Reading Notes: Lang's Tales of the Round Table A

Source: The Sword Excalibur from King Arthur: Tales of the Round Table by Andrew Lang

The story opens describing Arthur and Merlin's fight with the tallest knight in the kingdom. Though he's a great fighter, he had received major wounds and probably would have died had Merlin not intervened and cast a spell that put the opposing knight to rest. They found a healer to fix Arthur's wounds thankfully.

The two are looking for a sword and Arthur is eager to get there because he has none currently. When they arrived, there was a lady standing over the water. The Lady of the Lake comes up to Arthur with the sword and tells Arthur that he can have it if he does something for her. She wants a gift. She tells him where to find the sword and that she will ask for the gift later. Excalibur is obviously a special sword.

Merlin and Arthur go to retrieve the sword in all of its glory. Merlin asks Arthur if he likes the sword or scabbard best. The sword is coolest... duh. Merlin thinks that isn't wise because the scabbard is worth more, but the sword is most definitely cooler. The scabbard will allow Arthur to lose no blood as long as its attached to him, which is also a pretty neat thing.

I like this story in its simplicity. The sword itself is famous for being, well, itself. Getting to read the legend in this form is nice. Not everything is crazy complicated or dramatic. I feel like most Arthurian legends I read, they are just... horrific or sad. I was glad this one wasn't. I mean I know the fate of everything for Arthur and everyone, but seeing this nice moment was good. I would want to do something equally as simple of a story for this. Maybe write some funny dialogue between Arthur and Merlin. I'm not sure, but I that that would be fun!

The Lady of the Lake gives Excalibur to King Arthur (Wikimedia Commons)

Reading Notes: Native American Marriage Tales B

Source: The Dog-Husband from Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson

This girl has a dog and the dog turns into a human person at night. Eventually she gets pregnant and when her parents find out it was from the "dog" they are deeply embarrassed and kill her dog? and leave her for dead. It's not a great situation, though I can understand their disapproval. It's a secret that he was a man... ???? I think?

Crow felt bad for her and told her that she would be able to find fire if she would go to a certain place when she her crackling. She, Crow, put coals in between two clam shells for her to find. She soon gave birth to five pups and she had to support them herself. She would forage on the beach to find food. She noticed when they left home that she heard singing and soon realized that they were turning into their human form. She scolded them for this. I don't know why this is bad. She brought shame to her people in this way, so they must be doing the same.

As the kids grew up, they stayed in human form. They began to be skilled hunters and became great at whale hunting. When their mother came to visit, they gave her plenty to eat, but none to take with her. They wanted her to come back and stay. She wanted to stay with them. Crow noticed this as well and when she returned home, the girl told Crow to pretend like they had died. Crow did not do that and brought back whale meat for her kids. She told the villagers that they had whale meat. Crow's kid choked on the meat and coughed some up, so the villager's believed her and went to see the whales. They were supposedly impressed by this because the story ends with the kids becoming chief of that village and supplying them with whales, making sure they never ran out of food.

This story is from the Quinault people. This is a picture of a few baskets by Edward S. Curtis 

(Wikimedia Commons)

Reading Notes: Native American Marriage Tales A

Source: Bear-Woman and Deer-Woman from Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson

So, this one was a lot... most of these were quite different in terms of theme and what the story contained. They were all quite jarring to me, but interesting. The storytelling here is definitely unique.

Grizzly Bear and Doe share the same husband and they are just doing little chores. They decide to go down to the river to "leach the meal." While they are waiting for this to happen, they decide to search each other's heads for lice, like good friends do, I guess. Grizzly has none, but when it's Doe's turn, Grizzly sprinkles sand on her neck and tells her that she does. She, uh, then she bites her head off. She then takes Doe's acorn meal... I don't get it. They share the same husband. Wouldn't they share resources too? It's not like she'd benefit from Doe having more?? Anyway, she puts her head in the fireplace and it's really just horrible.

The Doe's kids heard her mother say that they wouldn't be permitted to live long, or maybe she told Bear's kids? It wasn't super clear. The ending doesn't make sense. I did not understand... the whole, "you're eating your children's hands" thing? Anyway, the kids give her dead skunks and Grizzly is being taunted so the kids run away to the river and cross over Crane's neck. When Grizzly gets there, Crane lets her cross and then dumps her in the water and she floats away.

What I think happened was that, obviously people knew that she killed someone and now she had a reputation or something. It didn't seem like she was doing anything wrong there until she chased the kids, but I would want to rewrite this differently. I think it might be interesting to see what happened if Bear never killed Doe or why she did it in the first place.

A whitetail doe (Wikimedia Commons)

Reading Notes: Myths and Legends of the Great Plains B

Source: Why the Possum Plays Dead from Myths and Legends of the Great Plains by Katharine B. Judson

I honestly chose this section because I love possums. I think they're just the coolest little scavengers. They're both creepy and cute. What a good combination. Anyway, I like the stories centered around animals the most. I feel like they're easier to retell because there is more room to play with. I feel like with the creation myths and such I wouldn't want to mess with something already done so well! There's always room for more animal stories!

Rabbit and Possum are trying to get wives but alas, they are loveless. Rabbit then hatches up a scheme to get themselves hitched. They say that they must move to the next town and Rabbit will claim to be from the Council and that everyone has to marry someone once. They figure someone must choose them by that logic.

Rabbit got to the next town first because rabbits are faster than possums? I don't know if they're much faster, but that's okay. I don't know enough on this to say for sure. Anyway, Rabbit spreads the news and gets a wife before Possum can even get there. Poor fellow. Rabbit is a damn awful friend and traveled to the next town over and told them things that were bad. Specifically, that there had been so much peace, that now there must be war. Possum didn't know this.

Rabbit got away and Possum got there, confused. All the other animals started attacking this man trying to find a wife, so he just rolled over and played dead. It's a good strategy. Man, that Rabbit was a jerk. What was the motivation? Cause problems on purpose? Like, why? I would definitely want to change the ending. I don't feel like there was enough justification for why Rabbit acted the way that he did. I liked the story though. I think that it's fun to explain behaviors or things in nature with stories!

A possum, just chilling (Wikimedia Commons)

Reading Notes: Myths and Legends of the Great Plains A

Source: The Legend of the Peace Pipes from Myths and Legends of the Great Plains by Katharine B. Judson

I wouldn't want to do an entire notes section on it, but I wanted to mention how much I enjoy creation myths. The one included here with Elk and how land was formed was so beautiful. The ties with nature and animals make it so easy to visualize. I do love that one a lot.

The Omaha Legend of the Peace Pipes begins with people coming across the water on logs. They land and clear the land of grass so that they can see each other. I like the detail of "so they can see each other's faces." It opens the scene up to one wide landscape with everyone sitting with nothing in the way. They hear an owl and a woodpecker individually and they call to them for aid and to join their meeting.

The chief sent a servant to get an ash sapling in the forest. The servant beings back the wrong sapling and they let the servant know. They tell the servant the specificities of the ash sapling so they can get it right. They do this time. An eagle came by and dropped a white feather in the middle. They don't want that feather. A bald eagle also come down, very fierce, and that wasn't want anyone wanted either and sent it on its way. A spotted eagle came by and it was wrong too. The imperial eagle was the right one!

The peace pipe is finally formed with the feathers from all of the birds and the other materials! It's used to bring friendly relationships with others. (It's also on the Oklahoma state flag!) Seven other pipes were made to keep peace amongst themselves. It was used for revenge cases. If a family wanted to act on revenge and had already received and refused the pipes four times, they were to take the punishment and would not get help from anyone else.

Eastern Imperial Eagle (Wikimedia Commons)

Reading Notes: Japanese Mythology B

Source: The Faery Robe from Romance of Old Japan by E.W. Champney and F. Champney

I chose this section because I really enjoyed its poetic structure. I thought that it was simple and very pretty. The imagery was lovely to see. I like things with fairies and mystical creatures! I thought that it was going to end differently. Honestly, I thought that it would've been a love story instead of this, but that's okay. I don't know the Japanese word for fairy. That might be something to check into!

A fisherman says somethings about nature that I didn't really understand, but it was nice imagery. He thought that he heard a roar off of the shores somewhere. He thinks that he must have mistaken the sounds of nature for something else and carries on with his day. Then a fairy comes out of thin air, covered in feathery, white robes and a dulcimer. She is playing a pretty song by the sea. It sounds enchanting.

She lays her robe down and jumps into the waters below. The fisherman sees her robe and wants to take it for himself, thinking it will be sold for a great deal of money. The fairy comes back and asks for her robe back or she will not be able to fly again. At least that's how I interpreted the line. He says that he will not and she can walk instead. They argue back and forth and he's being kind of mean, demanding she dance for him.

She yells at him again and he is overcome by shame and gives the robe back. Her wings are colored like rainbows. She danced in the moonlight and played her dulcimer again. The fisherman watched, lovingly this time. I think he should have done this the first time. The poem ends about how it began with the fisherman hearing something and her disappearing from where she came from.

Tennin (Wikimedia Commons)

Reading Notes: Japanese Mythology A

Source: The Eight-Forked Serpent of Koshi from Romance of Old Japan by E.W. Champney and F. Champney

I really enjoy learning about Japan a lot in general, but its mythology is especially interesting. I took two years of it as a language and absolutely loved it, but I never had time to take the literature courses due to scheduling and work issues. It's nice to get to read a little bit of it here! We discussed Shinto some, but I don't know much about the religion. I'm enjoying the language here. I like the mix of prose and poetry, though I like the poetry a little bit more!

Susa-no-wo sees a chopstick floating down the river and decides that this must be a sign of people living nearby. He sets out to go look for them. He comes across two old people and a pretty woman, who is getting "caressed" and cried over. He asks why they are crying. The old woman says that they are crying for their eight daughters who were taken by the serpent. This is their last daughter. They don't want to see her taken away.

They then go on to describe the monster of Koshi. "Eyes as red as a ripe mountain cherry, a noisome blood-inflamed body, armed with eight fearsome heads and eight forked tails. Moreover its back is all overgrown with firs, cedars, and pines, and it trails its tortuous coils over eight valleys and as many mountains." Sounds pretty scary. I doubt ole' Susa-no-wo will have an issue with this. He agrees to slay the serpent. He boasts about his lineage first.

The girl turns into a comb and he puts it into his hair. I don't understand this, but that's okay. Her and her parents are deities, so I guess that makes sense they can do things like that. No, it says Susa-no-wo did this? Okay, I guess. He had the woman make sake of eightfold strength and a lot of it. He used logs to build doors at which he placed vats of the sake. The serpent drank the sake and got drunk, making the job easy for Susa-no-wo.

He sliced the monster into a thousand fragments and he was no more. The sword "kushanagi" was brought to heaven after he found it hidden in its tail. Kushinada transformed back into a person and the two got married!

Susa-no-o and the Serpent (Wikimedia Commons)

WEEK 8 Progress

I'm happy with my progress so far. I've known about the progress chart for a minute, so I've been trying to stay on track with it. I had wanted to be more ahead, but it's not the time for that right now. It's been kind of busy in my life, so staying on track is just fine! Sometimes all you can do is your best! I do need to crank out the extra credit though. I'm hoping to get more of that done and even work ahead either this week or during spring break.

Moving forward, I'd really just like to stick to the schedule that I laid out at the beginning of the semester. For reference, I haven't done it so far even once! It's the best time for me to be doing any kind of homework and I think it would help me work ahead. The goal is to finish early and have more time, or at least finish the weeks early (as in before Sunday like I've been doing!) I don't really want to change anything about my project or blog website. I'm not that tech savvy and wouldn't know how to do it anyway! It's a good thing I like both of them!

The progress chart has been a big help to me throughout the semester! I'm the worst with checking my grades and sort of just like to live in blissful unawareness about my grades, but it's motivated me to keep checking on my progress. In a course like this, it could be easy to fall behind, but it's helped me hold myself accountable to staying on or ahead of where I need to be at the end of each week. I hope to keep that energy going!

A young Dolly Parton (9-5 Music video) (Wikimedia Commons)

I just think she's neat. I couldn't find any non-copyrighted pictures of 9-5, but I included a link to the music video. I find it extremely motivational... or at least it makes me want to quit my job. WWDD- What Would Dolly Do? 

WEEK 8 Comments & Feedback

I enjoy reading comments! I'm a perpetual people pleaser, so I like to make things that others like. I take suggestions seriously, as long as they're manageable and constructive. That being said, those are the comments I've found most useful. I do like being told that I've simply done good job with no critique as well! I'm simple and don't super care about the content. As long as it's nice and well intentioned, I'm happy!

I've really enjoyed feedback this semester. I don't know what changed. I usually hate it. I think that everyone is doing a great job with their writing, so it makes my job more enjoyable and fun! I try to suggest things when I can, as I know that a lot of people are looking out for self-improvement, but I like to tell people what I like about their writing the most. I think it can be easy to get bogged down by many critiques, so I try to be a happy medium.

I'm of the mindset that it's impossible to get to know someone through their introduction post, but you can try your best. Everyone seems sweet. I like my intro fine. It's very... me. I talk about criminology a lot and Kate Bush and that's just how I live my life. It's easier to see how people are when reading their comments, if that makes any sense. It's less of standing on a soapbox type deal and more of seeing how they interact more organically. I don't know. I'm terrible at talking about myself in an online space, but I do my best.

I don't know what changes to make to feedback. I guess it would be interesting hearing from other students what feedback they enjoy getting, so I could tailor it specifically to them, but that might be a big undertaking. I might just keep up what I've been doing. I feel like it's fine.

What a cutie! (Growth Mindset Memes) (Cheezburger)

I chose this cat because I have a difficult time with failure sometimes and will then not take any kind of risk or not try because of that. It's important to remember that failure is okay and you can always try again. Feedback is there to help you do better the next time. it shouldn't be something that's scary and intimidating. 

WEEK 8 Reading & Writing

In general, I'm pretty happy with my progress in this course. I'm enjoying the readings. I like my notes formatting. They're not anything too crazy, but they make sense to me. My issue is with stories. Personal issues and emergencies have arisen and I've been uninspired/exhausted my my life circumstances and I feel like the writing took a hit. I didn't start out strong and I definitely haven't kept the momentum going. I like the stories that I do have though. I think that they're nice. I'm more interested in my project stories at the moment. I feel more compelled to work on them, so I'll try to use that as a motivator to keep up the work in my other stories as well!

My favorite reading so far has been the Egyptian mythology section. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did, but all of the sections were interesting and timeless. I also enjoyed The Iliad. I've always found it to be quite sad, but important. All of the characters have different motivations which plays out so beautifully. I don't know. I've liked all of the readings. They've all been fun for different reasons. I can appreciate different aspects about each of them.

I'm happy with the look of my blog. I don't know if I really care that much how it looks, but it seems easy to get around, or at least it is for me. I don't see anything super ugly about it, so it's fine! My project website also looks fine to me. I don't have an unbiased eye for my own project or anything, but I do like the look of it. It's green, which was the goal! I met that one standard for myself!

Speaking of projects, I still think the name is so funny for mine. Like, no one would get it because i'm the only one who has read the poem, but like... get it. Gawain saves his face literally and in the sense of reputation. The Green Knight doesn't behead him... haha. I am funny. I really didn't know what to title it and it's kind of dumb, but it works.

Looking forward, I'd like to focus more on trying to do more writing! There's not much to say here. I slacked off a little bit and should focus more! Ain't that just the way? Oh, I'd like to do more extra credit too.

Priam and Achilles by Ivanov (Wikimedia Commons)

I chose this picture as my favorite because I love this style of painting. I also found the entire chapter where Hector dies to be very impactful. I still think about it often. It was a tender moment for both characters.