Dandelion Wine "Synopsis"

To Mr. Bradbury
Author of Dandelion Wine

Dear Mr. Bradbury,
I have recently read your book titled “Dandelion Wine”. I loved the way I could connect to the book, being a teenager of 14. I think that the feeling shared about family, and about summer are extremely common in young adults. Though this book was written sometime ago I could see the similarities between society in our current time and in this book’s society.

Yet another way I could connect to this book is in the way that the character Douglas Spaulding felt the sentimental “twinges” that he did. I too feel these “twinges” every time that something of the past goes away and something more convenient for modern society takes its place. During the reading of this book it made me realize how many different things occur at the same time. Even though they occur throughout different parts of the town and with different people I could see it the way that they all had a common point.

I like in which the way this society isn’t afraid to express themselves. I could tell that all the people in the town seemed pretty closely knit and intertwined. Many times during the book people would bring items or matters to the attention of others that I found most interesting, saying that in our modern society we are no longer able to do so. Doesn’t it almost make you wish that you could still do those things that the children did as kids, or the adults participated in; in the modern day society?

A major difference I noticed in contrasting then from now was sports. Now days it is extremely uncommon to see a kid that is not involved in sports or has no plan to. Most kids now are in something like football or soccer. It seems to me that in the older society represented in the book that was not a common thing to see kids missing days during the week to go to swimming practice or football practice or some other organized activity. Though this didn’t keep the children from staying fit, for it seemed to me that they enjoyed very much to go play and hang out with friends. And this normally included playing tag or some other physical activity.

I personally enjoyed this book, and would definitely count it on my favorites list. This book really helped me to realize that even though society has really changed noticeably there are many common factors that still exist. All through out the book I kind of just wished that I could go back and just live in the care free world that some of the characters had even if it were just for a day go back and see what it would be like to live as a care free child in the early 1900’s. I also kind of wished that I would have just as many wonderful people in my life as they commonly did back then.

State Science Olympiad

Well I know that a lot of you don’t really care about Science Olympiad, and some of you may be even bitter towards it, but that doesn’t mean it still does not mean a lot to me. This essay is simply the one that I turned into Mrs. Brinkerhoff for my term project. All it really states is what the title says, what happened at state for me, and how I prepared to do my best.

State Science Olympiad

State Science Olympiad is much the same as it has always been. One of the major things that set this year apart from that of others was mainly the coaching. When normally we have trained with four coaches, this year we trained with one. We only had one teacher acting as coach this year with all of the other coaching done by volunteers to put it in simpler terms. Many of us thought that this would lead to our downfall, along with the seemingly less amount of students trying out. But we managed once again to prove that Fairfield Junior is still strong and is still the Utah Science Olympiad Juggernaut.

This year I competed in three events: Scrambler, Simple Machines, and Rocks & Minerals. I placed gold in all three of my events, receiving an almost perfect score in Simple Machines as well. In Scrambler our distance to shoot for was exactly 12 meters. We managed to pull this distance off within 4.7 seconds- look at that- 12 meters! We didn’t get quite as close to the wall as we had hoped for but in training for nationals we hope to solve that problem. But our overall score was good enough to pull off gold.

In Simple Machines, we didn’t have quite the coaching situation that we would have hoped for. (Last year in Nationals this same partnership pulled off 10th place) But we made do with an extremely willing parent volunteer, she tried to keep us in shape to do our best. Right before state Mr. Erickson got out all of the Simple Machines from district and let us run through and try to get it all right, (We bombed district quite badly) and this seemed to help us enough to get every single question right on the state test. (Thus, pulling off gold once again in yet another event)

In Rocks and Minerals we have always been known at Fairfield Junior High to have the best possible coach you could get. This was still true this year, but unfortunately she would no coach us! So we had three amazing coaches that had previously been trained by her and had ranked nationally in the event. They did a wonderful job coaching us, and now have joined us in training for nationals with Mrs. Nelson. (And once again we got gold)

So overall I had a really good experience at the State competition doing well in all of my events, and being there for all of my team-mates.

Why we should Read

Why should we Read?

No! Please! Not another one! Reading to us may at times seem to be a kind of burden that we all feel that we are forced to bear at times. But really, if you look at it, none of us would be able to live without that capability. We read every day of our lives, most of the time without even realizing we are doing so. We also read for enjoyment, most of us find that hard to believe, but yes, we all enjoy reading a good book now and then. And of course, reading, even with all of the new technology in the world today, is still one of the best ways to learn.

Everyday we use reading in our lives, and most of the time, without even realizing it. It seems that almost every teenager in this country has a cell phone and they seem to not be able to live without texting. If we could not read, how could we: 1. Send a text in the first place, and 2. How are you going to read a reply from one of your friends? What about reading signs as we travel around the city? How are you going to know where to go if you can’t read the sign in the first place? So as you can see, already reading plays a big part in our lives. But the importance of reading doesn’t necessarily stop there.

After a long day of going to school and being totally stressed out by you teachers and your parents one of the best ways to relax is to read a book. Reality can sometimes be really hard to live with, but we have no choice. When we read, we can enter a totally different world that you can lose yourself in. You don’t have to worry about any of your own problems, like when your essay is due in English, or if dinner will be ready at five, but instead you can worry about things like if Jane is going to be murdered in the next chapter, or if Dave really saves the world from nuclear destruction. To us, those sort of problems are always less bearing and don’t really seem to “press” as much.

At school one of the most used talents we have is to read. In every class we have to read at some point, whether it is reading prompts in your music in Band, a recipe in Foods, or reading a Shakespearian novel in English, we always seem to be reading. Many times we have to research papers in which we are told we must use book references. And of course, we always ask, why? One of the most probable reasons would have to be that reading something out of a book kind of “sticks” in your mind better than something you read off of the internet. When we are on the computer there are always things to distract us, like getting finished so that we can play games, or checking our e- mail. But when we read, all of those distractions are gone, we can focus on what is in front of us, and we can go to a nice quiet place and just concentrate. And, when we use a book you have to work harder to get what you want, it isn’t any longer “a click away”.

So whether it is checking your text messages, or you e-mail, or if you are just kind of relaxing after a hard stressed out day, or going through what might cause that stress, reading always plays a part in you life. It is something that we should always try to keep a part of our life, and never forget, that without reading, there would be nothing.

T.V.... Is it really what it seems?

Matt Munns
Period 4
March 30, 2008

T.V. in Our Lives

Oh my gosh! Where’s the remote? Turn it off! We all have had a situation like this before in our life, when we find out the program we are watching is not exactly what we should, or want to be watching. T.V. has been blamed for many things in this world, obesity, raised violence, but it really only presents half of the problem. All those problems that it does create probably fall under the category of bad programming.

It has happened to all of us, at one time or another; we have all seen something that we never want to see on T.V. So what do most people do about it? Thy normally just chose to leave it on and watch it until it is over. You could maybe say that the more people watch programs that aren’t necessarily clean in language, action, or dress; it starts to desensitize them to it. The first time they watch the show they may not really like it, but soon it becomes their favorite, they have become hooked, just like a drug. And once again some of us ask, “Are they going to let themselves do this?” and from the looks of things in the world now, they are.

Programs on T.V. today are seemingly rarely clean, or worth watching. Unfortunately programs in our day and age don’t seem to ever follow a plot, or a story line. This makes them seemingly dumb or stupid to watch because they don’t really want or need to go any where, because all they need is for you to watch. Television stations now would rather put something bad on T.V. than good because guess what we are supposedly more likely to watch? That’s right, the bad program. So you may ask “What exactly is a bad program?” Look at it like this; does it have bad language used excessively? Does it promote drugs? Is it in someway explicit? Or does it just promote sex, violence and other actions that seem to be O.K. for T.V. to program? If it has any of these characteristics, it should be considered unclean, especially the latter. In a way this leads to another problem the one the T.V. may be best known for.

T.V. is quite often blamed for physical characteristics in our world, mainly known as obesity. T.V. does promote people just sitting around doing nothing, but watching their screen, also known as in-activeness, and when people start to become inactive, they start to gain weight. It starts slowly at first, and they may not realize it, but soon their weight is just, well, out of control! This is what T.V. gets blamed for, and in a way it should, because it does promote this in-activeness, and it does have programs that do the same; but all it has really done is nullify our decision making skills enough that we soon become happier to be extremely large, than to get healthy, and active.

So look at it, what does your favorite program represent? How clean is it? This is something that we all should ask ourselves before we ever watch anything. But we normally don’t. So is it necessarily the T.V.’s fault? Is it the T.V.’s fault for giving us so much bad programming? Is it the T.V.’s fault for giving this country such a high obesity rate? That is only the tip of the iceberg, in the end it is all up to us. Whether or not we watch the bad shows, whether or not we decide to become extremely overweight, and eventually obese. In the end, it is all up to us to make the decision, so what do you chose?