The Bird is the Word: Sophisticated Schoolyard Shenanigans
By Claire Jenkins
The Upper School ASB is selling Candy Grams all week (February 5th-9th) at $2 for one bag of candy or $5 for three. ASB representatives are also selling–for the first time available this year–Barbershop Quartet songs. You can send a Barbershop Quartet song to a friend, romantic interest, or yourself. The song is just $5, and you can send a friendship or romance song. All proceeds go to your Upper School ASB!
Edited By: Brennan Nick
By Shelby Armor
Pilot Metropolitan with Refillable Cartridges
I’ve always been a lover of pens. I choose my pens carefully based on the type of pen, the thickness of the pen, the smoothness, the type of ink, etc. And I’ve recently fallen in love with an entirely new yet old kind of pen: fountain pens.
Both of my parents used fountain pens when they were young, and it’s still used in Europe today. But in America we’ve let it die out. We now settle for more efficient roller-balls and ballpoint pens that may last longer but ultimately provide a horrible writing experience. The ink doesn’t flow as consistently. And to many, this doesn’t matter, perhaps that’s why we rely so much on ballpoint pens. But fountain pens have such an elegant vibe to them. Their perfect way that the ink flows from the pen, the sleek look, and the overall effectiveness make the fountain pen ultimately superior.
The ink just seems to flow from the pen. It’s something that I appreciate most from fountain pens. When writing, you get such a smooth line. It’s really the most lovely part of the pen. In addition, fountain pens just LOOK so amazing. They have an elegant and sleek look to them that is ultimately unattainable with other pens. From the spiffy exterior, to the beautiful metal nibs, there’s just nothing to not love. And fountain pens are just very effective as well. When buying one pen, there are two options. You can either get an ink well or cartridges. I personally use cartridges, as that is the more modern and efficient form. When using cartridges, you simply have to unscrew the pen to replace the cartridge every two weeks or so.
Many people argue that fountain pens are not cost effective, but I tend to disagree. My personal favorite pen is the Pilot Metropolitan Fountain Pen. (https://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Metropolitan-Collection-Fountain-91111/dp/B00KRPFD96/ref=ice_ac_b_dpb?s=office-products&ie=UTF8&qid=1517543300&sr=1-4&keywords=pilot+metropolitan+fountain+pen) The price ($15) may seem slightly unreasonable for a pen, but consider the lifespan of the pen. The pen comes with a cartridge already, and the cartridges can be replaced for years. You would go through SO MANY ballpoint pens by that time. Considering that a pack of 12 cartridges is $4.79, that’ll last you for six months.
Pilot Varsity “Disposable” Fountain Pens
My ultimate verdict is that fountain pens are dying out when they really shouldn’t be. They are a beautiful writing utensil that is underappreciated.
Editor: Peter Kadel
By Claire Jenkins
When Claire fired the following bolded words at a select pool of respondents, she got the following answers. What would psychologists say? What would you say?
Female:
innovative
pink
brave
pretty
height
fashion
dress
Eve
Male:
ignorant
kind
controlling
tall
shoes
train
suit
Adam
Smart:
science
children
glasses
tall
math
Einstein
lightbulb
women
Dumb:
sad
willpower
blonde
none
wood
brick
Barbie
rock
Future:
bright
bleak
nonexistent
scary
watch
car
space
broken
Past:
important
mess
ugly
scary
gift
bone
1800’s
wrong
Present:
fleeting
falling
beautiful
fun
crying
essay
Trump
tiring
Alone:
surviving
sad
me
fun
cat
sad
freedom
always
Community:
thriving
bridge
friendly
YMCA
mold
gate
Palm Springs
belong
Edited By: Peter Kadel
Graphic by Harlow Berny
Retold by Harlow Berny
Centuries ago, in a long forgotten kingdom, there was a poor and widowed peasant woman with two young children — but only one was still alive. The young son had died before his little sister was old enough to remember him. With no man in the house, the mother worked as a seamstress while her daughter, once she reached six years of age, went to work chopping logs to sell.
One winter morning, the daughter was about to head home with seven logs, when she realized that they were too heavy for her. As she was leaving with only three logs, a well-groomed boy, seemingly no older than her, appeared before her and offered to help carry the other four. The girl happily accepted his help and called her mother to meet the boy when they arrived at her home. The mother came out as her daughter called, but she only found her daughter waiting for her, no boy. The mother assumed that the daughter was talking of an imaginary friend and went back to sewing.
The next day, the daughter came home with a flower bud that the boy had given her, saying that the boy would return once the flower bloomed. The mother laughed and placed the bud in a cup of water, thinking nothing of it. A week passed. One morning, the daughter did not leave her bed. The mother, concerned, went to the daughter’s room to wake her. When the mother pulled the covers off of her daughter’s bed, she found the daughter was cold as stone, yet bearing a warm smile. That same morning, the flower bud bloomed into a crimson rose, and the water turned to blood and overflowed from the cup, like how the blood of the son had flowed from his head when he fell on his axe while chopping logs for his mother.
Editor: Shelby Armor
A Re-Telling of Grimm’s
Graphic by Harlow Berny
By Harlow Berny
Hello, fellow PVS students! Today from 11 am-10 pm there will be a Pizza with a Purpose fundraiser at the California Pizza Kitchen* on El Paseo**. In order to participate, you need to bring in a flyer–which you can get from either your Advisory teacher, the front desk, or online***–and present it to your server/cashier. When you do, 20% of your check will be donated to the school. Remember to write your Advisory teacher’s name on the flyer, as the Advisory class that has the most participation will have a pizza party!
Editor: Brennan Nick
*Phone Number: 760-776-5036
**California Pizza Kitchen 73-080 El Paseo Suite #8 Palm Desert, Ca 92260
***https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VPXscFvXAuMrsHk0bW1qUJEMTh3szJnL/view
By Brennan Nick
Once upon a time when the Spanish were first exploring the Americas, there were tales of “an island called California very close to the side of the Earthly Paradise” that was inhabited entirely only by black women with no men. They were great warriors with golden weapons for “there is no other metal on the island other than gold.” These quotations come from Las Sergas de Esplandian, a Spanish novel published in 1510 by Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo.
It was this story that drove Hernan Cortes a few decades later to send an expedition to California led by his cousin, Diego de Bercerra. He landed on the southern tip of Baja California and saw water on all sides. Now, thinking they had found the fabled island, Cortes sent further expeditions. Shortly after, explorer Francisco de Ulloa followed the coastline northward until he reached the Colorado River, discovering that Baja California was, in fact, a peninsula, not an island. On maps, California enjoyed the privilege of being drawn as part of the mainland for sixty years after the first map in 1562 represented California as connected.
Then something happened. In 1622, on the title page of a Dutch map book, California was drawn as separate from the mainland. This reinvention of the status of California can be traced to the journal of an obscure friar who described California as being a separate island. He then included maps that he himself made and sent them to Spain to be examined and potentially published. The Spanish wouldn’t have found these maps credible due to their prior knowledge of the area. However, the ship these maps were being transported on was hijacked and the bad maps were taken seriously by the Dutch who proceeded to publish them as their own.
This mistake was reproduced for decades. Many well-known cartographers of the time, mainly in Northern Europe, had better access to Dutch maps rather than Spanish maps and gave the incorrect maps more credence than the correct ones. This misconception even penetrated into Spanish cartographers as they saw what their northern counterparts were doing. 249 maps showed California as an island from the time of this first Dutch map until 1747 when the King of Spain finally made a formal decree stating “California is not an island” (that’s word for word by the way) after someone bothered to actually remap the area of California (Esplandian). Ever since then, all the maps have shown California once again as part of the mainland–except for a single Japanese map made in 1865.
Editor: Charles Schnell–Formerly of Blog Class
Written and Compiled by Brennan Nick
Old Friends. Yelling. Gunshot. Silence. Regret.
Left footprints. Tide came. No footprints.
Every sickness starts with a hug.
Aimed for moon–Landed among stars.
Three steps backwards; two steps forwards.
Dark and stormy night?! Oh no…
If I’m alone, then who knocked?
Epitaph–“Only wanted to find home”
Once vibrant village now lies silent.
Orders given. Orders followed. Lives lost.–Peter Kadel
The side of my face hurts.–Peter Kadel
Feel free to write your own!–Peter did.
No. I’m sorry. I’m all out.–Makena Behnke
Editor: Makena Behnke
By Brennan Nick
So I was in English class talking about the perspective a story can have: 1st person, 3rd-person limited omniscient, 3rd-person omniscient, and 3rd-person objective. We also learned that it’s possible to have a story take place in the 2nd person with pronouns such as “you” and “yours.” Then, I searched if there is such thing as 4th-person perspective, and I was not disappointed. According to Wikipedia, “The term fourth person is also sometimes used for the category of indefinite or generic referents, which work like one in English phrases such as ‘one should be prepared.’” So here’s my attempt at writing a quick poem in the fourth person.
When one takes a nap in the shade of the Banana Tree,
One must be sure the Parakeet bird won’t see.
For if he sees one asleep, he will come in from behind,
And the bird may steal from you and not at all mind.
One’s food and one’s drink he will take as inclined,
And return to his perch all sated and dined.
If one wishes to sleep beneath the Banana Tree,
One must be sure the Parakeet bird will not see.
Editor: Shelby Armor
By Brennan Nick
Just yesterday, the annual movement of the Doomsday Clock occurred,… and it just moved ½ a minute closer to midnight.
For those who don’t know, the Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 by a group of scientists– many of whom worked on the atomic bomb–as a symbolic way to show how close we as a planet are to nuclear war. Since 2007, however, it has been expanded to also reflect how close we are to unalterable climate change, and new developments in science that could cause irreversible damage to humanity.
When the clock reaches midnight that means that Doomsday has occurred. The lowest the clock can go to is 9:00 PM to signify how far the world has come from a 0% chance pre-humanity. Just as a reminder, we’re at 11:58 right now, the highest it’s ever been–tying with 1958. To put this into perspective, however, the furthest from Doomsday the Doomsday Clock has been since its inception was 11:43 in 1991 right after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The group that manually changes the time on the Doomsday Clock moved the clock ½ a minute closer to midnight because of “the failure of President Trump and other world leaders to deal with looming threats of nuclear war and climate change.”
Now, hopefully we won’t be heading towards the apocalypse anytime soon… hopefully.
Editor: Shelby Armor
By Brennan Nick
Last week, the founders of New California declared their independence from the rest of the state. With their own Declaration of Independence, they took a step to forming a 51st state. Within this Declaration of Independence, in their list of grievances, they describe California as being “ungovernable.” Their plan in the separation of New California is to take many of the western and northern counties in California–many of which are rural–and separate them from the big cities of the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Furthermore, the founders of New California can also be quoted saying, “The current state of California has become governed by a tyranny” (USA Today). Here is a map showing how they plan to divide California:
“New California” county map
Now, let’s be real; this is not going to happen. However, this has not been the first time a group of people have wanted to partition the state:
1965: The California State Senate voted on dividing California with the Tehachapi Mountains as the boundary. It failed.
1992: State Assemblyman Stan Statham sponsored a bill to allow a referendum in each county partitioning California into three new states: North, Central, and South California.
2009: Former State Assemblyman Bill Maze wanted to split some coastal counties which usually vote Democratic into a separate state, citing how “conservatives don’t have a voice” and how Los Angeles and San Francisco “control the state” (Downsize California webpage).
2013: Some Californians living in the far north wanted to found their own state of Jefferson with some Oregon counties.
2013: Tim Draper, a venture capitalist, proposed to split California into six new states, citing “improved representation, governance, and competition between industries”(“Six Californias”).
Seeing as no other state has this frequency of partitionist movements, this is indicative of large divisions in such a massive state. Let’s take a look at what these divisions may be.
2016 election county map
We usually refer to Northern California as NorCal and Southern California as SoCal. The reasons we say this have a greater reason than simple geography. Northern California with the big cities of San Francisco and San Jose is known for its progressive, liberal streak. Meanwhile, Southern California with the suburbs of LA, San Diego, and Orange County brings a more conservative tone. This can be seen in the election of governors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan whose vote tallies were carried by Southern California suburbs. Meanwhile, San Francisco would vote the most against them. This was the dynamic in California politics for decades–the North voting Democrat and the South voting Republican. The Southern California shift towards “blue” occurred during the campaigns of Bill Clinton.
In recent years, however, this North-South Divide has turned into an East-West divide, with the urban West Coast finding common goals in the state legislature while the rural eastern interior feeling left behind. This can be seen with Orange County. Once one of the most conservative counties in the state, this year it voted in majority for Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump.
These eastern counties could even be argued as having more in common with those in rural Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona than urban California, and this is the reason why some people in the far north of California want to found their own state by the name of Jefferson. Just consider what you think when someone says “Northern California.” You don’t immediately think of the far northern county of Trinity; you think of San Francisco, or Sacramento.
Nevertheless, these are the divisions that come with having a state of such land area and population size. These divisions have always existed and always will exist as long as California exists.
Editor: Claire Jenkins
