From tulsi to ashoka, Brindha to Sita

My introduction to sacred, mythic, religious, legendary, and holy plants comes and goes from the curriculum according the term and the number of class days. This introduction remains a walking lecture under development. I chose this term to focus on Saraca asoca, Ocimum tenuiflorum, and Cocos nucifera.

Originally I planned to start with the Saraca asoca, but then I remembered that the Ocimum tenuiflorum near the south faculty building was gone and I would have to use the plant at the intersection.

Ocimum tenuiflorum surrounds a single branch of Volkameria inermis

At the last minute I literally cut and pasted my notes on story of tulsi vivah, Brindha and Jalandhar, ahead of the story of Sita, Ravana, and Lord Rama. What I had not fully comprehended is that this is the order in which the stories fit together. The story of Brindha has to precede that of Sita and Lord Rama. The story is perhaps adult themed, what with Lord Vishnu violating Brindha.

Rodman wanted to ensure he was in the shot.

I first took the class down across the road to wrap up the Shinrin yoku with a brief moment amid the trees there. Then I read the story of Brindha. Afterwards, the class, chased by light rain coming off the ridge line, crossed campus to the ashoka tree.


Lefreeancy holding "Brindha" 


There I told the story of Sita and her abduction by Ravana, and, the story the Sashoka of Bhil.

Saraca asoca

After this I shared the Polynesian coconut origin story and a Philippine coconut origin story.

Saraca asoca seed pod

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Plotting polar coordinates in Desmos and a vector addition demonstrator

Image
In an earlier post I noted that Desmos did not directly plot polar coordinates. Not only was I incorrect, but Desmos responded to my blog to correct me! Although I had at some point seen that one could define a function f(x)=3x+5 and then have Desmos calculate f(6), I had not absorbed how this might be used to plot polar coordinates. The above works beautifully . Realizing that I could effectively program Desmos, I applied this thinking to demonstrating how to add two vectors when given the magnitudes m and the direction angles theta. The graph calculates the i and j components for the two vectors and then adds the vectors, graphically displaying the result while also providing information on the magnitude and direction of the vector sum. m1 and theta1 are the magnitude and direction angle for one of the two vectors, m2 and theta2 are the magnitude and direction for the other vector. All four are dynamically interactive and can be changed. The diagram purports to illustra...
Read more

Traditional food dishes of Micronesia

Image
Clara, Jennette, and Joanie presented ground hard taro cooked in an umw, effectively a hot rock oven. Pohnpeian: rotama. Pingelapese: sero. Mwoakillese: rodma. Mortlockese: Amahd. Kosrae: rodoma. After cooking in an umw the rotama is pounded with the petiole of a palm frond. Rotama is made from hard or swamp taro, known as mwahng on Pohnpei, mweian on Pingalap, pula in Mortlockese, and pahsruhk on Kosrae. In traditional times on the outer islands the women had primary responsibility for tending the taro while the men handled fishing and climbing tasks. Joesen and Noeleen presented fermented breadfruit from the outer islands of Yap such as Woleai and Eauripik. The raw ingredients were actually brought in from Yap, Noeleen prepared the maare.  The leaf wrap is ti leaf - Cordyline fruticosa. Pauleen, Barnson, Trisha, Verginia, Con-ray, and Maylanda from Kitti, Pohnpei brought in mahi umw, koahpnoair koakihr, and uht sukusuk. Above is breadfruit umw, mahi umw, o...
Read more

Setting up a boxplot chart in Google Sheets with multiple boxplots on a single chart

Image
The  Google Statistics  add-on for Google Sheets can display multiple boxplots in a single chart. The key is the layout of the data. One column should be the variable by which the data is to be grouped, the other column should be the data to be box plotted. Set up the Statistics add-on with the data to be plotted as the variable, and the grouping column as the "by" variable. In this image I had deselected all but the boxplot option, the result was the appearance of the Moment, Standard errors, and Confidence intervals options. The default is apparently a 95% confidence interval for the mean. The result is multiple boxplots on a single chart with a common scale. The new tab that is created also quotes 95% confidence intervals for the mean. Note that as of 2018 the Google Statistics add-on cannot be found by search in the add-ons. In addition, as of May 2018 the add-on no longer verifies, possibly due to the add-on not having been updated since August 2017. One may ha...
Read more