Week 5 Review

This week I chose to use an Image from Saturday, February 20th blog post.  I immediately like the image with the 'Bare Feet' and 'Bear Feet.'  I grew up with my dad telling lots of puns.  It really stuck with me, I take every opportunity I can to make bad puns, and will always appreciate other people's bad puns.

Image from wikipedia

Learning Challenge: Find a favorite health/happiness meme - Week 5

Cartoon by John Atkinson

This was the first image on the page, and I was able to relate to it immediately.  I did scroll through all of the Health/Happiness memes to see if there was one I liked better, but there wasn't.

I will often stay up to late, and use coffee in the mornings.  I rarely used to drink coffee, but they have free coffee at the office where I work, which got me into the habit of drinking it almost every morning.

Thoughts about Comments

Every week I have been writing comments on other people introductions and stories, and other people have been commenting on mine.

As far as my introduction goes, the most engaging comments are from people who have something in common with me. When somebody picks a specific topic that I mention interest in, for example baking, and people talking about whether or not they do any cooking and baking I find that interesting.  Finding out the familiarity between myself and other people is always interesting.

As far as story comments go, I really enjoy which specific pieces of my writing people enjoy.  Although it's always nice to know that people like my stories, it's much more helpful to here criticism, which parts of my story doesn't make sense, doesn't include enough detail, rambles on for to long etc. I would much rather read more critical comments that help me improve my writing than praise.  Don't get me wrong, praise is really nice to hear, as long as it's honest.

When commenting on other people's intro, I try to talk about which part of their into captures my interest, or which parts or the other people's lives I can relate too. When I comment on people's stories, I feel like I have been doing a good job since i have been leaving critiques as well as praise.  I could be writing better comments if I reread some of the stories a second time.  A reader will often catch something the second time that they missed on the first.

Comment Bubble - Pixabay

Week 5 Storytelling : Thieves in the Night

Arabian Nights - By Milo Winter

Thieves in the Night

Once upon a time, there lived a handsome prince and a beautiful princess in a palace far far away.  The palace was made up of the most beautiful gems and jewels any person could imagine.  The window panes were made of diamond, and the gilded walls and the marble floors danced with light when the sunlight peeked through the windows.

The palace spent a week in Africa were me and my fellows first laid eyes on the riches and wonder.  All those riches and jewels are exactly the kind of thing we had been eyeing. The second we laid eyes on it, we started making plans.  We could probably have filled a whole bag full of jewels and nobody would even have noticed that they were gone.  Before we were able to complete our plan, the palace vanished.  The legend told of a genie, a magician and a princess.

A prince fell madly in love with a beautiful princess.  The prince came from a very wealthy family, and he was convinced that the princess was so beautiful, that he would only be worthy of her if he used every last ounce of his gold for her.   He spend the next fifteen years building a palace, working and laboring with his own hands, as well as making his slaved labor day and night on the palace.  One the 365th day of the 15th year, he was final done.  We went up to the Sultan and asked for the princess's hand in marriage.  Impressed by the dedication and splendor that the prince showed, he agreed and the two were happily married for the rest of their days, living in splendor.

My personal opinion is that the story has been elaborated during the telling.  There is no way a man could build a palace of such splendor in 15 years, much less a lifetime.  I had also never believed in magic until I saw the palace appear, and then disappear a week later.  We kept our ears open for rumors of the palace, until finally one day we heard that it moved to China.  We did not hesitate for an instance, we packed up our bags and moved to China.

My band of thieves gathered around the palace.  We knew we needed to scout out the place, figure out the guard patterns etc.  before we could actually steel anything.  We believed this process would take weeks of time.  On our first day of scouting out the palace, we did not see a single guard.  We could not believe our eyes, no palace was ever left completely unguarded. Three more days we surveyed the palace to be sure, and three more days we saw nobody protected the palace.  On the fourth day, we entered the palace, found the treasure room, and left with all we could carry. We found many things in the treasure room, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pears, gold, and so much more.  We also found a very old looking dingy lamp, which we disregarded in an instance, skipping over it to look at the rest of the treasure.

We praised our luck as we left the palace, feeling fortunate to have come out with such a successful score.  It was morning by the time we went to a quiet  place and started counting our money.  As we were doing this, the room around us suddenly blurred, as as if by magic.  We found ourselves back in the palace we had just left, kneeling in front of the prince of the castle, Aladdin, and his princess.  Aladdin held the lamp, and beside him floated what could only be a genie.

Finally we understood why the palace had no guards.  The palace didn't need any guards, because Aladdin had the power to summon up anything he needed from his genie.  I knelt to the floor and begged forgiveness, promising to mend the error of my ways.  I knew what happened to thieves, and it was not a fate I wanted to share with my friends.  Aladdin would not yield, wanting to set an example for people who would steal from him in the future.  He spoke a command to the genie, speaking a sentence which I knew was the last one I would ever hear.  Know this, keep your greed in check because no amount of jewels and money is worth the price of your own life.


Authors Note:
Everyone is familiar with the Disney Movie Aladdin.  The story is The Arabian Nights, however, is quite different than the childhood tale most of us grew up with.  I wanted to tell yet another, third retelling of the story, taking five different Motifs from the original story and wrote my own plot.  I chose The Jeweled palace as the setting, Aladdin, Genie, and the princess as the characters, and the lamp as my artifact.  Together, these are five different things from the original story.

The Arabian Nights includes many stories inside stories, and sometime even stories inside stories inside stories.  Because of this, I decided to include a brief summary of the original as a story within my story.  The tale is based on the rumors that the people have been hearing, so it's a fabrication, a slightly different version of what actually happened.

Bibliography: 
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).

Growth Mindset : Stories About Growth - Week 5

As my reading this week I chose Arabian Nights.  In this story I believe Aladdin shows a growth mindset.

One Thousand and One Nights - Wikipedia Article

Aladdin falls in love with a princess, and is determined to marry her.  Even though common folk don't marry royalty, he still implores his mother to ask the Sultan for her hand in marriage.  Aladdin waits eagerly for the month until the wedding, but instead the princess is Married to the Grand-Vizir's daughter.  Instead of becoming disheartened, Aladdin found a way to marry her anyway.

Aladdin gave the Sultan everything he wished for, and kept filling his requests.  When the princess was kidnapped, Aladdin traveled to another country to get her back.  He found her, and found a way to get her home.  In a way, you could say that Aladdin had a growth mindset about marrying the princess, he never gave up and perused her despite every challenge.

Week 5 Reading Diary, continued: Arabian Nights

This weeks reading is part B of Arabian Nights.
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).

Genie, From Disney's Aladdin

 Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp

• It is really nice to read a story that I already know, a story that disney has made a movie of. I know Disney adds a happy changed the ending of all of their stories to make them happy, so I am curious to see how this one ends.
• The story mentions the 'false uncle', but the story does not tell us who the uncle really is, so the reader is left to wonder
• It is especially interesting to me to see the differences between the original story, and the once that I know.
• Aladdin asks for the hand of the princess using jewels, instead of turning himself into a prince
• Aladdin steels a look at the princess, and falls in love at first sight
• Does Aladdin have an unlimited number of requests from the Genie? It would seem that he does
• The Sultan is very greedy with all of the gifts he demands from Aladdin
• I like the imagery that the author creates for the palace that Aladdin builds for the princess.  She must indeed be very beautiful to inspire such a thing.
• I notice that Aladdin never ever told the princess about the lamp, for otherwise she would not have traded it away.
• The magician was mean to want to kill Aladdin, but very clever to trick the princess into giving him the lamp.  I enjoyed the way in which he tricked the princess.
• Aladdin managed to trick the magician just as easily as the magician tricked Aladdin.  
• I notice that this story, unlike many of the ones from Tuesdays readings, actually use character names.  I wonder how the author chose which stories required named characters, and which ones didn't.
• I enjoyed reading this story, and was slightly surprised to see that it had a happy ending, since usually the key difference between Disney and the original is the ending.

Week 5 Reading Diary: Arabian Nights

This weeks reading is Arabian Nights, inspired by other student stories that I read last week.
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).

One Thousand and One Nights

  Scheherazade

•  Wow, the whole premise of the story just seems really messed up.  "So every evening he married a fresh wife and had her strangled the following morning before the grand-vizier"
• The intro to this story definitely captures my interest right away.  Such a dramatic start makes me want to read on to see what happens next.  The story does not give the reader a chance to get bored before the action starts. 

The Story of the Merchant and the Genius

•  The girl is very clever.  This is not the first reading story I've read this semester with multiple tales, but this is definitely my favorite premise for a story within a story.  
• It's a story within a story within a story.  That almost seems like to many layers.

The Story of the First Old Man and of the Hind

•  I notice that none of these characters have names.  Instead they are referred to as "my son" or "my wife" or "the third old man."  I wonder why the author made this decision, especially since he named the characters in the first layer of his story.

The Story of the Second Old Man, and of the Two Black Dogs

•  Many of theses stories have a common theme of killing for revenge.  The Sultan kills his wives, the Genius wants to kill the Merchant for killing his son, and how the fairy wishes to kill the two brothers of her husband.

The Story of the Fisherman

• I assume Genies in lamps or pots or jars was a common theme in stories during this time.  Both the yellow pot, and the story of Aladdin both include a trapped Genie.  
•  I enjoyed this story, of how the Fisherman outsmarted the Genie.

The Story of the Greek King and the Physician Douban

•  I wonder what kind of power the physician possesses? It's clearly some form of magic that healed the king.

The Story of the Parrot; The Story of the Ogress

•  Why does the Grand Vizir distrust the great physician.  It is not made obvious in the story, so the reader if left to wonder.

The Story of the Physician's Revenge

•  It's getting hard to keep track of the stories.The stories themselves are interesting, but there are too many layers to them.

The Story of the Sultan and the Fish

• Why are the fish so valuable in the first place? I do not believe this part of the story explains this at all.

The Story of the Young King of the Black Isles

•  I enjoyed reading the mini stories.  This style of writing works very well.  Instead of having many disjointed tales, a story like 1001 nights can ties a bunch of little stories into one giant work.

Tech Tip: Blogger Profile

This week I updated my blogger profile. 

Although blogging is a good way to interact with other people in an online class, it is not something I see myself doing in the future.  I am just not a blogger.  Because of this, I mostly configured my profile for class, and kept it short and simple. 

Silhouette : Flickr

I did want to include my profile in a widget as part of my blog, I wanted to profile to include a picture, and a very basic description that people can read quickly.  I not have a profile that does all of these things for me.