For Anyone Who's Been Wondering...

...I have finished Burning Hope (last year, actually), and I've been posting it chapter by chapter on my new blog, Books of an UNpublished Author... So you can go and look at it, if you want to. :)

Aldo Leopold Report

Aldo Leopold was born in 1887, in Iowa. While he grew up, he spent most of his time outdoors, exploring the wilderness. He was sent East, to New Jersey, for his high school, and although he did eventually graduate, he was often so busy with being outside that he didn't always do his homework, and in fact flunked some of his subjects.

When Leopold graduated high school, he went to Yale, and graduated with a degree in forestry. He joined the Forest Service and went to the Arizona Territories. It was there that he originally started observing the connections between people and the land, and started to develop his ideas of a "community" between the wilderness and humans. When he transferred to a laboratory in Wisconsin, he convinced the Forest Service to protect 500,000 acres of a forest in New Mexico, as wilderness.

A few years later, Leopold accepted an offer from the University of Wisconsin to teach a program in game management. Two years later, he helped form The Wilderness Society, The same year, he and his wife, and their children, bought 80 acres of abandoned/ruined farm land to try to restore. An abandoned chicken coop on the property, fondly named "The Shack", became the Leopold's research center, and the family spent almost all of their weekends on the land, planting hundreds of trees in an effort to restore the health to the land.

It was around that time when Aldo Leopold started writing his Sand County Almanac, a collection of nature writings which he is most famous for. The book was originally rejected, but after being edited, was accepted. Unfortunately, Leopold never got to see it in print. He died a week after it was accepted from a heart attack while he was fighting a forest fire. It was printed a year after he died, and is still in print today. Leopold wrote about 500 published articles, pamphlets, essays, and works, and there are still more of his journals that are unpublished.


Resources:
Aldo Leopold Nature Center
Aldo Leopold- The Wilderness Society
The Encyclopedia of Earth- A Sand County Almanac

Oh the Joys of Being a Teenager.

"...and so we invented 'the teenager', an unfortunate creature who had all the yearnings and capabilities of an adult, but none of the freedoms or responsibilities." - Alex Harris (That's a quote I copied from my friend Lexi's One Year Adventure Novel profile. It's pretty much true.)

So, yesterday my mom's friend Liz called my mom, and asked if I wanted to go to the field museum with her, her husband, and their daughter, my friend Mae. Since I didn't really have anything planned (except reading A Confederacy of Dunces *shakes fist at book*), I said sure, and we went.
While we were riding in the car for three hours (1.5 hours there... 1.5 hours back), and while we were at the museum, I decided that being a teenager really isn't all it's cracked up to be. Of course, this isn't a new revelation, but one nonetheless that I wasn't pleased to discover. Here is a list (wow, another list post... I hope you aren't getting sick of these), of all the reasons I've thought up so far, of why it isn't that great to be a teenager. (Coming soon.. Why it's AWESOME to be a teenager! [figured I need some balance here... My blog is slowly becoming quite negative.])

1. The bad rep: It doesn't matter how you actually act... It seems like most adults catch a sight of braces and think, "OH MY GOSH IT'S A DELINQUENT! DON'T LET THEM OUT OF YOUR SIGHT OR THEY'LL DESTROY SOMETHING!!!!" *eyeroll* I'll have you know that I have never graffitied, damaged, exploded, or otherwise hurt public property. Geesh!
2. Hormones: We're all chalked up to being moody. But is that our fault? No! It's usually because of these little green alien things called "hormones" floating around our heads and making us act grumpy! Give us a break! You act pretty terrible too, sometimes!
3. indecision: No, this isn't your imagination (though, you being an adult, the existence of your imagination seems to be questionable... ^_^). We really are indecisive, unless you tell us to do something. Usually, and I really don't know why... We hear "Go do X" and we think, "NO! I am going to do Y!!! HA!!!"
   
4. Responsibility: This is a tricky one. On one hand, we like to be responsible. Having responsibility is a nice thing. It makes us feel like we're trusted. Being trusted is always a good feeling. On the other hand, however, if you just heap a lot of your problems and responsibilities on us, we start feeling resentful. I guess it's a tricky balance to get, but generally... try to give us more responsibility than a kid, but not as much as you would, say, a coworker. ;)

Eight Totally Overrated Things in My Life

So, yesterday I was thinking about how everyone kept bothering me about going to dance, and I realized that dances are completely overrated. Then I realized that other things in my life were overrated. Then I realized that a lot of things in my life are overrated. Then I decided to write a blog post about all the overrated things I could think of easily.

1. Dances. Because we all need another way to spend our parents' money on pointless dresses we'll only wear once, get our toes stomped on, start losing our hearing from loud music crappy, pointless sounds with inappropriate lyrics, increase our chance of diabetes by drinking copious amounts of soda, and wake up feeling like like we were hit by a truck. Right. All those in favor, raise your hands!
2. Best Friends. Alright. I'll admit that this one is partly from my jealousy of those who actually do have best friends. (Therefore, I write an irritating narrative about best friends on my blog. That's just how I roll.) But there really are some overrated facts about best friends. Like the fact that you're mainly leaning on one person. Hello? That can't be fun for the friend, now can it? You try being the main support for someone's sanity, and see how that works for you, kay? Secondly... Have you noticed how many times it's the best friend who back-stabs you? In my humble opinion, it's best to have several close friends, rather than the "one and only best friend".
   
3. Dystopian Novels. I have to say. Teenagers must have the least reactive emotional state ever. Or maybe they're just stupid. At least, it certainly seems so, because one would think that a person, after reading so many books set in "An imaginary place where everything is as bad as it can be", the reader would become thoroughly depressed and would stop reading such reading material. But noooooooooo. The teens of this day and age seem to inhale distopian novels like their lives depend on it. I wonder what effect it's having on their internal emotional state.
4. Hating Twilight. Because that's a nice thing to do, criticizing someone's hard work. Does anyone stop to think that maybe Stephenie Mayer is simply disillusioned? Or maybe she's a tad insane. Either way, no one seems to consider the fact that it's pretty hypocritical to be going around cursing Twilight and vampire romances, at the same time they're listening to My Chemical Romance, Justin Beiber, or some other band equally ingrained in pop culture.
5. Hating Math. You hate math. Why? Because it's hard. And yet you don't hate skiing? Or crossword puzzles? Or video games? Or science? Or reading? You hate math, and you persecute math geeks, yet you expect all your clothes to fit? Can we say hypocrite?
6. Being Silly/Hyper (Girls). I don't know what girls expect being stupid/silly/hyper/overly energetic is going to get them. A guy? Let me tell you, from my experience, the guys I've all talked to prefer it when a girl is actually being herself, not some sugar coated dumbed down version. Or maybe I just have weird guy friends. But anyway, I have to say, the only people I know who aren't bothered by pointless silliness are the other pointlessly silly people. Maybe that's a good thing. I digress.
7. Celebrities. Well, surprisingly, this is one of my least overrated overrated things. Some celebs actually deserve their fame. But some *cough* Paris Hilton *cough* really have no claim to fame at all. If we're going to have celebs... Then at least let them be good celebs! If we're going to take basically normal people, inflate their egos and their personas until they basically take over the world... Then at least let them be people who deserve it! And if we can't even do THAT... Then at least remember that they're just people! All that stuff about how "regular" people aren't as attractive as celebs? Rubbish. Trash. Null. Incorrect. Degrading. Irritating. Untrue. False. Take your pick of words... it's going to come to the same thing.
8. Romance. Thirteen/Fourteen year olds should not be focused on romance. That's all I have to say.