Part 1:Answers to a Self-Administered Test on Myths, Legends and Tales (True or False)

Part 1 – Myths, Legends and Tales Self-Administered Test (True or False)

Dr Abe V Rotor 

Bangongot (sleep paralysis)
Who will be his next victim?.

1. Ati-atihan and Moriones have a common origin; both are ethnic and myths. F

2. The Loch Ness monster of Scotland and the Champ (America’s counterpart of the Loch Ness) monsters are thought to be living prehistoric beast that survived the annihilation of the giant reptiles. (T)

3. There is really a winged dragon – biologically speaking that is, meaning it does exist and is still found in the wilderness today. (T) One of them is Draco rizali, named after our own hero.

4. There have been sightings of UFOs in many parts of the world so from these testimonies, we are regularly visited by creatures of outer space. (F)

5. Ceres is goddess of the sea that is why she is called Ceres. (F)

6. Ceres was a goddess who came down to earth from Olympus and lived as ordinary human, had a beautiful daughter who was kidnapped and made queen of the underworld by married Pluto. The story goes that 6 months she stayed with her husband (spring and summer) and 6 months lived with her mother (fall and winter). (F)

7. Orpheus is the musician with a lyre who joined Ulysses in Odyssey, made a trip the underworld, and when he wanted to go back to earth with his loved one, Eurydice, Pluto warned them never to look back – but they did – and were doomed. (T)

8. Dracula, the most popular vampire is believed to have originated from Romania, Eastern Europe, but the curse is feared thoughout the European continent. (T)

9. Actually, according to medical research, there is a rare genetic disorder called congenital erythropoietic porphyria caused by inbreeding at the end of the middle ages in eastern and central Europe that make the sufferers avoid sunlight. (T)

10. Premature burial of people suffering of catalepsy (trance-state) explains why exhumed corpses would not have deteriorated as much as expected. (T)

11. The Chinese version of a vampire is less frightening than the European version. (F) The Chinese vampire has glaring eyes, long claws, covered with greenish white hair, and can fly.

12. The whole idea of a vampire is relegated entirely to fiction, no person would evn believe it otherwise. (F) Gilles de Rais who fought with Joan of Arc drank blood, Countess Elisabeth Bathory bathed in human blood, Marcello Costa of Brazil killed 14 boys drunk their blood to make him as handsome as his victims.

13. The abominable snowman actually exists. Sir Edmund Hillary, the first white man to reach the summit of Everest encountered the creature personally. (F)

14. The Greek mythological beast Centaur is equivalent to our tikbalang, except that the Centaur has the head of a man and body of a horse. (T)
15. Anyone who opens a Pandora ’s Box will suffer the ills of life without hope of recovering. (F)

16. Prometheus disobeyed Zeus; he brought fire to man – which made the difference between man and other creatures. (T)

17. Actually the gods and goddesses on Mt. Olympus did not agree that man should be given fire because he will be killing animals, melt gold and silver into coins, and start selling and buying things, make war. It is a terrible thing, indeed. (F)

18. The terms Medusa, Hydra and Cyclops are Greek mythological beasts which are biological terms today. (T)

19. Garlic and salt are believed to keep evil spirits away not only a belief among Filipinos but Americans Europeans as well. (T)

20. Daedalus and Icarus left Crete by flying; Daedalus flew near the sun and its wings made of wax melted that he plunged into the Mediterranean, (F)

21. Labyrinth is a mythological structure which serves to symbolize a very complicated situation where it is almost impossible for us to find exist. (T).

22. If misfortune befalls on you, think of a creature that rises from the ashes – and in no time you will recover. This creature is the Sphinx which guards the pyramids. (F) Phoenix

23. Narcissism is a psychological disorder that has led to the ruin of many lives, especially young men and women. (T)

24. Oedipus complex is the desire, most readily expressed in sexual terms, of a son for his mother with a consequential rivalry between the son and his father, a complex which may appear later in life as seeking a mother image in relations with other women. This is also true between a daughter to her father. (F)

25. Pygmalion, a sculptor made a marble statue of a most beautiful woman, asked Venus to give him a wife as beautiful as his masterpiece. Pygmalion can be compared with Professor Higgins of My Fair Lady. (T)~

Part 2: Myths, Legends, Tales - Answers to a Self-Administered Test

 Part 2:  Myths, Legends, Tales (Self-Administered Test)

Dr Abe V Rotor 

              The armless goddess, Venus de Milo. Restore her arms and she loses her beauty.

A. Identify the following important characters in Mythology.
1. Greek God with two faces – Janus
2. Equivalence of Adam and Eve sa Pilipino – Malakas at Maganda
3. Of all Philippine epics, which one is the most popular – Biag ni Lam-ang
4. Kung Zeus ang chief god ng Greek mythology, sino naman sa atin? Bathala
5. Sa lahat na legend sa Pilipinas ano ang pinakapopular – lalong lalo sa katagalogan? Maria Makiling

6. Ang pangalan ng Visayan supreme deity na nakatira sa Mt Lanlaon – Kan-Laon (or Lalahon)
7. Ang isang nobela ni Robert Loius Stevenson tungkol sa isang tanyang na doctor, ngunit doctor sa araw at halimaw. Dr. Jekyll and My Hyde
8. Heracles sa mga Roman ngunit _________________ originally sa mga Greeks. (Hercules)
9. Half-man, half-horse – Centaur sa Greek mythology, ___________ sa atin
Tikbalang
10. Ang Golden Fleece ay balat ng anong hayop? Tupa, a ram

11. The Aztecs – ancestors of the Mexican – offered human sacrifice by the hundreds to their God which is the __________sun (To assure that it will return every morning.)
12. The early Egyptians believe in the afterlife of their rulers, what do they do to the body of their ruler to prepare him for the afterlife? Mummy.
13. Pinakacompletong burial chamber na nadiscover – intact lahat at nasa Egyptian Museum ngayon ang bankay at lahat na isinama sa kanyang libing. Who is this pharaoh – Tutankhamen (or King Tuts)
14. Ang simbolo ng haloween sa America, isang claseng prutas na malaki at nilalagyan nila ng kandila sa loob. Anong halaman ito – pumpkin, relative of the squash.
15. Ang pangalan ng isang maunlad na siyudad during the in pre-classical Greece na biglang nawala sa mapa at walang survivor to tell the tale – Atlantis

16. Ang tahanan ng mg adios and diosas sa Greece – Mt Olympus
17. Matangkad siya, magaling tumugtog ng fluta, inakay niya lahat ng dada sa isang cuidad sa Germany; tinangian ng mayor na bayaran pagkatapos. Ang sumunod na kanyang tinugtog ay para naman sa mga bata, sa sumunod sila sa bundok and disappeared - Pied Piper
18. Isang legendary hero, did not submit himself to a foreign dictator in his own country, was force to shot an apple atop the head of his son – and hit it – then killed the invader. William Tell
19. Poet, novelist, professor sa America wrote the Tale of Acadie. Who is the principal character, whose name is more popular than the title of the book? - Evangeline
20. He saved his country by plugging his arm into a hole on the dike to prevent water from flooding. He was found dead the following morning, but he saved _______ anong country? Holland

21. Legend tungkol sa magaling sa pana, kaibigan ng mga mahihirap, inaapi. He rob the rich to help the poor, siya ay siang legendary hero of England, Robin Hood
22. Nakatulog siya ng matagal, at lumipas ang mga mahahalagang pangyayariu katulad ng War for America’s independence. Paggising niya he did know anyone including himself - Rip van Winkle.
23. Stories about old Arabia – Scheherazade 1001 Nights
24. Ang pintuan inside is treasure, anong sasabihin? Open Sesame.
25. Novela ng isang piloto sa Sahara, he met a little prince – The Little Prince.

Trivia: Mga unang tao sa Scandinavia more than two thousand years ago – nakakatakot sila, giants in size, marauders, blood thirsty – but they had their own civilization. Vikings (their god - Odin) ~

End of Part 2

Lesson on former with Ms Melly C Tenorio Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (School on Air) 738 DZRB 8 to 9 evening class Monday to Friday 

Part 3: Myths. Legends and Tales - Answers to a Self Administered Test

 Self Administered Test on Myths. Legends and Tales

Abe V Rotor

Ancient Egyptians revered the cat. To kill a cat was punishable by death.

Give the missing word or keyword

1. Last part of corpse to decompose – hair.

2. Element that glows in cemeteries – phosphorus. 

3. Tree that grows big and spreading in cemeteries –Acacia.

4. Errand of the gods and goddesses who is a boy forver, never growing old – Cupid.

5. Children’s story of a boy who flies and visit children in the homes and playground, who fought a pirate – Peter Pan

6. God of the Sea – Poseidon.

7. Island when Troy was found by Schliemann - Crete

8. One-eyed monster – Cyclops

9. Ghost appear on Balete Drive – white lady

10. If you follow where a dwende would go what grows around its dwelling – mushroom.

11. Province where we fondly associate with Ati-atihan –Aklan.

12. Prometheus defied Zeus by giving man _____ fire.

13. Old folk warn children of unseen spirits starting to roam around – twilight or takip silim.

14. Pestilence which killed one-third of the population of Europe in the Middle Ages – Bubonic Plague

15. Famous author of horror novels, among them the House of the Seven Gables and Scarlet letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne

16. American short story writer, and poet, who couldn’t write without taking a shot of liqueur too many, The Raven. _ Edgar Allan Poe.

17. It is a poem written by the same author of a love one her tomb by the sea. The narrator laments deeply for her death, and even in her tomb you could feel the deep pain of broken heartedness. Title of the poem – after the woman’s name: Annabelle

18. The legend of Count Dracula the blood curdling vampire originated from what country? Romania

19. If you tame me you are responsible to me. What is essential is invisible to the eye. It is only through the heart that one speaks clearly – The Little Prince.

20. This is a plant that is so shy that a legend was built upon it – a certain shy Maria who turned into this plant – Makahiya.

21. At the end of a rainbow is _____ a pot of gold.

22. King who touches anything turns to gold – Midas.

23. Man turns into a wolf or into predatory animals – Werewolf.

24. Other name of Abominable Snowman to the Sherpas – Yeti (tatak kandado, made in China)

25. Paniwala na kulay ng dwende na swerte – Yellow or white; harmful – black

Bonus O Captain, My Captain – Sino ang character na tinatalakay? Abraham Lincoln

By Walt Whitman. Grief and admiration to the great fallen leader written March 4, 1865

The only poem with rhyme and rhythm written by the poet. Ilan stanza? (3) Ilan lines? (8 lines each stanza in diminishing length). Ano ang last line – halos pareho sa last line ng first two stanzas (Fallen cold and dead.) 

National epic of the Anglo Saxons – Beowulf (and Grendel)

Character in Robin Hood, giant of a man. 7 footer – Little John.

Author of Pardoner’s Tale – Geoffrey Chaucer ~

A frog turned into a prince by the power of a kiss by a princess

... and they lived happily ever after. ~

Acknowledge and thanks: Photos from Internet

Fish Incognito (Pointillism Art)

Fish Incognito (Pointillism Art)
Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature School on Blog

A School of Grouper Fish (38" x 26"), AVR. Pointillism is an art style

of Impressionism in the later part of the 19th century in Europe led

by French painter Georges Seurat

Fish, tell me where you live, your home;

The ocean is so huge to be your own;

Fish answers: I am a fugitive in pursuit,

Hunted or hunter whichever may suit.    

Fish, tell me of your kin and your shoal;

How you live together as a school;

Fish answers: I live by the rules of the sea,

By number and luck, and by being free.  

Fish, tell me if I am friend to you, or a foe;
I gave you a name, regard you with awe;
Fish answers: Neither, I'd rather be unseen,
Far from the dreadful fate of your cuisine. ~ 

Birth and Upheaval of Our Planet Earth

 Birth and Upheaval of Our Planet Earth 

Dr Abe V Rotor 

Living with Nature School on Blog [ avrotor.blogspot.com ]

Primordium mural on canvas (4ft x 8ft) by the author 2007 

Primordium of a protoplanet born from a star, the sun, orbiting with eight others; ours the Earth - the third planet, fiery and chaotic  beyond imagination but gradually cooling off until some one billion years ago;   

• Early earth was lifeless with ever-changing landscape, fiction portrays, simulating the geologic processes gradually and spontaneously giving birth to protolife in pre-cellular forms;  

• Protolife scientist Alexander Oparin offered an explanation: molecules combined in random under remote possibilities until giant protein molecules produced "the spark of life;" 

• The ancestral origin of life, the Monerans evolved from prokaryotes to eukaryotes - the Protists, and later multicellular organisms, many of them are living fossils today; 

• Explosion and proliferation of life occurred as Oxygen, the by-product of early photosynthesis by cyanophytes favored aerobic organisms to spread out in number and complexity; 

• Proliferation of life everywhere defies the principles that govern the natural world we know today; life however is always part of Nature; without Nature our planet would be a lifeless one;   

• Nature deepened by faith in a Great Maker, began to reveal more mysteries, challenge great minds, seek adventure, build universities and churches, and other institutions;  

Integration and interconnections of living things on one hand, and the living and the non-living world on the other, gave rise to ecosystems, collectively comprising the biosphere;   

Exploitation of Nature from nomadic life to agriculture and growth of communities, pushed the frontiers of Green Revolution, and lately modifying the genetic makeup of organisms;  

Genetic engineering is playing God's role, defying age-old values and blindly embracing change in the name of progress in materialistic and immediate gains to attain the "Good Life;"  

The Good Life led to population explosion, global warming, destruction of natural resources, pollution, etc.,

Inventions gone wild threaten man as a species, and the whole world itself: splitting the atom, cracking the code of life, inventing the microchips, and their consequent and collective effects;

Shrinking the world into a village condenses man's lifetime into careers, riches, pleasures save true happiness, resulting in millions losing hope and failure to find meaning in their lives; 

• Myth and legends tell of  Icarus, Narcissus, the madman who defaced the Pieta; while we ask where is the boy who saved Holland, the likes of Malala, of Wangari who planted a million trees?; 

• Reverse evolution which Darwin downplayed warns of the return of man to his early beginnings as survivors of weapons of mass destruction, threatening the world of a postmodern Armageddon;   

• Armageddon takes us back into pre-civilization, unless we heed Malthus, Nostradamus,  Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons Toffler's Future Shock, so with Gibbon's Rise and Fall of Civilization;

• "Progress" and breakthroughs in science and technology, advancement of civilization, make a curtain on the stage, behind it are the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse marching - discreet but real. ~          

Living Wheels of Plankton

Living Wheels of Plankton  

Author's concept of association and cooperation among the plankton communities cum associates that form food webs and ecosystems in oceans and lakes. 

Dr Abe V Rotor

 

Living Wheels of Plankton, in acrylic, AVR 2014. Author's concept of association and cooperation among the sea's plankton communities cum associates that form food webs at sea and lakes.  Sub-colonies in gyrating motion allows independence as well as convergence, always in dynamic balance.  This original concept is a tool for survival, following the principle of cellular organization into tissues, into organs and ultimately, into systems. Taken collectively, plankton form ecological systems that have common as well as distinct individual characteristics.   

Plankton, the biggest and most diverse group of organisms form interacting sub-colonies of millions of members living at the lighted zone of seas and lakes some 10 to 50 meters deep; 

Plankton, they are organized into food chains, to food webs and pyramids, through which the sun's energy flows through the living system these organisms make;

Plankton, the autotrophs (photo-synthesizers) capture solar energy, the heterotrophs (consumers), feed of the former, in turn are food of other bigger organisms, including man ultimately;

Plankton, without them the seas, oceans, and lakes would be barren like desert; they form the earth's largest pasture, the number one producers of biomass and Oxygen that supply the living world;    

Plankton, they are the least understood in composition and ecology, yet they are the oldest organisms, many barely changed through evolution some one billion years ago;  

Plankton, the least subject of art and literature, imagined more as fantasy rather than science, and nil in understanding social biology that links them with the human species;   

Plankton, they must have evolved from somewhere else other the primeval earth, perhaps they rode on asteroids, rose separately, but later merged into the family tree of life. ~  

Will you draw me a ship?

 Will you draw me a ship?

Dr Abe V Rotor

 Ma Victoria M Primicias, 8; awardee, 1994 NFA Art Workshop

Please draw me a ship.

Will you draw me a ship?

I am busy.

Will you draw me a ship?

I cannot draw.

Do you like Captain Hook?

He was a pirate.

The Galleon?

That's history.

Noah?

That's for the Bible.

So she drew and drew and drew.

Here is a ship.

You can see the outside and the inside.

It is not Captain Hook's,

The Galleon, 

Or Noah's

I looked at her three-ships-in-one,

And into the soul of this child.

I have been a grown-up too long.

Will you draw me a ship? ~
--------------------

In contrast, this is a painting by a grownup, no other than the teacher, 

Lighthouse Ruins and Shipwreck in acrylic by AVRotor ca. 1965