Quarter 2 Post 1

13 Reasons Why
Jay Asher

This week I read 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher. It's about a boy named Clay Jensen. One day Clay came home from school and found a mysterious box on his doorstep. He opened it up and found a series of tapes. Recorded on the tapes was Hannah Baker's story. Each tape tells stories about why Hannah committed suicide. Once you get the tapes you have to pass them on to the next person talked about on the tape. Clay listens to each story, following a map that was also included in the package. He goes to each different place as Hannah talks about it. He goes through a variety of emotions, sadness, anger, guilt, and hate. Each story is one of Hannah's deepest secrets, something she never told anybody else about. They talk about her first kiss, a list of hot girls and not girls, her ex-bestfriend and her first party. As Clay listens he keeps feeling sicker and sicker, trying to think of what he did wrong. All he can think of is a party where he started to make out with Hannah, but she freaked out at him. When it finally gets to his tape, his story, he finds out he did nothing wrong. Hannah had included him to apologize. She wanted him to know why she killed herself, that it wasn't in any way his fault. Even after hearing this Clay still feels like he could have done something to help her. Even though he already heard his story he keeps listening, until he gets to their english teacher/social worker's tape. Hannah went to talk to him the day before she killed herself and talks about him as her last hope. As she went in she started recording so that the conversation would be saved. She tells him she's been thinking about committing suicide and he doesn't really do much about it. He talks about how that would be a bad idea, but when Hannah leaves he doesn't do anything. The next day Hannah didn't go to school. He found out she committed suicide and didn't show up to school for a couple weeks.

I really liked this boook. It's really suspensful. A lot of the stuff that Hannah talks about is stuff that happens to a lot of teenagers every day. It makes you think about the little things that you do. Hannah talks about her ex friend Courtney. About how she used her for a ride to a party where she was going to drink. Hannah then talks about how she should have seen it coming, Courtney always said hi to everybody and was always nice but she never said bye. As if some people weren't good enough for a good bye even though Courtney seemed to treat them like they were great friends. It helped me realize that a lot of the little things you don't really think about can have a major affect on somebody else's life.

Post 6

Caution, teens: Efforts to raise driving age ahead
http://www.startribune.com/local/28036944.html?elr=KArksUUUU

Lately there has been talk of raising the driving age to 17 or 18 years old. I think that this would be great. I am a teenager and I have talked to other teenagers that agree that 16 is too young to be getting a license. Right now most of my friends are either in the process of getting their license or have already gotten it and that’s scary. I don’t trust most of my friends driving a car. There are so many kids my age that aren’t mature enough to have the responsibility of having a drivers license and there’s even more that are just dumb and you know they will do stupid dangerous things. I think a lot of teens sort of have mixed feelings about getting their license at 16. It seems like the number of teens getting killed in car crashes is always increasing. I’m pretty sure that every one of my friends knows somebody that’s been killed in a car crash. At church last year Kelly Phillips died in a car crash. Everybody knew who she was because she was involved in so many different activities. I remember a conversation some of us had one night at hi-league right after Kelly died. We’d all already started drivers ed and we talked about how scared we were that we’d all be driving in about a year. The human brain isn’t anywhere near being fully developed at 16, there’s at least 4 more years til it is, and I think that putting adolescents in cars going 60 mph right next to other cars also going 60 mph is just dumb.

Post 5

Museum returns painting found to be Nazi loot
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27453827/

In 1961 the Minneapolis Institute of Art bought a painting called “Smoke Over Rooftops” painted in 1911 by Fernand Ledger. In 1977 the museum got a letter claiming that the painting really belonged to Alphonse Kann a Parisian art collector that died in 1948. The museum had to go through many files to find out if the painting had really once belonged to him. Investigators found out that after Kann fled to Paris after the war the Nazis took away most of his collection. They took so much that their inventory of it was 60 typed pages long. After the Nazis took it Galerie Leiris, a Paris art dealer, bought the painting at an auction in 1942 and then sold it to Buchholz Gallery. In 1951 Putnam Dana McMillan bought the painting in New York and gave it to the Art Institute in 1961. Once the museum found out the now 2.8 million dollar painting for sure belonged to Kann the returned it to Paris. Stuff like this has happened a lot between 1998 and 2006. The Association of Art Museum Directors says the 22 pieces have been identified as stolen by the Nazis and each one has either been returned or the owner and the museum have reached an agreement.

Post 4

Mille Lacs Band fraud claims multiply
Star Tribune- Twin Cities + West
November 2, 2008

The Chief Executive, Melanie Benjamin, of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe has been accused of using tribal funds for herself. The tribe had set aside money for school construction and was surprised to find that $1600 of it was spent on a french replica toilet and $800 on a waterfall faucet. Both fixtures had been installed in Melanie Benjamin's home. She denies that she did anything wrong saying that the money was from a $35000 home improvement loan from the Community Development Department. She has also been accused of taking more than $50000 in illegal casino comping privileges like concert tickets and dinners. The casino had issued her a Diamond Club Card which is meant for people with a "very high level of play". Melanie should have only recieved $600 in services.

I think its horrible that Melanie would ever so something like this. The funds she used for all of her spending were meant to be for schools and homeless shelters. I think that she should be arrested and put in jail but instead shes planning to run in the special election that will be held to replace her because the Chippewa Tribe's constitution that the tribe follows allows her to do so.

Post 3

Twilight
Stephenie Meyer

Last night i started to read Twilight and I got half way through it. I think that its very easy to read but not a very good book. It seems like I could predict everything that was about to happen next. Most of my friends have read it and love it. They told me a little about the book but didn't give anything away. The whole story to me is just kind of wierd and I don't really like it. Before I even started reading it I thought it seemed kind of wierd but they all said that it was just like Harry Potter. I still think Harry Potter is a pretty normal book, most of the characters are still humans they can just change into other stuff and do wierd things. It reminds me of like a comic book made into a love story and then writing 3 books about it. I think it's creepy that the whole book is about vampires and werewolves and that the main character likes a guy that wants to drink her blood. I also haven't noticed anything very charming about Edward Cullen. I was told that he was really nice and had good manners and all that kind of stuff. The only thing he's done thats very charming is opening and closing doors and paying for dinner. He also kind of ruins his charmingness since he's a vampire and wants to suck her blood and keeps calling himself dangerous and she sould stay away from him. I guess I just don't really like books about not humans.