The song I chose is by Parachute called forever and always. Verse after verse is like a new chapter in the song. Verse one, is about this guy’s girlfriend waiting for him to come pick her up, and he’s running late. She’s getting antsy and worried, he’s getting later and later, he doesn’t show up, she starts to think something is wrong then the phone rings and she has a flash back to when he proposed, then the chorus which is the flash back and how he proposed and asked her to be his “forever and always”. Verse two she’s at the hospital, her mind is going a mile a minute and isn’t hearing what the doctors are telling her as they escort her to his room. Once she gets to the room she tries to stay strong and smile but can’t. She just sits next to him and what their future holds together. Kids, house, ect. then the chorus.  Bridge, an idea pops into her head and wants to marry him right then and there, they barrow the rings from the couple next door, the Chaplin comes in and says a couple words, everyone is smiling and crying at the same time. They are getting married, she says her vows which is the chorus and he try’s to say his vows but is slowly going down hill, he try’s his hardest to get his vows out, says his vows on his last words and passes away. The song ends with his vows and no music.

It’s the saddest yet most beautiful song and story I have ever heard. You can just picture this happening to someone in real life, you can play out the music video in your head even though there isn’t a music video for this song! This song has love, tragedy, happiness, goose bumps, tears, all in a matter of four minutes and six seconds. So many emotions in such a short amount of time that you just sit there in “awe” with a tear in your eye as you listen to the song and hope and pray you personally never have to face something like this and that no one for that matter has to ever face something like this. Everyone wants a love like these two, but don’t ever want it to come to a quick end as their love did. This song really tells you to love everyone and to never take your love and life with that one significant other for granted, you never know when a freak accident could happen and everything could come to a tragic end. But leaving this on a happy note, that man still loves her, even though they are together in person, he will always be in her heart and that’s the best thing she can have and all that she asks for since she no longer can have him in her life. He’s in her heart forever and always.

Song Link

The article I chose for my feature story assignment is actually the second story I read. The first one was so boring I couldn’t read it anymore, and I couldn’t even tell you who or what it was about. This one was about a guy named Nate Woods from Lincoln Nebraska who’s having built a memorial for his grandfather and other people from the 20s and 30s who helped with the Lincoln’s black community with equality. This monument will feature people as famous as Martin Luther King Jr. and Jackie Robinson who both have visited Lincoln during this movement.

The article starts off with “Nate Woods remembers little about his grandfather, Millard Woods.” That’s the lead, short yet simple. But the very last line of the article in my opinion would have been a better lead, even though you aren’t suppose to start leads with a quote. The quote is “I think he would have a big smile on his face,” which is a quote that Nate said referring to his grandfather. “I think he would have a big smile on his face,” Nate Woods says referring to his grandfather who helped with the Lincoln’s black community movement. To me the lead the writer chose is confusing because how can you think someone would have a big smile on their face when you can barely remember that person, and you were only around when you were a little kid. I don’t remember a lot from back when I was six years old!

The spin that could have been put on this story is talking about how Nate raised the money for these panels, and why he even wanted to or thought of doing this. Also, why he picked the location he did for the panels to be put. I realize he’s doing this because he’s proud of the work his grandfather did, but I don’t think I really need to know that he doesn’t really remember him. I’d be perfectly fine not know that information. It’s very understandable for him to not remember him. Especially when Millard Woods (his grandfather) died when he (Nate) was only six years old.

Article Here

Going into this Coca Cola challenge of giving away free pop I thought was going to be a piece of cake, boy was I wrong! I asked guys, I asked girls, teachers, everyone, I got nothing but “no thanks, I’m good” or “I don’t drink pop” or a picky “I don’t like Coca Cola, maybe if it was Diet…” I couldn’t believe it, I was handing out free, cold pop and no one wanted it! I walked around for 45 minutes. The one I did give away was to a teacher I don’t even know, and she was ecstatic that the pop was cold too. She thought since I was walking around with the box in my hand it was going be room temperature or even warm.  I ended up taking the eleven pops back for my four rooms, three of which are guys. Thinking I’d come back from golf and it would all be gone, nope wrong again. All eleven were still there! Does this society not drink as much pop as I thought? Was I just talking to the wrong people?! I’m still left confused as to how I couldn’t give away as simple as twelve pops for FREE!

Now, I am going to put a spin on this assignment; this spin made me understand and realize maybe this is why people are rejecting free pop. Coca-Cola is used as a cleaning agent. Coca-Cola can clean car batteries, clean rust, make chrome shinny again, clean car engines, and remove oil stains on garage floors among other things.  Another crazy fact about Coca-Cola, is that in 2003, the CSE (Centre for Science and Environment of New Delhi came out saying that Coca-Cola contained toxic pesticides that could cause cancer and breakdown the immune system. Better yet, Coca-Cola was found containing 30x the amount of pesticide permitted under the EU regulations.

Have you ever stopped and actually thought about what is going inside your body when consuming something? I think of myself as a healthy eater, I watch what I eat and how much I eat. Well I did some research on what goes on inside your body when drinking a Coke. After only ten minutes of a glass of Coca-Cola, you have just ingested ten teaspoons of sugar, which causes a major “strike” on your organism. Ten minutes later, high levels of insulin goes into your bloodstream, which makes the liver convert all he sugar into fat. Add another thirty minutes onto that, the digesting of the caffeine is done. Your eye pupils are getting bigger; blood pressure goes up, because the liver is just throwing more sugar into the bloodstream. Drowsiness kicks in due to adenosine receptors getting blocked. Only 45 minutes after drinking that glass of Coca-Cola, your body goes through the same effect as if it was heroine in your system. Your body raises production of dopamine hormones, which starts up the brains pleasure center. The list goes on and just goes even more downhill from there!

Now after those ten minutes of simple research, I now have a good idea as to why people rejected my free pop. Morningside College to me is a very athletic/active school, The HPER building is always busy, most of the students are athletes, so why would someone active or a college athlete want to put that kind of  “poison” in their system? It all makes sense to me, maybe if I was handing out Gatorade, or even a diet pop this whole experiment might be completely different.

Going into this Coca Cola challenge of giving away free pop I thought was going to be a piece of cake, boy was I wrong! I asked guys, I asked girls, teachers, everyone, I got nothing but “no thanks, I’m good” or “I don’t drink pop” or a picky “I don’t like Coca Cola, maybe if it was Diet…” I couldn’t believe it, I was handing out free, cold pop and no one wanted it! I walked around for 45 minutes. The one I did give away was to a teacher I don’t even know, and she was ecstatic that the pop was cold too. She thought since I was walking around with the box in my hand it was going be room temperature or even warm.  I ended up taking the eleven pops back for my four rooms, three of which are guys. Thinking I’d come back from golf and it would all be gone, nope wrong again. All eleven were still there! Does this society not drink as much pop as I thought? Was I just talking to the wrong people?! I’m still left confused as to how I couldn’t give away as simple as twelve pops for FREE!

For the Spin a story is 5 ways assignment, I picked the California earthquake. I read the article on Yahoo.com and it was all over the place trying to cover every little detail. It was also very long which just slowly made me uninterested in the story. Short simple and to the point is how it needs to be these days. It covered everything from California’s history with earthquakes, a couple personal experiences, how others are stepping in to help, damage, location of the earthquake, details of the event, injuries, and then it went back through having more damage reports, more personal stories, and more history and details. It was overwhelmingly too much.

I put a spin on this story in 5 years easy. One, focus solely on one family that lost everything. Two, the details. Three, the 13-year-old boy who’s in critical condition in the hospital. Four, what the white house is going to do to help.  Five, how California will fix all the roads, historic buildings, wineries, and homes that were damaged or lost. And for kicks and giggles, six, how the winery businesses will be effected by the earthquakes. I understand they want to get all the details out and not leave anything behind, but this day and age, long articles get boring fast. I printed out this article and it was exactly two pages long. I don’t have the time or patience to read that if it wasn’t for homework. Short and to the point is perfect!

There was once this “friend/teammate” in my life; we’ll name her Debra. She lied to me, used me, manipulated me, and destroyed me for 2 years. Because of everything this one single person did, I lost trust in a lot of people. Trust is a huge part of my life, and it’s very hard for people to gain out of me. It’s also very hard for me to keep tryst in someone. Trust for me is a very deep and important part of my life.

Trust is being able to put your own life in the hands of someone else. It’s putting your whole heart and every ounce of emotion into the other person’s hands. I don’t like talking about trust, because my opinion on it is far form a lot of the average populations opinion. I get criticized for being so harsh on my friends when it comes to trusting them. But how hard or easy your life is, is how hard and east it is to keep trust and get trust in a person. Trust is a very person-to-person topic.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t simple, not so deep trust. It can be simple, less deep situations. For example, I trust my teachers will teach me everything I need to know to graduate on time and help me achieve a successful career. That’s not something that needs to build or can be lost with the snap of m fingers. I know teachers know what they are doing; I’ve also never had a problem with them before. I know teachers know what they are doing; they have a career to prove it. Where my friends and family only have their word to give and sometimes their actions. I could go on about trust, but I got my own personal opinion across and I know I can’t help the way I look at trust.

When I first started thinking about all the different meaning that the work escape could have, I got very overwhelmed. Although there is no right or wrong way of how I could go about describing “escape”, it left me wanting to escape this assignment because I don’t like feeling overwhelmed…like what I did there?! Anyways, escaping something or even someone can have a very deep meaning or a not so deep meaning. The bottom line of escaping is getting away from something.

A wrongful form of escape would be escaping prison or jail. A good form of escape could be escaping a hostage situation. Those are two very extreme examples, but I can also go to the other side of the extreme and say escape could simple be, I’m talking about my car. My 2010 ford escape.

Or the deeper side on the intellectual side could be, people can get lose or stuck in their heads. They become depressed, overwhelmed, mentally unstable, and just need to relax and escape from their own heads. They need to escape the darkness in their heads to get back to a healthy mindset and life. Just backing up, taking a break and relaxing, long term or short term. Getting away from life, people, class, sports, anything and everything. But what it comes down to is getting away permanently or temperately from something.

It’s an event someone experienced and wants to pass it down for others to know about, so that that memory isn’t forgotten or lost. An event someone may have enjoy, disliked, smiled during, or even cried. But no matter what that event was that wanted to share it and pass it down. A story could also be a thought. Something someone thought of whether it be fiction or nonfiction. Stories don’t have to be told with words. People get their stories out by dancing, singing, or just actions. They can be new stories or even century year old stories. Stories are something that people can join in on even if they are just reading it, it still allows them to escape into a world that currently aren’t living in, and sometimes that’s all people want to do. Escape from life.

Lieutenant Colonel Chris Stokes in Afghanistan about to go on his night patrol.

A 41 year old father of 5 girls from the ages 1 to 17. Three different military tours, two in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Lieutenant Colonel Chris Stokes is a fighter pilot for the United States Air Force. But when he’s not on active duty with the military he flies for United Airlines and owns a business in the Midwest. He has trained his entire life to do what he does overseas so all his friends and family support him and he doesn’t look for sympathy. Chris does what he loves and ironically doesn’t mind going overseas to fight.

Lieutenant Colonel Chris Stokes flew an A10 and F16 fighter planes. His job was to give support to the troops on the ground. His squadron also saw more action on Friday’s than any other day because Friday was a Holy day. They would do their religious activities then go out and attend to their war duties.

One of the short stories Chris shared was when, “we were on a mission watching over bad guys from the sky, they had to abort the mission because we ran out of gas and had to leave before we could help the good guys. We couldn’t shoot the bad guys or who we thought were bad guys because they hadn’t done anything bad yet, they could have just been farmers loading up a pick-up truck for all we knew, but we weren’t believing that, because we heard they were talking on their cell phones telling everybody they were gonna attack the Americans. So we could have blown them up but we didn’t because they weren’t doing a hostile act. But we ran out of gas and had to leave.”

According to Chris, “it’s kinda fun going over there. It’s the biggest challenge in life, but I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.”

Chris was lucky in that when he went overseas he was able to talk to his family more then usual. He would Skype with his kids almost everyday and eat together over Skype and even play peek-a-boo, which made things easier.  His wife Alisha didn’t really change her routine when Chris went overseas. She would stay busy and focus on work. But once they had kids, she had to explain to them where he was at and why he wasn’t home. They understood for a couple days then they would start to miss him again and ask, “where’s daddy? When is daddy gonna be home?” He always told his wife that “he’s safer over there than you are driving down O street.” Obviously it wasn’t true, but to make her feel better that’s what he’d say.

During his last tour he had access to a computer everyday. He got to send out emails to not only family but also friends. Chris would email all his friends and family almost everyday. When he emailed them they weren’t short, couple line emails, but he took the time to write five page stories, talking about what he’s doing, any missions he’s been on and sometimes just general things.

In one of his emails, he told a story about one of his missions when his fighter jet had a malfunction. But he decided to keep flying above the convoy to keep them covered. He didn’t realize till he was five miles from landing how bad his plane was malfunctioning. In his emails he went into great detail about what his thoughts were and what he was doing in those moments. “ I had to land with the right engine on full power, and I couldn’t shut the plane down until the de-arming crew detached all guns, bombs and ammo off the plane.” He was afraid the plane malfunction would set off the guns and deploy the bombs.

The tours that Chris went on weren’t very long, but he did experience three different tours. Ken Koop who has known Chris for 13 years now says, “It was difficult at first to see him leave.  Often we would think about him and hope all was going ok and that he was ok.  I wanted him to be safe and to serve.  It was a tough situation because both items are not necessarily the same.”

Chris did have light symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but not significant problems. He and his wife Alisha, noticed some differences in moods or feelings, but were able to control it and work through it to make things better. Chris said it was, Chris said, “not so much a traumatic experience but more of constantly under stress, and having high adrenaline levels all the time, day in and day out, and what that does is form a chemical imbalance in peoples bodies and getting use to it, then going home and having it just drop.”

Lieutenant Colonel Chris Stokes isn’t on active duty anymore. He isn’t going back overseas anytime soon or possibly never again. He’s at the age where the younger men and women are taking over his job. He is still part of the Air Force and still currently has what is known as a desk job. When he’s not working for the Air Force he keeps himself busy with  owning a business in Kansas. He also started OmaLink, a small business in Omaha and Lincoln but recently sold it. Chris also flies for United Airlines. Finally, he still keeps very busy with family and friends.

CNN News Article

This is by far the best article I’ve read for a news comment this semester. The video sent chills down my spin, and when Walkers father was talking and just stopped mid thought and broke down in tears, just sent even more chills racing through my body. The video had great information in it about the accident and about the actor himself,  The article itself was long, a lot of information about the accident, Walkers charity, Walker himself, Walkers friends and family, his acting career and even his fans reactions to his accident and death. The article even gave me chills at some points. I didn’t want to stop reading it. It was just a very good article. A little all over the place. But still very good. Some key words were linked to pictures and other information about whatever they were talking about. I would encourage everyone to read CNN article.