Capital January

World News

 

            This week we have a big piece of news from the capital city of the United Kingdom. A major theater collapsed in London. At historic Apollo Theater they were having a wonderful performance called “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and suddenly one of the actresses said, “Watch out!” and many people thought it was just another part of the performance. There was a crease in the ceiling and the roof just simply crashed down on the 720 people in the auditorium. Soon firefighters came and helped a few get out of the wreckage. The local ambulance service came and saved at least 79 people, 56 of whom were taken to nearby hospitals. Thankfully there no deaths in this incident, though it could have been a lot worse.

 

Biography

 

            This Biography will be about the famous inventor Alexander Graham Bell who was a Scottish born immigrant. He was born in Edinburgh and was educated in London. At the age of 16, Bell decided to start studying and researching the mechanics of speech. Later, his family emigrated to Canada and he founded a school for the deaf. Bell became very fascinated with the idea of transmitting speech. He finally made a machine that created sound from electricity. Later he was granted the patent of the telephone and it became one of the most wanted things in the world and the Bell Telephone Company was created. Bell was also one of the founders of National Geographic.  

 

Local

 

            Here in the local area of Garmisch there have been many complaints about the recent weather. It seems to be a lot more sunny than snowy around here so skiing and snowboarding conditions have been very poor in the last few weeks. Most of the snow on the ski and snowboard trails is artificial. This is not only here; our friends in the eastern part of the US are wearing summer clothing! The weather is expected to change in the next week in Garmisch. This is why it is always better to come here to ski in February.

 

Unfortunate

 

Hundreds of airplane flights were delayed because of de-icing. Ontario is having this problem as well. In fact, about 300,000 people in Ontario did not get electricity because of storms in North America. Toronto has opened more than a dozen warming shelters and are expecting a huge wave of people to come in.   

 

 

 

Fortunate

 

            For this issue in the Fortunate section I will talk to you about the very famous holiday known as Christmas but also called Noel, Yule and others. The very fortunate thing about this holiday is that children from around the planet receive gifts from whomever they choose to believe in, for example, the US population commonly believes in a character called Santa Claus but there are many more. There are also many other days to celebrate this holiday including Christmas Eve on which the European countries open their presents and Christmas Day on which the US celebrates it.

 

Travel

 

            During the Christmas break I enjoyed a lot of travel, including lots of skiing in the nearby towns in Tyrol, Austria like Biberwier, Lermoos, and Ehrwald. One other very new thing that I have done is going night sledding, which I have never done before. It was quite an experience, though many of the others kept falling and I had lost a headlamp. To those who live in Ehrwald I have quite a piece of news for you: they are making some surprising changes to the Ehrwald resort in 2014.

 

 

Poem

 

 

Winter

 

When icicles hang by the wall 
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail 
And Tom bears logs into the hall, 
And milk comes frozen home in pail, 
When Blood is nipped and ways be foul, 
Then nightly sings the staring owl, 
Tu-who; 
Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note, 
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. 

When all aloud the wind doth blow, 
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw, 
And birds sit brooding in the snow, 
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw 
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, 
Then nightly sings the staring owl, 
Tu-who; 
Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note, 
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

William Shakespeare

 

 

Fact

 

Almost two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. If the earth were flat, water would cover everything in a layer two miles deep!

 

 

Quote

 

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like.

Design is how it works.

 

-Steve Jobs

From now on this paper will be a monthly.

Thank you for reading Capital

11.2.13 – 11.12.13

Brief. Easy. Helpful. Interesting… Capital

World News

            For this week’s world news I will tell you about a stranded hiker named Marco Lavoie in Quebec who was rescued on Wednesday. Lavoie’s campsite was attacked by a vicious bear that ate all of the 44 year-old’s survival tools.  Lavoie was suffering from hypothermia, dehydration and starvation as he was in the wilderness for more than three full months. Lavoie got lost when he went on a planned two-month canoe trip around Lake Matagami. The police department found him on October 21st, three months after he began his journey on July 16^th.

This is all the information that they were able to take from him, and I may have more on this next week.

Biography

            This week’s Biography will be about the famous Neil Armstrong, known well for being the first person to set foot on the moon. In 1961, John F. Kennedy told NASA that he would like to put humans on the moon. Apollo 11 blasted off eight years after that because of all the planning they had to do. The other two astronauts on the space ship with Neil Armstrong were Michael Collins and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin. Collins was the pilot and did not get to set foot on the moon four days after the lift off, but Aldrin and Armstrong did. Neil Armstrong was born on August 5^th,1930 and died on August 25^th, 2012.

Garmisch

              For this issue I will tell you about the weather change here in Germany. You see, for the last few years winter weather time is getting longer and longer. Not only does this effect peoples cold and fevers, but it makes people enjoy all of the hiking in the short time that they can. I was not able to do as many things in the mountains in the summertime as I am able to do in winter. This is one of the only minuses because the slow transition from rain to snow is one of the greatest things. I always like the first snow day because it is what I call “The Grand Opening of the Ski Season”. Skiing is one of the most popular winter sports in this area. If you did not quite understand what you just now read, then just come to Garmisch.

Unfortunate

            For this section, I will go into a little bit more detail on the so called

“transition to winter weather” from the previous section. This is the only dreaded thing about getting closer to the “Grand Opening of the Ski Season”.

Before the world becomes a great winter wonderland, it has to go through a horrible transition that includes many very hated things. This is before it’s cold enough for rain to become snow, and after its nice and sunny. What do you get as a result of this? A very dreadful and rainy few weeks. Everyone does not like this because all they want to do is go skiing. Skiing is one of the most popular winter sports, and you can even ski in summer in some places. In a ski area near us, they make enough snow and its cold enough for people to be able to ski all year long.

Fortunate

            This week, something absolutely miraculous happened in the least expected place, the sky. There was a horrible airplane collision over Wisconsin with two planes full of trained skydivers. One plane crashed on top of another causing the bottom one to burst in flames and lost one wing while the other had nine skydivers jumping out of it to save their lives. The pilot of the airplane without a wing had a parachute and jumped down to safety while the other pilot landed the plane alive and uninjured even with wing and propeller damage done to his plane. The most amazing thing was that everyone had survived without an injury.

Travel

            For this week’s travel section I will tell you about a trip to Washington D.C. I stayed with friends in Germantown, which is also a very nice area to take walks in. Most of the time that I was in Maryland, I was walking around Washington stopping at many frozen yogurt shops. One day was completely dedicated to viewing the monuments, half of which we were not allowed to look at because they were closed because of the government shutdown. That day I got lost once or twice but it was still very enjoyable. Another day that I was there I went to a baseball game in Baltimore. This city was really one of the most beautiful cities that I hope to have a future in. My favorite part of all of Baltimore was the wonderful architecture there. I am not quite sure why but it felt like just the place for me. Another day that I was there I visited two of the Smithsonian Museums while I could before they were closed because of the government shutdown. I was able to look at all of the wonderful exhibitions they had there including supersonic airplanes and old hot air balloons. The second museum that I visited was the Natural History Museum. I wasn’t able to stay there for long because it was getting fairly late, but I got to see the Hope Diamond (the largest natural diamond), walk through a very large hall with shelves displaying many types of rocks and minerals, and lastly, I got to enter the butterfly room, which was a room filled with butterflies with a great range of colors and sizes.

I recommend this trip to Washington D.C. to anyone who would like to go.

Poem

Whatif

By Shel Silverstein

Last night, while I lay thinking here,

some Whatifs crawled inside my ear

and pranced and partied all night long

and sang their same old Whatif song:

Whatif I’m dumb in school?

Whatif they’ve closed the swimming pool?

Whatif I get beat up?

Whatif there’s poison in my cup?

Whatif I start to cry?

Whatif I get sick and die?

Whatif I flunk that test?

Whatif green hair grows on my chest?

Whatif nobody likes me?

Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?

Whatif I don’t grow talle?

Whatif my head starts getting smaller?

Whatif the fish won’t bite?

Whatif the wind tears up my kite?

Whatif they start a war?

Whatif my parents get divorced?

Whatif the bus is late?

Whatif my teeth don’t grow in straight?

Whatif I tear my pants?

Whatif I never learn to dance?

Everything seems well, and then

the night time Whatifs strike again!

Fact

                  The weapons on the ships during the war in Iwo Jima launched bullets by mixing flames, oxygen, and Quaker Oats’ oat grains.

Quote

The best road to progress

Is the road to freedom

-John F. Kennedy

September 23-29

 

Brief. Easy. Helpful. Interesting… Capital

World News

This week’s World News will be about the recent mudslide in Mexico. Not long ago, there was a mudslide in Mexico caused by a hurricane called Manuel that hit Mexico. Because of this mudslide, at least 57 people are unaccounted for. The mayor of Atoyac, a town 50 miles from Acapulco, said that 15 bodies have been recovered and that at least 70 people are trapped under the mud from the 20 buildings that have been buried under the mud. In all the different resort cities tourists are stranded. Luckily, hundreds of people have been rescued from the mud. It is amazing how much harm something as weak as mud can do.

 

Biography

 This week’s biography is about a great inventor named Nickola Tesla. Nickola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in what is now Croatia and died on January 7, 1943 (aged 86) in New York City, New York, U.S.A. He made such great inventions including the Tesla Coil, the Radio, and Wireless Telegraphy. Tesla died alone and mysteriously in his hotel room in the New Yorker Hotel. Alice Monaghan, a hotel maid that ignored the “do not disturb” sign on the door handle, discovered his corpse. This room was room #3327 on the floor number 33. If you need any more information, try some research yourself.

 

Garmisch

 For this week’s Capital issue, I will write about something that happens once a year for 2 weeks in a row. This event is something known to the locals as the cow festival. The cow festival has absolutely nothing to do with people having a celebration with cows or for them, it is simply when men go to where they keep their cows for the summer on a mountain and then bring them down to the little wooden log houses in the field for the winter. Luckily, my family does not own any cows so we do not have to work all day to try to get them down the mountain. In fact, not very many people own cows as you would expect. Though it would probably be great to have some because you could get your own milk and butter without having to pay any money. During these two weeks a lot of people come to Garmisch and its neighboring town to see these cows coming down from the mountains.

 

Unfortunate

One very unfortunate thing that is happening right now is the fact that the weather and the air pressure have been changing very quickly which has been causing people to start having headaches and stuffy noses and other bad things. For example, I woke up with a stuffy nose that partially disabled me from breathing. Another example, my friend Thomas, who is used to being able to breath with his nose, suddenly got his nose clogged-up and completely disabled him from breathing from his nose. A few others woke up with headaches that must have felt horrible. I think you may not want to hear any more of these examples. If this has not been happening to you, then you probably should not come to any town near the one that I live in.

 

Fortunate

One very fortunate thing is that we are going to start fall very soon. Fall is one of my favorite seasons. It Is great because of the way that the leaves fall down from the trees that have even more of those stunning leaves that are barely hanging onto the branches. This way, everywhere you go and whatever you are doing, you will always see these stunning leaves on the ground or on the trees. Not only that, you can do everything that you did in the summer except with a nicer view. So, fall is just like a nicer-looking extension of summer. If you have a different opinion then just write it in the comments below and I will reply to you as soon as possible.

 

Travel

 Quite some time ago my family went to a place called Lake Bled. This place was a very nice area with a very nice lake. There are very many things that you can do in Lake Bled. The first one that I will tell you about is the walk around the lake. On this walk you can always view the lake through the trees of the small Bled forest. Another great thing to do if you come to Lake Bled in Slovenia is to take a boat to the only island on Lake Bled. Once you get to this island, you go up some steps until you get to the top where there is a restaurant and souvenir shop. With the next hour that you have until the next boat comes, I recommend going on a walk around the island and if you have some extra time, then eat at the restaurant. Another fun thing is to rent some sort of boat that you like to use. One route that I went on with a kayak starts on the east side of the lake, then you row towards the island. Then you go in a loop around the island and go back to the dock. One more fun thing that I recommend is to hike up to the Bled Castle and you will get a great view of Lake Bled.  The castle also has a nice museum.

 

I recommend this trip to anyone who wants to do it

 

Poem

The Leaf

By Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov

A little oak leaf tore off from its branch

Was driven o’er the steppe by a cruel gale;

Dried up and withered from the cold, the heat and sorrow

It finally alit by the Black Sea shore.

A young plane tree stands by the Black Sea shore;

A whispering wind strokes her green boughs;


On her green boughs sway heavenly birds

Singing the praises and fame of the queen of the sea.

The traveler lit at the soaring tree’s roots;

Anguished he pled for a moment’s shelter,

And these were his words:

“I am but a poor oak leaf,

Matured before my time in a grim homeland.



For ages I’ve wandered without a goal, all alone

Without shade I withered, without repose, faded.

Would you welcome this stranger among your emerald leaves,

know many stories of wonder and wisdom.”

“But why do I need you?” the young tree replies, –

“You are dusty and yellow – ill-suited to my wholesome young sons.

You’ve seen many things – but what use do I have for your tales?

The heavenly birds have long wearied my ears.



O traveler! Be on your way. You are a stranger to me!


Beloved by the sun,

I bloom and shine for him;

My boughs are spread in the heavenly fields,

The cool sea refreshes and washes my roots.”

Quote

“An eye for an eye only ends up

making the whole world blind.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

September 13-16

Brief. Easy. Helpful. Interesting… Capital

World News

This week’s World News will be about National Geographic’s predictions on global warming. According to their studies, National Geographic has predicted that in the year 2100 all of the ice on earth will be completely melted. This means that some cities will be completely sunken in oceans and seas. These cities include London, Venice, and parts of New York. But the most unbelievable part of planet earth that will be sunken under the sea is all of Florida, yes all of it. Warning to all citizens of Florida: your home will be under the sea in less than 100 years, so please go somewhere else (just not in the East and West Coasts). The same goes for all of you in Denmark. Global warming will force all of Denmark to drown in the North Sea. The San Francisco Hills will become a cluster of islands. Now you see how much danger global warming can cause.

Biography

This week’s Biography will be about Lemony Snicket, my very favorite author. He has written many books and writes perfectly well. Lemony Snicket as my favorite author and he inspired me to write Capital, so if he never started writing then I wouldn’t have started writing. He has written about 20 books and a few songs. He is currently 43 years old (born in 1970). Lemony Snicket was born in San Francisco, California and graduated from The University of Chicago. 13 of his most famous books are called “The Series of Unfortunate Events” which are, just like all of his other books, extremely mysterious and/or sad (in a good way).

Garmisch

 I have been in Garmisch for all of my life and I still haven’t seen one of the most important things, the Höllentalklamm. The Höllentalklamm is a very nice gorge in our area. You just have to do a hike up to one little place where you can eat a meal and then pay the entrance fee. Once you enter the gorge, you start walking on a very nice trail where you can hear the rushing water and little droplets of water fall on your head and everything is just amazing. At some points, you go into a cave with a few lights scattered inside. At other times, there would be a bridge that would go from one side to the other. At the end of the gorge you have a choice to go back the same way that you came or go a different way that leads to a bridge that is at least 100 meters above the water. I highly recommend this gorge to everyone.

Unfortunate

A very unfortunate thing that I noticed is the fact that all military children have to move from place to place all the time, which must be very hard. First they have to struggle to meet new people and then all that hard work goes down the drain because they have to move somewhere else and start all over again. This process gets repeated an innumerable amount of times and there is no way to stop it. Luckily, I am civilian so I may not have to repeat this yearly process too often but mostly everyone that I know is military and I do not think it is to fun for them. Please comment below with your opinion.

Fortunate

I am very sorry to again bring up the topic of global warming to the people in Florida and Denmark who may already be packing their bags, but I have to say that despite the danger that it puts the world into, global warming keeps planet earth from becoming a cold and chilly place. If you spent all of your summer doing fun things in warm weather, then you may have been experiencing one of the only good things about global warming. Since this may be the only good thing about global warming, then you may as well enjoy it before the ocean devours your town.

Travel

 Just after summer ended, my dad and I climbed up a mountain called the Kramer. The Kramer is a huge mountain that overlooks Garmisch and the neighboring town of Grainau. Half of the time going up was a lot hiking of hiking that makes you take lots of breaks to drink a lot of water. After quite some time hiking, the weather worsened quickly and it started raining very hard on us and the temperature dropped. This forced us to take shelter under a tree. We started off early because we were just too desperate to get to this one hut, where we could warm up and wait for the weather to clear up. Once we finally got to the hut, I had some hot chocolate while waiting for the weather to change. After a full hour of sitting in the hut, we finally started off with perfect weather. We started off going on a small hill and after that we started going up a long, winding, and rocky trail up to the ridge of the mountain. We followed the trail on the ridge until we got to an area where we had to climb without a rope. Once we were finished with this, we had to go on a very thin trail with very high-speed winds threatening to throw us off the ridge. After this, we started going up with a rope until we got to the summit. This moment was too good for a word like extraordinary or terrific to describe it. We took a nice break at the summit until we decided it was time to go down.

I recommend this trail for everyone.

Poem

Birches

By Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay

As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows—

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father’s trees

By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It’s when I’m weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig’s having lashed across it open.

I’d like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Quote

Always bear in mind that your

 own resolution to succeed

 is more important than any other.

-Abraham Lincoln

August 19-23

 

 

 

 

 

Brief. Easy. Helpful. Interesting… Capital

 

 

Summer Special

 

 

Kayaking

            Well, I am sure that this time you know the exact meaning of the title in this Summer Special, Kayaking. This was my very first time kayaking, and regularly the first time will not work out perfectly, but unlike the regular, I had one of the best days of my life and everything worked out perfectly. At fist it was hard to get used to the paddle because in Garmisch the only boating that I do is when I go rowing with my dad on a nearby lake. Another thing that was not simple to get used to was the way that the boat was so thin instead of the wide design of a rowboat and the way that you sit inside of the boat, on the bottom of the boat. On a rowboat there would be a wooden board that goes from one side of the boat to the other that you would use to sit on. This time I was on a river where the current will always push you forward, which made it somewhat harder even if we went downstream. My mom and my sister must have been having some trouble because they were just going side to side and colliding into all of the roots and trees that fell into the river. Thankfully, I was with my adult cousin who is an experienced kayaker. We had to dock a few times on a few different small sandy beaches on the riverbank where we would drink some water and eat some snacks. But then we had to get back into the water and start kayaking again, when we got to the very end of the trip, we started swimming in the river, which was hard when you were going upstream. Even though kayaking was much different than rowing, and some of us found it tricky to paddle, it still turned out to be one of the best and most fun days of my life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 12-16

Brief. Easy. Helpful. Interesting… Capital

  Summer Special            

 

Ojców

&

Baby Chickens

 

            The word that I am sure you are unfamiliar with is the top one, which is – just like the last two-a town. The second words I am sure you know if you are above the age of two. I will start off this issue of the summer special with the baby chickens. My sister really wanted to get ducklings at the market in Poland, where they had very many things including clothes, shoes, fruits, vegetables and birds. Obviously we were heading straight for the area where the birds where sold. The reason we did not come home with ducklings is because all the species of duck where completely grown up, so my sister refused to get them. Near that stand, there was a man selling baby chickens of many species. We walked over there and asked if we could have four, and the man said that it would be cheaper if we bought five, so we accepted his offer and we got five chickens, and since there were five different species, we got each chicken from a different species. When we got home we named the chickens Peter, Princeton, Russell, Carmelita and Theodore. Theodore was a strange species of chicken called a green foot, meaning that he will some day have a green foot.

            About a week after we got the baby chickens, we went to my cousin’s house in Ojców, which was quite a long car trip away from my grandma’s house (which we were staying in). After the very long car trip, we stayed in their amazing house until it was time to go to sleep. The next day in Ojców, my cousin’s families and mine went on a long walk around the Ojców National Park until we got back to the cars. Then we drove to another place were there is a large rock in the shape of a club called The Club of Hercules. After wandering around that area, we went back to the cars and drove back to my cousin’s house and went to bed.

August 5-9

 

Brief. Easy. Helpful. Interesting… Capital

 

 

Summer Special

Kudowa Zdròj

&

Adršpach

 

 

 

 

These words may not seem too familiar, but that is probably because they are in two different languages that you probably have never spoken before. Kudowa Zdròj and Adršpach are two locations, one in Poland, The other in the Czech Republic. I visited both of these places when I was on vacation. First, we got to Kudowa Zdròj (after a long car ride through fields and forests), where we went on a walk through the very nice town and then we went to bed. The second day, we visited the Skull Chapel a small church where the walls are made of thousands of human skulls of people who died of various plagues over 200 years ago. It was actually quite scary once you walk in. The tour guide taught all of the visitors about the history of the chapel and the many skulls. After you see all of the skulls in the chapel, the tour guide opens a trapdoor to the underground part with twice as many skulls. This amazed everyone in the chapel. The final day, we went to a town called Adršpach. One part of this Czech town is filled with colossal rocks in the most unique shapes. These rocks are called the Teplice rocks, or the Adršpach rock town. The rocks were in all different shapes, and each one was named after its amazing shape. Some looked like elephants, some like people (see the photo above as an example). There were so many more giant rocks, most I can barely remember. All the way through the rock town, there was a very nice stream that leads to a small waterfall. This place is so amazing and I recommend it to everyone reading this.

July 1-5

 

Brief. Easy. Helpful. Interesting… Capital

 

Capital will be on a break until early August because our staff is on holiday

 

World News

            This week, in western China, in a town called Chengdu, there is a building that just happens to be the biggest building in the world, The Global Center. When you think of the biggest building in the world, you are most likely to think of a skyscraper, but in this case, The Global Center is not so tall, but it is big. The Global Center is extraordinarily wide. The purpose for this immense building is a very helpful one. It has business offices, hotels, theaters, shopping malls, an old folks home, and a water park called Paradise Island, all in a space 500 meters long, 400 meters wide, and 100 meters tall. This massive building just opened recently in a new part of Chengdu called Tainfu District.

 

 

 

Biography

            You may have seen some of the poems in the Poem section of Capital that are written by Shel Silverstein. Shel Silverstein is one of my favorite poets. He has written over 145 poems including “Where The Sidewalk Ends” and “Pirate Captain Jim” and 11 books/anthologies including “The Missing Piece” and “A Light In The Attic” published in his lifetime. Shel Silverstein is also a songwriter having written around 800 songs in his lifetime including “A Boy Named Sue” and “100,000 pennies”. Shel Silverstein sang a handful of his own songs with his guitar. In his drawings, he draws some of the most wonderful pictures that I have ever seen. Shel Silverstein is a very creative person that makes some of the best poems that many people have ever read. I highly recommend his poems, books, and songs to all children.

 

 

Garmisch

            This week, no very special events happened in Garmisch, so I will write a story about what happened 2 seasons ago. In the wintertime, after the ski season, a family that must have come here for vacation had never seen snow. The father of the family was strongly eager to show his family snow, so he decided to go to the hardest ski slope of the area, with his car. This ski slope was called the Kandahar, with the hardest grade here: black. When he got to the steepest, most difficult part, the free-fall, his car got stuck in the middle of it. The car was absolutely, positively, unquestionably, unmistakably, confidently, indisputably, undoubtedly, categorically, conclusively, assuredly, empathetically in danger of sliding down the whole mountain. He had to call the police and mountain rescue men, it was a ginormous disaster. The car was a BMW, produced in Munich. The BMW company must be very happy that one of its own cars made it all the way to the free-fall of the Kandahar!

 

 

 

Unfortunate

            Last Friday, I went to the hospital in Munich with my sister (see more in the Travel section below). The very unfortunate thing about this was how big the hospital was. How many people were there? So many people were sick in this hospital. It was just the saddest thing that I have ever seen. I could not believe how many different people with how many different diseases were in this hospital. I could barely stand walking through the halls, seeing so many different rooms filled with all these people, having to suffer what they were suffering. On the floor above my sister’s floor, there were the men, women and children that had facial mutations who had to stay in their room for the longest time. On the floor below my sister, there were the people that were fighting hard against cancer. It was absolutely, positively, unquestionably, unmistakably, confidently, indisputably, undoubtedly, categorically, conclusively, assuredly, empathetically the most miserable sight that I had ever seen.

 

 

Fortunate

            Now to give you a break of all this unfortunate miserableness, I will write to you about my birthday on Friday! I have been so excited about this day since my last birthday. I hope to find a gift that I had wanted for a long time, a watch that has a barometer (a device that measures barometric pressure and can predict weather in the next 10 hours), a thermometer (which we all know measures temperature) and my favorite, an altimeter (a device that measures altitude. I have been looking for an altimeter application on my iPod and wasting 10 dollars on applications that don’t even work. I hope to find this watch and other gifts wrapped up in wrapping paper.

 

 

Travel

            This week, as I said in the Unfortunate section, I will write about my trip to Munich. My sister stayed in the hospital for almost a whole day. My dad and I went on a walk. Munich turns out to be a very nice town. My dad showed me the castle, which is actually the city hall. Towns in Bavaria tend to have historical city halls. We stopped at the Apple Inc. Store, which we spent a lot of time in. I was on the new MacBook Air for almost the whole time. I really wish that I had this genius little thing! We continued walking until we reached two big onion-topped towers, which where also seen from the highway and anywhere else in Munich. These two towers where absolutely, positively, unquestionably, unmistakably, confidently, indisputably, undoubtedly, categorically, conclusively, assuredly, empathetically the second biggest things that I had ever seen (after the mountains surrounding our valley). Then we bought lunch and brought it to my sister, who must have been very hungry. The rest of the time was just walking and sitting, then walking and sitting, and this repeated many more times before I needed to leave to the car.

 

 

Poem

Fell

By Jan O’Connor (ME)

I fell from a building

50 stories high

and when I reached the bottom

I met a man named Tye

Tye bandaged my leg and my arm and my head

And took me to my house

And laid me in bed

Tye left

And I sat for a while

I wanted to talk to somebody

Which number should I dial?

So I grabbed the phone

And dialed Tye’s number

But he told me to call back

When he finished eating his cucumber

So I went to bed

And held my teddy bear

Ned

And slowly fell asleep

Quote

As long as I’m in great shape,

nobody beats me,

for sure.

-Usain Bolt

June 24-28

Brief. Easy. Helpful. Interesting… Capital

World News

            This week on Capital world news I will talk about the Monsoon Rains in India. These Monsoons come from the southeast Indian Ocean and go northwest toward India. Mostly all of India is now being flooded because of these Monsoon rains. Citizens of India are trying to survive the rivers that have become their streets or the landslides happening near them. These people, including kids, have no other choice but to escape by going by boat, foot, or even zip-line. These men, women, and kids have to struggle to survive just get getting to the other side of the street. Many of the 1.27 billion people of India are endangered. We wish them luck trying to escape.

Biography

            This week on Biography, we are featuring Roald Amundsen, famous explorer of Antarctica. Roald Amundsen was 34 when he had reached the South Pole. However, Amundsen’s expedition was not quite an expedition, it was a race. Roald Amundsen was racing against Ernest Shackleton and Robert Scott. Shackleton’s Endurance (ship) was frozen in ice, so his team had to engineer a boat to get them to safety. Ernest’s team took a trail on the South Georgia Island that is now called the Shackleton Trail to a shack where they warmed themselves and radioed a ship for safety. This shack is now filled with Gentoo Penguins. Meanwhile, Robert Scott and his team had past away when they were trying to get to their destination, the South Pole. The Scott expedition failed because of the motorized sledges that broke down immediately and his team had to try to get to the South Pole on foot, which was a disaster waiting to happen. Roald and his team survived the whole race, there and back thanks to their use of dog sleds, which have been used by the Inuits in the far away arctic for centuries. Roald did an amazing job in his expedition. Sometimes, old technology is better than new technology.

Garmisch

            Just last weekend, Garmisch had three different marathons. Two friends of my parents ran the shortest marathon, the Basetrail, a trail that is 35.9 kilometers uphill in the mountains. Basetrail was the easiest, but still must have been very hard. It started in a neighboring town further to the east called Mittenwald, and then it went through Garmisch and into a town to the west called Grainau, where the marathon ended. Of course that was only one of the races. One was from Grainau and went in a circle around the other towns (100km). Another went from a town further east than Mittenwald, all the way to Grainau (68.8 km). The last and hardest one is an overnight trail that starts in Grainau and goes around the mountains of Austria and back to Grainau. I could not imagine myself on any of these trails that I wrote about.

Unfortunate

            A very unfortunate thing all around the Arctic and Antarctic is global warming, which is very dangerous. In the Spring of 2005, James Balog and a few other people went to the Arctic to look at how ice changed. Balog and his team set up cameras to look at different areas to see what happened to the glaciers. The cameras were on all the time and sent back coverage of how much the ice had receded over the last few hours. Balog and his team switched the cameras every 4 years. This project was called the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS). The survey shows video images of ancient glaciers disappearing completely. So many people and organizations are trying their hardest to stop this receding of ice. To see more about the Extreme Ice Survey, just watch the movie Chasing Ice on CD, DVD, Netflix, and iTunes.

Fortunate

            This week in fortunate, I will write about summer vacation. As I said a week or two ago, the worst part of vacation is boredom, when you are not doing anything at all. That can change if you know that you can do something. Just like me right now, I woke up extremely bored, and I knew that I could just write the newspaper, so I did. My sister Kasia did this too, she woke-up and luckily she had her brand new iPod that came in the mail just yesterday afternoon. When she got bored of the iPod, she had her very favorite television show to watch on the TV. The message that I am trying to deliver: just in case you get bored, you always need to find something to do before you get more bored.

Travel

            All of the travel that happened was probably just walking around the house doing chores, that is what I will write about this week in Capital. Most of the summer, you are just walking around in circles trying to find something that is actually worth doing, though you are supposed to be outside frolicking and playing in sprinklers. That is what I really don’t like about summer, you don’t do what your supposed to do. Not in the sense that you were to make your bed, and you don’t, but in the sense that it is completely impossible to do what you are supposed to. Like if you are told to go “clike” [climb/hike] a mountain when it is pouring rain outside. It is not the easiest thing to understand when it is read, but when experienced, it is completely sensible. Please excuse the fact that the Travel section of Capital this week is so inadequate this week, but unfortunately, no travel was done this or last week.

Poem

Peanut-Butter Sandwich

By Shel Silverstein

I’ll sing you a story of a silly young king

Who played with the world at the end of a string,

But he only loved one single thing —

And that was just a peanut-butter sandwich.

His scepter and his royal gowns,

His regal throne and golden crowns

Were brown and sticky from the mounds

And drippings from each peanut-butter sandwich.

His subjects all were silly fools

For he had passed a royal rule
That all that they could learn in school

Was how to make a peanut-butter sandwich.

He would not eat his sovereign steak,

He scorned his soup and kingly cake,

And told his courtly cook to bake

An extra-sticky peanut-butter sandwich.

And then one day he took a bite

And started chewing with delight,

But found his mouth was stuck quite tight

From that last bite of peanut-butter sandwich.

His brother pulled, his sister pried,

The wizard pushed, his mother cried,

“My boy’s committed suicide

From eating his last peanut-butter sandwich!”

The dentist came, and the royal doc.

The royal plumber banged and knocked,

But still those jaws stayed tightly locked.

Oh darn that sticky peanut-butter sandwich!

The carpenter, he tried with pliers,

The telephone man tried with wires,

The firemen, they tried with fire,

But couldn’t melt that peanut-butter sandwich.

With ropes and pulleys, drills and coil,

With steam and lubricating oil —

For twenty years of tears and toil —

They fought that awful peanut-butter sandwich.

Then all his royal subjects came.

They hooked his jaws with grapplin’ chains
And pulled both ways with might and main
Against that stubborn peanut-butter sandwich.
Each man and woman, girl and boy
Put down their ploughs and pots and toys
And pulled until

KERACK!

Oh, joy —

They broke right through that peanut-butter sandwich.

A puff of dust, a screech, a squeak —

The king’s jaw opened with a creak.

And then in voice so faint and weak –

The first words that they heard him speak

Were, “How about a peanut-butter sandwich?”

Quote

Happiness is not something ready made.

It comes from your own actions.

-Dalai Lama