An Important Principle in Life is...

I feel that a principle that is important to always have is that not everything can be pleasureful. This idea is of prime importance and even if the world should change it is necessary for one to have hardships. If one didn’t experience any hardships in their life how would they know and understand that all the things that they have experienced continuously are not a normal occurrence? For them there would be no bad events and no good events because the events that we determine are “good” is based on our objective views on our life and for the person who has always experienced the “good” events there would be no events that they determine to be “good” because these events are the usual. In order for us to appreciate our lives we have to have a good balance between experiencing strife and experiencing good events otherwise your life would feel boring and mundane. This principle could include having to work to gain benefits. In that case the work may be stressful or difficult while the benefits could be a source of joy. When you overcome something the result would also make you feel happier than if the event just happened to you.

I Am Thankful For...

I am thankful for many things and people, one of these people being a person in my American Literature class who I sit in front of. Her name is Holly Herman. In our English class we are often told to split ourselves groups and discuss a text that we read the night before or in class that day. Holly and I often pair up together and when either of it's don't know the answer to a question we can all the other person and if they don't know either we bounce ideas off of each other until we can wire adequate responses. On top of our ability to problem solve together we also edit each other's papers. This is really helpful for me because my writing Isn't the best and i often have issues with my phrasing, so when we trade papers she will often fix the things that i had issues with. In addition when we have to get Chromebooks we trade off getting them and as a result I do not have to get up every time we are told to grab one which is nice. I am also thankful because she gives me a person to write this blog about.

What did Margaret do?

Margaret Macomber is Francis Macomber's wife in the short story "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" by Ernest Hemingway. At the end, after Francis' discovery about himself, he is shooting at a buffalo that charged at him only to die when Margaret shot "at the buffalo" and instead hit Francis at the base of his head connecting to his spine. She claims that she had hit him by accident when aiming at the buffalo. However, I think that she was only telling a partial truth. She probably killed him by a mix of her unconscious desire to kill him to stop him leaving her and her desire to shoot the buffalo. I believe this because if she just wanted her husband to die she would have left him for the buffalo to kill. At the same time though the buffalo is a far larger target, so even without a lot of training with the gun she would have been now likely to hit some part of the buffalo instead of a small part on her husband's body. This is why I believe that Margaret Macomber killed her husband, Francis Macomber, because of her unconscious decision to stop her husband from leaving her and her desire to not allow the buffalo to kill him.

Six Word Stories

Regret traps me, I run away

Heart racing I turn, seeing leers

My project sits, gathering dust covers

A SNAP sounds as pain spreads

Two bodies, bloody surroundings, one laughing 

Light flickering, shapes materialize and disappear

John Proctor Hero or Stooge

I would not classify John Proctor a hero or a stooge because depending on the perspective from which you view him, he could be classified as either. He could be called a hero because he seeked to reveal the truth behind the court cases, that fraud was occurring in the church. He was attempting to reveal the truth in order to save not only his wife but other people as well knowing that he may hang for “going against the church” if he speaks up. From the public’s point of view, John Proctor is a nice person and he is respected. However, John could also be a stooge because he does the dirty work no one wants to do, he tries to reveal the truth behind what was actually happening in the church. He is also a farmer, he works to serve the community by raising crops and selling them. In addition, he committed adultery, and I don’t really think that a adulterer can be classified as a hero. Overall, I believe that it is impossible to classify John Proctor as either a hero or stooge unless you only looked at him from one perspective, which would give you incomplete and biased information. John is both a hero and a stooge.

There Goes the Neighborhood

In general, humans are greedy and a lot of them have superiority complexes. As a result, when two groups of people with different cultures meet there will normally be fights. These fights would enable the winning group to claim that their group was the one in the right, that the opponents’ gods either didn’t exist or had turned their back(s) on their followers, and that their group had received god's protection. If the two groups end up not fighting they will most likely trade. An example of an interaction between two groups is when the Europeans journeyed to the Americas. On this venture into the unknown the Europeans meet different, but welcoming Native American tribes. Unfortunately for the Native Americans interacting with the Europeans had no benefits for them. When trading with the Europeans, the Native Americans would give things of value in large quantity while they would only be given a small amount of the unneeded items that the Europeans had laying around. In addition, the Europeans gave the Native Americans diseases that they weren't immune to. As a result of the transmission of illnesses it is thought that an estimated amount of 90% of the Native Americans died.

Me

Hey, I’m Elizabeth Shumaker and I’m currently a sophomore at Whitney Young. I have an older brother and two younger sisters. During school breaks we drive for at least five hours in order to visit our family that lives in Michigan. My grandmother on my mother’s side was born in Italy and was brought to the United States when she was eight years old. When we visited she would tell me stories about Italy, what her life had been like, and stories about her neighbors. My mother works as a preschool teacher and because I used to get dragged along I became more adept at putting up with kids. My father works as a scientist and he shares his office space with a few other people. These people often tell jokes to each other and my father will in turn tell us the jokes when he came home because they were “hilarious.”

I am on the high school swim team, I do club swimming in between the end of my season and water polo. I also swim throughout the summer and do dryland after practice. I normally end up missing a lot of practices when it’s not my season, so I’m around the average varsity speed for my events. My favorite things to do, if I were to exclude the options of sleeping and eating, would be to doodle, to read, and relax. I’m not very skilled at speaking and I don’t like to be a part huge crowds. Some of the foods that I like to eat are ice cream, chocolate, and curries.

However, I don't have "favorite" things. I can determine whether I like, dislike, or have neutral feelings towards something, but I can't honestly say that I like anything more than something else. I don’t mind most music as long as it’s not too loud and it isn’t an overplayed song. I don’t have cable so I don’t watch television. I enjoy reading books. I read things ranging from newspapers to adult and young author books to comics originating in America, Japan, or Korea. I also like art because I find it captivating. The fact that such beautiful things could exist and that somebody had put extreme effort into improving their art to create that piece and others like it is impressive and I’m glad that they made those pieces. Everyone interprets different messages from art pieces and it is outstanding that so many different ideas can originate from observing the same thing. However, I find that my liking for art and books is overshadowed by my love for sleep.