Another Monday, Nov 28 In class exercise

Possible shark attack occurs at Village Beach

AMITY - Following the death of Christine Watson Sunday night, 10-year-old Alex Kitner appears to have been killed in a vicious and unprovoked shark attack off the waters of Village Beach today.

Kitner, who was visiting the beach with his mother Marion Kitner, had asked his mother for ten more minutes in the water before grabbing a yellow rubber float and running into the ocean, according to several witnesses.

He had been floating on the raft at crowded Village Beach around 2 p.m. when the apparent attack occurred. Several children were close by in the water at the time of the attack.

Beach goers heard screams from the children and witnessed commotion in the water, running to the edge in search of their children.

Kitner’s damaged raft floated ashore shortly after the incident with what appeared to be a giant bite taken out of it and bloodied water surrounding it. His body, however, has not been recovered.

Kitner’s mother, who was at the beach at the time of her son’s disappearance, is being treated for shock at Amity General Hospital, where she is in fair condition.

A black Labrador retriever, named Pippet, has also been reported missing.

There were no other injuries.

Amity Police Chief Martin Brody believes the Watson death may be linked to the possible shark activities in the vicinity of Amity. The investigation into the incidents is ongoing.

A special meeting will be held by the mayor, police chief, and the Amity Board of Selectmen at 6 p.m. today in Town Hall to discuss Police Chief Brody’s plan to close the beaches on July 4, the Kitner family reward of $3,000 for capture of perpetrators, and the offer by fisherman Ben Quint to hunt down the shark thought to be the perpetrator of this tragic incident.

Monday, Nov 28 In class exercise

Death of teenage girl found on beach being investigated

AMITY - The body of a teenage girl was found early this morning washed up on the beach after a brief search by the Amity Village Police Department.

The girl, identified as that of Christine Watson, was reported missing at 6 a.m. this morning by Christopher Hoggenbottam III, a former resident of the island and sophomore at Trinity College.

Watson, a 17-year-old resident of the island and senior at Amity High School, was last seen alive leaving a beach party with Hoggenbottam around 11 p.m. Sunday.

According to the Amity Police Chief Martin Brody, Watson decided to go swimming and entered the water at a remote section of South Beach, near the South Beach Shoal bell buoy.

According to the local weather report, the weather was clear and the seas were calm when Watson entered the water.

When Watson, a member of AHS’s varsity swim team and lifeguard at the Amity Island YMCA, did not return from the water, a concerned Hoggenbottam notified police officials.

Witnesses told police investigators that both teenagers had been drinking heavily and possibly smoking marijuana throughout the course of the evening.

Her body was found severely mauled by an attacker of unknown origin and was transported to the coroner’s office for autopsy shortly after it was discovered.

The medical examiner assigned to the case, Dr. Robert Nevin, said that it is likely Watson was killed due to a motorboat accident, explaining she could've easily gotten caught in the propeller. According to Dr. Nevin, "her body appeared just like every other body in a motorboat accident."

As of yet, no charges have been filed in the case, and police are continuing to investigate the incident involving Watson’s death.

Although a shark attack has not been confirmed nor denied, Brody wants to assure all residents and visitors that they are in no threat of danger.

He confirmed that “our lovely beaches will remain open for swimming pending the outcome of the investigation.”

Letter to accompany my application!

My name is Catherine Kolnaski and I am currently a student at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire. I am writing to you about my interest and application for the Development Editor K12 Assistant position that you are hiring for. I have been studying English and Education while at UNH and have a love for children and education that has grown over the course of my time here in New Hampshire.

I came across this position through an online posting and was immediately interested because it combines the two things I want to do in my life: work in publishing and work in education. I have always loved reading and writing and have wanted to pursue a career in publishing since I started my education at UNH. Pearson Higher ED is not just a reputable and respectable publishing company, but to me, it is the ideal workplace. I have spent almost over seven years working with children, volunteering at schools, teaching lessons, and for the past six years I have taught tennis to children ages four through sixteen. I have developed an understanding and love for children of all ages and it is my dream to work in a field that allows me to help them. Since my other passion, besides children, is reading and writing, this position would be an amazing opportunity for me to work in an environment devoted to education and children. I feel my background in teaching children tennis has given me an understanding of how children behave outside of the classroom in a fun, yet still educational, environment. My experience inside classrooms, as a volunteer, aid, and participant in an internship, has given me the knowledge of how to run a classroom and how to be a good, impactful teacher. I believe my knowledge experiences will allow me to help Pearson Higher ED and I am most definitely willing and eager to learn more as I grow as an adult.

I would be incredibly grateful for an opportunity to interview for the position and talk with you about my experiences and hopefully you will be able to see how truly passionate I am about children, reading, writing, and I will be that way about Pearson as well. My goal in life is to improve education and improve children’s lives and I believe that if I am an employee of Pearson, I can help to do that. Thank you for your time and consideration!

Sincerely,

Catherine Kolnaski

Wednesday, Nov 16

There's an article in the NYT today about a Nashville bookstore that is set to open today! The article, titled "Novelist Fights the Tide by Opening a Bookstore", is about the woman behind the opening, author Ann Patchett. Although I haven't read any of her books, I think what she is doing is really great. The article says how Nashville was once the "Athens of the South" because of its rich cultural tradition. I've been to Nashville a few times and it is an absolutely beautiful city - street cleaners clean the streets every night! Apparently there are very few bookstores left in the city, which to me, a HUGE book lover, is really really sad. However, I hope that the efforts of this woman help return some of that rich cultural tradition back to Nashville. The article also mentions RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth, which I didn't realize needs $100,000 to stay in business. Over 150 people packed inside the store last week "to discuss its fate." It would be really upsetting to love RiverRun so I'm thinking about getting some of my friends to see if we can help out in any way possible!

Tuesday, Nov 15

I know we are supposed to stay away from writing about sports but I couldn't help myself when I saw that one of the articles in the NYT today was about the situation the NBA and all of the people affiliated with the NBA are going through. Apparently, the union representing the players in the NBA "formally disbanded" Monday, saying it would take the league's owners into federal court. Ultimately, it is looking like there is going to be little to no season this year. Apparently the players want to sue, claiming the league's 4.5 month lockout is illegal. There's a lot of stuff I don't really understand with this whole lockout going on but ultimately, it discourages me. The reason I wanted to write about this is because I just find it hard to believe that these players need to be paid anymore than they already are. Do they really need more money? Maybe there is a deeper issue to this whole situation that I am missing, but as of now, I cannot see it. I mean, I understand that if the league has to make sacrifices financially (which would in turn come out of players' salaries), then yes, that's a little upsetting, but when compared with almost every other occupation, I'm assuming those players will still be pretty well off. All in all, I'm one of those people who feel professional athletes are paid way too much money (money that could be spent on many other things), but we are a nation that has high regards for both entertainment and sports. Oh well! We'll see what happens!

Monday, Nov 14

It was only a matter of time before the Occupy protests going on all over the United States, focused in major cities, made it's way onto college campuses. There's an article featured in the Nation section of the NYT today about this happening through a group called "Occupy Colleges". Occupy Colleges is a "national group coordinating college-based protesters" and has put up encampments at a handful of colleges throughout the United States including Harvard and various University of California schools. The article explains how the goal of Occupy College organizers is to get more students involved.Several groups of students are protesting tuition increases at their respective schools, but many of these protests have been broken up by police officers, results in arrests oftentimes. There are, however, some groups of protestors that have withstood eviction from their properties, including groups in Oregon where people "staved off eviction on Saturday with the help of hundreds of supporters who poured into two city parks near each other." Ultimately, like I said at the beginning of my blog, it was only a matter of time before students starting protesting as well on their own campuses because there are always things on college campuses that can be improved upon, such as tuition increases. It will be interesting to see how long all of this lasts!

Wednesday, Nov 9

The very first article I saw in today's issue of the NYT had the word A-bomb in the title. Without reading any other titles, I picked up the paper and started reading the story, titled "U.N. Agency Says Iran Data Points to A-Bomb Work". The title alone made me a little nervous just because it mentioned a bomb, but nonetheless, I wanted to read on. Apparently the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report saying because of new evidence the U.N. has amassed it finally made a judgement "in its decade-long struggle to pierce the secrecy surrounding the Iranian program." There are discussions about how to stop the Iranian program, whether by diplomatic pressure, sanctions, sabotage, or even military action. The reporters explain that because of past issues with credibility and false information/reports, the judgment includes a section called "credibility of information". One of the other key things I noted about the information in this article was that the reporters explained how the report laid out how Iran had created computer models of nuclear explosions and they conducted experiments on nuclear triggers. "It said the simulations focused on how shock waves from conventional explosives could compress the spherical fuel at the core of a nuclear device, which starts the chain reaction that ends in nuclear explosion." Yikes! Now that's something to think about.

Tuesday, Nov 8

An article about the death sentence for youths caught my attention in the National section of today's NYT. I'm definitely one of those people who likes watching Law and Order, CSI, etc etc and so naturally, I find stuff like this article really interesting. However, just because I like watching those shows, doesn't mean I've been desensitized to the information presented. For example, this article was about the Supreme Court agreeing to hear cases on whether  sentencing teenagers involved in killings to die in prison is a violation of the Eighth Amendment. Having taken a political science course on the US legal system, I am very much familiar with certain amendments, including this one, and I think the reporter raised a lot of good points about why this might be in violation of that amendment. However, it wasn't until the end of the article that the two cases in question were described. One of the cases is about a boy who was 14 years old when he killed a 52 year old neighbor. He beat the neighbor and set fire to his home after a night of drinking and smoking, causing the neighbor to die of smoke inhalation. To me, although the individual was young and not yet mature, I can't imagine he wasn't aware of what he was doing and therefore, I believe he should be justly punished. Maybe if he's a changed person he deserves to be free one day, but that's an awful crime to commit and after reading the article I was definitely a little disturbed.

Monday, Nov 7

There was an article in the NYT today about the "racial fault line" and what it means to be born along that line. I found the article in the Arts section next to a picture of Jay-Z and Kanye West performing at a concert in New Jersey. The article, titled "Born Along the Racial Fault Line" introduces Mark Whitaker, who wrote a book called My Long Trip Home: A Family Memoir. In my sociology class, we just spent about two weeks discussing race and issues that come with classifying race, discovering race, etc. and many people in my class were shocked to learn that race is a socially constructed institution - it has no scientific evidence, proof, backing, or anything. We, as a society, have created the idea of race and over time, it has just stuck. I found that really interesting and as we further discussed things like the racial fault line, I became more and more interested in the dynamic between interracial couples, families, etc. The article discusses how a child from a white mother and a black father would identify him or her self. I just found a lot of the points made in the article really neat, especially considering everything I've been learning about in regards to race. It's discouraging to think that we have to identify ourselves by our ethnicity or color when in fact, there is no difference between us (race-wise) biologically. Crazy!

Wednesday, Nov 2

This afternoon in my sociology class we were discussing the current state of Greece and its government, economy, etc. My professor explained that if the people of Greece do not approve of the pending bailout, the government and what will basically fail. It's so strange to think of a country or state "failing". The article in the NYT today called "Revolt in Greece on Bailout Vote May Oust Leader" focused on the Prime Minister and the possibility of him being ousted. Having little to no background in economics or politics, except for two political science courses, I don't understand the state of the Greek government nor do I understand how it works. The article did a good job of keeping the information in pretty simple terms so I got the gist of the article. The other article I read was about jeans. An avid jean wearer, I think it is really neat what Levi Strauss is trying to do by creating a nonprofit program that teachers farmers in various countries a new irrigation and "rainwater-capture" technique to reduce the amount of water used in the product of jeans. I really like reading about the things people and companies are trying to do to reduce the amount of resources that we use so often.

Tuesday, Nov 1

I am actually really surprised with the stories featured in the NYT today because they seemed to cover a wider array of topics than they have been covering lately. By this I just mean that there have been a ton of articles about the presidential candidates and topics surrounding that, about the protests all over the country (and world), etc etc. Today I noticed a lot of articles that were about different things. On the front page there were articles about money missing from a brokerage firm, a sexual harassment claim, Haiti's legal system, and even an article about airport travelers and their respective delays. I'm sure if I looked closely enough I'd find articles about the protests and the presidential candidates, but it was refreshing to not be overwhelmed with that information for once. Granted, I couldn't find many positive articles in the NYT today, but at least I got to read about some new things going on in the world. I spent a lot of time reading the article about airport delays because I just booked my flight to Florida for an internship in the spring last night and so I thought that was a cool coincidence.