To start off...

So, this Wiki thing, I don't like it. Sharing what I can do just isn't my thing. But, if I MUST share with all of you people I guess I will. 

Counting Coup

     This quarter, 2nd quarter, I am reading Counting Coup. This book is about an Indian girl living in Montana. Sharon is a high school-er living in a time where people are still very racist against Indians, but just in subtle ways. Sharon is an extraordinary basketball player, but living without parental guidance has corrupted her and made her unable to find the motivation to keep up her amazing game. As many of us know, being 16 and 17 years old is hard enough, but for Sharon, its just that much harder. Living on the Crow Rez in Little Big Horn has more cons than it has pros.

     Counting Coup is set in the 1980's and is told by Larry Colton. Colton sets out on an amazing adventure to see life in the eyes of an Indian girl just trying to get by. Colton lives on, or rather near, the Rez for a few months watching the local high school's basketball team. As the story progresses, you see the team grow closer together as they try to become one and win the state championship for the first time in however many years.

     I'm loving this book so far. Not that I have ever played basketball for our school, but I do know how Sharon feels in many ways. We both have gone through a stage in our lives where we don't know which way is up, and have also struggled with drugs. Being able to connect with a character in a book is one of the best parts of reading, and this book makes my life easier to know that someone else has gone through it, too.

     To answer the question of weather or not I go through the same racism as Sharon does in Counting Coup..

Okay, so what happens to Sharon is that when she tries out for the basketball team, everyone expects two things.

     1)She will make it, and the "white people" will be angry because she only made the team because she's Indian.

     2)She won't make the team, and the Indians will be angry because she only got cut because she's Indian.

Stuff like that never happens to me, since I don't try out for sports because I don't really think I'm good enough.

     In school, Sharon is treated differently by all of her teachers, some are careful about what they say, and others don't really care and are extremely racist towards Sharon. Here, in Bonners, I don't really think that there are racist teachers, and if they are, they sure do a good job of hiding it when I'm around.(I actaully learned that I am wrong about that about a week ago. There is a racist teacher here at BFHS, but I won't name any names.) But, on the contrary, I have had teachers that try really hard not to offend me, which really just bothers me more. Usually, racist comments don't affect me at all. Sometimes people slip, I get that. Sometimes people are just ignorant, and you know what? That's their problem, because one day they are going to go out into the world and learn that what they've been saying, or how they've treated people of different races has been wrong, and that they were idiots.

     So, to end my rant..yeah. I really don't know if I even answered the question. You tell me. Does it?

What is "counting coup" you may ask. Well, I'll tell you what it is, and I'll give you the defintion straight from the book.

     Long ago it was possible from young warriors of the Plains Indian tribes to gain honor and respect  by counting coup. There were four primary ways to accomplish a coup: touch an enemy in battle, steal an enemy's horse, lead a successful war party, or capture an enemy's weapon. Of these, the bravest was to touch an enemy-not to kill him- but to touch him on his chest. The more coups a warrior scored, the more glory and dignity he acheived. Often it was the on with the most coups who was chosen as cheif.

Quotes!

Tar paper shacks, abandoned junk heaps in front yards, ruttedand littered streets-all the outward signs of people living on the margin. Down the block from where I park, a pack of mangy dogs mosey across the street, pacing themselved in the heat of this August day in Crow Agency, Montana.

This is the fisrt paragraph of Counting Coup. Larry Colton, the author, really sets the scene for the reader as he explains what it is like on the Crow reservation.

Tricks

bam.

      "Five teenagers from different parts of the country. Three girls. Two boys. Four straight. One gay. Some rich. Some poor. Some from great families. Some with no one at all. All living their lives as best they can, but all searching...for freedom, safety, community, family, love. What they don't expect, though, is that they can have all of these things when those powerful little words "I love you" are said for all the wrong reasons. Five moving stories remain seperate at first, then interweave to tell a larger, powerful story- a story about making choices, taking leaps of faith, falling down, and growing up."

Eden- An innocent daughter of a preacher thinks that she will never find true love. Her parents want her to find a nice boy that goes to the same church, that thinks the same way that her family does. Of course, though, that would never happen. When Eden does finally meet the boy (or, more like man) that she can see herself with in the future, her parents rip her away from him and push her into a home for troubled teens. A home where she must compromise her beliefs more than she has ever done before.

Seth- As it say above, there are four straight teens and one gay teen in this book. Seth is the odd one out. His mother died recently and Seth has no idea how to deal with the pain. His father has never really understood him, and they grow farther away as the days go by. His mother would have accepted him for whoever he was, when she was still alive, but Seth could never tell his father. The day that Seth decides that he can no longer hide the fact that he is gay, his whole life falls apart and he finds himself with no one but himself.

Whitney- Now, I don't mean to be blunt...Actually, I do mean to be blunt. Whitney is a slut. Everything that happens to her in this book was asked for by her. She was too easy and got herself messed up and put in a place that she regreted soon after. Sure, who could balme her; her mother ignored her and favorited her older sister, her father was always "away on business," and she had no one to guide her but her instincts. But, really? Why was she so stupid. She meets a strange, older man in the mall and falls in love with him, and he loves her back, or so she thinks. When she finds herself in Vegas shooting up cocaine and turning tricks, she realizes that this isn't love.

Ginger- Ginger, I think, is the worst off in this book. Having a postitute for a mother is bad enough, but when that mother sends "clients" to her house to rape her daughter, it becomes 100 times worse. I could go on and on about Ginger, but that might ruin the book for someone who is reading this and is thinking about opening the pages of Tricks. I've been good about not giving away any important details thus far, so I'll just stop there with Ginger.

Cody- The All-American kid, always keeps his drinking and fooling around under the radar so he never gets caught, but when his step-father gets seriously ill and his younger brother starts getting into major trouble, it falls to Cody to find a way to make ends meet and hold what’s left of his family together.  In trying to be a good guy, he develops a dangerous habit

Ellen Hopkins in probably one of my top 10 favoite writers, and she did not let me down with this amzing novel. I want to say sooo much about this book, but I'm afraid that I will tell a little too much and give it away...  There are 6 kids, all from different parts of the country, whose stories are all different. When the book first starts out, it seems that the stories will never fit together, but soon commonalites start to arise. Now, I won't say what happens or who with, but I will say that this poem-style book is worth the couple hours it takes to read.

IF YOU HAVE THE TIME, READ THIS BOOK!

Ethan Frome Project

Ben Heart is so smart that he actually made a website for our project. Here is the URL. Have fun perusing it ^_^ http://ethanfromeproject.webs.com/

( ^ Ben totally wrote that ^ )

Research Paper.

     When most people hear the word eugenics, they think of World War Two; they think of Hitler and his Nazi henchmen who tried to kill an intire race. It is thought that Aldolf Hitler was the first man to use this tactic called eugenics, although this thought is wrong. Hitler did not use eugenics first, he did not coin the term eugenics and he defineatly was not the last man to try to use eugenics. The United States of America was the first nation to use eugenics against people who were feeble-minded and it is thought to be that the U.S was the one who gave Hitler the knowledgeof eugenics. The uses for eugenics have changed since the early 1900s, and today eugenics does not mean the choosing of who has children; in his day and age, eugenics is used to change the outcome of childbirths, to try and make sure that infants who are born are born healthy and have a chance to live a happy and normal life.