Reading Notes: Pacific Northwest, Part A

In the story "How Beaver Stole Fire," animals and trees walked and talked and there we no men on the earth. Pine Trees had the secret of fire and refused to share with anyone else, no matter how cold it got. One winter, it got so cold that many animals came close to freezing to death. The animals held a council because they wanted to steal fire. At the same time, the Pines held a council on the Grande Ronde River and had a fire to keep them warm. They had guards watching for animals so they could not steal fire. Before the guards took place, however, Beaver hid near the fire. When a lit coal rolled towards him, he grabbed it and ran away. The Pine Trees started chasing after him, but Beaver kept running. Sometimes he ran side to side and sometimes he ran straight, and this is why the Grande Ronde River curves in some places and is straight in others. Many of the Pines grew tired and stopped along the river. That is why there are thick groves of trees in some places along the river. Cedar also chased after Beaver. Cedar ran to the top of a hill to see how far away Beaver was. Beaver was far away; he had reached where the Grande Ronde River met the Big Snake River. Beaver swan across Big Snake River and gave fire to Willows, Birches, and other trees. These trees have fire inside them, and that is why people can start fires by rubbing two pieces of their wood together. Cedar still lives alone on the top of the hill.

While reading this story, I realized that many of the sentences are very short, and sometimes can read choppy. This may be an interesting technique to include in my story if I choose to write based on this story.

Bonfire by Jens Mahnke

Story source: Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest, especially of Washington and Oregon, by Katharine Berry Judson (1910)

Comments

Story Lab: TED Talk Videos

For this Story Lab, I watched Ted Talks about stories and storytelling . The first video is the TED Talk of a woman named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from Nigeria. From a young age, she has been a storyteller. She read foreign books for much of her childhood and based the stories she wrote based on what she read in these books. She eventually discovered books and she learned that writers could look like her. When she came to university in the United States, her roommate was surprised to learn Nigeria has English as an official language and that she was familiar with many of the comforts of American life. She believes people like her roommate have a view of Africans because of writing that portrays them as living in a dark place. When Chimamanda wrote a book, her professor told her the book was not "African enough" because the characters were similar to him, a middle-class man, and they drove cars. When she visited Mexico, she realized she saw the people there as poor immigran...

Tech Tip: Word Counter

This word counter is so helpful! I usually go to a word counter website and write my text in there, then copy and paste it. This extension makes it easy to just write where I will posting my text so I don't have to flip between tabs. I usually am worried about meeting the minimum word count, but I usually don't have an issue hitting, I am just afraid that I won't. I think I am generally bad in estimating numbers in general, so I probably would be very off in my estimate if I just tried tried to guess how long my writing is.

Growth Mindset

I had never heard of Carol Dweck or the growth mindset before this week, but I love learning more about personal growth and leadership development, so I really enjoyed hearing about the idea. I'd be interested to see how much of a different a growth mindset can make, especially in school or the work field. I feel as if I have a growth mindset at times, but a fixed mindset at others. Sometimes, when faced with a difficult task in school or extracurricular activities, I think of it as a growth opportunity, while I sometimes feel like I absolutely cannot do it and shut down because of my mindset. I would like to try to focus on having a growth mindset this semester, and know I will need to find specific ways to do this. I think this could potentially be very beneficial to me as I try to practice my Italian language skills even though I am not currently taking a language class. I know keeping up with the language and continuing to practice on my own will be difficult, but I can use t...

Shea's Myth-Folk Blog

Search This Blog