October Harvest

Patriotism



                Patriots, a lot of people are one, they just don’t realize it. When the declaration of independence was signed those men were committing treason, because they loved their new land and wanted to own it themselves, in their own country, land of the free and home of the brave. The declaration of independence showed many great things in this country and was a huge step in history showing if you want to do something great you should go out and do it. Patriotism can be shown in many ways, whether it’s donating to the Salvation Army, or just helping out a friend; it’s very easy to be a patriot.
                  When a man goes to fight for his country, he’s taking a great risk, he could die, he could be tortured, any multitude of bad things could happen to him, but he still goes and fights. This is the ultimate sacrifice that a person can do for his country and people take it for granted every day. Sure we have veteran’s day and what-not but how many people actually keep in mind that people are fighting for our freedom every day of the year? If we lived in a third world country we would have to constantly be aware of our surroundings, making sure the next step you take isn’t your last. Something similar to this is a book called “The Hunger Games” which takes place in a post apocalyptic time but things are basically already rebuilt, and this new place is in old North America and is separated into twelve districts and a capitol. The capitol has all the money all the food and all the everything, where the districts get significantly less. But what happens is the capitol has such great power over the districts the districts can’t rebel otherwise everyone in the district will be killed which is why there is twelve districts now whereas there was thirteen years ago. Anyway, what happens is every year the capitol holds something called the Hunger Games, which takes one boy and one girl from each district, puts them all in an arena to kill each other the winner getting some food for themselves and for their district, all for the entertainment for the people in the capitol. Could you imagine having to kill fellow human beings just to get some food? This is why we need to support our veteran’s every day of the year and not just a few days so something like this doesn’t happen in our country.
                Although fighting for your country is very patriotic, it’s easy to be a patriot in everyday life. This can be done by volunteering, helping others, or just being a nice person, these are all things that make us patriotic. One very easy way to show patriotism is to donate to an organization like the Salvation Army. This organization takes the money it receives and uses it to help the less fortunate, it’s important to donate to organizations like this because it makes you feel better about yourself and it helps those in need. This is what it truly means to be a patriot.
                It is very important to donate to organizations like the Salvation Army because when you think about it, it makes you into more of a patriot because you’re helping your country just not in a direct way. Hopefully now you will become more aware about how lucky we are to live in a free country, have food, water, and not having to live in fear.


Hydropower essay

            For over 200 years coal has been our main energy source, but is it really the best? Scientists have found alternate forms of energy like wind power, or solar energy, but both of those cost too much to put up with little energy that we get back from. But there is a viable energy source that is both safe for the environment and the machines that get it are efficient enough to get a large amount of energy so we actually get a profit that doesn’t take 50 years.
            Hydropower is by far the most efficient energy source getting up to 90% of possible power from the water, plus it is the most cost effective. Last year the United States produced 250 Billion kilowatt hours, if this was all hydropower it would cost about $200,000,000,000.00 whereas coal production would cost about $937,500,000,000.00. So anyone can tell that it saves a lot of money to use hydropower energy instead of coal.
            Even though some people would say that coal produces more energy this is not true, of the dams in the U.S. just 2% of the water that goes through is used for hydroelectricity and they still reach the numbers that they get, if we were to use at least 15% for hydroelectricity the results could be astronomical. Some countries have already learned the power of hydroelectricity, in New Zealand 75% of their electricity come from hydropower and in Norway a whopping 99% comes from hydropower showing just how great this energy source can be.
            Hopefully after reading this it would persuade you to do something about it like sending a letter to Pewaukee about building a generator in the new dam or something along those lines.