COYOTE

Author's Note: I wrote this creative piece on coyotes for are writing circles. It is about a fake story of us seeing a coyote up north and in this piece I worked on trying not to make run on sentences.

One day we were walking down the street and saw a shaggy dog run across the road into the ditch at Grandma’s house. We were looking at the water and on our way back there was this, what looked like a stray dog, and then when we saw it and actually could see it we realized it was a coyote. It jumped out of the ditch and ran away down the road. It was really scary seeing a wolf sort of thing, shaggy dog whatever it was it didn’t look normal. The coyote didn’t even bother us almost like it didn’t notice us but it makes me think and kind of laugh, to think about what would have happened if it would of attacked us I could have seen my mom rolling into the ditch on the other side of the road screaming and sobbing and me not knowing what to do which kind of made me chuckle a little bit to myself. But it didn’t attack us and just walked away like we were nothing. Later that evening we heard him hollering at the moon and realized that it was the coyote we had seen earlier that day.

BE A LORAX NOT A ONCE-LER

Author’s Note: In this essay I worked on developing a variety of methods to begin sentences and paragraphs and increase the use of complex vocabulary. Also I worked on improving methods of transitioning from one paragraph to the next to a proficient level.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not” (68).  A common way people interpret this quote is if you care about something a lot then do something about it don’t just stand back and watch it get worse.Some people do not care about the environment and it’s mostly big companies like the Once-ler and his Thneeds, exampled in this book. In The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, all of the characters have a very symbolic meaning in the world, and if you think about it you can see just what all of their purposes are. You have to start to care more about the ecosystem than you already do because the environment is the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal and plant lives and operates, and in this story the Once-ler just kept on thinking about how he could make more and more money and not about what he would leave behind once it was all done and over with. Readers should make a connection between the make believe characters in this story into real world situations, and what we can learn from history so history doesn’t repeat itself. Earth is our home and you have to be able to make the change and not just hope it happens.

There are four main living things in this book that have a really big meaning. Yes, they may just be made up animals or trees or plants. Besides all of those things if you really look and try to understand what all of these things mean, you will find that they all have real world connections to them. The one thing that was the hardest for me to connect to and truly find it’s meaning though were the Truffula Trees, and then when I really thought about it I realized that they represent agriculture. Which is the science or practicing of farming, including cultivation of the soil for the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food, wool, and other products. This kind of reminds me of the rain forest if we keep clearing the rain forest then we will loose animal populations that will have to travel elsewhere to get their needs met, many will become extinct. Every year an area of rain forest the size of New Jersey is cut down and destroyed. The plants and animals that used to live in these forests either die or must find a new forest to call their home. Why are rain forests being destroyed? Humans are the main cause of rain forest destruction. We are cutting down rain forests for many reasons, mostly including: wood for both timber and making fires, agriculture for both small and large farms, land for poor farmers who don’t have anywhere else to live, grazing land for cattle, pulp for making paper, road construction and extraction of minerals and energy. The Once-ler did only a couple of these things when he cut down the Truffula Trees. He cut them down to grow his business and then also realized that he could build bigger roads and then a bigger factory. He should have realized that for every tree he cut down he should have planted five new ones, but he didn’t think of that all he did was hurt the environment.

Even though Truffula Trees have big meaning in this book so does Grickle Grass. Grickle Grass represents the thistled mess we will be left with if we do not care for what we have been given. Grickle Grass is what you would be left with if you cut down all the trees. Trees have more meaning than most people think. Animals use trees to live in and they also use them for protection. Also trees help hold the brush down like the Grickle Grass, and the Grickle Grass ends up being the only thing left because everything moves away and it’s not a good environment to grow anything. No one wants to live in a world full of Grickle Grass, it would almost be like watching paint dry, you have nothing to look at and trees not only give us oxygen to breath but they also make the world more interesting to look at.

Grickle Grass is important, but so are the animals that live in the environment. The Bar-ba-loots, along with the Swamy Swans and the Humming Fish represent the lifeforms we are disrupting by polluting their environment and destroying their habitats. This relates to the polar bears whose habitat is being destroyed because of all are pollution. Animals habitats are being destroyed because no one cares, and if they do care their not trying to do anything about it. Yes you will see polar bears in zoos but their not going to be where they belong. This is just like what the Lorax said to the Once-ler “Your glumping the pond where the Humming-Fish hummed! No more can they hum, for their gills are all gummed.” (56)What this means is that even though you think that all of your polluting isn’t going anywhere or doing anything, it is it’s endangering all of the animals in are rivers, lakes and streams.

The Bar-ba-loots, Swamy Swans and Humming-Fish are all really good examples of animals that are being endangered, but the Once-ler is the most important figure in this whole book. The Once-ler represents big business’s  that are to busy looking at the profit line to take heed to what damage their business is doing. They see the “EPA” (United States Environmental Protection Agency) as a nuisance. Once in a while they will stop and give help to a given situation but mostly they think of the EPA as a bunch of tree huggers. This is exactly what the Once-ler and the Lorax were. The Once-ler was the big business and the Lorax was the EPA. The Once-ler looked at him as a nuisance and wouldn’t hear him out in anything. All the Lorax was trying to do was prevent what the world was going to end up to be. Which is what we all have to do. You have to learn from history so that history doesn’t repeat itself. We should all learn from the story of the Once-ler. So that this can be prevented in the world because the more you destroy the ecosystem with pollution and cutting down trees, the less oxygen we will have and more and more animals will start to die off.

The Earth isn’t just a place for us to live it’s our home, we have to care enough to make the change not just hope it happens. “It’s not what it is, it’s about what it can become ” (70) What this means is that we can’t look at the world as just a place to live and then not worry about anything else. We have to look at it as what it can become. This is because it already is one way but we have to find ways to make it better. Everything we do effects us in some way, the more we protect are environment the better it will be and the healthier of a world we will get to live in. So look at it as what it can become not as what it already is and then maybe we can keep the story of the Once-ler on paper and not in real life.

CONNECTIONS

Author's Note: In this essay I tried to explain why the people you think can help you sometimes always can't. Also I was trying to work on my goals of transitioning between paragraphs and developing different sentence begins.   

“I know all those astronomers I’d watched an hour earlier on CNN can explain just what happened and how and why and they’ll be explaining on CNN tonight and tomorrow and I guess until the next big story happens. I know I can’t explain, because I don’t really know why.”[…] “But the moon wasn’t a half moon anymore. It was tilted and wrong and a three-quarter moon and it got larger, way larger, large like a moon rising on the horizon, only it wasn’t rising. It was smack in the middle of the sky, way too big, way to visible. You could see details on the craters without the binoculars that before I’d only seen with Matt’s telescope.(19)  Some people think they know everything, whereas there are people that know they can’t help you but try anyway. It always seems to turn itself around on you, and the people you relied on the most are useless and the unhelpful people turn out to be the ones that take charge. Sometimes the “helpful” people in the world, like in this case, the astronomers, could not help anything, and the citizens had to live with the moon and try and just figure out what’s going on. Life as we knew it by Susan Beth Pfeffer. To the readers always try to succeed in the things that you do and try to be successful but even though you do have a big scientific job where you think you can help you will never be perfect at it. 

In this book Miranda and her brother live in northern Pennsylvania with their mom and an asteroid hits the moon and brings it a lot closer to Earth. In their little town this was really cool and everyone on their street was out to watch it. When the asteroid hit there were some cheers and then as the moon started approaching earth there were screams and people were running all over the place like chickens with their heads cut off. No one knew what was going on. I feel this way sometimes when I’m given directions and don’t know what I’m doing. When I have to run a machine that could kill someone while were splitting wood I feel a little uneasy. These people were unsure of the unknown and were scared. 

Even though being scared was a big part of this book second guessing yourself was another. Their where people second guessing God because of what was going on, and their own choices because they didn’t know what to do. But the biggest thing was when people in the town started arguing with each other and eventually everyone was second guessing their actions. I have second guessed myself every since I was really little. But what seems to be the biggest thing I’m doing know is second guessing whether my bowling ball will curve or not on the ally. So I swing my arm across my body but the people of this little town had bigger things to worry about.

This was a book that I really had a chance to connect with it was hard at first but as I read deeper into the story I could really understand what was going on. I never could understand why I second guess myself or feel scared when I know I’m doing something right. But in this book it really helped me to understand those things, and it’s all because I want to make sure everything comes out perfect in the end which is never true because nothing and nobody is perfect. Everyone is like that, not only me it is hard to just understand why. But now I know so don’t ever try and make anything perfect because it will never be but you can always try your hardest to succeed the best that you can.

CHANGE

Author's Note: In this essay I tried to work on how change not only affects you but everyone around you. Also I tried to work on my transitions between paragraphs to give it a better flow to the paper.

Your left all alone in a city where everyone is turning mad and you have to fend for yourself and your two younger sisters, you would be scared. Which is what happened to Alex in Susan Beth Pfeffer’s book The Dead and the Gone. Now and then life throws you curve balls and you have to catch them and run with all you’ve got and on the way you may change.

 Change is a big thing that different people experience in different ways. Slow change is easier to adapt to than fast change. Leisurely change consists of something along the lines of you take something and slowly change it to something you like. In this book slow change happened not as present as fast change but it was still there. The main characters realized that their parents were never coming back. That was hard to adjust to at first and then the realized that they had to live with it and move on. Occasionally things like this may happen and you have to move on and deal with the consequences.

Even though slow change is hard to deal with fast change sometimes hits really hard and you almost don’t know what to do. Alex, the main character, was hit hard like this when he realized that he had to keep himself alive and his two younger sisters. Even imaging this would be hard, on how this could even happen. Often in the way; that you have to roll with the punches and not let anyone or anything get in your way.

Even though slow and sudden change is hard to deal with personal change hits home in this book. This is because the main character Alex changed so much from the beginning of the book. Even though in the beginning he was just a normal 17 year old with a job and a family. But then when his parents disappeared he kind of took on the parent role of his two sisters. It was really hard to connect with this book though because I have never been put in a situation like that. I’m the youngest in my family and have no siblings.

This book showed me how change affects the lives of not just you but everyone around you. You can just be stubborn, and want everything but you have to give a little to get. That is a hard lesson to learn because when you want something you want it and then when you can’t have it you don’t want anyone to say or do anything to you. So sometimes when you catch that ball and run with it you still have to remember the curve ball was thrown at you first before you got to where you are now.

GENERATIONS

Author’s Note: I wrote this piece to tell people that every chance you get to spend with your family you should appreciate and this is because not everyone has a family like mine that is together all the time every day. Some families are small and live in different states and sometimes even countries. So when you get to talk to them you need to treat it like it’s the best thing ever.

Everyone knows of things that happened before they were born and are still going on now. Like Christmas dinner or Thanksgiving dinner. Their family has been doing it since before they were born and now are still doing it. Well my family has just that, yes we celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving. But the biggest thing I think we do is Hunting season which always falls right over Thanksgiving. My family has been doing this since at least 1975. There were 25 people who hunted, and then there was my grandma and aunt and a bunch of other people. When I was born a couple of people stopped hunting because they became too old. Others just stopped hunting with us because they started to move a little slower and didn’t want to hunt with us if they couldn’t do as much as they used to. The saddest part though was a couple of people died and then obviously could not hunt any more. Now we’re down to 8 people. It’s still a lot of fun because all the people who used to hunt with us still come around every year for hunting season. My favorite part of hunting season is that when someone does get a deer and not like we’re trophy hunters we just like the meat in are freezer. But when someone gets a really nice deer you’ve got to take pictures and we hand out trophies. We have three of them BIG BUCK, SMALLEST DEER, and HEAVIEST DEER. It’s the favorite part when someone gets to put the trophy up on their mantle all year long and hope that it stays there till the next year.  I look forward to hunting season every year I get out of school for two days and I get to relax up north with my family and friends. So appreciate every chance you get with your family at your annual events. My families is really strange I know but I love it for what it is and I love them for what they are and nothing can ever change that.  

FAMILY

Author’s Note: I decided to write this paragraph on a song that has a very funny story in are family. In this piece I wanted to work on my goal of developing a variety of methods to begin sentences and paragraphs. 

Have you ever heard a song that just made you start laughing every time you heard it because you have so much in common with parts of the song? Well in my family there’s this country song by Jason Aldean called my Big Green Tractor. Some of the lyrics are really funny and it’s not just because the song is so weird there’s a little bit more to it. We have tractors up north on are farm, one of them is blue and this was the only one we had before we heard this song. We were sitting at the kitchen table up north playing cards, and this song came on over the radio. We all stopped talking at a random time and just heard on my big green tractor. It was so funny and we all started to laugh. We only have a blue tractor right now but we still think it’s funny. Now that we have this song in our heads all the time when we are up north we will catch each other while were splitting wood or cutting down trees and start laughing really hard. So that’s pretty much it we like to have fun and laugh at each other we can always have fun like that. But the best part is we do everything together. As a family and we need to help each other not trying to do the hard jobs of cutting wood and splitting wood and keeping our land up there running alone.

DIFFERENCES

Author’s Note: I wrote this paragraph on the point of view of different people on the same thing. I have never done this before and was trying very hard to make you see the point of view of different people. Also in the paragraph I wanted to work on my goal of developing a variety of sentences beginnings. 

Some people see things one way and others see things different. I decided that I was going to test this out and see just what other people thought of this picture, this is what I found. My aunt told me that see thought that this was a picture of the woods. She told me excatally what the picture was and told me what she saw. Then I asked my dad and he said it reminded him of when his family and him went up north every year the week over his birthday. This picture reminds me of my familys land up north in fall, while were out in the woods on the four-wheelers for our last time out there till spring. I thought this was very interesting on how many different people see just one simple picture in many different ways on what it reminds them of. If you looked at this picture what would you get out of it? What would your parents get out of it? What would other family members get out of it? It just depends on what you see, if you have a deep imagination you could make a lot out of this. But, if you see everything in the laterally sense than your not going to get as much out of it. Don’t try to see things in ways everyone else does, do things your own way.