Patriot's Pen

Our Founding Fathers of this country deserve great amounts of gratitude and appreciation for starting our country and giving us a clean and clear base to build our nation off of. The constitution is an old baby’s blanket. Tattered and torn from years of use. It has some holes in it that had to be patched up, and it had to be rewashed over and over again, but at least it is still there. Without it, there would be no protection or sense of security for its owner. There would be no calming sensation when it was in your hands. There would be no comfort. So to our Founding Fathers I would like to say thank you, because without them, there would be no America.

The 55 Founding Fathers were very brave, strong people who understood the importance, and the purpose of America. They understood that we wanted freedom, and liberty. Fifty-five people made it their goal to make America the best it could be. That’s why I would like everyone to remember the good of the first laws of our country. Or in other words, security they gave us.  Not the bad laws or decisions they made, or the holes in the blanket. It must have been hard for them, imagine the pressure and the huge burden that was on their shoulders. Fifty-Five people had to work together in order to make laws that all of them, as well as the good portion of our country, had to agree on. Not to mention they had to cover all the bases of anything you could possibly do. They even decided what day the Congress would meet on of each year. The point is, that the Founding Fathers worked really hard to get us to where we are now and we should thank them for that.

The blanket that now covers us might eventually fall apart completely, but for now we still have it. We should respect it, honor it, and embrace it in remembrance of our Founding Fathers.

The Demolition

Authors note: This is a cause and effect piece for the book Uglies.

I am currently reading Uglies, and in this book everyone wants to turn 16 so they can change from an ugly to a pretty by undergoing the operation. Everyone that is, except the runaways.The runaways go live outside of the city in "The Smoke" to stay ugly forever.

The main event in the story happens when the Special Circumstances invades The Smoke. They blow the whole city to pieces and there are few survivors. Luckily, Tally and her friend David make it out together and now it's up to them to rescue other survivors and plot their revenge. The cause of this event is that Tally's friend Shay ran away to The Smoke because she is against being pretty. Special Circumstances found out Shay escaped and forced Tally to go to The Smoke and let the Special's know where it was. The only reason she agreed is because they threatened to not give her the operation she so desperately wanted. During the trip there though, Tally has a change of heart. She realized that she didn't want to be pretty anymore. Instead of activating the communication device when she gets to The Smoke, she destroys it, unknowingly sending out an emergency signal telling the Special's where to find her and the city.

The Specials would have thought twice about attacking The Smoke if they would've known what was going to happen next. The destruction of The Smoke caused the survivors to rebel. They stole back the remaining citizens of The Smoke, thus infiltrating the Special's headquarters and ruining their equipment. Now they have to try and start a new Smoke, with only 7 members and nothing but a few packs of dehydrated food and 4 hoverboards. If the Special's hadn't infiltrated The Smoke, Tally would have lived the rest of her life there wondering and pondering all the ifs. What if the Special's put a tracking device on her? What if someone finds out she's lying? What if she made the wrong decision in coming at all? After The Smoke was destroyed, Tally finally realized she didn't want to be pretty anymore. 

The Tragedy

Tragedies, they can happen any day, anyplace, and anytime. But you never think you will get caught in the middle of one. Last weekend, a couple of my family members and I met up at Port Washington so we could have a little fun before school started. And it was fun. At first anyway.

            The excitement of the trip started when we first got there. I didn’t expect our designated meeting place to be a beautiful playground overlooking lake Michigan. With everything from picnic tables to swings this was the best park I had ever been to. It was like a mini castle. Exploring the features of the gigantic play area is what we decided to do until my aunt and cousin arrived. We were busy playing on a simulation wakeboard when they came bounding toward us with excited expressions on their faces. None of us could wait to get on with the fun although our ideas of it were very different. My mom, for example, wanted to lay on her towel and sun bathe. The water was simply screaming my cousin’s name, and I just wanted to get my feet a little wet and play some beach volleyball. Unfortunately I only got to one of those things before it happened.

            Just as my Aunt had challenged me to a game, we heard a voice far off in the distance. We couldn’t tell who, or what, was making this peculiar noise. It sounded like a whisper. After a minute or two of trying to identify it, we shrugged our shoulders and went back to our game. I was winning our game 2-1 when a boy in a blue and black striped swimsuit was spotted frantically swimming to shore. Bounding up onto the sand screaming, “Help! Help! Help! Somebody call 9-1-1!” he looked frazzled and confused. My mom, who had her phone on her, whipped it out and dialed.

            “What!” She said frantically “What’s wrong? What happened?” The boy did his best to explain under the circumstances.

            “Me and my friend, we were just out there, and, and, a wave came, and he said he couldn’t breathe so I tried to save him. But I was getting water in my mouth and I couldn’t breathe either so I had to swim back, He’s out there somewhere. Please help. Please help.” By the time I sorted myself out and comprehended what was happening, my mom had already called and the boy had run off to somewhere.

            We stayed for a little while after that to see if they would find the boy. After about 45 minutes of sitting around waiting, trying to find him, we decided it would be better to let the scene play out and not be involved anymore. Not at all interested in sticking around to see his lifeless body pulled out of the water (at this point there was less than a 1% chance he could possibly still be alive), my aunt suggested we get something to eat. Even though it was only quarter to 4, and we had just witnessed about as close you can get to a death, all of us had skipped lunch so we were starved.

            Now let me tell you, it is just as well as impossible to find a restaurant open at 4 O’clock in the afternoon in Port Washington. Everything, and I mean everything, is open until 2, then closes and reopens at 4:30. We had no choice but to climb the stairs of an outdoor restaurant overlooking the lake right next to the place where the boy had gone missing. That’s why, when the search helicopter started making its rounds we were right there to watch it. Around and around it went, circling farther and farther, covering more and more ground each time. We just couldn’t get the thought of the poor boy out of our heads. It didn’t help that out waitress just happened to be the coast guards wife. She had not yet gotten the “lowdown” from him so she wanted us to repeat the whole story to her. We did unwillingly. All we wanted to do was put it behind us but we couldn’t.

            We must have repeated that story about a hundred times that day. To our family, friends, total strangers who wanted to know what was going on, everybody. And every time we relived the moment. That moment of sadness, sympathy, and understanding. That moment when everything else goes away. That day I got caught in the middle of a tragedy, and I will never forget it.

About the Victim

After this all happened I found out more about him on the news. The boy’s name was Tyler Buczek. He was 14 years old, on the high school football team and valedictorian of his class. Tyler was found dead 3 days after he drowned, 200 yards away from the filtration plant where he first went under.

Brainwashed

Authors Note: This is a piece about the conflict and resolution of The Mysterious Benedict Society.

The main conflict in the Mysterious Benedict Society (or MBS for short) is people vs society because the members in the group are trying to overthrow Mr. Curtain and the rest of the government officials working for him. Mr. Curtain is trying to transmit thoughts into people's minds so the community thinks of him as their leader. He is stealing people and breaking the law but the government can't stop him because half of the people in it are working for him. The other half are receiving his thoughts too, so they don't know something is wrong. Everyone goes along with it except the MBS because he is putting his own thoughts into everyone's minds through TV signals and they don't watch TV. The MBS spends a big part of the book undercover against society.

The conflict only gets resolved at the end of the third book, because the machine that transmits the signals gets intercepted by the MBS and they reverse it to get Mr. Curtains thoughts out of people's heads. After everyone's mind is reversed back, They go to Mr Curtain himself and destroy everything he has until he is forced to flee.