the bird on fire

The Palm Valley School Student Blog

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

The World According to Henry: A Guide to Book Burning

by 4 Comments

Book-Burning-Day-After-Tomorrow

–by Henry Huang

Suppose someday you and your friends end up in a situation like the one in the movie The Day After Tomorrow where you’re trapped in a library while a blizzard rages outside. In order to survive, you have to burn books to keep warm. Now the question, which books would you burn?
Remember, you are trapped in a library–an institution intended to store knowledge. You can’t burn books that will influence the survival and advancement of human beings. So, forget the calculus books, agricultural pieces, and books of essential scientific discovery. They are so important that it is not worth burning them to save individual life.
So what should you burn?
I suggest your first category for burning be . . . Celebrity Biography. 0Don’t get me wrong; some biographies are good. However, some biographies like Kim Kardashian’s Selfish, which contains nothing but her selfies, should be burned. Mostly, a biography exists because it can inspire people. However, Celebrity Biographies often offer very little under the cover. Do we really need selfies of Kim Kardashian? Remember, in our hypothetical situation, we are in a severe winter snowstorm, and we need to warm ourselves to fend off freezing. Those Celebrity Biographies are usually heavy (in weight), usually more than three hundred pages. Just one burning copy could keep us warm for hours.
Next, burn anything about the zodiac.unnamed I know many people believe in the zodiac and fortune telling. However, think about it seriously. We are now in a huge huge crisis that involves the existence of human beings in a snowstorm. At this moment, all kinds of zodiac and fortune-telling things would not work anymore. The only thing that we need to focus on, at this moment, is survival. If you’re about to freeze to death, do you really need your fortune told?
These are two kinds of books that I would like to burn in this scenario. What is your choice of books for burning in a life-threatening snowstorm?

 

Henry floated a survey on “What Book What You Burn” on Facebook. Here are some of the replies . . . .

Many of the respondents believe that the first choice of books for burning should be the Twilight series. twilightThe reasons were mostly concentrated on the fact that Twilight is a poorly written book. According to one respondent, “Twilight promotes abusive relationships and is just bad literature in general.” The second most popular choice involves encyclopedias and dictionaries. The reasons are, “They have the most paper, so they have the most fuel”; “They are very big and fairly replaceable.” Surprisingly, the third most popular choice for burning for warmth and survival is the Bible. The reasons include more are available “in the future” and “the Bible is thick and burnable.” And, one of Henry’s personal favorite responses is “Burn Mein Kampf.”

 

The Curse of the Bambino

by 1 Comment

IMG_3614

 

–by Chloe Sweeney, a born Red Sox fan

The tale of the Babe completes Chloe’s three-part series on famous baseball curses. 
The Curse of the Bambino is arguably the most notable curse in sports’ history. The superstition began when the Boston Red Sox traded the infamous Babe Ruth or “Bambino” to the New York Yankees between the 1919 and 1920 seasons. Prior to this trade, the Red Sox had been the most successful team in baseball. They had won five World Series titles including the inaugural championship. This disastrous trade led to a grand power shift as the Yankees became home to the legend and went on to bIMG_3618e incredibly successful. The Red Sox went without a victory from 1918 to 2004. To many Bostonians, this curse was no joke as the die-hard fans lived their entire lives passionately detesting the Yankees. The curse was the spark that ignited the greatest rivalry in sports between the Yankees and Red Sox. As a child, many things were engrained into my brain, but one of the most vivid lessons was the absolutely necessary hatred of the New York Yankees. To this day, despite the curse’s ending, I loathe the Yankees, other New York sports teams, and often the city itself.
IMG_3616
In 2003, many fans believed it was the Red Sox’s year. We were in the American League Championship Series against the Yankees. It was game seven, the bottom of the 11th inning when Aaron Boone hit a one-run homer to win the game and the pennant. As you can probably imagine, he became the most disliked man in the city of Boston and the SweeneIMG_3617y household. We were all devastated! We had come so close to victory but were denied victory by our greatest enemy.

There were many attempts to break the curse, such as placing a Red Sox hat on the top of Mt. Everest, burning a Yankee’s hat at the base, and hiring an exorcist to “purify” Fenway Park. A sign on Storrow Drive (a road leading to Fenway) that read “Reverse Curve” was changed to say “Reverse the Curse.” This sign was not changed until after the curse was broken in 2004 and it now reads “Curse Reversed.”
IMG_3615
The 2004 season was all about redemption. The Red Sox absolutely refused to be denied the victory. Once again, in the American League Championship Series, we were up against the New York Yankees. Fueled by a fan base who desperately longed for the sweet taste of glory, the Sox rallied after being down by three games to win four in a row. The Red Sox became the only Major League Baseball team to come back and win a seven-game postseason series after being down three games. Finally, we defeated the Yankees! The entire state of Massachusetts went absolutely insane. The entire state was celebrating the humongous achievement of their beloved team. It almost meant more to the team and the fans to defeat the Yankees the way they did then to actually win the World Series. The Red Sox did go on to sweep the Cardinals and win the 2004 World Series! The Curse of the Bambino was finally broken after 86 years.

IMG_3619

 

–Edited by Gaige Griffin