Crusade of the People

Authors Note: This is a creative piece on the word "crusade".

One day in the usually sunny town of small town of Goatsburg, France. There was the sound of steady marching and people screaming. Everyone knew that the Germans had come to the town to take it from them. The Germans had come to take it because they think that they should have it. The people from the town didn’t like it, but the only way out was to leave town, so they did. After the town was overrun, the survivors made a meeting and swore that they would take back what was rightfully theirs.

A week had passed and the people have told the Spanish Army and they gave them weapons to try to take back the town. The next day the people silently surrounded the town that was crawling with German soldiers. They waited for a good hour and then started the crusade. It caught the Germans completely off guard, but the Germans quickly grabbed their guns and returned fire. The survivors were outnumbered by about 50 people, but they never gave up. One by one Germans were going down until the last shot was fired and the last German fell. Suddenly, a wave of happiness overcame the survivors, but that was also mixed in with the cries of mourn. The survivors pulled about 30 of the survivors out of the underbrush and had a ceremony to honor them. Also it was to let them know that their fighting was not for nothing. After the ceremony there was a big party and everyone knew that they had won the crusade.

Irony of The Lottery

Authors Note: The purpose of this is to show all of the ironic events in the story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson.

            There are over 100 major lotteries worldwide, but in this story, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, it is a different type of lottery. Usually in a lottery you would want to win, but the ironic thing about this is story is that you want to lose. If you win the lottery, you get stoned to death and if you lose you get to live another year. There are many more ironic events that occur throughout this story.

            For instance, another ironic event that happened in the story, “The Lottery” it seemed that the boys in the story were stacking rocks because they were just being kids and playing, but as pointed out at the end of the book, they were stacking rocks to throw at the unlucky winner of the lottery. Also an ironic event in “The Lottery” was the manners of the town. In society today, adults teach children to be nice and courteous to each other. In this village they are teaching kids to throw things at each other and teaching them that violence is okay. Along with manners of the village is that the wife’s husband didn’t even seem to care that his wife was going to die.

            In conclusion, there are so many twisted and wrong things with this village. There also are many ironic events such as stoning a woman to death to kids being taught to be violent. I don’t see how people could live like this, but that is why this is a book. These are just some of the ironic events that happen in the story “The Lottery”.

No More Wash Me

            I have been dirty for about 4 months now and people have written “Wash Me” on me about 13 times now. Do you know who I am? I am a window on the back of a Mercedes Benz. All the other windows on the car look nice and clean, but not me. I feel left out. What have I done to deserve this? All I want is some water and soap and I’ll be good as new. Is that too much to ask for?

            People constantly get into the car and drive off without even thinking about how I feel. They look through me, but can’t see how sad I am. They can’t figure out that I just want to be clean, like all the other windows on the car. One day some new guy got in the car and was driving me around. All the way I was getting more and more dirty and angrier by the minute. I started to get excited when along the way I show a car wash, but we just drove by. He stopped at the grocery store and picked up all his groceries and got back in. I saw the car wash on the way back, but didn’t think anything of it. Then there was a sudden squeal of the wheels and in two seconds we were in the car wash line. It was finally my turn and we went into the car wash. We came out and I was so happy I was finally clean. I am finally no longer dirty; people won’t write “Wash Me” on me anymore. Instead they won’t be able to write anything on me because I am to clean

About Perry

Authors Note: This is a character development piece on Perry from the book, Fallen Angels.

Everyone in the Army is somewhat brave, but Perry isn’t very brave. In the book, Fallen Angels, Perry entered the Army because he thought that he was a tough person. He meets many people and becomes really good friends with a person named Peewee. They are in the same squad and execute missions together. From the very first mission, Perry knew that this wasn’t what he was expected.

Perry is a nice man who entered the war in Vietnam. He learns that war takes a lot of toughness and determination. He also realizes that you must be very disciplined and alert all of the time. In this book, I consider Perry to be a dynamic character because in the start of the book he sounds brave and strong, but towards the end of the book you can tell that war scares him a lot.

In part of the book, Perry is ambushed by the enemies and doesn’t know what to do. He just fired at random, not seeing or knowing where the enemies stood. Then when he got orders from the sergeant that they were moving to the top of the hill to try to overwhelm the enemy, Perry was reluctant to do it because it put his life in danger. When they got to the top of the hill, they got the surprise of their lives. They were waiting for them. All around Perry there was bullets going past him. Then described in the book, Perry’s legs gave out and he got hit by 3 bullets. His actions of being scared and cowardly almost got him killed.

This reminds me of the movie Act of Valor because one of the side characters chickens out in the middle of a mission and instead of getting wounded, he got gunned downed and died. At the start of the book, Perry seemed like the main character in Act of Valor who would put his life in danger to save his fellow squads. Also the main character in Act of Valor jumped on a grenade and killed himself so that the people around him would survive the grenade.

In conclusion to this, I believe that Perry thought that war was easier than it really was. He thought that everyone could make it into the war and be good. I related Perry to the main character of Act of Valor because their characteristics seemed about the same. But that is what Perry sounded like in the beginning of the book, but towards the ending you can tell that Perry would be too scared to do the things the main character in Act of Valor did.

All About Cloning

Authors Note: This is a research/district assessment essay on the science topic of cloning. It will describe the history, process, and many other intriguing facts about cloning.

What is cloning? Cloning is a complex task that requires a person to make an exact replica of an animal. The copy would have the exact DNA as the animal that was cloned (What is Cloning?). One example of cloning is identical twins. The twins weren’t cloned by a scientist, but they were cloned in naturally. Cloning is well researched topic by scientists and is one of the most controversial and interesting topics that are in science today (What is Cloning?).

First, let’s talk about the history of cloning. The first person to successfully clone an animal was in the late 1800’s named Hans Dreisch. The most known cloned animal is called the Dolly sheep, but Hans Dreisch successfully cloned a sea urchin. Hans Dreisch put two attached embryo cells into a beaker and shook them until the separated. The two separated embryo cells grew into normal sea urchins with no signs of being cloned (Thinkquest.org).

 

Now, you are probably wondering what the process of cloning is. First, you must get a donor nucleus ready. Then you must get an unfertilized egg. Next, you carefully remove the nucleus of the unfertilized egg. Then you insert the donor nucleus to the egg. Last you put the egg into a womb of a female animal. There is more of a chance that the egg will not produce anything, but there is a possibility that it will clone the animals (Carver).

Even though, animals are the ones being cloned, many scientists believe that in the next few years we will be able to clone humans. Humans can be cloned, but it would be harder than any other mammal. One reason is that two important proteins are very close to the chromosomes in eggs. So removal of the nucleus to put in the donor nucleus would remove the proteins of the cell, which would make cell division harder. Still, scientists believe that in the next couple of years cloning humans will be possible (Cloning).

           However, there is a risk to cloning. Right now, there are about 1 – 2 successfully cloned animals per 100 tries. So cloning humans could cause defects in the cloned human because they would be using that persons DNA. Also many people believe that everyone is different and special in their own way, so cloning wouldn’t make people as special. These are some reasons that cloning is a very controversial topic. As cloning humans would be a cool and amazing scientific breakthrough, but it would make people not as unique and special as they are right now (Cloning Fact Sheet)

Scientists are continuously making the cloning technology better and that could help make cloning more efficient and easier to do. Cloning is a very controversial topic that is very well researched among scientists. As it would be cool to clone a human, I do not think that the risk is of cloning a human is worth it. All in all, cloning is a very complex task that many scientists have the honor to participate and improve in.

Bibliography

Batra, Karen. "Process of Cloning." 2008. CloneSaftey.org virtual pressroom. 17 April 2012 <http://www.clonesafety.org/cloning/facts/process/>.

Carver, Roy J. "Cloning: How To Make Identical Genomes ." 2004. Iowa Public Television. 17 April 2012 <http://www.iptv.org/exploremore/ge/what/clone.cfm>.

"Cloning." 1 July 2011. National Human Genome Research Institute . 17 April 2012 <http://www.genome.gov/25020028>.

"Cloning Fact Sheet." 11 May 2009. Human Genome Project Information. 19 April 2012 <http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml#humans>.

Thinkquest.org. 25 April 2012 <http://library.thinkquest.org/20830/Frameless/Manipulating/Experimentation/Cloning/longdoc.htm>.

"What is Cloning?" Genetic Science Learning Center. 17 April 2012 <http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/whatiscloning/>.

Changed

Authors Note: This is a writing piece explaining two important quotes in the book, Touching Spirit Bear and relating this to me.

I am reading the book, Touching Spirit Bear, by Ben Mikaelsen. A quote that stood out to me in this book was on page 98. Cole says, “Why couldn’t they (the seagulls) wait just a little longer until he had died.” This quote stands out to me because Cole has given up on life. He couldn’t tolerate the pain and suffering anymore, so he wanted to die. This saddens me because I believe that Cole wanted to turn his life around, but first he would need to survive.

I can’t relate this to my life because I have never been in that much pain and suffering that is described in this book. I can relate this to a friend at my old school. He always seemed depressed and down. Sometimes even when he was talking to you, he would say he was waiting for the right time to die. I think that he gave up in life because he had parents who didn’t care and he was lonely. That made our class very scared so we started to hang out with him and talked him out of killing himself.

Another quote that really stands out to me is on page 106. Cole says, “Why do you guys help me?” This is a turning point in his life because he finally found out that people in the world do care about him and will be there for him. In his past, he could never trust anyone, not even his own parents. Now he has come to trust in Garvey and the world. He also wonders why people have helped him when he has been so mean to people in his past. This quote tells us that Cole Matthews is a changed kid.

            I can relate to this quote because I sometimes can be mean and yet people still help me. Also Cole and I don’t like being helped because we think we know everything. The people who usually help me despite my anger are my parents. No matter what I do, they will still help me. Cole and I need to work on being more nice to people by excepting people’s help and learn to let people who know more about things help us. They aren’t trying to hurt us, they are trying to make us better.

Nightmare

I am fierce and destructive. I live in your sleep. I overwhelm you with fear. I am your worst nightmare. You awake sweating and trembling with the picture of me in your head. You quickly survey the area asking yourself, who am I?

First, you saw me and you are trying to forget about me, but you can’t because I am now a part of you. You try to fall asleep again, but then in the blink of an eye I am back in your mind. You wake once again. You slowly get out of bed looking around in panic. You creep along the floor tip toeing all the way. Then you turn on the light and wait of few minutes to gather yourself. Then the lights go off.

Next, you walk swiftly to your bed, pull your sheets over, and close your eyes. You think that I won’t come back and you happily start to dose off into a deep sleep. The coming morning you wake powerful because you think that you have won. But the reality is you haven’t.

Finally, you walk into your room the next night sleepy and tired. You crawl into your bed and slowly drift off to sleep. And that is when I strike. With brutal force I slowly take over your mind and love to see you fear me. You try to fight me, but your mind plays tricks on you and you start to go crazy. You might hate me, but you can’t get rid of me. So keep trying because it won’t work.

I keep coming back striking when you least expect it. I overwhelm your mind with fear and you coward away from me, but I always find me. You can’t stop me. You can’t control me because I control you.

All About Terabithia

Authors Note: This is a retelling piece on the book Bridge to Terabithia explaining the important events in the story.

  Jess is a lonely young kid who lived next to a person who is his age. She just moved in and Jess is very excited. Together they make up a place to get away from everything called Terabithia. At Terabithia, they have many adventures, some good and some devastatingly bad.

Big Yellow Taxi and Field Below

Author's Note: This is a piece reaction and response to the two poems and songs, “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Field Below”.

            What are these two poems about? 

            First, “Big Yellow Taxi” is talking about a girl who is watching nature being destroyed right in front of her eyes. She is not happy about her beautiful world being destroyed by the people. The purpose of this poem is to express her feeling and concern about what they are doing to her society. The tone that you get from this poem is sadness. The author’s mood in this poem is sympathetic. The song that is made from this poem is nothing like the poem. The poem’s tone and mood is sadness and depression and the song’s tone and mood is happiness. This means that the song was meant to be played in a different atmosphere than the poem. I believe that that is very bad because if you copy the poem it would be a good idea to keep the tone and mood the same.

           The second poem, “Field Below” is similar to the poem, “Big Yellow Taxi” because it also is talking about nature. The meaning of this poem is to explain to the audience that she wishes she had a beautiful field to look out to everyday. The purpose of writing this poem is to show that she wishes that she had a field like she did when she was growing up, but now she is stuck in a big crowded town with no field. The tone and mood are the same as “Big Yellow Taxi”, sadness and sympathetic. The mood and tone of the song relate perfectly with the poem. The poem is meant to be sad and that is exactly how the song is sung. This show s that the person singing the song understood and felt the pain of the poem writer and sang the song how the poem writer would have. I believe that, that was a good thing to do because I think that if people read the poem and heard the song would understand it better.

Leslie's Death

I let you die

Trying to go

To Terabithia

All alone

I am sorry

I should have

Warned you

The water was high

But you wouldn’t

Listen to me anyway

So why

Should I have tried

This is a parody to the poem “This is Just to Say” by William Carlos William. This is a poem about when Leslie died trying to go to Terabithia. The speaker in this poem is Jess. The audience that this poem is to is Leslie. The tone starts off sad and sorry and turns into sarcasm. The mood of the story is that he is not sorry for her death and is happy he doesn’t have to deal with her anymore.