Today was one of the most exciting days, since arriving at this lake house. First surprise of the day was an encounter with a corn snake. Next to it was a weird yellow young tarantula looking spider, as much as I hate to say this, but we will get to that in another blog. Last but not least I finally caught a fish!

 The corn snake was found by my dad trying to move wood around. It was very well camouflaged, so I had a little trouble seeing it at first. The corn snake got its name by its distinctive, nearly checkered pattern of the snake’s belly scales that resembles the kernels of variegated corn. It hunts relatively small prey like mice, rats and other creatures that eat the harvested corn, that are in their size rang. Their length varies from 2 feet to almost 6 feet! They live up to 6-8 years but in captivity they can live up to 23 years (the record for the oldest corn snake in captivity was 32 years). They are also one of the most popular snakes to have as a pet because they are nonvenomous and chill creatures. I even held it, it tried to bite me though, but its mouth was too small for my thumb.

Let’s start with honest graft. First, graft just means abusing your position in office to get money illegally. However honest graft was not illegal during Plunkitt’s time. Basically, he describes it as “He seen his opportunities and he took ’em”. In more depth he would get a, now illegal, tip from one of his political friends placed all throughout New York about a property or item that some people were interested in buying. Plunkitt would buy that item first and then sell it to them at a higher price. For example, let’s say you got a tip that some company was going to expand their business by building new locations. Plunkitt would find the most likely properties that the company would be interested in buying, and he would buy them cheap. Once the company’s decision went public there would be a big scramble to get the properties that Plunkitt had, and he sold them at a price where he could get a lot of profit.

Now dishonest graft is completely different from honest graft. It is the exact meaning of the word graft. Getting money by blackmailing people, stealing from public funds, and some other ways.

I think that Plunkitt was so open about his way of making money, honest graft, because he could not see why so many other politicians used dishonest graft. He said that they were so many opportunities for honest graft that nobody needed dishonest graft to get rich. However, nobody had a bunch of informants like Plunkitt and had no idea who was interested in what. Even if everyone did use honest graft they would certainly be in jail when it was made illegal to give out tips like the ones Plunkitt got.

In conclusion I have talked about honest graft and dishonest graft, and why Plunkitt was so open about how he made money.

My quick answer for both questions is: No. I think that we can all agree that the idea of equally distributing grades on an exam is pretty stupid. Each student studied to achieve a good grade, and they were each rewarded for the level of work that they put into the exam. The whole point of grades is to measure each student’s knowledge for the subject, and the students tried to perfect that knowledge so that they would excel on the test. If the grades were distributed evenly, it would be pointless for the students to really try on their exams, because they would know that they had little to no impact on what grade they would actually receive. This system would result in horrible grades for the entire class, and there wouldn’t be much that the teacher could do about it. The grades would be horrible because there wouldn’t be any incentive for the students to work hard. They wouldn’t be recognized or rewarded for their grades. This isn’t moral at all, because the teacher or the school is taking away a grade that a student earned and redistributing it around the class.

This same thing happens in countries which redistribute income. It’s the same concept, but real money is at stake, instead of a little letter on a piece of paper that supposedly measures your intelligence. When wealth is redistributed in a society, entrepreneurship, innovation, and practically any form of progress comes to a halt. When people aren’t fairly rewarded for their labor, they’re discouraged, and they feel cheated. People don’t want to work as hard anymore, because they realize that it’s mostly pointless. When wealth is equally distributed, there’s no reason for one person to try and work harder than another person. There’s no reason for one entrepreneur to try and make his product better than the other entrepreneurs, because he knows that he won’t be rewarded. Like I said, this causes innovation to stop, and the society starts to collapse. Not only is redistributing income impractical, it’s immoral, and basically a legal version of theft. Taking someone’s earnings from them and giving them to somebody else is immoral and unfair.

When people aren’t rewarded fairly for their work and their commitment, there’s no reason for them to keep working. At the least, there’s no reason for them to try and do better, to try and become more efficient. This applies to every area where rewards or compensation is given out. This includes school, work, chores everything. So basically, no, it’s not moral for the state to redistribute wealth, because it discourages entrepreneurship and hard work.

   It’s always good to save money, some people save most of their money while some only save 10%. The fact is a lot of people don’t even save their money they are incapable to give up something, for example, beer, drugs, designer items, video games, the list can go on and on. But we are here to talk about what I would have to give up to save 10%. It would be video games.

 I don’t really make a lot of money, I barely do. But what I did before this whole look down happened was acting. What I mean by that is commercials, photo shoots for companies like Disney to advertise. I usually would get 2 to 3 a year and they usually pay around 800 or more or less. Last year I made around 1900 and 10% of that is 190. But my annual income may very on the how much the one job paid and how many I got but we are going to use last year. I spend a lot of money on video games or stuff for video games but what would get closer to 190 would be buying food from restaurants. Don’t get me wrong I do need to stop buying video games or anything to do with that or at least cut down a lot. But buying food I need to stop there is no point as long as I’m under 18 my parents cook for me every day the only reason, I do get it is because I sometimes don’t like it.

   In conclusion I need to cut down on video game spending and buying food.

When Northup was separated, he had no chance to say goodbye to his family. He was kidnapped during an outing to play the violin. He was hoping to see if anyone would like to hire him to play music for them. Before all of this, his wife had gone to this southern state to see if they needed a musician, and so she thought this would be a good place to send her husband not thinking anything bad would happen to him. He set off going to the place where he was supposed to meet these men. However, they moved places and promised they would pay the expected amount and he thought it was a good thing. He didn’t think to tell his wife where he went to but that turned out to be a big mistake because he thought it would be a quick performance, but that’s where he was wrong. The people took him out of New York and kidnapped him to Georgia. There they tried to break his spirit and try to force him to think that he was a run-away slave from Georgia, but he didn’t break. They still sold him anyway. He was distraught because he thought he would never see his children again and just very sad. He thought about how he should have spent more time with them. “My cup of sorrow was full to overflowing. Then I lifted up my hands to God, and in the still watches of the night, surrounded by the sleeping forms of my companions, begged for mercy on the poor, for[1]saken captive. To the Almighty Father of us all—the freeman and the slave—I poured forth the supplications of a broken spirit, imploring strength from on high to bear up against the burden of my troubles, until the morning light aroused the slumbers, ushering in another day of bondage.”

As for Eliza, she was a slave, but she was with a very rich master that provided everything and more. This made being a slave to him more of a luxury in comparison to other slave owners. This was the closest thing to being free and she was basically a maid or a person that cleaned the house for him. Then she had three children and her oldest child, which I think was twelve at the time, was sold to a man, a day’s ride away from her master’s home. She was very sad and wanted to see her child which she felt that she would never see them again. So, she went to her master and begged to see her child before she was gone for good. “Eliza never after saw or heard of Emily or Randall. Day nor night, however, where they ever absent from her memory. In the cotton field, in the cabin, always and everywhere, she was talking of them—often to them, as if they were actually present. Only when absorbed in that illusion, or asleep, did she ever have a moment’s comfort afterwards.”

 It seems to me that Eliza was crushed without her children and Thomas was full of regrets of not being with them more.

When people don’t put their energy, focus, and time into something, they never will ever get stuff done.  They might have amazing ideas about different businesses they could start, things that they could do, or people they could be, but without going the extra mile, they will always lack the determination and motivation to achieve their goals.

When you go the extra mile, you will never do things sloppy. You will put your full attention and energy into your work. Going the extra mile would mean that if you get off at 5:00 p.m. but there is still more work to be done, instead of always running away from what you are doing, you stay and finish the task you have left. Instead of only helping customers that you know will provide profit, you should help every customer, even if it means referring them to another business or just being friendly. By going the extra mile, I could get more things done each day, have more time to do things that matter to me later, and achieve my goals faster.

  Well first and foremost, I wouldn’t want to sell my business for any amount of money, because if I do start one it will be my passion, something I love doing not for the money but for the purpose. Nonetheless if I ever do this, this is how much, and what I would do.

  I would have to be making a profit of at least 15 million a year. Well, that’s if I ever do get that big (I was going to say I hope so, but I believe I can achieve that and higher). I’ve always wanted to travel the world, every bit of it! Climb mountains, scuba dive in colorful coral reefs, skydive, and do/witness many more amazing things. That’s probably what I would do and if you’re wondering what I would spend my money on, most likely cars, super cars, hyper cars, J.D.M. cars (Japanese domestic market), maybe make a few sleeper cars (which is a car that doesn’t look fast but is actually really fast) that I would modify myself and, in the process, learn how cars work and how its built.

  With all that said, I mostly likely will never sell my business, and if I do, I wouldn’t sell It, I would give it to my kids when I pass on. But I’m still going to find time to do all of the things I mentioned. Well, I hope to have what I just shared with you and much more and I will be striving towards it every day.

How you can just laugh and be happy and content with the world around you when you finally let go to the path of the warrior. But the journey getting there won’t be easy at all! There will be a lot of hardships, points where you feel like you’re going to die, and it will take a lot of your will but it’s the journey where you will learn the most, and to value life and really enjoy the world around you.

First you must let go of the shallow world you perceive yourself in and open your awareness to see what life truly has to offer. Once you do get to that point where you can just sit for hours and listen to the wind and the trees talking and even being able to jump remarkably high with an enough practice. But to get there you must let go of the life you have been accustomed to and expand into the world around you and see what the human body/mind can really accomplish and just be happy with where you’re at with your life and love every moment you are living. Most people cannot do it, they just can’t see anything else; they can’t imagine anything other than their regular schedule wake-up-go-to-work come back, sit and watch tv, rinse and repeat until the weekends. It isn’t a bad thing going out with family and having BBQs, but when you hate Mondays you need to question how you are living . You should love every day and wake up, be happy, and thankful you get to live another day on planet earth. Go out and seek whatever is your passion . I’m still working on my self so I can come close to being able to be content with what I have and being able to just let go and be happy even if I have nothing.

This is why I also would like to one day become a warrior myself and be able to sit outside for hours and look up into the sky not having to entertain myself with my phone or any materialistic items and just be happy in that moment, and happy with my self.

Having a heart attack is no easy feat to recover from, some people don’t even get the chance to see the light of day again. Jim Lehrer’s heart attack was life changing for him but not in a bad way. Today I will be discussing some of the good things that came from his heart attack. 

The first thing he did, was set lists for himself to accomplish. Starting with food and over all body heath department he said in his book “Never, ever smoke again, never get angry again, never again eat barbecue, pizza, hamburgers, French fries, chocolate fudge, Milky ways, Butterfinger chips or Tex-Mex food, exercise regularly and exhaustingly, take a nap every day.” Next is a list of bus signs he wanted to collect “Overland Greyhound, Bowen Motor Coaches, Southeastern Stages, American Buslines, Dixie-Sunshine Trailways.” The last list is the major priorities he will do every day in every way “love, relax, write.” Later he was thinking that stress might have caused the heart attack, so he wrote another list to stop the things that stress him out “riding the Eastern Shuttle to New York, going to big cocktail parties, going to small cocktail parties, talking on the telephone, driving to work, listening to whining grown-ups.”

Now that this is out of the way let us start the good things that came from his heart attack. On Christmas day the president of the united states called him, and he talked with Mr. Reagen like a normal person for about 90 seconds. The second thing is he started to write fiction again, because he didn’t know how long he could live for, could be 5 years or shorter, so he decided to pick it back up again. He started to have pain in his chest again which indicates that he’s going to have another heart attack, so he had to go to the hospital and the doctor told him had to get a bypass operation. He asked the surgeon what’s his success rate and the surgeon said “98%”. After the operation, the desire to smoke was gone even after 30 years of smoking. While he was recovering, he went to this gym where he met three men, eventually getting really close to them. They also were recovering from near death experiences too and began all working out together. They shared everything together and the communication they had was vital to his recovery.

As stated in his lists, he pursued a complete dietary transformation; he listed all the things he had ate since he was 15 and had to stop eating them (they were all junk food) and made a new list of foods he had to eat. This list is going to take time for him to like it and he will have to self-discipline himself from a lifetime of bad eating habits. After some time in recovery, he started to work again because he got a call saying they needed him, so he started off slowly with only telephone conferences. After a little bit of working from home he felt he was ready to go back to work fully, so he put on his cloths and drove into town to the studio. The next step was for him to go to the nightly news.

Little by little he made a recovery back to a normal workload. Later he got the idea for a documentary about his heart attack. It was called “My Heart Your Heart”. He did the documentary to get people to think about their hearts, eating, behaviors, and if their lifestyles were calling their life expectancy in to question. After the documentary was made and it aired to the public, he got a lot of good feedback. He considers that as one of the best things he has done in his life and that it probably saved at least 1 to many lives!   

My life is not that eventful, but there are a few moments that spoke to me. Today I will be telling you my experiences that came to my headfirst. The first story starts 3 years back, I was in 6^th grade and lived in Clearwater, Florida.

My day started off normal, I woke up and did school work (I was home schooled for 6^th grade). Later my family and I went out to the beach on our bikes that were supplied by the homeowners of the house we lived in. We rode our bikes on this bike trail by our house, it is a 40-mile strip of asphalt that goes through downtown and passes by a library my brother and I used to go to. The 40-mile strip also brings us close to the beach but after 3 miles we must break away from it to cross a high bridge (remember the bridge it plays a big part in this story). After we cross it, it is basically a straight way to the beach. On our way back while we cross the bridge little me likes to take the down part of the bridge at full speed, so while I am going down the bridge, probably at 30 miles an hour, I see three people taking up the sidewalk but one of them moved opening up a gap for me to go through, so I kept going. When I was close they closed my gap, and I did not have time to break. I am not sure what I did at that moment, but I think I jumped off my bike, I am still not sure to this day. When I opened my eyes, I saw my compass on the ground rolling away from me, I also saw my brother zoom by me. I got up and the people I jumped off my bike for asked if I was ok and I really was not. I was crying because it hurt, my shirt was ripped and I had cuts and scrapes all over my body. My parents finally made it to me and came to ask what happened and they talked to the people and told them I was going to be ok and the people left. My foot hurt bad and I could not walk on it, but my dad told me I had to bike back. When I got back my mom and I went to the ER to see if my foot was broken, but it wasn’t, it was just badly bruised; they gave me crutches and I left. I could not walk for a few days after that (coMra certainly helped speed up the healing process). I was fine after all, moral of the story do not thread the needle when you don’t have to.

The next story was when I was doing acting as most of my best experiences came from my acting jobs. My family and I got a shoot in Mexico. At that time my dad was traveling the United States, so we were not together when we were flying there from Florida. They paid for everything, our plane tickets, hotel room and food (the shoot was about a resort In Mexico, so we stayed there and had VIP access). Before we took off from our connecting flight in Atlanta, Georgia, our flight got delayed and we had to wait in the plane for the crew to fix something on the wing. When we got to Mexico City, we missed our flight because of the delay and they were no flights after that, so we had to call the people that booked us, and they hired a driver to take us to Ixtapa. IT WAS AN 8 HOUR DRIVE! The drive was nice though as we drove through mountains and saw Mexico’s true colors. We arrived at the resort at night, my dad was waiting for us there as he flew from Toronto, Canada. The next few days we were working, the staff was nice and got us Mexican candy which is spicy and food and pina coladas which is the only thing I drank, I do not remember drinking water. The food was amazing and delicious. We went to the beach and boogie boarded on big waves, my brother wiped out nasty on the sand; he was fine though. The rooms were amazing with the view of the mountains and the beach. The trip was fun and Mexico is beautiful, I highly recommend visiting Ixtapa, Mexico.

     My last story happened 2 months ago, it was December 2020 and my family and I were getting ready to go to Clayton, Georgia, a mountain town. My dad booked us an Airbnb for Christmas. It was a 12-hour drive in a small car with a dog and baby, but we made it work. We did not do the full 12 hours in one day, we stopped at a hotel for a night in Savannah, Georgia. The following morning we got up and drove the rest. We also drove through mountains not as big as the ones in Mexico but still something to look at. The big reason for the trip was to see snow and have a white Christmas. When we got there we unpacked, ate and hung out then fell asleep. When we got up it was raining, and it showed it was going to snow in a place near where we were at. I was telling my dad we should drive there but it could be dangerous because it was cold outside, and the rain could freeze on the ground and the car could slip so we ended up not going. I do not remember what we did for the 24^th, we probably chilled inside the whole day. Around 5 it showed it was going to snow at 6 and we were all excited. When the clock turned 6 it still was raining outside but then around 6:10 it started snowing a lot and stopped raining, we were in a mini snowstorm! My brother and I went outside and started to gather snowballs so when my dad got back from the grocery store, we would throw it at him. When he got back, he put the groceries inside then we had a snowball fight, let our dog outside to run around to play with her going crazy and being all frisky, it was a lot of fun. Christmas morning everything was covered in snow, it was a white Christmas we asked for. The presents were amazing too, I got a handy pocketknife that had a flashlight, glass breaker and a fire starter, a hoodie I had to return because it was too small and one more gift. That was the best gift of all: a gaming computer! It had good specs, it was fast, and I could not wait to play video games on it. I immediately opened it up, set it up and started downloading games on it. I am using it right now to write this. This was the best Christmas ever!   

Well, these are my three stories that spoke to me. I hope you enjoyed reading of my adventures, until next time!