Yeager: An autobiography of General Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos

Yeager is an autobiography of the famous Chuck Yeager, the man who broke the sound barrier (The speed at which sound travels; 660mph at 20,000ft altitude, 761mph at sea level). At the beginning he talks about how he was raised in a rural area with a farm house sitting at the edge of a forest. His father was an expert mechanic when it came to generators and motors because his job was a natural gas driller. Both Yeager and his brother Roy inherited their father’s wisdom in mechanics. At the age of seven Yeager, was helping his father in the gas fields. He was helping set up a series of single cylinder engines that pumped water uphill to a big engine.

From there he goes on to talk about his flight training and some of the humorous things he did. After that he goes on to talk about how he enter WWII, and began fighting over Germany, and got shot down over France, where he  joined a rebellious group in France, called the Maquis. While in this group he tried to travel to Spain, where he would be picked up and sent back home by the American Embassy. During his travel he had to move across the Pyrenees, this was a gruesome mount range. While traveling across the mountains he was accompanied by a partner named Pat who was also shot down. Sadly, while traveling they were noticed by some German patrol units while they tried to achieve rest and warmth within a small shack located perfectly on the mountain. The German units noticed them because they had hung there drenched socks on a tree to dry, after noticing them they began firing upon the shack. This startled Chuck, and Pat, and as they attempted to escape through the back Pat was shot by a dumb dumb; a large bullet with severe piercing capabilities, that ripped his whole shin from his thy except for one tendon which chuck cut off to set the wound that Pat had gained. After all the running Chuck and Pat finally make it back home. After these sections the book goes on to talk more about the crazy things Chuck, did like entering space and breaking the sound barrier and much more about his flight career

The book contains many characters but the main character is Chuck Yeager, since this is an autobiography

The setting varies tremendously as well; ranging from France, to Spain to Germany and many other countries and areas.

The theme is quite obvious; the life of Chuck Yeager.

I would definitely recommend this book to anybody who is interested in military topics.

Death Sits By My Side

Tony

Language Arts

25^th March, 2010

Nobody knows about the other side, only that a cloaked phantom holding a sharp blade takes you there. This is what many people have tried to capture in literature, but so very few have succeeded in doing so in such a vivid way that it feels like your right there. One person has so lucidly captured the shadowy figure and his scythe of desolation, that author is Emily Dickinson, which is who I believe is the Queen of Macabre,

Emily Dickinson was born 12^th December, 1830 in the small town of Amherst, Massachusetts. Her family consisted of five, one mother and father, one sister and one brother. Both her father and her brother at one point were attorneys. Due to her father’s increasing reputation in both the field of politics and the field of law in 1840, their family was required to relocate to a house on what is now called North Pleasant St. in Amherst.

As Emily grew older in this house she became attached to it. During her daily life she performed many domestic duties and activities ranging from baking and gardening to participating in church activities and attending school.

For a woman to be educated well such as Emily was a rare occurrence in the nineteenth century because of the views of woman during this era. But, this wasn’t rare for woman in Amherst. Emily’s schooling started out in an ordinary district school which she attended for a minuscule amount of time. After that she advanced to Amherst Academy.

There she spent seven years of glorious learning, spent on Geology, and Classical English as well as Modern English of that time. Amherst Academy ironically was founded by a group of town leaders including her grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson. In 1821, the Academy found itself morphing into a college. Most of Samuel Fowler Dickinson’s fortune was put into the college. Then she moved forward to Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now known as Mount Holyoke College), in 1847, where she spent one year, the longest she had ever been away from home, studying English grammar, Latin, History, Music, Algebra, Philosophy, Logic, Botany, Natural History and Astronomy. All of this was taught by the guidelines of religion and morality as was most schools of this time period.

Since Emily rarely left her homestead, she was not given the experience of working and thus never dealt with financial trouble. At her homestead she added a conservatory so she could practice her hobby of gardening year round. The plants she created were mostly climate sensitive. Emily also had her own bedroom in the southwest corner room of the second floor which is where many of her writings were composed. After Emily deceased people had looked throughout her writings only to find what is now called the “Master Letters”, which many people believed to suggest that there was a severely troubled romantic attachment. This is what many people believed to have pressed Emily to start writing. Above all writing Emily was well known for her hundreds upon hundreds of death ridden poems, which spoke about things we dared not thing about. Since Emily’s writings were not discovered until she deceased, she was unable to receive the awards I believe she so very deserved.

Through the extensive research I have done on Emily Dickinson, I have discovered one thing, everybody loves her work. No matter what site you visit, what article you read, you will always see comments on how well she wrote. I can also say myself, that I love her works. The reason I love her work is because she is so vivid in her descriptions of things. Through all this I must say, Emily Dickinson is truly the Queen of Macabre.

Works Cited

Works Cited

Museum, Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson Museum : The Homestead and The Evergreens. 2009. 25th March 2010 <http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/>.

28^th March, 2010

Racism, no matter where you go you’ll find it. But, where you don’t expect to find it is your very own government’s eyes. One example of this is the case Korematsu V. US.

In the case of Korematsu, many Japanese citizens were imprisoned for safety reasons concerning the war that had started with Japan, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The imprisonment started after the issue of Executive Order 9066, in which the president stated that all commanders under the secretary of war and the secretary of war himself had the authority to deem locations as military areas. These areas could then have laws in place excluding any person they please and enact curfews. After this issue the West Coast was then deemed as a military area and a law was enacted prohibiting anyone who was or had Japanese ancestry. Korematsu, was living in the West Coast at the time, and was frightened at this. He then, to avoid being removed from the area, attempted to have plastic surgery to remove the slants of his eyes so he would be thought to be Caucasian. But, his surgery had failed and then he was placed under arrest for illegally trespassing in a military area. This is when all of the court travels would begin.

During the time that the case Korematsu vs. United Sates, was brought in to the court system, we were in a war with Japan. This played a important role in this case because the whole case revolves around the power that the president and the government has to enact laws during a time of war. Which from what this case shows is pretty high.

Korematsu was not the only person with Japanese ancestry to take their case to court over the laws enacted by the secretary of war being what they believed to be unconstitutional. One other person to take their case to court made a precedent case for the ruling of Korematsu, Hirabayashi. In the ruling of Hirabayashi, the court upheld the conviction of him for disobeying a curfew which was enacted in a military area. The reason they upheld the conviction in Hirabayashi, was because they believed that the curfew was not meaningless and racial but rather helped in protection against espionage and sabotage. Also that the curfew was much less a deprivation than the exclusionary act which prevented Japanese Americans from entering the area.

Much like many cases, Korematsu wasn’t immediately sent to the Supreme Court to dispute this matter, but rather traveled through the various sets to make it there. The first court Korematsu had to visit was the Northern California District courts. In the District courts Korematsu, convicted of being in a place in which all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded. From the District courts Korematsu, moved to the appellate courts where he would find his conviction upheld once again. Now is where he would make one final trip, to the Supreme Court. After Korematsu lost in the Supreme Court he took his case back to the federal courts where he won his case. This was in 1984 after they discovered that Dewalt had submitted false information and that the lawyers knew about this and still defended it. This misinformation was how Korematsu, was able to take his case back to court under the term coram nobus, which concerns the misconduct during a trial.

Once in the Supreme Court in (1944), Korematsu, was given a date where the attorney general and Korematsu, would plead their case. But, the attorney general said that there wouldn’t be enough time for them to construct their argument. After they made their arguments the justices left to make their decision. In a 6-3 Decision Korematsu, lost his case. In the majority opinion, read by Justice Hugo Black, the justices stated that the deprivation caused by the evacuation order was justified completely. This is because of the information provided by Dewalt which was later found to be factitious, showed there was disloyal Japanese citizens among the area and due to this the evacuation order was necessary to protect from sabotage and espionage. As was the curfew order which was upheld in the precedent case Hirabayashi V. US. Also within the opinion statement was a small section which talks about strict scrutiny. Strict scrutiny is used to determine whether a racial based law is constitutional, this is done by determining if there is a great dangerous to the general population.

That may be the majority opinion but let’s see what the dissent had to say on the subject. In the thoughts of Justice Roberts, the case did not involve the exclusionary order or the curfew but rather the unlawful of a citizen for not submitting to the government and moving to a concentration camp. In Justice Murphy’s thoughts, “This exclusion of all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien, from the Pacific Coast area on a plea of military necessity in the absence of martial law ought not to be approved. Such exclusion goes over the very brink of constitutional power, and falls into the ugly abyss of racism.” Finally in the thoughts of Justice Jackson, Korematsu was born on American soil and so he is given American citizenship under the constitution and so he has all the rights as the Americans would. Not only that but compared to a German alien, an Italian alien or a American citizen who was put on parole for treason is that Korematsu would be the only one to have been detained for his presences. Also no question was brought up as to whether or not Korematsu was loyal to the US.

All my thoughts as to this case are very scrambled. But, I still must concur with the majority ruling. This is because I agree that only if there is a great danger to the welfare of the public should there be a racially targeted deprivation. That being said I believe also that in the future the courts need to look closer as to the validity of information provided by the military as to ensure that things like this don’t occur again.

1. Emily Dickinson is the queen of Macabre.
2. Birth/Death
3. Childhood
4. Family
5. School
6. Education/Training
7. Jobs – Experiences
8. Why writing?
9. Books/Essays/Poems
10. Awards
11. Legacy – what can you tell us about him/her based on your research?
12. Conclusion Restate the thesis statement.

Tony Aiello

11-10-09

Book Review

The Quantum Ten

In the beginning the book starts off with facts and ideas that were formulated by the people mentioned in the book. These ideas are string theory and quark theory; these are the thoughts on how quantum physics work. Quark theory is the thought that our world is made up of infinitely small black holes; whereas string theory is thought that our world is made of multiple universes, each consisting of a choice that was made. Ex. In the morning you had a choice of drink, coffee or orange juice in one universe you chose coffee in another you chose orange juice. As the book goes it starts to talk about how these physicists met and conversed about this newly found physics in which they are studying. They usually met at the Soviet Conference in Germany, there were many famous scientist such as Marie Curie!

The setting of book mostly takes place in Bismarck, Germany, in the 1900s, but also takes place in the following areas Italy, the U.S.A, and France. The book mostly takes place in Bismarck, because they are currently the leading country in science.

Some of the people in the book are Louis De Brauglie, Wolf Gang Pauli, and Albert Einstein.

The theme of the book is curiosity because you always are wondering about how quantum physics works.

I would recommend this book to those who can spend many a hour to read thinking about the book and are extremely smart in the subject science. I say this because the longer you think about it the more you understand it.