So What Blog Post
By: Max Blomquist My book “Eliot Ness: The Rise and Fall of an American Hero” ends in a darker tone. After Eliot’s life as an officer was completed he attempted a normal life and succeeded for many years. After a while he lost his touch in the business field and started becoming less focused, and energetic. This really affected his work in corporations and ultimately got him fired. “He hadn’t been on top of things for quite a while.” (page 284) Since his corporate industry goals were now all washed up, he took a step back and started with simpler jobs such as selling electronics, burgers,and working at a bookstore. Even after he knew his career in police was over, he still reached out to former employer Alvin Sutton to see if he could get a job doing some investigating for the police force. Although Alvin liked Ness he couldn’t accept the offer. Then at only 54 years old Eliot suffered a heart attack that ended his life. This book is relevant today because of its historical value. Since it’s a biography it means that it is purely information and doesn’t dramatise the stories about Eliot Ness or Al Capone. Eliot Ness played a large role in taking down one of the biggest criminals in America yet nobody knows about him. His fame was very short-lived and he was quickly forgotten about and irrelevant. Books like these are very important for legends like Ness to have a way of being remembered for the important things he did.
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Current day Connections Blog Post
By: Max Blomquist The book “Eliot Ness: the Rise and Fall of an American Hero” is a biography about a man who, with help of several others, took down Al Capone, one the most well known gangsters in America. Eliot Ness was a very serious and dedicated man, especially when it came to his job at the Bureau of Prohibition. He took this job very seriously and made it his life to enforce prohibition on any and all citizens. In his life he was the golden boy of the Bureau but he died a nobody. Without the headlines he was making every week the public quickly forgot about his large part in taking down the most well known criminals of the twenties. It wasn’t until he and Oscar Fraley worked together on his book “The Untouchables” that people started remembering his legacy. The book he wrote was largely exaggerated but that didn’t stop the public from taking a large notice to it. The Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the sale and transportation of alcohol in the United States impowered criminals like Al Capone to take advantage of the American people. While doing so he gained power, money, and notoriety. Prohibition affected the lives of thousands ranging from alcohol related violence to death from drinking unregulated alcohol. In today’s society, after repealing the Eighteenth Amendment, we haven’t seen a criminal rise to such power and authority as Al Capone did. The book “Eliot Ness: The Rise and Fall of an American Hero” is a biography about a man who with several other people took down the crime ruler of Chicago, Al Capone. My book takes place throughout the roaring twenties, a time period in which the economy was picking up and prohibition was starting. Prohibition in America was the ban of all sale and consumption of alcohol, which of course leads to people finding out how to get it into America and turn a profit from it. The American people after prohibition went into effect quickly realized it was not going to work very well. Citizens quickly started hopping onto different methods of obtaining alcohol, varying from creating it to buying it illegally off usually dangerous bootleggers. It was very clear that not many were happy about this new change in lifestyle and there would be consequences.
The infamous Al Capone started off as a small time criminal running smaller crime operations before he started his bootlegging career which turned him into the most well known gangster in all of Chicago and maybe even America. To Al Capone bootlegging alcohol was the perfect opportunity for a man like him to earn a name for himself among other large criminals. His previous illegal businesses he was running were gambling, and prostitution which although provided sufficient funds it didn’t provide him with the fame he craved. Eliot Ness however had a completely different standpoint from the mob boss himself, Eliot Ness strongly supported prohibition to the point where he made it his life to protect and enforce it on any and all people. “He believed ruthlessness was the only way to win the war against bootleggers.” (Page 16) . Even people in the Bureau of Prohibition wanted to have a taste of alcohol again which led to a group of secretaries taking a weekend off and spending it out in a cabin by a lake. Within this group of secretaries they had all privately agreed to purchase some bootlegged liquor and have a little bit of extra fun on this weekend out. One of the secretaries had started a more private relationship with Eliot, while they were away at the cabin Eliot knew where they were staying. On the second day of the trip Eliot wanted to make sure the girls weekend was made up of just the girls so he paid them a visit. When Eliot started knocking on the front door the girls all hid the liquor around the cabin because they all knew that if Eliot find out that the girls had bought bootlegged liquor he would get them all immediately fired and possibly even arrested. Community Service Paper
By Thor, Max and Jesse Raleigh, North Carolina is a very clean city although several of its large recreational areas contain multiple kinds of pollution. A major pollutant in Raleigh is waste and garbage. Waste and garbage is especially bad in communities because it can run down to water sources then making the water dirty and potentially making it unsafe for others. Water pollution can be very dangerous and will affect anyone who drinks it, it can lead to tons of diseases and its bad for the environment. Even if Raleigh is a very clean city we can help to try by cleaning up and getting rid of some of its pollution and in doing so help out the environment and the community. In the U.S. nearly 63 million people have to drink dirty water every day(USA TODAY). That is about a fourth of the population drinking potentially dangerous water. This number is way too high and we don’t want Raleigh to be contributing to the issue. To help prevent this issue becoming worse in our city we can try to help clean up around large bodies of water like Jordan Lake. Pollution is a serious issue around the world and we should make sure it doesn’t become a serious issue in our community. Water in our area has several contaminates. Some contaminates like Chloroform and Bromodichloromethane increase the risk of cancer. The EWG(Environmental Working Group) detected 9 contaminants in our area above health guidelines, meaning these toxins are above healthy standards. This problem has been an issue for at least 10 years and hasn’t gotten better. These toxins form during treatment processes using chlorine and other cleaning products(EWG). Anyone who drinks this water has an increased risk of cancer. Some of these toxins are very close to the legal limit which could lead to more complications. These pollutants may increase problems during pregnancy, if this is not taken care of our population would decrease due to the increase of cancer and problematic births. Trash has chemicals in it that intoxicates the water. Trash like six pack rings can choke and kill aquatic life as well as pollute the water. The Conservation Trust of North Carolina is helping preserve the Neuse River by protecting the land around it. “Land trusts work with landowners, state and local governments, and other conservation organizations to protect drinking water sources across North Carolina.” (CTNC) Wetlands, forests, and fields filter the pollutants out of the water through the soil. Our community still needs help because this problem is very complicated to fix. To fix problem this you have to cut off all waste which is impossible. Even if we cut off all trash there will still be after effects of pollution like lead poisoning. Wakegov says join a stream clean up. A stream clean up helps fish and other animals that rely on that water source. What we will be doing to help the community and the environment is that we are going to go to Jordan lake. Where we will have a group of volunteers split into groups going around on the trails or the picnic areas and picking up the trash. We were thinking about bringing around 25 students that are able to work together, we would later in the afternoon take a lunch break and then get back to work. Since we are under age we would need parental permission to go to Jordan Lake. To get there and from we would need a school bus. We would leave at 8 o’clock and leave Jordan lake at 12:45. It takes around 30-35 minutes to get there depending on traffic. Once we get there we would start to pick up trash. We would bring our lunch and have it at 11:00, if you don’t bring a lunch you can order a bagged lunch from the cafeteria. The information on how to do that will be on the permission slip. It would be provided before the trip. Lunch would take 30 minutes then we would start collecting trash again at 11:30 and then leave at 12:45 to get back to Martin at around 1:15. Our goal will be to collect 10 bags of trash or more. We will know we’ve reached this goal when we have over 10 bags of trash full or close to full. Bibliography Conservation Trust For North Carolina, ”Upper Neuse Clean Water Initiative.” Conservation Trust For North Carolina. 2017. January 23,2017.<https://www.ctnc.org/assist/upper-neuse-clean-water-initiative/>. EWG,”EWG’s Tap Water Database. ”EWG. 2017.January 23,2017. <https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=NC0392010#.Wm8-NGkbPIV> Fedinick, Kristi Pullen, et.al.“Threats on tap.” Natural Resources defense council. May 2017. January 23,2017.<https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/ threats-on-tap-water-infrastructure-protections-appendices.pdf > Agnel, Philip, et.al. ”63 million americans exposed to unsafe drinking water.” Usa Today. August 15, 2017. January 31,2018. <https://www.usatoday.com/story/news 2017/08/14/63-million-americans-exposed-unsafe-drinking-water/564278001/> Photo http://elipalteco.com/water-pollution-lesson-plans/water-quality-critical-thinking-in-science-pollution-lesson-plans-high-school-d/ Raleigh North Carolina has had a growing water pollution issue and has especially taken off over the recent years. The pollutants in streams, lakes, and rivers in Raleigh have been growing over years. The #1 pollutant in bodies of water in Raleigh is sediment, the main source of the sediment pollution is illegal dumping into stormwater drains. This is a pressing issue because with the pollution in waters it will eventually start to affect drinking water. In conclusion this growing concern needs to be looked into more by the community because if the problem continues to grow it will affect everybody. I believe that being flaked out on is the most annoying experience anyone can go through.
By: Max Blomquist I firmly believe that getting flaked out on completely sucks and happens more often then it should. Most of my school life so far I’ve had at least one friend that happened to be a flaker and would either always cancel last minute or just never show up. These kinds of people are the worst type of people and you should try to avoid them in life and never become them. Last year over summer break, nearing the end of it, when the sun was still shining bright golden yellow and the temperature was still hot enough to be wearing shorts and short sleeves and still get drenched in sweat. Each day over summer was quite boring, mostly because all my friends were vacationing and all my neighbors still had school, so I was excited to hear that three of my neighbors and several of my school friends were available to go out. Me thinking that I was smart planned with these three different groups of people to see a movie, for each group I would go out with i planned to see it 3 whole times. I would go out on Friday with my neighbors, saturday with my other friend group of neighbors and sunday with my school friends. Although I knew that this would be very complicated and probably would fail in some way shape or form (mainly because i’m a pessimist) I still had a good bit of hope this would turn out well Friday came at me faster than a train and I was excited for the hopefully good night. I had woken up early so I could have a full day, but once noon came half of my neighbor friends had cancelled because they had gotten grounded and the other half had realized it wouldn’t be as fun without them so we decided not to go. After this happened i was feeling pretty annoyed but i knew I could still have a fun next day. The rest of friday had been quiet and boring so I was happy once saturday came. Saturday morning I slept until past noon because I had stayed up late the night before and woke up to my phone exploding about how my neighbors mom had gotten in a car accident (the brothers were coming to the movies as well) and they all had to spend time with their mother because she got a concussion, and like the day before nobody wanted leave them behind so we decided not to go. The final day sunday had come where I would get to see my school friends that I hadn’t seen in awhile, this was the day I was looking forward to the most because living in apex I don’t see my school friends too often. Because of the previous two days i was certain that I would be able to go with them i was ecstatic about it. Then, tragedy struck and i had talked back to my dad he grounded me for the day. After this terribly annoying experience I came to believe that what happened to me is one of the worst things that someone can experience. Whether you’re the flaker or you’re the person getting flaked out on, I hope you can realize that if you know something is getting in the way of your plans just let the group know for christ sake. |
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April 2018
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