Dear Ms. Langley,

I believe I deserve a 90 for these six weeks since I have been doing my work even though I have turned in my essay works late to wordpress. 

I was mainly focused on reading my books for these six weeks because I wanted to get better for my goals and not wanting to drop it even half way through it. I was reading Call me by your name by Andre Acieman for most of these six weeks. I enjoyed it a bit but probably would not read it again.  I also branched out to start reading mystery genres since I thought it was time to try something new and shake up my reading genre habits, since looking back I mainly focused on mythology/fiction in the young adults section. I honestly need to give other genres a good look without any bias.

For my writing I say I got a bit better at focusing on just writing no matter what distractions are tempting me away until I actually let them. I want to say I haven’t really gotten better at cranking out essays in a small time frame though unless they are like the AP Collegeboard test and I have like 3 and ½ hours and it is also being handwritten. I can’t say that I am an amazing essay writer since I mainly forgot the differences between the three different types of essays we need to remember for the exam. For the synthesis essay I have to say it was kind of weird trying to write it out since it is similar enough to how I mainly write out like DBQs except it more of not formatining it to historical events and to whatever the prompt is and in that case eminent domain. Each essay was hard on its own but I have to say it mainly the argument essays are probably the easiest to write since they are basically picking a side and defending it. Rhetorical analysis the only main hard part is remembering the triangle and using it focusing on the message or purpose.

I can’t say that I was the best student, but I want to say that I tried really hard for these since most of these from the books we were forced to read during this year to the essays we had to write were very draining. Overall I want to say that I worked really hard even if my writing makes it seem like I haven’t. That is why I think I deserve a 90.

Eminent Domain is the government’s right under the Fifth Amendment to take privately owned property for public use – to build a road, a school or a courthouse for examples. Under eminent domain, the government buys your property, paying you what’s determined to be fair market value. In recent years, there have been many debates over the suitability of eminent domain, and further its legality in specific instances. The government is allowed to seize personal property for private use if they can prove that they are doing it to serve what’s called “the public good”.

One instance of eminent domain being used by the government and it was challenged in court and was able to be a win for the sufferer. “When Canal Winchester offered Richard “Pete” Stebelton $9,249 for a 1-mile strip of his property, Stebelton thought the payment was too low.” What Canal Winchester wanted to use part of Stebelton’s property for was to build a bike path between Rager Road to a swimming pool.  “It used eminent domain to take a strip of Stebelton’s 80-acre property and hired an appraiser who determined that the $9,249 would be enough compensation.” “Instead, he went to court to challenge the village’s valuation.” “The jury decided Sept.20 that the land the village wants, along the northern edge of his property, is worth $37,000. But the jury also decided that by taking it, the village was also closing off a back entrance to the property and damaging the value of the rest of Stebelton’s land by $558,625”.(Narciso) 

A separate but more of the government using eminent domain in a more positive ruling for them. Would be 2 different court cases. One of them is the Kohl v. United States in 1876. “The U.S. Supreme Court first examined federal eminent domain power in 1876 in Kohl vs United States. This case presented a landowner’s challenge to the power of the United States to condemn land in Cincinnati, Ohio for use as a custom house and post office building. Justice William Strong called authority of the federal government to appropriate property for public uses “essential to its independent existence and perpetuity.” Kohl  v. United States, 91 U.S. 367, 371 (1875).”  “Condemnation cases like that against the Gettysburg Railroad Company exemplify another use for eminent domain: establishing parks and setting aside open space for future generations, persevering places for historical interest and remarkable natural beauty, and protecting environmentally sensitive areas”.(U.S.Department of Justice)

Last is more of the horrible ramifications that can happen when the government uses eminent domain but none of the promised things that were used to justify it, never actually come true.  

President Biden’s decision to deny the pipeline to be finished is a bad decision. The Key stone Pipeline is a huge pipeline that would be coming from Canada cutting through Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska seeing that it would be adding to the already huge existing pipeline. The existing pipeline runs through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and ending in either Illinois, or Texas. The Pipeline is very controversial for the fact that it affects not only jobs but also the environment and there are a lot of people who support President Biden’s decision  who only care about the environment.

The Pipeline will bring many jobs even if it is temporary. The State Department states that at estimated about 42.000 jobs over the two year time it takes to be built. 3,900 would be in actual construction everyone else would be more indirectly affecting it, such as food service. Though it is estimated that it would create about 35 permanent jobs. The report states that the pipeline would bring about $3.4 billions in the U.S. economy. The State Department review concluded that even if the pipeline were not built, global oil demand is such that companies would continue to develop the Alberta oil sands and bring the petroleum to market in other ways. The oil could come by rail or by building other pipelines. But moving oil by rail has its own hazards. As transport has increased in recent years, so have explosions of rail cars carrying oil.

Building the pipeline would also help provide a conduit for oil from a friendly ally, Canada, and cement trade relations for the United States and Canada. “The Government of Canada continues to support the Keystone XL project and the benefits that it will bring to both Canada and the United States,” Canadian Ambassador to the U.S. Kirsten Hillman said in a statement. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said on Twitter that he is “deeply concerned” by the reports signaling the cancellation of the pipeline. “Doing so would kill jobs on both sides of the border, weaken the critically important Canada-U.S. relationship, and undermine U.S. national security by making  the United States more dependent on OPEC oil imports in the future,” he added. Construction of the pipeline is well under way in Canada, with the international border crossing already complete, Reuters noted. And the U.S., work has begun on the pump stations in every state along the path.

The oil industry characterized the move as the latest turn of the screw in the long-running legal battle. “Pipelines like KXL are the backbone of our nation’s energy infrastructure and one of the most environmentally sound ways to transport the fuel and petroleum products that power America,” said Robin Rorick, vice president of midstream operations for the American Petroleum Industry, which lobbies for oil companies. “The pipeline has passed every environmental review conducted for it. In fact, a total of six assessments by both the Obama and Trump administrations concluded that KXL is safe to build,” Mr. Rorick said. “Calls to conduct identical environmental reviews makes no sense and are a waste of tax dollars.”

Cite:

https://www.theblaze.com/news/biden-kill-keystone-xl-pipeline

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/534675-biden-pushing-to-cancel-keystone-xl-pipeline-as-soon-as-he

President Biden’s decision to deny the pipeline to be finished is a bad decision. The Key stone Pipeline is a huge pipeline that would be coming from Canada cutting through Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska seeing that it would be adding to the already huge existing pipeline. The existing pipeline runs through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and ending in either Illinois, or Texas. The Pipeline is very controversial for the fact that it affects not only jobs but also the environment and there are a lot of people who support President Biden’s decision  who only care about the environment.

I feel like I’ve gotten at least maybe a little better grip on my reading habits. Since I am more focused on reading even though it is focused on one book that is required for this six weeks. I felt that I didn’t have enough time to write my essay for the Bluest eye novel and I should have added at last one more quote in my essay but I wrote a lot of information and the essay was pretty long, so maybe I really need to cut some stuff out of the paragraphs. It really seems that I have a tendency to over write for my essays right now not only in ela but also in history since I feel like I need to cram so much into them and I have a limited amount of space to use.

I feel like reading comprehension quizzes that we are doing in collegeboard are sort of helping in the way, but it mainly the actual understanding the questions is harder, since it seems that answer A. is the right now but when you get the results the correct answer is like D. and the answer is talking about true loves kiss and the whole writing pieces the questions were for were about robots and technology.

For reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison it was sort of eye opening I guess. More of the different ways to write switching points of views between different narrators for a pretty famous novel and not outright stating which narrator it is and leaving the readers either confused or on a hunt to figure out how is speaking. I have to have the novel amazingly written for the different flashbacks for certain characters that are actually pretty important to the story even though how they’re flashbacks are kind of jarring for me since I was mainly listening to the novel as an audiobook. The only thing that really irritated me was like when Soaphead Churchill had the like couple of pages going over his story and his minor character just mainly pissed me off and made me hate him, even though even I try not hate every minor character and give them fair chances it mainly has to do with how he was portrayed for me is the thing I can think of the irritated me the most.

    I honestly am not sure how these skills are going to help me for the AP exam but honestly all I am hoping for is I don’t just blank out in my mind and bomb it since I basically forgot everything that was completely important for the test.

    I feel as for a critical thinker I haven’t really been the best I could have possibly been for this six weeks since Toni Morrison’s writing really scrambled up and messed with my head. Probably since I am so used to reading to certain types or maybe styles so they don’t really force my to be out of my comfort zone and make me to us my head to think deep meanings in things that probably don’t have meanings, or are never supposed to be connected in the first place and I am trying to force them to together. So I think I deserve 89 for this six weeks since I mainly feel like I should have been on my top A game and I fell so off that mark. 

I did not agree with this essay mainly since it was to me proclaiming that any new book was never going to be anywhere near as good as a classic book in that genre. This irriatied memainly since that is purely on a matter of opioin and everyone’s opioin is different. I is unfair to assume that everyone is going to have the same experiences as you do. While there are some parts that I might agree with like number 4 be “4) Every rereading of a classic is as much of a voyage of discovery as the first reading”. I only agree with this because there are some books I would call classics since they were probably the first books or series that actually stuck with that I enjoyed. But they are not referred to as classics by the international stage for books. I mainly feel as a talking point that this could be a touchy subject since some people might hate reading books, fell out of loveing reading or whatever it maybe be, so it might bring at lot of different emotions never mind feelings when someone might ask them this.