Art is a form of lying in order to tell the truth

To the subjective eye;

Art speaks truth and could never lie.

‘T is the lying

In this, as all, comes through.

Embrace the art, and you are sane;

Live without,-you’re mind is in danger

To be taken over with lies

The pen can be a person’s most dangerous weapon.  The bleeding tip and hard rounded body threaten friendships like a fire threatens forests.  The horror that it brings to people is like none other.  Mass destruction of business and the murder of presidencies are all crimes committed by the pen.  And despite the efforts of the writer to stop the pen from causing this trouble, he had to voice his thoughts.  For the bleeding tip will never dry, and the black virgin paper will never end, unless something is done to destroy the pen.

Sitting on the couch with her golden blonde hair flowing down silky smooth skin as she attempts to write. A slight scratching of her pencil can be heard as she ours her thoughts onto the plaid demon of a notebook.  Writer’s block seems to have set in as the motion of her pencil stops.  I know that my ideas would be useless so I keep my mouth sealed.  As I look down and see the blank page resting in my lap seemingly mocking me, daring me to write something down, begging me to empty my thoughts onto its body for the world to see.  I begin to write, my pen gliding across the paper like a figure skater over ice, she looks over in awe to see the pages I have written.  Mouth gaping, just as the mouth of a cave she begins to speak.

Coffee

The deep rich aroma fills my nose as I begin to tilt the cream colored mug towards my anxious lips.  The soothing milk chocolate brown liquid slips into my mouth.  At first there is a burning sensation on my tongue as my tastebuds get scalded from the scorching drink, but as the fluid moves to the back of my mouth the sweet cream and bitter coffee excite my senses and sends a message of comfort to my brain.  As my adam’s apple jumps in preparation to swallow I feel an overall warmth come over my body as the drink slides down my throat and my mug begins to tilt once again towards my lips.

We were given a piece of pomegranete on this morning and were told to describe it. I did not want to eat the fruit so I decided to describe how the coffee I had that morning was.

To the Puritans, the “candle that would light the world” is God.  Puritans are very strong christians and their life revolved mainly around God.  And they felt it their responsibility to spread the word of God, and the crusification of Jesus to the rest of the world.  I think that modern America’s “candle” is different than the puritans.  Now a days, the candle is money, and war support.  Not God.  America would rather send money or troops to a country than spread the word of God.  That is one reason that church attendance is so low percentage wise.  Around the ’50s and ’60s is when the change happened.  Until then, people still held Puritan beliefs in high regard.  But around the mid ’50s and ’60s that view changed and a democratic youth broke free from the religious tyrany and now war is our candle not God.

There was a journal assignment on this day asking about what the candle was that was referred to in “The Crucible.”  The obvious answer for the Puritans was that the candle was God.  However it took much consideration on my part to figure out what the candle for the rest of the world was.

Westley Decker

Honors America Literature

Ms. J. Robinson

December 18, 2008

“The Road Not Taken”: Right or Wrong?

            Robert Frost was a great 20^th century poet who is world renowned for his poem “The Road Not Taken.”  There is a commonly held belief that Frost is trying to say that the road less traveled has changed his life for the better.  However, there is another interpretation: there is significant evidence that Frost thinks that either choice would have been just as beneficial.  Frost also laced his poem with thick, concrete imagery to create a solid image in the reader’s mind.  In “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost uses imagery and metaphor to give the poem a meaning that is open for interpretation.

            Frost uses a great deal of imagery in his poem.  From the first line where he describes where the roads meet as “a yellow wood” Frost creates a solid image in the reader’s head.  Concrete details are how Frost makes this image.  With words like “grassy,” trodden black,” and “in the undergrowth” the image of the two roads and the surrounding wood is created.  Even though there is some room for interpretation, the image in everybody’s head will remain essentially the same.  These concrete details keep the reader in check and ensure that there is little to no variation from Frost’s image.

            Frost uses many metaphors in his poem that all focus around the same central topic: was his choice a good one or not?  The main metaphor lays in the last two lines of stanzas two and four.  Frost says, “Though as for that the passing there Had worn them

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really about the same.” “I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”  These two statements are paradoxical in that at first he feels that the roads are equally worn, and that neither one offers any benefits that the other does not have.  Then at the end of the poem, he says that the one less traveled by has made the difference in his life.  This paradox creates a very open interpretation of the meaning of the poem. 

            Through his use of metaphors, there is a very open meaning in Frost’s poem.  The commonly held belief is that he took the less traveled road in life and that has bettered his life.  This is enforced by his saying that the second road was “grassy and wanted wear” and that taking the one less traveled by “has made all the difference.”  This is little support for the general public to say that the meaning of the poem is that the second road made Frost’s life better; however, they were both very effective in getting one interpretation of the poem across.  However, my interpretation is that both roads would have been equally beneficial to Frost.  There is much more support for this stand on the poem than the first stand.  Line 10 where Frost says that the paths were worn about the same is one of the strongest arguments for my view on the poem.  By saying this, Frost begins to build support for the fact that no matter which road you take in life, your life can end up just as productive.  In lines 11 and 16 there are also words that support my idea.  In line 11, Frost says that the roads “equally lay.”  This seems to show that he feels that, as he looks down both paths, neither one stands out more than the other one.  Finally, on line 16, Frost says that he talks about which road he took with a “sigh.”  This has a very negative connotation in which Frost seems to regret his decision.  Because of

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these examples, the interpretation of Frost’s poem is that neither road was any more beneficial than the other.    

In “The Road Not Taken” Frost creates a meaning that is open for interpretation through metaphor and imagery.  To create the open meaning, Frost uses a paradox, a form of metaphor, to give the reader room for interpretation.  He also uses imagery to narrow the focus of the poem to ensure that there can only be two interpretations of it.  Because of this, “The Road Not Taken” is one of the greatest poems of the 20^th century.

Westley Decker                                                                                                       Decker 1

Mrs. Robinson

English III

17 November, 2008

Lung Cancer: Little Known Causes of a Feared Disease

The name lung cancer sparks fear in everyone.  The sheer magnitude of the disease and the horrors that it creates are enough to make the hardest of criminals cringe.  The fact that nearly eighty percent of lung cancer cases diagnosed in America lead to deaths (National), and the fact that even the most gifted of scientists cannot find a cure to the rapidly spreading disease sends chills down doctor’s spines.  Smoking is the major cause of lung cancer, followed closely by genetic predisposition (Ravin).  There is little that one can do about either of these though, besides quitting smoking, or not smoking at all.  Therefore, this paper is not about how to quit smoking, or how genetics can be altered while a child is still in the womb in order to ensure that cancer never takes its life. This paper is about lung cancer, and how, even though its main cause is cigarette smoking, other deadly causes are: radon and uranium exposure, and exposure to asbestos.

            Lung cancer is the most prevalent cancer, with over 200,000 new cases each year in America (National).  Lung cancer, however, is a very general term for the four different types of cancer that originate in the lungs.  The first type is small cell lung cancer.  Small cell cancer is named so for the relatively small size of the actual cancer cells (Cancer Research).  The cancer spreads rapidly and is found in one of three stages: limited disease, extensive disease, and the recurrent stage (National).  Small cell lung cancer is rarely found in the limited stage where is has only invaded one lung and possibly nearby lymph nodes.  It is rare to be able to effectively

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treat small cell cancer because it is not often found in the limited stage (Cancer Research).  Because the symptoms of lung cancer are so common and there is no periodic test that is covered by insurance, the disease is often found in the more serious, extensive stage.  The extensive stage is where the cancer has spread throughout the body to other organs such as the liver or other chest tissues (National).  Because of the size of the tumors, and the fact that they are all over the body in the extensive stage, there is little hope of survival.  With a life expectancy of less than a year after diagnosis, the outlook is grim for most patients with small cell lung cancer.  Without the recommended chemotherapy, a patient ma live less than two weeks with a case of lung cancer in the extensive stage (Cancer Research).  Chemotherapy is the treatment for both the extensive and limited stages of lung cancer.  The final stage is the recurrent stage, where the cancer has left the body and returned some time later.  At this stage there is no hope for the patient, and only clinical drugs are used to help the problem.  Chemotherapy is used sparingly in order to lessen the discomfort (National).  Usually cancer does not return five years after it has gone away the first time, but lung cancer is a unique case.  Lung cancer can resurface at any time, no matter how long it has been since the original cancer subsided (Cancer Research).  Small cell lung cancer’s main cause is cigarette smoking.  The only way to truly lower your risk is to not smoke.  While small cell lung cancer is very scary and can be the more deadly of the two types once diagnosed, it only accounts for about twenty percent of the total lung cancer cases, non small cell lung cancer is the more prevalent of the two types, and a person’s risk can be greatly reduced if a few select things are done (Cancer Research).

            Non-small cell lung cancer is just the opposite of small cell lung cancer in that the cells are large in comparison and spread slowly.  There are three types of non-small cell lung

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cancer, or NSCLC.  The first type is epidermoid carcinoma, which is found in the middle sections of the lung.  This type of cancer is related to skin cancer in that the squamous cells that if affects line both the skin and the inner respiratory tract.  This cancer along with small cell lung cancer is the main result of smoking.  There is very little to be done to prevent epidermoid carcinoma other than to not smoke (National).  The second type of NSCLC is adenocarcinoma.  This is a cancer that begins in the alveoli and creates mucus in the lungs; it causes massive coughing fits and chest congestion.  There are common misdiagnoses with this type of cancer because of the commonality of its symptoms (National).  The scariest of the three types of NSCLC and the hardest to find is undifferentiated large cell lung cancer.  This type of lung cancer is very similar to small cell cancer in that it can start in any part of the lung and will spread rapidly.  Small cell and non-small cell lung cancer are responsible for 200,000 cases a year (National).  However, there are ways to not only lower the risk of getting cancer, but ways that if combined with not smoking can nearly prevent the chance of getting lung cancer all together.

The first way that lung cancer can be avoided is to stay away from radon gas and uranium exposure.  Radon gas is a gas that is often found in homes and when exposed to it for long periods of time, it can lead to lung cancer.  The gas, which is found in rocks and soil, can find its way through the smallest cracks in a house’s foundation and contrary to popular belief is not present only in homes with basements.  Radon gas is the number two cause of lung cancer behind only cigarette smoke.  And example of a tumor caused by radon gas is shown in figure 1. 

Figure 1 http://www.mycanceronline.com/steps-to-preventing-lung-cancer.html

It causes as many deaths in America from lung cancer as all the other causes, except cigarette smoke, combined (Medicine Net).  Radon gas is often found in uranium mines, which in conjunction with uranium dust causes thousands of cases of lung cancer a year (Depleted).  In a study done recently on German uranium mining from 1946 to 1954, it was shown that because of poor mining techniques, an increase in uranium dust and the presence of excessive radon levels, there was a vast increase in the number of lung cancer cases among the miners.  The number of miners that developed lung cancer was thirty-four percent, over twice the number of non lung cancers among the same people (Mould).  Uranium dust is often referred to as depleted uranium, or DU. DU has been shown to be proportionately more deadly than cigarette smoke (Schwarz).  Luckily though, DU can only affect the body through inhalation or ingestion (Depleted).  The average person has no direct access to uranium so there are really no worries about it unless a person works in an area where exposure is common.  Uranium and radon gas are not the only

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deadly causes of lung cancer.  Asbestos, a well-known silicate fiber can cause cancer as well.          Asbestos is a fine silicate fiber found commonly in building materials.  It is used in insulation and fire retardants and can lead to many types of lung diseases.  When inhaled, asbestos fibers get into the lungs and stay for long periods of time.  IF the fibers stay long enough, diseases such as pneumonia or lung cancer can arise.  The only ways to be exposed to asbestos is work in construction, or other interactions with an area under construction.  Asbestos cannot be obtained through regular use of a building (U.S.).  Exposure to asbestos is the second most virulent cause of lung cancer behind only smoking.  Asbestos causes a person’s risk of cancer to go up seven times, combined with cigarette smoke, a person is ninety percent more likely to develop lung cancer than a normal person.  There are some easy ways to avoid exposure to asbestos.  A child should never attend a school with remodeling or building projects going on.  This greatly increases the likelihood of being exposed to asbestos.  With a child’s weak lungs this could result in not just cancer, but very serious pulmonary diseases as well.  Older building materials that contain asbestos are encountered in many remodeling jobs.  Luckily, in the 1970’s, the EPA passed a law greatly restricting the amount of asbestos used in building materials (National).  This has reduced the number of cancer cases caused by asbestos.  It seems that some causes of cancer are easily avoidable for the most part, yet there are still over 200,000 cases in America each year (National).  What happens after a person has gotten lung cancer?  Do they just become another statistic, or is there something more involved?

            The consequences of lung cancer are extreme.  With over $72 billion being spent on treatment and trying to find cures of lung cancer in the United States (Cancer Trends), and $9.6 of that being paid by cancer patients, lung cancer is one of the most expensive cancers in the

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states (CDC).  Money is the main issue for most lung cancer patients, especially ones who must travel long distances to a cancer facility.  In my experience with lung cancer, however, the biggest issue was the emotional stress that it put on the family.  When my Grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer, the family was torn apart: brothers fighting each other and father and son battling for interminable weeks.  After treatment for lung cancer begins, patients become bedridden.  This puts a great time stress on the relatives because somebody must both feed and take care of the patient, or the patient must be put into a nursing home.  When a patient can move around, however, he or she must do all that is possible to stay active and to eat right (Rita).  From all of the stress that lung cancer imparts on the patient and family alike, the lifespan could be shortened even more if the situation in handled incorrectly.  If the stress is handled properly, the cancer could go away quickly and the patient could make a quick recovery.

            Avoiding the causes mentioned in this paper could decrease the likelihood of you getting cancer to a great degree.  This is if you do not smoke.  Cigarette smoke is by far the biggest cause of lung cancer and is also the easiest to avoid.  By stamping out smoking, the number of lung cancer cases, as well as related heart disease and emphysema cases, would drop a great deal, and with this the world would be better off (Ravin).  By avoiding the causes mentioned in this paper, however, a person greatly reduces his or her risk of obtaining lung cancer and will better his or her life as well.

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Westley Decker

Mrs. Jessica Robinson

English Three

September 18, 2008                

Invisible Crimes: The Trials of Salem and the Duke Lacrosse Team

Did you know that the Puritan religion is one that broke off from the Catholic religion in the seventeenth century in order to purify their church?  The faith was strong for years, but as I learned from The Crucible, by Authur Miller, was weakening and in 1692 there was a scare of witches in the town of Salem.  The scare resulted in over 150 accusations of men, women, and children; with 19 people being hanged. In a seemingly unrelated case, three Duke Lacrosse players were accused of raping a black woman in 2006.   While nobody was hanged in the Lacrosse Trials, it was a similar situation to the Witch Trials.  The Duke Lacrosse Trials and the Salem Witch Trials are very different in most people’s eyes, but the similarities such as the crimes being invisible crimes, victims that could be persecuted, and a loss of “life” for the accused persons, are the truly interesting facts.

            In both the Witch Trials and in the Lacrosse Trials, the crimes committed are invisible.  An invisible crime is one that has no witnesses besides the victim and the accused.  In these types of crimes, there is often little hope of acquittal for the accused besides science or other modern day processes.  In the script of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible Danforth says,

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witchcraft is ipso facto, on its face and by its nature, an invisible crime, is it not?  Therefore, who may possibly be witness to it?  The witch and the

victim.  None other… and they (victims) do testify… Therefore what is left for a lawyer to bring out? (45) 

This quote just goes to show how difficult it was for the accused to prove innocence, and why in the Witch Trials most of the accused were not hanged, but forced to confess and escape death.  In the Lacrosse Trials, a 27 year old black escort accused three lacrosse players of raping her at a party.  The reported crime occurred in a room with no witnesses besides the accused.  The invisibility of the crime made it very difficult for the players to prove innocence.  For example, there was nobody at the party who could say that the players were not raping the girl, because everybody had been drinking and nobody could be trusted.  Also, with the girl being an escort, it is easy for her to show signs of rape because she is paid to have sexual intercourse with people.  Even The New York Times journalist David Brooks called the Lacrosse case a “witch hunt” which just reinforces that even the press viewed the two cases as similar.  Even though both crimes are invisible, there are more ways that the cases are similar.

            In both the Lacrosse trials and the Witch trials, the victims of a crime could be easily persecuted.  In the Lacrosse trials a black prostitute was the victim.  If that cannot speak for it then I do not know what will.  Blacks have always been treated differently in the south, even forty plus years after the civil rights movement.  The victim was also a single mother of two.  The court system will always feel sympathetic to a single mother working to support her two children and go to school.  Between blacks being mistreated

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in years past and the court feeling sorry for that, and that she is a single mother, the court will be leaning heavily towards the plaintiff.  Since the victim was black, the press covered the case extremely carefully looking for any slip ups on the player’s part or on her part.  Eventually they found it in a report that the woman had accused three other men of the same crime ten years ago.  This was the break that was needed to prove the “rapists” innocent.  The Witch Trials had a similar happening.  Abigail was an unmarried servant girl who had sexual relations with a man twice her age.  In 1600s this was viewed as a major sin in New England and elsewhere in the Puritan religion.  This would result in most of the town looking at her in a very condescending way.  However because of the claims that she was making, of Proctor’s wife sending her spirit on Abigail, the court felt sympathetic toward her.  This allowed Abigail to get the court wrapped around her finger to the point that she could convince Danforth that anything she was saying was true.  This allowed Abigail to accuse everybody from Elizabeth to Mary Warren without question from anybody besides Reverend Hale.  All of these claims affected the accused very much, and all of the victims lost their life in some way.

            The accused in both cases lost parts of their life; in the Salem trials people were either hanged or they confessed and were marked for the rest of their life.  Of the 150 or more accused and 19 hanged in the witch trials none escaped with their life the way it was before the accusation.  If a person was to confess to witchcraft and escape the hanging then they would have to name names and accuse other people.  This ruined friendships, tore families apart, and destroyed reputations.  A man, such as John Proctor, who had a good name, was unlikely to confess unless he felt that there was something

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that he could gain from the trial.  After confessing to witchcraft a man could lose his land, his house, his servants, and potentially his ability to live in the town.  All of that was on top of being in jail for at least a couple months.  Women who confessed were looked down upon in society and could not hold any respect from the town or their family.  In the Lacrosse Trials, the three men accused of rape lost their standing in society just as those who confessed to witchcraft.  Their scholarships were taken away; it was now on record that they had been drinking under age and had used the services of a stripper, and that they have been accused of rape.  It is unlikely that the athletes will be able to use the Duke degrees that they will likely obtain, and their reputation will be forever stained.  All of this because a black woman was trying to get some money and sympathy from the American public because her ancestors were mistreated. 

            Among all of these similarities such as the crimes being invisible, the victims being easily persecuted, and the loss of life for the accused, it should become obvious to you that both trials really are “witch hunts” and had no real need.  The witch trials were sparked by a young girl trying to win the heart of her lover, and the Lacrosse trials were started by a woman who wanted to be felt sorry for by society.  It was later found that in both cases, the accused were innocent.  There were no witches, just bad wheat, and the lacrosse players never raped the black woman.  There are many more trials where the accusers were simply trying to gain something in their accusations, and these types of trials need to be stopped.  But until there is another example in which the victims are sent to jail for false accusation, these cases will continue to happen.

Works Cited

Miller, Arthur.  The Crucible.  Austin, Texas: Holt Rinehart and Wilson, 2005

Duke’s Trial by the Media.  8 Oct. 2006.  U.S. News & World Report.  19 Sept. 2008.                                            

               <http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060806/14duke_2.htm>.

            There are some major differences between Patrick Henry’s speech given to the Virginia Convention and George Bush’s speech given to the American people after September eleventh.  The time period is different by over three hundred years, and the audience is extremely different.  In Henry’s speech, the delegates of the states were the audience, while in Bush’s speech the audience is the American public along with the major players in Congress.  The similarities are the interesting facts: Henry and Bush both gave their speeches during times of crisis in America, both speeches were meant to persuade the nation to go to war, and finally, both speeches had very powerful quotes.

The teacher said,

Go home and finish

This page tonight.

And let that page soak into you—

Then it will all become clear.

I now question it it’s that easy.

I have been here before, tests I am not ready for

Then here it comes; it’s on my desk,

The nightmare has begun.

There I sit, wondering if,

That call was really worth it.

Now through the year, I will learn

What it is to study.

And in the end, I will realize,

That it all could have been much simpler

It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me

With but 10 hours to my test.  But I guess that I’m what

I do or chose not to do, Homework, I chose you;

see you, debate you—we two—you, me, fight on this page.

(I see the phone too.)  Me—who?

Well I can feel my phone, vibrating like crazy.

I can see the computer in the background asking me to get on.

But I must finish studying

Like a good student should.

I guess that doing my homework shouldn’t make me NOT go

And do the same things that other people are doing.

So how will I be rewarded for this good deed?

As a student it should be

Nothing less than an A.

But it may be

That I am not ready

And don’t do so well on the test.

You are the grader—

and that makes me part of you.

That’s school.

Perhaps I don’t want to be a part of you

Nor you a part of me

But we are, that my friend is true.

As I learn from my mistakes

And you help me through them

Even though you are in control,

And more powerful

These are my thoughts on US HIstory