Myth & Folklore

 Feedback Strategies  Photo by Nick Wehrli from Pexels Feedback Thoughts How to Give Bad Feedback Without Being a Jerk This article makes it short and sweet by pretty much just coming out and saying to not soften the blows when you are giving feedback.  The author says that In order for both the receiver and the giver of feedback to benefit from anything, you need to start by not pulling any punches when it comes to giving feedback.  By saying things that are transparent and not manipulative, the receiver can actually benefit from what the person has to say.  I particularly liked how the author suggested to say things like " I have been researching great leaders and they gave great feedback, I am trying to replicate" or something like "I have high expectations and I know you can reach them, here are a few suggestions I had..." I find those to be a great way to say something constructive.  Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback The authors lists several reasons...

 Sinbad  Photo by Andrew Neel from Pexels Sinbad Research:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinbad_the_Sailor Just by reading the Wiki for Sinbad the Sailor I have come to find a lot of Arab writers were influenced by Greek writing when the story was written.  The voyages of Sinbad have a lot in common with the adventures of Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey.   http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/06/sindbad-second-voyage-cont.html In this story, Sinbad finds himself on an island with his crew in search of adventure and riches.  He takes nap only to find when awakens that his entire ship and crew have left him.  He has to escape large predatory birds from attacking him and finds a way to hitch a ride on one of them.  The bird (Roc) takes him to a dangerous valley full of diamonds and large snakes.  Another merchant crew was there and he is then able to join with them and return to Baghdad.  There is a lot to work with in this particular vo...

 Miracle Man  Photo by Taryn Elliott from Pexels James stepped of the badly weathered ship after what seemed like an eternity at sea.  He was approached by a man with a disturbing appearance.  Upon closer inspection it became known that this man was not just a man anymore.  He had been overtaken by something which explains why he was bruised, bleeding from self-inflicted injuries, and his wrists and ankles were rubbed almost down to the bone from the chains he wore.  James asked the man for his name and they simply replied with “we are Legion” (Historically a legion was 3,000-6,000 men).  A divine figure, James would not stand for such a thing and so he said unto the legion “leave this man, or I will cast you out myself.”  The legion stalled James and pestered him with riddles before he acted.  James ran up to the man and grabbed him by his arm and demanded the legion leave his body.  As he did so, the evil spirits erupted from the man a...

 Part B Notes Photo by Brett Sayles from Pexels Notes: For part B of these reading unit, I was most interested in the story of when Jesus first entered in Jerusalem.  Jesus and his disciples first entered the city and were not accepted well by the priests.  The people loved His doctrine and that frightened the priests.  As I was reading, I could only think what if the priests did accept his doctrine?  What changes would have occurred in the treatment of Jesus in the gospel of Mark?  The Pharisees themselves were amongst the priests as well and would still have sought out to destroy who they saw as a threat to their traditional ways.  I would maybe like to take a turn away from that in my retelling of this story.  I think it would be interesting to write about the “what if” and provide conjecture as to what would have happened if Jesus were to not be captured. As far as the last supper and the arrest go, I would like to change how some things wen...

 Gospel of Mark  Photo by egil sjøholt from Pexels Notes:  Jesus exits the ship only to find a man who looks in rough shape.  Bleeding and talking to himself the man is clearly undertaken by demons.  After a long voyage, Jesus still decides to help the man.  The demons spoke for the man and Jesus asks the man for his name.  The spirits answer for him exclaiming their name was "legion" (legion from my understanding is thousands of troops).  Could have been possible for there to be thousands of spirits living inside the man.  Jesus demanded the spirits to leave the man and sent them into a pen of nearby pigs.  The pigs, overtaken by the legion spirits, began squealing and all run off a cliff to their ultimate deaths.  Possibly write more of a story for the man that Jesus helped.  After he told the people of the nearby city and wrote about his experience what did he do?  We don't get to read any more about it.   It ...

Project Brainstorming   Photo by Walid Ahmad from Pexels   Scheherazade  From what I have seen and researched about the story of Scheherazade I became hooked almost instantly and look forward to reading more.  I have never heard of this story, but upon reading it I really became interested in it.  My goal is that this will help me develop differences in the future plots of my stories.  I might be able to do a role reversal or even write about the sultan switching roles with grand-vizir. Sinbad I have seen an animated film that was an adaptation of this story, but that had to be at least 10 years ago.  From what I researched about this story, I have no prior knowledge and I look forward to being able to write up my own story with a similar plot.  I definitely enjoy adventuring stories and Sinbad should be a fun one to work with.  I find it to be easer to write about adventures because there is a lot of room to work with.  At any...