I have finished reading my book Sarah’s Key. In the end Sarah and her new friend from the concentration camp escape and walk for endless miles. They try to stay hidden in the woods and in a dog shed. They end up getting caught by an elderly couple. The elderly couple is kind enough to take the risk of taking the children into their home. Unfortunately Sarah’s friend ends up getting a very bad disease. It gets bad enough that the couple ends up calling a doctor. To be safe Sarah hid herself in the basement of their home. The doctor recognizes Rachel’s shaved head to be a sign that she was an escapee and returns to the home with a few German officers to take Rachel away. Sarah was not captured luckily and decided to go back to her apartment in Paris, France with the couple. She makes her way all the way back to the apartment and unlocks the secret cupboard just to see her dead brother lying there. She is in total grief over what she has essentially done to her brother. My book matters because it just shows the pain that the holocaust brang to all of the victims. The one thing that I will take away from this book is the importance of family. At the beginning of the story Sarah let her brother stay in the cupboard locked away to keep him safe from the dangers of the French police. After she realized that her brother was most likely not going to live she decided that she HAD to get back to the apartment with the key to see what happened to her brother. Here is a quote of Sarah talking to the elderly couple about going back to Paris to see her brother ”If you try and stop me,” she said darkly, “if you stop me, I’ll run away.” She ended up risking her life escaping from a concentration camp and making her way all the way back to Paris with a shaven head to see what her brothers fait was. This is still extremely valuable today because the world is still nowhere near perfect. There are tons of ways to get hurt, into to trouble, and killed, and we need someone there to help guide us our way through life.
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My book is all about the genocide on people like jews, gypsies, the disabled, and other kinds of people back during the holocaust. In my book a family of Jewish people is being taken to a concentration camp solely on the fact that they are Jewish. Nowadays there is no more of the Holocaust but there is still some genocide around. I am talking about over in the middle east in Syria. In Syria there is a civil war going on. Basically what is happening is that some rebel groups decided that they were tired of how the government was being run and so they were just going to go overthrow it. The government of Syria ended up retaliating against these people and just kind of destroyed all of the land that supposedly the rebels were staying to get rid of them. What is happening is many women, children, and even men that are not fighting are ending up getting caught in this mess and dying. In Syria many Women, men are being brutally killed for no good reason. ”Authorities have harassed and imprisoned human rights activists and other critics of the government, who were often detained indefinitely and tortured while under prison-like conditions”.This is related to my book because people that are Jewish, gypsies, etc. are being killed for no real reason. They were taken to concentration camps and then just gassed or worked to death.
The book that I am reading is called Sarah’s Key and it is about a girl whos family is taken by the French police and brang to a big stadium where a lot of other Jewish families were being held. The girl left her brother in a secret cupboard back at the apartment because she thought the trip would be short and then she could just go back and get him out. The conditions were horrible in the stadium. Shortly after the families were being taken on a train to some camps in Germany where families were being split up. This is just basically what happened in Paris. French policemen went around and rounded up around 13,000 Jewish people in July of 1942. Most of the Jews rounded up were sent off to the concentration camp Auschwitz. This roundup is known as the Vel d’Hiv. The main character in my book Sarah does not realize what is going on during this time. She knew that this is under the control of the French police so she felt safe. In the book it says “If they are French, and not German, they will not harm us”. She believes that in maybe like a couple of days the family will be able to return back to her apartment. The people of Paris did not really know of the roundup except for the fact that most of the Jews were gone and Germany had already invaded part of France. The French police although just kind of went along with the plan for their own good. Not all of the French police agreed and knew some of the Jewish people so they just tried to look away from what was happening.
Parks and Greenways Problems Our goal with this project is to help make the environment a better place. We are looking to go out and clean up a park or greenway. As you can see in the graph to the right most of the litter left around in our area is styrofoam, and paper. Our goal is to pick up 20 bags of garbage.There is lots of littering pollution throughout parks in our North Carolina area. This issue is affecting all of the living things in the community. Littering can seep into the ground and then into the groundwater and then you have groundwater pollution. Some other effects of littering are more littering, fire hazard, breeding ground for bacteria, and just the cost to remove the litter (Conserve Energy Future). I personally am a nature person. I love being outside in the fall in the cool weather and the leaves. Unfortunately the litter that is just being thrown on the ground at any place and time is ruining the nature. I want to to keep the nature to be as nice as it can be to preserve the nature and keep the community enjoying the outside. The regular things that are littered are things like glass, paper, plastic, and fast food (JB Green Team). This is a big issue that everybody should know about. Littering is an illegal thing to do and if caught you will be charged. In North Carolina the first offense of littering is $250 with a maximum fine of up to $1000 (NC Public Safety). The community should also be aware of this issue so that we can keep North Carolina looking clean and nice, and so that we can be in the in the best possible health. Body Paragraph: The Problem Littering affects everyone in a community that is littered in. Littering has been an issue ever since people started becoming lazy enough to dump their trash in small amounts in other areas. Littering can also be accidental. Like if an uncovered dump truck full of debris drives down the road and scatters litter everywhere. Littering is a problem because it attracts vermin and creates a place for bacteria to multiply. Also, when litter gathers and becomes dried out, it becomes a fire hazard. It also becomes a danger to animals if they eat it or get stuck in it. Littering is a problem in our community because many people have become lazy and thrown their trash all over the place. After many, many, too many people do this, it begins to look regular and even more people disregard it, and then they end up littering, too. The effects of littering are that communities become less appealing. It also creates a fire hazard, attracts vermin, and provides a place for bacteria to multiply. If the littering problem is not solved, the world could become unlivable as a planet. It would be like the WALL-E movie, except we can’t fit the whole of people on Earth onto a spaceship. The more people litter, the more other people litter, and eventually it becomes a habit that no one cares about. It also encourages people to be more wasteful. If they keep throwing their trash everywhere, they don’t care about reducing, reusing, and recycling because they aren’t going to waste their time putting recycling where it belongs, if they already throw their trash everywhere. Body Paragraph: The Solution Many people in our community and other communities are helping to reduce and get rid of pollution with varying solutions. The two ways to prevent pollution are to prevent the pollution in the first place and to clean up the pollution that is already there. The first way, preventing pollution in the first place can range from recycling a soda can to using wind turbines and solar panels as alternative energy sources. The other way (and the way we are using for our project) is to clean up the pollution that there is now. It is hard to use this way to get rid of things such as air pollution and water pollution but you can pick up trash by hand and that is not hard to do at all. It is very accessible because all you need are yourself and a trash bag and you can get rid of a lot of litter and make a difference. There are many organizations in Raleigh and other cities that take volunteers to go pick up litter in parks and along streams and paths.The City of Raleigh and Wake County take volunteers to parks and greenways to clean up and do maintenance work. There is a need for help with this issue because despite many people wanting to help out and get rid of pollution there are many people that don't care and a lot of pollution ends up where it shouldn't be accident. Luckily in our community people want to help out and we are fortunate enough to have landfills and recycling. If everyone pitches in and helps these organizations then we can live in a community where pollution is hardly a problem at all. What can you do to help? The Plan In response to the high levels of parks and greenways, we propose to have a park cleanup. The 8th grade students could come together to clean up a park to help animals in their habitats and to reduce pollution levels. Small donations could be collected to help provide trash bags and litter sticks/ trash pickers. We could come together and ride over to Laurel Hills Park and pick up the trash around the area. There would be no cost to go cleanup the area but we will need to provide our own trash bags and trash pickers ( and maybe gloves). We could set up a donation table outside of the lunchroom to collect small donations to be able to provide the needed accessories. The transportation would be by a bus which we could ride there and back from. We would be participating this activity most likely on June 6th,2018 but if not that day then it would be June 7th. 2-4 weeks before we participate we can contact Laurel Hills and inform them on the specific information involving when we would be cleaning, and to make sure we have their permission. ( Laurel Hills Park Information 2018) This activity of cleaning at Laurel Hills could be an entertaining and interactive way for many Martin 8th grade students to come together and help reduce the pollution in our parks. We could have several students participate as buses have the capacity to fit many students. June 6th or 7th would be the day we participate, driving over to laurel hills in a short 15 minute drive (Google Maps 2018). The participation part would become very easy as the drive is so short. We would participate for about an hour or a little longer. We would have plenty of time to participate in the other activities that martin is doing. Our goals for this project is to help out the pollution status of laurel hills drop, as it is one of the most polluted parks in wake county. We believe that we could help clean a majority of the park as hopefully we could fill up as many bags as possible. The main goal though is to pick up at least about 20 bags of trash, but hopefully we can overachieve it. Bibliography: Laurel Hills Park Website: https://www.raleighnc.gov/parks/content/ParksRec/Articles/Parks/LaurelHills.html http://www.wakegov.com/parks/lakecrabtree/Pages/volunteers.aspx City of Raleigh volunteer program: https://www.raleighnc.gov/parks/content/ParksRec/Articles/Programs/Volunteer/VolunteerProgram.html Wake County volunteer program: http://www.wakegov.com/parks/att/Pages/volunteer.aspx J. B. Green Team Litter Pickup: https://www.jbgreenteam.org/litter-preventioncollection/ Pictures sources: Littering Graph Littering Picture I found an article on WRAL that I thought was interesting. It was from September of 2017 so it's not that long ago and it was about cats that were in some urgent need of adoption. These cats were from the terrible storm that happened in Florida named Irma. This can relate to our community because our community is filled with animal lovers and people that want to be animal lovers and these cats are in need of an adopter so that’s good. I in particular were interested in this issue because my dad is allergic to pet hair so my family can’t own any pets but I really wish we could so I always like reading or seeing stuff about animals. The community is affected by this because by the shelter getting in more animals it is causing them to have to spend more and more money. They need people to adopt these cats or the shelter will run out of money and then what’s gonna happen. Also owners of animals that could be careless could see the article about this and then might just be thinking that if their cats dies then there will just be another one at the shelter. This is an important topic for other people to care about because we would never want the shelter to run out of money from having too many cats, then it shuts down, and then the cats are moved somewhere else where are treated not as good. We could help this issue by a couple of ways. We could donate money to the shelter to help the animals, and also we could find some people/families that were looking to get a cat or going to go get a cat somewhere else and we could refer them to the shelter to help the cats in need of adoption.
Nic Edward
11/2/17 This I Believe This I believe that life is fragile. The sun was shining on a nice Spring day. We were vacationing at Atlantic Beach with my family, my sisters friend Mary, and my friend Maddox. We got up and immediately checked the weather to see if we would be able to go in the water today. We both jumped up and yelled when we saw that there was a high of 80. Our only worry was that there was like a 40% chance of rain. We ran to the kitchen and asked my parents if we could go to the beach soon. Their answer was “Once everybody eats and we get sunscreen on.” We quickly ran into my sister's room and got up my sister and her friend. We chomped down our food and then got into our bathing suits. We ran outside with our boogie boards to try and skip getting sunscreen on. After annoying my parents enough they finally let us run to the beach and just told us to be safe. When we got to the beach we immediately took off our flip flops and let our toes sink into the sand. The beach was pretty empty because it was just spring and not really that hot yet. I got a big grin on my face because I just love the sound of the waves crashing and the birds squawking around. When we got close enough to the waves we noticed that it was high tide and the waves were looking very rough. We found a nice spot to put down our stuff and then we sprinted to the water. We slowly stepped into the water and froze when the chilly water touched our toes. Then we just started getting farther into the water and noticed that it wasn’t even that cold we just had to get used to it. We were both so excited to go farther into the water though because the waves were huge. The crazy waves were like stacking on top of each other and then just crashing right onto the sand. Unfortunately we didn't realize this until afterwards we started boogie boarding. It was very tiring getting out to where the waves crashed though because the waves just kept knocking us back towards the shore. But eventually we made it past the crashing waves. We waited a few minutes and then hopped on what seemed like the perfect wave. We both were yelling with joy. We started riding the wave and then all of the sudden we noticed that we were really high up on the wave and it that it just started crashing. I got really scared because I could tell what was going to happen next. I just prepared for impact and then I fell straight on my back. The crashing waves flipped me around through the shelly salt water a few times and then calmed down. I immediately got hit by another wave when I tried to sit up. I was really shook up but I could tell that I wasn’t hurt or anything. All of a sudden I just heard this loud groaning noise that really scared me. It was actually my friend Maddox who had gotten hurt when the wave crashed down. When I first ran over to him I just thought he was a little shook up as I was but then when he managed to flip over I could easily tell that he was in some bad pain. He was kind of stuck in an awkward position and had a very painful look on his face. I yelled to my dad to help get him up and over to the sand. He just kept getting knocked over by the waves. We got him up and carried him over to the sand and just let him ly down and recuperate. Luckily he had no serious injuries which caused us to go the hospital. My learning from this story is that you can be doing something as fun and normal as messing around in the ocean at the beach but you can just easily carelessly get pretty badly injured. This story was from this spring and unfortunately my friend Maddox still is going to the chiropractor about it. We are close friends though and to me it doesn’t really seem to bother him at all anymore. I just never really thought that you could get hurt and not be doing be something where there is an obvious risk factor like football or something. |