Storytelling Week 10: There's No Longer Just One Woman Left In The World

News Anchor: We interrupt your scheduled programming with very big news! Last week, we thought that that all of humanity was doomed, since there was only one woman on Earth in the south, and she just recently got married, so we thought that only one family would have a child, meaning that the end of people on Earth was inevitable. We now, however, have reports that as of last month there is now more than one woman,which means we might actually have a chance! There are also some other very interesting twists to this story that you're going to want to hear. We have Ted Williams live on the scene with more information. Ted, can you tell us what's going on?

Ted: Yes this is quite the weird situation. There originally was just one woman left on Earth and she was located in the southern region, while all of the men were located in the north. It was a long journey to the south, so no one had actually made the trip yet to marry her. Finally, a man from the north had traveled south so that he could marry her, meaning that there were no longer any single women left on this planet. We weren't sure what we were going to do, because it's kind of hard to populate the earth with just one man and one woman.

Anchor: Yes, you do have a point there.

Ted: Anyway, there was a headsman who had a son who also decided that he wanted a wife. The woman's husband knew of this other man, but didn't expect him to actually do anything about it. Boy, was he wrong. The headsman's son went to the couple's house and formulated a plan to take the woman from her husband. The headsman's son tried to take her while the household was sleeping and began to pull her out of the house by her feet. The husband woke up, realized what was happening, and ran to save his wife.

Anchor: Wow, this is quite the story.

Ted: Oh just wait, there's so much more.

Ted: So the two men are pulling the woman in opposite directions, and she ends up splitting in half. In half! Isn't that crazy? So now there are two halves to a once whole woman.You'd think that the men would fight over who would get to keep both halves and make the woman whole again, but they actually ended up each taking half of the woman and keeping it for themselves. The headsman's son took the half with the feet to the south, while the northern man kept the top half for himself, and this, my friends, is where things get really interesting. So each of them have half a woman, right? What were they supposed to do with half a woman? Each of them decided that they were going to carve the missing parts of each woman out of wood so that they had a whole woman. The man in the north carved feet and legs for his wife, while the man in the south carved arms and hands. Apparently, the woman in the south is a great dancer, but not very good at sewing or any other skill with her hands, and the woman in the north isn't a very good dancer, but is extremely skilled at sewing. This means that we can now begin to populate the Earth!

Anchor: This has turned into quite the story.

Ted: I know, and it's still developing.

Anchor: Thanks for the update, Ted. We will keep the viewers informed on this developing story as we get more information. Tune in at 9:00 pm for more updates.

(Eskimo Family)

Bibliography: This story is based off of "The First Woman" by Eskimo storytellers. 

Author's Note: The story "The First Woman" really stood out to me because it kind of reminded me of the story of Adam and Eve in the beginning of the bible. There was only one woman on Earth and she lived in the south. A man from the north decided that he was going to go marry her, so he traveled to the south and made her his wife. A headsman's son, however, thought that he should have a wife and traveled south as well, even though the woman was already married. The husband knew of the headsman's son, but let his guard down while he was sleeping. The headsman's son went in the house while everyone was asleep and started dragging the woman out by her feet. The noise woke the husband up and he began pulling his wife back into the house by her shoulders. Eventually, the woman was pulled in half and the headsman's son took her lower half to the south, while her husband kept the upper half in the north.They each decided that they were going to carve the rest of the woman out of wood, but the woman in the north couldn't do much with her feet since they were made of wood. The woman in the south couldn't do much with her hands since they were wood, but she could dance very well. This story is the myth behind why women in the south of Alaska can dance well, while the women in the north are very skilled at sewing. I thought it would be fun to write a news report over this story because I think it would definitely be breaking news if there was no longer just one woman on Earth. 

Reading Diary Week 10: Myths and Legends of Alaska Continued

This is the second half of the Myths and Legends of Alaska.

The story "The First Woman" was my favorite in this unit. Earth originally just had all men, who lived in the north, and there was only one woman who lived to the south of the men. One of the men decided that he was going to travel south and marry the last living woman. There was a headsman whose son didn't have a wife and the man who married the last living woman acknowledged it. This headsman's son traveled south to the woman's house and formulated a plan to take her. He waited until everyone was asleep and began to drag the woman out of the house by her shoulders. The husband woke up as the headsman's son was taking the woman and started pulling his wife's feet. The headsman and the husband kept pulling until the woman was eventually pulled into two. The headsman's son took the upper half of the body to the north, while the husband kept the lower half in the north. They each set out to carve a complete woman out of wood. The woman in the south had wooden hands, while the woman in the north had wooden feet. The woman in the south was able to dance very well, but didn't have use of her hands, while the woman in the north was very skilled with her hands, but couldn't dance. This is why southern women are good dancers and women in the north are very skilled with their hands.

I liked that this story related to mythology about why Eskimo people are the way they are today and was really interesting to read from start to finish.

(Eskimo Woman)

Reading Diary Week 10: Myths and Legends of Alaska

This week I read Myths and Legends of Alaska told by Eskimo storytellers.

I really enjoyed all of the stories in this unit. I thought it was really interesting to learn more about what Eskimos believed in and the fact that a lot of the stories were about the raven. I've never really done a lot of research into their mythology, so I really enjoyed this unit!

My favorite story in this unit is "The Origin of the Tides". I haven't read a story about why there is high tide or low tide, so this story caught my eye almost immediately. It begins with a man, a raven named Qa, walking along the Nas River. Instead of having a high tide and a low tide, the sea was always high. Qa found a rock in the very middle of the sea and decided that he was going to build a home underneath it. He made a hole in it and then dug a hole through the house and the Earth and put a lid over it all. He had another man be in charge of the hole and he would open it twice a day, which would cause the ocean's tide to go in and out. A chief, Tael, got caught in the tide and couldn't figure out why the ocean kept going in and out. He finally realized it was because of the lid and that's the reason that we have high and low tide.

All of the stories in this unit were very good. I loved reading about the different beliefs that the Eskimo indians had.

(The Ocean)

Week 9 Storytelling: The Owl's Wife

Dear Diary,

My mom said that it's time for me to find a husband, but said I need to be very picky when choosing one. I know how well my father took care of her, and how much she struggles now that she's gone, so I want to make her to completely approve of the man I marry. She's offered up some very good advice that I need to keep in mind while finding a suitor. She said I'm supposed to find a man who will be a good hunter, since I need to be taken care of. She told me that this is one of the most important characteristics to look for in a man. I know that my mother is always right, so I'll make sure that my husband knows how to provide well for me.

Dear Diary,

I didn't think I'd ever find a suitor, but that changed today. A man approached my mother about me becoming his wife. She spoke with him a bit and decided that he would be a good husband for me. I was kind of reluctant at first, but he swore to my mother that he's a good hunter, and she believes him, so she really wants him to court me. If my mother thinks he's good enough to be my future husband, then he most likely is.

Dear Diary,

I'm a married woman now! My mother allowed us to live together and be married and I'm very happy. I can't wait to start our life together. I know that he will provide so well for me and our future family. He already goes out and spends the whole day hunting to find food! He hasn't really come back with anything big yet, but it's to be expected since he's not used to hunting in this area. I know that he'll get better with time though!

Dear Diary,

There's something weird going on with my husband. He claims to be out hunting all day, but only brings back little scraps of food. He always makes up excuses, but I'm having a hard time believing him. He should be bringing back more food than just scraps, especially since he's spending the entire day out hunting. My mom is getting suspicious. She thinks that something weird is going on and wants me to follow him the next time he hunts. I'm worried that he'll never trust me again if he catches me, but I need to know what's going on. What if he's not really hunting and just steals food from other people? He could also just be a really awful hunter, which means he lied to my mom. She won't be happy if he lied to her. I'm ready to figure out what's going on.

Dear Diary,
I finally figured out why my husband was so bad at getting food, and you're never going to believe why. I followed him out to his hunting spot and found out that he's actually an owl. I'm married to an owl! I don't even know what to do. I can't be married to an owl. Especially an owl who can't provide for me at all. I'm not sure what to do. I need to confront him, but I think I'll talk to my mother first.

Dear Diary,
Well, I'm no longer married. I confronted the owl and ran him out of the house. He was so sad, but what was I supposed to do? We could never stay married. I moved back in with my mother and will continue to look for a suitable husband. Hopefully the next one can provide well for me, and isn't an owl.

(Owl)

Bibliography: This story is based off of "The Owl Gets Married" in the Cherokee Myths Unit. 

Author's Note: My story this week is based off of "The Owl Gets Married". It's about a girl whose widowed mother tells her that she needs to find a husband who is a good hunter so that she can always have plenty of food to eat and be taken care of. After awhile, a man comes and asks if he can marry the girl. The mom tells him that he must be a good hunter and the man says that he is a great hunter. The mom agrees to letting them get married and the man takes the girl away to be his wife. The girl and her mother become suspicious of the man's hunting skills after he claims to hunt for hours and hours, but never returns with more than just a few scraps of food. The mother has her daughter follow the man out when he hunts, and she finds out that he's actually an owl. The girl was furious, confronted the owl, and forced him to leave their home. The owl dies of a broken heart because he loved the girl so much. I really enjoyed this story, and thought it would be interesting to write a diary from the girl's point of view and give her a voice in the whole thing.

Week 9 Reading Diary: Cherokee Myths Continued

Today I read the second half of the readings in the Cherokee Myths Unit by James Mooney.

The second half of this unit was just as good as the first. I really like that a lot of these stories were about animals and told different tales about animals' relationships with each other, as well as with humans.

One of my favorite stories was "The Owl Gets Married". A mother always told her child that she would only allow her to marry a man who was a good hunter and could provide well for her. A man came along and claimed to be a great hunter, so her mother advised her to allow him to court her and gave the two of them permission to live together. The husband would always claim to be out hunting, and would be gone the whole day, but would only return with a small amount of food. After seeing him return with very little food, the mother got very suspicious and had her daughter follow him. The daughter followed him to where he would go 'hunt" and found that he was actually an owl. She returned to her mother with the new information, and the girl confronted the owl. She drove him out of their house and the owl withered away because he had lost his love.

(Owl)

I also really liked the story "The Bullfrog Lover". A man really liked a woman, but her mother didn't like him at all and didn't want him courting her daughter. He hid in the bushes near the water and made a trumpet, and made himself sound like a bullfrog. At first, the woman was very frightened, and told her parents what had happened. The family believed that this was a sign to not tell the daughter what to do in her personal life anymore and the mother let her be with the young man. In the second part of the story, a girl would hear a bullfrog singing, but didn't realize the man that she was going to marry was a tadpole, until one night the fire revealed his tadpole mouth. 

Week 9 Reading Diary: Cherokee Myths

This week I read Cherokee Myths by James Mooney.

I was really excited to read these myths this week! I've always loved Native American tales, so it was really interesting to read about what the Cherokee Tribe believes!

I was really interested in "How The World Was Made" at first glance, because it's always really interesting to read about what different cultures believe about the creation of the world, and it ended up being one of my favorite stories! The Cherokee believe that the Earth is an island that is suspended from the sky vault. They think that once the Earth has grown old, the cords holding it up will break and the entire planet will be submerged in the sea. The Earth used to just be covered in water, overcrowded by bugs who thought that there needed to be more room. This story also had a lot of aspects of the bible. After the men and animals were created, they had to watch over the Earth for seven days and seven nights, which relates back to the Earth being created in seven days. There was also just a brother and sister in the beginning, much like Adam and Eve. I really enjoyed this story!

I also liked "Tobacco and Strawberries". The first part of the story was about how tobacco came back and the second was about where strawberries came from. I really liked the origin of strawberries story. I think it's really interesting that strawberries were created in order to make a woman fall back in love with her husband.

(Strawberries)

I liked reading about the different Cherokee Myths this week! 

Week 9 and 10 Reading Plan

I'd like to read about Cherokee myths during week 9. I'm really interesting in the story "How the World was Made", but I'm also looking forward to reading about the different Cherokee animal tales. I'm also Native American, so I'm looking forward into hearing mythology from one of the Native American tribes.

(Smokey Mountains)

 

For week 10, I'd like to read about tales in the Pacific Northwest. I feel like growing up in the south, especially Oklahoma and Texas, you really only hear about tribes in Oklahoma. It'll be cool to read about what the tribes in the Pacific Northwest believed and learn a little bit about their culture and tradition. 

 



Blog Ideas

I looked at three different blogs and found different aspects of each that I really liked and wanted to incorporate into my blog in the future!

http://oklahomafornow.blogspot.com
I really liked how this blog had the Pinterest board and weather widget on the side of it. I'm planning on adding my Pinterest board into my sidebar, because it's really cool to see what people are pinning for this class!

http://mythandfolk2016.blogspot.com
This blog had such a pretty and vibrant layout. I want to update the design of my blog to be a little bit more lively and creative! I loved the different shades of pink in the background and how it wasn't just one solid color.

http://weeklydoseofbri.blogspot.com
This website was organized well and made me want to change the layout of my site a bit to make it more organized and easy to navigate.

All the blogs in our class are so great and I enjoyed looking through them!

Time Strategies For Second Half of Semester

I think my schedule for this class is actually working out really well! I'm pretty good about keeping on top of things, and I've also allowed myself some extra time in the week if I want to work ahead. I think I'm doing much better with time management as a whole this semester. I'm getting everything done on time, studying for tests in advance, and I feel a lot less stressed this semester in comparison to others, which is great! I know that this part of the semester is when things start to pile up, so I'm really trying to stay on top of things and make to do lists and actually stick to checking the items off. I have a ton of projects due over the next couple of weeks, and I now have to start really applying for jobs since I graduate in almost two months, so I'm hoping that having good time management skills will help me be able to do it all. I've found that making a list of things to do has helped a lot with completing things on time! I'm looking forward to the second half of this semester.

(This picture made me laugh because I used to be the person who waited last minute to do anything) 

Storytelling Week 7: The Doctor's Crazy Story

(Radio show host): Good morning, Dallas! Thanks for tuning in on this beautiful Monday morning. So we know that we've been getting pretty repetitive with some of our contests, and wanted to spice the show up a little bit, so we've decided to do a new segment called "What were they thinking?", where we allow callers to tell us their stories, and the craziest story wins a free cruise!

(Radio Host)

(Radio co-host): We know a lot of ya'll have had some strange things happen to you, and we're super eager to hear your stories. Call in between the hours of 9am and 12pm to let your story be heard and hopefully win a cruise to the beautiful Bahamas!

(Radio host): It looks like we already have people calling in! Our first caller goes by the name "Doctor". Hey Doctor, what's your crazy story?

(Doctor): You guys aren't going to believe my story, I barely believe it!

(Radio Co-host) Please go ahead and tell us, we can't wait!

(Doctor): I come from a small town and I'm the only doctor for all of the residents, so I get pretty close to all of my patients. One of my patients, Pedro, came in about six months ago and was complaining that he didn't have a wife, and didn't think he'd ever get married because he didn't have anything to offer a woman.

(Radio Host): Well that's pretty sad, poor Pedro.

(Doctor): You won't be saying "Poor Pedro" after I tell you what happened. So I decided I would help Pedro out and find him a wife. I knew a friend of mine had a daughter who was interested in getting married quickly, so I set the two of them up. They got married the next day, and I allowed them to live out at one of my houses and even gave them 200 pieces of gold to kind of give them some money to start out with.

(Radio host): That was pretty nice of you! I wish my friends would give me two hundred pieces of gold. I would have been so thankful!

(Doctor): I would have been too! I thought everything was okay, then i went on with my life and I thought they had too. About a year later, I got a call from them that they needed more money because they had spent all of mine.

(Radio co-host): They asked you for more money?! After you helped them get married and gave them money to start their lives?

(Doctor): Yep! So I reluctantly gave them more money, just because I didn't want them to suffer. I thought that it would be the last I heard from them.

(Radio host): Well I'd hope so! But I assume that they called you again.

(Doctor): Yes they did. And that's when I started to get a little suspicious. How could they be blowing through so much money? So I decided I would confront them about it. They then had the audacity to play dead when I confronted them, so I kind of took them back to my house so that they could be my servants.

(Radio host): You took them to be your servants? That's a little weird.

(Doctor): I know, but what was I supposed to do? They took all of my money!

(Radio co-host): Well that was quite the story.

(Radio host): Yeah, I know that we still have more stories to hear, but I don't think that anything could top that! Doctor, we're just going to go ahead and give you the cruise!

(Doctor): Wow thanks so much!

(Radio host): Someone will contact you with the details. Make sure to tune-in after the break to hear more crazy stories and to see who will win the contest tomorrow!

Bibliography: This story is based off of The Clever Husband And Wife in the Filipino Popular Tales by Dean Fasler. 

Author's Note: In this story, Pedro thought that he didn't have a chance at finding a wife because he didn't have any money or anything to offer a woman. The doctor decided that he would help him find a wife and get him married the next day. After the two were married, he gave them a house and two hundred pesos in order to start their life together. They spent all of their money and had nothing, so they asked the doctor for money again. They spent money again, and asked once more, then realized that they could just keep asking the doctor for money. The doctor figured out their scam, went to confront them, and they played dead. The doctor realized that they were faking it, and made them his servants for life for stealing from him. I thought it would be fun to do a modern radio show about it, and make the radio program a contest for crazy stories. I think it would have been interesting for the doctor to be able to share his story on the air and get modern-day reactions to it. It made it fun to give the doctor a cruise for having the most ridiculous story because that's something that radio shows today do.

Reading Diary Week 7: Filipino Popular Tales Continued

This is Part B of Filipino Popular Tales by Dean Fasler.

Many of these stories contained animals and explained why things are the way they are today. My favorite stories were the ones that contained morales at the end of them, like "The Iguana and the Turtle".
One of my favorite stories was "The Story of our Fingers". I love that the story gave human-like characteristics to fingers, and I've never really read a story that has done that before. We all know that our thumb is separate from our other fingers, but the story begins with the thumb actually being close to all the other ones. The fingers were hungry and the thumb suggested that they steal food in order to survive, but the other finger didn't agree. Since the thumb was a thief, the other fingers didn't want to live near him, so he separated from the rest. I thought this story was really interesting and different. I definitely never thought that there could be a mythological reason for why our thumbs are away from the rest of our fingers.
I also really liked "Why the Ocean is Salty". The ocean used to be without salt and was a collection for goddesses' tears. There was a tall giant who saw a beautiful women sitting on the rocks crying into the ocean. The woman didn't want to live in her dark home in heaven, so she asked the giant to build her a mansion made out of pure white bricks. The giant couldn't find any bricks, so he went to the king of salt, who gave him bricks of salt. He built bamboo bridges across the ocean and had people carry many bricks across. The ocean, who was peacefully sleeping, was angered by all the noise and wiped out those carrying them, dissolving the salt into the water, which is why the ocean is salty today. I like that this story is so unique and I'd never heard a story about why the ocean is salty before this one.

(Salt)

I really enjoyed this week's readings. Filipino tales were something that I'd never read before, so it was really interesting to read their stories! I love learning about other cultures and I think that learning about their different myths really gives some insight into their culture and beliefs!