My father having recently passed away, I was feeling nostalgic and found myself back in Livingston, haunting some of the old places of my youth: Becker's Farm; the National Little League baseball fields (we called it the sandpit); Northland Pool, and the adjacent water basin with the big painted rock titling rakishly at the far end of the field. The basin is now a soccer field, where I saw several coaches running young girls through various kicking drills. Some of the balls bounced into the concrete culvert which cuts through the center of the field and connects with a smallish drainage pipe—that pipe running under Bryant Drive and into a brook that flows past my boyhood home on McClellan Avenue. The pipe where I stood and watched the girls practice was the big pipe, the tunnel, the entrance to the cave where after forty years I could still stand straight, the sluggish stream of murky water flowing between my feet, and walk comfortably past its graffiti-covered walls rolling under the earth. Between kicks, the girls looked at me strangely, wondering no doubt why this middle-aged ma...
Deep in the American South lies a swamp so vast, so diverse, so mysterious, perspective changes its very nature. The appeal of this swamp, the Okefenokee Swamp, as an inspiration for writers lies not only in its mystery, but also its many faces. Describing the swamp, from its terrain to its inhabitants, authors can bring out its beauty or terror, depending on their purpose. While both Passage 1 and Passage 2 define and describe the Okefenokee Swamp, they differ in their style, intended audience, and general purpose. While Passage 1 attempts to provide an authoritative, objective, and precise description of the swamp, Passage 2 uses descriptive imagery to convey its essence and spirit.
High school sports can have a tremendous effect on not only those who participate but the members of the community in which they participate. These effects can be positive, but they can also be negative. In the book Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger shows that they are often negative in communities where high school sports “keep the town alive” due to the social pressure. In this way, Friday Night Lights gives insight into the effects of high school football being the backbone of a community, revealing that the fate of the individual football players are inadvertently determined by the actions of the townspeople.
Joes High School’s total enrollment consisted of sixteen girls, and twenty boys. Ten of the boys that had enrolled there played basketball. All of the boys were over six feet tall. Lane Sullivan, the new coach of the basketball team, had never even touched a basketball before he started coaching. Sullivan had never coached anything at all before he started coaching the Joes basketball team. In order to gain knowledge about the sport, he got a book about it. He started coaching in 1927, but before the 1928 basketball season, Joes High School didn’t even have a gym. Instead, they’d practice outside on a dirt court, and two times a week they’d take a bus to the nearest gym, which was ten miles away. In order to play home games, the boys had to play in the local dance hall. The “court” was nowhere near regulation size, and the ceiling was so short that the boys couldn’t shoot an arched shot. The people who attended these basketball games had no place to sit and watch the game, the all stood around the edges of the court and on the small stage. Joes High School finally got their own gym around Christmas time because the people of Joes donated their time and material in order to make it happen.
As teenagers, Frazier and his friends began to wonder “What are we doing?”(In Praise of Margins). They now thought that their time spent in the woods was just a waste of time. As an adult, Frazier realized the importance of the time he and his friends spent in the woods after seeing his children playing in the little irrigation ditch. Children live in a world full
The soccer field is the only place he is able to do this, not at school, not at home, and not in his community. Paul has to leave Lake Windsor to be able to play soccer in Tangerine. The kids in Lake Windsor are snotty, rich, and self-centered. But the kids in Tangerine are hard working, resourceful, and proud. During their first soccer game, Paul described the game as, “The Palmetto players got down and dirty right away, and their fans cheered them on.”
Hoffmann, Gregg. Down in the Valley The History of Milwaukee County Stadium. New York: Partners Group, 2003.
1817 to 1825—a period of time that oversaw the presidency of the 5th U.S. president, James Monroe, whose term in office later became known as the Era of Good Feelings. The end of the War of 1812 and the "Era of Good Feelings" are often viewed as a time of cultural, economic and political nationalism; however during the era, the tension between nationalism and sectionalism began to rise. Issues about the tariff and the bank were constantly being fought over, inevitably dividing society. Not only had that split society, but the conflicts of slavery began to greatly rise, which created the problem of sectionalism, which led to Henry Clay’s Missouri Compromise in 1820. Many areas had differing views on slavery and voting, which only strengthened the belief that sectionalism was taking over the smidgeon of nationalism that lingered.
Timeless themes of equality, truth and perseverance are presented in this heartwarming tale of one courageous softball player and the wiffle bat that she adored. It all begins one summer day shortly after Tegan's sixth birthday. The scene opens with the young girl enviously watching a group of children play wiffle ball in the park across the street from her grandmother's house. She furtively glances behind her at the kitchen entrance and listens to the sounds of lunch preparations while contemplating the distance to the door. With a determined look in her eye, she takes a shaky deep breath and dashes out to the park to join the game, all the while looking back and wondering what her grandma would say. She approaches the field and stands by the rusty fence behind the plate. One of the older girls – she looks about ten or twelve – spots Tegan and invites her to join in. The kids show her how to swing the bat and the pitcher starts to toss the ball in her direction; they let her keep swinging until she hits one. When she does, the light wiffle ball catches the wind, floats high in the air, swirls around a bit, and lands two inches from Tegan's feet. After staring at the ball in wonder, she looks up and a slow smile spreads across her face. The other kids laugh and Tegan joins in with glee. The boy at first base looks at his watch and yells, "Hey, it's lunch time," causing all the wiffle ball players to scatter and race home in search of food. The girl that invited Tegan to play tells her to come back tomorrow in the morning to play a game with them and Tegan agrees with an enthusiastic nod of the head. She turns to run back for lunch, and sees her grandmother waiting by the fence.
Coakley (2009) starts off the chapter by introducing how participation in organized sports came about and how gender roles played a major role early on. He describes how most programs were for young boys with the hope that being involved would groom them to become productive in the economy. Girls were usually disregarded and ended up sitting in the stands watching their sibling’s ga...
H.G. Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights brings to mind the cold, autumn nights of 1988 where a town, just like any other rural town in America, was brought together in such a raw and emotional way. From the rise and fall of Boobie Miles to the push for the playoffs, it is clear that 1988 Odessa was swept up in the glory of football to replace the grandeur of the 1950s, which seemed to deteriorate throughout that hectic decade. While a modern reader may view Bissinger’s masterpiece as a tale from a dated and faraway place, several factors have kept it in the public’s eye. What is it about Friday Night Lights that still resonates today? The answer can still be found in the same rural towns of America. Though it may seem incredible, Texas is still football crazy, and it may be fairly concluded that emotions have only slightly receded from the obsession they once held towards high school football. People’s inability to analyze themselves, the impact a community can have on younger generations, and the way priorities can easily be warped all struck me as subjects that have stayed true in Texas culture over the past 26 years. I will be discussing these topics throughout this dissection of Friday Night Lights.
I then sat with a woman who was gazing out of the window. The woman appeared to be in her early eighties, but...
It was two hours before our anticipated game against Manitou Springs, the second ranked team in the state. As I walked through the brick arches I heard nothing but honking traffic from blocks away. I got an eerie feeling when I saw all the smoke coming out of industrial factories, and noticed that no one else was there; I felt like I was in a ghost town. Our team started to go on to the field that we would be playing on to observe the differences in it. As I walked through the gate leading to the field, I was awestruck. It seemed as though this field was the only place in this strange neighborhood privileged enough to receive light from the blazing sun; standing on the field made it seem as though the creepy town had disappeared. The feeling overwhelmed me as I saw the flawless grass outfield and th...
open world, where we see and hear about a lot of things that was not
I’m going to write about my past life and how it has influenced me now that I am older. Most of the bad things I did and most of the good things I did while I was growing up.