Review: Week 12

Just a few weeks left! I seem to be sitting in an okay place points wise. I just need to keep focus over these last two or three weeks and everythings should work out! 

 

I've done a lot of research for this class and an independent study course I am working on. I feel like I could actually live on wikipedia now, so I need to remember to do a wikipedia trail each of the next few weeks. I'm already there, might as well blog about it and get a couple of points! :)

A picture I found that I enjoyed in the annoucments was this vitruvian cat. 

 

 

Source - Announcments blog, Vitruvian Cat, noted to be a kitchen magnet at CafePress

I also enjoyed the video of poet Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni:

 

Wikipedia trail: From Peafowl to Beethoven's 9th

 So I started off with Peafowl because I was specifically looking for information on peacocks for a story featuring Saraswati. In the story she is actually using wikipedia so I needed to see what sort of trail I could come up with!

An easy fun read from peafowl is iridescence. Peacocks have such shimmery feathers, so it's great to click over to this article, read a bit about iridescence in general and then see what else is considered iridescence. The weird one was the description of the sheen on raw meat. Accurate, but ew.

Rather than read about meat, I clicked into compact discs. Yes, apparently they still make them! Seems to be largely about computer/business use now and less about media. Also first fun fact would be asking someone hey, what to peacocks and CDs have in common? They're both sparkly! 

Finally I found my way to the wikipedia page for Beethoven's 9th symphony. There was a fun tidbit on the CD Page that supposedly the size of CDs were picked because the tech at the time allowed for the entirety of Beethoven's 9th to be placed on one disc. Apparently an original, handwritten manuscript of this symphony was the first musical score added to the Memory of the World Programme Heritage List by the UN. 

Photo of a peacock statue in Jaipur -  "Peacock" by guy_incognito is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Reading Notes: Kali the Mother (Part B)

 Kali the Mother (source) by Sister Nivedita, 1900

Notes on the voice of the mother - this sucker is intense. While it's still a mother's voice, this does not feel like that westernized, defied holy feminine up on a pedestal mother. This is raw real mother stuff. Which - not to discount any other experience - as someone who is a mom, who has done that whole labor and childbirth thing, the scary kid stuff and all of that - this feels real. Like mom stuff is not all sweetness and light and running through a meadow with your perfectly groomed child and I have thoughts on all of that. This brings up again kind of the thoughts that this is just more real. Moms are in the trenches with you either fighting your bullies or sometimes yelling at you because maybe you are the bully. 

Image source here - by Tapas Kumar Halder

Reading Notes: Kali the Mother Part A

Kali the Mother (source) by Sister Nivedita, 1900

 

I LOVE the comparisons in this between eastern and western theology. In the past that has kind of been my jam. :)

So text wise this is kind of dense and not the easiest/quickest read but I do like the constant call back to Kali's form. It's referred to several times as how it should be perceived as so great and horrible but it's Kali the mother and she's a great divine being. It's the perception challenging call out - I feel like there's a story idea there, I'm just not sure what it is yet. But that's the bit that's sticking out to me from these readings - perception, perception, perception. 

 

 "The Doors of Perception" by koen_jacobs is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0