#26 Thanksgiving Memoir

The Thanksgiving holidays were very special this year. There was a lot of food for me to eat. I went with my family to my aunt's house where we were going to have our thanksgiving dinner. My brothers had previously arrived from where they currently have established their residence. My oldest brother, Richard Vaninger II lives in Atlanta, Georgia and works as a biomedical engineer for McKesson. This is no problem, he has no friends and nobody will ever love him. My other older brother, the one in between me and rick is named sam. He is a junior at Illinois State University.

I arrived at my aunt's house half an hour early because my parents had lied about the time to see if anyone would fall for it... I did fall for it. Anyway, the meal was elaborate. There was a wide variety of foods with which I could endulge my taste buds with. Upon gazing at the elaborate display of chefmanship placed in front of me (the food) i knew I would not be walking away hungry that night. I ate a large amount of food, too much actually, because afterwords I had to lie down on the couch and take a nap. The nap was a precaution, I had to be ready for desert. I would prove to be very weak indeed if I did not participate in the desert course of the meal. I was a little disappointed with this course I won't lie. It was a pumpkin pie, and some wild berry pie. Im not a fan of pumpkin pie, or wild berry pie... Im a more apple or blue berry pie kinda man. That's when it hit me, I realized that sometimes in life, you get thrown a fastball or a curveball, you either shoot first in the duel or second, and in my case, sometimes you get an apple pie, and sometimes you get a wild berry pie... I decided to make the most of my desperate situation and eat the wild berry pie. At least the berries were ripe. i could have eaten poisionous berries and died from some horrible and unimaginably un-curable disease.

Journal #25 RBC Reviews

I read a couple interesting critical reviews of The Red Badge of Courage. Both reviews shared many interesting points about the book and its author, Stephen Crane. It was interesting to see what the British critics thought of the novel as well as american critics. One former British Gneral praised the story for its format of being described by a private instead of a general. When a story is seen through the eyes of a general, the focus is on troop movements, casualties, individual victories of the units. When seen from a private's point of view, the reader is able to see the individual battles and the intensity of them. Whereas that experience is lost when seen from a general. We are able to see Henry's emotions and ponder his reactions and the reasons why he reacted this way.

I can agree with this because i read a story about the Battle of Waterloo which was fought between The Duke of wellington and napolean (British and allies vs. French). The book described the overall statistics of each individual skirmish, such as cavalry charges and infantry attacks. It sort of described what the troops were experiencing but for the most part it was nothing like how The Red badge of Courage did so. I think The Red Badge of Courage did an excellent job mixing up the view points expressed in combat compared to other writers.

The critics also pointed out how Stephen Crane did a great job writing about battle. Especially since he had never fought in any battles, and he was not even born during the civil war. Yet, he was still able to write about a battle and was very accurate describing what was happening and did a great job describing what the soldiers were experiencing. I agree with them because I feel he had done a great job describing war without ever having experienced a battle or war. He exceeded expectations of normal standards with this book because he does a very good job describing a battle in a war that he had never even been alive during.

Journal #24 9-20 Red Badge

Chapters 9-20 also have many realism qualities. Henry shows a perfect example of Human nature when he continues to ponder how he can return to camp with a good enough excuse for his retreat that the other men will accept him. He worries over this constantly until he finally returns after being hit on the head with a rifle by a retreating comrade. He tells everyone that he has been shot and they believe him. This is his way of showing the men he was not a coward and they accept him back to his explanation of being separated from them and fighting on the right flank. Henry also shows human nature by complaining about how he feels the commanding officers are not skilled enough for their jobs. He blames them for the army's continual defeats which is very common for someone to do, people often blame their superiors. He also shows anger when he becomes aware that essentially, his regiment is just being chased by the rebels like kittens being chased by boy. He begins to really hate the rebel army and takes it out on them during their next skirmish. During the next fight, he fights ferociously and helps to fight the rebel army back.

Personification is used when Crane (the author) says phrases such as, The sun shone his light upon the field. The importance here is in the three words, sun shone his. He is making the sun sound human-like by making it male. in the english language the sun is gender neutral, Crane bypasses this by giving it a male pronoun which makes it less neutral, and more human.

Government is still commanded through the officers in the army. They still give the orders to the regular soldiers and the soldiers follow them. Without the officers to give their orders, their would be mass pandemonium and chaos on the battlefields. The amount of confusion that would be added to the battlefield if their were no officers or men to take charge would be incredible. EVerything would be much more confusing and things such as friendly fire or mass groups of men fighting without leaders to guide them.

Journal #23 Chapers 1-8 RBC

The Red Badge of courage is about a boy named Henry who goes off to fight in the American Civil War. He is just like everyone else in the fact that he views war as a glorious thing and that he will become a hero. However, he soon finds that life in the army is not what he expected at all. He assumed it would be battle after glorious battle. Instead he discovered that it was mostly camping and waiting for the next battle.

The American Dream is shown by how the crowds greet henry and the other soldiers. Everywhere they go they are greeted and sent off as heroes. During this point in time, the American dream was to go fight in the war, either for the south or the north. Each side saw their soldiers as heroes.

Personification was used when the author described how eyes stared up at henry and the other men when they marched through a creek before entering battle. He said that the creek seemed to have eyes and was staring at them. The creek did not really have eyes but it could have been bubbles foam that gave the appearance of the creek having eyes. The way he described the creek having eyes is personification because he made the creek seem human-like.

The government category in the story is the officers. The regular soldiers are given orders from their officers and they follow them. This is the government and governing way in the army. Men follow their superiors' commands and orders because that way things get done and rules are followed. Human Nature is shown in the fact that Henry believes he can beat the rebel army by himself. This is a common way for people (especially henry's age) to feel. However, Henry quickly begins to doubt himself and his abilities. He is unsure of how he will act in combat and how he will react to the confusion of battle. He show more human nature when he sees a small group of his comrades running during the battle. He turns and retreats with them because he gave in to his fear.

Journal #22 All school field trip

On November 13, 2009 (about three days ago) Pleasant Plains High School had an all school field trip. We went t0 four different cemeteries and bases including camp butler, camp lincoln, the air national gaurd base, and the war memorials.

My trip started out with camp butler, which is a cemetery just outside of Springfield. It used to be a military trainingbase for Illinois soldiers who were soon shipped out to fight the confederates. THis was a very interesting place because it has Union and confederate soldiers. It also has soldiers from World War 1 to the Korean and vietnam conflicts. What I found very interesting was the fact that there are some germans, confederates, and koreans buried there ar\s well as american soldiers. Here, at this camp, a lady spoke to us for what seemed like a good 45 minutes but it was probably only half that.

Next, I went to Camp Lincoln and got to see some weapons and vehicles. This was probably my favorite part because the weapons and vehicles were much more interesting to a high school student than the other things. The tour i got of this building was also very interesting because it showed all of the jobs that are handled at Camp Lincoln.

After camp Lincoln i went to the war memorials for the korean, vietnam and world war 2 Wars. We did a little question sheet that took us all the way around the monuments. Fortunately the questions were not difficult and took just a little effort to find. I was getting tired at this point so I would not have worked very hard to find the answers if they were difficult.

For lunch me and luke reynolds ate at burger king together. i went to town on a larger whopper, no lettuce picvkles or tomoatoes, and a large fry. The dr. pepper was also satisfying to my stomach. However, I got a stomach ache because i ate too fast and left the restaurant feeling a little unsettled.

The last place i went was the air national gaurd base. We learned about the fire service there which was a little strange because I expected only jets. Then we saw an f-16 fighter jet which was very interesting.

Journal #21 A Dream that seemed real

I have many dreams and frequently, they are nightmares. Dreams oftentimes seem realistic and when you awake from them, you might think they actually happened. This recently happened to me when I dreamed that I was in college and a few states away. It was a long dream and I remember going to class where i could hear the professor speaking, but could not understand the words. It was sort of like Charley Brown where the teacher speaks gibberish, only for me, unlike charley brown, I could not understand anything. I then took a test over that material and failed it miserably. Maybe it was my brain telling me that I suck at Spanish 3, or math, or science... Anyway, I then went to my dorm room and started watching tv but all of the channels were the rainbow color. I decided that nothing could be done so I sat on the couch and continued viewing the interesting color pattern.

When I woke up friom the dream and was lying in my bed, I remember that it was around 4:30 A.M. This is about two hours before I wake up for school. I could not go back to sleep because everything felt so strange. I still thought I was living in the dream at this point so I felt like an idiot for failing the test. I went down stairs because i felt to strange to go back to bed and whwen I got down I realized it was all a dream and i felt much better. I had a heart warming bowl of Fruity Dino-Bites. While eating my breakfast, which was the cereal mentioned abovE along with a nice glass of chocolate milk, I watched t.v. for a few hours and then went to school. School sucked because I was tired all day but that is what happens anyway so it wasn'rt too different.

Dreams can seem real sometimes and nightmares are no fun. When you wake up from them everything seems twisted and upside down. Here a fun fact, dreaming occurs in the REM stage of sleep. That stands for Rapid Eye Movement. During this stage thwe eyes rapidly move under the eyelids and this is totally normal.

Journal #20 Favorite Tall Tale

My favorite tall tale is the legend of Johnny Appleseed. I'm honestly not really sure why this is my favorite, but i really like it. The story is about a boy named Johnny who travels westward and plants apple seeds along his way. These seeds eventually develop into apple trees and the moral of the story is that Johnny is the reason there are apple trees across America.

I guess I like the story because of the adventure it brings out. Johnny leaves everything he has in the Eastern part of America, and walks all the way to the western part. There are very few people who would be willing to do this and many would consider this crazy, not to mention suicidal. Johnny not only has no essential plan he is following, but he also plants apple seeds along the way. Im not sure that I know or can think of many people who would abandon everything they have in order to walk thousands of miles planting apple seeds.

My second favorite is the story of John Henry, the man who was very strong. They say John was born with a hammer in his hand because he is so good using hammers. John is the fastest and strongest spike nailer in the railroad building business. He can quickly and effectively drive nails into the ground stabilizing the train tracks.

John ultimately dies when he challenges a machine to a spike driving contest. The machine does not get tired which is what kills John. Since John is human, he suffered from fatigue and his heart stopped due to his hard work beating the machine. Fortunately, John Henry was able to beat the machine in the challenge, unfortunately, it cost him his life.

Everybody has different favorite stories but the two that were mentioned above are my favorites.Tall Tales are stories passed down in order to entertain people and teach us morals, very similar to the native american stories that are often popular moral giving stories.

Journal #19 Vengeance

Vengenace is the act of seeking revenge. Everybody does this at one point or another. For instance, When Benedict Arnold's treacherous plot to give up an important Continental Army base to the british, George Washington was furious. He sent his Aide, Colonel Alexander Hamilton, to find Arnold and bring him back to be made an example of. However, Arnold had already escaped to a British warship.

Washington failed to catch Arnold but he was exemplifying revenge.

How about the time the Arch Duke Ferdinand and Isabella were shot? That event led to a great period of the nineteen hundreds called World War 1. The events World War 1 led to an even more important factor, World War 2. This led to the Vietnam war due to the rise in communism and many other following events.

This shows that revenge is sometimes bad. However, in Star Wars, Revenge cam out good.

Darth Vader destoryed Princess Leia's homewrold of Alderan with the death star. The rebel Alliance decided this was not good and attacked the death star. Luke Skywalker destroyed the death star and exacted revenge for alderan. This was a good example of revenge.

Revenge can go both ways, but it usually just ends up making things worse. You should always try to talk things out like civilized people. Violence only leads to more violence. For instance, in los Angelos there are many gangs. Two very big rival gangs are the bloods and the crips. These gangs kill each other causing the other members to exact revenge, only making the situations worse. Innocent people sometimes get caught in the cross fire and that is never good. The name innocent implies that they have nothing to do with the event so its unfair they are caught up in it. This just goes to show that vengeance is not very good.

I am not a very good spokesperson for anti-vengeance because I get angry, just like everyone else, and want revenge. Sometimes I am able to calm myself down but sometimes you just gotta show people not to mess with you.

Journal #18 My Biggest Fear

I have many fears, but that is normal because everyone has at least one fear. I can be considered a brave person, but i am humble so I realize that I am not invincible. I absolutely hate spiders and snakes. They are the worst and most useless creatures on the planet (not really) and all they do is scare people. Whenever I see a snake i run away, which I realize is an unmanly thing to do, but im not going to pick a fight with it. Sometimes when I cut the grass, I see a snake slithering towards me, instead of running, I run it over and kill it.

If I see a spider that is big, I just have my dad kill it. I basically hate these because they are big and everywhere. Its a little ridiculous. There a huge spiders near my house by the woods because I live near woods. They are pretty big sometimes and that makes me angry because whenever I see them I vacate the general area.

Im also afraid of heights. This is not as bad as my other fears because I can handle it better. If I am up on a roof i am fine, but if I am up in an airplane it takes me awhile to get used to my altitude. It just varies depending on the situation.

My fear are very common fears among Americans. America's number one fear is death. I would not say that I fear death. Im not comfortable with it but i know that Im going to die eventually. This opinion will probably change with time but I know that I have all my life to impact planet Earth, and i intend to do that.

I understand how people can fear death but I don't see a reason to it. If everything goes well my classmates and I will have long lives ahead of us. We should worry about death after we get closer to it, not now when we still have so much life left.