Allison’s Blog

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“What Happened”

Deanna Howerly

          A tragedy had occurred in a small town of Ohio. Anna Riley was the victim of this story. She was being stalked and she didn’t even know it. Anna was very shy and independent. She didn’t need anyone to tell her what to do besides her mom Ella. Her dad had died of a heart attack and she was devastated when this had happened. Anna was twelve when her father died. Anna wasn’t much liked her small town school and she didn’t care because she had one great friend Elizabeth Goodser. Elizabeth was a true friend to Anna. Elizabeth was the kind of friend Anna needed to stay strong from people bullying her and teasing her by the clothes she wore.

Days went by and Anna noticed a man around his forty’s was following her and then he would vanish. Anna didn’t know that this man was following her since her father died. The man Tyler Foundersly used to know her father and he was trying to get to Anna. Anna had no idea she was being followed nor followed by a man her father knew either. Anna noticed the guy as days passed and he called her name out one day and she ran. He wrote a note to her and put it in her locker before the bell rang for school to start. Anna found out his name and looked up records and found out he was charged with murder of her father.

Clearly Anna didn’t know that her father was murdered by this man and she cried because her own mother didn’t tell her about this murderer that killed her father instead of telling the story about her father having a heart attack. She stopped and followed the man and screamed she knew he killed her father and he started running after her and she ran too. He stopped and left. She was very frightened. Anna didn’t know what to do.

The next day Anna had told Elizabeth the whole story and Elizabeth was shocked and frightened as well as Anna. Anna was in class and she felt safe for a few minutes until Tyler walked in with a gun. Everybody in the classroom screamed and everybody was held as hostage. He came up to Anna. Put the gun to her forehead and said, “Did you love your father?” and Anna said yes. Everybody screamed. This book touched me because Anna didn’t know the truth and if her mom had told her really happened, and then Anna could make a difference and called the police or tell someone she was being followed by a guy.

Telling the truth makes everything better to me and it would if Ella told the truth to her daughter. Over all books that I have read this year my favorite would be and or the Nancy drew stories or books I have read. The always make the story so exciting and mysterious. Those kinds of books make me read and read until I have finished the book. This summer i will probably read more Nancy drew books if I can at all because this summer I am going to be really busy.

The best at Mariner is basically everything we ever do in Mariner. Our school is so much fun that I can’t explain it. We go on field trips, have semi formal, dances, pep rallies, sports for winter and spring. In school we take pictures of everybody and hang them on a wall for everybody to see. Our school was exciting this year for me as an eight grader and a treasurer for our school, honor society, band, and way much more. My teachers are so great and they teach me a lot, well that is what they are supposed to. This year was the best year ever with me and my friends. I would do it all again since I am going to miss every single one of my friends especially Becca Huling. She will always be my best friend and she will always be there for me. My best year of mariner for the whole three years was this year and I will remember it for the rest of my life.

          Who do I appreciate? I appreciate a lot of people so this person appreciates me a lot and it would be Mrs. Albanese. She cares about so much people and she is constantly on task and ready to learn and always ready to have fun. I always ask her for help or tell her stuff I don’t agree and she listens to me instead of ignoring me. Mrs. Albanese is a special teacher to me she is more than a friend to me; she is like a big sister that is always ready to help anyone who needs it. I will always appreciate Mrs. Albanese even when I go to high school and she isn’t there I will still miss her as well. Through out the Mrs. Albanese had been a hard teacher but she always taught us in a fun way that would make the not boring. Mrs. Albanese is a teacher with many talents including singing. This teacher appreciates me no matter what even if I get in trouble she is always there to help me and I just want to say thanks!

The author I have taken notes on was Sinclair Lewis. Sinclair is a man with many words that cannot be described, but Sinclair’s life is like a road that on no account ends. Sinclair had a couple of bumps on his road of life, but he never gave up on his writing. Through out Sinclair’s life, the road was level, for books he published and other things he won, by the way, they were great. Sinclair was a Nobel Prize author as well. Sinclair Lewis is an astonishing author who never gave up on living his life the way Sinclair wanted to. He published many books and some were grand and some were not, but through out his whole life, I would say Sinclair had a breathtaking life through his years. This is his life. These are the years or Sinclair Lewis’s life of times gone by.

            Sinclair was born February 7, 1885, and died January 10, 1951, of heart disease. Sinclair was born in the city of Sauk Centre, of Minnesota. Sinclair died in Rome about the age of 66 of heart disease. It was sad to everybody in Sinclair’s family to see Sinclair die so early in his life even though he was around 66 when he did die.

 Sinclair’s parents were diverse from other parents. His parents did not really care what Sinclair did. Though Sinclair is dead, many fans still love him the way he wrote his books and described dissimilar characters in his books and novels and poems too.

            Sinclair’s parents were kind of parents you would not necessarily want to have as parents. Well, in 1891 Sinclair’s mother died. Sinclair’s father died in 1926 and Sinclair did run away when he was 13 to be a drummer boy for Spanish American war. Sinclair had no brothers or sisters either. He was the only

child in his family so ha had to face problems by himself. Sinclair did marry as a matter of fact he did marry a journalist, Grace Hegger, but he divorces Grace in 1928 and marries a journalist, Dorothy Thompson and had a son, and his name was Michael Lewis. Sinclair did divorce Dorothy Thompson in 1942 before he died.

            Sinclair went to many schools in his years. Sinclair went to the Oberlin collage in Ohio, then went to Yale University, and got hid bachelors degree there too. In 1906 through 1908, Sinclair finally graduates from Yale University. Sinclair worked at many jobs to pay of his collage, to come up with the money for food for him, and to pay his rent, which were very hard for him to pay off since he was not famous yet for his books. Alcohol was a key part of Sinclair’s life. He was captivated to it, but he did not unerringly know what alcohol would do to him later

in life once he died, but know one really knew what alcohol would do to them. Around 1912, Sinclair starts publishing books.

            Sinclair published his first book in 1912, which was “Hike and The Aero Plane”. This book was a seller and a hit. This book was so attention grabbing to people that Sinclair won the Nobel Prize for Literature. (Sinclair was the first American honored for that award!) Other books that were published by Sinclair besides “Hike and The Aero Plane” were:

•Þ     Our Mr. Wrenn

•Þ     The Job

•Þ     The Innocents

•Þ     Free Air

•Þ     Main Street

•Þ     Babbit

•Þ     Mantrap

•Þ     Elmer Granty

•Þ     Aerosmith

•Þ     The Man Who Knew Coolidge

•Þ     Dodsworth

•Þ     Ann Vickers

•Þ     Works of Art

•Þ     Selected Stories

•Þ     It Can’t Happen Here

•Þ     Gideon Planish

•Þ     Cass Timberlane

•Þ     The God Seeker

•Þ     World So Wide

Those books were the ones that were published, but Sinclair had written many books, but many were not prominent and never published.

      Though Sinclair is dead, he was a poet and novel writer that had many words to say before dieing. If I could illustrate one word about Sinclair would

be courageous. He never gave up on writing books and poetry, he was man you could depend on for about any task given by yourself. Sinclair was the first man privileged in the United States to win the Nobel Prize of Literature. I thought that was remarkable. If Sinclair were still breathing today then he would have had many Nobel Prize awards because I have read some of his books and I thought they were phenomenal. At the end, Sinclair Lewis was

one of the 100 greatest poets and I think that is magnificent that he is in the top 100. Just think, if he were still alive in the present day he would be in the top 10 out of 100 no uncertainty about it for best poets! You never know!

 What shall we learn from John Doe? Look at him
Do not act like him
He commits the same crimes year after year,
no matter how much we punish him
But no matter how often we learn
that we must not end up like him,
it’s not crimes and prisons we fear the most
here at the Faculty of Law,
or meeting John Doe in exams year after year
No, the most frightening thing is simply
to be named John Doe and to land in Smalltown,
with defective title to a mortgaged house full of construction flaws,
in debt up to your eyes, with creditors at the door
and a wife, Jane Doe,
who always wants to divorce you and get the lion’s share
of your assets and your inheritance
and throw you out onto the street,
where you end up in a fistfight with your neighbor Richard Roe
because of that big new garage of his

“Africa”

although she has lain. 

Influence

“Keep your legs in a straight line and your body tight and you will not fall off the beam on your back handspring.” says my coach as I finish my routine on the beam. Kim Whickman, a normal human being who is my coach at Mid-Coast gymnastics. She is someone I look up to and depend on to teach me what is right and what is wrong. I first met this crazy woman when I was seven when I first started gymnastics. I was old for my age to be starting gymnastics. Kids who make it to my level right now start at the age of 3 and that is really young for a lot of people. I could tell by the way I looked at Kim, she was the kind of people I get along with.

Kim Whickman has the cool personality that everybody will love. Her long curly brown hair always in a French braid that is constantly smoothed out by her berets. Kim’s hazel brown eyes always shine and show people that she does care about little details that no one would pay attention to. Kim would always wear sweat pants and a shirt like she is going to work out. She would always tell us that working with little kids is a workout for her and we would all laugh at practice. She always gives us directions and loves making jokes and having fun all the time. She always tells us if we fall this way it would hurt and if we fall this way, we would not get hurt in a hilarious way.

Coach Kim has the qualities I look for in a special best friend. She is always helping and would be the best mom anyone would have. Why would I pick her? Well, my coach is someone close to me besides my family and best friends that I know. She is like another mother to me but I only see her in gymnastics or on special occasions. Kim is a sensitive person and she loves to listen to music. Kim is a very good person to me and always will be and I hope she will always be my coach.

If it were not for my coach Kim, I would not be the person I am today. She does not just teach me gymnastics, she teaches me a whole bunch of other stuff as well as manners and she teaches me to be proper and nice. I just want to thank her for everything she has taught me and much more. I would do anything for my coach if she needed me and that is all I have to say and I hope Kim is in my life forever. She will always be my idol.

Gymnastics Years

This year has been a forceful year of gymnastics for me since I am on the team for Mid-Coast Gymnastics, though it is an accomplishment through all the rough times I have been through. A lot of bumps have occurred this year in gymnastics. I am on level 8 and it is difficult for me at times.

 Gymnastics isn’t just a sport it’s a passion and dedication for most of us and some of us it’s for the recognition and grandeur, but those people will be crushed by me and those people who practice to be the best. In this year I have been working really hard to get my confidence back up to 110% as it was before I hurt myself. It was devastating when a physical therapist told me I would have to give up my true dream which was gymnastics. It tore my heart but I didn’t believe and it wasn’t true too. I can do gymnastics but I have to go back in June but that’s not that far away. Only a small amount of weeks for me and I am excited about it. Let me enlighten in the easiest way about gymnastics for me this year.

Gymnastics is a hard sport and all people know it inside of us. If you have not seen the movie “stick it”, well then you don’t know what pain means to us. Pain is the one word gymnasts describe this sport as. You will fall off and break something, get rips on bars, shin splints, fractures, and most importantly bruises. We all can’t land a difficult skill on the beam every single time we do it on beam. I would come for practice and no one would be there and warm up and practice because I knew if I wanted to be the best I had to work at. It was a week before a meet and I was excited at practice and I was pumped up to give a 100% to my coach. I was tumbling and doing a double full when I knew something was wrong in the air and I knew I was going to come down a different way then I supposed to. I rolled my ankle and it snapped and I broke it. There was sharp pain going from my right ankle to my leg all the way up. It was very painful. You could tell I did something wrong with my ankle cause you could see a massive lump on the side of my ankle that wasn’t there before.

When I went to the hospital, the doctor came and told me I had a broken ankle and that I would have a cast on for six to eight weeks. I was pretty depressed because I knew that I would have to take gymnastics off for about two months. I had a blue cats on for seven weeks and then the day finally cam and I got my cast off. I had to wash my leg almost five times before the stink finally went away. I had to go to physical therapy and then I could go back to gymnastics. The day came and started practice again and it was exciting. I came back to gymnastics strong and was ready to compete and win trophies and medals and team awards. A month went by and I started to get pain shooting down my back. I first thought I had pulled a muscle in my back but I didn’t know what was really happening to my back. I went to physical therapy for my back to get it better so I can go back and compete, but it wasn’t getting better it was getting worse. I had told my mom and she thought it wasn’t that serious, but it was.

A couple weeks went by and I went to get a MRI done on my back to see what the problem was. It took 30 minutes of stillness and stiffness to determine what was wrong with my back. A couple days went by and I got the results. I had two herniated disks in my back and a bulging disk in my back as well. I was really sad because I knew what the doctor said was not good at all. I started crying because the therapist told me I would have to quit gymnastics for the rest of my life so I wouldn’t mess up my back. The therapist told me to get a second opinion from a more skilled doctor from A.I. Dupont. So me and my mom went up to A.I. Dupont and waited about two hours before I saw a doctor. The doctor had told me that I didn’t need to quite gymnastics. I was so happy. He told me was a disease and that it would go away between six to twelve months. I can now go back to gymnastics in June. I can’t wait to back to gymnastics for the summer because it is so much fun!