Reader of Mine,
I was born in Alaska and raised in the little town of Wasilla. It was here that I learned to love hunting and fishing, along with many other outdoor sports, but these are my two favorites. I also started playing hockey while living in Wasilla and continued playing until I joined the military and left to see the world in 1984, and see the world I did. I have been to the following locals while in the US Navy: Italy, France, Spain, Greece, Sicily, Israel, Grenada, Jamaica and the US Virgin Islands and I have driven across the United States twice and the Alcan once. I was well traveled by the time I was twenty-five. I am married to a wonderful woman named Dina and we have four kids between us, his/hers. One of our favorite pastimes is camping and fishing together.
This is my second quarter here at Everett Community College. I am back in school after falling off a ladder and hurting myself in several places, and I have found out that it is true that the shinbone is connected to the knee bone and the knee bone is connected to the hipbone and they all work in conjunction to make some days miserable. I will be having my back operated on this summer so I will not be gracing this campus during the summer quarter.
English 98H has been one of my tougher classes that I have taken here at school due to the complexity of the writing subjects. One of the hardest papers for me to write was the definition paper, which we had to do in week 3. This paper appeared to be very easy at first, and then attempting to write a three-page essay describing one word sank in and I was stressed out about it because of its difficulty. I did finish this paper along with each of the others that had been assigned to us during English 98H with Miss Phebe Shen.
During our time in Englilsh 98H we were required to read two book, Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and The Absolutely True Story of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexi. Both of these books were pleasant to read, yet I found myself drawn more toward Three Cups of Tea due to its writing style. Both of these books dealt with education but in a much different way. Alexi’s book was aimed at young high school while Mortenson’s book was a bit harder, therefore geared towards college and up readers.
I have arrived at my four picks for my E-portfolio by going through all of my papers and picking out the ones that show the most improvement in my writing. I am starting with “An Inventory of Being”, Professor Shen had us write this the first week of class, following this is “Promises”, our second major writing assignment,
Monday, May 31, 2010
Introdution to Inventory of Being
I thought hard about what I would use for our “Writer’s Choice”, and I figured that since I have always enjoyed writing poems that I would enter our very first writing that we did in English 98 and that was “Inventory of Being”, which was done from a skeleton that Professor Shen had given us. I found this an easy, yet difficult paper to write because of the intricacy with which we had to place ideas from our past and our present lives. When we were done with this project I looked at it and was about to throw it away when I realized that I actually liked it. It is not a very long, nor well-written paper, but it is fun to read. Enjoy
Inventory of Being
The Inventory of My Life
I am Glen
I am 45 years old most days
I am a father of two
I am a stepfather of two others
I have two kids that are stepsisters
The other two are stepbrothers
I am an avid angler that likes the rivers and lakes
I use spinners, bait or flies, whatever it takes
I am a college student at this point
I am a man who has his hip pop out of joint
I like driving Chuckanut drive on a sunny day
I love my Golden Retrievers when I play ball with them
I hope to enjoy my golden years, which are creeping up
I believe family comes first
I know that my dogs love me unconditionally
I don’t understand the Obama craze
I really do not understand reality shows, get a life
Every man and woman in the military is a hero to me
I hold my father as a role model above all others
I hate nasty cynical people
I cannot live without the love of family and friends
I spend too much money on gas on a daily basis
Indiana Jones is my hero on the big screen
If I were rich, I wouldn’t let the door hit me as I left for Jamaica
I wish our military were used to guard our shores instead of being overseas
My worst personality quirk is trying to get people to laugh
One bad trait I had until a month ago was biting my nails
Some say I drive too fast in the snow
I plan to get a 2-year degree in Auto CAD. I want to be able to do work in a campground on my laptop
I love to hike and mountain bike,
I have not been able to do either for 3 years
Possibly after my back surgery
I am Glen Remsen, and this is the beginning of the rest of my life
I am Glen
I am 45 years old most days
I am a father of two
I am a stepfather of two others
I have two kids that are stepsisters
The other two are stepbrothers
I am an avid angler that likes the rivers and lakes
I use spinners, bait or flies, whatever it takes
I am a college student at this point
I am a man who has his hip pop out of joint
I like driving Chuckanut drive on a sunny day
I love my Golden Retrievers when I play ball with them
I hope to enjoy my golden years, which are creeping up
I believe family comes first
I know that my dogs love me unconditionally
I don’t understand the Obama craze
I really do not understand reality shows, get a life
Every man and woman in the military is a hero to me
I hold my father as a role model above all others
I hate nasty cynical people
I cannot live without the love of family and friends
I spend too much money on gas on a daily basis
Indiana Jones is my hero on the big screen
If I were rich, I wouldn’t let the door hit me as I left for Jamaica
I wish our military were used to guard our shores instead of being overseas
My worst personality quirk is trying to get people to laugh
One bad trait I had until a month ago was biting my nails
Some say I drive too fast in the snow
I plan to get a 2-year degree in Auto CAD. I want to be able to do work in a campground on my laptop
I love to hike and mountain bike,
I have not been able to do either for 3 years
Possibly after my back surgery
I am Glen Remsen, and this is the beginning of the rest of my life
Introduction to Promises
I have had to make a couple of tough decisions about which paper I am going to ask you to read second and I have decided that my definition paper “Promises” would be a great second paper. We were expected to take one word and turn its definition into a two to three page essay. At first, I thought I would never be able to complete this paper, how was I going to think up enough to say about one word. I found the strength to push on and I believe I have found the true meaning of the word promise, I have now realized how promises have shaped my life and I hope this journey about “Promises” enlightens each person who reads it and they take the word to heart when they do use it in their daily lives.
Promises
Promises,
The word promise is used quite profusely in the English language. There are individuals in this world that take the word promise to heart and will do whatsoever it takes to keep that promise, and others who will promise someone the world just to get what they desire. If a promise has been made to someone, every effort should be made to fulfill said pledge. There is a very old saying, “a person is only as good as his/her word.” A promise was at one point in time considered a binding contract in the courts of law; therefore, there were solemn consequences for breaking a promise. This word has been used inaccurately for the last few decades. Since the early sixties, this word seems to have been “dummied up” for lack of a better phrase, it just doesn’t have the same meaning. Each generation has done its share to the English language. When a person knows the correct definition of a promise, they seem to use it less in the speaking.
In the book Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Mortenson made promises to an array of influential individuals ranging from village elders to U.S. Representative Mary Bono. As an admirable man, Mortenson did everything within his power to keep his promise to whomever he had made the promise. A quote in the book eventually becomes the first day of the rest of Greg Mortenson’s life: ‘“I’m going to build you a school,” he said, not realizing that with those words, the path of his life had just detoured down another trail, a route far more serpentine and arduous than the wrong turns he’d taken since retreating from K2. “I will build a school,” Mortenson said. “I promise. (Mortenson33)” This man apparently knew the meaning of a promise. There seems to be very few people in modern civilization that would go to the lengths that Mortenson did to keep a promise to people half way around the world. Although very few words were spoken at that time, those words would change his life forever. That one promise meant immense things for both Mortenson and the Baltic people.
A promise was made to a five-year-old boy ten years ago after he’d called his father a liar after the original promise had not been kept to its end. I had quit smoking for a few months and had started up again; consequently, when my son saw me washing my truck with a cigarette lit and dangling from my mouth, he screamed from his bedroom window, “you lied to me.” A vow right then that I would quit for good and that was ten years ago, a promise that had been made and it is now being kept for the rest of my life.
In these busy times, people will promise to “call back”, or “stop by”, often times these little promises get broken without the person even realizing the words true meaning . With the changes in modern language, the word promise has become the new contemporary “we’ll see.” The English language has been drastically degraded in the last three or four decades and the improper use of the word promise, is only one of a multitude of words that are being improperly used lately, largely due to the change in attitude. The vast majority of the blame for these changes can be aimed at the hectic pace of our modern society.
Promise is a word that the vast majority of people in the modern world use all of the time without actually thinking about its meaning or content. The Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines promise as (gsr1) a. “A declaration that one will do or refrain from doing something specified. b. A legally binding declaration that gives the person to whom it is made a right to expect or claim the performance or forbearance of a specified act.” That is an intense phrase when a person takes the time to think about it. As a legally binding declaration, this word used to be up-held in courts across the country many years in the past. That was in a previous era.
The word promise is used quite profusely in the English language. There are individuals in this world that take the word promise to heart and will do whatsoever it takes to keep that promise, and others who will promise someone the world just to get what they desire. If a promise has been made to someone, every effort should be made to fulfill said pledge. There is a very old saying, “a person is only as good as his/her word.” A promise was at one point in time considered a binding contract in the courts of law; therefore, there were solemn consequences for breaking a promise. This word has been used inaccurately for the last few decades. Since the early sixties, this word seems to have been “dummied up” for lack of a better phrase, it just doesn’t have the same meaning. Each generation has done its share to the English language. When a person knows the correct definition of a promise, they seem to use it less in the speaking.
In the book Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Mortenson made promises to an array of influential individuals ranging from village elders to U.S. Representative Mary Bono. As an admirable man, Mortenson did everything within his power to keep his promise to whomever he had made the promise. A quote in the book eventually becomes the first day of the rest of Greg Mortenson’s life: ‘“I’m going to build you a school,” he said, not realizing that with those words, the path of his life had just detoured down another trail, a route far more serpentine and arduous than the wrong turns he’d taken since retreating from K2. “I will build a school,” Mortenson said. “I promise. (Mortenson33)” This man apparently knew the meaning of a promise. There seems to be very few people in modern civilization that would go to the lengths that Mortenson did to keep a promise to people half way around the world. Although very few words were spoken at that time, those words would change his life forever. That one promise meant immense things for both Mortenson and the Baltic people.
A promise was made to a five-year-old boy ten years ago after he’d called his father a liar after the original promise had not been kept to its end. I had quit smoking for a few months and had started up again; consequently, when my son saw me washing my truck with a cigarette lit and dangling from my mouth, he screamed from his bedroom window, “you lied to me.” A vow right then that I would quit for good and that was ten years ago, a promise that had been made and it is now being kept for the rest of my life.
In these busy times, people will promise to “call back”, or “stop by”, often times these little promises get broken without the person even realizing the words true meaning . With the changes in modern language, the word promise has become the new contemporary “we’ll see.” The English language has been drastically degraded in the last three or four decades and the improper use of the word promise, is only one of a multitude of words that are being improperly used lately, largely due to the change in attitude. The vast majority of the blame for these changes can be aimed at the hectic pace of our modern society.
Promise is a word that the vast majority of people in the modern world use all of the time without actually thinking about its meaning or content. The Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines promise as (gsr1) a. “A declaration that one will do or refrain from doing something specified. b. A legally binding declaration that gives the person to whom it is made a right to expect or claim the performance or forbearance of a specified act.” That is an intense phrase when a person takes the time to think about it. As a legally binding declaration, this word used to be up-held in courts across the country many years in the past. That was in a previous era.
Introduction to Two Ways to View a River
During week two, we were instructed to read and summarize a short story “Two Ways to View a River,” which was written by Mark Twain(Samuel Clemens). The reason I chose this little summary for my E-portfolio because of the way it paralleled my own life growing up. It also shows the progress of my writing skills as our class has learned about writing at a higher level and the use of different styles of sentence structure. This was a fun summary for me to write because of the nature of the story taking me down memory lane of my own childhood.
Two Ways of Viewing a River
After reading this short story, I put my life in the same boat as Mark Twain. He was looking at the river for the first part of his life as a source of enjoyment. As a young boy, he had most likely spent the majority of his free time at the river fishing and swimming with his friends and having a grand old time. Once he got older and the river became his source of income, he had to put aside his prior life of using the river for pleasure and now he had to study it for dangerous items instead of pretty one. This is where I tie the way my life was to this story.
I grew up in Wasilla Alaska on the banks of a creek and would waste many hours playing around on the lake that our creek flowed from, fishing, waterskiing and swimming. When I left Alaska for the US Navy, I started to view the water in a completely different way for three years.
For a few years I had a nice 28-foot motor home that we had really loved travelling around in. Approximately six months after selling it, I started working at an R.V. repair shop that really changed the way I looked at motor homes, more as a way to make a living instead of pleasure for when you work on them you cannot afford one.
What Clemens really meant at the heart of the story is that people see things differently when they grow up playing in and around what becomes their life’s work, as they get older.
I grew up in Wasilla Alaska on the banks of a creek and would waste many hours playing around on the lake that our creek flowed from, fishing, waterskiing and swimming. When I left Alaska for the US Navy, I started to view the water in a completely different way for three years.
For a few years I had a nice 28-foot motor home that we had really loved travelling around in. Approximately six months after selling it, I started working at an R.V. repair shop that really changed the way I looked at motor homes, more as a way to make a living instead of pleasure for when you work on them you cannot afford one.
What Clemens really meant at the heart of the story is that people see things differently when they grow up playing in and around what becomes their life’s work, as they get older.
Intro to Modifying Firearms Regulations
When we were instructed to write an argument paper for our third writing assignment, the first thought I had was about fishing, and then I changed my mind three times and ended up with a paper titled “Modifying Firearms Regulations.” I believe this paper shows that I have improved in my sentence structure over the last nine weeks as shown with the following exert from my paper. “While I fully support the second amendment, I think that there has to be modifications made to it every once in awhile to keep up with the rapid rate of technology. “ This was a subject that I am very adamant about and would like to see happen in real life. There is no known legal reason for the public to have access to assault weapons and I believe they should be prohibited from public ownership. I hope you enjoy reading and possibly arguing your own idea on this touchy subject.
Modifying Firearms Regulations
Modifying Firearms Regulations,
One of the favorite pastimes of millions of Americans is to head down to the rifle range and fire a few rounds into a target, and many of us like to find a place up in the mountains to shoot. Along with people liking to shoot, many of us also hunt for subsistence or for sport. If not for the Second Amendment, the world would be a much different place. When the second amendment was being put to paper the weapon of choice was a single shot musket which was not an easily concealable weapon. Our ancestors who wrote the constitution could not see what the future would bring in the way of assault weapons and some of the people that would own them. I believe that assault style weapons should be restricted and only the military be able to obtain them. While I fully support the second amendment, I think that there has to be modifications made to it every once in awhile to keep up with technology. It is also my strong believe that every law-abiding citizen should be able to own guns, for there is some truth to the saying “if they outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.”
There have been numerous articles about gun control and the outlawing of guns. It seems to me that there should be a happy medium somewhere between the two topics. What the courts should not attempt to do is completely outlaw guns, for this is something that would just make outlaws out of decent upstanding people and the true criminals would just continue to break the law just as they already are. What should happen is that the manufacturers should be held accountable if they are the distributor of an assault type gun that is used in any murder or assault. In the future it could possibly curtail the number of murders and accidental shootings . If manufacturers had to pay a large fine for each and every time their weapons were used for such a crime I do believe that the companies building these weapons would eventually quit.
My children have been brought up in a different environment than I had; therefore, they were not allowed to start shooting until they were nine years old. For my fifth birthday I was entrusted with my very first .22 caliber rifle which was a single shot and my father was my governing body. He had his rules and no one dared break them for fear of losing privledges and the right to have our gun. If this passage sounds familiar, it is what’s supposed to happen to criminals; however, not everybody that breaks the law learns his/her lesson and continue to break the law. Guns do not kill people! Untrained people and criminals who use guns to kill people has more truth to it.
The Second Amendment gives every citizen the right to bear arms. This phrase has been a hotly debated argument for decades, mainly by the National Rifleman’s Association, of which I am a member. While most of the people opposing the change to the Second Amendment are honest upstanding citizens, there are those arguing for the right to own and use assault weapons for their own reasons. These are the people that are fighting for the legalization of assault weapons, people that are getting prepared for either a civil war are a race war. I have yet to see any reason to own an assault rifle other than a high rate of fire, which is useless for hunting or target shooting.
To keep the criminal element from thinking about using a gun in their criminal pursuits, the penalties for pulling a weapon during a crime should be extremely harsh; along with the penalty for the crime, they should also forfeit other rights, such as search and seizure. What if searches on ex-convicts could be conducted randomly? The police and probation officers are allowed to do random urinalysis's on ex-convicts. Why is it that they cannot do random search and seizure of any weapons while on probation since ex-cons are not supposed to own weapons. That would probably cut down on the murder rate although the lawyers would argue for their civil rights. I am all for civil rights. I am not for criminals getting anything they do not earn just like law-abiding citizens do; nevertheless, I do believe that their rights should be modified considerably to include random searches for five years after getting out of prison. Once they have become a productive citizen for that long they could start to earn rights back, by every year of good behavior on the outside. This would be a good trial program.
Possibly the most common type of shooting, is of the accidental variety and most of these accidents involve automatic or semi-automatic weapons. I have been a gun enthusiast for over 40 years and I have yet to shoot anyone or to have an accidental discharge with my bolt-action rifles, and revolver pistols; furthermore, I have been through three individual training programs for firearms safety for my family as much as for myself. I have always kept my weapons locked up and the ammunition locked in a different room out of sight, so that there will never be an accident in my house. For home protection I have a pistol that has a clip which I keep out of the pistol and the weapon is kept unloaded for safety purposes.
In all of the years I have been shooting and cleaning my weapons I have never thought of using one of them in a crime. With modifications to the constitution regarding machinegun style weapons and the search and seizure of weapons from ex-convicts, we would have a much safer environment for our future generations. Anyone wanting to purchase a weapon should have to go through firearms safety along with showing receipts for gunlocks. I am all for the Second Amendment, but with modifications to make the country a little safer from ourselves.
One of the favorite pastimes of millions of Americans is to head down to the rifle range and fire a few rounds into a target, and many of us like to find a place up in the mountains to shoot. Along with people liking to shoot, many of us also hunt for subsistence or for sport. If not for the Second Amendment, the world would be a much different place. When the second amendment was being put to paper the weapon of choice was a single shot musket which was not an easily concealable weapon. Our ancestors who wrote the constitution could not see what the future would bring in the way of assault weapons and some of the people that would own them. I believe that assault style weapons should be restricted and only the military be able to obtain them. While I fully support the second amendment, I think that there has to be modifications made to it every once in awhile to keep up with technology. It is also my strong believe that every law-abiding citizen should be able to own guns, for there is some truth to the saying “if they outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.”
There have been numerous articles about gun control and the outlawing of guns. It seems to me that there should be a happy medium somewhere between the two topics. What the courts should not attempt to do is completely outlaw guns, for this is something that would just make outlaws out of decent upstanding people and the true criminals would just continue to break the law just as they already are. What should happen is that the manufacturers should be held accountable if they are the distributor of an assault type gun that is used in any murder or assault. In the future it could possibly curtail the number of murders and accidental shootings . If manufacturers had to pay a large fine for each and every time their weapons were used for such a crime I do believe that the companies building these weapons would eventually quit.
My children have been brought up in a different environment than I had; therefore, they were not allowed to start shooting until they were nine years old. For my fifth birthday I was entrusted with my very first .22 caliber rifle which was a single shot and my father was my governing body. He had his rules and no one dared break them for fear of losing privledges and the right to have our gun. If this passage sounds familiar, it is what’s supposed to happen to criminals; however, not everybody that breaks the law learns his/her lesson and continue to break the law. Guns do not kill people! Untrained people and criminals who use guns to kill people has more truth to it.
The Second Amendment gives every citizen the right to bear arms. This phrase has been a hotly debated argument for decades, mainly by the National Rifleman’s Association, of which I am a member. While most of the people opposing the change to the Second Amendment are honest upstanding citizens, there are those arguing for the right to own and use assault weapons for their own reasons. These are the people that are fighting for the legalization of assault weapons, people that are getting prepared for either a civil war are a race war. I have yet to see any reason to own an assault rifle other than a high rate of fire, which is useless for hunting or target shooting.
To keep the criminal element from thinking about using a gun in their criminal pursuits, the penalties for pulling a weapon during a crime should be extremely harsh; along with the penalty for the crime, they should also forfeit other rights, such as search and seizure. What if searches on ex-convicts could be conducted randomly? The police and probation officers are allowed to do random urinalysis's on ex-convicts. Why is it that they cannot do random search and seizure of any weapons while on probation since ex-cons are not supposed to own weapons. That would probably cut down on the murder rate although the lawyers would argue for their civil rights. I am all for civil rights. I am not for criminals getting anything they do not earn just like law-abiding citizens do; nevertheless, I do believe that their rights should be modified considerably to include random searches for five years after getting out of prison. Once they have become a productive citizen for that long they could start to earn rights back, by every year of good behavior on the outside. This would be a good trial program.
Possibly the most common type of shooting, is of the accidental variety and most of these accidents involve automatic or semi-automatic weapons. I have been a gun enthusiast for over 40 years and I have yet to shoot anyone or to have an accidental discharge with my bolt-action rifles, and revolver pistols; furthermore, I have been through three individual training programs for firearms safety for my family as much as for myself. I have always kept my weapons locked up and the ammunition locked in a different room out of sight, so that there will never be an accident in my house. For home protection I have a pistol that has a clip which I keep out of the pistol and the weapon is kept unloaded for safety purposes.
In all of the years I have been shooting and cleaning my weapons I have never thought of using one of them in a crime. With modifications to the constitution regarding machinegun style weapons and the search and seizure of weapons from ex-convicts, we would have a much safer environment for our future generations. Anyone wanting to purchase a weapon should have to go through firearms safety along with showing receipts for gunlocks. I am all for the Second Amendment, but with modifications to make the country a little safer from ourselves.
Finishing the Quarter
Although it is only the end of the quarter, yet it is the beginning of the rest of our lives. I hope you have enjoyed perusing my papers from English 98H; although it hasn’t always been fun working through the stumbling blocks I ran into while writing these papers I have found my way through and will be moving on with my life. I hope that everyone that I have had the pleasure of meeting in this class has a very good college experience and I may run into you during the fall quarter. I am sure that I will be utilizing what I have learned from Phebe Shen in the future and I thank her for the patience of two quarters of English.
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