Bedford

Were it not for a web-footed rodent and a haberdashery fad in the eighteenth-century Europe, Minnesota might be a Canadian province today. The beaver, almost as much as the horse, helped shaped the course of early American history. Some Mayflower colonists paid their passage with beaver pelts... But even more influential were the trappers and fur trappers penetrating the great Northern wilderness between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, since it was their presence that helped hold the Near West against British expansion from the north... These men, by making pelts the currency of the wilds, laid the base for a new economy that quickly overwhelmed the old. And all because European men of mode simply had to wear a beaver hat.

Imitation on another small cause producing a large effect:
Were it not for a certain uneducated boy from Illinois, the United States of America would not exist. Abraham Lincoln had such a profound effect on our country and guided her through so much, if he had not been there, America would be split into two or more countries. He was a mostly unknown lawyer from Springfield before he started into politics. He lost many times before becoming the 16th President of the US. He saved the United States from a major disaster. and even though thousands of lives were lost, the slaves were freed and the US was united once again. And all because of a simple self-educated boy from the back-woods of Illinois.

To Build a Fire

When he had recovered his breath and control, he sat up and entertained in his mind the conception of meeting death with dignity. However, the conception did not come to him in such terms. His idea of it was that he had been making a fool of himself, running around like a chicken with its head cut off - such was the simile that occurred to him. Well, he was bound to freeze anyway, and he might as well take it decently. With this new-found peace of mind came the first glimmerings of drowsiness. A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It was like taking an anesthetic. Freezing was not so bad as people thought. There were lots of worse ways to die. (This passage was taken from page 18 of Jack London's To Build a Fire.)


This book was about a big arrogant jerk who gets what he deserves in the end. He is prideful and disregards the advice of the older men who have lived in the freezing climate much longer than him, and he calls them women. He does not think through his actions and does not care about his dog. Pride comes before a fall, and boy did he fall. He froze to death, but not before he learned his lesson. Hopefully, the rest of us will learn from this story and listen to the advice of the people who have lived longer than us and not have to go through what 'the man' did.

Newspaper

Creating a mega-musical is no easy feat, [duh] even in the hands of U2 megastars Bono and The Edge. "Easier than we could have imagined. Harder than we ever thought," says Bono, [that's saying a lot] resting on a Times Square hotel bed near where "Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark" [what an awful name; how can they do that?] is readying for its first preview. "I mean, easier in the sense that the music came to us effortlessly. [I don't believe it] Dreaming up the show, the scale of it, the flying sequences, the pop art opera [oh, great] that it is - that was all pure joy," he adds. "What we didn't realize was how difficult it is to stage this stuff, both technically and financially." [maybe should have looked into that in the beginning.] (Taken from the November 30-December6 edition of Emerald Valley Shopper.)


I looked at this article and thought it sounded odd. I interjected a few comments throughout the article in green. The topic threw me off, since I had never heard of anything like it before and thought it was a crazy idea. It says later that the mega-musical cost an outrageous amount of money to put together. How much did they have to pay just to use the name and how can they create a good play anyway? There have been enough movies, shows, and comic books that a play seems ridiculous to me. Also, a musical hero show? Come on. Imagine: Spider-man swinging from his webs singing a heavy rock version of, "The itsy bitsy spider crawled up the water spout..." Ha, ha, ha. Seriously.