Salem Witch

Being accused as a witch was not the best experience ever, mostly because it ended in me dieing. It started by me being called up to the stand. All eyes were on me. People claimed that they saw my specter flying and there were even some that said that it attacked them. Some crazy girl screamed and said that I had stabbed her, but when a boy walked up and said it was his knife they told the woman to never lie again. Then came all the questions to me, starting with, “Are you a witch”. As I just sat there they continued, “Why are you tormenting these people?” and statements like, “We know you are a witch. How long have you been one?” As they were telling me to confess I said no. I got sent to jail and it was horrible. I said that I was innocent but they chained me up again and gave me a trail date. At the trial all the girls wail at the sight of me. Every time that I moved they were saying that my specter was doing things to them. When I moved my feet, they said I kicked them, when I bit my lip, they said I made their lip bleed. It seemed impossible. Then my son came up with a petition that people from my neighborhood had signed saying they knew I wasn’t a bad person. The jury gives the verdict, “Not Guilty”. But as soon as I thought I was free the woman started going crazy and they decided to reconsider. This time they decided…GUILTY! Next comes the day of my hanging. I look around my cell for one last time, almost glad that I am finally leaving what seemed to be my home for forever. Three other guys are due to be hung before me. First is Burroughs, who is supposedly the master wizard, then Willard, then Procter. Then all faces are turned to me, it is my turn to go up. The end comes slowly. I dangle in agony as I fight for my last breaths. It is finished.

Book Talk

Quarter one

This first semester was far from easy. I knew it was going to be tough as soon as we got our first vocabulary sheet with tons of words that I had never heard before. Our first quiz was torture. I was determined to work a lot harder after that. One of the first things I remember doing was our metaphor poem. I kind of enjoyed doing that because mine was about basketball. The writing about a feeling was fun to do. The planning for it wasn’t that great but when we wrote it all out I had fun with it, mostly because mine was about anger. Lit groups were fun too. My first book was Pretties which was very interesting and my group that consisted of Thad and Dustin had some interesting conversations. My second lit group with Kambri, Jonathan and Dillon was for the book Shooter. It wasn’t as good of a book but we had some good talks also. I didn’t enjoy doing all the work for that one, but I did learn how to do drawings for stories, connections and layered questions. So for the most part this was a pretty productive quarter.

Shooter

The book that we are reading is Shooter by Walter Dean Myers. It starts out by having Cameron Porter questioned by detective Richard Ewings. They talk about all the different happenings between Cameron and his best friend Leo. Through different questions they talk about what they did together and what kind of people they are, or were. Cameron and the detectives dont say what the actual big thing that happened was but we know that it was big to have to go through all these different reporters. The whole dialouge is alot like this one time when i had to be questioned. I was at a church camp this summer and an incident occured one night when we went to walmart. I was the only person that actually saw the whole thing so i had to go to answer some questions the next morning. It was very official, pretty intimidating and i didnt even do anything, so i couldnt even imagine how it would be for an actual criminal.

Being like everyone else isnt all its cracked up to be

Many teens seem to always want to just follow the crowd and not just be their own person. Teens are put into social standing from name brands to athletic ability. Being judged all the time, not very many people are willing to stand out. In Pretties the author, Scott Westerfield, stresses the point that what seems to be great, might not be the best.

Pretties starts off with the main character, Tally, as a new pretty trying to get into the Crims clique. Getting voted in put her in the position she wanted to be in. Everything was going great until she runs into an ugly from her ugly days, named Croy. He tells her that he has something to give her but it is secret so she has to search for it. So Tally and her friend Zane go to find the mysterious object. After going through dangerous challenges to find the gift, they found a letter that Tally had written to herself before having pretty surgery. It explained that having the surgery messes with your brain and in order to try to save all the pretties she needed to take certain pills. Zane offered to take one too, despite the possible outcomes. Zane had been pretty longer than Tally had so the side affects were worse for him. He had major headaches and one time he had bad trouble breathing, like an asthmatic. They couldn’t take him to the hospital though because it would be too suspicious, but Tally rushed him to the E.R. just in case it got worse.

I am an asthmatic. One winter I was at my aunt and uncles’ house up north and an event occurred. I am also allergic to cants and with my relatives owning cats it caused my asthma to kick up. We tried to keep from having to go to the E.R. by taking treatments. We also tried sitting out in the car thinking the cold air might help. By three o’clock in the morning it was just too hard to take a breath so they drove me to the hospital and they gave me better treatments with stronger antibiotics in them that worked very well. It made everything better so I could breathe normally again.