. Camera transitions to a recorded interview of Siddhartha. Siddhartha: I have lived my whole life away from home. My mother and I were shunned from the kingdom by King Suddhodana. My father believes that my mother was unfaithful to him, and that is how I was conceived.  I am here today to prove to my father that I am no bastard child, but that I am his son. The camera pans back to Jerry and Siddhartha walks out. The crowd stands and cheers. Jerry: Well Siddhartha, what are you looking to get out of this, once you find out your results? Siddhartha: Jerry, it's not about vengeance, it's about finding the tru

This week I chose to explore the readings from,  The Life of Budda by Andre Ferdinand Herold (1922) , Part A. One of the parts to this story that I find unique is how the gods will speak to the people. For example, when Maya summoned King Suddhodana to the forest, he began to felt overwhelmed with fear, however, a higher power also referred to as a divine voice, reached out and spoke to him, reassuring the King that he "should be happy." This story reminded me of the Virgin Mary, which I am not too familiar with biblical stories, but the connection I made was how the lead female character is impregnated by the gods, and the child who is born is a prophet. Another similarity is how the child's birth brings happiness and how that person will end a lot of the suffering that is amongst their people. What I have always found interesting about stories like this, i.e., the gods impregnating a woman with a prophet, is that the husbands do not seem to question it. I understand

For the second part of this week's reading assignment I chose to stick with  The Aesop for Children (Winter)  As I mentioned before, one of the main characteristics to these stories is their meaning or moral at the end of every story. An interesting feature to these stories is that, for the most part, I am able to deduce what the moral of the story is before actually getting to the end where you find the answer. To me, this shows that the author's ideas were well thought out, which is a great skill set to have when creating a story. Something that I have yet to try is to make a story that sits a little closer, maybe too close, to reality. I enjoy the fact that these are stories for children; However, this only makes me want to re-create them into something more suitable for adults, i.e., turning one into a horror/ghost story, maybe a story about someone who loses all their money from gambling, or a student who parties too much and flunks out of school. There are a lot of comm

Parental Pursuit This is my cat, Todd Archimedes Lahey , and he likes to party. Source: Personal Image

Once upon a time, there was a brave Pinky . He liked to go on adventures, but his parents made sure that he never strayed too far. Before he left on his adventures, they always reminded him, "Now son, don't wander too far or the Snake will get to you quicker than we can."  One evening, the Pinky decided to sneak out of his home. He zipped through the tall grass, climbed over rocks, squeezed under logs when suddenly he began to hear the babbling brook. He followed the sound, and as he got closer the sounds grew louder until finally, he stumbled upon the rushing water. As the Pinky walked along the brook, he ran into the Grasshopper, who was playing his jazzy tune. The Pinky asked, "Excuse me, but why do you make so much noise this late at night?"  And the Grasshopper replied, "So that those who wonder have something to listen for." Confused, the Pinky closed his eyes, focused on the Grasshopper's song, and took in a deep breath

This week I chose the first reading that popped up from the random image generator; this led me to  The Aesop for Children (Winter) . I am glad that I came upon these fables. None of these were familiar to me from childhood, but they were perfectly interesting. One of the main themes that is carried throughout this unit is the lesson or moral of the story. I thought it would be unique to search for a lesson and create a story from it; although, I know we are supposed to re-create one of these stories. Another characteristic that is in most of these stories is the use of personification with animals, plants, and even wheels. I know I have mentioned it before, but the use of personification is one of my favorite things in a story; it is what can make them all the more intriguing and mystical. I also find it comical when an animal is speaking like a human, but they are still behaving like the animal that they are. For example, the Ass. In most of these stories, the Ass is a stubborn ASS!

I like that we are studying these feedback strategies. As we discussed last week, feedback is an important element for improving ourselves and the work that we do. In other classes, specifically ones where we post discussions online and have to give our feedback as part of our assignment, I have always dreaded the task. There is a pressure to get the reply post submitted and this has affected the quality of my feedback, as well as others. One of the articles that I read was, How To Give Students Specific Feedback That Actually Helps Them Learn . In this article, I learned how to make my feedback "goal-oriented." In other classes, I am guilty of replying with, "Good job," "this is amazing," etc., because I found myself running out of time, I did not want to be the 'bad guy', and mainly because I did not know how to give effective feedback. Having learned this new technique, it will be easier to expand on other people's ideas, maybe throw out an

(Ink drawing of a merman by Lady Orlando. Source: Flickr ) One of the sources that I am using is the idea of the "stolen child's perspective," number twelve in  Dan L. Ashliman's essay on the topic of Changelings . My story's setting is placed in various locations across the ocean. In my story, I will be using a sea monster, i.e., the Kraken, as the kidnapper. In traditional Changeling stories, the parent(s) realized the child is not theirs and is given information on how to get their infant back; However, I am spinning the story around where the parents are unaware of the exchange and their infant is raised by the sea monster. In my story, it is up to the abducted child to realize he is being imprisoned and to figure out how he is going to escape. Somehow I would like to incorporate the Name of the Helper , which D. L. Ashliman gives many different versions of this story on his website. The name of the helper character could go many ways: it could

Ovid's Metamorphoses III , translated by Tony Kline Daedalus and Icarus I thought the plot of this story was unique because it started off with the story of,  The Minotaur, Theseus, and Ariadne , which introduced King Minos and Daedalus. Then the story changes to a third-person point of view of Daedalus and his son Icarus. The use of a metamorphosis in this story are the wings that Daedalus constructed. Typically, when I think of a metamorphosis I imagine a physical transformation. I was surprised to see it used differently and can picture some different ways that I can incorporate in one of my stories in the future. An important event that caught my attention was Icarus' death. The use of foreshadowing revealed how Icarus' ignorance led to his inevitable death. Icarus falling from the sky. Source: Wikimedia Lelex tells of Philemon and Baucis Something that I will have to attempt is the use of 'beautiful sentences'. The story of  Philemon and

The first article I found was under the learning from mistakes  tab titled, The Importance of Mistakes , by John Cleese. I caught my attention because the title says it all, I am a believer of the importance of making mistakes. As Dr. Gibbs has pointed out, if we do not make mistakes, then we are missing out on an opportunity to learn. In Cleese's article, he tells the brief story of Gordon the Guided Missile . I have never heard this story before, but I am glad that I know it now. The article gave a great explanation of how it is important to make mistakes so that they can be fixed. Of course, there are some situations when a mistake cannot be fixed; However, we can still learn from the mistake, which is what is important. The other article I read, Seven ways to crush self-doubt , I picked from the list that Dr. Gibbs gave in this assignments instructions. I chose this article because I like lists and I struggle with self-doubt, which I believe the majority of people do too. Pro

The first topic that I would like to possibly to my semester project on would be over the  Rumpelstiltskin  story, which is a Trickster story. I chose Rumpelstiltskin because it is a story that I have known since I was a little kid. It is the one of the most memorable because it is dark and has some humorous aspects to it. I think there is a lot of twists/changes that could be made to this story. I also like the use of Rumplestiltskin's song, I think it would be fun to re-create this song, like possibly changing it into a poem. I do not know much, actually anything, about this story so, since it is one of my favorites, I would like to learn more about this story, i.e., it's origin, the author, etc.  Secondly, I found the topic of Changelings. I chose this topic because I recognized it as the name of the movie, Changeling (2008) , with Angelina Jolie. The movie, Changeling , puts a modern twist on the legend. I am a criminology major, so this seems right up my alley since it is