Caitlyn's Corner

For the extra reading this week, I decided to read the Celtic Fairy Tales unit, and I fell in love with all of these wonderful stories.  My favorite from the first half was  Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree  from  Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by John D. Batten (1892).  In this story, the mother, Silver-Tree goes to a trout in the river and asks if she is the most beautiful to which it tells her that actually her daughter, Gold-Tree is the most beautiful.  Silver-Tree can't stand this and decides that Gold-Tree must die so that she will remain as the most beautiful.  The story carries on very similar to Snow White, with the mother trying repeatedly to kill her daughter. She even poisons Gold-Tree and the prince that Gold-Tree had married refuses to bury her because she is too beautiful.  Eventually, the prince's second wife saves Gold-Tree from the poison and then tricks Silver-Tree into killing herself the next time she shows up to kill Gold-Tree.  I thought

When the world first started, there was no warmth until the Thunder came.  The lands were cold and nights were so dark.  One day, a great storm brought the Thunder and struck a huge tree on an island and filled it with fire.  Smoke rose from the island, so the animals knew it was there, but could not reach it for the water.  They held a council to determine who among them could bring the fire back to them. All of the animals were very eager to volunteer.  It seemed that everyone thought they were more than capable of reaching the island and bringing home the fire. All of the birds were there and the council decided one among them should try first, since they could easily fly over to the island. It was decided that the first to try would be the eagle.  He was a very smart and strong bird, so the council agreed he would surely be able to do it. He was the strongest flier among the birds and unmatched in his hunting skills.  The council thought that if any bird could retrieve the fire

Image: Owl Reading through the Cherokee Myths, I began to fall in love with my ancestors' people.  These stories are rich with imagination and you can easily picture them being told around campfires or to small children as they fall asleep.  My favorite story from this section was  The Owl Gets Married   from  Myths of the Cherokee by James Mooney (1900), In The Owl Gets Married , a young woman's mother tells her only to marry a good hunter.  When a suitor comes along asking for the girl, the mother inquires if he is a good hunter and he says he is.  The mother allows her daughter to marry him.  As the days go by, the man leaves each morning to hunt and fish and is gone all day, but only brings a few fish or scraps home each night, saying that he didn't have any luck.  The mother is suspicious and tells her daughter to follow him.  When the young woman follows the man the next day as he leaves to hunt, she sees him turn into an owl and grab food from the river, th

Image: Fire For the reading this week, I decided to check out some of the Cherokee Myths.  I chose Cherokee because two of my great grandparents were full blood Cherokee, but I still don't know a lot about their culture.  I really loved reading all of these stories.  All the creative ways they have explained the origins of different things, like the shape of the land or certain characteristics of animals.  My favorite of these stories was The First Fire   from  Myths of the Cherokee by James Mooney (1900).  The story is really beautiful as it tells how fire came to the Cherokee lands.  It tells how each of the animals tries to go and retrieve the fire, but fails and is changed.  I think it would be really fun to try and rewrite this story with some sort of twist.  I think it would be a good challenge to try to write this story in a more modern setting or maybe just with different animals and come up with ways in which they are changed to be like the ones we know today.

In a small little cottage on the edge of town lived an old couple.   They lived together peacefully, but they couldn’t be more different.   The old man was kind and gentle natured, while his wife was hot headed, greedy, quarreled with anyone that passed, and loved to spread vicious gossip.   One day, the old man was sweeping his front porch and enjoying the spring air when a small bird landed fell out of a tree and landed in his yard.   Startled, the old man ran to the little bird and found it hopping in the yard with an injured wing.   The old man gently picked up the little bird and inspected the wing.   The little bird nestled into his hand and chirped happily at him.   The man carried the little bird in the house and mended the hurt wing.   He then put the little bird in a cage to protect the little one while the wing healed. The little bird began to enjoy staying with the man and stayed even after the wing healed.   The old man would open the cage during the day

This week I read some of the Japanese Fairy Tales and a couple were very fascinating to me.  The first one that caught my attention was The Two Frogs .  The two frogs live in opposite cities, Kioto and Osaka. They each wish to see the other city so they set out on a long journey.  After climbing a mountain halfway, they meet each and explain their journey.  They decide to hold on to each other and stand up as tall as they can, pointing their noses towards the city they are traveling to.  They do this thinking they will see the city they are trying to journey to and decide if it is worth it.  However, a frogs eyes are in the back of its head so they simply looked at their own cities and decided it wasn't worth the journey and they went home.  I just thought this story was very cute and it would be interesting to figure out a way to retell it with a more modern twist. 'The Two Frogs'  The Violet Fairy Book  by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1901) Image: epitr

Learning About Feedback: My biggest take away from learning about feedback is that it is very important to remain positive in your own criticism.  I read  6 Bad Mental Habits That Sabotage Your Success  which talks about the biggest habits we make that are negative towards our success.  I really liked this article, because it listed things we all do to some extent that inhibit our ability to perform our best.  It didn't just focus on the negative, though.  For each wrong thing we do that the article listed, it gave a positive alternative to overcome it.  For example, when the article mentions how "making excuses" causes us to get stuck, it suggests we focus on what we "can do."  Teaching us positive alternatives is the best way to overcome something negative.  This article does a fantastic job at saying this and putting it into use.  Positive reinforcement is the best way to get the positive results we want.  I think that this is a very important lesson to ke

For my final Tech Tip, I decided to check out Google's define and etymology look-up tools.  I know what you're thinking and it's probably "Big surprise, linguist nerd" with a sarcastic tone and maybe even complete with an eye roll.  Yes, I love all things linguistics, so of course I am taking every opportunity to talk about it.  I decided to focus on using Google's etymology feature and sent out a message to a few friends for ideas of words to search.  I received too many awesome words so I did my top 3 favorites. The first one I tried was 'rascal' because the person that suggested it wondered if it was related to ' Raskolnikov '.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find any evidence suggesting the word came from the character's name and my research came up with the result that they are unrelated. Screen shot of Google search results for 'rascal etymology' The second word I looked up was 'gargantuan.'  I was surprise

I followed the steps here for installing a Word Counter for Chrome yesterday. I have already been using it constantly for things like my blog posts, comments, and other assignments online. This tool is so handy for typing up things in Chrome that you need to know the word count for.  Before adding this extension, I would type my posts and comments for this class in a word document and then paste over, so that I could have a word count.  This tool is so useful and I am now obsessed with knowing my word count when typing. Another neat part of it, it lets you know the reading level of what you wrote.

Meme made by Caitlyn Buckley at ImgFlip.com Story: I had my students do some extra practice problems last week and turn it in for a grade on Friday.  Somehow, I've lost my copy to the answer key.  I have too much homework of my own to solve all 75 questions and make sure they're correct, so it is now for a completion grade.  

I decided to make my profile visible on my blog.  You can see it in the side bar on the left side (when using desktop view).  When you click the link to my profile, you can learn a little more about me.  It shows some personal stuff like where I am from, what town I live in now, and a recent(ish) picture of me.  I decided to add this so that readers can get a better sense of me.  Often, I feel like online blogs and such are very hard to make a personal connection with.  How do you relate to someone you only know through words on a screen?  I hope adding a little more about me helps people have an easier time feeling like they are reading from a real person.

Following the online instructions , I updated my Canvas Profile.  I decided to add in a short little biography stating what my major is and what college I belong to.  I also updated my profile picture to be a more updated photo of myself.  Several of my professors already require us to use a photo for our profiles because they think it makes the Canvas Discussions a little more personable.  A few of my classmates have been giving me a hard time because my old photo had my hair still long and with my old glasses.  My new photo is much more like my day to day appearance.  While editing, I also discovered how to link my Google account to Canvas.  This allows me to submit assignments straight from my Google Drive without the hassle of downloading them to whatever computer I am currently using.  I often start my papers on one of the computers in the library on campus and just save it to my Google Drive so that I can finish it from wherever I want.  Before connecting my accounts, I had to d

Have you ever found a picture of something and wanted to find the source or even a better quality version of it?  Well, I definitely have.  All the time, I find logos for things that I can't remember what company they are for and it drives me nuts.  I also get really frustrated when I look through my pictures after visiting a museum and find that I forgot to take a picture of the information card for a piece.  Then, I'm just stuck trying to recall who did the piece and what it was called.  Well, Google Reverse Image Search saves the day every time.  This is something I used to use all the time and then I kind of forgot about it.  When I was reading through the options for Tech Tips, I got so excited when I saw this as an option.  I had completely forgotten how to do it and the instructions were linked right there.  I went to the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa a few weeks ago (I highly recommend it, by the way) and I took a picture of an awesome painting there.  As I was scrolling th

For this week's Tech Tip, I'm discussing the Google Timer feature.  Now, I've actually been using this for years, but it is so wonderful and easy to use, I think everyone should now about it.  To use it, just open a tab, go to Google, then type in "set timer for."  Google brings up a little digital timer than you can fill in the minutes and seconds for.  This is great for things like blocking studying time.  During finals season, I study one subject for about two hours and then switch to another for two hours.  This helps me not get bored and burned out on one subject while also making sure I end up studying for every class.  I just set the timer for two hours in a tab and then in a new one until it goes off.  If I close the tab or window before the timer has run out, it prompts me to make sure it wasn't by accident (usually it is an accident).  If you ever use Google Assistant, it is pretty much exactly like that timer.  I also use this one often, since I can

For this week's Tech Tip, I decided to check out the Canvas App a little more.  I downloaded the app a couple of semesters ago and have used it primarily for canvas messages.  I occasionally will look up posted grades and download an assignment if I forgot my laptop for class.  Today, I checked out the Canvas Student Android Guide  for some tips on what else the app is useful for.  There, I discovered I can use widgets with the app! If you don't know, widgets are little things you can place on your home screen on an android phone that updates every couple of minutes.  I currently use one for weather that updates every half hour with the current conditions and another that has my monthly calendar of events.  I tried out the "To Do" widget for the Canvas App and already know I'm going to use it all the time.  It gives me a nice little check list of all the assignments I have left to do.  It color codes each class, gives a symbol with the type of assignment, the titl

Image by Caitlyn Buckley "Lake Eufala" January 2018 Here you will find my portfolio site, Finding Mythology , to read my stories and such. Feel free to comment below anything you would like to discuss from it.

Image: Golden Apple In section B of the Japanese Mythology stories, I was really interested in "The Labors of Yamato - The Golden Apple."  Jofuku searches for the Isle of Life Eternal for the Golden Apple and after years of sailing, he finds it.  He stayed on the island for 100 years and never felt any passage of time.  One day he wanted to leave and he had a stork fly him away from the island and back home.  Upon returning, Jofuku become the Khan of Khans.  This is not the ending I was expecting to come from this.  As I read the story, I expected Jofuku to run into some trouble upon trying to leave the island with the Golden Apple.  I think I was expecting the immortality to not work unless he was on the island.  It would give the lesson that you cannot be selfish in wanting eternal life and also have the happiness of being with those you love and be worshiped. "The Labors of Yamato - The Golden Apple" from Romance of Old Japan, Part I: Mythology and Legend

An updated version of this story can be found here at my site: Finding Mythology Image: The Golden Girl Amaterasu, the Sun-Goddess, was cherished by everyone. She was the most beautiful goddess and definitely the brightest. One day, she was sitting at the loom of the world, weaving in different pieces of life. She weaved into the pattern patches of joy and love with dismay and slaughter. Her loom was filled with all the parts of life. Suddenly, the demon of fire, Susa-no-wo came down from the peak. He came with wrath and malice, tearing in from the void. Amaterasu was frightened by her brother’s sudden presence and feared his power. She fled to the shadows of night in a cave to hide from the wrath of her brother and would refused to return to the heavens. All the people mourned the disappearance of their beautiful goddess. Their bright star was gone and so the people begged and cried for her return. But, she would not leave her cave and the people became even more upset