Chester IL.

Chester Illinois. Home to Popeye The Sailer Man. There is a six-foot, 900 lb. bronze statue of popeye, that stands in the Elzie C. Memorial Park, which also honors Popeye's creator, Elzie Segar.

The population of Chester Illinois is 8,400 at the 2000 census. It is county seat of Randolph county and is located 63 miles south of st. Louis, Missouri. Chester is a city located on the bluffs of the Mississippi River Valley in Randolph County, Illinois. The Longetude is 89.822, and the latitube is 37.914.

Chester's big event is it's annual Popeye picnic and parade held the weekend after Labor Day. Popeye fans travel from all over the U.S. to parade in the weekend activities.

Cotton Plantation

"It was work hard, get beatins, and half fed..... The times i hated most, was pickin' cotton when the frost was on the bolls. My hands get sore and crack and bleed." A quot from Mary Reynolds.

First thing that comes to mind when you here of cotton plantations, is slaves stooped over, picking cotton, and hauling huge cotton stuffed bags behind them. For the most part this was true. Cotton become the dominate cash crop of the south in the height of the system (1850). 1.8 million out of 2.5 million slaves in the U.S. (nearly 75 percent) were involved in cotton plantations.

Between the arrival of the first slaves in Jamestown in august 1619, and the ratification of the thirteenth amendment prohibiting slavery (December 6, 1865), cotton only became a significant factor after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. Nonetheless, during that 72-year period, an estimated of one million individuals were enslaved in the service of "King cotton," either by transfer, or by domestic slave traders.

The industry of Cotton was given a boost invention of Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin in 1793. With the aid of a horse to turn the gin, a man could clean fifty times as much cotton as before. This increased the demand for slaves. For example, in 1803 alone, over 20,000 slaves were being brought into Georgia and south Carolina to work in the cotton fields. By 1850, America was producing 3,000,000 bales of cotton and the industry had become a vital element of the south's economy. The need for slaves, and the price of slaves, was much higher in states in the lower south, such as Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, than in states of the upper south, including Virginia and Maryland. The result was a thriving domestic slave trade that devastated many slaves households.

Teenage boys and young adult men were especially desirable laborers for the new areas, and slave families in the upper south lost sons, brothers, and young fathers to the cotton plantations of the lower south. at the time of revolution, most slaves were held along the southeastern seaboard, but by 1860, the greatest concentrations of slaves were in the lower south.

Friday in Langley

I sit down on the cold, black bench with a sigh, breathing in the sent of the bay and tree's blowing in the wind. I watch the birds play and sing, landing on and off the power line. A car passes now and then, filling the air with the smell of exost and rubber. I look toward the bay, and notice a girl crossing the street. A cool brease blows, and sends shivers down my back. The sound of a roaring diesel makes me jump after all the silence. i look up to see a Dryers Ice Cream truck passing by. Great. Now I want Ice Cream. That thought is banished as another cold brease sends me shivering again. I look toward the bay again, just out of boredom, and see Hannah pocking her head out of where she's writing. I snicker quietly to myself. The bus stop bench is getting very uncomfortable. the top is digging into my back. The bus pulls up then. The driver sits there, waiting for passengers, looking at me expectantly. He looks away quickly when i glance at the bus. A few people walk over to where the bus is stoped. Why the don't get on confuses me. The must not be going to Skatget Head, as the bus has typed across the top. The people waiting looked like they were headed to a job. All of them were dressed in very nice clothes, business looking clothes. A few of them shot sceptical glances toward me. I wonder if they think I'm ditching. I smirk as i think of that. Because i still can't believe Snelling would put someone at the bus stop. i glance toward the bay again, and see a group of my class mates walking this way with Snelling. I get up quickly and walk quickly to meet up with them; to quickly, i almost face plant as I trip over something (most likely my feet). I get my balance back and walk forward to endure the rest of my day.

Three Stories

I think that the main way the books and the movie are similar, is that they are both rebelling against something.
In Across The Universe, they are rebelling against the war that is going on. In Johnny Tremain they are rebelling against the British, as they were in Ishi.
I think that watching the movie Across The Universe was a good idea. It gave a good picture of what it was like during that time period, how far people were willing to go in order to get what they wanted, and it was nice to just be watching a movie during WASL.

Reading the two books also helped. Because it shows how things worked back during that time period from different points of view. There were some pretty brutal things going on back then. I think that watching the movie was better though.

spring break

I climbed the bluff on Thursday and Friday of the spring break. I was climbing with my cousin Zack on Thursday, and i climbed with both Zack and Elli on Friday.
I've climbed the bluff many, many times, but i had only ever climbed up the first bluff. on Thursday, i only climbed that high because we didn't have enough time. And on the way down I almost smacked my head in to a log that lays over the trail. the trail is pretty steep - you have to crawl in some places - and it's covered in clay, and the clay was wet on top of that.
On Friday, we climbed to the top of the second; all the way up to the tree's and where the rope is. it was really fun climbing up. Zack brought a box to use as a sled to slide down the bluff. Elli and I wern't stupid enough to try going down the bluff in it, but Zack was, well not stupid enough, but daring enough i guess you could say. he didn't get very far in it; he slid about a foot - not going very fast - and then it just stopped. So that didn't go as we had planned. the view from the very top is amazing.
That was really the most exciting thing I did all break. I went to the beach a lot, but not much els.

Ishi

Ishi was a part of the Yahi tribe. He was the last of his tribe in Northern California. He was believed to have been the last Native American in Northern California to have lived most of his life outside of the European America culture. He traveled to Oroville in 1911. He died on March 25th, 1916. He lived 56 years.

Japanese man survived bombing.

I think that its sad and happy about the man who survived. It's sad because he was only one of very few that survived. It's happy because, obviously, he survived. After this bombing, it was very devastating. There so many man, women, and children killed from this bombing. Over 140,000 people were killed. The ones that survived were very lucky.