Tech Tip: Canvas Notifications

I have always had Canvas send me alerts to my phone as well as email.  I have always really liked having the notifications on because my grades are really important to me and it is critical to stay as up to date as possible on all assignment notifications, messages from professors, and grade postings!  Having notifications on has definitely made my life better!

Iphone sourced via Pixabay

Week 14 Reading Notes Part B: English Tales

The King o' the Cats

A woman and her cat are waiting for the husband to come home when he flings the door open.  He starts ranting about how while he was digging a grave he fell asleep and when he woke up he saw 9 white cats carrying a coffin.  He said they came closer and closer to him and the biggest cat in the front of the group said, "Tell Tom Tildrum that Tim Toldrum's dead."  After saying this, their cat, Tom, starts swelling up and says, "What?  Old Tom dead! then I'm the King o' the Cats!"  The cat runs up the chimney and is never seen again.

Tom, King o' the Cats! sourced via Wikipedia

This story in particular made me laugh really hard at just how ridiculous it was!  If I were to redo this story, I would definitely make it someone's dream to try to justify how ridiculous it is.  I would love to try writing a story that is just totally crazy and then it turns out it is just a dream!

Bibliography:
More English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs

Week 14 Reading Notes Part A: English Tales

The Three Wishes

One day a woodsman went out to chop wood and his wife gave him supplies.  He comes upon a great tree to chop but before he hits it a fairy begs him not to.  To show it is grateful, the fairy tells him he will be granted three wishes, but quickly disappears.  The man mostly thinks it isn't real, comes home, and when his wife says supper won't be ready for a while, he says he wishes for pudding and BAM pudding comes down the chimney.  Then later the wife gets mad at him and screams that she wishes pudding were in his nose.  It happens and they can't get it out so they have to use their final wish to get it out and they run out of wishes.

Fairy sourced via Pixabay

This is a classic example of being careful what you wish for!  This story kinda made me mad, which is why I would like to change it!  I want to write a story where someone that gets three wishes actually does it in a responsible manner!  I don't think I have ever personally read a story where being granted three wishes turns out okay.

Bibliography:
More English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs

Week 13 Reading Extra Credit: Filipino Tales

The Wicked Woman's Reward

Once a king had five women, two of which he loved most because they could have children.  He said whichever bears him a baby boy will be his wife.  One bears a girl, the other a boy.  The one that bears the girl is jealous and kills her own baby and steals the other woman's child.  She replaces the child with a cat.  When the king finds this, the woman who bore a boy is commanded to be drowned and she is killed.  When the other woman presents him with the baby boy she stole, he marries and loves her dearly.  Soon, the water the dead woman was drowned in started smelling sweet.  Her body washes up and is growing sweet flowers.  Anyone who tries taking the body is pecked at by birds.  When the king hears of this, he goes to her body and feels remorse upon seeing her.  The dead body leaps up, tells the king about the corrupt wife he married, and in his rage he throws his wife out a window and kills her.  The king commands for the woman who actually bore the boy child to be buried among the noble dead.  The child grows to be a wonderful prince and king.

Flowers in Water (body not included)
sourced via Pixabay

I liked the weird plot twist of this story.  It was strange to me the whole flowers growing on the dead body thing.  I guess it was just a cool representation of how she was actually a good person.  I personally would have added the detail that the other woman when dead starts to smell like manure or something of that degree.  I would like to place this story into a more modern context! I feel like it would make for a very interesting story!

Bibliography:
Filipino Popular Tales by Dean S. Fansler

Week 13 Reading Notes Part B: Celtic Fairy Tales

A prince named Llewelyn had a dog named Gellert.  One day the prince called all the dogs at his place and all came except Gellert.  He goes on the hunt without him.  When he comes back, Gellert's mouth has a bunch of blood on it, and the prince fears that his new baby might have gotten eater.  He runs to the nursery to find the cradle filled with blood.  In a panic, he looks everywhere but can't find the child.  Convinced of wrongdoing, the prince kills Gellert.  But in Gellert's final breaths, he hears his child crying under the cradle, alive, with a dead wolf next to him.  He feels terrible.  RIP Gellert.

Dead wolf sourced via Wikipedia

This was SO SAD oh my god.  I can't believe this horrible sad ending!  I haven't written a sad story before and this story inspires me to do just that!  I really liked it and it was well made even though it was terrible and sad!

Bibliography:
Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs

Week 13 Reading Notes Part A: Celtic Fairy Tales

The Shepherd of Myddvai
A shepherd sees three maidens rise from a lake. 

Lake sourced via Wikipedia

He offers them bread but they start singing to him, saying his bread is hard and they run away.  He comes back the next day with bread that is softer, but the maidens say it is too soft and run away again.  He comes back again and this time the bread is good enough for one of the maidens.  She says that if he comes back the next day and can select her out from her sisters she will be his wife.  He is successful and she tells him she will always be his as long as he doesn't strike her three times without cause.  Years pass and everything is okay, but one day she asks for gloves to ride a horse.  When it is time to ride and she stands there not moving, he taps her on the shoulder to go and she tells him that is strike number one.  Another time, they are at a wedding and she starts to sob.  He taps her on the shoulder asking what is wrong and she tells him that bad things are upon them and that that was the second strike.  The next is at a funeral and she starts bursting into laughter.  He taps her on the shoulder asking what is wrong and she tells him that's the last straw and leaves him.  She takes all the animals with her and the only other time she is seen again is when she comes back to see the grown up children she had with the shepherd.

I thought this story was odd and actually really funny in a way.  It was a little twisted and manipulative that the maiden could be so heartless, but it was also really amusing.  I would love to do this except in like a child romance way like in grade school where a fifth grader's girlfriend says something like he can't touch her hand but he keeps accidentally doing it or something.

Bibliography:
Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs

Week 12 Story: The Man and the Newspaper

The Man and the Newspaper

One day a man was coming home from work when he notices his dog holding his newspaper.  "Good boy!" The man said, as he tries to take the newspaper from the dog.

The dog says to him, "Not so fast!  I am very hungry as you forgot to feed me this morning.  Give me one of your chicks from the shed to eat and I will give you the paper."

The man goes to the shed to grab a chick, but the rooster attacks his hand when he goes to grab one.  The man says to the rooster, "I need one of your chicks to give it to my dog so he will give me the paper.  Out of me way!"

The rooster says to him, "Not so fast!  We have been too cold this winter and have gotten close to death.  Get us another blanket and you can have the runt of the flock."

The man goes inside to grab a blanket.  He doesn't have any spares except for the one his cat usually sleeps on.  The man goes to grab the blanket, when the cat plants its paw down on it and hisses in his face.  The man says to the car, "I need this blanket so I can give it to the rooster, who will then give me a chick, which I will then take to the dog, who will then give me my newspaper.  Get off of the blanket!"

The cat says to him, "Not so fast!  I have been wanting a rat to hunt for a long time now.  Find me some game and the blanket will be yours."

The man goes into his attic to find a rat and runs after one when he sees it.  However, the rat runs into the hole and the man can't get him.  The man yells at the rat, "I need you to please come to the downstairs and let my cat hunt you so he will give me his blanket, which I will take to the rooster, who will then give me a chick, which I will take to the dog, who will then give me my newspaper.  Come down stairs.  You just have to let him chase you!"

The rat says to him, "Not so fast!  I have had too many brothers and sisters die from the mouse traps you have put all around the house.  Disable them, give me the cheese, and i'll be bait for your cat."

The man goes to gather the cheese from the traps, but snaps his fingers in one of them and drops the cheese.  The cheese falls downstairs and lands on the lap of the man's daughter.  The man goes to his daughter sternly says, "Rita, you need to give me that cheese, so that I can give it to the rat, who will be bait for the cat, who will give me the blanket, which I will give to the rooster, who will give me a chick, which I will give to the dog, who will finally give me my newspaper!"

Rita thinks for a few moments, looks at him, smiling, and says, "Not so fast, Daddy!  I am bored... Give me the newspaper and the cheese is all yours."

The end.

Running in an infinite loop
Sourced via Pixabay

Author's note:
The original followed the same theme of the story told here starting with a farmer who can't get a pig to hop a fence and ends up going through a huge sequence of requests from dogs and cows and even fire and water to get it to finally hop over.  The biggest difference is I thought it would be really funny to make this story into an infinite loop at the end and have the father never get what he wanted.  This story was a lot of fun to make and I really enjoyed reading it when I was done!

Bibliography:
English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs

Week 12 Reading Notes Extra Credit:Pacific NW Native American

Woodrat and Rabbits

a woodrat lived with its mother and five rabbits lived near by.  The woodrat starts a fight with one of the rabbits asking why it likes bitter leaves of cabbage over everything else.  The rabbit doesn't want a quarrel, but accuses the rat of being a thief.  They continue to argue until the rat catches the rabbit in a net and kills it with a stick.  He then does the exact same thing to the other four rabbits until all are dead.  The rat and its mom eat the rabbits and dance around a fire but they both accidentally catch fire and die.  The end.

Woodrat sourced via pixino

This story stood out to be because I realized it is one of the few stories I have ever read in this class where the bad guy wins.  While the rat does eventually die, it successfully killed all the rabbits, which I feel most readers would rather the rat die than the rabbits.  Now, this got me thinking of how strange it was to see the rat having such a good time after killing the rabbits.  It just goes to show just how much perspective matters and how the bad guy always has his own story.  I would love to write a story entirely given from the account of a bad guy and try to make the reader find sympathy and support for the bad guy even though they do bad things!

Bibliography:
Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest, especially of Washington and Oregon, by Katharine Berry Judson

Week 12 Reading Notes Part B: English Fairy Tales

Fairy Ointment.

A nurse is woken in the middle of the night by a man who asks her to take care of his baby because his wise is too ill.  They make it to their house and the woman gives the nurse ointment and tells her to put it on the baby's eyes as soon as he opens them.  Curious to what it does, the nurse also puts the ointment on one of her eyes.  When this happens, everything gets better.  The nurse and the baby become more beautiful.  The rest of the family was still quite ugly and usually up to no good.  When the woman is better, the nurse asks to be taken home.  The next day she goes to the market and notices the same man as before stealing things from everywhere and nobody seemed to notice.  She walks up to talk to him and he freaks out that she can see her and realizes that she must have put the ointment on her own eyes.  It turns out the ointment allows you to see pixies and the family were all pixies!  The man smacks her on the side of the head and it blinds her.  The end.

Ointment sourced via Flickr

This story was really strange and interesting to me because of the seemingly "normal" way pixies were portrayed.  It made me wonder how popular the pixy myth is in this culture!  I would love to recreate this story keeping the same classical time period but with a different mythological creature that becomes seen!

Bibliography:
English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs

Week 12 Reading Part A: English Fairy Tales

The Old Woman and Her Pig

Old woman finds money and buys a pig.  The pig won't jump over a stile, so she tells a dog to bite him but the dog refuses.  She then tells a stick to beat the dog but it also refuses.  She finds fire and tells it to burn the stick but it refuses.  This goes on and on until she tells a cat to kill a rat.  The cat tells her it will kill the rat if she gets it some milk, so she goes to a cow, who then tells her he won't give milk unless she gives him hay.  She gives him hay and the cow gives her milk and she gives the cat milk and the cat starts killing the mouse so the mouse eats rope and it has a chain reaction up until the dog bites the pig who then hops over the stile.  The end.

Domino effect sourced via Max Pixel

I loved this story because of the crazy dynamic of it.  I couldn't believe how long it went on for with the chain reaction!  This was really interesting and I would love to redo this in a chain reaction that is different and more modern!

Bibliography:
English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs