L Christina M

As I've mentioned before, I absolutely love Ted Talks and always take advantage of having the opportunity to watch them. This week I watched two redrawing the creative life. I really enjoyed them and recorded a few of my notes below. 1. A New Theory Of Human Intelligence - He argues that those telling us of our own intelligence are not necessarily any more intelligent than we are ourselves. - It is important to factor in background and opportunity as a means of determining one's own intelligence in relation to the opportunities they have had to learn. - You can't judge someone on their intellect levels without everyone being given the same opportunities to gain intellect. - It is a somewhat manmade idea that we must know certain things in order to be deemed "smart". 2. Copyright is Brain Damage - Creativity and Originality is vital to human advancements. - We can't keep replaying the pass. - Maybe we should measure our intelligence in terms of creat...

The second half of the readings focused more on the Coyote then any of the other animals. Even the majority of the titles have the Coyote in the title. I was able to find another really interesting "creation" story that I really hope to be able to tell in one of the weeks to come. This one was called "How The Bluebird Got It's Color". Here are a few notes about it. 1. The story includes instances of poems as well. 2. The main character is named Bluebird. 3. I like the idea of breaking up the paragraphs with poems or sonnets rather than just having one continuous story. It might give the reader a longer attention span and even hold that attention a little longer. 4. There is also dialogue included. (thefool.com) Bibliography: How The Bluebird Got Its Color A Pima Legend

I used to live in California with my family so was very interested in learning a little more about the original settlers. I hope to move back there after I graduate and love that I'll have even more knowledge about it this time around. As I've mentioned before, I absolutely love creation stories. Out of all the stories I read, the Creation of Man story definitely stuck out the most to me. The notes below primarily relate to it: 1. The story is similar to the Biblical creation story that I am most familiar with. It starts off with the creation of the world and then ends on the creation of man. 2. Animals are the primary characters in this story, rather than a divine deity. 3. More cunning creature just like Anansi: Coyote. 4. Maybe try and model my story so that I just take the character of Coyote and put him into an Anansi tale. (Dennis Davenport Photography) Bibliography: Native-languages.org 1998-2015

One chilly morning, Trickster Anansi and Sheep ventured away from their small town to embark on a journey across the vast land of their country. As the journey took way, the loud rumble of their stomachs took precedence over the long journey ahead of them. The two always carried their own spoons with them. For you never know when you'll stumble upon a place to eat with nothing to eat with! It was around breakfast time and Trickster Anansi and Sheep knew that they must be fully nourished in order to make the rest of long trek. Trickster Anansi and Sheep decided to stop in a nearby town in order to dine in for breakfast. As they neared the entrance of the small diner Trickster Anansi got a cunning idea. He knew exactly what to do. The small red diner smelled of fresh pancakes and fluffy waffles as they sat in their small booth waiting for their food to arrive. Trickster Anansi's plan had become a full-fledged scheme and all he had to do was wait for the food to arrive. Out of...

The continuation of the Anansi stories starts early on with the story of Anansi and the Tar Baby. I think out of all the stories I read on day 2, this was definitely my favorite and one that I am really interested in recreating. Here are a few notes I made about this story: - Just like in all of the other stories, this story has ALOT of Jamaican dialect and colloquial terms. Maybe tell another story just using this type of dialect or take these stories already in the dialect and retell them without it? - Tiger makes another appearance. A common character I've seen weaved into a lot of these different stories. - SO much dialogue is utilized in these stories! - The stories are split into what seems like chapters each headed with a different subtitle. - Just discovered that this film is also a Disney book but with a different twist, maybe this is something I can recreate. (alchetron.com) Bibliography: sacred-texts.com Elizabeth Warren Beckwith 1924

For the second week of Asian and African stories I decided to focus on another set of Anansi stories. I forgot just how much I used to enjoy sitting around the fireplace listening to my uncle tell us these stories while drinking hot chocolate around Christmas time. As I looked through the list and saw that there was another set of stories about Anansi, I just new that I had to continue in that direction. Here are a few things I learned: - I love the Jamaican dialect that is incorporated into the story. It doesn't take long for the reader to adjust and definitely adds a whole other element to the storytelling. - These stories are told almost entirely in dialogue. Maybe try and recreate one of these stories using the same idea. - The story about the Rabbit and Anansi were definitely my favorite. I really like the relationship between the two and feel as if I might be able to really come up with some interesting characters to reflect them in my own story on Thursday. - There are ...

When reviewing my progress this far in the class I am pleasantly surprised. While I would like to be farther along with my storybook I do realize that this is a process that might take longer than expected. The preparation we did leading up to the stories in our Storybooks was very helpful and definitely allowed for our creative juices to start flowing. For the remainder of the semester, I do hope to be able o employ a few more "storybook" type elements to my story to make them easier to read and maybe even shorten some of my posts (I tend to be longwinded when writing). (MakeaMeme.org)

I really enjoy the ability to see other people's thoughts and critiques about my work. As someone who works well under pressure I feel as expecting others to read my work actually tends to work in my benefit. I enjoy hearing other people's opinions and in turn making my own work better using some of their ideas. Over the course of the first half of the semester, I've seen that these comments have become more and more helpful and beneficial for me when writing stories. On many occasions, a comment a person has made about dialogue or format has caused me to want to try something different in my next post. I really enjoy getting to speak with people on their own blogs and do feel a sense of familiarity after visiting a certain blog more than once, especially after reading their Introductions and getting to know the people behind the stories. Furthermore, for me getting to leave comments on other people's pages is also very helpful. I always tell people when there is some...

This class has certainly transformed into something much bigger than I originally thought it would. I was pleasantly surprised and thoroughly entertained when reading all of my classmates stories and have had the opportunity to discover so many new things. I have not started to write my own stories in my Storybook as my Introduction ended up taking me a lot longer than I originally thought to perfect. However, I have been writing stories on my blog. I have taken up a deep curiosity and intrigue in creation stories or stories explaining seemingly simple creations in our world. For example, I recently rewrote "How The Tortoise Got Its Shell" and created a new story called "How The Hermit Became A Crab". I have to admit, I had a little too much fun creating this story. The image below is very similar to the image I used under my story. Drawingskill.com The reading notes I took on the original reading definitely aided in helping me stay true to the original feel...