Happy Thanksgiving! Pass the Venison Please!

• The first Thanksgiving in America was actually in 1541 in Texas, celebrated by Francisco Coronado, the explorer.
• The Pilgrims' Thanksgiving took place in 1621, then not again until 1623, then not until 1676.
• 535 Million pounds of turkey will be eaten in the U.S. every year.

• The Pilgrims ate, celebrated, and feasted for 3 days on berries, shellfish, boiled pumpkin, fish, and deer.
• Cranberries were used as a way to dye cloth and hides red.
• Since it was autumn, the Native Americans who took part in the feast likely were wearing warm animal skins, not dressed in minimal clothing.
• The first Thanksgiving football game was played in 1876, Yale vs. Princeton.

• The Macy's Thanksgiving Parade balloon handlers are employees of Macy's and their families and friends.
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• People on the west coast of the U.S. often eat crab for Thanksgiving.
• The biggest turkey recorded, in 1989, was 86 pounds.
• Columbus named turkeys "tuka," using the Spanish word for peacock. He had heard there were numerous peacocks in the East Indies (where he thought he was) and that turkeys were some type of peacock.
• In Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated the 2nd Monday in October.
• The average distance traveled for the Thanksgiving holiday is 214 miles
• Turkeys have heart attacks

How do Native Americans feel about Thanksgiving now? Some consider it a day of mourning because of the way white people have treated them, and for the fact that they brought diseases to the Native Americans that hadn't existed here before. For an interesting perspective...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-w-zotigh/do-american-indians-celebrate-thanksgiving_b_2160786.html

 

Who Is That?

You know who this is...

And this....



But do you know these people??? What changes have they made in the world?

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1.  Sonia Sotomayor, the first person of Hispanic descent to serve as an Associate Justice (judge) on the United States Supreme Court and the third female Associate Justice. She is originally from New York. The other 2 women are Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

2.  Malala Yousefzi. At the age of 14, she was the youngest person to ever win a Nobel Prize. She is outspoken about women's rights, particularly focusing on education. She was shot in the head for being so outspoken, survived, and continues to speak out for womens' rights.

Read about her: Triogenius, 1-6-2014: The Rebel.

3. Greta Thunberg. She is a climate-change activist from Sweden and is not quite 16 years old. She began her call for climate awareness by protesting outside the Swedish Parliament building. She travels the world to spread support for protecting the world's climate. She also is autistic, and calls that her 'superpower'. 

Are you interested in learning about young people that have influenced our lives? Check this out: http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/responsible-living/photos/8-amazing-kids-who-have-changed-the-world/get-ready

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4. Nelson Mandela. He is a South African man who spoke out against apartheid, and spent 27 years of his life in prison. Read about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela

5. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft,, which provides many basic computer programs we all use or have used . Read about him at Triogenius, 9-1-2014. 

6. Rosa Parks, considered a pioneer in the Civil Rights Movement, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man in 1955, and was arrested. This is a picture of her being fingerprinted, and yes, she was actually arrested over a dispute about a seat on a bus. Her case was heard in court and eventually, the court found in her favor.  Read more about Rosa here:  http://www.rosaparks.org/biography/

7.  Mother Theresa, a highly regarded nun who was born in Albania and served in Calcutta, India, the founder of the Missions of Charity, serving the poorest people of the country and those suffering from AIDs, leprosy, and other diseases. She also was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

8.  Stephen Hawking. Hawking was a physicist who studied things like how the universe began, black holes, and time: He wrote a book, "A Brief History of Time." He suffered from motor neuron disease, which eventually robbed him of the ability to speak as you and I do, but communicated using a computer*..  He died in 2018 at the age of 76.

*learn about the person who developed this sort of computer..beginning when she was 12 years old--Rachel Zimmerman:  http://women-inventors.com/Rachel-Zimmerman.asp

9.  Sally Ride, the first female astronaut in the U.S. Ms. Ride was born in 1951. She was the first American woman in space, flying twice on the space shuttle Challenger and spending over 14 days in space. . She was the youngest person at age 32 to orbit the Earth. After she retired from NASA, she was a physics professor. Ms. Ride died in 2012.

10. Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin. He did research on the staphylococcus germ, watching how it grew and behaved when invading healthy cells. He planned to go on a holiday and stacked his samples in a pile, and when he returned he noticed there was some other kind of mold in some of the staph samples that was consuming and destroying it. His remark was, "That's funny.." Penicillin in many forms is still used as the first antibiotic to fight infections. Fleming lived from 1881 to 1955. He was born in Scotland and lived in England.

11.  Jane Goodall, born 1934. She is an Englishwoman who has devoted her life to the study of chimpanzees, living among them and discovering that they use tools, for one thing. Ms. Goodall still advocates for protection of chimpanzees as well as  promoting the saving of the environment,especially that of endangered species. Did you know that her notes and records were first digitized by the University of Minnesota? Here is more on her life:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Goodall

12. Martin Cooper, the inventor of the cell phone (an early prototype is pictured). He worked for Motorola. The first cell phone conversation was Cooper calling a friend while standing on the streets of New York City.

Now you know some important people...

Think of more that you can explore:

• Who invented something you use every day, and when did that happen?
• Who has achieved great success, and how did he or she do it?
• Who would be a role model for you?
• Who rose from humble beginnings to accomplish great things?

Essay Phobia

Do you have Essay Phobia?

Do you see the words “write an essay” and feel like a deflated balloon?

Did you ever write an essay you thought was brilliant, and got an “F” on it?

Do you feel like the way you write an essay is never going to have a big impact on your life?

Consider this: you will have to write essays for school in almost every subject. Essay writing is part of the ACT test. You will often have to write them as part of college applications, and also for scholarships. If you go on to graduate school, you will still be writing essays that will be a big part of your grades. The quality of an essay could make all the difference in a grade, an acceptance to a school, or being awarded a scholarship or not.

Some common mistakes in essays:

• Run-on sentences (like when you write something that goes on for several lines and there isn't any punctuation and when people get to the end of it they feel like they need to take a breath like this one).
• incomplete sentences (examples: 'Because I could.' or, 'Yesterday.')
• Incorrect spelling
• Incorrect use of apostrophes or dashes (it isn't 'Do your test's or 'pick-up your garbage.')
• Descriptions that are too 'wordy' or too dramatic
• Wandering off the subject
• Did you ever notice that in Word, the number of words you have typed (as well as how many pages) is at the bottom left corner? You might be assigned a 1000 word essay, and that's how you can keep track of the number of words you have so far.

If you're stuck as to where to start, try starting with an outline--a plan on what the essay will include.

So, how do you know if your essay is written well enough to submit? Here are some suggestions:

• First, use spell check. Fix spelling errors. It will also alert you when words should be capitalized and possible grammar mistakes. Be sure to fix and then save.
• If you're stumped for a word, try the thesaurus that's part of your Word program.
• Check with a tutor. Colleges and high schools often have a tutoring center.
• There may be another instructor who'd be willing to look at your work and make suggestions.
• You can try an online tutoring app.

Here are some online sites you might try for help with writing:   https://www.grammarly.com/?q=essay&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Search&utm_term=%2Bfree%20%2Bessay%20%2Bwriter&matchtype=b&msclkid=39400f7ea2791557810152e2056d91e9  
You can also try:  

https://www.tutor.com/subjects/essay-writing
        This site offers online tutoring in other subjects as well. 

 https://www.slickwrite.com/#!home
Don't be scared: It's only an essay!

I'm Worthless Until I've Had My Coffee

Are you one of those people who have quite a coffee habit?  Do you drink coffee several times a day? Do you stop at a local coffee shop drive-through for a fix on a regular basis?

You  might be interested to know:

• Light-colored coffee beans have more caffeine than dark-colored ones.
• Coffee was originally eaten, not brewed into a beverage.
• Coffee was first introduced to the Americas around 1723.
• Coffee beans start their lives as a cherry. These are said to taste like peach or watermelon. The berries are dried and stripped until only a green seedpod remains, then they are roasted; that's how they turn brown and dry.

• Hawaii is the only state in the U.S. that grows coffee.
• Brazil grows the most coffee. 
• Coffee is grown in 65 countries; those countries are close to the equator--coffee plants only grow in tropical environments. Sometimes, fruit trees are grown amongst coffee plants.
• Coffee has been used for over 700 years as a drink.
• Over 500 billion cups of coffee, it is estimated, are consumed every year. The U.S. drinks the most coffee, about 150 billion cups a year.

• As to caffeine: Espresso is the coffee with the highest level of caffeine. 
• Coffee was the first food to be freeze-dried. The method was invented by someone named George Washington, a Belgian man (not the American president).
• There are over 50 species of coffee bean, but only two kinds are harvested and sold on a large scale: Arabica and Robusta. About 75% of coffee we drink is the Arabica variety.
• Coffee produces $60 to $90 billion every year in profits.
• Seattle, Washington, has the most coffee shops.
• Coffee, or the caffeine in it, will not make a drunk person sober.
• If you spend $4 a day on coffee at a coffee shop and you buy it five days a week, you are spending $1040.00 each year on your morning fix.
• Black coffee has only 8 calories in a cup.
• Cream and sugar are often added to black coffee to combat its bitter taste.
• Cappucino has about 130 calories
• Latte has about 180 calories
• Mocha has about 330 calories
• Peppermint chocolate coffee has about 560 calories-total daily calorie intake should be about 2500 for a man and 2000 for a woman

*It has a lot to do with what you add to the coffee, like sugar, whipped cream, and flavorings.

*People who are in the habit of drinking coffee regularly will sometimes have withdrawal symptoms when they stop:

• Headache ( caffeine narrows the blood vessels in your head. When you stop, the blood vessels enlarge. This can cause a headache)
• Fatigue (caffeine is a stimulant. When you're used to having it, then stop, it can cause fatigue.
• Anxiety, lack of ability to concentrate, being depressed, and/or being irritable or angry. These are all a result of having a stimulant on a regular basis (caffeine) and then taking it away or withdrawing it. If you have caffeine daily, it only stays in your system for a few hours and then you'll want more.

• If you are getting caffeine from soft drinks (most dark colored drinks, but a few light color ones have a lot of caffeine in them, such as Mountain Dew), then the sugar rush you experience along with the caffeine is a combination that's hard to stop. Pepsi One, for instance, has a super-high content of caffeine even though it's supposedly only one calorie and not sweetened with sugar. Here is a list of various colas and their caffeine content: https://www.caffeineinformer.com/caffeine-amounts-in-soda-every-kind-of-cola-you-can-think-of
• Caffeine can also be found in some teas, certain chocolate, and anything with coffee as a flavor such as coffee ice cream, energy drinks like Red Bull, as well as some medications and over the counter drugs such as Excedrin and Anacin. Some people feel that (ironically) caffeine helps migraines. You can purchase caffeine in a supplement, as well. Read labels to see how much you're taking in.
• If you start feeling unwell, try cutting back or cutting out your coffee/caffeine consumption. Your coffee habit may make you less able to absorb the iron and calcium you need, and it may be affecting your ability to sleep well. You may feel much better without caffeine. It can increase cysts in breasts, high blood pressure, and various other conditions. Some other findings about caffeine: https://www.caffeineinformer.com/harmful-effects-of-caffeine

As with all things you take into your body, moderation is key.

Now that you know more about coffee and caffeine, you might think about cutting back.