Hey

Hey!

This just goes out to the 8th and 7th grade new Advanced Classes with Mr. Johnson!

I was one of his old students, he's the best teacher that you will have this entire year and I hope that you really enjoy your year. I know I did when I was in his class and do something that he won't forget you with. I know that he will never forget me imitating him walking around the class room even though it was never intentionaly meant to be like that! I hope you guys have fun this year! And add me as a friend, I would love to read and comment on some of your post that you write this year!

~Sammmmmmm :)

Really Your Best Friend?

Poem written by: Samm Snyder

Best Friends
Someone to be there for you
Best Friends
Someone to rely on
Best Friends
Someone to tell you secrets to
Best Friends
Someone to call when you’re sad
Best Friends
Someone to laugh with
Best Friends
Someone to share good memories with
Best Friends…
But then there are those times when you hope that you didn't say the right thing and them mad. Or do the wrong thing and they get angry at you. Why do we think like this about our best friend? Best Friends should be everything above. Not someone that you have to worry them getting mad at you and hating you for a few days. Best Friends are people that you should always be able to get along with. If you can't, then are they really your best friend?

The Most Important Things in Life~

Sitting by the beach, feeling the warm air all around me, I wish that I would never leave. As I sit on white sand beaches of Hawaii I think to myself that this is a place to get away from the world around you. No politics, no gossip, no rumors, nothing is going on. By yourself, sitting as the waves crash on the shore and the seagulls fly through the air. I sit pondering, and I soon want this to be my new home. Move and live here: why not? Nothing could be any better. Then I think that I wouldn't really know anybody. My entire family lives back at home, all my friends, my future collage, and career. This would be the best place to live, but I would lose everything in my life that is most important to me.

Lost in Life--Wondering~

Peom written by: Samm Snyder

Lost in life wondering.
Alone in the room
Not knowing what's going on
What's going to happen

I lay in the hospital bed
Wondering where I am
Why I'm here.
As I see my body

There's glass in my arms
I'm all bruised up
Scratches and Scars
All over me

I think as hard as I can
Wondering, what I had gotten into
When the doctors come
And tell me the horrible news

The news that I still... can't stand to hear
I was in a major car crash
A drunk driver ran the red light
And the worst part... was yet to come

My parents were in the car with me
And got hit head on
Launched from the windshield
And killed at an instant

I hear the news and start to bawl.
As they try to say their sorry
I told them to go away
I wanted to be alone.

I pray to God everyday
Asking him "Did I deserve this?"
I know the answer is 'no'.
But I am lost in life--wondering

A Lifetime Thinking

Authors Note: Christopher is a young boy who has been diagnosed with autism. Even though this is a disorder, he is a very smart kid.

The young boy, filled with wonder, thinks about everything in his spare time. About how the stars look, and how someday, he knows that he Earth is going to end--when the universe isn't black anymore and all we will see are a bunch of lights coming towards us in millions of miles a second. About how… "prime numbers are like life. They are logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them"(12). Things like this are true. All the time, and every day, everywhere in the world, people think of the things that are not realistic questions. Why? There are no answers because they are never found and answered.Things that are just unexplainable are questioned and its sad when you get dissapointed, knowing that they will never be answered. Christopher knows that these things are true, there are not always answers to life's questions, and that is why he relates them to prime numbers. Everything is logical and everything works out at some time or another but even if you spend a life time thinking about how these things happen, you may never find the true answers.

Life Choices in Effect--Forever

Hey here is the link to got to my essay on The Power and the Glory~

http://sammsessays.blogspot.com

Check it out! Thanks! :D

Two Humans in Love

Poem written by: Samm Snyder

Two Humans In Love

She lies in bed wondering--
Does he ever think of me?

He tosses and turns; but always wonders--
Does she ever think of me?

All the memories that were once made
And all the thoughts that were once thought

As they tremble through the night
They wonder when they will finally reunite

Something that they both question
Will we ever see each other again?

The night their eyes met
Was the night they fell in love

Thinking they will never meet again
They try to get back to sleep

His dreams are all filled with her
Her dreams are all filled with him

But going through life
Constantly…with a loss of hope.

Living in a World of Despair~

Authors Note:A Response to: The Power and The Glory about how the Whiskey Priest has lost all his hope but slowy, with baby steps, starts to gain some back.

Living in a world filled with despair, the only thing that keeps the priest going is the hope that God will save him. As the priest gets put in a jail, he thinks to himself that he may have a chance in surviving this--that is until he realizes that they are going to find out who he really is in the morning, when the birds are calling, the sun is shining, and all faces are on the prisoners.

As the night starts, he only keeps thinking to himself, this will be the last. Tomorrow I shall be killed and my life shall be over. When the other prisoners wonder why he is in there, he tells them that he has been caught for smuggling spirits. Until the young lady in the corner says 'father'. He knows that this will be the last night so "He said after a moment's hesitation, very distinctly, 'I am a priest'" (125). He wonders if it is the wrong move to say that, yet again he thinks that the world should know who he really is and God would want him to let people know that he believes in Him and follows the Bible.

The night goes on, and he tries to spend it best he can in a jail cell in a city unknown to him. The morning appears and it wasn't like he thought it would be. Oh they noticed him and all the prisoners all right, but not in the way he thought. The Whiskey priest thought that in the morning they were going to find out that he was the priest and shoot him, to vanish him from the Earth completely.

Instead, they took him separately, but only to make him do a different job. Seeing they didn’t think that he deserved to do the work that the other prisoners were ordered to do. They still hadn't noticed him, and he felt like God had just given him another chance, a second life. He takes hold of it and continues to do the orders of the government. Now, slowly inch by inch, step by step he starts to gain some hope again.

Smiles~Poem

Smiles are like the sun in the early morning sky
Rising early, yet still there
The sun brightens the day
Like smiles brighten people

It may turn upside some days
But there's always something to relate to
A rainbow is an upside down smile
But still makes people happy

Smiles can change through-out a day
But can never change the meaning
A smile can always brighten anyone's day

Katniss's Letter Home~

post to 'The Hunger Games'-by Suzanne Collins

Something very different has happened in the Hunger Games this year. When only 6 tributes are left, the game-makers let each tribute write one letter to any person that they wanted, back home. The games have stopped for 2 hours, to let the tributes write the letter, calm down a little bit and then get their head back in the game, from everything that has happened so far. When Katniss hears that this is really happening, she knows exactly who she is going to write it to--her younger sister, Prim. The letter written to Prim was like this…

My dearest Prim~

I have missed you very dearly. I am here playing these games as hard as I can, just to keep my promise that I made to you.That I would never quit trying and that I would play until I die--for you. I hope and pray every day that you and mom are still doing ok, and that Gale is too, keeping his promise with supplying our family with food while I am gone.

I hope that you and mother are still getting along ok, and have not starved yet. Another thing is that I hope mom is still getting along with her business of making medicine and helping people who have gotten hurt in the mines. Here in the Hunger Games, people have been dying all over the place. I have even met someone who reminded me of you. I became her ally so that we could get around easier. She was 12 years old and her name was Rue. Her specialty was that she was able to move around very quietly so that other tributes were not able to tell she was even there, which is why I made her my ally, and I protected her from other tributes as she did for me. We even set up a trap to burn the entire food that the careers have in the cornucopia. We successfully succeeded but the saddest part of the games that I have witnesses was moments after I burned it and was back to meet her. I went back to our meeting spot to find she wasn't there, I searched farther. As soon as I heard her scream, I ran to her. To find out the boy from district one got there before me, and before I could even throw a rock, he stabbed Rue, and I then stabbed him. Rue then died in my arms from the spearhead in her. I fight for her now, knowing she would have wanted me to win if she couldn't.

I bet you are growing up, and acting like a young lady now . Seeing you have to be the person in the house to go out, get food from the Hob, and even ask Gale for food. I bet that you are helping as much as you can for me, knowing that I am fighting for the family. So, you have to take care of mom. I thank you very dearly and know that I love you with all of my heart. Please do three things for me while I am gone. First, tell mom this for me. Tell her 'I love her so very much and miss her with all of my heart. I am trying my best to win and then get home as soon as I can. Again, I love her so much and am trying my hardest' Second thing, please tell Gale this for me. 'I miss him very much. I think of him every day when I am out in the woods hunting, knowing that if I was doing this back home, he would be right next to me. I know that he is taking good care of you and mom and that he is doing it for me. Keeping his promise that he made with me, after the reaping. Again, please tell him that I miss him very much and am trying my hardest to come home alive.' Lastly, please stay strong for me, that is what I want the most.

I don't know if you have been watching the games on the television with mom at home, but if you have, you know what I am going through. My time is now up for me to stop writing. I love you very much. I will try to make it back alive. If I don't you are going to have to help mom, but I feel very strong about winning and hope for the best.

Please pray for me!~
With all my love~

Katniss

Katniss wrote this letter crying, but knowing that her family would appreciate it greatly. Now she has 30 minutes to settle down, and then the games begin… again.

The Importance of Love in a Family~

post to The Hunger Games-by: Suzanne Collins

Scared to death, but knowing its right, Katniss joins the Hunger Games because of the love she has for her family. Not knowing what to expect her mind is running on end thinking about everything. Her childhood past, her loved ones at home, even about her competitor --wondering, what's going to happen at these things, that are just torture to families and loved ones all around.

This is a rare event that almost never happens in the reaping. Someone volunteering for another person willing to give their life away instead of theirs. Then having your district doing something extraordinary for you, like what they did for Katniss:

" At first one, then another then almost every member of the crowd touches
the three middle fingers of their hand to their lips and holds it out to me.
It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals.
It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love." (24)

An honor to Katniss. Nothing like this has ever happened in district 12, the poorest district of all them. Katniss feels very honored and is not happy that she's going but is happy that it's not her younger sister,Prim.

Going for a good reason, Katniss is determined not to cry, to show that she is a weak competitor, unlike the other tribute from her district. Petta, a boy that she has only ever seen at school and at the bakery. She know that things are going to change greatly from her old like and transform her. She leaves her family almost immediately when she is announced. They give the families 5 minutes to say their final goodbyes but that’s all. Katniss is a very strong character and tries to keeps her tears in which is almost impossible, but she does it. The moment she gets on the train to go to the capital, this is the moment when her life is starting to be changed…forever.

The train, taken into the openness of the world around her. She is shocked by the sites and beauty of what is actually out of the districts, where they are used to seeing a small city with many mines. Katniss, sitting on the train, tries to take everything in but is too breathtaken that she has to take a break from looking out the windows of the train. This is when her and Petta meet formally, for the first time. He acts like a nice boy, but Katniss soon thinks that this could be a trap for him to win, so she stays on the down low with him and just goes along with what Haymitch who is their mentor says. The person who won from their district years ago and won a wonderful life, filled with luxury, food, and supplies for life.

Haymitch sends them to the arena to practice their skills that they are good at, and some that they still need to learn how to survive in the Hunger Games. After this Katniss and Peeta have to go to the game-makers separately and show them their best skills and qualities. Obviously, the person who gets the highest score usually means that in the Hunger Games is most likely favored to win. When the scores show that night, Katniss gets the highest score. She knows that when the games start, other tributes will want to go after her.

It is the day that the Hunger Games start, all tributes are spaced equally around the cornucopia—the main area in the Hunger Games arena. Katniss waits patiently, taking in everything around her and knows that she at least has try, knowing that she made a promise to her sister Prim. The only reason that Katniss continues to keep up her strength, is not for her, but for her family. Hoping that she can give them a better life than they had before.

The Paradox in Pi's Life

We would never think that somehow pools and oceans could tie into the subjects of animals, but they do very significantly. Now you may think, what do they really have in common? If you think about it there are many things, an ocean and wild animals: and ocean is unknown, it has many powers that are unknown and are really uncontrollable, and has no specific direction on where it’s going or where it’s been, it is just out there, in the wide open.

Now, wild animals and oceans are same just like pools and calm animals. How is this possible you ask? Well, pools: they are calm, keep us safe, they have boundaries, there actually is a direction, and they are clear. Just like the animals who are tame, the ones in the zoo. They sit in a cage all or a closed area all day long. They don’t know what is out in the real world, they get fed at the same time every day, they know where they can go and what they are allowed to do. They are never angry or upset because they always get what they want and they do get it because there are people to take care of them, they even have directions on which way they can walk in their cage and they way they can’t walk because they will run into a wall. Pools are just like them--think about it; there are sides to keep you in your boundaries, the water is clear and you can see out of it, mostly it is calm, unlike the ocean.

Whether it is pools or oceans there is paradox, just like weather it is wild animals or tame animals—there is paradox in everything. If there were no tame animals in the world, none locked up we would always have to be afraid that they could be outside our houses at any time and if there were always tame animals, there would never be anything to fear animal wise. They would all be locked up and even if they weren’t locked up they would still be tame, and that means that we wouldn’t have worries that if we pet a tiger our hand will get eaten off or if we step in a lagoon of alligators they are not going to try and bite our legs off. Same with pools and oceans, think about it, if we never had oceans and just pools around, it would not be the fun of going to a pool because it is not like the ocean that gives you waves to ride and a large area to go boating on. Then if there were no pools and just oceans everywhere there would be nowhere to go without getting in salt water or have the risk of seeing a shark, a stingray, maybe even a jellyfish.

My point is that whether we had all tame or wild animals, or just pools or just oceans nothing would balance out just like paradox. Paradox says that we need to have a balance in our life otherwise it would never be the same. For example, if we had no death there would be nothing to fear or joy, we would always have time to do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted. So we have to have pools and oceans and tame and wild animals otherwise nothing would ever balance out.

Pi witnesses paradox all over, he is in the middle of the ocean and realizes how it is much different than a pool, and he also notices the difference between the animals that his father has in the zoo compared to the ones that are in his boat with him. He realizes that there are things in the world that have to have opposites otherwise nothing would ever balance out. We need paradox to live life.

~Television Hypnotism Speech

Scenario:

I am a mother of 2 small children, 5 and 7 years old. When suddenly I have started to notice that my children really don't go and play outside anymore. All they ever want to do is watch SpongeBob or one of those silly shows that are on TV now. I tell them that they have to go outside and get fresh air and the sad thing is that when they go outside they soon ask how long they have to be out there because they want to go back inside and catch another show they may be missing. I want to take this up with TV program. I would like to tell them that they are getting too many people involved in TV and that it is not good especially for children. They should be outside running around because that is what kids their age should be doing. Not sitting in the house eating some popcorn or having a snack while watching another rerun that they have seen a hundred million times! I would like to tell the company that maybe they should show broadcast’s that get kids involved or tell them that they should go outside and get some exercise because kids that age are still growing and they shouldn’t grow up watching television, because if they do that is what they are going to do the rest of their life and I do not want that.

Speech:

As many of you may have noticed, the amount of people watching television every day continues to increase day by day. Instead of going outside and playing a game of ball or playing a game of tag kids are now sitting inside on the couch right in front of the television. This needs to stop, if we continue to let children just sit inside the house and watch TV or playvideo games all day long what is going to happen when they grow up? They will not know what to do, or what to do with their children.

While we are talking about children, another thing that we should be looking at is besides that fact that many of them are watching television more than they should be, many kids also “snack” while they watch and or play. This is a problem that we should focus on also. Sitting on couches or in your favorite chair are not going to give you any exercise and snacking is not going to help. If you keep on eating, well I hope you don’t need studies to tell you what is going to happen: you are clearly just going to gain weight. Not working out or getting exercise and continuously eating is going to make you gain not just a few but a lot of weight if you do nothing to work it off. You may wonder what we even started talking about since I have started talking about food, but the main subject that we have started this discussion on is televisions. Many of us think that they are harmless- WRONG, they may not “physically” harm us, but think of what they do to us. They almost get us ‘hypnotized’ into watching whatever show is on. You may still think ‘What’s wrong with the fact that we like to watch TV?’ Well, the answer is that TV all in all is not bad to watch, it is just when people start getting almost pulled into the television and they forget about the other things in life that are most of the time more important than sitting yourself down in the front of your TV and staying there for the night to see what shows are on.

Now some of you may say that you don’t believe this matter or that you do, but you can’t believe that it really has changed that drastically through the past years. If you do not believe me maybe you will believe some statistics and facts that I have found about this subject. To just start out with the subject, studies show that the United States is ranked number one (tied with the UK) in the world that watches the most television, with about 28 hours on average per week each American watches. Some of you may not watch that much television like most children our age; However we don’t watch this much because of after school actives or clubs. But on average almost the entire country, that is about how much television is watched per American per week. That is just one study that was taken, another study shows the reading v.s. watching TV ratio; This study had shown that about 67% of Americans choose watching TV over reading. That is another thing that is just showing what is happening in our society, even reading is chosen second over television. Now you may not want to just be loaded with facts, but there were many studies taken on television and more and more people are watching, also one of the studies found that the reason they continue to get more and more views is right now, about 99% of all households in the United States own 1 or more television sets and about 66% of Americans own about 3 TV sets in their house at the moment. Even TV sizes have gotten larger through the years—let’s start with 2002. In 2002 the average TV was about 34 inches large, that number stayed the same until approximately the year 2004 (which was also one of the biggest jumps) when the average size TV got to about 46 inches in size. The next year, it went down to 42 inches then stayed the same for one more year, then jumped back up to 46 and now has stayed at that number until about now. Although, there is something that they do predict—studies show that eventually the average size television will be all the way up to 60 inches in size.

With all of these facts that I have shown you and just told you about, I hope that you see where our future is going if we do not start to stop the problem. If we don’t do anything about this, what do you think will happen through the next decade? We will kind of ignore life, almost like it will be our second priority instead of our first. Do you want that to happen to you, or your children, or their children? I didn’t think so, so we need to put a stop to this. If there are any moms or dads out there make your children play outside more, let them enjoy life how we have it now. If they don’t want to go out tell them that you will go and play a game with them for a little while-something to make them want to go and play instead of sit in the front room from the time they get home from school until the time that they go to bed at night.

The novel Fahrenheit 451 has a huge problem of this as well, in this novel people own televisions the sizes of their walls and think of them as their ‘family’ they are so hypnotized into their TV. In this novel, they never stopped the problem which is why everybody was soon getting TV’s in their parlors and watching them 24/7. We shouldn’t let that happen which is what I said before and we do need to try to put a stop to it! Tell everyone you know that they should help this cause and tell them they should try to get out more, and maybe even get more active! Do something so that they aren’t just sitting in the same spot all day long watching nothing but reruns.
I hope that you have liked my speech about what televisions are doing to us and what is happening to our environment. If you would like to see where I have gotten some of this information you could go to…

· http://flowingdata.com/2009/09/23/tv-size-over-the-past-8-years/

· http://www.infoplease.com/entertainment/books/hours-minutes-watching-tv-reading.html

· http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html

· http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/med_tel_vie-media-television-viewing

· http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_percentage_of_Americans_watch_TV_everyday

· http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_percentage_of_teens_and_young_adults_watch_television_as_opposed_to_reading

· http://www.livescience.com/culture/081115-tv-unhappy.html

But thank you again for listening to my speech and I hope that you have learned and enjoyed it!

Falling with my hopes and dreams~

Lying here looking up at the sky, I wonder how I got here. I don't know how long it has been or why I am even here when suddenly my memory takes control over me. I am seeing flashbacks when I see myself hiking up a mountain and I am about 3/4 the way to the top. All of a sudden I see myself loosing oxygen and then, there I go: I start to fall. I can see is me, falling all the way down, falling, falling, and falling some more when I then find myself at the bottom where I am now. The only thing I can remember is my name.
I can barely make out where I am or what mountain I was even climbing when I see another flashback, and realize that it was Mr. Everest, the tallest mountain in the world and I had just fallen to the bottom with my hopes and dreams. My memory is coming back to me now when I remembered that I did this for my family, to make them proud and show them that I could do it, really to show the world that I could do it, I could climb the tallest mountain ever! Now, letting that thought leave my mind for a moment I start to think if I will ever be saved? Will anyone know that I am out hear, lying in the snow just barely making it anymore?
Suddenly I hear beeping noises all around me, the sound of trucks coming through the snow, when I look through the small hole that I made with my hands beneath the snow and see that it is an emergency crew, they were coming to save me! They tell me to get up but at the moment it was impossible I couldn’t feel my arms or my legs, so they help me into the truck and quickly wrap as many blankets around me as they had. I reach the emergency room and they rush me in. When I get to see the doctor they do a few test to see if I will need any serious attention. I am sitting in the waiting room for a few minutes when the doctor is arriving in my eyesight and then reaches me to tell me the good news. They had told me that I was going to be ok. I would need to stay there for about a day but luckily I wasn’t in the snow that long to do any serious damage. Although—they did tell me that I had a broken arm and leg but I thought, what the heck! For falling nearly from the top of Mt. Everest and only breaking an arm and a leg I must be the luckiest person on Earth right now!
This response was for the piece that I saw at the Milwaukee Art Museum that is shown above. It was the wall of rocks which to me in my mind made me think of falling: the ways the rocks look. Then after I thought about falling my mind almost took me to this story and that is how this story came to be! I hope you liked it!

Clarisse and the books~

“But Clarisse’s favorite subject wasn’t herself. It was everyone else, and me. She was the first person in a good many years I’ve really liked. She was the first person I can remember who looked straight at me as if I counted.” He lifted the two books. “These men have been dead a long time, but I know their words point, one way or another, to Clarisse.” (72)

How is this possible? Men that have written these books hundreds of years ago and somehow they lead all to Clarisse? Montag has recently told Mildred that he has these books hidden in his house, but when he starts to actually read them he thinks that they are all talking about his poor neighbor girl who was said to have gotten run over by a car. Could it just be that he is thinking all of this because he misses her, or thinks that she was more than she really was, or could it just be that he has almost gone “crazy” under all of the pressure or guilt that he has because of these books. Montag is a fireman who keeps all of these books because he thinks that they will be worth something one day, so when this happens to him he starts to actually think why he is a fireman and he starts thinking why his job is to burn books when he thinks that there is something valuable inside of them. Montag has trouble going back to work because he doesn’t think that he is going to be able to burn even more books when, according to him they are ‘valuable’.

Clarisse has now been forgotten by everyone else but Montag. Guy wants to know how they wrote almost ‘about her’ but he can’t suffer anymore guilt of having the books. So, will Guy live his life thinking about Clarisse and how the books relate to her or will he just forget about her, and move on with the rest of his life burning books?