The Once and Future Blog

Hiawatha On the dawn of the day of the nineteenth year of Hiawatha, a great chill spread over the whole of the plain and forest. From where this chill was from, no man, woman, or creature could say. As the people continued working as they do in Spring, the grasp of frost began to eat at the sapling plants in the gardens. Such a plague of ice was unknown to these people, and it was not long until the men and women were without plan, without food, and without hope. Soon came a hare to the circle of wigwams, a meager beast of little more than bones and fur. It hopped to Hiawatha, seated within his dwelling next to a fire consuming a small ration of maize dried last harvest. The great warrior saw the pathetic look of the rabbit, and extended his hand to the creature in an act of mercy. The hare began to eat the morsels, the little food Hiawatha had remaining, and soon its strength seemed to return. It energetically began to escape, but indicated to Hiawatha to follow. The weakened war...

Today we continue the Song of Hiawatha, the story of a legendary hero in Native American mythology. Overall, I found the story to be incredibly interesting and unique in comparison to "Old World" stories, featuring a deeper connection to nature and divinity than is expressed in most of the Western canon. Hiawatha himself originates many things, including the development of corn, where a woodpecker gets it red color, and more, and also shows himself to be the mighty warrior of legend in these tales. Hiawatha slays the serpents This week's specific story of interest was an easy choice. Continuing my love of heroism once again, we see Hiawatha defeat the evil sorcerer Pearl Feather, who had slain in vain the father of one of his own. Hiawatha prepares intricately, and sails to the home of Pearl Feather through the rot waters, past the fire serpents (which he kills with ease), to his evil grounds. Therein, he fights a losing battle against a seemingly invincible enemy, ...

This week, we're covering Native American mythology. Here in Oklahoma, you do occasionally hear some of the old stories from displaced tribes such as the Cherokee or Chickasaw, but they still aren't nearly as common as Bible stories or classic English tales, built into our history. However, stories and folktales from further off peoples aren't common, so I selected the Song of Hiawatha as a story from a unique place that formed one cohesive narrative. And, I enjoy heroic tales after all. The first thing that stuck out to me was how bad I am at keeping up with verse poetry. While I realized I somewhat signed up for this, I find it difficult to both read/comprehend a story/keep up with its characters and try to manage the verse at the same time. While this one is in decently modern language, the heavy use of Native words made it a difficult read. Hiawatha Defeats Mondamin The story that caught my attention the most of the first half was the Fasting of Hiawatha. This sor...

Today's reading finishes off the Chinese Fairy Tale unit. I found the tales, as I said in the last part, to be pretty odd or off putting at some points, but all in all, they were entertaining and many of the morals were more or less obvious (some morals may not be ones particularly appreciated in Western circles as well). The first story that caught my eye this time was Retribution. The story frames an obvious place for vengeance to be enacted - an argument causes a death, no one takes claim for it - not the perpetrator, not the witness - and a spirit returns to have its revenge. However, the story does not move toward an obvious revenge, but instead the spirit becomes the soon-to-be born child of the neighbor. He grows to love birds, who invade the garden of the murderer, and the boy tries to stop the birds with rocks. So, the murderer dies just similarly to the victim, and no one says a word. This type of non-obvious revenge was particularly interesting to me. It will definitely...

This week's readings come from Chinese Fairy Tales. While I've always loved folk tales from the East, I've never encountered many tales from China, outside of historical ones. The very first story caught me off guard so much to the point where I had to begin writing immediately after it. The story of the Favorite of Fortune and the Child of Ill Luck, in no uncertain terms, is a bad story. I'm sure it's seen as a classic to some or many, but to me, it almost reads like an anti-joke. I hate to rag on the classic tales of another culture, but this story is sad all the way through, offers only the moral of "Don't go out of your station.", and ends poorly for everyone. If I were to use this story in any way, it would be to create a sad tale to catch my readers off guard, like this one did to me. A solid example of what I'd like to avoid doing, in general, but it still teaches a valuable lesson. A cunning cat In a bit of contrast, I was rather ente...

February was a pretty tumultuous month for me. Between travelling out of town for a grand total of a week straight, some of the most difficult midterms I've ever taken, and a near-persistent cold, it was pretty hard to keep up with this class. On the week I ended in Memphis, I missed pretty much every assignment from this class. That, combined with a few dropped posts here and there, have put me back about a week's worth of points I'll be making up both with extra credit and dead week time. Overall, I'm happy with how my project is coming along, but it's obvious I'll need to think about dedicating more time to this class in the coming weeks. As far as my writing goes, I want to look more into trying some experimental writing - fancy stuff like second-person perspective, choose-your-own-adventure stories, and foreign land fairy tales. King Arthur draws Caliburn, a good symbol for what I need to do in this class.  Image Source: an apparently bad movie

Much of the feedback I've received from students so far has been focused on positive things. While I don't mind hearing what I've been doing well, I would like to get more critical feedback to be able to figure out how to improve, not just learn what things I'm doing well. Much of the feedback I've given has been oriented this way - I try to find at least one item for improvement,  or two for projects, so that the recipient has something to work off of. The blog comments have helped me to get to understand some folks on a basic level, but without talking to them, it can be difficult to try to connect to them as people - especially on the mostly faceless internet. Going forward, I'm going to try to keep with offering constructive criticism for people's projects, and to try to get it in before revisions are due. I'm also going to try to solicit constructive criticism more often in my own posts. I chose this one since it's pretty accurate to how I ...

So far this year, I think I've already seen marked development in both my critical reading and creative writing ability. While I've never been the best at keeping up with reading assignments, I've never found the ones in this class to be a drag. Even though February was terribly busy and left me a week or so behind in the class, I don't feel swamped trying to catch up. At first I didn't believe the reading notes were helping me to write, but by the time I wrote my Breaking of the Bow story, i found myself referencing them often to incorporate or redevelop tropes. I recognized I just used this photo, but it's easily my favorite one I've used so far. It provides the lovely setting for my favorite story thus far, as well as being its primary character.  The Dragonfly and the Baobab