I recently visited Downtown Disney in Orlando, Florida, and enjoyed the huge Legos ® creations there.
Really, they are tremendously interesting. I kept trying to figure out how someone built them and where they put their first blocks to begin these fun displays.
Here are some of the Legos ® pictures I took:.
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You’ve seen your fair share of messages on t-shirts, and you’ve probably worn a few t-shirts with writing on them.
Sports teams, music groups, camps, and even hospitals put their messages or advertisements on t-shirts.
They are like wearable billboards, and everyone reads them as you walk by. What message do you want to tell people?
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You learn important skills in essay writing that you can apply to other forms of writing, but are essays always the best way to communicate ideas to others?
When Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wanted to save a piece of American history in 1830, what did he do?
Did he write his senator? Take out an ad in the local papers? Write a letter to the editor? Make protest signs?
Although all of those things are legitimate ways of communicating with people, he did none of them yet still succeeded in saving the USS Constitution, an old warship that had fought in the important War of 1812.
How did he do it?
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In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson writes that our “inalienable rights” are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
“Inalienable” means you can’t sell your rights or transfer them to someone else. They’re yours to keep.
But what does “the pursuit of happiness” mean?
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Former U.S. presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson used to be hot rivals but became close friends later in life. In fact, for the last twelve years of their lives, they wrote to each other almost daily. In one letter about a year before his death, Jefferson wished the ailing Adams “nights of rest” and “days of tranquility.”
Near the end of their lives, they wrote to each other that they wanted something very special. Do you know what they wanted?
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True story: I was eating dinner in a restaurant recently when I heard a woman in the booth behind me state, “This is an abomination!”
My ears perked up. My curiosity was piqued. I rarely hear the word “abomination” any more and wondered what could be so horrific as to need that word. I imagined she and her dining partner were reading a magazine article on human trafficking or perhaps watching a YouTube video about persecution in Indonesia.
I strained my ears to learn what she was referring to.
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Many exciting stories have come from scientific ponderings. Take, for instance, Frankenstein. It was written by Mary Shelley while the scientific world debated the idea of reanimation. Could something dead, a frog, perhaps, be reanimated by electricity? And if a frog could be brought back to life, what about a human? And if a human could be brought back to life, does that mean we should?
So Dr. Frankenstein sews together pieces of cadavers and, after many failed attempts, actually brings to life this cobbled-together thing, this human, if you can call it that.
Eighty years later, H. G. Wells is exploring a similar topic in The Island of Dr. Moreau. Can humans and animals be joined together?
Fast-forward 200 years from Shelley’s Frankenstein. What happens if scientists
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Dogs and cats are going places they’ve never gone before. They’re visiting children in daycare, older people in assisted-living facilities, and patients in hospitals.
Love on a Leash is an organization that is filled with therapy pets—pets that are specially trained by their owners to make people happy, reduce stress, and help educate people about the benefits of owning pets.
One fun thing these dogs and cats do is go to school so children can read to them. Children who have trouble reading out loud or who are shy enjoy reading to a dog or cat that will sit there and listen to them.
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One of the first rules story writers learn is this: Show, don’t tell.
What does that mean? Check out the following examples to see what I mean.
When you write a story, try not to tell your readers what your character is feeling, like this:
Jeremy was angry.
Instead, show your character in action, like this:
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In a recent tutorial, you practiced plunging your character into hot water with two powerful methods many writers use. You can find that prompt here.
This week you’ll examine three more methods of getting your main character deep into a story. As Stanley Elkin reveals, “I would never write about someone who is not at the end of his rope.”
