THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS

The right to bear arms:

When the constitution was written, most Americans lived on the frontier surrounded by hostile British soldiers, French trappers and Indians. The right to bear arms meant the right to join a militia like the one at Lexington and Concord.

Times have changed. While we still have many Native Americans, they are no longer warlike. I haven’t seen a British redcoat except in movies, and Frenchmen no longer come to trap in our forests. If they did, they most likely would not bring guns with them.

Certainly the founding fathers here in America did not mean that citizens should carry concealed guns on the streets of big cities or into classrooms and churches.

The frontiersmen in 1787 when the Constitution was written didn’t have automatic rifles. They didn’t even have six shooters.

Do do not confuse the framers of the Constitution with Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday. The framers weren’t wearing gun belts. Sure Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington went to war and they probably went hunting too. They didn’t carry guns into their offices, or meeting rooms.

11 HABITS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL STUDENTS

Attend every class. if you miss any classes, you miss important material.

Do all assignments and give yourself time to do a good job. Start budgeting time for the assignment as soon as it is assigned. Don’t wait until it is due.

Study every day. After class type up your notes. Coordinate them with other class readings. Go over these notes every single day. When test time comes, you will have absorbed the earlier material. You just have new material to memorize.

Be an active reader. Annotate your textbooks. Underline important points and write in the margins. Have some shorthand symbols like “EX” for examples or an * for important material. Pay attention to clues like “Three reasons…” Make sure you get all those reasons. Use a journal to write about what you have read. Reread passages that you don’t at first understand.

Understand the difference between main point and support in textbook readings.

Get copies of textbooks before the class begins. Read and annotate them.

Do more than is expected. If the teacher tells you to do problems 2,4 and 6, also do 1,3 and 5.

Introduce yourself to the instructor and plan on meeting with the instructor as least three times during the semester. These professionals can give you tips on how to get a better grade in their classes.

If you need a tutor, get one.

Form a study group, so you and other students can work together. What one student does not get, another one will. Help each other. Learn some memory techniques like chaining, pegging and mnemonics.

Chaining is telling a silly story and including items you need to memorize. To memorize the names of the U.S. presidents.

You are WASHING a TON of Clothes. See yourself by the WASHING machine with TONs of clothes. The door bell rings. A naked man wearing only a fig leaf is standing there. He must be ADAM, the first man except that there are several other men wearing fig leafs. ADAMS. They want to use the JOHN.

You get the idea. Make the story ridiculous so you are more likely to remember it, and visualize as you go.

Pegging is plugging new material to be learned to a list you already memorized. That might be the days of the week, the months, the alphabet.

To learn the names of the presidents you might use yearly holidays. Picture George Washington as the New Year’s baby. John Adams is Cupid for February and Valentine’s Day. Thomas Jefferson is all in green and wearing Shamrocks.

Mnemonics are memory helpers. To memorize Pi or any long number construct a sentence where each word has the same number of letters and order as the number to memorize.

Pi to the tenth is 3.1415926535. (3) May (1) I (4) have (1) a (5) large (9) container (2) of (6)coffee,(5) cream (3) and (5) sugar. You get the idea.

To remember what happened to Henry VIII’s wives: Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived.

Invent some of your own mnemonics if none are available.

Repetition is important even if using memory helpers.

TEN THINGS THAT WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN

1. National Health Care like that in great Britain and other progressive countries. We are the only industrial nation that does not have comprehensive national health care.

2. Higher wages that provide a comfortable living for all workers and their dependents.

3. More vacation time and family leave.

4. Day care for working mothers.

5. Better roads and bridges.Let's invest in our infrastructure.

6. Strong labor unions to make sure we keep all of the above.

7. Political parties with truthful names like Liberal and Conservative. What is a Republican or Democrat? All of the Republican candidates are radical extremists. Hillary is a moderate Republican who should be running for president in that party.

8. Fewer billionaires and more middle class Americans.

9. A moratorium on wars including the one on drugs.

10. Police departments that protect instead of kill citizens.

WHEN WRITING ABOUT A THIRD PERSON, SHOULD ONE MENTION THE PERSON WITH "HE" OR "SHE?"

This really should not be too difficult, but it is.

I once applied for a job, talked on the phone to the department head, whose first name was Ira and who had a deep masculine sounding voice. I thought I was talking to a man. When I went to meet Ira the first time, I met a secretary in the elevator. I said I was looking for Ira ————’s office. “Do you know where his office is?”
 The secretary corrected me. “I’ll show you where Her office is.” I did get the job, but I was embarrassed when I talked to that secretary. If I had written Ira a letter or sent an email and used the wrong pronoun, I would have been even more embarrassed.

Those situations are hard to completely avoid.

Pronouns are tricky little things. We used to always use the masculine pronoun “he" for a singular generic, unidentified judge, doctor, factory worker or teenager. That was simple. Then along came the women’s libbers who said that is sexist. A judge, doctor, factory worker or teenager could be a she.

I always found the “he or she” construction awkward, though many textbooks suggest using it. Some people started using “they,” which is incorrect because it is plural. A singular judge, doctor, factory worker or teenager is one person and not a “they.” But this is a common mistake.

A good rule is to use ‘he” sometimes, and to use “she” other times. Switch back and forth. Be consistent, but fair. If I am writing a paragraph or an essay about how a judge might rule on cases, and I have not identified a specific judge, I might use “she.” I will use this pronoun exclusively for that one unidentified judge throughout the essay.

Tomorrow I will be writing about a doctor, and use “he.”

So long as the pronoun “she” is used as often or almost as often as “he,” no one will complain.

You can make it even easier, by making the nouns plural, judges, doctors, factory workers and teenagers. Then you can use “they.” It is also easy to be talking about one specific person: Judge Mary Jones or Dr.Sandra Smith.

HOW DO I WRITE A TOPIC SENTENCE?

How do I write a topic sentence?

Think of a main idea as an umbrella. It’s usually one sentence long. It covers everything else in your essay. The main idea itself should be a statement that has to be proved and it is also called a thesis statement. It should invite examples, definitions, and comparisons. Some ideas are broader than others; some are narrower than others.

Decide: How long does you essay have to be? Make sure your main idea is broad enough to fill out X number of words or pages in the assigned essay?

Example: All of our U.S. presidents, with a few exemptions, have had wonderful people skills. That is a main point, but it would take at least a very thick book to cover all our presidents and their people skills or lack there of.

Example: John F. Kennedy possessed a wonderful sense of humor. Better. But if my essay has to be ten pages long, I had better make sure, I have enough examples to fill that many pages.

Beware of main points that degenerate into lists:

Example: Several of our early presidents were deists.You may have to define deists, but after that a list will be all you need. Instead craft a topic sentence that explains why these presidents were deists and how it affected their decisions.

Several high school and college texts have lists of topic sentences. Some are there to provide essay ideas. Some English books have lists of sentences that are really topic sentence tests. Which of these possible topic sentences is indeed a usable topic sentence? Then you have to read the sentences and do as I did above. You have to determine why they would make poor topic sentences. I suggest you look for some of these lists, to help you identify good topic sentences and how to write them when you have an essay assignment.

WHY DO PEOPLE VOLUNTEER?

Here is a letter I wrote to “Psychology Today”magazine yesterday.

In the May/June issue, Kaja Perina writes on page 46, “Even community service, for some the standard metric of character development in the form of ‘giving back’, has been reconfigured as a resume enhancing path to achievement.”

How many community service jobs are resume builders? Can the author or the editors name any? I am a retired college English instructor. I volunteer two days a week at an animal rescue group. I clean litter pans and cat cages. Imagine that on a resume.

When I was in college, I was asked to dress up as a gingerbread cookie for Special Olympics. The girl who recruited me said it would look good on my resume. I started giggling. Did she think I would be applying for any jobs as a gingerbread cookie?

Most of us who clean the litter pans or dress up as cookies, do it to help the community. I am grateful for the opportunities I have had, but this is not giving back or resume building. You oversimplified a complex topic.

And you insulted people who give of their time for unselfish reasons.

David Brooks and Kaja Perina could learn something about character building by talking to people who volunteer to clean litter pans. I am often up at 5:30 a.m. and I stumble through snowbanks in Michigan winters to get to the animals I volunteer to help.

Excuse me. I have to add “Gingerbread Cookie” to my resume.

Excuse me. I have to add “Gingerbread Cookie” to my resume.

DISCOVER A NEW AUTHOR TODAY

Thousands of writers need your help.

These are first time authors who have crafted new novels. These authors need readers. First time book authors face a difficult time getting attention. They are ignored by the publishing industry that is itself flooded with new novels and nonfiction books. I have been told that some agents get a new email from an author looking for representation on average every ten minutes. That is a lot of book proposals to read and evaluate. Even with an army of interns to read some of the manuscripts, most new manuscripts are not read. They are lost in the shuffle.

As an author who just spent over two years on a novel that is finally ready for readers, I understand not wanting this precious baby of mine to get lost in the slush piles.

Reading new (as yet) unsold novels will cost you nothing but time. They are free; imagine the joy if a novel you read, reviewed and championed early in the process becomes a best seller, a classic or both some day.

Here are several ways you can help. Create an online book club. Join with two or three other readers to read and critique one novel a month.

Get school classes to select three new books every semester to read and review. Or you can just start reading. Where do you find these new authors and their novels?

Bookcountry.com

inkitt.com

These sites are free to join. While they were set up for new writers to post their work and share, readers are always welcome. Let’s support new authors in our community be they online or sitting across from us at the local coffee shop. Start reading today. Discover some exciting new talent.