Growth Mindset: Growth Beyond School

I mentioned in my Pinterest post that I occasionally do Scherenschnitte papercutting as a hobby. Traditional cutwork is found in several cultures worldwide, but I'm most familiar with the flowery style of the German/Pennsylvania German tradition that features a lot of hearts as well as stylized birds and flowers. So when someone from a historic site asked me about doing a Scherenschnitte cutout of the site's 18th-century house, I was like "Sure! I can do that!....Wait, that's actually not at all like what I usually do." Also, I typically cut patterns drawn by others; I'm not a designer myself, but I needed to draw a new pattern for this house.

I procrastinated for the next two weeks about getting started, until suddenly it was this last weekend and I was getting ready to head back to campus, after which I probably won't have enough time to do anything besides schoolwork. I really didn't want to start on this project, but I kept thinking about Growth Mindset and how I should push myself instead of staying in comfort zones. So I finally buckled down and got a pattern drawn. It's really more of a silhouette than a Scherenschnitte, but it will do for a first draft. It's probably the most tedious design I've ever tried to draw, with all the windowpanes that have to be lined up, but it's DONE, and it felt great to get it finished. Now I just have to cut it out...

poor shadowy photo by me of pattern draft

the Old Stone House in Granite Quarry, NC

personal photo

Tech Tips: Pinterest Board & Embedded Pinterest

I already had a Pinterest account, so it was easy to add another board here. I've started out with just two images, one that may be useful in a Storybook and one that I liked because it was a ballet version of The Ramayana, but I'll add more as the class progresses -- Pinterest is a great way to keep up with things I happen across while looking at other things but want to come back to eventually. I also embedded the board below.

I'm not super into Pinterest, but I do find it useful for keeping up with some things. I mostly use it to bookmark recipes, clothing I actually like, and historic examples of Scherenschnitte papercutting (I do this at living history events sometimes, but it's difficult to find original 18th/19th century pieces!). I also have secret boards for tracking TV shows and films I want to watch and a couple other random things.

Week 2 Reading Diary: Jataka Tales

reading: Part A of Eastern Stories and Legends by Marie Shedlock (1920)

First off, I was struck by the similarity between the story "The Hare That Ran Away" and Chicken Little. From what I can tell, they appear identical. Interestingly, when I looked up more information on Wikipedia, the Henny Penny article focused on fairly recent Western textual sources, with a brief mention of the ancient Jataka tale but no bridge between the 2500-year-old Jataka source and the ninteenth-century European texts. The stories are so similar that I would think they have to be linked somehow -- how odd (and intriguing) that there's such a long gap between the source materials!

I also found it interesting to look at the language Shedlock uses. The "by hook or by crook" phrase used by the crocodile in the second story and the thee's and thou's in other tales certainly are not direct translations from the original language(s) of the Jataka tales. It's always fun to see how people opt to translate sayings and dialogue forms, trying to adapt them to a different culture, not just a different language.

And then there is the similarity of the fable structure itself. Most people today are probably most familiar with Aesop's fables, but the tradition of this style of moral storytelling (and often the plots of the stories themselves) seems cross-cultural: La Fontaine's stories in French, components of African storytelling, the myriad collections from India and other Eastern traditions, and more. It raises the question of how such similarities arose. Did a fable tradition start in one place and spread out from there? Did these traditions arise independently in multiple areas? Or is the similarity in part influenced by translation, by translators taking tales from other cultures and tweaking them to our own society as they translate them? What makes these same motifs resonate across diverse cultures to create very similar, long-lived traditions?

the Tortoise and the Scorpion, from the fables of Bidpai

Mirza Rahim, 1847

source: Wikimedia Commons

Possible Storybook Topics

1. Possible topic: Minor characters. I noticed when reading and searching for images this week that some of the Ramayana characters, like Anusuya, have other stories associated with them. These are pretty minor characters in the context of the epic, but it looks like they appear in other canonical tales. What kind of picture would emerge for such a character if all their stories are pieced together in one place?

Research so far: Anusuya was the character who most caught my attention. In The Ramayana, she's identified as the wife of Atri, and the couple offers extremely generous hospitality to Rama and Sita. According to Wikipedia, however, more famous stories about Anusuya involve Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva testing her and, when she passes the tests, being born to her as incarnations. There's several different tales about this.

Anusuya Feeding the Hindu Trinity

 anonymous c1907 wall painting from Krishna-Sudama Temple of Porbandar, India

photograph by William Pearl, 2013 

source: Wikimedia Commons

2. Possible topic: How we met. When reading the chapter on Rama and Sita's marriage, I thought about making my Storytelling for this week a contemporary version of their love story (with Once Upon a Time-esque sense of fate and repeating what's happened before). Given that just the first half of The Ramayana has several couples' stories, I'm anticipating that there will be still more to draw from in future readings.

Research so far: Rama and Sita's love story is given in detail in The Ramayana, of course. Reviewing Wikipedia and Google search results isn't giving me any other versions. With Ahalya and Gautama, however, the Wikipedia article for Ahalya notes different textual sources with different versions of their story. Tales where there are multiple versions of the same story would be more interesting to include in the Storybook, since there are various sets of plotlines and details from which to draw.


3. Possible topic: Festivals. As in most religions, Hinduism has annual holidays and festivities that are often associated with religious events and figures. An interesting approach to a Storybook would be to have the mythological figures associated with each festival attend a modern celebration and branch out from observing the festivities to reflecting back on the events that inspired the holiday. I especially like this idea because it can combine contemporary cultural studies with the ancient texts we're reading in class.

Research so far: According to this Wikipedia article on Hindu festivals, there are several held in honor of mythological events. Thaipusam, a Tamil festival, is about Murugan's defeat of Soorapadman. Holi is about Prahlad's killing of Holika. Rama Navami celebrates Rama's birth and marriage (back to Rama and Sita again!). Gudi Padwa centers on Brahma's creation of the world, and Sitalsasthi celebrates Shiva and Parvati's marriage. There's various stories behind Deepavali, including the return of Rama and Sita from exile. And the list continues.


4. Possible topic: Panchatantra. I'm not familiar with the stories in this collection (yet!), but it looks like a fun read, and a collection of fables is sure to provide plenty of material for a Storybook! This book has been on my to-be-read list for a while, and this class is a good opportunity to finally get around to reading it.

Research so far: Penguin Classics offers an unabridged (!!) translation of the collection. The published version is attributed to Vishnu Sharma but goes back to ancient oral traditions, surprise surprise. The Hitopadesha is a related fable collection. We tend to think of fables as fun little stories now, so I'm a bit surprised that this work falls under the category of the more serious-sounding "treatise on political science and human conduct" (Wikipedia).

Week 2 Storytelling: Updates from Exile

Author's Note: I based this assignment off of the chapters in Narayan's Ramayana about Rama's 14-year exile to the forest, accompanied by his wife, Sita, and brother Lakshmana. Since the reading for this week cut off around where Sita is kidnapped by the demon Ravana after his sister has been rejected by Rama and mutilated by Lakshmana, I ended the account with Sita's kidnapping. I chose the medium of Facebook posts because, with how popular Rama is with his people, I thought they would be interested in keeping up with him during his exile. In the modern world, what better way to send people updates than regular Facebook posts?

Bibliography:
source: R.K. Narayan, The Ramayana: A Modern Prose Version of the Great Indian Epic (Penguin Books, 1977).

images:
Burmese Ramayana dance, by Nguyen Thanh Long, May 2010 (Wikimedia Commons)
Bharata Asks for Rama's Footwear, by Balasaheb Pandit Pant Pratinidhi, 1916 (Wikimedia Commons)
Anasuya Feeding the Hindu Treaty, anonymous c1907 wall painting from Krishna-Sudama Temple of Porbandar, India; photograph by William Pearl, 2013 (Wikimedia Commons)
Rama in exile with Sita and Lakshmana, print from Ravi Varma Press, 1920s (Wikimedia Commons)
Ravana fights Jatayu, from wall of Bhabanipur Chandranath Chatterjee Lane Sarbojanin Durga Puja pandal, South Kolkata; photograph by Arnab Dutta, 2011 (Wikimedia Commons)
Rama visits Atri, unknown artist, 1780-1785 (Wikimedia Commons)
Sita with golden deer, by Raja Ravi Varma (Wikimedia Commons)

Facebook posts generated with Simitator

Week 2 Reading Diary, cont.: Narayan's Ramayana

reading: The Ramayana: A Modern Prose Version o the Great Indian Epic by R.K. Narayan

The section of today's reading featuring Ravana's sister read like a soap opera to me. Woman desires man, propositions him as a lover, spreads lies about the woman he does love, and when spurned goes crying to someone else with more lies to entangle others in the drama. I see now why a student in previous semesters did a Storybook based off of "Real Housewives."

 Rama spurns Soorpanaka

Warwick Goble, from Indian Myth and Legend (1913)

source: Wikimedia Commons

I don't understand why Rama didn't just tell Soorpanaka that Sita is his wife, because it's implied that if Soorpanaka thought Sita wasn't just some woman Rama picked up as a lover in the forest, she would have backed off. Actually, Rama's actions throughout this section seem out of character for him; his one flaw appears to be that he cares too much for his wife, ignoring his brother's wise warnings in order to please Sita. The same goes for Sita, who, concerned about Rama, pressures Lakshmana into going against his best judgment to check on him.

For the Storytelling assignment this week, I'm considering two options. One is to go in the soap opera direction, scripting the story as if set in a modern television drama. The other is to create a "Facebook" for Rama (I remember making a "Twitter" for the Tower of Babel story was a lot of fun, because of the multimedia way of linking people/images/locations, etc. that is found in social media). The people back in Ayodhya obviously care very much about Rama and his relatives, and what better way to update them on events during his exile than a social media account?

Week 2 Reading Diary: Narayan's Ramayana

reading: The Ramayana: A Modern Prose Version o the Great Indian Epic by R.K. Narayan

I enjoyed getting into the first epic of the semester. I'm struck by the similarities of heroic stories across cultures -- connections with the gods, divinely-ordained destinies to be fulfilled, exile, unbreakable promises, impossible tasks, romances with princesses, and more! The Ramayana seems to have it all.

 scene from Javanese dance, depicting Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana in exile

photographer: Gunawan Kartapranata

source: Wikimedia Commons

I'm thinking about both the weekly storytelling assignment and possible Storybook topics as I begin reading. Several things stood out to me that could somehow be developed into either of these two assignments:

Waste Land theme. This was covered in a poetry course I took last semester, relating specifically to the Grail myth of Arthurian legend. But Rama and his companions also travel across a wasteland (in this case, specifically a desert) created from a once-fertile land for nefarious magical reasons.

Reincarnation. I was vaguely aware that Rama is an incarnation of Vishnu, but I'd never connected together the full story before. It reminds me of the TV show Once Upon a Time, with characters in our world having backstories they've forgotten in the fairy tale world, and I'm thinking for this week my storytelling post could be setting Rama and Sita's romance in a modern setting. The wedding chapter was my favorite of the ones I read for today, even if Sita's lovesickness seemed just a tad too much.

Frame tale. The first chapter of The Ramayana intersperses other stories throughout Rama's travels. A possible Storybook idea might be to pick out my favorite substories from these epics and have them retold within the frame of travelers, like Chaucer did with The Canterbury Tales.