How Lovely to See

Author's Note: Our writing circle decided to write about a place that we would want to visit in our lifetime. 

Food, lights, people,

What to see, where to be?

When to start?

The lights, the brightest in the world

Like a never ending streak of twinkling stars.

The food, exquisite and unique.

People, small, some rude, but most kind and joyful.

The Tower is so lovely in the silent evening.

Paris. 

Apartment 4B

Author's Note: This is a scary story that is about a 17 year old girl, who is having a hard time adjusting to her new apartment and living on her own after living with her parents for 17 years. And now her parents are dead and she is paranoid about everything. 

  I was walking down the darkly lit street by my house when a man came up to me and asked me where I lived. I told him I lived right down the road and he asked me where exactly it was, to take him to the outside because he was looking for a new place to live. So I was thinking okay I’ve seen this guy walking around before he’s nice enough. The man thought it looked nice and I told him about the few apartments that were open. He asked what apartment I lived in because then he could tell the landlord that I had recommended him to her. So I then went on to tell him that I lived in apartment 4A next to this really sweet old lady who always makes me cookies and smells like brown sugar. I spent that night laying in bed thinking about my parents again. They died last year a few days after I turned 17. I had been on my own because I told everyone that I was 18 and I rented out this apartment. I don’t like to talk about it with anyone so I just sit in my room and try to make the thoughts go away. That night I woke up in the middle of the night to a scream. I figured it was probably the T.V. and that I had just left it on again. I went back to bed and fell soundly asleep for the rest of the night.


The next morning as I walked outside of my apartment, I see that there is a crime scene outside the old lady next door’s house. As I walked past I glanced back and all of a sudden I saw the slightest trickle of blood come out of the closed door. I was walking to my car and I saw the strange man that had come up to me last night. I walked away from him as fast as I could because for some reason I had the strange feeling he had to something to do with the blood and the crime scene. He started towards me and before I knew what I was doing I sprinted off in the other direction. While I was running away I didn’t dare look back, because I wouldn’t be able to deal with the emotions I was feeling if I found him chasing after me. It was like I was living in a scary movie, everything was there: the murderer, the stalker, the sweet old lady.


When I got to school I was so freaked out I didn’t even notice the crowd that had formed around the gate to the school. Everyone was staring at me, because they knew something was up, I never got freaked out like this. The last time I was this scared was when I got a call at school saying that my parents had died in a car crash on their way to get me a birthday present. Now whenever something bad happened everyone knew because I had grown a hard shell that hid my emotions from everyone. I had a boyfriend who was perfect, he was sensitive, and really nice and super funny. He cared about me and supported me in almost everything. My, best friend, Ella was the first person to come up to me and ask me what was wrong. I told her everything about the old lady, and she told me not to worry that we could talk to someone. Only a few people knew about my housing situation, and they all have kept my secret. I finally agreed that she would stay over tonight in case anything happened.


After school I went to the grocery store because I was too scared to go back to my apartment in case the stalker guy was still there. That night after the grocery store and every other store close to my house had closed; I had no choice but to go home.  While I was in the coffee shop, Ella had called and said that she had a family emergency to tend to and couldn’t come over. She was really sorry and told me not to worry about anything I was just paranoid. As, I was walking home I tried everyone in my cell to see if they would come over for the night, but of course they all had plans, or were busy with family. Even my boyfriend, Liam couldn’t come over and was really sorry and would see me tomorrow for our date.  When I got to my apartment building and trudged up the stairs I saw it.........

It was the man, the man who had asked me where I lived the other night. His back was facing me, but in his hand I saw a bloody knife! THE KNIFE! Oh no! What should I do, and then he was coming up to me, raising his arm…


I am completely oblivious to everything around me, I feel awake but maybe this is just what it feels like to be dead. It’s strange though, it feels like someone is shaking me... Wait! That is someone shaking me! It’s Eli! So I’m not dead! She tells me I was screaming in the middle of class. It was all just a dream.

Symbolism

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/mady214-1409196-syoblism/

Semantic Devices Presentation

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/mady214-1408069-semantic-devices2/

Oil Drilling: Harmful of Helpful

Author's Note: This piece is a persuasive essay that has to do with whether or not we should drill for oil in Alaska. I will be explaining why I think that we should not drill for oil in Alaska. 
 
If you have ever thought about Alaska, chances are you have not pictured workers with big machines and drills looking for oil. No, you have probably pictured all of the people dressed warm in their fur clothes or those cute baby snow bunnies hopping around without a care in the world. Maybe it was the little kids running around with their sled dogs playing in the frozen tundra, their cheeks rosy and their runny noses. If we drill for oil in ANWR, all of this will go away; there will be no more fun and games. Big machines and workers will take over this winter wonderland. It will be gone, and for what? You, and your family, your neighbors, everyone in the United States, all because we need more oil provided for us. We are using it up way too fast. Drilling is wrong and everyone knows that; it is somewhere deep down in their hearts, but we Americans are too selfish to admit it. 

Oil drilling is a big project, not to mention costly. We could use this money for other things like putting it towards figuring out how to get rid of using oil in our everyday lives. We would also have to pay for all of the workers to live up there and pay them for their services. According to CNN Money, Time and  Science Eccentric magazines, About.com, and many others, drilling would not lower the prices of gas. Oil is an important everyday resource in America, but we could be discovering ways reduce demand instead of using it all up on pointless things. Using wind, solar power, water, and even vegetable oil to power our homes, cars, and create electricity are things that some people in America are already doing, so why not everyone? The US is the leading user of oil in the world and alone we use 21 million barrels of oil a day, compared to China, the second leading oil user,  which only uses 6.9 million barrels a day and Japan,the third leading oil user in the world) which only uses 5.4 million barrels a day. Our oil consumption is out of control and soon we will be damaging our environment in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, otherwise known as ANWR.

If we drill for oil in  ANWR, we could do serious damage to the land, plants, resources, and the animals that all live and grow there. The government and the workers who are applying for the jobs have to think not only about themselves, but about all of the people and animals that live in ANWR. They don’t know if they would have to abandon their habitats because of the disturbances that the oil drilling would cause for the animals and the environment. Not only would we be forcing these animals away, but we would be losing lots of the natural resources that come from ANWR. According to Live Science, if an oil spill happened it could be fatal to almost all of the marine life that inhabits Alaska like seals, sea lions, sea otters, whales, polar bears and all of the birds that live there as well, not to mention how the people of ANWR feel about this matter.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been protected since 1977 to prevent drilling there because there are not many places left in the US that aren’t already providing oil. The people of ANWR feel that the drilling is wrong according to Ecoworld because they feel that they would be greatly and badly affected by this change. It would disrupt the natural routine that the people have established there. They would have to change lots of large details in their lives and a lot of people may have to leave because of the disturbance it would cause. If you put yourself in these people’s shoes then I think that you would agree that drilling in ANWR is wrong.

Politicians always think that they know what is best, but they don’t because deep down in their hearts they know that we should not drill for oil in ANWR. No matter what age you are, or how much experience you have with anything, does anyone ever really know the right thing to do? We can say that we do, but even though no one likes to admit it, no one is perfect.

Words

Author's Note: This piece is written as an analysis of a book titled Speak that is a fictitious story about a girl who is in trouble with a guy.

Why me? why me? It’s just not fair. No, I know, this isn’t happening. Yes that’s it, it’s just not happening. These are some of the questions victims ask themselves while they are being attacked. According to the office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention 2004 Victims of Violent Juvenile Crime. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, victims of sexual assault committed by juveniles are younger than 18 years of age approximately 96 percent of the time. If you are in trouble you need to talk to someone because no one wants to be assaulted, and they may be able to help you. I learned that you should never let anyone that you don’t know get your personal information because of this book. It helped to make the lesson clearer to me. In Speak Laurie Halse Anderson teaches us that our actions will always speak louder than our words.

When you are in your teen years, you can be succumbed to sexual violence. It is usually never fair. You can’t always help it if you are in trouble, but you can help yourself by always being careful in what you say and do. The main character, Melinda, is greeting her freshman year of high school with no friends because of THE event that happened during her summer vacation: she was sexually assaulted by a boy that she hardly knew. She feels like an outcast, but on the first day is greeted by a new girl named Heather. Melinda doesn’t really have anything in common with Heather except that she is an outcast because she is new. Melinda quickly figures out that her old friends want nothing to do with her. She wants so badly to tell them the truth but cannot because they wouldn’t believe her. She tries to write her old best friend, Rachel, a note to be careful, because Rachel has gotten involved with the boy who assaulted her. Her ex-best friend chooses not to believe her because she thinks that she is just jealous that Melinda is not going to the prom and she is. Rachel ends up almost getting hurt because she thinks that the boy she is with is perfectly harmless.

Actions are taken louder than your words because body language gives away the tone in your voice. Laurie Halse Anderson teaches us this important lesson in the book Speak. Why do people do these awful things? No one ever knows.

The Girl on Fire

Author's Note: Catching Fire, is the sequel to the Hunger Games. If you want to know which book is better you will have to find out for yourself.

 Why would she do that? What was she thinking? These questions kept bouncing around in my head while I was reading Suzanne Collins’, Catching Fire. Why would Katniss, a girl from District 12, the poorest district, who has always been short on money, clothes, food, water, and had very few nice things, want to sacrifice her life for someone; give up her life for this boy who had been nice to her one time? She was crazy. If I were offered a lifetime of luxuries for free, just for surviving a few days at the most, a week, in a place called an arena, I would for sure take that opportunity, as long as I didn’t have to kill anybody; I would just sit on the side and watch it all and do my best to survive because that is the point of the Games: to kill people. Collins teaches us that we need to be grateful for the things that we have, and that we can’t all have anything and everything at the drop of a hat.

When we were younger our parents, sometimes our mothers, and sometime our fathers, taught us that we need to be polite, have manners, and be grateful. These are some of the few main things that we are taught and are not only encouraged, but it is expected that we do these things with the utmost respect. In this book: it’s obvious that President Snow was never taught these things. He has zero percent respects for all of the people he ‘rules’ over. While manners play a big part in our world, but sometimes power plays a bigger role.

Even though the Hunger Games, takes place in the distant future, these issues are still present in today’s world. In our time, according to the website Africanpress.me, Sudan’s leader, Omar al-Bashir is the worst dictator in our entire world out of the 70 countries that are ruled by dictators. We are very lucky to be able to live in a country where we are maybe not allowed to act upon our opinions necessarily, but we are at least allowed to have opinions.

Being grateful is important, although we can’t always have everything that we want, and Suzanne Collins does a spectacular job teaching this in Catching Fire. Now you need to remember and realize that it is not all about us and our needs, but about helping others and being thankful for what we are privileged enough to have.