A single flake of snow

Author's Note : This is just a poem I wrote for a journal. It talks about a snowflake, and about how no two are alike. But I meant for it to have a deeper meaning as well. 

A single snowflake falls from the blanketed sky

A single flake, its own being, unique

Falling softly toward the ground

To meet its brothers 

A frozen raindrop, crystallized by 

The icy breath of winter

Feathery crystals all around it

But for the moment, it is alone

A crystalline flake of snow

Looking like fairy dust sprinkling the ground

with magical power

This cold dust warms people's hearts

How ironic

A single snowflake, once separated from its friends

family, now rejoins and rejoices

But for a single moment

It is sad

For that small time in the sky, free floating

It was special, unique

Nobody else was like them 

And now that shape is lost in the crowd

Unless

Unless a hand reaches out to that flake

Catches it in their gloved palm

Cold enough to keep its shape

The flake is still unique

But perhaps

Perhaps that fate is not better

Because although they are kept individual

Eventually the hand will get tired of the flake

and it has a choice

The hand can choose the fate of the flake

It can decide to bring it inside

where it will melt into a raindrop once more

Or they can let it go

Rejoining the crowd 

But the hand has another choice

To crush the flake

to break its precious arms

crush the only thing it has

Which is better?

Which fate is better

Being crushed by a hand that once admired you

Or to be forgotten by the past

swallowed up by the crowd

Until Spring

Where it will all melt away

Reached

Reading a romantic fictional novel, what do you look for? A girl who's torn between two boys, along with her worry about the society she lives in, that they're not telling the truth. That's exactly what happens in the Reached trilogy. In the first book, Matched, Cassia is investigating the mystery surrounding Ky, an Aberration. Being an Aberration means he can never have a Match. Yet his face came up on Cassia's microcard she got for her real Match, Xander. After that, she unintentionally got Ky sent away to the Outlands. In Crossed, Cassia runs after Ky and escaped her camp and prison. She makes her way through many things, including the starvation pill she accidentally took, and a camp that is now empty. In Reached, Cassia helps overthrow the Society and work to create a new world. When Xander and Cassia pick up Ky, he finds out that he is not immune to the new Plague, but Cassia and Xander are. I think Ky's going to fall ill to this new cure and seem to become an extreme case. 

This prediction can be supported by the text in a couple of ways. First, when they are locked in the cargo hold for the ride back to the Rising base, Cassia and Xander tell Ky that even though they are immune to the mutated Plague, they could still be carriers. Being locked in a cargo hold for a couple of hours with almost no air circulation, Ky is sure to catch the new form of the Plague. And the risks run even higher with Xander, because he's been working around people with the sickness almost all the hours of his day. He has been exposed to different symptoms  of the Plague, and Ky is breathing the air with all of those sicknesses in it. 

The second reason is just because it makes sense for the author to make Ky fall ill. In a book, you need to have a tragedy, so to speak. Something to distract the main character from any thoughts he or she might have except for this event. When he does fall sick, Cassia will not be able to think of anyone else except Ky. 

This book is a lot like Mockingjay. In that book, Peeta, one of Katniss's love interests, is taken by the Capitol and brainwashed to think that Katniss is his enemy. Katniss can't think about anything else except Peeta, and she tries anything to get  him back. Sometimes it looks hopeless for her, but she pushes on. I think Cassia will do the same thing for Ky, and when the time comes, she'll choose him for her Match, and Xander will find someone else he cares about.

Cassia and Ky have been through too much together to not become a couple. Xander has been there for her, but Ky was the one who stole Cassia's heart. And after he recovers from his illness, Xander will see that and start trying to find someone else who will love him. 

3:15

Once Troy runs into Molly, she's not even going to try and get him back, because she already knows that he's not coming back. She probably will move on and let him live out his life without any feeling, or any talk coming back for him. I think, in the room, when Mr. Mason took something from Troy, it was a special blend that took away his personality and replaced with some kind of alter personality, one that Mr. Mason could stand to have in his class. 

Harry Potter - Character Anaylisis

·         Harry is left with a special mission from Dumbledore, and he feels like he has to do it alone.

Harry thinks that because Dumbledore never talked about his suspicions with anyone else, he has to take the trip alone. It’s some kind of heroic feeling, or maybe he feels that he’s already gone, and nobody else should have to take the fall with him.

·         Ron and Hermione finally convince Harry that they would come with him on his quest

Ron and Hermione probably were thinking of the fun that this quest would be, skiving

out of classes, not going back to Hogwarts, with only one homework assignment that still has yet to show a due date. Or maybe they wanted to make sure to give Harry support and make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid without them there to help him out.

·         At Bill and Fleur’s wedding reception, they have to flee, relying on what Hermione packed in her magically expanded bag.

At this point Harry realizes that having his friends with him on this quest could prove very useful, and he has a change of heart. He never again mentions the downfalls of having his friends as allies. He still feels as if something’s wrong, that Dumbledore meant for him to undertake this alone.

·         Harry, Ron and Hermione travel to Grimmauld Place, where Kreacher, the house elf, gives them the clue to the first Horcrux. They make a plan to collect it from inside the Ministry.

Harry finds new hope in a cause he thought might have been lost. Even though he has a huge price over his head, and being discovered would mean his life, he is excited beyond measure at the fact that he had finally found a Horcrux, the one that had the one faked, the one they found on the night Dumbledore died.

·         After traveling for weeks, and losing Ron, he turns up again when the sword of Gryffindor turns up.

Harry is relieved of a huge weight, because he now knows his friend is safe, and so is his family. He destroys this first Horcrux, and is in high spirits, until they are crushed again by the fact that he gets captured. Only his steeled nerves and undying want for destroying the Horcrux helps him escape.

·         At the end of it all, after coming back from the dead, he finally kills Voldemort, his enemy for so long, the one who made his life horrible.

A duty done, after Voldemort’s body hit the floor, Harry could have died a very satisfied death, and everything would be fine. He changed so much, he had doubted he could do it, he resisted his friend’s efforts to follow, resisted help from anyone, lest they perish in the attempt. But finally, what fate was chosen for him when Voldemort tried to kill him was fulfilled. 

Casey At the Bat

Equality - Patriot's Pen

Equality. Equality means everyone is equal. Everyone is the same. But when the founding fathers wrote that in the Constitution, I guess they didn’t clarify enough for people to understand that everyone is equal, not just white men. There should have been no need for an Amendment that says women can vote.  If the founding fathers had figured that out when they first wrote the Constitution, history would be much different. Slavery would never have happened, women would be able to vote and run for president, and who knows what else would happen.

If I could talk to the founding fathers, I wouldn’t waste time.  I would tell them immediately to go fix the Constitution and make it clear that every single human is equal, not just white men. You would think that they would understand that women are what make the country work. They probably would be ignorant and not believe me, but I would make it clear. The first boatloads of people that came over to America were all men. Of the 500 men that came over, 400 of them died. There were several reasons for this, but one is because they didn’t want to work and plant food. They were greedy and just wanted to look for gold. Only when the women and children started coming over was when the ‘all knowing men’ decided to pick up their act and start working to survive.

The founding fathers wouldn’t know it then, of course, but if the Constitution had said that everyone was equal, slavery and the Civil War would never happened. If you look at history, the Civil War was caused because the North didn’t like the fact that the South had slaves. The war lasts for years, and finally was won by the North. So many lives were lost, but if the Constitution said that black people are equal to white people, slavery would have never become a thing, therefore the Civil War would have never been fought. Thousands of lives could have been saved if the founding fathers had just said, ‘Oh yeah, I guess black people and women are equal to white men,”

The Constitution is a big part of our country. It makes the most simple of laws, and we alter it as we need. But there should never have had to be an amendment that said women and black people are equal to white men. There is no point in that. It was a flaw that cost many lives.

Cause/Effect

In the book, Shadows on the Stars, the constellation called Merlin's Staff has gone dark. Some ancient and deadly evil caused this to happen in the first book, and now it's up to the young heroes, Tamwyn, Elli, and Scree to journey on separate quests in order to bring peace to this world of Avalon. 

Elli must journey to the dark world of Shadowroot in order to destroy a crystal that was created to destroy. It was first created of élano, a powerful substance that creates. But after the god of war, Rhita Gawr wraps around it, some evil and horrible magic turns it into a substance he calls vengélano, the opposite of élano. Instead of creating, it destroys anything it touches. Elli's job is to take the crystal and somehow destroy it,even though she will have to face Rhita Gawr's wrath. This was caused by the dark wizard that the heroes have dubbed 'White Hands,' because he brought Rhita Gawr to full power and he also created the crystal of élano using Merlin's staff. 

Scree, after getting injured and being left by his brother in an eaglefolk village, wakes up and helps out until he is well enough to leave on his quest. But almost as soon as he is, some eagleman, coming from another vengeful tribe, shoots almost everyone in the village, including his healer, Arc-kaya. Because he couldn't join his brother, he sets out on his quest to find this tribe, and kill the leader, to save the eaglefolk tribes and to avenge Arc-kaya. It will be difficult, because of something that happened with the leader of the tribe that he has to face. She had took him in, gave him affection when he was lonely, and she used him. Therefore, he has to muster up all his courage to face her again. 

Tamwyn, after realizing he was Merlin's heir, must carry the real staff of Merlin and relight the darkened stars of Merlin's Staff. He must do this before all-out war breaks out between the creatures who have a Treaty of Peace, and the ones who rejected the treaty, a long time ago. He doesn't yet know how he will relight the stars, but he believes he needs to find something that was carried by his father and famous explorer, Kyrstallus, a torch that would never go out until the day he died. He learned about his father in the last book. He figured it out on his own, and now he has a real drive to find him. If he never lost faith in living, he would never die. So Tamwyn thought he would be able to find his father at the top of the Great Tree.