Kelsey's Blog!

It’s 1913, a young girl is found on a ship in Australia. No one knows who she is or why she was on the ship in the first place. A family adopts her and flourishes with a child. They name her Nell and keep her as their own.

When Nell turns 21 her dad tells her about the not-so-legal adoption and that he knows nothing of her birth parents. Her whole world falls apart. Nell doesn’t even know who she is anymore, she doesn’t feel like she’s still Nell.

Even though Nell’s sisters and dad see her the same, she cannot go back to who she was. Her sisters never even knew she was adopted. They’d looked up to her their whole lives and did not understand why she all of a sudden turned into a different person. Or rather, a shell of who she once was. Nell thinks of herself as anonymous while her adoptive family still sees her as they always have, their Nell.

The Forgotten Garden focuses on two womens’ search for their own  identity. Nell tries to find her lineage and the reason she was shipped to Australia as a girl. She finds her birth parents but that’s about it. Nell’s granddaughter, Cassandra searches for herself while trying to solve the mystery of Nell’s past. She finds Nell’s home before being sent away.

This book is so captivating. It takes you through London in the 1900s and present day. There are fairytales and flashbacks hidden within the pages. I don’t want to stop reading The Forgotten Garden but then again I don’t want it to end.

Synchronized skating is one of my favorite sports. It combines athleticism, synchronicity and finesse. Synchro has many different components such as pinwheels, blocks and smashes. Technically, synchronized skating is a complex routine performed by eight or more people. Although a majority of the population believe that skating is simple, it definitely isn’t.

A block is when a team in square or triangular formation skates across the ice doing various footwork in sync. Smashes are when two, three or four lines intersect without actually bumping into anyone. Pinwheels come in many forms but all have one, two, three, or four lines that meet and rotate around a pivot point. A kickline is a footwork sequence performed in a line and a circle is a footwork sequence in a circle.

This year, my team of thirteen girls, skated to Jai Ho. Of course you can imagine our Bollywood themed costumes and make-up. If you can’t just look at the picture on the left. We had to come up with many different hand movements and leg positions for our theme but it was a blast.

There are so many reasons to love synchro. I get the whole team experience and I don’t get as nervous as when I have to skate solo. It’s always amusing to try and find new, inventive ways to move a large group of people across the ice. Synchro is such a great way to work on people skills and musicality while letting out competitiveness.

If you still aren’t convinced that synchro is a stupendous and precise sport, I suggest you try out for a team. If that still seems a little far-fetched you could always go to a synchronized skating competition or watch one of these videos.

Synchro 1

Synchro 2

Making goals is a common ritual that many people do. The reason people make goals is to feel that they have control over their lives. Take Ryden Malby, (Post Grad) she had her whole life planned out, from good grades in school to where she would work. When she isn’t hired her life starts spinning out of control.

People hate change or when something happens unexpectedly. It causes them to stress out or become agitated. Ryden is very strained when she can’t seem to find a job and her eccentric family while trying to help is only making things worse. In the end, Ryden gets the job of her dreams only to realize she doesn’t want it anymore.

The problem with goals is that we get so focused on achieving them that when we finally do, the sense of accomplishment only lasts a few minutes before we’re bored and need something else to focus on. We’re not happy because we want to be proud of ourselves but the moment has already slipped from our grasp.

While Pushing Daisies isn’t traditionally a DVD. I’m writing about it under a DVD review because I would like to describe the whole first series, which I have in a digital videodisc set.

Pushing Daisies is a witty love story with many morbid twists. It’s a very fairy-tale-istic show with charming characters and gruesome deaths. Everything from the case cover to the pie-like DVDs seems surreal and radiant. However, this show isn’t all sunny and blithe.

Ned, the male leading role, has a unique gift. He can touch the dead and bring them back to life. The piemaker , as he’s called by the enticingly-voiced narrator, has had this gift since he was a child. Ned discovered his distinctive power when he was nine years old and his mother dropped dead of an aneurysm. Needless to say, Ned was a troubled boy, fascinated and repulsed by death.

A private detective by the name of Emerson Cod has stumbled upon Ned’s powers and decides to partner up with Ned. Murders are much easier to solve if you can ask the victims who killed them. Emerson finds cases with handsome rewards and Ned asks people who murdered them. A problem arises when Emerson stumbles across a murder from Ned’s home town, Couer d’Couers (french for heart of hearts). In fact the woman who was murdered was Ned’s childhood sweetheart, Charlotte Charles, but to him she was just Chuck.

They had played together as children and were separated when young Ned’s father had sent him away to boarding school. He’d grown up wondering where she was and if he’d ever see her again. Chuck grew up taking care of her agoraphobic, cheese-loving aunts. Ned turned to his love of pie-making and Chuck turned to her love of beekeeping. They never did see each other again, that is, until Ned brought Chuck back to life. In a moment of impulsiveness, Ned decides to leave Charlotte alive knowing that within a minute of bringing something to life, something else has to die in its place. The funeral director dies.

Chuck and Ned have fallen in love again but can not touch each other. They spend the episodes hugging Emerson (the replacement) and solving more murders. Another character, Olive, is jealous of Chuck and doesn’t know why there is a surprising lack of physical contact between the two. She’s been in love with Ned ever since she started working at The Pie Hole, Ned’s restaurant. By the end of the series she’s helping unravel the odd murder mysteries that Emerson seems to find.

This cute and grisly tale has a lot of different themes that are both controversial and puzzling. Should someone have the ability to choose who lives and dies? Is it considered murder by choosing who dies? Is it right to “cheat” when solving murders for a reward? Ned faces a tremendous amount of guilt from his childhood when he accidentally “killed” Chuck’s dad. He confesses to her at the end of the 8th episode and while she’s upset, she still forgives him.

When Ned decided to let Chuck live he knew he was condemning someone else to death. It could have been anyone. Ned, in his hasty decision, didn’t fully consider what could happen. As Emerson rudely points out by taking the funeral director’s murder case. I don’t believe it’s right that Ned had the choice pertaining to some else’s life. Yet, I can’t blame him for reviving his old love. His choice made the show much more interesting and I probably would have done the same in his position.

These are the poems that I think are my best:

http://iblog.stjschool.org/kmccrea/2009/05/06/a-journey-to-nowhere

http://iblog.stjschool.org/kmccrea/2009/05/01/five-easy-pieces

Here’s a good one by a classmate:

http://iblog.stjschool.org/tstafford/2009/05/06/a-journey-towhere

I left my house with a backpack

Inside it was a book, a map, a compass

A picture of my old family

I carried a water bottle in my hand

and a wide-brimmed hat sat atop my head

I followed no path to arrive

Never once glanced at my map

Just kept following my mantra

” Go where you have to go and you’ll get there ”

I kept walking, oblivious to the fact that I was being shadowed

A scruffy, Yorkshire Terrier ran up beside me

He had an unconcealed yearning for an owner

It seemed the little dog had chosen me and I couldn’t refuse

I patted his head and selected a name for him

Odyssey because that’s what he was enrolling in

The dog and I walked in companionable silence

We were like a couple of old friends reminiscing

Only we weren’t talking about our memories, just remembering them

My good memories were few and far between

but, I loved them more than anything else in the world

The leaves in the trees trembled, their branches swayed

They appeared to be instructing us to stop

A boy of about twelve leapt from the tallest tree

“Can I come with you?”

He, like the dog, became mine

We walked until we came across a small cottage

The interior was barren except for a mirror

I glanced into the strange looking glass

and was shocked to see something I never had expected

I was a man

I was no longer the boy that had left his old home

Somewhere along my journey I had grown

The boy and the dog joined me in front of the mirror

I realized I had found what I was looking for

I had found my family

She’s part of the team

Yet, distinctly different

maybe her hair is shinier

Or maybe her emotions make her distinguishable

She’s the one that smiles that much brighter

Excitement radiates from her

Her eyes sparkle

You can tell she enjoys this

She seems light on her feet,

while everyone else is lead-footed

Every movement is enhanced by her,

Everyone else seems pitifully ordinary

The team pays no attention to her

but the audience notices her

Her team benefits from her luminosity

Extra points gained

She doesn’t hate her teammates

Even though they ignore her

This is what happens

She’s just another part of the team

His fingers are slender

with clean, short nails

These hands are gracefully proportioned

not too muscular, not too thin

Carving shapes out of wood

Turning the wood into a keepsake

He’s whittling

Kilimanjaro is Africa

a representation,

of beauty and strength

Would you whittle a piece of wood to look like Kilimanjaro?

His gaze captures mine

He attempts to read my thoughts

I struggle not to blink

“I only carve what feels right”

The judge slams down his gavel

He yells, “Order in the court!”

Everything in the closet is immaculate,

folded to perfection

The sun shines through the trees

A bird swoops down, but does not frighten

Everything is quiet

I take a break to read under a tree

There’s a knot in my stomach

It’s not so bad

Pangs come now and then

only 30 hours

Glorious battles and bloodshed,

Pyramids rising from dust

Ships slicing through water,

searching for a new adventure

RATHER CLEAN LOOS

quirky unexpectedly funny

in a past life?

pulled back to reality

unnaturally quiet

Anything to save Will

who can’t help

writes of all things

top-notch lawyer

Without even knowing

roles of a proper woman

found her home

other-worldly trance

what’s going on

feel the cold

a storm blows in