Indian Epics

This week was pretty hectic for me. I had to get things around at the beginning of the week to get prepared for the rest of the week because i had a death in the family. The funeral was scheduled for Thursday with viewing to be held on Wednesday. All my family lives in northern Kansas so this meant that i needed to have all my things that had to be done my Thursday or Friday done on Tuesday because that is when myself and my sister would be leaving to head North. Deaths and funerals are always a weird occasion for me. I do not show much emotion and because of this funerals can be a little awkward. They are also weird for our family because we are spread out around the country, so when someone dies it in a way brings everyone back together and is kind of a joyous time. In any case that is how this gathering was. It was deffinately a celebration of my grandfathers life. I always knew he was an interesting guy but i had no idea until i began to hear stories from his brothers and closer fa...

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Feedback as I alluded to last week is complicated. This is why there are professions just in this category, aka editors etc.. After the brief introduction to "feedforward" I decided I wanted to learn a little more one the topic. I believe that this is good way to go about feedback and the principle is a nice one to use, however it cannot be used in all cases. For instance, when instructing a class and an assignment is handed in, unless the student is unable to resubmit the assignment the feedforward approach gives him or her no help on the current assignment. Most often also the next assignment will be different and use a different way of thinking about a set material. That being said, for this class it works great. This is a creative class, so one's style or opinion should be put down because it is different than their owns. Instead just give encouragement and "tips" on how they may want to take a story next time. In the "Try Feedforward Instead of Feedba...

I don't know if it will be the first story I peruse but one of my favorites that I will end up telling is the end battle stories in the Ramayana. Mainly I will focus on "Rama and Ravana" and "Ravana's Death". The end battles are always the most epic right? For the second portion of my storybook I thought that I would work more on the Mahabharata. It has some interesting battle scenes in it and also deals with a more in depth look at death. I thought I could use this to create a battle scene in the afterlife. "The Battle Begins" would be a good place to start because of the peril that the men will soon face. Many will die which will leave them in the afterlife trying to find their way and perhaps in another battle in the underworld.  The last story I found of great interest was "Indrajit". I think that this is a great story to tell because it could have essentially two battle scenes in it. One where the army gets dismantled then heal...

It was a Friday night and all of Lakewood Highschool was gearing up for the homecoming basketball match up against their hated rivals Mulberry High. Lakewood had high hopes for a state championship this year with Manny Rodriguez leading the way. These aspirations from the preseason, however, had not quite lived up to their hype. Manny had been in a shooting slump and seemed to average almost double-digit turnovers a game. This was a basketball school though and none of the students or faculty was going to give up on this team. Manny on the other hand was having a tough time wondering what was going on with his abilities. He kind of moped around school that day not really getting into the homecoming spirt. Instead, at lunch time Manny went downtown to walk around by himself. He had hoped that maybe it would get his mind right and clear his head for the game that evening. While he was walking by a shop he happened to look through the window and see a pair of vintage Larry Bird shoes. T...

This set of stories, to me, were not as grasping and as whimsical as the first section. I am sure there are many out there that would love to disagree with this statement. I did enjoy getting to read about Rama's adventures while exiled in the forest. Having to overcome many demons and battles. I think Khara rushing to battle against Rama found at pedia . that this section was crucial in setting up the story for future events. Many of the encounters that were made during this time in the forest seemed to set the stage for the future. Whether it was obtaining knew weapons for Rama to use or freeing someone from demon form so they might ascend to heaven, it seemed like these people and articles may show up later down the road for Rama and help him in his journey. My favorite story from this part of the epic was "Battle with Khara". I enjoyed it because there was a story before this that set up the scene that was quite comical and could in fact be real life. A woman fel...

Image of the demon Thataka trying to become  invisible found on Wikipedia   I just finished up reading the first section of the Ramayana epic. I have to say entering into this reading I was a little worried about the length of the story as a whole because it seemed to me to have a lot of section. Then I began to read them and they were not as long as I had initially thought that they would be. Plus, the story was really beginning to pull me in and made me want to keep reading which is a huge plus for me. Before I discuss an individual story to perhaps do a storytelling assignment over I thought I would address my preliminary thoughts on the epic as a whole. For this first quarter of the epic it seems to me like a story I have read many times over through my life already. That is the story of Jesus in the Bible. In this story Rama is born as a son that is half god and half man. Although the way and family that he is born into is quite different than Jesus their purpose ...