“A Quilt of a Country” is an essay written by Anna Quindlen after the 9/11 attacks on September 11, 2001. At the beginning of her essay, Quindlen claims that the idea of America is impossible because trying to put all the different types of people in one nation seems like it doesn’t work out. She compares America to quilts because quilts are great pieces of art made by combining parts that don’t seem to go together.
In her essay, she says that America is a failure because of all the bad things such as slavery, burning of the crosses, and the sweatshops but Anna Quindlen argues that “amid all the failures is something spectacularly successful.” Anna Quindlen says that historians worry about Americans clinging to the views of certain groups of people because of the past, for example, white people’s views of black people due to slavery in the past, but Anna Quindlen states that people today are no longer separated and they no longer need to avoid each other. Anna Quindlen concludes her essay by saying that even though the idea of putting different types of people in one country is impossible, it can unite the country if it works.
I read this essay in my English class and I honestly didn’t get what the essay was about for a few days but after reading it more and taking notes, I started to understand it more and I honestly found it kind of interesting. I like how she compared America to quilts because of the diversity.
An easy yet delicious cake recipe fit for beginners and intermediate bakers to use!
Ingredients:
5 eggs
40 grams of brown butter (directions below)
145 grams of sugar
3 grams of salt
20 grams of milk or buttermilk
70 grams of coffee (black coffee is preferred)
135 grams of flour (all purpose flour or cake flour)
5 grams of vanilla extract
Directions for brown butter:
Brown butter is one of my favorite and most crucial ingredients to making a great cake. Heat up your 40 grams of butter in a small saucepan. Don’t be nervous when your butter begins to turn brown. Around 3-4 minutes later, your butter should be a golden brown color and smelling very nutty. From that point on, take it off of the heat and drop in a small icecube. Stir vigorously and after the icecube is incorporated, leave it to cool before using!
Directions for whipped cream and vanilla milk:
Use heavy whipping cream and mix with your electric mixer or hand whisk. Mix and add in sugar and salt until its to your desired consistency and taste. Vanilla milk is just milk with a teaspoon of vanilla! Add in sugar until your desired taste is reached.
Directions for Coffee Cake:
Separate your five eggs into yolks and egg whites. Be careful not to break the yolks and put them into separate bowls.
With your electric mixer or hand whisk, whisk the egg whites until you reach stiff peaks. While mixing, incorporate 80 grams of sugar a bit at a time.
Moving onto the egg yolks, incorporate the rest of the sugar slowly. Add in the vanilla extract and salt while mixing vigorously. Slowly add in 30 grams of the coffee and your milk into the mixture as well. Mix well. (Save the remaining coffee for later)
Preheat the oven to 375 Fahrenheit for 25 minutes
Using a spatula, fold in your egg yolk mixture VERY VERY carefully into your egg whites. Make sure NOT to stir but instead fold the mixture or draw a S over and over until thoroughly incorporated. Stirring will dissolve or pop all of the air bubbles that were created resulting in a denser cake.
Slowly add in your flour a bit at a time, be careful to make you sure FOLD and NOT STIR the mixture.
Grease your cake mold with butter or line with parchment paper.
After mixing well, pour the cake batter slowly and carefully into a cake mold. Tap out air bubbles by dropping the mold on a steady counter 3 times.
Place into the oven and wait until fully cooked. Use a toothpick to test if the cake is completely cooked. If there is still wet batter stuck on the toothpick, put it back in for 5 more minutes.
Carefully remove the cake and as soon as it is out, poke a bunch of holes in the cake. Now with the remaining coffee, mix it with sugar and a bit of milk. Brush this onto the cake, making sure it absorbs.
Let it chill before slicing and topping with whipped cream with a side of milk. Enjoy!
Today, I just finished reading a book called Trial of the Sun Queen by Nisha J. Tuli. The book was amazing!
It was about a young girl named Lor, who was imprisoned by the Aurora King. Lor lives with her sister and brother, Willow and Tristan. The book starts with them dreaming about the possibility of escaping this nasty prison, known as Nostraza. But then, Lor starts a fight in the cafeteria room, and she gets sent to the Hollow, a hole in the ground with no food or water for 2 whole weeks. There are also monsters outside of the hole, designed so if the prisoner escapes, they will surely die.
Lor manages to survive 1 week, but one night, a man kidnaps her, and Lor wakes up in a gorgeous bedroom. She is confused how she got there, but she soon realized that she was the last tribute of the Sun Trials. Whoever managed to pass all 3 trials gets to ascend and become the Sun Queen.
The Sun King is known as Atlas, and I think you can tell where this is going. Atlas soon falls in love with Lor, and Lor returns the same feelings. I have to say, I really enjoyed this book the minute I picked it up. The plotline was so addicting! Lor is definitely my kind of girl, headstrong and stubborn. It’s really nice to see everything fall together throughout this book. I love the way the author described all of the characters, so while I am reading, I can imagine what the characters look like, and can start formulating a picture in my mind.
One tip: this book goes by quite slowly. If you are thinking about quitting, don’t! It will get a lot more interesting if you keep reading, trust me. Overall, it was a really decent book! Out of 5 stars, I would give it a 4.7! I can’t wait to read the next book, Trial of the Aurora King!
Tral of the Sun Queen by Nisha J. Tuli is available to download for free from Libby.
Transformers: Rise of Beasts is the newest Transformers movie. Set in Brooklyn, New York in 1994 (7 years after Transformers: Bumblebee but 13 years before the first Transformers movie), we follow older brother, Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos) who tries to help out his single mom and sick younger brother. They don’t have enough money to pay for his brother’s medical bills, so he turns to car stealing for some quick cash. At that moment, Noah meets the Transformers. In order to get home, they need the help of museum employee Elena (Dominique Fishback) and Noah. Noah and Elena have to team up with the Transformers to defeat another evil power, Unicron. The Transformers and their human allies team up with a new species (the Maximals) to save each other’s worlds.
This movie was overall pretty great. I sat in the theater rooting on the protagonists, my mouth was left gaping open and I laughed at a good amount of the jokes there. I managed to jump right into this movie despite not having watched the last four movies of the franchise. In fact, my friend has never seen a single Transformers movie until now, but we both still enjoyed this movie immensely. It was super fun and had good tension, good jokes, and was really immersing.
Transformers: Rise of Beasts stars Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback; the human allies. They were wonderful and really enjoyed watching them throughout the movie but I really wish they had more interaction so they could create a deeper bond. I also wish that the movie was longer as I didn’t feel like there was enough time for all the characters. There were some that I wish had more screen time and interactions. If you were to watch the movies in chronological order, there would be a good amount of characters you would wonder about after. I barely have any information on newly introduced characters. The movie only gives you a good surface view of who the characters are but doesn’t go deep into depth or show you who they really are. However, that would be the only thing that I would improve despite the movie already being two hours long. If the movie was longer, I don’t think I would have minded.
The plot of the movie, character developments, and new characters were really good. The only thing I could have wished for was more character bonding. I would definitely recommend this movie to others, whether they’ve seen previous Transformers movies or not. I did enjoy the movie and I can’t wait to see what comes next in the franchise.
Sword Art Online (SAO), written by Reki Kawahara, is a name that sparks many arguments among anime fans. Some claim it to be one of the greatest shows ever made while others claim that calling it hot garbage is an insult to garbage. Meanwhile, SAO’s YouTube parody counterpart Sword Art Online Abridged tends to be much more beloved by general anime fans with much fewer people complaining about the negative aspects of the show. The review/dissection seeks to examine the two shows to discover why SAO Abridged is considered to be a better show than its original.
Likely the first thing to talk about when discussing why people like SAO Abridged over SAO proper is the characters. In the original Sword Art Online, most of the characters had very, very bland one-dimensional personalities. The general lack of personality in these characters usually meant that the storylines arising from them tended to be rather flat. Additionally, the main protagonist of the series, Kirito, shares this lack of defined personality traits or is at least perceived to. Meanwhile, SAO Abridged infuses even minor one-off characters with personalities. From the NPC Gary and his goal to save his family to the now psychopathic protagonist Kirito every named character in Abridged has personality in spades something which makes it vastly superior to the original.
The next thing to be talked about in SAO Abridged is how it improves upon the character arcs. In SAO Kirito does not have so much a character arc as he effortlessly transforms from a (supposedly) cool loner to a (supposedly) cool loner with a wife, a kid, and a close group of friends. Meanwhile SAO Abridged follows its version of Kirito on his journey to becoming a better person because he frankly is not a good person at the series start. In fact in episode four of Abridged Kirito is described by one of the characters as “like, the worst person I’ve ever met.” However, Abridged improves upon the original SAO by having Kirito struggle through a variety of setbacks to eventually become a better person.
The last thing to talk about with SAO Abridged is the improvements to the story. Now, I’m not going to bring out the dead horse of the community of the “lol I forgot” comment because I disagree with that necessarily being a plot improvement. However, Abridged has many more improvements to the plot beyond the aforementioned scene. For example, episodes five and six are improved by addressing the fact the original show’s version of the plot only works as an idiot plot and in Abridged the plot instead works because Kirito does a wee bit of trolling. Other plot improvements include the removal of the incest subplot (don’t ask if you don’t know) and the fact that Asuna retains her personality in the second arc.
In conclusion there are many a reason SAO Abridged is considered to be superior to its original incarnation, not all of them mentioned here because there are way to many. So to anyone who wants a surprisingly thought provoking series with admittedly raunchy humor I would highly recommend SAO Abridged. And to those who want a power fantasy with a protagonist who is very easy to project onto, I present you with SAO proper.
Today I went to football practice after school and did some drills. The coach had all these drills to do and planned them out. Today is a short day at school so the football practice had to be short too.
The first drill to do are the sprints. This is where you are supposed to run as hard as I can through the 60 yards cones and walk back slowly to pace your heartbeat and on the second sprint I have to run as hard as I can to the cones and slowly walk back the twice as far than last time. So we meet up with the coach and say, “You guys will be doing sprints so be in your lines as fast you can.” Then we all dashed to our lines that we were supposed to be in and started the sprints.
As we finished the sprint I wasn’t actually tired, I thought we could have done more of the sprints and had less walking distance. And I thought of a drill where we have to sprint to the 60 yards cones and only walk half of the distance then we run again. And most of us were not tired so I ran for another one on my own.
The Wright Brothers: How They Invented the Airplane is a Newbery Honor award-winning book by Russell Freedman. This book is about the true story of Wilbur and Orville Wright, who are credited with inventing the first practical airplane.
The Wright brothers were curious about flying machines since they were young, but their first business venture was a printing press, followed by a bicycle shop. When they heard about Otto Lilienthal’s gliding experiments in Germany, their interest in human flight grew. Wilbur wrote that “insects, reptiles, birds and mammals were flying every day at pleasure, it was reasonable to suppose that man might also fly.” Within just a few years, Wilbur and Orville developed a flying machine and became two of the most famous brothers in history.
I did not know much about the Wright brothers before reading this book, so I found it to be very interesting and informative. One of the main things that I learned from this book is how much trial and error the brothers went through. I was also unaware that many people had already tried to make flying machines before the Wright brothers. I was fascinated by the science involved with making an airplane.
I was also impressed by the Wright brothers’ childhood experiences. Wilbur and Orville were very close to each other. Wilbur said that from the time he was a little child, “my brother Orville and myself lived together, played together, worked together and, in fact, thought together.” They did not have any special training in science or engineering. They did not complete high school or attend college. They learned more by teaching themselves than by formal schooling.
Another thing that I enjoyed about this book is that it contains many photographs that were taken by the Wright brothers themselves. The brothers had taken up photography as a hobby long before they invented airplanes. As they experimented with different flying machines, they took many photographs to help them learn from their mistakes. They also wanted to record a photographic history of their work. As a result, we now have many beautiful photographs of their airplanes.
This is an inspiring book because it tells a true story of making something that seems impossible into reality. Through patience and hard work, the Wright brothers became two of the most famous inventors in history. I would recommend this book to anyone.
The Wright Brothers: How They Invented the Airplaneby Russell Freedman is available to check out from the Mission Viejo Library.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, by Holly Jackson, is an enticing young adult novel that all mystery loving teens should consider reading.
Earlier this month, while wandering the seemingly endless aisles of my local bookstore, I came across the section which holds my favorite genre of books: murder mystery. Gazing across the shelves, I noticed the novel, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, and decided to take it home since it was previously recommended to me by a friend.
The book follows an ambitious teen, Pippa Fitz-Amobi, as she attempts to solve a cold case that has impacted her town immensely. Throughout the book, Jackson writes in a captivating and suspenseful tone that makes the book hard to put down.
While I personally loved the story of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, I would not recommend the novel to anyone under the age of 13 as it has some mature themes that are better understood by those who are at least in their teen years. My original desire to read this book stemmed from my interest in criminal justice and a want to see how this theme played out in the characters’ lives; I would recommend the book to anyone feeling the same way.
The story of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder has also been confirmed to be a made for TV adaptation, so I recommend that anyone interested reads the book first!
– Taylor O.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson is available to check out from the Mission Viejo Library. It is also available to download for free from Libby.
I LOVE SURFING! All summer, my family, my friends and I go surfing. Regardless of the fact that we have been surfing for years now, we still go to Doheny Beach because I have been teaching my friends to surf as well. After I teach and surf with my beginner friends, I always ask them if they liked it or not. Here are their (and my) pros and cons of surfing.
Pros
It’s refreshing. The cool water against the hot summer weather makes you feel nice and fresh.
Health benefits. During the summer, most people like to binge out and watch Netflix shows (I am literally doing that right now), but you do have to stay active. Surfing is a great way to get your exercise without going for a run or lifting weights. You have to paddle a lot which really helps your arms. Every summer that my brothers and I have surfed, we have come out with muscles on our arms. It also helps your balance, you have to stand up on a moving board. The amount of core strength and stability that you must have is surprising.
Fun thing to do with friends. I love going out surfing with my friends. It is so fun to cheer when they catch a wave and, I am going to be honest here, make fun of them when they fall. You also get to talk and catch up a lot when you are waiting for the next set (lots of waves in a row).
Wildlife! Even though Doheny Beach is a closed off beach with the rock pier, wildlife still runs rampant. We have seen turtles, sting rays, sand sharks, sea lions, crabs, hermit crabs, sea slugs and so much more!!!! Surfing with sea turtles is the best thing and every surfer I have met has their own names for the 2 turtles that tend to swim by. My brothers and I affectionately call them Benjamin and Carl, but I have met someone who calls the Potato and other quirky names. With wildlife comes…
Respect for Mother Nature. My siblings and I grew up on the beach and have so much respect for nature. While surfing, we pick up every piece of plastic or trash we see floating around. We have learned to watch, but never touch the turtles. To pick up, but never take home or endanger the crabs. To never harm any wildlife. Respect for wildlife is very important and recently people have been acting more and more harsh towards Planet Earth.
Life Skills. You get better posture and learn resilience. The posture comes from all of your standing on the moving board. Resilience is practiced when you fall off or don’t catch a wave, you have to try again.
Cons
You wipe out. I’m just going to go ahead and say it; you will wipe out. You will get water up your nose and sand in places sand is not supposed to be. But you will also get the feeling of flying while you catch a wave.
It’s crowded. No matter which beach you visit, it will be crowded. We live in Southern CA in the summer. You have to learn to live with the other surfers and children. It is worth it though, because sometimes you are the other surfer and/or child and you want to be safe.
It’s hot or cold. I hate wearing wetsuits, so for me the water is either freezing cold or nice. It could be so cold my arms turn red when I am paddling and my teeth chatter as I ride. The temperature outside can be so hot you feel as if you sunburn just stepping out of the car. It is worth it if you wear sunscreen and take proper care of your skin. You also get a nice tan.
You need to practice. Don’t expect to go out, catch a wave and stand up on your first try. Don’t even expect to stand up in your first week! It took me 3 weeks to stand up and 3 summers to catch MOST of the waves I wanted. You need to keep on practicing, however, it’s like riding a bike. You don’t forget how to surf, just how to be good at it.
I love surfing and think that more people should learn how. It’s a great way to hang out with friends, exercise and not get sweaty during the summer. I recommend learning how to surf!!
I would like to start by saying this movie felt like the OG Marvel, this is coming from a huge Marvel fan. I had high expectations going in walking in due to the hype surrounding this movie and when I left the theaters, those expectations were fulfilled. I would say I like the Guardians of the Galaxy but they wouldn’t be my favorite characters in the MCU but after this movie they definitely got higher up on that list.
This movie was oriented mainly on the character Rocket who in the past 2 movies was in denial about who he was. However, we see the backstory of this character and the environment he grew up in, which was harsh and demanding. We see that he was always cunning and smart in how he handled certain situations. It was nice seeing baby Rocket and how he grew up over the years.
The plot of the movie tied perfectly into his character and allowed for more details to pass through such as his previous friends before the guardians being Teefs, Floor, and Lylla. Also, I would like the mention the fighting sequences were AMAZING. This action kept me in my seat HOOKED to the screen whether it was them Starlord and Groot fighting on the High Evolutionary’s ship or the hallway of them all fighting, nonetheless all were amazing.
Usually, I’m a big crier when it comes to movies so I was expecting to cry and well, I did. So many moments when James Gunn really tied the scene together to make it more impactful. When Lylla told Rocket it wasn’t his time to join them yet that really got me and resonated that Lylla was a bigger impact in Rocket’s life then I had anticipated. Another moment was when Rocket went back to save the animals but specifically when he saved the baby raccoons. In that moment, when he read they were raccoons he finally was able to stop his denial and fully accept that he is Rocket the Raccoon.
I had to create a separate section just for this specific moment because it truly encompasses the ties between the Guardians and how they truly are each other’s family. When the audience hears Groot say “I love you guys” and not just “I am Groot,” that truly damaged me. It is said that James Gunn had Vin say it in that manner so that the audience is now a part of this collective “family.” Throughout the movies, the Guardians were able to fully understand what Groot was saying while us, the audience only heard “I am Groot.” I think this process of understanding what Groot is saying essentially means you are a part of the family. To back this up, this new Gamora had no idea what Groot was saying at the beginning of the movie but towards the end she easily catches on and understands what he is saying.
This film was so impactful on the way I understand the Guardians and it deserves the utmost attention. Phase 4 has produced some amazing films and this would rank high on there for me. I would recommend this movie to anyone, but you should first watch the other movies to get general knowledge on the dynamics of the guardians.
-Madison C.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is available to check out from the Mission Viejo Library.
Mission Viejo Library Teen Voice 