Read the blog about Sequoia Nature Preserve. Blog: Forest Forever

POST: There’s been a lot of talk lately about cutting down the Sequoia Nature Preserve to make a neighborhood park. The space would include a playground, ball field, picnic area, and soccer field. My feeling is, what about the forest? The Sequoia Nature Preserve is one of the most beautiful places. I’ve spent my childhood exploring it. I can’t imagine the trees being cut down or life without it. The local wildlife would suffer too. Would you really want to destroy the natural habitat of so many animals all for a park?

COMMENT:
We need to encourage kids to get more exercise. New sports facilities would inspire kids to get outside more and get moving. I’m all for it.

RESPONSE:
Exercise is good, no doubt about that, but you don’t need it from sports facilities or team sports. The Sequoia Nature Preserve has miles of paths where people walk, even jog. And when kids are walking in the forest, they area also breathing cleaner air and the surroundings are peaceful—it’s a healthy environment for people to get exercise and just get away from city life.

How does the writer respond in the last paragraph?
She gives reasons for the counterclaim.
She attacks her original claim.
She attacks the counterclaim.
She gives a rebuttal with support.

What to the slave is the fourth of july? by frederick douglass fellow-citizens—pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am i called upon to speak here to-day? what have i, or those i represent, to do with your national independence? are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that declaration of independence, extended to us? and am i, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings, resulting from your independence to us? but, such is not the state of the case. i say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. i am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. the blessings in which you this day rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. the rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. the sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. this fourth of july is yours, not mine. you may rejoice, i must mourn. to drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, i hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are to-day rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. if i do forget, if i do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth! " to forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before god and the world. my subject, then, fellow-citizens, is american slavery. i shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. standing there, identified with the american bondman, making his wrongs mine, i do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this fourth of july. whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. what is one of the lessons douglass impresses on his listeners? a) the nation should not rejoice until everyone has freedom. b) he must speak on the fourth of july in order to bring change. c) for him to join the celebration would be treason. d) he can see the perspective of slaves and citizens with equal clarity.

Must read story will give if ! in “perseverance,” which theme is reflected in the lines, “life’s field will yield as we make it / a harvest of thorns or of flowers”? a: life is a field in which flowers and thorns will grow. b: accept what you are given, because you cannot change it. c: your life is the result of the work you put into it. d: working together people achieve their goals in life.

The duke and the dauphin lie, cheat, and steal for the purposes of their own survival. answers: •true •false