Car Crash Cuts Clean Through Power Pole! Major Blackouts in Norton follow suite.

In the late afternoon of Sunday, November 2^nd, the driver of a black 2008 Toyota Camry barreling down Old Colony Road of Norton coming off of Pleasant Street in Attleboro lost control over her steering wheel and crashed her car completely through a power pole, taking out the bottom half of it, and rolled into the front lawn area of a local car wash facility, which lead to a major blackout that covered the majority of facilities in the area.

As the scene unfolded, Christine Davis, a local of Norton and an employee of a Dunkin Donuts affected by the blackout, stated how show saw the entirety of the event, being able to see it “right through the large glass windows of our store”. “I was taking care of front counter when I saw the car crash, and watched as everyone in the store turned their heads towards where the crash came from.” Christine said, still a little in shock over the car crash. “Next thing I knew, my co-workers, the customers, and I all ran out of Dunkin Donuts running just to see what was going on.”

Dave Blauder, owner of the “Cozy: Beer and Wine Cordials” liquor store across from the local car wash, only heard the crash when he was going to restock the shelves before running out of the store to see what happened. Dave told us that he heard “a huge crash that seemed to shake the bottles of wine right off the shelves.” While Dave’s wine bottles didn’t actually fall off the shelves, he was still left with a temporary closing of hos store, due to the blackout that happened. “With a crash like that being cleaned up, I don’t know how anybody in this area could keep their business running.” Dave stated.

“From the way the victim was acting after we got her out of the vehicle, I could tell she was on some type of drug” said Thomas Petersen Jr., Detective Lieutenant of the Norton Police Department. Thomas showed up only seconds after the accident happened, as he was already heading down Old Colony Road to make a stop at the Attleboro Police Department. After helping the victim into the ambulance and setting up a road block to cover Old Colony Road, he proceeded to go through the various facilities affected by the black out, and helped keep calm of the people while more police officers came to help roadblock the street. When asked by an employee at Dunkin Donuts how bad the situation was, Thomas stated how “The blackout, may last a few more hours, however it shouldn’t be too big of an issue. The main concerns right now are making sure that not only the victim is alright, but also figure out what to do with the power pole, since the car took out the bottom half of it.”

Should "Death with Dignity" be Allowed?

Last year, it was revealed to us on Lifenews.com from "Oregon Assisted Suicide Deaths Hit Record High" that the rate of suicides for 2012 in the state of Oregon reached a high of 709 people. Of those people, however, 77 of those suicides were committed with assistance at hand.

According to Dictionary.com, the definition of assisted suicide, or better known as "death with dignity", is "suicide facilitated by another person, especially a physician, who organizes the logistics of the suicide." In today's age, we now have the medicine and technology to prolong lives. But is prolonging lives just a positive way of saying we're "dragging out death for those who desire it"? If assisted suicide were to be applied to the rest of the world, then the world wouldn’t drop dead from “death with dignity”.

From a scientific viewpoint on assisted suicide, there are many studies that have been explored upon within the United States. However, from an article on Danariely.com written by Arjun Khanna, one of the more infamous cases of a study on assisted suicide would have to be “The Oregon Paradox”. From this study in 2010, a group of 91 terminally-ill patients were each given the choice of whether they would choose to take a lethal injection, a chemical combination that would put the patient to sleep, stop the heart and ultimately kill the person in a peaceful manner. From this test, only 61 of the patients, 2/3 of the total amount of patients, actually took the lethal injection. From the article, it’s stated how, when given the choice of ending their lives, the ones who chose to keep living wanted to choose their own time to end their lives without having to make a decision on the spot. From this, "patients can now wake up every day with the comfort of knowing that they do not have to suffer through pain or stress they might find intolerable."

Today, there are currently four states in the United States that have legalized the use of assisted suicide, those states being Montana, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. From those states, many tests similar to “The Oregon Paradox” were taken place in studying the “death with dignity” act, helping us get a better understanding of what goes into the decisions and thoughts behind assisted suicide.

If the United States, or even the rest of the world, were to allow the rights of “death with dignity”, would it matter in the end? According to most, they’ll say that their deaths were done on their own time.

College Can't Slow Down a Runner

After a long and dragged out day of college spent in the laboratories of UMass Dartmouth, my sister Erin doesn't kick back and relax like most other college students would. Instead, she throws on a fresh new pair of gym clothes, ties on her sneakers, puts headphones in her ears and starts blasting her music, as she takes off down the campus road running.

Erin Markham is both a hard-worker, as well as a caring sister, who doesn't want to slow down. With a five foot eight inch height, a light complexion from our dad, straight brown hair that reaches her shoulders, and a happy-go-lucky attitude, Erin is a strong-willed person who will do whatever it takes to create a balanced lifestyle that makes herself as well as those around her happy.

Over the past couple of years since starting college at UMass Dartmouth, Erin has been hard at work with her Medical Science major. She found the major interesting, at the expense of needing to dedicate much of time towards her schoolwork, with her freshman year alone needing to take eight classes in order to stay on a four-year schedule. Needing a way to get away from her schoolwork and relax herself, she picked up on running thanks to our mom, who has been running in her free time and for races over the past five years. Soon afterwards began swimming as well as cycling over at the YMCA down the street when she comes home to visit for the weekends. When I asked my neighbor, Sean, about Erin's training, her stated how he's "surprised about her drive to do so much, especially with her college workload".

This past summer, August 24th, Erin decided to try and take on a triathlon, which was a thirteen-mile race focused on running, swimming, and cycling, all of which she'd been working on over the past couple of years. When I asked Erin why she wanted to do a triathlon, she said she "wanted to try something many people could only dream of doing." From her triathlon, she placed second in her age group, which was nineteen to twenty-three years old. When I saw her cross the finish line at the end of the race, I could see how ecstatic she was from what she had just accomplished.

I asked Erin if she would do another triathlon in the future. "I'm ready to do another one next year.", she said. "Maybe you can do it with me next time too!"

The Passing

The year is 2006, a week after Thanksgiving, and my sister and I were getting off the school bus at our house after yet another long, forgettable day of school. It was especially cold that day, cutting through our sweatshirts we were wearing at the time. As we walked off the bus, we noticed our mom on the front steps of the porch, her cheeks reddened from the cold, as if she were waiting for us for a long time outside.

My sister and I ran up to mom, and gave her a big hug, and she hugged us back hard. We didn't know what was going on at the time, but we were happy to see her, as she normally came home after dark. I looked up at my mom, and she gave us a weak smile. Her mascara had been running down her face, and I noticed that she wasn't even wearing a jacket, despite the cold.

"Is something wrong?" my sister asked. Being older than me by a couple of years, she tended to catch on to things easier and quicker than me, but I was still curious about what was going on.


My mom, letting go of us from the hug, said "Do you recall how Grandpa was really sick on Thanksgiving?". I remembered it all too well. My Grandpa was bedridden for Thanksgiving, so he couldn't enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with us over at my grandparent's house. Through the walls, I could hear him coughing up a storm. I knew he was sick at the time, but never asked about how sick he actually was. I didn't know it at the time, but my Grandpa had been suffering from both Lung Cancer and Liver Cancer over the past couple of months.

My sister seemed to understand at the time, and walked inside the house, leaving me and my mom outside. Somehow, the weather seemed to be even colder than before.

My mom whispered in my ear, as if she was afraid the wind would take her words from me, "Your Grandfather died this morning."

I heard all I needed to hear, and ran inside the house, and into my room, slamming the door behind me and burying my face in my pillow for the tears that would soon follow. I never experienced a death in my family, and so I was left alone my both my sister and my mom to do one thing. To cry.

NESA Scholarship Prompt

Scholarship: National Eagle Scout Association Academic Scholarship
Prompt: Describe what it means to be an Eagle Scout.




To be an Eagle Scout isn't an award to be shelved a week later, nor is being an Eagle Scout a way to get an easy pass in life through respect from others. Being an Eagle Scout is being a leader, for everything accomplished over the years of scouting to be looked upon by upcoming scouts, who also with to reach their Eagle Rank.

Since I was in Elementary School, I’ve been a scout, and have learned many techniques over the years, ranging from how to camp properly, to properly learning how to cook. While all of this was fun, it never showed me what was needed in order to become a leader. It wasn’t until this past year that I’ve learned how to become a proper leader, which was done through my Eagle Scout Project, a service project that would benefit the schools, religious facilities, or the community. With my project based around a citywide food drive to benefit the “Hebron Food Pantry for Working-class Citizens” of Attleboro, I had to learn what it took to become a leader in order to fulfill my Eagle Scout Project.

With my project, there were many aspects where being a leader was necessary, including organizing the initial project by going to different locations and other people to find out how to go about the project, fundraising the project in order to get all of the supplies necessary, and create a schedule and plan for the volunteers and scouts to follow by and be kept safe. From all of this, I’ve learned to create my Eagle Scout project, and have it based around different parts of Attleboro each week, I’ve learned how to properly create an organized fundraiser in order to pay for the supplies necessary, and I’ve learned to create a schedule that would keep all of the volunteers and scouts safe while helping fulfill my project.

In the end, I’ve successfully completed my project over the span of five weeks, and am now officially an Eagle Scout. However, I found that I would have never been able to complete my Project had I not learned how to become a leader. Through becoming a leader, I was able to learn what was necessary in order to succeed with my project, and was able to show not just myself, but other scouts within my troop what is needed in order to become a leader. It’s through this experience that makes me an Eagle Scout.

My Rhetorical Analysis on "Defending Jacob"

In “Defending Jacob”, William Landay talks about the story of Andrew Barber, and how his world began to fall apart after the murder of a young boy, with his son to be accused of. Landay’s narrative follows the style of a man who displays conflicting viewpoints on the world, shown through pity and spite, on characters and events that happen throughout the story.

 

When you begin reading of “Defending Jacob”, you expect the story to be focused around this character named Jacob and his point of view, as the opening of this literacy narrative begins in a Police Interview setting. However, you find out in the next line that the perspective of the story is actually focused around Jacob’s father, Andrew.

From here, we begin to see Andrew describe Mr. Logidudice, the man interviewing him. Even though we had only just met this character, it’s clear from the amount of backstory following this shows how Andrew has known Mr. Logidudice from quite some time. With the way in which Andrew describes Mr. Logidudice, however, shows how Andrew shows pity for Mr. Logidudice, as Andrew describes how Mr. Logidudice has messed up over the years. This is mostly seen through lines such as “His reputation was already damaged beyond repair, and his career along with it.”, being followed up later on in the same paragraph with “But to me, Logidudice was okay. He was just innocent.” It’s through this that we can see of how Andrew is going through different conflicting opinions on even just one character, displaying both spite for how Mr. Logidudice has messed up only to follow up with how he cared about him as well.

Later on in the narrative, we begin to unfold in this interview with Mr. Logidudice, asking more questions of the case. It is here, however, that we get another case of Andrew conflicting among his own thoughts. Andrew states of how “‘I believe in the system, same as you, same as everyone else‘”, but then immediately follows up with “I do not believe in a system, at least I do not think it is especially good at finding the truth.” This again displays another confliction with Andrew, as he talks about how he believes in the court system similarly to Mr. Logidudice and everyone else, however then immediately flips over and states of how he doesn’t believe in a system, saying how it’s not good as finding the truth.

From these, it can be seen how William Landay’s narrative follows a conflicting style of writing for our main protagonist.