Famous Last Words: A Difficult Week

Hello again! This is only my second time doing "Famous Last Words," so I'll reiterate the basic idea: the following will be a reflection on how my week has gone, along with what I anticipate for the upcoming week.

This week was a difficult one for me in a lot of ways. My great-grandfather was placed on hospice care following a medical emergency, and he unfortunately passed away on Friday night. Emotionally, of course, it's been difficult for me -- not only managing the grief, but also the fact that I live so far from my family, so I was unable to be with them during this difficult time. I am hoping to be able to go home for the funeral this upcoming week, but I do have an exam on the same day and at the same time, so I am hoping my professor will allow me to take it early or make it up later. The drive home is about twelve hours, so it will be a fairly stressful week, as I'll need to drive home Wednesday and drive back to Oklahoma either Friday or Saturday, in addition to two exams, at least one quiz, and a paper, among other things.

Still, despite the sadness of losing my grandfather and the stress of everything else, I do feel a sense of peace. Like me, my grandfather was a Christian, and I am confident that he is now reunited with Jesus, with my great grandmother, and with other loved ones. In fact, over the last few weeks/months, he told both my grandmother and my aunt that he felt ready to go whenever God called him, despite then being in excellent health. Since his wife died several years ago, he actually had gotten a girlfriend at his retirement community, who was a wonderful woman. She had dementia, and she had been relying on his care for some time. In completely unrelated circumstances, she passed away the day he went to the hospital, about a week before he did. I believe that was a blessing from God, calling them home together, so that neither had to deal with the grief of losing the other.

Anyways, I know this post was a bit of a downer, but I just wanted to take a moment and reflect on how grateful I am for the people I've been blessed to have in my life. I'll miss my grandfather dearly, but my life is better for having had him in it.

Sunrise over Wainui Beach, from pxhere

Week Eleven Reading Notes Part A - Hiawatha

Source Story: The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855). Web Source.

• "The Four Winds"
• After killing the great bear Mishe-Mokwa, Mudjekeewis' name is changed to Kabeyun and he becomes the West Wind. He gives the other three winds to his children - the East Wind is his son, Wabun. Wabun brings the sunrise and makes things beautiful but is lonely, until he finds a beautiful but lonely human maiden. He romances her with his beauty and then turns her into the Star of Morning, and now they can be seen walking together in the heavens.
• "The Four Winds (cont.)"
• The North Wind is given to his strong and fierce son, Kabibonokka, who brings the snow and the freezing of the lakes and forces everyone to migrate southward. But a diver (duck) remains with fish he has caught and logs for a fire, and despite Kabibonokka's best efforts to freeze him, and then to beat him in wrestling, Kabibonokka cannot defeat him. The South Wind is given to Shawondasee, who is fat and lazy and careless, and who brings about summer and crops and birds. Shawondasee falls in love with a beautiful maiden dressed in green and with yellow hair, but is too lazy to woo her. One day her hair is white like snowflakes, and he thinks his Northern brother has stolen her from him, so he sighs his sadness across the plains, and the maiden is blown away, because she was a dandelion all along.
• "Hiawatha's Childhood"
• A woman named Nokomis falls from the moon and gives birth to a daughter, whom she warns to be wary of the West Wind. The daughter does not listen and lets the West Wind seduce her, but he abandons her when she gives birth to their son, Hiawatha. She dies of heartache, so Hiawatha is raised by Nokomis, his grandmother, who teaches him everything. He learns how to talk to birds and animals, and Iagoo makes him a bow, with which he kills a red deer buck on his first try.
• "Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis"
• As an adult, Hiawatha learns of how his mother died, and decides to confront his father. He goes to the land of the West Wind, and he and his father sit and talk for many days. Hiawatha pretends to be happy to see him only to ask what his weakness is. His father says the only thing that can harm him is a specific black rock, and Hiawatha tells his father the only that can hurt him is the bulrush. Then Hiawatha tells his father that it was his fault that Hiawatha's mother died, and his father admits it.
• "Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis (cont.)"
• Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis fight violently, but reach a stalemate because Mudjekeewis is immortal. So Mudjekeewis admits that he was only testing Hiawatha's courage, and when Hiawatha is old and ready to die, he will instead become the North-West Wind. On the way home, Hiawatha stops to buy arrows and meets a beautiful but enigmatic maiden, named Minnehaha or Laughing Water, about whom he does not tell Nokomis.
• "Hiawatha's Fasting"
• Hiawatha goes into the woods to fast and pray for the "profit of the people." Mondamin, a friend of man dressed in green and yellow and sent by the Master of Life, shows up after Hiawatha has been fasting for several days and wrestles with him. They wrestle for three nights in a row, and then Mondamin announces that the Master of Life will give Hiawatha victory, and Hiawatha will get what he prayed for.
• "Hiawatha's Fasting (cont.)"
• Mondamin tells Hiawatha he will come and wrestle him once more, and after Hiawatha wins he must strip Mondamin of his green and yellow clothes, bury him, and watch over his grave until he comes up again and reaches for the sun. Hiawatha, though he has been fasting for a week and has refused Nokomis's food, wins the fight and follows Mondamin's instructions. Mondamin comes back as a corn plant (dressed in green and yellow) to serve as food for the people and fulfill Hiawatha's prayers.
• "Hiawatha's Friends"
• Hiawatha had two friends: Chibiabos, who was the greatest musician of all time, and Kwasind, who was the strongest man. When Kwasind was young everyone called him lazy - his mother asked for his help with the nets but he was too strong and broke them all. His father asked for help with hunting, but Kwasind broke the bows. Still, Kwasind cleared the path of fallen trees for his father, and dammed the river and caught the King of Beavers for the other young men.
• "Hiawatha's Sailing"
• Hiawatha asks all the trees and the hedgehog for parts of themselves to help him build a magical canoe. They agree, albeit unhappily. Then Kwasind clears the river of all logs and sandbars, and Hiawatha can sail it without paddles because of his magical canoe.
• "Hiawatha's Fishing"
• Hiawatha sets out to kill the King Sturgeon, but the sturgeon keeps sending other fish to grab his line and try to pull Hiawatha down. Finally, after the other fish have failed, the sturgeon swallows Hiawatha, the canoe, and the squirrel friend who is along for the ride, in one bite. Hiawatha, inside the sturgeon, kills it by attacking its heart, then the squirrel and some seagulls help him get out of the now-beached and dead fish. He instructs Nokomis to work at night turning the fish into oil for winter so the seagulls can eat it during the day as thanks.

"Westward, Westward, Hiawatha" painting by M. L. Kirk from Wikimedia Commons

Week Ten Reading Notes Part A - "Eskimo"

Source Story: "Eskimo Folktales" by Knud Rasmussen with illustrations by native Eskimo artists (1921).

• "The Coming of Men"
• The earth was created by falling from the sky, and then men crawled up out of the earth as little children. Eventually a man and a woman were there, and man grew to be many on the earth, and man got dogs and did not know how to die. There was no light or day, other than the light in man's homes. The earth was too crowded, so a great flood came and drowned many. Then two old women talked about whether it was better to have death and light, or no light and no death. The former was chosen, and light came about because, when man dies, he becomes a star in the sky.
• "Nukúnguasik, who Escaped from the Tupilak"
• Nukúnguasik lived among a set of many brothers who would bring him food since he had no wife. One day he discovered one of them creating a Tupilak (a magical creature created with the intent to harm someone) and telling it to kill Nukúnguasik. Nukúnguasik startles the brother to death, then returns home. He goes out with the other brothers looking for the dead man, and leads them to him, where the Tupilak is now eating his body. They bury him and go on with their lives.
• "The Woman Who Had a Bear as a Foster-Son"
• An old woman is taken care of by her village, and one day they give her the cub of a bear they killed. She raises it as her son and it grows up well-loved by the whole village. When it is older, it begins hunting with the men of the village to find food, but the men from a faraway village want to kill it, despite the old lady making a collar to mark it as friendly. One day the bear kills a man in self-defense, so the old woman tells it that it must leave her, so that nobody will be able to kill it. They both weep, and the woman marks the bear with oil before he goes. From then on, it was said that sometimes people would see a bear as big as an iceberg, marked with oil.
• "Qalagánguasê, Who Passed to the Land of Ghosts"
• A boy's whole family dies and leaves him a paralyzed orphan. He begins to see ghosts, and one day he sees several ghosts, including his sister. They tell him that if he doesn't tell anyone about them, he will stop being paralyzed, but as soon as he starts to feel stronger, he tells everyone and is immediately paralyzed again. The village ties him up and leaves to go to a singing contest, and the ghosts of his parents show up to take him to become a ghost with them. He goes willingly and becomes a woman ghost.
• "Isigâligârssik"
• A bad wizard steals Isigâligârssik's wife, so Isigâligârssik challenges him. The wizard stabs him, but Isigâligârssik goes home and puts on his childhood dress, which has healing powers and heals him. Then he takes a tiny bow and arrow and has a shootout with the wizard, who he kills. He gains his wife back and they live happily ever after.
• "The Insects that Wooed a Wifeless Man"
• A wifeless man is detested by all the women because he always sleeps in too late to go hunting. One day he goes out in the evening anyway, and helps a Noseless One whose kayak was overturned. After that, he does not struggle with his old sleepiness and becomes the best hunter around, and he gets the best wife. But she nags him until he tells her what happened, and then his sleepiness returns. His wife runs away and he chases her, and she sends a bunch of insects to try and seduce him. When this doesn't work, he crawls into the cave she is hiding in and she combs his hair and tells him to sleep until spring. When he wakes up, she's gone and so is the winter, and his kayak has rotted from old age.
• "Makíte"
• A man named Makíte is bad at hunting and hears that his wife is going to leave him, so he runs away to live along in the mountains. He meets a lone-dweller there who has floating lights in his house, and he threatens to kill the lone-dweller if he doesn't say where he got them. He tells Makíte that they are on top of a faraway hill. They get into a fight and Makíte kills the man, then goes on and meets some dwarves. He witnesses a fight between the dwarves and the inland-dwellers, who fight by sending waves of water towards each other. The dwarves win, and Makíte builds a house with them, and gets some of the floating lights from the hill, and lives there forever.
• "Atungait, Who Went A-Wandering"
• A man named Atungait leaves his wife to find a strong woman to go on a trip with. He finds one, and they travel around on his sledge, meeting several strange groups of people. They meet one group who is all lame, and he steals their copper plaything. They use magic to send an avalanche of stones after him, but his strong woman ties leather to the back of their sledge which stops the stones. After this, he tells the woman to stay there while he flies to see which way home is. When he arrives home, he sees his wife with another man. She says she hasn't kissed anyone, so he kills her, but the man she was with admits to kissing her, so he lets the man live. Then he marries the strong woman.
• "The Giant Dog"
• A man had a giant dog, who could catch whales and narwhals and on whom he and his wife could ride. He gave the dog an amulet that made it hard for the dog to die. After the dog killed and ate someone in their village, the man had to move somewhere else with the dog. A stranger came with three dogs as big as bears to kill it, but the dog killed all of them, and the dog also often killed inland-dwellers and brought their legs back to his master, which is why inland-dwellers are so afraid of dogs.
  

Image of a dog sled from Wikimedia Commons

Week Nine Reading Notes Part B - West Africa

Source Story: "West African Folktales" by William H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, with drawings by Cecilia Sinclair (1917).

• "The Moon and Stars"
• Anansi and his son Kweku Tsin are captured by a dragon one day while they're out hunting. The dragon takes them back to his castle where they are guarded (along with many others) by a great white rooster. Kweku devises a plan to distract the rooster and make a ladder to climb up into the heavens, using a bag of bones and a magical fiddle to keep the dragon at bay as they climb. The gods make Kweku into the sun, Anansi into the moon, and all the others into the stars.
• "How the Tortoise Got His Shell"
• The gods decide to throw a party, so they send Klo (the tortoise) to get some wine from the chicken. Klo is very fast, and he gets there quickly. The chicken and the tortoise fight for the right to the wine and the palms that produce it. Klo wins, but there is too much wine for him to carry in his pot, so he drink all the leftover wine, then slings the pot onto his back along with all the trees. Being drunk, he is too slow getting back to the party and finds himself locked out in the rain for two months, during which time he dies under the weight of the pot. When they find his body, the gods are able to bring him back to life, but the pot had so melded to his body that it became part of him, and that's how tortoise got his shell.
• "The Hunter and the Tortoise"
• A hunter finds a singing tortoise in the woods, and takes her home to sing to him every day. She agrees with the condition that she will only sing to him, and not to others. But of course he tells everyone about it, and tells them they can kill him if it turns out that he's lying. They agree that, if he is telling the truth, he may punish them however he sees fit for disbelieving them. But the tortoise doesn't sing in front of them, because of the agreement they made. After they kill the hunter, the tortoise finally speaks, and explains that the man brought it on himself.
• "The Leopard and the Ram"
• A leopard and a ram mistakenly choose the same place to build their house, so they decide to live together. When Leopard realizes that Ram brings home as much meat from hunting as he does, he asks his son to find out how Ram kills animals. Leopard's son and Ram's son reveal to each other how their fathers hunt, and Leopard gets the information from his son that Ram backs up a bit, then rams forward with his head to kill an animal. One day, the rain makes the floor very wet, and Ram slips backwards. Thinking Ram is about to kill him, Leopard takes his son and flees into the woods, despite Ram's calling out to him. This is why rams are domestic (they continue living in the house) while leopards are wild (they flee into the forest).
• "King Chameleon and the Animals"
• The animals decide they need a king, but because they cannot agree on one, they decide to have a race to determine their ruler. The first one to sit in a certain stool should be the king. Hare, the fastest, makes it to the stool first, but finds that Chameleon has hidden himself on Hare's tail and jumped off at the last second to steal the seat. The other animals honor their agreement to make him king, but they are all unhappy with the outcome, so they leave Chameleon lonely forever, with no subjects to rule.
• "Elephant and Wren"
• The king tells all his subjects that anyone who can cut down a certain large tree with only a wooden axe will receive an elephant as a reward. Spider takes the challenge, but secretly uses a steel axe instead. However, he doesn't want to share the elephant with his family, so he ties it to a tree while he tries to catch a wren to give them to eat while he hides the elephant in the woods to eat by himself later. He fails at catching the wren, and the elephant escapes.
• "The Ungrateful Man"
• A hunter comes across a pit with a serpent, a rat, a leopard, and a man all trapped in it. He helps them all out, despite thinking that the man was the only one he should have saved. The serpent repays him with a powerful antivenom for snake bites (which must be mixed with the blood of a traitor), the leopard supplies him with meat for many weeks, and the rat brings him a bundle of riches. The man from the pit, however, only becomes envious of the hunter and mooches off of him until he finds an opportunity to do him wrong. He wrongly accuses the hunter of stealing from the king, and the hunter is sentenced to death. Before his execution, however, the hunter is able to save the king's son from death by a snakebite using his antivenom mixed with the blood of the ungrateful man, who they kill for being a traitor. The hunter is set free and given many riches.
• "Why Tigers Never Attack Men Unless They are Provoked"
• A tiger and a hunter befriend each other and take turns staying at each other's homes. The hunter's father dies, so the tiger and his cub come to visit to console their friend. As they are leaving, some of the hunter's friends shoot the tiger, who fortunately does not die, but worries that his friend has betrayed him. The tiger pretends to be dead to see what the hunter will do. The hunter is deeply grieves and stays by the tiger's side all night, crying, to protect the body. The tiger reveals that he isn't really dead and explains what happened, then promises to never attack a man unless the man provokes him first.
• "How Mushrooms First Grew"
• A pair of brothers racks up a lot of debt, but they decide to try to pay it off honestly by farming. A bird eats all their seed, so the debt transfers to the bird. The bird tries to lay eggs to sell, but a silk tree's branch smashes them, so the debt goes to the tree. The tree tries to make silk to sell, but an elephant takes down all the pods, so the debt goes to the elephant. A hunter kills the elephant, so the debt goes to him. A tree stump trips the hunter and breaks his leg, so the debt goes to the stump. A colony of white ants (termites) eats through the stump, so the debt goes to them. They all pool their money to buy linen thread, which they weave into pieces of cloth to sell to pay off the debt. They sometimes lay this cloth out on their anthills, and people call it "mushrooms."
• "Farmer Mybrow and the Fairies"
• Farmer Mybrow sets out to make a field next to the home of some fairies. The fairies help with whatever task he begins (clearing the field, planting, etc.). He keeps the field and the fairies a secret from everyone, even his wife. But eventually his wife finds out the location and goes there to gather some firewood, after promising her husband she won't answer any questions she hears there. She pulls an unripe ear of corn from a stalk, and the fairies ask what she is doing. Forgetting her promise, she tells them she is pulling down an ear of corn. The fairies immediately help her with her task, pulling down all the crops before they are ripe and ruining the field.

Image of a tortoise from Public Domain Pictures

Week Nine Reading Notes Part A - West Africa

Source Story: "West African Folktales" by William H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, with drawings by Cecilia Sinclair (1917).

• "How We Got the Name: 'Spider Tales'"
• Spider was jealous of Nyankupon for being the subject of all the folk stories, so he asked for all the stories from then on to be called Anansi stories, after him. Nyankupon agrees on the condition that Spider bring him a jar full of bees, a boa constrictor, and a tiger. Spider uses his cunning to trick all the above creatures and brings them to Nyankupon, so after that the old stories were called Anansi (Spider) Tales.
• "How Wisdom Became the Property of the Human Race"
• Father Anansi, who possesses all the wisdom in the world, becomes angry with some men and decides to punish humanity by reclaiming all the wisdom he has shared and placing it in a pot, then hiding the pot on top of a tree. He hangs the pot from his neck, and therefore he cannot climb the tree to hide it there. His son, who has been watching, suggests that he carry the pot on his back. Realizing that his son has more wisdom than he, Anansi throws the pot down, breaking it and releasing all the wisdom across the world to humans.
• "Anansi and Nothing"
• Anansi and his rich neighbor, named Nothing, go to town to find some wives. On the way, Anansi trades clothes with Nothing so that he appears rich while Nothing appears poor, so Anansi gets many wives and Nothing gets only one. When they get home, Anansi's wives realize how poor he is and leave him for Nothing. Anansi tricks Nothing into a deathtrap, killing him. Nothing's first wife is heartbroken and makes food to share with all the children of the land so that they will cry with her, which is why children are often said to be "crying for Nothing."
• "Thunder and Anansi"
• Anansi and his family have no food and are starving, so Anansi goes in search of some coconuts, only to find an underwater cottage where Thunder lives, who gives him a magic pot that provides food out of nothing. Afraid that the pot's magic will run out, Anansi keeps it from his family, allowing them to starve while he fattens himself up. His son, however, shapeshifts into a fly and spies on him, then takes the pot to share with his family. Anansi's wife, in anger, accidentally destroys the pot while cooking a meal to share with all the hungry people in town. Angry, Anansi goes back to Thunder and tells him the tale, whereupon Thunder gives Anansi a magical stick that beats him to a pulp. Anansi is left feeling remorseful for being so foolish.
• "Why the Lizard Moves His Head Up and Down"
• A king offers his three daughters as wives to any man who can discover their names, which Anansi does through trickery. He tells the name to his friend Lizard, who agrees to act as his herald when he meets with the king. However, since Lizard is the one who actually says the names, the king gives him the princesses instead of Anansi. Anansi frames Lizard for the crime of killing the king's rooster, and pours boiling water into his mouth to make him unable to speak. When the king's men find him, he can only bob his head up and down and is unable to defend himself, so the princesses are taken from him and given to Anansi, and since then all lizards bob their heads up and down.
• "Tit for Tat"
• During a terrible famine, Anansi's oldest son discovers a good hunting place where he finds meat to sell in the village. Greedy, Anansi uses trickery to track his son to his hunting place, then drives him off in order to kill all the animals himself and sell them to become rich. His son returns the trickery, though, by creating a fake god to scare Anansi into leaving behind all the meat, which his son then takes to sell, becoming rich and eventually telling the story to all the neighbors, which shames Anansi into temporarily giving up his evil ways.
• "Why White Ants Always Harm Man's Property"
• During another terrible famine, Anansi finds a dead antelope and tries to take it home to his family to eat, but Wolf and Leopard steal it. So, he tricks them into letting him hang them from a tree by promising to sharpen their teeth for them, then takes back the meat and hosts a huge party right in front of them where the whole village eats the antelope meat. Later on, a family of white ants (termites) passes by and helps Wolf and Leopard escape their bonds, so the two animals offer to prepare a feast for the white ants a few days later. Anansi hears and dresses his own children up as white ants, and they go and eat the feast themselves. When the real white ants arrive, Leopard and Wolf assume they are really Anansi's children and kill all of them but the father, who in anguish vows never to help anyone again, and only to destroy.
• "The Squirrel and the Spider"
• Anansi uses trickery to steal the crops which Squirrel has so carefully tended, by pretending that the fields were his all along because he built a roadway to them, where Squirrel always came by the trees. He and his family carry away all of the crops to sell them, but a huge storm makes them drop their crops to hide. When they return, a crow has his wings spread over the crops to keep them dry, whereupon the crow claims the crops as his own and takes them to sell himself, leaving Anansi with no reward for his theft.
• "Why We See Ants Carrying Bundles As Big As Themselves"
• Anansi and his son both need rain to make their fields grow, and a dwarf comes along to his son and offers his help. The son taps the dwarf lightly with two small sticks, which makes it rain. Anansi, thinking to make the dwarf produce double the rain, beats him so hard with two large sticks that he dies. Anansi tries to frame it on his son, but his son is too clever and tricks Anansi into taking the dwarf (a close friend of the king) to the king himself. The king is angry and has the dwarf's body magically sealed in a box which is placed on top of Anansi's head to carry forevermore. The only way to get rid of the box is to get someone else to carry it for him. Anansi tricks Ant into carrying it for him, which is why we always see ants carrying such heavy loads.
• "Why Spiders Are Always Found in Corners of Ceilings"
• Anansi's family has a magnificent harvest, but Anansi wants it all to himself, so he tricks his wife and son into leaving for awhile, telling them he'll be gone on business, and when he returns they will all feast together. Really, he stays and eats half the harvest himself. His son discovers that someone has been stealing from them and sets up a rubber man, to which Anansi gets stuck. Out of shame when he is discovered by all the townspeople for stealing from his own family, he shapeshifts into a spider and hides in a corner of the ceiling, which is why spiders always hide there.
• "The Grinding-Stone that Ground Flour by Itself"
• During a great famine, Anansi's cousin discovers a stone that grinds flour of its own accord, next to a stream of honey, but he only ever takes enough to feed his family. Realizing that his cousin's family is not starving like everyone else, Anansi tricks his cousin into showing him where the stone is. Rather than only taking what he needs, and against the stone's begging, Anansi takes the entire stone from village to village, carried on his head, and sells the flour, making a lot of money. But when he tries to take the stone off his head at the end of the day, it refuses, and instead grinds him up, which is why we often find lots of small spiders under huge stones.

Spider image from Good Free Photos

Week Eight Progress

1. Looking Back: Over the first half of this semester, I've found that I've actually enjoyed some of these assignments more than I expected, and I've been relatively proud of the work I've done, particularly the stories I've written. I've always enjoyed writing, but fiction - and especially fairytales and folklore - has never been something I've been good at or really even tried. I've had a good time reading most of the stories so far, and I think my note-taking strategy has fallen into a good and productive rhythm. That said, I'm not very pleased with myself in the realm of extra credit; I had intended, at the beginning of the semester, to be quite diligent at working ahead and completing extra credit work. But so far, I've not done a very good job of that.
2. Looking Forward: That said, the most obvious segue into what I plan to do for the rest of the semester is that I hope to be more consistent with the extra credit work and perhaps even begin working ahead somewhat. I think the best way for me to accomplish this would be to do the extra credit at the start of the week, rather than putting it off until the end and eventually just not doing it at all. I've been avoiding doing it at the very beginning of the week because my week is very front-loaded when it comes to classes, but it would be feasible for me to try to do more of this work on perhaps Wednesdays.
3. Image:

Image of a mountain climber from Pexels

Week Eight Comments and Feedback

This post is meant to be a reflection on the quality of the feedback that I've given and received in this class so far.

1. Feedback In: So far, I would rate the quality of the feedback I've received at around a three out of five. I appreciate that people have been quite positive and friendly in their comments, and many have pointed out the things I've done well in my posts, which is helpful to know which things I should continue doing or expand on. That said, not very many of the comments I've received have included much in the way of constructive criticism, which makes them not very useful for revising my work. I appreciate that people want to be nice, and I am certainly grateful for the compliments, but I can't know how to fix my work if no one will verbalize what's not working.
   
2. Feedback Out: I guess I would rate the quality of the feedback I've been putting out at about a four to a four and a half out five. I've taken several writing workshop classes for my minor, so I've had a fair amount of experience with offering constructive feedback on writing. I make an effort to point out things that could be improved and offer solution to address them. That said, I think my comments have been lacking in providing anything constructive that doesn't pertain to the writing/storytelling (i.e., I know I haven't given much feedback, if any, on website structure and appearance or anything along those lines), so that might be something for me to look for in the future.
   
3. Blog Comments: I've enjoyed reading other people's blog posts, stories, and introductions a lot. I'm a huge fan of getting to know people, so it's been really fun to see their introductions and get a sense of who they are, then see that come through in their writing. I'm hopeful that my blog offers a similar sense to those who read it.
   
4. Looking Forward: Moving forward, I'll make an effort to pay attention to the actual websites/blogs and their structures and offer feedback on those things as well, rather than limiting myself to just commenting on the writing and the stories themselves.
   
5. Image: I chose the following image because I really like the idea it puts across. External feedback is helpful, but taking the time to self-reflect and provide your own constructive criticism is important, too.

Image from Cheezburger