Neufeld,+H.

Dear Friend,

I'm sure you have already heard plenty about Emitt Till, but I feel the need to tell someone about my experience at his funeral. It's easier to write a letter to you instead of actually talking to someone about it. The funeral was horrible, to say the least. I will always vividly remember two parts of it: the body and the crying. I had heard that the body was going to be hard to look at, and I had prepared myself for the worst. While it was still heartbreaking to look at was once the face of my old friend, now completely unrecognizable, it was the smell that did me in. It took me completely by surprise, and it made me come back from my almost dream-like state and realize that this was really, truly happening, and that the grotesque mass in front of me had once talked and breathed like the rest of us. Seeing people cry always unnerves me, and having to watch and hear Emitt's mothers uncontrollable weeping did more than that. Having to witness a suddenly childless mother's pain and knowing that it will never really end can break a person. I've always been careful around white people; I guess it's just part of my nature. Now, though, I will try to be invisible. I'm more worried about some of my friends behavior than my own. They say that this injustice shouldn't be happening, and while I know that it shouldn't, I also know that enraging a white person will do nothing to make the situation better. For now we just have to keep our heads down and hope that sanity and decency will come through eventually.

Be careful, Helena.

Helena, I really like your style in this letter. The descriptions are very vivid and you can almost see the funeral just by reading your paragraph. Also, the person's feelings saying how they feel they must be invisible is very creative. It seems very accurate in the feelings that could have been going through other peoples head. Hope

You described the funeral very well. I liked the thought about remembering he was a breathing and talking person. Also, I hadn't even thought about Emitt's mother, and I liked that you mentioned her. I think our description was probably very accurate. Your final thought in the third paragraph was also pretty accurate because I guess that was probably how some people felt, instead of wanting to demand their rights. -Laura Maurer

Nice imagery. You have a good writing style. Keep up the good work. -Kaylin Miley

I was walking my dog in Landis Woods when I heard a loud rustling in the trees, and then my dog got out of his leash and ran towards the noise. I chased him and I came to a large pond with a waterfall. By the pond there was a mime who was crying. I immediately felt sorry for the poor soul, as he looked like a very young mime (perhaps only 8 years old), and I asked him what was the matter. He gestured to his throat to show that he couldn't talk. I looked in my pockets and the only piece of paper I had was the chapter five review, but the young entertainer looked so forlorn that I gave it to him along with my lucky Lisa Frank pencil. He wrote down, "I was performing at a 5-year-olds birthday party when the children became bored with my act and started throwing various gluten-free foods at me. I have cyliac disease, and I'm very sensitive about it, so I left the party. I knew right when I saw those children that they were too uncultured to appreciate me talent, but I had to perform. As I was walking back to the Child Mime Warehouse, a rhino the size of a German Shepard ran out of the bushes and chased after me. I ran for a long time, and finally got away from him here." I was about to give him a reassuring sort of pat on the back and ask for the return of my summary when the rhino, now with a gluten-free corn muffin gouged onto his horn, emerged from under the water. The mime yelped and ran away with my paper in his hand, the miniature beast chasing him, and I was too worried about his well-being to write anything about chapter five for the rest of the day. I was going to write more the next morning, but my cat's head fell off again and I had to hold him while my mother sewed his head back into it's rightful place. I really did do it, though. Just ask the mime.

It's more a matter of survival than a matter of good or evil. One example of the evils of mankind is racism. Humans automatically classify things in order to survive, and one of the ways to classify people is "like me" or "not like me". Racism is one of the forms of this. While it is not fair or kind to do this, it is natural. Everyone is at least a tiny bit racist, because it is the way that the brain works. It becomes a problem when we let this way of thinking become our sole way of thinking, and we act on it in significant ways. Another evil of humanity is greed, which is another way that humans survive. Way back when, people needed to be greedy when it came to food or other necessities to keep from perishing. Although now we, as Americans, have easy access to a large amount of food, the greedy instinct has not worn off. Most of the evils of mankind are merely instincts that we used to need to survive, but now, with survival being much easier then it used to, these instincts cause many problems and are now understood to be unethical and outdated.

As Max's eyes loose all feeling and become blank and lifeless, he is remembering his old pet, Victoria, who he had lost a year earlier. Victoria was a large pot-bellied pig, and she was his pride and joy. She had just been old enough to start participating in all of the most celebrated pig shows, and showed herself to be a fierce competitor, winning many awards for a pig so young. It was clear she was destined for great things, as she had already mastered many talents that it took most pigs years to learn. Victoria had the ability to dance seventeen different dances with grace, paint landscapes that rivaled the works of the masters, and had won three marathons.

Max's great-grandfather had owned the most successful pig in all of history, the Great Darla. In fact, the DeWinter's had acquired their vast fortune by Darla's excellence, and Victoria was her descendant, and it showed. They had the same distinctive, regal look about them that the pig breeders all strived for. Needless to say, Max loved her dearly, and she loved him, too. They went for walks together every day, and she brought him great joy and success. Victoria was the envy of all of his friends and family, and she felt that he was the best owner a pig could have.

One day, while Victoria was practicing doing flips on the balance beam, she fell and was injured. She was to swim the English Channel later that week, and although Max wanted to reschedule, Victoria insisted that she was fine. When the day came, see seemed fully recovered, and as the cheering crowd watched her swim away, it looked as if she would do it in record time.

Just as Victoria was about to reach the halfway point, a boat full of greedy french sailors pulled her into there boat and road off to Monte Carlo. Ever since that day, Maxim has been going to Monte Carlo to find his dear Victoria. The day he finds her will be th day that his hapiness is completed. THE END~