im a Jr in high school and have to do a research paper for US History.My thesis is "the nuclear bomb makes the US more influential in World Politics, inevitably leading to social-economic advantages." But i don’t know how to start out my introduction.

I was doing a guest writing workshop at Susanville State Prison near the Sierra Nevada foothills in northern California. Most of the men doing time there are sentenced to prison because of drugs. They are housed in huge dormitories in bunk beds. They have no privacy, no place to be alone, no place to think quietly. I had great apprehensions when I walked onto the prison grounds. I had taught writing workshops at many California prisons, but those prisons had cells. In Cells, even if they are shared with another inmate, one can find a least a little writing time. Surely the men here at Susanville were not going to be interested in what I had to offer.
I had decided to spend my two days giving a monologue workshop. I wanted the men to have a chance to write and then perform before a camera. I wanted them to see themselves on video before I left the prison at the end of the second day. I felt that life in this prison had probably stripped them of most of their identity and that writing and performance art might restore some sense of who they were or who they could be. eve isk
I was pleased that twenty men had signed up for the class. This was the maximum number I had said I could take. I spend the first hour with them, talking about what it was like to be a writer. Telling them that there is a joy and a freedom in the words. That no matter how much they were all forced to be alike, dress alike, eat the same food, keep the same hours, that in their writing they could finally be different. As different as they wanted to be. Writing, I told them, can be the most liberating of all the arts. You can be free with the word. There are no limits. told them that every time I picked up a pencil or sat down at a computer or a typewriter that it was as if I was coming home, coming home to my art, my words, that this was a world that no one else could take away. This art would sustain me throughout all my days.
The men listened well and when I finally had them start their writing projects, they worked hard. There was only one, a young, very handsome blond man, who I worried about. He was reluctant to share during that first day when I had them writing their monologues. Every other student read and rewrote and read again, but this man sat quietly, erasing, writing, tearing up drafts, starting again. Whenever I would approach his desk, he quietly covered his paper with his arms.
“Can I see?” I ask.
“It would be easier for me if you didn’t,” he would answer then a shy smile would appear.
I figured, what the heck. Even if he doesn’t share his writing with the class, he’s writing. He is choosing to spend his whole day in this hot stuffy classroom working on something called monologue. That morning he probably didn’t even know the meaning of the word. This should make me happy. But it didn’t. I was concerned about his need for privacy, a Atlantica gold
bout his inability to share, knowing that he didn’t think his writing was good enough.
I had worked in prisons for too many years to be fooled by his shyness. I knew that many of the inmates had learned at a very young age that they could do nothing right. They had been abused and tormented as children and lacked any self-confidence. But no matter how much I praised the other prisoners he wouldn’t relent. He went back to his dormitory that evening with his writing tucked into his jeans pocket. Many of the other men just left their work on the desks. Not him. He was taking no chance that I would read it after he was locked away behind the bars. He was right, of course. 1 would have made a beeline right for his desk the minute he got out the door. He had judged me right.
The second day all the men returned to the classroom. This was particularly pleasing to me. Even the young blond man. This was the day for reading and taping. I wondered how the silent, shy student would handle this. I was actually surprised to see him there. He had combed his long, blond hair and his shirt was neatly pressed. He had obviously thought about the fact that he was going to be filmed and wanted to look his best. At last I was going to hear what he wrote.
He didn’t say much during the performances. I had given the men fairly loose instructions about who should be speaking in their monologues. I had, though, told them that I wanted to hear their characters tell me what it is they really wanted, what it was that no one understood about them, and why they needed to talk. He sat there quietly, watching the work of his fellow inmates. One of the men had written a monologue for God, and another had been Abraham Lincoln, another Martin Luther King, Jr. Some of the monologues were funny, others serious. Even though they hadn’t had time to memorize their lines, once they began reading, the scripts in their hands were hardly noticeable, and I was extremely moved by their work.
Finally, he was the only one who hadn’t read his monologue. When all the others were finished I asked him, “Are you ready now?”
“I don’t think so,” he answered in such a gentle voice. Then the men were on him.
“Man, if I can do it, you can do it. Try it. You’ll like it. Come on man, don’t be shy. Nobody’s going to judge you here.”
So he got up, took his script to the performance area and stood before the camera. He looked so young. The papers in his hands were shaking like frightened birds, but he looked with determination into the eye of the camera and opened up his monologue.
“My name is Bruce. I am twenty-one years old and I am dead. I am dead because I spent time in prison for drugs and I didn’t care. I didn’t care about me. I went to bed every night just counting the days ‘till I could get out and get that next wedding dresses
fix. I would kill for my next fix. I would kill for my next fix.”
He went on about his life, how he was raised in poverty by alcoholic parents, beaten, hungry, no life at all, shuffled back and forth through foster homes. While he read, he showed scars on his body, the burn marks on his arms where a drunken father had extinguished cigarettes, the cuts on his wrists where he had tried to take his own life. I couldn’t help it. The tears began forming in my eyes, hot and painful. My God, why had I asked him to share this horrible pain? Then he got to the end of his story.
“Even though I died right there in prison, I want to tell you something. The reason I need to talk to you today. I have risen again, just like in the Bible. I am reborn. One day a woman came in and told me to write. And I had never written before, but I did it anyway. I sat for eight ours in a chair and focused the way I have never focused before. I could never even sit still before! I wrote out my ugly life, and then I was able to finally feel something. To feel pity. For myself. When no one else was ever able to feel it. And I felt something else. I felt joy. I was writing, and what I was writing was good. I was a writer! And I was going to get up in front of all those men in that class, and I would say that this . . .” At these words he held up his little manuscript. This is more important to me than any drug. What I wanted to tell you was that I died a drug addict, and I was reborn as a writer.”
We all sat there stunned. The camera kept running. He took a self-conscious little bow. Then he said, “Thank you,” once again in his quiet voice. And then the men broke out in spontaneous applause. He walked over to me and took my hands. Inmates are not allowed to touch their teachers, but I let him anyway. “You have given me something,” he said, “that no drug has ever given me. My self-respect.”
I think of him often. I pray that he has continued to find respect for himself through the written word. I know, though, that that day in that room with those men, a writer was born. After a long and terrible journey, a lost soul had come home, home to the words.
相关的主题文章：


A Perfect Mistake

was beside myself with frustration and annoyance at the little foal, curled up in the corner of the small stable where she had been born two nights before. The delivery had been a difficult one for the mother, and, in the end, she succumbed to heavy bleeding and died.
I felt for this little animal, so all alone in the world and without a mother to show her the ways of being a horse. But after three days, she still refused to venture outside her little nest on her own. Even the veterinarian, who found nothing physically wrong with her, could not motivate her.
Day after day the little horse, which I named Sprite in hopes that she would aspire to her name, moped about, sniffing out her mother’s scent and eating enough to sustain her, but without the usual gusto of a growing animal. Sprite seemed determined to be miserable. wedding dresses
There were other horses and their infants on our ranch, and Sprite sometimes watched them, on one of her forced outings into the field, with a look of longing. Then she would sigh, a long, plaintive snort, slowly turn her head away and refuse to look until we delivered her back to her stable.
Weeks passed with little change in the foal’s disposition. She ate and slept and compiled with daily walks outside but never seemed to aspire to do the things that the other horses did, neither running nor prancing about with the simple delight of being alive.
Then one day, something changed. Not in Sprite, but in me. It happened one distressingly hot, summer day when I had retreated to the relative coolness of my home. Not knowing what to do with the hours stretching out before me until the sun disappeared behind the horizon, giving relief to blistering air, I perused one book, and then another, of old and yellowing pictures. replica rolex
There were many pictures of my mother in those books, given to me by my father before he died an old man just a few years ago. I had barely known the woman on those pages and only imagined that she must have loved me. She, too, had died, when I was very little, leaving me to miss the presence of a relationship that seemed so innate, so necessary.
I remembered being a small girl at school picnics, watching other children and their mothers. It was often so painful that I had to turn away. It wasn’t until a kind and understanding young teacher took it upon herself to be my friend, and became a kind of surrogate mother to me, that I began to blossom. After that I grew faster, my grades were better and I felt alive inside.
Now I understood. replica watches
With renewed determination, I headed out to the stables under the oppressive noonday sun. I didn’t care. All I knew is that I had to try.
For the next few days, I all but lived within the tiny four walls that had become Sprite’s safe haven from the world. Chores were hired out to a young boy who lived nearby, and my husband was instru
cted, via cellular phone, to bring me the necessities of life.
All that time, I talked to the sad animal, telling her about my life and her mother and anything I could think to say. When my throat was dry from it, I simply stroked her white muzzle, or brushed her chestnut brown coat until we both slept.replica Rolex
On the fourth morning, when my own odor had become indistinct from the smell of the horses, I woke to a beautiful sight. There was Sprite, standing on her own spindly legs, nudging me gently with her nose to get up.
Without a word, I opened the gate, and for the first time since her birth, she led me outside into the cool morning air, where she began to bounce and kick and just be the baby that she was.
Something in her eyes had changed, too. They were brighter and filled with the wonder of being alive. It was as though that empty place in her heart had been filled.
From then on, Sprite lived as though she was making up for the time she had missed. She ran as though she had wings and, when she was big enough, let herself be rode with a gentleness I had seldom seen. And every morning, she reminded me of our special bond. Though I no longer slept in the stables — much to my husband’s relief — Sprite slipped her restraints and waited by my window until I woke up to greet her.
相关的主题文章：

父爱如禅

At first glance, Ronny looked like every other kid in the first-grade classroom where I volunteered as the Reading Mom. Wind-blown hair, scuffed shoes, a little bit of dirt behind his ears, some kind of sandwich smear around his mouth.
On closer inspection, though, the layer of dirt on Ronny’s face, the crusty nose, and the packed grime under his fingernails told me he didn’t get dirty at school. He arrived that way.
His clothes were ragged and mismatched, his sneakers had string for laces, and his backpack was no more than a plastic shopping bag.
Along with his outward appearance, Ronny stood apart from his classmates in other ways, too. He had a speech impediment, wasn’t reading or writing at grade-level, and had already been held back a year, making him eight-years-old in the first grade. His home life was a shambles with transient parents who uprooted him at their whim. He had yet to live a full year in any one place.
I quickly learned that beneath his grungy exterior, Ronny possessed a spark, a resilience that I’d never seen in a child who faced such tremendous odds. wow Power levelinG
I worked with all the students in Ronny’s class on a one-on-one basis to improve their reading skills. Each day, Ronny’s head twisted around as I came into the classroom, and his eyes followed me as I set up in a corner, imploring, “Pick me! Pick me!” Of course I couldn’t pick him every day. Other kids needed my help, too.
On the days when it was Ronny’s turn, I’d give him a silent nod, and he’d fly out of his chair and bound across the room in a blink. He sat awfully close — too close for me in the beginning, I must admit — and opened the book we were tackling as if he were unearthing a treasure the world had never seen.
I watched his dirt-caked fingers move slowly under each letter as he struggled to sound out “Bud the Sub.” It sounded more like “Baw Daw Saw” when he said it because of his speech impediment and his difficulty with the alphabet.wow Power leveling
Each word offered a challenge and a triumph wrapped as one; Ronny painstakingly sounded out each letter, then tried to put them together to form a word. Regardless if “ball” ended up as Bah-lah or “bow,” the biggest grin would spread across his face, and his eyes would twinkle and overflow with pride. It broke my heart each and every time. I just wanted to whisk him out of his life, take him home, clean him up and love him.
Many nights, after I’d tucked my own children into bed, I’d sit and think about Ronny. Where was he? Was he safe? Was he reading a book by flashlight under the blan-kets? Did he even have blankets?
The year passed quickly and Ronny had made some progress but hardly enough to bring him up to grade level. He was the only one who didn’t know that, though. A
s far as he knew, he read just fine.
A few weeks before the school year ended, I held an awards ceremony. I had treats, gifts and certificates of achievement for everyone: Best Sounder-Outer, Most Expressive, Loudest Reader, Fastest Page-Turner.
It took me awhile to figure out where Ronny fit; I needed something positive, but there wasn’t really much. I finally decided on “Most Improved Reader” — quite a stretch, but I thought it would do him a world of good to hear. cronous cro
I presented Ronny with his certificate and a book — one of those Little Golden Books that cost forty-nine cents at the grocery store checkout. Tears rolled down his cheeks, streaking the ever-permanent layer of dirt as he clutched the book to his chest and floated back to his seat. I choked back the lump that rose in my throat.
I stayed with the class for most of the day; Ronny never let go of the book, not once. It never left his hands.
A few days later, I returned to the school to visit. I noticed Ronny on a bench near the playground, the book open in his lap. I could see his lips move as he read to himself wedding dresses
His teacher appeared beside me. “He hasn’t put that book down since you gave it to him. He wears it like a shirt, close to his heart. Did you know that’s the first book he’s ever actually owned?”
Fighting back tears, I approached Ronny and watched over his shoulder as his grimy finger moved slowly across the page. I placed my hand on his shoulder and asked, “Will you read me your book, Ronny?” He glanced up, squinted into the sun, and scooted over on the bench to make room for me.
And then, for the next few minutes, he read to me with more expression, clarity, and ease than I’d ever thought possible from him. The pages were already dog-eared, like the book had been read thousands of times already.
When he finished reading, Ronny closed his book, stroked the cover with his grubby hand and said with great satisfaction, “Good book.”
A quiet pride settled over us as we sat on that play-ground bench, Ronny’s hand now in mine. I at once wept and marveled at the young boy beside me. What a powerful contribution the author of that Little Golden Book had made in the life of a disadvantaged child.
At that moment, I knew I would get serious about my own writing career and do what that author had done, and probably still does — care enough to write a story that changes a child’s life, care enough to make a difference.
I strive to be that author.
相关的主题文章：

The Little Girl Who Dared To Wish

Hello: it wanted to know if they can help me. They offer me a ring honor totemkopf with the inscription A. Müller 08.10.42 with certification of Detlev Niemann’s genuineness. I do not have photos, but actually it is not his aspect but it is the date and the name what they me make doubt his originality. Can it be original with this inscription? Thank you

Hey all.

While browsing around Ebay recently, I found this example: ORIGINAL WWII GERMAN HELMET, M42, SIZE 66 - eBay (item 250723590246 end time Nov-14-10 16:07:22 PST).

Now before the bullets start flying in my direction, let me clarify that I well know that Ebay is a minefield for collectors. This helmet has me stumped, though. It has what appears to be the correct textured paint and inner liner stamp. However, it looks a little too good to be true. Is it real or fake?

I also found another mysterious camo for comparison on a UK site: S and B Collectables | Quality Militaria | Antiques | Vintage Motorcycles | Memorabilia.

Which one is real? And which one, if any, are fake?

I pick up this Franco-Prussian Medal bar the other day. I think that it looks OK, but I would like any input (are the Campaign bars correct?).

Click to enlarge the picture

 

 

 

 

Click to enlarge the picture

 

 

Can anyone tell me about this medal?

Many thanks

Click to enlarge the picture

 

 

 

 

 

 

1st edition,1996- Mr. Mollo’s series of books on the ss have long been known to be just about the best reference on the subject,,,here this volume focus’s on the waffen~SS CUFFTITLES,SPECIALIST BADGES,COLLAR TABS,SHOULDER BOARDS,ETC.,,,,best compendium of this type of reference in my opinion,,,every historian,collector,researcher,of the Third Reich and of the SS in particular,should have these important reference books in their historical research library,,$195.00,,post paid to us and overseas addresses,,,overseas buyers must purchase a registered mail label @$12.80 showing successful delivery of item to their country,,,thanks for looking,,,

Click to enlarge the picture