Helena’s Twitter Account

Nov17

In Shakespeare’s comedy, “the Midsummer’s Night’s Dream”, two couples run into the woods where they meet the magics of the fairies who live there. A girl named Helena is obsessed with, a boy, Demetrius, sad that she couldn’t have her way with Demetrius, and jealous of her friend’s, Hermia’s, beauty. Helena is head over heels in love with Demetrius. The more she wants to be with Demetrius, the more he wants to get away from Helena: “The more I love, the more he hateth me” (Line 199). Helena doesn’t want to give up on Demetrius, even though he had given up on Helena once he saw Hermia. In fact, Helena’s plan to make Demetrius fall in love with her. Helena is sad that she couldn’t get her ending with Demetrius, unlike Hermia running away to elope with Lysander. She complains that some people will always be happier than others: “How happy some o’er other some can be!” (Line 226). She is implying here that even though she is beautiful, she still won’t sway Demetrius’s heart. Helena is also jealous. Helena wishes to be beautiful as Hermia so she could make Demetrius fall in love. Helena even remembers the time Demetrius really loved her, but when Demetrius saw Hermia, he forgot about Helena: “For ere Demetrius looked on Hermia’s eyne, he hailed down oaths that he was only mine” (Lines 242, 243). This makes Helena jealous of Hermia’s beauty because now Demetrius is committed in making Hermia his wife, and scorns Helena.

 

Two of her quotes, the lines 226, 242 and 243, are tweets, while the bio highlights and puts emphasis on the part that she is madly in love with Demetrius. There is a tweet written by Lysander, explaining that Demetrius won Helena’s heart, and how infatuated Helena is. I chose these profile pictures by searching up Google using the words pretty and handsome.

Maggie Tells the Theme of Miss Marple’s Story

Sep30

Maggie Tells the Theme of Miss Marple’s Story

 

“The danger with such people is that when anything at all extraordinary really does happen to them, nobody believes they are speaking the truth.” (Christie 5).

 

Miss Marple Tells a Story is a story told in Miss Marple’s perspective of solving a case. Miss Marple learns of a recent murder in Crown Hotel where Mr. Rhode’s wife is murdered. She solves the case by asking Mr. Petherick, a shrewd friend of hers, and Mr. Rhode details about the suspects, considers all the possibilities and proves Mr. Rhode innocent by finding the culprit, Mrs. Carruthers. In the story Miss Marple Tells a Story, by Agatha Christie, the author believes that a person who makes their life sound like a fantasy frequently cultivates disbelief from other people. Mr. Rhode never taken any notice of Mrs. Rhode’s distress of the threatening letters: “’Frankly,’ he said, ‘I never believed it. I thought [Mrs. Rhode] had made most of it up.’” (4). Mr. Rhode knows that Mrs. Rhode likes to exaggerate a lot. From what Miss Marple gathered, Mrs. Rhode would describe her life as almost deaths and whimsical tales. So, it was possible that Mr. Rhode wasn’t aware that she could be telling the truth because it was a habit for Mr. Rhode to discount her statements. When Mr. Rhode attempted to tell the police about the threatening letters that Mrs. Rhode received, the police never believed Mr. Rhode. However, further along in the story, the claims of threatening letters were true.  Mrs. Rhode’s impractical and reckless way of living is why Mrs. Carruthers retaliated against her: “Mrs. Rhode, who was a most reckless and dangerous driver, had run over her little girl, and it had driven the poor woman off her head.” (7). Before Mrs. Rhode married Mr. Rhode, she used to drive without the regard of consequences and killed Mrs. Carruthers daughter. To seek revenge, Mrs. Carruthers hid her madness secretly and sent threatening letters which nobody believed that existed. At the end, Mrs. Carruthers killed Mrs. Rhode. Mrs. Carruthers used Mrs. Rhode’s way of romanticizing life as an advantage, because nobody will truly believe Mrs. Rhode. This is why a person who makes their life sound like a fantasy frequently cultivates disbelief from other people, and all the more dangerous when another character has a grudge against this person.

 

The Last Kiss Found Poem

Sep14

In Humanities/Social Studies/Language Art class, we read 3 short stories as a class. The stories were “The Last Kiss” by Ralph Fletcher, “Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan, and “Thank you, Ma’am” by Langston Hughes. As the assignment, we had to do a found poem, a poem created by taking words or passages from other sources and reframing them as a poem by making changes in spacing and/or lines (and by consequently meaning), or by altering the text by additions of deletions. I chose “The Last Kiss” as my found poem. My poem explains the external conflict of the main character, the author Ralph Fletcher, as a little boy wanting a kiss from his father. However, the little boy is now older and can’t receive a kiss from his father. The conflict is a man vs. nature conflict because the main character is now clashing with how old he is. Him growing up is a natural process, and it conflicts the character himself, thus it is man vs. nature.

 

The poem goes:

My childhood had symmetry

That passed much too quickly

First

Night,

I was stunned

Next night,

I murmured

For clarification of quiet expectancy

With sinking heart

I

Formulate

Loss

This grim truth

Sunk in

I was too old

Not powerful, much more fragile

 

 

The first lines “my childhood had symmetry that passed much too quickly,” explains the theme of cherishing childhood before it is too late. Then the poem explains the two nights of the main character’s reaction getting rejected by his father. He slowly realizes “with a sinking heart,” that he was too old and not feeling “powerful” anymore. The color scheme goes first to dark green, expressing the normality of the routine of getting kissed both by the father and mother. Then the second paragraph turns into dark blue because the main character is sad and stunned that his father didn’t kiss him good night. Then it goes to blue grey, cool grey, and then black, to show the hopelessness of him realizing he will never be getting a kiss from his dad and worries when he won’t get a kiss from his mom.

 

Outbreaks: Black Death vs HIV

May28

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The Ineffective way: Banning single-use plastics

Dec16

Animals getting hurt, air getting polluted, and health risks are increasing. We’ve all seen this through social media and the Internet. This all sounds frightening that single-use plastics are making this mess, and it is common sense to ban the usage of single-use plastics. However single use plastics is an ineffective way to save the environment, for it reduces employment, the economy will get hurt, and it will not benefit the environment.

 

Firstly, banning single use plastics will reduce employment for businesses. A survey recorded employment in a Los Angeles plastic bag ban and shockingly found out that stores inside of the ban reduce 10% of employment, however 2.4% of employment had risen outside of the ban. This proves that many businesses depend on single use plastics to get workers. Even if there will be a single-use plastic ban, more than 30,000 jobs that require single-use production would be at stake, so will the employees that depend on this job to make a living.

 

Secondly, if we ban single-use plastics we will hurt the simple and affordable economy we have. On Seattle’s ban on plastic bags, almost 40% of surveyed store owners described seeing their costs for carryout bags increase between 40% to 200%. Business sales will be negatively affected due to these prices increasing for consumers, the profit decreasing for the producers, and economic activities decreasing as well. If we were to substitute single-use plastics, prices will be higher. According to a poll 83% of people will not be willing to pay that higher price, and people will start crossing to the other side of the country just like the Connecticut’s 2019 plastic bag tax.

 

Many people and researchers believe that if we ban single-use plastics, we will start to use substitutes so the air will improve, and food will be less contaminated. However, in the paper from the State Chamber of Oklahoma on how banning single-use plastics affect the economy and environment, it argues that if we use substitutes, like cloth, we will also have a risk of cross-contamination and disease to the food we buy. This is mainly because, cloth items need be used 104 times before it is more effective like single-use plastics and for paper, 43 times until it is safer. Plus, if we are getting rid of this simple convenience, we have to find the out-of-the-box idea to substitute without harming the environment. The closest ideas we have to substitute single-use plastics is still far from the perfection of single-use plastics

 

On the outside, banning single-use plastics sounds like a great idea to stop pollution. However, on the inside, it provokes great harm. Due to the reduction of employment, the damage of the economy, and the ineffectiveness on the environment itself, banning single use plastics is an ineffective way to save the environment. After all it is not a question of single-use plastics harming our world, or our world harming single-use plastics.

Maggie Percy Final

Oct8

As a demigod, Percy can do magical phenomena with his water powers, like blow up a pipe and flood the bathrooms with water (Chapter 6, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief) or can plummet from couple of stories high to a river without splattering himself on the impact (Chapter 13, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief). However, these powers don’t solve his way of making terrible choices. Through research and the context of the book, it is decided that Percy Jackson can make better choices by strengthening his relationships with his peers and have more control with his emotions.

 

Firstly, Percy can make better choices if he strengthens his relationships with his stepdad, Gabe Ugliano. In the book, Gabe Ugliano is described as a figure that Percy despised, calling his stepdad, “Smelly Gabe”.  Take the case of when Percy and Gabe were arguing. Percy was coming out of the taxi and coming back to his apartment. Gabe knew that he got there by taxi and wanted Percy’s money. Instead, Percy lied to get himself even in more trouble. From the Newsela article, “Conviction Challenge: Seek Out Different Beliefs to Test Your Own,” the author says that “disagreeing is ok and makes us a better person, however, the listener should’ve first listen to the talker, ask why they truly believed it, and then decide what to do next”. Percy should have asked why Gabe needed the money, so Gabe could ask himself, do I truly need it? If Percy did do the actions, as stated in the same article, he would actually fortify his connection with his stepfather. In connection to the idea of seeking out different beliefs and getting stronger relationships as a result, as claimed by the report, “Why Personal Relationships are Important”, people who had stronger relationships with others had “a faster recovery when they were reminded of people with whom they had strong relationships”. Percy is dealing with stress from the gods, and his mother isn’t there to help him. If he had a stronger relationship with his stepdad and didn’t have to be so unfair, he could have dealt with less stress.

 

Equally important, Percy can make better choices if he can control his emotions. This problem occurs to many middle students, including me. Every time I’m mad, I lose control and forget myself. However, in this case, Percy always want to defend Grover in anyway possible because they are friends. When Nancy Bobofit purposely dropped her half-eaten lunch onto Grover (Chapter 1), Percy automatically forgets all the advice from the counselor about disciplining himself and sends Nancy into the fountain. To make it worse, Percy sassed at his Pre-Algebra teacher even though Percy was already on probation. From the article, Recognizing and Managing Emotions, it advised to “stop and give ourselves a chance to think, consider what might happen as a result and how the result affects others”. Percy should have thought first what will happen if he got mad, then consider how Nancy Bobofit will be affected.

 

In the end, Percy has had a rough time being a middle school student and being a normal person in general. He didn’t strengthen his relationships with other individuals, excluding his mom; he also didn’t manage to control his emotions when he comes to stressful situations, like getting mad at Ares because he felt the “anger, resentment, bitterness” presence from Ares. Kronos is now making his way back to reality, the gods say that Kronos has a way to go into anyone’s dreams and haunt them. Would Percy stand a chance against Kronos, and his terrible choices?

5 new words for this week

Sep13

Censure

Example from someone else: “He was censured for his conduct” Oxford American Dictionary

My example: The judges censured her masterpiece.

 

Certify

Example from someone else: ” The aircraft was certified as airworthy.” – Oxford American Dictionary

My example: I will certify to the opposition that this claim is true

 

Chaff

Example from someone else: “Winnowing was done by women, who tossed the grain into the air with small wooden boards, the chaff being blown away by the winds.” – sentence.yourdictionary.com

My example: Separating the chaffs from the cereal grains were either done by hand or by machines.

 

Chassis

Example from someone else: “The chassis of the car is in mint condition.” -Oxford American Dictionary

My example: The chassis of the radio is missing.

 

Choleric

Example from someone else: ” He is a choleric, self-important little man.” – Oxford American Dictionary

My example: The male bullies in this show were often represented as choleric and selfish students.

Percy CER- Chapters 10 to 11

Sep12

Percy should try to make himself more enjoyable to hang out with. The evidence is that Percy was annoying Annabeth with questions why their parents don’t go along (in Chapter 10). In the video about how to build trust and relationships, they mentioned that asking questions that people will enjoy answering will encourage them to talk about themselves. Plus, many people find it uncomfortable to talk about their personal lives. If Percy wants to be friends with Annabeth, he really should try to ask better questions.