Happy Thanksgiving

The District Learning Project office will be closed Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday.

We've all heard the story of the first Thanksgiving. In 1621, the pilgrims at Plymouth, MA, gave thanks to God for helping them to survive the long New England winter. They celebrated by inviting their Native American neighbors to a feast that lasted for three days.

Although Thanksgiving has been celebrated since that time, it wasn't an official national holiday until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared it, and proclaimed that it should be celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November.

In modern times, most families celebrate Thanksgiving by visiting and enjoying a turkey dinner. Certainly, we at DLP will be enjoying friends, family and food, and we hope that you will be doing the same. Please take the time to reflect on the things for which you are thankful, and remember those who aren't so fortunate.

History and Reading - Gettysburg Address

On this date, November 19, in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln made a speech at the dedication ceremony at the Gettysburg National Cemetary. This speech, called "Lincoln's Little Speech," because of it's short length, has become famous as The Gettysburg Address. This is the text:

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war . . . testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated . . . can endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate . . . we cannot consecrate . . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us . . . that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion . . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom . . . and that government of the people . . . by the people . . . for the people . . . shall not perish from this earth.

Let's look at it one paragraph at a time. Most people have heard "four score and seven years ago," but don't know what it means. A score is 20. Four score is 4 x 20, or 80. Four score and seven is 80 +7, or 87. If we subtract 87 years from the year 1863, we get 1776, the year the Declaration of Independence was signed. Lincoln was saying that, in 1863, the year he gave his famous speech, America had only been a nation for 87 years, and that our nation was founded on the principles of liberty and equality.

In the next two paragraphs, he is acknowleging that the civil war tested whether our nation was strong enough to uphold those founding principles, and that he and the other people were now gathered on part of the battlefield to dedicate the cemetary for the men who died to uphold those principles. He says they are there because it is the right thing to do.

In the fourth paragraph, the president then says that, although they have gathered to dedicate the cemetary, their efforts are small in comparison with the men who died here. The blood and bravery of those men who fought at Gettysburg had already made it hallowed, or sacred, ground. Lincoln goes on to say that in the future, people (us) will not remember the speeches that were given at the dedication ceremony, but they will always remember the Battle of Gettysburg and the men who fought and died there.

In the last paragraph, Lincoln asks that we, as Americans, dedicate our lives to the principles that the founding fathers set out for us, and that, over the years and throughout many battles, our citizens have fought to uphold: a nation where all are welcome, free, and equal.

Science - Uses for Human Hair

People laughed when the suggestion was made to use human hair to soak up the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year, but that idea is not so offbeat. It was also suggested to help with the cleanup of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989.

Try this experiment after your next haircut:
Fill a bucket with water. Add enough cooking oil so that you can see the oil floating in the water. Next, cut the foot off an old pair of nylon stockings (pantyhose), stuff it with hair, and tie the end shut. Put the bundle into the bucket of water and watch it collect the oil. It really works!

Woman have long known that the oil from human hair keeps sewing needles sharp and rust-free. They used to keep the hair from their hairbrushes in "hair catchers," and when they had enough, they would use it to stuff a pincushion.

Human hair has been woven to produce fabric for clothing, and twisted to make rope.

Recently, it has also been used as a substitute for silicon in solar panels.

It also has applications in agriculture and the food industry. It is being woven into mats and uses to keep moisture in and weeds out in gardens and fields around the world. In some countries, because food is scarce and hair is high in protein, oil is separated from hair and processed to become a substitute for soybean oil.

Of course, we can't forget the more obvious uses for human hair. It is still used in wigmaking, and cosmetic testing.

Can you think of any other ways to recycle human hair?

History - Watergate in a Nutshell

It all started in 1972 when a security guard at the Watergate Hotel and Office Complex in Washington, DC, was making his rounds. He discovered several doors with tape over the locks. He removed the tape and moved on. When he came back an hour later, he found more tape over the locks. He called the police.

Five men were arrested for burglarizing an office on the 6th floor. The office belonged to the National Democratic Party. After much investigation, it was discovered that the burglars had ties to the Committee to Re-Elect the President, also known as CRP, or jokingly, CReeP. Many prominent people in Washington were allegedly involved, not only in the conspiracy to commit the burglary, but also in the resulting cover-up. These included some of the president's top aides and advisors, as well as people in the Justice Department, the FBI, and the CIA.

The Watergate Break-In quickly became known as the Watergate Scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. Nixon maintained his innocence to the end, but the Republican Senate voted to remove him from office. Nixon decided to resign rather than be impeached.

Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, uncovered much of the story with the help of an anonymous source who went by the name of Deep Throat. Deep Throat's identity remained secret until 2005, when it was revealed that he was the former Deputy Director of the FBI. Woodward and Bernstein wrote a book about the Watergate Scandal called All the President's Men. It was published in 1974. In 1976, All the President's Men was made into a movie starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.

Writing - More Fun with the English Language

Here are some rules to remember when writing:

1. Don't use no double negatives.
2. About them sentence fragments and pronouns.
3. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
4. Correct spelling is esential.
5. When dangling your participles are in the wrong place.
6. Use your apostrophe's correctly.
7. Don't use commas, that aren't necessary.
8. Proofread you writing.
9. i think case is important.

Remember, you must first know the rules before you can break them!

Reading - Fiction, Nonfiction and Genres

Have you ever gone into a large bookstore and felt completely overwhelmed? It can help if you understand how the books are arranged.

The first thing you should know is that all forms of writing are divided into two groups: fiction and nonfiction.

Fiction is made up.

Nonfiction is true.

Fiction and nonfiction are both divided into subcategories called genres.

A genre is a category.

Fiction is divided into genres such as mystery, science fiction, romance, and drama.

Nonfiction is divided into genres such as biography, how-to, travel, political, history, and self-help.

Fiction and nonfiction are both made up of many, many genres. I've only listed a few. If you're one of those people who says, "I don't like to read," maybe you just haven't found the right genre yet. Think of something you're really interested in, something you would like to know more about. Everyone is interested in something! It could be cars, dogs, cooking, outer space - absolutely anything! There is a book - probably a whole genre out there just waiting for you! And remember - books are like potato chips; one is never enough!

Writing -- A Few Simple Rules

Have you ever noticed that, while your writing teacher corrects your punctuation and your tenses, famous authors use them in novels all the time? If you pay attention, though, those novels are sometimes written from a certain character's point of view, that is, the character is telling the story. Other times, the author only breaks the grammatical rules when he is writing one character's dialog. In these cases, the author is using grammar to reveal details about a character.

Make no mistake. These authors know how to use perfect grammar, but they choose to break the rules in order to let us infer more about a character. You must know the rules before you break them!

Here are some examples of how you can have fun with the rules of grammar:

1. Always avoid alliteration.

2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

3. Avoid cliches like the plague.

4. Employ the vernacular.

5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.

7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

8. Contractions aren't necessary.

9. Foreign words and phrase are not apropos.

10. One should never generalize.

11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

12. Don't be redundant. Don't use words more than necessary. It's highly superfluous.

13. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

14. Be more or less specific.

15. Understatement is always spectacular.

16. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

17. One-word sentences? Elliminate.

18. Analogies are like feathers on a snake.

19. The passive voice is to be avoided.

20. Who needs rhetorical questions?