The Blizzard Voices, By Ted Kooser

The voice of vocation is mostly discerned through the heart; therefore, one must consciously be aware of the matters that occupy the heart. In John Neafsey’s “A Sacred Voice Is Calling,” Neafsey asserts “The voice of vocation is the voice of God” (Neafsey, 6). By hearing the voice of God, we’re able to reach the destiny God predestined us for in life and especially in our vocations. In order to hear the voice of God, you have to be able to discern between the many voices you hear every day, the voice of your conscience, and God’s voice. You do so by: consistently managing the matters of the heart- monitoring what you allow to physically and mentally enter into your heart, learning to discern between those things by familiarizing yourself with

Jim Heynen describes, “How beautiful! People said when things outside started to shine with ice. But the freezing rain kept coming.” The story, “What Happened During the Ice Storm” by Jim Heynen, is about farm boys going to collect pheasants in the middle of a raging ice storm. Every animal was safe except for the pheasants. They were frozen in place along the fence and could not see anything through the ice. After a careful analysis of the story, the reader can understand the theme, how people act in challenging situations, and human nature through imagery, diction, and figurative language.

The author’s frightening story, “The Storm” has all the expected things that a good scary story should have. It has a story line that gains suspense throughout the story, there is irony, and there is lots of

The common theme they share is if something needs to be done you have to go and achieve it. In the poem it says “The people I love the best jump into work head first, without dallying in the shallows.” In the poem the last sentence says that the kids are walking through the snow and no person or thing is going to stop them from getting to school. It also states that he has to shovel snow he said “ he could leave it undisturbed” but he said he has obligations and the kids walk down his street to get to the school, he had to get it done so the kids could walk to school. There was another snowfall after he had just got done shoveling snow the first time and he knew that he had to shovel it again so he went outside and shoveled it again. The poem

The Blizzard of 1888 tested how much the human spirit could take. Stacking problems on problems, it was unforgiving to everybody in the area. Though the immigrants who came to the US all took different paths and ended up settling in different places of the Great Plains, in the end they both went through the same cold, unpredictable blizzard.

Some Kind of Courage, is written for children between fifth and eighth grade in terms of

On January 28, 1977 one of the most devastating blizzards occurred in the upstate New York. This occurred around the Buffalo Area. The official arrival time was 11:35 am. Many people had not seen a storm like this before or since this time. This storm was credited of causing 29 deaths. The storm ended on February 1, 1977.

“Don’t look down” the wind whispers tenderly as it blows through my golden trusses. Trifling detailed fragments of snow fall from the skies above, meeting the horizon. They are the calmness in this storm. My storm. The jagged icy glaciers, sharp as a knife, smooth as silk, tower overhead. Every breath I take is a battle, every thought is a war and every step is one closer to the end.

Both texts talk about the negative effects of the wind that spreads chaos throughout California

brings in another style, use of metaphors. The storm is a metaphor used to describe violent and

As a growing topic of discussion, privacy in our society has stirred quite some concern. With the increase of technology and social networking our standards for privacy have been altered and the boundary between privacy and government has been blurred. In the article, Visible Man: Ethics in a World Without Secrets, Peter Singer addresses the different aspects of privacy that are being affected through the use of technology. The role of privacy in a democratic society is a tricky endeavor, however, each individual has a right to privacy. In our society, surveillance undermines privacy and without privacy there can be no democracy.

The book Seize the Storm, is written by Michael Cadnum. I chose this book because my dad actually read this book and told me about it a few years earlier, and found it in the library and it looked cool so why not choose this book. The title of the book “Seize the Storm” just sounds like that would be a great book, which it was, plus the cover looked very cool.

The Great Warming by Brian Fagan claims that environmental changes (most commonly prolonged droughts, El Niños, and La Niñas during the Medieval Warm Period) affect human civilization, including human’s trading abilities, overall movement, and quality of life. He examines the world’s ancient climate warming, known as the Medieval Warming, between the 10th and the 15th centuries, also mentioning the preceding and succeeding centuries. Fagan gathers his research using studies conducted by archaeologists, historians, and paleoclimatologists. Throughout his book, he refers to direct methods to study climate change, such as instrument records and historical documents, and indirect methods, such as ice, deep sea cores, coral records, and tree rings. Fagan digs into the rise and fall of multiple civilizations around the world as an effect of The Medieval Warming Period. As well as examining civilizations across the world, he attempts to connect the climate change patterns during The Medieval Warming Period to the current global warming faced today. The Great Warming discusses positive and negative connections between climate change and human civilizations across the world, starting in Europe and working its way into Asia, North America, South America, Africa, and even covering the arctic ice caps; however, throughout the book, Fagan has a hard time connecting his various ideas back to one main topic and can easily stray from his point about the effects of climate change.

“Endgame: The Calling” was written by James Frey and Nils Johnson-Shelton. The book is about a historical and mythical game called “Endgame”.It is a modern day setting with lots of mystery. In Endgame there are twelve lines of people going way back into ancient times, from those twelve lines come one “Player”. The Player is the one who will decide the fate for the world and their line. No one knows when Endgame would come so every newborn who is a part of that line goes through training for Endgame even if it's not certain that they will be a player. Each line is different in culture, and in training. Each person has to go through gruesome training even with the possibility they might die from it, if they were going to be a player, they had to be ready for it or else their whole line will die and most of the entire world.For example, Sarah of the Cahokian line, learned in her training how to catch an arrow from out of

No storm is experienced the same. Seeing a storm on the horizon has the power to stir up gripping memories, introspective thoughts, and convoluted emotions. The poem “Storm Warnings”, by Adrienne Rich, applies a predictable structure paired with flowing syntax, and ambiguous diction- speaking both of weather and emotions- to illustrate that one cannot avoid the tribulations of life, embodied as the approaching storm, but instead prepare for their arrival.