Reflections:AP English/Composition

  When I found out I was put in AP English and Comp.,I thought this was going to be great but I also thought, "Oh lord we are going to be doing a lot of work." In my first day of class,I was kind of hesitant and a little scared of what I was in for. I was happy to be in a class with all my friends of course,but I was still a little frightened.So,as class went on I started to hear the teacher, Ms.Day,talk about the work my peers had over the summer. The first thing that popped in my head was,"Oooohhh noooo,Summer work? Noooo, no ma'am." That started to convince me that this class wasn't for me,but I said to myself "boy you can do this work.". So I decided to stay in the class. As the days of class went by, I started to get more and more intrigued by the class and i started to learn how to do things. I learned how to do a rhetorical and literary analysis,which turned out to be not really complicated at all. I learned about rhetorical tropes and schemes, more fluent diction and etc. I mean this class really helped me expand my English skills a lot. Doing the synthesis', arguments, analysis', syntactic variety exercises and many more things were helpful to me in the class. Also some of the passages we read helped me to pick up the skill of annotating passages to help with the understanding of them. Overall, the class was a great success to me and I'm glad I was enrolled in there, even when i did get lazy and tired of working. Also I'd like to thank my teacher Ms.Day for pushing us to learn all these terms, strategies and etc.that are going to help us in the near future. I can honestly say I enjoyed this course.

Football

  As everyone knows,I'm pretty much a guy who loves to be involved with music or performing arts but I also like to try different things because i'm multi-talented. So, I decided to try football for the 2013 season to see if I'd like it. I mean I watched it all the time and I figured why not experience the real thing. I knew that it was going to be challenging when I signed and i'm always up for a challenge,so I figured why not.
So when I started football,I figured its actually not that bad. I mean we did weightlifting,running and a few drills. However,my body wasn't really feeling all of that. The weightlifting wasn't really a problem,it was mostly the running because I'm out of shape. Adding on to that,my shins were constantly in pain because I walk everywhere from school to home and anywhere else and since I was going to be running,I knew that was going to be putting more pain on it. But I just kept trying to push through it. Then, we started to go out to the football field and practice different positions and stances and it was definitely interesting. Since I got put as an offensive lineman,I had to squat down into these very uncomfortable positions and learn how to fire off from that position to block,pass and tackle. Since my shins were in pain most of the time,I'm tall and I'm big,those positions were challenging to get in. Luckily with some help from the coaches and some practice,I'm able to get in the stances a lot better now. I'm actually doing things a lot better since I've started being on the football team. Even though,I have gotten kind of discouraged at times from knowing that I keep ending up being a screw-up at times,I didn't let that phase me and I still stayed on the team. Eventually,I'm gonna be known as a great football player Of course,I still need a lot more practice and coaching but I'll fully catch on sooner or later. Besides,this is my first and last year playing football for high school so I really have to make it count and I'm willing to go the extra mile to do that.

Lion Kills Intern

  Do you ever get a feeling something bad is going to happen when you see someone cleaning a wild animal's cage at the zoo or on tv? Like they're going to get bitten or killed? Well unfortunately that bad thing has happened. Less than 72 hours ago,a young woman named Dianna Hanson was killed by a lion that had escaped it's cage at an exotic animal park in California where she was a volunteer intern. The Fresno County Coroner’s Office says the 550-pound lion used its paw to lift a partially open door and escape a smaller cage before attacking and killing Hanson, who was cleaning a larger enclosure at Cat Haven, about 45 miles east of Fresno. She was on the phone with a co-worker in the moments before she was killed, and the co-worker became concerned when the conversation ended abruptly and Hanson failed to call back, Coroner David Hadden said Thursday. Investigators told Hadden the 5-year-old African lion had been fed when he charged Hanson, breaking her neck and killing her with an apparent swipe of a paw. Sheriff’s deputies responding to an emergency call from the park found Dianna Hanson severely injured and still lying inside the enclosure with the lion nearby, Fresno County's Sheriff Lt.Robert Miller said. Another park worker had been unsuccessful in trying to lure the lion into a separate pen, so deputies shot and killed the animal to reach the woman, who died at the scene, he said. And although they shot and killed the huge animal and deemed the attack as an accident,Diana's father is still suing them for the murder of his daughter. They feel he shouldn't do that because it was just an accident and they have been incident free since 1998.
Like Seriously,what type of explanation is that to a man who just lost his daughter while working at your animal park?? That man has every right to sue the animal park for his daughter's death. Just because you've been incident free doesn't mean you can unexpectedly have one. Then for one,you're dealing with exotic animals and you have to be careful with them and you ALWAYS have to watch them. For all you know,the animals could be plotting to get you alone and kill you for years and you wouldn't have a clue. With this case,it appears that that could've been what the lion was planning to do. The evidence shows that the lion mauled Dianna and sunk it's teeth right into her neck to kill her. And oh if you don't know,lions do that to kill their prey when they're in the wild. So,he could have been plotting to kill Dianna from the moment he laid eyes on her or he could have just snapped and went out to kill Dianna just because she was there. All I am saying is,just because they haven't had any accidents like that,doesn't mean that they weren't bound to happen. They should ALWAYS keep a close eye on those animals.

Political Cartoon Analysis

  What strikes one first about cartoon is the relative difference in size and fuse length of the two ``bombs.'' One also notices a difference in the person depicted as the bombs' ``heads.'' The likeness of George W. Bush acts as a means  of further distinguishing these two signs; he lights the fuse of a distant bomb turning his back on the one. Thus he creates a both in contrast between them, terms of a spatial relationship and a mode of interaction. Together these contrasts form part of the meaning of this cartoon, is a contrast between between contrast a nations,policies towards nations, and a contradictory matching between nations and policies. But how exactly are these images and signs related to nations and policies To answer this question, we turn to a structural study of the meaning of complex metaphorical signs known as blending.
  The most basic intuition for identifying a blend in this cartoon is to notice that while the images of the bombs play a metaphorical in describing geopolitical relationships between the United States,North Korea, and Iraq,what is seen cannot be a simple geopolitical a from projection space to a metaphorical ``bombs with fuses'' space. This is because elements of the source space are visible in what is supposed to be target space. The natural explanation for the coexistence of elements from both the source and target spaces is that a new blended space has been created.

Being off my grind

Do you ever get overwhelmed by everything sometimes? Sometimes you just want to escape from the world? Do you just want to give up? Well that's how I've been feeling lately. I've been wanting to just throw in the towel and move on.I'm a guy who's usually on my grind. I usually stay focused on my music,studies,assignments,organizations and etc. However,lately, I've been very off of my grind. I've been behind on assignments, having an "I don't care attitude" about a lot of things that are usually things that are important to me,I've been lacking a little passion and drive in my music and etc. I mean I've been doing terrible. I believe I've been too stressed considering that before I had to help my mom with my grandfather's funeral in January, I was fine. After the funeral,nevertheless, I learned I had missed and was behind on some work and I also had other things I had to do. While catching up on work and other things,I kept getting more and more work to do and responsibilities that I had to take care of. All that has caused me to just get tired of doing all this work and having to take care of a great amount of tasks. Unfortunately that's caused me and my priorities to be really off and me to be kind of irritable. Nevertheless,that's about to change. I'm about to get things back on track and get back on my grind,because I'm really not liking this change that's been happening. I mean honestly,even though I get a little overwhelmed sometimes,I've never been this overwhelmed or stressed this long and it's really affecting me and my music and i'm hating it. I'm usually able to feel the music I sing.write or arrange and I've been not really caring about it. It's also affecting my work habits and being in AP courses and etc.,that's not a good thing at all. That's why I need to get back on my grind or return things back to normal.

The Execution of Lena Baker

In the 1900s,racial injustice and racial hate was around the world everywhere. We learn of the stories of African American Heroes such as Rosa Parks,Martin Luther King Jr.,Malcom X and etc. about how they went through those trials. However,before Martin Luther King Jr.and Rosa Parks,there was an African American woman who faced a much more crucial form of racial injustice. Her name was Lena Baker and on March 5,1945 she became the first and only woman to be executed by electrocution on Georgia.

First,let me give you a little history on Lena Baker: Lena was born on June 8,1901 near Cuthbert,Georgia. As a child Baker and her family worked for a farmer named J. A. Cox chopping cotton. They were not paid well and even working in a laundry, the family was poor.

At the age of 20, Lena and her bestfriend found they could make money by "entertaining gentlemen" by running a sex house. This came to attention of the Randolph County sheriff as their clientelle were white and interracial relationships were illegal in Georgia. They were were arrested and had to spend several months in a workhouse. On release,Lena was ostracized by the black community, leading her to become an alcoholic.

In 1941, Baker was hired by Knight to care for him after a fall broke his leg. In the town of Cuthbert, Georgia, Knight was viewed as brutal and abusive. He was a failed farmer who ran a gristmill and known for always having a pistol strapped to his chest. A relationship developed between the two. Knight would provide Baker with alcohol in return for sex, and the whole town knew of it. Knight was persuaded by his oldest son to move to Tallahassee, Florida in an effort to break up the pair, but Baker came with him. Knight's son ,Eugene, then gave Baker an ultimatum to leave. She left, but Knight followed her back to Cuthbert.

On the night of April 30, 1944 Lena Baker went to the house of J.A. Cox, who was now the town coroner and told him that she had shot Knight. Cox told Baker to go to the sheriff, while he would go to gristmill where Baker said Knight's body was. Baker did not go to the sheriff, but instead went home. She was picked up by the sheriff later that night, but was cooperative. He gave her two days to sleep off the affects of the alcohol in her system.

At her trial,Baker told her story of how she had been warned by the county sheriff to stay away from Knight or that she was going to be thrown in jail; too, she was afraid of physical abuse by Knight and she once was given a brutal beating by Eugene Knight with a warning to stay away from his father.  However,Knight had come to her house drunk and asked her to come to the mill. She did not want to, but knew better than to refuse the drunk man. She tried stalling him by asking for money to go buy some whiskey. He gave her some money and she went to the tavern but found it closed. She waited there for a while hoping that Knight would leave her house. She returned but found he was still there. She was forced to accompany him to the mill, but escaped and hid in some bushes. She bought some whiskey and went to sleep at the nearby convict camp. On waking the next morning she decided to go to the mill and she was sure this was the last place that Knight would go. However,that was exactly where Knight was.

He held her prisoner for several hours, even though several hours of his absence. He returned and told Baker he would kill her before she would ever leave again. A struggle ensued, with Baker being the only living witness the details of what happened are sketchy at best but Baker managed to get hold of Knight's pistol, which went off, hitting him in the head, instantly killing him.

Under the jurisdiction of Judge Charles William "Two Gun" Worrill, who presided at court with two pistols on the bench, the trial didn't last even a full court day, taking a little over four hours. A former "lawman" out West, Worrill boasted of gunfights with twelve men, seven of whom died. Later he was appointed to the Georgia State Supreme Court by Governor Herman Talmadge, who later became a vehemently segregationist senator. The jury consisted of twelve white men (not unusual for 1944), but many of the jurors were good friends who attended the same small churches, socialized with each other's families at card parties, and shared morning coffee at a local cafe.

In less than one-half hour the jury came back with a guilty verdict and Worrill sentenced Baker to death in Georgia's electric chair, nicknamed "Old Sparky." Her lawyer immediately asked for a new trial to be scheduled because "the verdict was contrary to the evidence and without evidence to support it ... and the verdict was contrary to law and the principles of justice and equity." He then just as immediately resigned as her lawyer. Later,Lena was granted a sixty-day reprieve by then Governor Arnall, but the Board of Pardons and Parole denied clemency when they heard the case. Lena's execution date was scheduled for March 5, 1945. On February 23 she was signed into one of the worst prisons in the United States, Reidsville State Prison, where she was housed in the men's section until just a few days before her execution when she was moved to a solitary cell just a few feet from the execution chamber itself.

On March 5,1945, Lena Baker calmly went to be executed. Her last words were “What I done, I did in self-defense, or I would have been killed myself. Where I was I could not overcome it. God has forgiven me. I have nothing against anyone. I picked cotton for Mr. Pritchett, and he has been good to me. I am ready to go. I am one in the number. I am ready to meet my God. I have a very strong conscience."

Sources: http://murderpedia.org/female.B/b/baker-lena.htm ,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lena_Baker

 

What were you thinking??

  Memphis Radio host Thaddeus Matthews has been known for exhibiting recent crazy news to the public.He's also been known for exhibiting disturbing news to the public as well. This past week, he got in a great amount of trouble for exhibiting some very disturbing news that wasn't a good site to see at all. It was so unsightly,that he went to jail for it and was charged with child pornography.
  Thaddeus put on the internet a picture of a toddler giving oral sex to a grown man. The reactions I saw to that were similar to mines,which was "WHAT THE...What kind of sick bastard does that to a child and what kind of sick bastard puts this piece of trash on the internet???" That sight was sooo horrific and disgusting. To think of the man who did that to that child just disgusts me.I mean who would do such a thing like that?
  Everyone was furious with Thaddeus,because he posted the vulgar picture on a social site.When Thaddeus was asked why did he put that picture on the internet,he stated he was trying to see if anyone could identify the man that was in the picture so he can report them to the police. He aslo stated "It was on instagram first,hundreds of people had it!" Are you freaking serious?? What on earth would make you think putting a picture like that on an interet site so someone could identify the man in the picture would be ok? I mean for one,no one would be able recognize that man. I'm pretty sure no one would even want to recognize that man. And just because it was on Instagram doesn't mean you should put it on Facebook for everyone to see.
  I understand he wanted to help the child by identifying the man who did that to it,but that was definitely not the way to do it. His heart was in the right place,but his mind most definitely wasn't. Honestly if he wanted to identify the man or the baby,he should've reported the picture to the police AS SOON as he got the picture. That would have helped alot more than putting the picture on the internet. Hopefully this experience taught him a lesson on exhibiting such disturbing news like that to the public though.