Humpty Dumpty

A long time ago, in a small town England, there was a little boy named Humpty. From the time he was little, he was a problem child. He ran around picking on others, lying, and making messes. However, but Humpty was much more than your everyday brat.

 He had a very old grandmother on his father’s side. People in the village always said there was something just a bit off about the old woman, but no one could quite say what exactly it was.

 Humpty grew into a rebellious teenager, always getting into trouble. As punishment for one of his latest screw ups, Humpty had to go over to his grandmother’s house to do chores for her. Humpty arrived at her home late because he was off with his friends, getting into trouble, as usual. His grandmother was very, very angry when he finally showed up. She hollered, “HUMPTY DUMPTY! You need to learn some responsibility! Well, maybe this will teach you how to take care of yourself!” With that, she cast a horrible spell upon Humpty. It turned him into a giant, fragile egg.  “What on earth?” Humpty shouted. “What have you done to me you crazy old bat?” He demanded. “Now you will learn that you need to be careful and responsible. You can’t be off doing crazy things that will hurt you. As soon as I am sure you have learned your lesson, I will turn you back into a human.” said his Grandmother. Humpty was so outraged, that he stormed out of his grandmother’s house and into the night.

Humpty decided he would go back to his home and see if his parents could help him. The moment his parents saw him, they smiled. “I see you went to grandma’s house.” said his mom with a laugh. Humpty begged for his parents to change him back, but all they could say was, “We can’t do anything about it. You’ll just have to wait until your grandma fixes it.” Humpty was so frustrated. He slumped off to town.

Humpty wondered around the village, sad and desperate. He tripped once or twice, which caused his egg shell to crack. Humpty was awful scared. He had to keep himself save from any harm, but Humpty wasn’t the smartest fellow and decided he needed to go somewhere high up where nothing could get to him. So Humpty looked for a tall tree or some sort of wall. He found the largest brick wall he had ever seen on the outskirts of his small town. Humpty got a latter and climbed all the way up to the top. Then he kicked the latter down so nobody could come up after him. He sat up there on top of wall for several hours, and got extremely bored. Soon, a people noticed a giant egg boy sitting up on the highest wall and a crowd started to form. Humpty’s family, including his grandma, showed up. “Humpty!” his grandma called. “How will you ever get down from there without breaking into a million pieces?” she yelled, fear covering her voice. Humpty finally realized how stupid he had been. He became very afraid, and started swaying on top of the wall. He slowly tried to maneuver himself to the ladder the king and his men had set up for him, but instead, slipped and plumpeted down. He shattered into a million pieces. His family began to weep. Then his grandmother saved the day. She cast another spell and turned him back into his normal self.

"I learned my lesson, grandma. Thank you for teaching me how to take responsibility for myself." The family hugged and the town rejoiced.

600 word article

So today, I'm gonna tell everybody about a news article! Yay! 'Cause we all gotta keep up with the world around us, right? Right! Especially when it is a highly dangerous super volcano! Keep reading and you'll see what I'm talking about..
In Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming scientists have recently discovered that the magma plume underneath Yellowstone is a lot larger than they first thought. The volcano is already classified as a "super-volcano" which means that it could take out several states if it were to explode. It was already thought to be extremely powerful and dangerous, but now we have discovered that the super volcano is much, much larger than we had previously thought. So if and when the volcano explodes, we will be in a lot of trouble...
Reports from scientists at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah tried out a new measuring technique. Magnetotelluric imaging looks at the electrical conductivity of the plume. By looking at the angle in the plume, they discovered it actually goes on for 400 miles- 250 miles longer than they originally thought it was. This super volcano is getting about 3 times more power than we had thought, making it 3 times more dangerous if it is to erupt.
National Geographic interviewed the study leader, Michael Zhdanov, from the University of Utah. Michael Zhdanov explained a few things about this startling discovery. First, that the imagery used is something like an MRI, where the old data was more like an ultra sound. Both effective ways of measurement, only with different advantages or disadvantages.
Those who live by Yellowstone do not need to panic just yet, however. The volcano may or may not erupt. But with this new research, geologists can examine the crust and learn more about the earth from it. We can now gain a better understanding of the geological structure of Yellowstone and the super volcano. This can help predict when the volcano will erupt and help keep people safe.
This is a good discovery because now we are aware of the danger. We can learn from this discovery and use it to our advantage. It is better that we know about this extremely large and hot volcano then be in the dark and not aware of the problems we a may face.
The bottom line is, we have made a very "hot" discovery!
Sorry, had to throw in the pun.
I'm glad that we made this discovery. Like I said, we now are aware of the danger. It is better that we are aware because we can be prepared. People living around Yellowstone or in neighboring states can get ready in case something does happen with the volcano. We can also learn a lot about our earth from this discovery. Perhaps other super-volcanoes around the world are this large, too. Scientists will now need to investigate this.
At the same time, this is also a very scary discovery. Super volcanoes have taken out entire countries before. I once saw a discovery channel special on super volcanoes and thousands of years ago, a super volcano took out the whole island that it was on. It blew itself up! Crazy volcano done killed itself. They are so so powerful and dangerous that it is pretty freaky to have one so close to where we are.
I guess there is really nothing we can do except wait thought. Wait for scientists to look further into Yellowstone and see what else is going on deep down in the earth. We also can prepare for disasters. Ready ourselves for any possible volcanic activity. Still, there is little chance the volcano will explode any time soon, so we can just relax and go on with our happy lives while the scientists check it out for us.

Yitta Schwatz died last month at 93 years old. She had around 2,000 living descendants. Yitta had 15 kids then they had her 200 grandchildren, which had even more of her great grandchildren. She had 7 siblings herself and decided at a young age that she would like to have a large family. Together her and her husband Joseph raised their 15 kids. Yitta was a stay at home mom while her husband provided for the large family of 17. Yitta was also a survivor of the Holocaust and took in refugees during the war-time. She has the largest surviving family from the holocaust now.
Her husband was a furniture sales man on Lee Avenue and she tended to the family. She had to make home-made bread everyday and had little money for nice appliances. She made around 12 pounds of home-made bread each day to feed her family. 
Can you imagine taking care of 15 children by yourself? You would have to pay for food, schooling, and clothing while also cleaning the house, doing laundry and chores, attending things like sporting events for them, all that jazz. But Yitta did it! She was a loving mother and will be greatly missed by her 2,000 descendants. 

Pripyat- As we entered the kindergarten our guide warned us not to touch anything with our bare hands. This little kindergarten class room was filled with child toys and small cubbies we noticed that everything was covered in dust.

This was not simply dust though. It was the leftovers of the first nuclear accident to ever occur. In this small, innocent corner of the world, a nuclear reactor exploded. Then caused problems in the environment, and killed many people.  After the explosion, the Soviet Union decided to shut down the construction of new nuclear reactors. But they did not shut down the ones they already had because many citizens are employed there and it brings money into their country.

Now the town is deserted. It is highly dangerous to enter into the region without protective gear.

I think it is kind of neat that my teacher picked this article for me to blog about because guess what! We just barely learned all of this in my geography class. Yeah. I learned all about this little accident and the country’s reaction to it. They weren’t too happy….. Let’s just leave it at that. But yeah it was a pretty sad accident.

A dude named Henry Holt wrote a book called “The Last Train from Hiroshima” and people believe that it reveals a secret accident with the atomic bomb that killed one American so they reduced the power in the bombs .But the thing is, they didn’t have eye witnesses of the accident. The only person in the book that knows anything about it was Joseph Fuoco and he was just a last-minute substitute. Mr. Fuoco died in 2008 and he never flew on the bombing run and never substituted for James Corliss on the plane. Scientist, historians and veterans are all dissing on the book and saying that Mr. Fuoco is an impostor and has no right taking credit for Corliss’s flight.

Mr. Corliss is also dead and he died back in 1999 but his family still has the documents from his historic flight. Russell Gackenbach, another member of the of flight crew, also says that Fuoco was not on the plane and that Corliss was the true bomb man.

Mr. Fuoco’s account also disagrees with the Los Alamos weapons lab which says the bomb did not have any problems and that the accident was a lie. A lot of people agree that the book should be recalled.

Officials See Slander, but Artists See Censorship

Umida Akhmedova is a photographer in Uzbekistan and she took a photo of a Uzbek boy that showed village life in an unflattering light. (the photo pretty much made it look like life is horrible over there) The photo caused problems with the country's censorship. Prosecutors said the she intentionally made their quality of life look poor. But Akhmedova says she is offended that she could go to prison over her art. She is simply trying to express herself. She says art is not always happy things, sometimes they are deeper and could be darker. Everything is not always happy and she wants to express deeper meaning in her art work. She think is it is not fair that her country keeps all its artists from creating what they want.
The picture of the boy is actually just a young kid laying down in a building under repair. He does not live in the dangerous conditions but is curious to see the strange room. All Uzbekistan people know this but it gives a different meaning to foreigners. This is why the country's leaders are upset with Akhmedova's photograph- it gives the wrong message to people.
The indepentent artists do not make much money off their work and feel it is unethical that they cannot show most of their work.

Alexa Loo and the Kin Brothers

A failed olympian.
Two hard-working, determined brothers.
Two stories coming together because of a blog.
Alexa Loo was a competitor in the 2006 olympics and failed to gain a metal because she crashed and injured herself badly. Soon after, she lost all her financial supporters. What was she to do now? She simply could not give up on her dream.
Loo wrote a blog about her story and soon she had many followers. One of her followers read her blog and  had Loo tell her story on the radio and broadcasted her accident on MTV.
The Kin brothers heard of her and realized that they were alike- Loo and the Kins both being determined but financially incapable. The Kin brothers built up money from opening small grocery stores and working hard to keep they're dream alive. They soon had 28 stores open and decided to help Loo by putting her profile on their grocery bags. They also made and sold comic books about her. This helped her put her life back together. Her dream was possibly again with their help. Loo is even engaged now. Loo and the Kin brothers are now good friends and Loo is grateful for their help.