The Sinking Kayak by Lily Loewen

I'm really not creative at all, so I'm just going to write about a story from spring break last year. Last spring, my mom, dad, aunt, uncle, and 2 cousins, Jack and Elle, and I went to Florida for spring break. We stayed in Estero, Florida, but for a few days we took the ferry to Key West and spent some time at my uncle's cousin's place. There were jet skis, kayaks, and paddle boards there that we could use on the lagoon that went into the bay, which his house was on.  So Elle, Jack, my aunt, and I decided to go kayaking in the lagoon and then try to snorkel in the bay. Elle and I were on one kayak and then my aunt and Jack each had their own. We didn't realize it at first, but it turned out that the bay was sort of shallow, and there wasn't much to look at to snorkel. But Elle and I just laid on our stomachs on the kayak to "snorkel". I got tired of just looking at nothing in the water so I got up, opened the lid to the kayak that has the compartment for our things, and put my snorkel set in there. As I was doing this, Elle also got up, and our kayak flipped over. At first we were trying to gather everything that fell out of the compartment, until we looked down and our kayak had sunk to the bottom of the four foot deep bay.

Elle and I tried to lift the kayak out of the water, but there was water throughout the entire thing, and it was impossible. My aunt was freaking out, and calling our dads so that they can come out and help us lift the kayak and empty, but there was still a big problem. We lost the lid to the kayak so even if we did empty the kayak, if someone tried kayaking it would just fill up and sink again. Eventually our dads got to the scene on kayaks, in the middle of the bay, and saw Elle and I hopelessly trying to drag the kayak nearer to the shore. Contrary to my aunt, our dads thought that it was hilarious. After they stopped making fun of us they lifted the kayak and started emptying it out. It literally took fifteen minutes to empty the entire kayak. So after the kayak was hollow again, my uncle wanted to try to find the lid because if we didn't then we would have to pay his cousin back for destroying one of his kayaks. So we tried to find the lid, but of course we didn't because we were in the middle of the bay trying to find a little, flat plastic lid. After about twenty minutes of searching the water we decided to kayak home. Although our parents had to pay for a kayak, which is very expensive, this was certainly a memory we would never forget.

Southeast Asia Underwater by: Mikayla Flanz

      Global warming. A gradual increase in the overall temperature of the Earth's atmosphere. It's a term kids from the past few generations have grown up with, but has now evolved into "climate change". The same meaning as global warming, only including the monumental consequences that come with it.

Up until the past few years, as a global community we have yet to reap the effects of climate change, but now that we have; hurricanes, temperatures, sea levels, and many other events have sent us spiraling. But up until now, there has never been a real threat to our ways of life.

     According to science correspondent, Josh Gabbatiss's article from British newspaper, The Independent, as opposed to the inhabitants of Southeast Asian and Pacific Islands getting the next century to keep their native lands, new research published in the journal, Science Advances proclaims that the once promised one hundred years are now diminished to a few more decades. 

Since the Industrial Revolution, more and more of the green house gases such as, carbon dioxide and methane have been released, overall warming our planet. Although this "warming" has only come to about a two degree global increase, that change melted enough of the ice caps for there to already be devastating floods throughout these islands. The constant rising sea levels exert more water onto the low lying land, here the sea water is able to leach into the soil, spill into freshwater supplies, and decimate infrastructure and farm land. 

    Narrowing in on the Marshall Islands of the South Pacific, Science Advances illustrates the 70,000 natives of these chains of islands, where due to climate change and rising sea levels they will lose access to freshwater supplies, causing their farming industry to collapse, leaving a good portion of these inhabitants with little to no income or food. Along with the fact that, the rushing flood waters will sit in the dry walls of these houses for days at a time before clearing out and drying, therefore leaving mold in it's place. However, the authors also find that these issues will soon extend to neighboring islands such as the Maldives, Hawaii, and Seychelles, driving hundreds of thousands of people from their ancestral homes.

This is definitely the most selfish and least important reason to want the islands to stay right where they are, BUT... I have always wanted to travel to these places. These destinations are stunning, the landscape, the sites, the culture, to experience it all would be extraordinary. Stepping away from my traveling fantasies, there are more important matters...

Anyway, as someone who has always dreamed of traveling the globe all their life, to now see the world being picked apart and slowly demolished is devastating, but to the people living this out and losing the only home they have ever known must be like walking through their own never ending nightmare. 70,000 people. And that is just one chain of islands, what about the more densely populated Maldives or state of Hawaii. Where are all these people going to go? What are they going to do? Some of these people know nothing outside of their island chains, are they supposed to simply adapt from thousands of years of tradition overnight? 

Not to point fingers, but those who think climate change "doesn't exist" or is a "natural occurrence" are going to be very sorry some day, and that day may be coming soon. Even though this is happening thousands of miles away, across oceans, on a different continent, who is to say this can never happen to our coasts. Already, climate change is mauling our southern coasts, nothing permanent yet, but nothing is impossible, these people native to these Pacific islands probably thought that they would die in their home, as would their children, as had their parents, and relatives before them, all before their world was torn apart.

As a global superpower, we can not stand idly by while this is happening, sure it has not directly effected us yet, but eventually it will. So what if we have to give up certain things like oil and coal, and invest for a future in eco-friendly power systems, hundred of thousands of people will have to give up their land by the middle of the century. Maybe it might be too late to save some of the islands, but do we really want to see this underwater and abandoned? Gone?



Who really wants to see this gone?








Citations:Josh Gabbatiss Science Correspondent “Rising Sea Levels Will Leave Islands From the Maldives to Hawaii Uninhabitable.” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 25 Apr. 2018

Images:
1. https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/index.html
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/world/asia/floods-south-asia-india-bangladesh-nepal-houston.html
3. https://xdaysiny.com/top-10-tropical-islands-south-pacific/

One Day, One Day by Liv Przydzial

And sometimes I venture to a special place in my mind, a special place that takes me to where I want to be more than anything. 

* * * 

I'm in a Volkswagen camper van, one covered in tie-dye peace sign stickers and painted in colorful shades of the happy colors. Although the van might be blue, we were anything but that. All the windows were down and the pleasantly warm summer breeze drifted by as we wound our way around the Pacific coast. Music blared from the radio, replaying old songs from our childhoods. Everyone knew all the words, and we all laughed as we attempted to reach a high note. Everyone wore a smile on their face, and the slowly setting sun cast golden glows upon our sunkissed faces. The ocean just a hop, skip, and a jump away reflected the rainbow of colors infecting the sky. 

As we climbed our way to the beach, songs by the Beetles blared. Our hands in the air, our wrists crowded from all of the friendship bracelets from old and new friends, we danced our way down local streets. A blur of people milled up and down the boardwalk. The ocean's salty aroma wafted to us, mixing with the chatter of the people and the seemingly distant crashing of the waves. 

Perhaps the stereotype of the recklessness of teenagers was true, but maybe a part of the story was forgotten. Why didn't anyone talk about how liberating it felt to ditch the heavy burden of material things behind and live for the moment? Why didn't anyone talk about how much more meaningful each day was when you lived in and for every second of it? Why didn't anyone ever talk about life as the new, colorful, make-it-what-you-want-it entity that it was, rather than the monotonous, day-after-day blandness that society made it out to be? 

Regardless, as soon as the van rumbled to a stop, I flung open the door and essentially spilled out. My legs like that of a newborn fawn, I stretched from the long ride down here. Even the pavement was covered in sand carried here by a million people, the thought of which made me happy, because I was now a part of this too. I was already in my bathing suit, as where the rest of my friends. We would race to the end of this world and the next together, all of our steps in synch, our feet creating a dust storm behind us, each footstep resonating within the earth. The sand between my toes was so fresh, so raw. I understood what it now felt like to be in touch with nature, myself, and the people around me - all at once, and it was simply exhilarating. We plunged into the warm water, emerging with salty hair and laughs. 


It was liberating, to be swept off your feet and into the sea. The ocean was such an unimaginably huge entity of unknowns, a seemingly endless expanse of secrets that would never be fully understood. Perhaps some would find this terrifying, but I was actually rather entranced. To me, the ocean was full of contradictions. The waves crashed with vigor and anger, while all the life dependant on it hung in a gentle balance that something as simple as a minor breeze could sway out of control. As unknown and scary the depths of the water below us seemed, I felt nothing less than free, with nothing dragging me down but gravity, which didn't even feel as heavy as it normally did. 

* * * 

With our salty lips and soaked hair, we sat side by side on the beach, watching the sun rest atop the horizon. How big was this earth? What was beyond that line? Perhaps I would never know, but the beauty was not in knowing, but in speculating what wonders one could find in such a mysterious thing such as this. 

It was easy to feel satisfied. Feeling exhilarated, wild, and free, and ultimately falling asleep happy all at the same time was a challenge so simple in nature yet so unattainable and out of reach for those afraid to break the chains of the weights on their shoulders. 

As the sun dipped below the cloudless sky and the first stars unmasked themselves, my fingers strummed the ancient strings of my mother's guitar, the vibrations flowing through each of my veins and into everyone else's. We sang whatever songs came to mind and laughed when we all forgot the lyrics and came up with our own. 


* * *

Although I dream of such a mental, physical, and soul-quenching liberation, I know that the value in such a phenomenon is only understood with a background in the opposite. To be free, you need to be in bondage, an unfortunate cycle that nobody has strayed far enough from to break out of. I hope that maybe one day, maybe just one day, I'll be the one to go far enough into the darkness to find the light switch to happiness in everything I do, but for now, the most I can do is at least attempt to be happy in as much as possible, until I reach far enough into the dark to light up this world.

Beginners Guide to a THIS Summer by: Mikayla Flanz

Well. We're finally back from that whole one and a half month we had off and administrators are trying to pass off as summer. Let's see what you missed...

I don't think people understand how long six hours are. Especially when they are spent sitting on uncomfortable plastic chairs, in the mid day summer sun, attempting to keep eight year old brats from drowning. Last February, I got my life guarding certification and I some what knew what I was getting myself into, but man, I was NOT paid enough for the amount of hours I wasted sitting on that god forsaken life guarding chair this summer. Personally I don't believe nine dollars an hour is the value of a child's life (even though no one drowned, I swear I'm good at my job... please hire me).

Stranded. I'm stuck in Sparta, New Jersey, alone. Sure I get people go on vacation and have summer houses, but it seems every time my friends were in town, I was on vacation, leaving me lonely the majority of summer. Overall, I'm relatively certain the best part of my summer was my college trip to Brown. Since I was little, I've always known that I would play soccer in college, and now it's beginning. Even then, a college visit for soccer should NOT be the highlight of my summer, to be honest I'm slowly becoming more and more disappointed with my standards.

Vacation in the North Carolina Outer banks, sounds great. Wrong. I'm not trying to sound like a brat, I get that I was lucky enough to go on a vacation, and I'm grateful that my parents booked the trip, but the things that went down were kind of out of both my hands and theirs... The weather, day one through five of our week long vacation, the Carolinas were hit with what is called a "tropical depression", which in a nut shell is rain. So. Much. Rain. And I could have even looked past that, but day two of our trip I got sick, and I spent the next few days of vacation sleeping, it was miserable. But I finally got better for the last few days of vacation, and the last three days were beautiful, until the last day of our trip. Somehow on the final day of vacation, I wound up in the ER. Since it was such a nice day, I thought I'd take my board and go surfing for my final day, you know, go out in a bang... So at some point in the time I was out there, I got up, then was knocked off, and landed onto the ocean floor on my head. Five hours at being in the ER later, I had a concussion. Yay.

The summer of 2018, wasn't terrible, but it also was not memorable, it was kind of just there. As much as I love not utilizing my brain cells for about a month and a half, IT WAS ONLY A MONTH AND A HALF. I'm sorry, but that's not summer, that's a glorified and more humid version of spring break, but without the Easter bunny. Yet, even then it wouldn't have been that bad, but because I made the personally choice to play high school soccer, my summer ended August 6, 2018, the beginning of heat week... I'm pretty certain I questioned a good portion of my life choices during that week that lead me to do this for a second consecutive time in my life. Anyway...

Rest In Peace

Summer 2018

June 30, 2018- September 6, 2018

(You won't be missed)






Image Citations:
Bennett, Clay. “The ‘Abstinence Only’ Lifeguard. Don't Go in the Water!” Clay Bennett's Editorial Cartoons, 2008.

No One Cries in Summer by Jordan Bucenec

“No One Cries in Summer”

As the freeing feelings of Summer begin to subside,

one cannot help but to feel terrified.

From long cozy nights of joy and bliss,

dancing in the sun and receiving the rays’ warm kiss,

To endless, shivering days of heartache and somber,

forever wishing that summer could just last a little bit longer.

No one cries in summer.

Not when you’re knee deep in the sea,

Savoring the feeling of the soft waves against your legs and the smell of the ocean breeze.

No one cries in summer.

Not when you’re spending time with people you adore,

Making jokes and laughing until someone falls on the floor.

Even when you’re in pre-season,

Pushing yourself to the limit until you start wheezing.

No one cries in summer.

Not until you witness the crisp green leaves begin to change their colors.

Thoughts of school and expectations push you up against the wall,

And that’s the reason why everyone cries in fall.

There is always so much pressure to be the best.

“Do your homework and go to bed early, you better pass that test!”

School always begins to feel like a competition,

Trying to do homework from eight subjects in one night like a magician.

Everyone is always fighting for the highest score,

Is this school or the civil war?

If only everyone could be taught equally,

Each and every student would come to school gleefully.

No more ‘A’s, no more wrongs and rights,

No more ‘F’s, and to the end with sleepless nights!

I wish fall could feel like less of a brawl,

But until then, everyone cries in fall.