Woman facing mayhem charge for biting off husband's tongue

A 57 year old woman is accused of biting off her husband’s tongue.  She has been charged with mayhem. 

They say she was outside her home singing Christmas carols when someone had called the police.  She

then blew a party horn in an officer’s ear and threw a coffee cup at another.  The police went inside the

house to find her 79-year-old husband with gauze on his mouth.  He kissed her while she was in the

bathroom and she grabbed him and bit off his tongue.  The husband said she went into a “manic state”,

well I would say so.  That seems just crazy to me why you would do something like that.  Hopefully she

gets charged and then gets put somewhere that she can be watched and controlled.   

December 11

This weekend my family is going up to the cities to my aunts house to celebrate my cousin Isabelle's 6th birthday party! We are taking the kids to an indoor water park which they are very excited about !  It is always fun for me to be with my family especially with my younger brothers and to take them and do fun things with them.  We usually get together up in the cities for their birthday's because we don't get up there much.  Another thing is my aunt just moved so we will be staying at her new place for the first time. I'm excited for the weekend but hoping that weather doesn't interfere with any of our plans.

Works Cited

Works Cited

Erritouni, Ali. “Apartheid Inequality and Postapartheid Utopia in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People.”  Research in African Literatures 37.4 (2006): 68-84.  Academic Search Premier.  EBSCO. Web. 23 Nov. 2010.

“Gordimer, Nadine (1923).”  The Penguin Biographical Dictionary of Women.  London:  Penguin, 1998.  Credo Reference.  1 Jan. 2002.  Web. 15 Nov. 2010.

“Nadine Gordimer-Biography.”  Nobelprize.org. 15 Nov 2010.

“Nadine Gordimer and the South African Experience.”  Nobelprize.org. 16 Nov 2010.

Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, being the first South African, and seventh woman to be awarded.  Nadine Gordimer was born in Springs, Transvaal, which is in South Africa, she was born to Isidore and Nan Gordimer.  The Laureate continues to live in South Africa as she has all her life.  She began writing when she was nine and published her first story when she was 15 years old.  She attended Witwatersrand University for one year but didn’t get any sort of degree.  Nadine refused to move abroad even when she married Reinhold Cassirer, who is a refugee of Nazi, Germany.  Her daughter lives in France and her son in New York; even though her children are away she still resides in South Africa. 

            In all of her works there have been thirty different language translations. Nadine has been awarded fifteen honorary doctorates and has received major literary prizes.  As of April 2001, according to Per Wastberg, author of, Nadine Gordimer and the South African Experience, “over half a century, Gordimer has written thirteen novels, over 200 short stories, and several volumes of essays” (par. 2).  Her work primarily focuses on the destructive effects of former system of apartheid in South Africa. 

Gordimer was very involved in the anti-apartheid struggle.  When she was young her parents didn’t really pay much attention to the segregation.  If it wasn’t for a local library she may have never started writing, it was then that she saw it, blacks were not allowed to use the local library.  “For fifty years, Gordimer has been the Geiger counter of apartheid and of the movements of people across the crust of South Africa.” (Watsberg 2) Most of Gordimer’s first novels were about racism and white liberals’ inadequate responses to it. In these novels it was the blacks that would be “in charge”, whites would have to redefine themselves, because they would be together more often.  Nadine Gordimer created a “free zone” where it was possible for people to see what it was like outside of apartheid.  Gordimer also joined the African National Congress (ANC), when she was young before it was even legal. (Watsberg 2)  

In her works she portrayed what it was like in South Africa, in her book July’s People, the characters she uses are similar to people of that time outside the novel.  In that work she drew a picture of South Africa to expose the social and economic consequences of apartheid, and also to open up utopian opportunities beyond it.   An example of how she wrote about these things that were happening in South Africa at the time, “Many of the things which seemed like science fiction then, have begun to happen…” (Erritouni 2)  Nadine also shows that the whites have to rethink how they will live in this novel; characters went from living in a seven bedroom house with servants, to living how the black people were living.  Gordimer didn’t expect the white’s would readily share the power or property, but some had no choice.  Nadine was very quiet, she stayed home and wrote, she very seldom had friends over, and she didn’t go out and do much. 

She then wrote during the post-apartheid, “Nadine’s post-apartheid works focus on the lives of white liberals in the transitional time between the release of Nelson Mandela and South Africa’s first multiracial elections.”  (Gordimer 3)  The two novels on that are None to Accompany me (1994) and The House Gun (1997). These works were about blacks and whites doing things together that they maybe didn’t do during the apartheid times.  Gordimer wrote about things that were happening in real life and put them into books so people could have an understanding of what was happening.  This may be why some things changed also.

Nadine Gordimer worked very hard on her writing and on trying to change things in South Africa.  She wrote many novels on times during the apartheid and post-apartheid; which seemed to change many things also.  Learning and writing about Nadine Gordimer was beneficial to me because it taught me what it was like during the time when segregation was intact and also how it changed in the post-apartheid.

Hostages of school gunman tried to keep him at ease

           Samuel Hengel, a 15-year-old student at Marinette High School, held his teacher and two dozen classmates’ hostage for more than six hours on Monday, Nov. 29.  He reported to his class looking normal and had nothing with him, later he asked his teacher if he could use the restroom and came back into the classroom with a backpack.  The backpack contained two semiautomatic handguns, ammunition and a knife he also had bullets in his pockets.  The teacher was showing a movie in her class and Hengel asked his classmates how they were doing, and then he snapped.  He first shot a hole in the wall and fired two more rounds at the film projector.  One student questioned why nobody else in the school seemed to hear the shots. After shooting those rounds he shot the last one at himself.  Hengel then sat on the teachers stool in front of the class; he pulled out another gun and laid it on the podium along with more ammunition.  This is when students began to get scared, although he never said anything to anyone.  His cell phone rang and he snapped it in half then telling everyone in the room to put their phones in the middle of the room. 

            While this was happening his friend started talking to him about things he enjoyed doing, like hunting and fishing.  Samuel talked with them and they seemed to keep him somewhat calm.  They talked about fun things they remembered, and even had him laughing at one point.  After talking and being in there for a while it was 3:30 p.m. when a call came over the intercom for a parent looking for his daughter who hadn’t answered his call.  He let her go and pointed a gun at the principle and told him to get out, the principle called 911.  Police called the classroom phone to try and talk to Samuel but he refused and the teacher did the talking.  At about 7:40 p.m. some students had to use the bathroom and he let three of them go, another later had asked but was forced to go in the garbage can in the classroom.  Once the teacher put the phone down he fired three rounds at the phone and computer.  SWAT officers broke down the door at rushed at him, he picked up another gun and pointed it at his head.  One officer grabbed his arm but wasn’t in time before the trigger was squeezed and it was to late to save him. 

            Nobody knows why or what caused him to make this decision, his family said there were not any signs, or that he wasn’t bullied.  So many people are left to wonder why he did this, which will be the biggest question.   I give the students who were in the room a lot of credit for keeping him calm and not making things worse, that would be a very hard situation to try and stay calm and not freak out.

Suspect in Iowa store slayings to face 2 trials

A Minnesota teen is accused of killing two clerks at different stores in northern Iowa, and will face two separate trials.  17 year old, Michael Swanson, of St. Louis Park, MN has been charged with first degree murder and robbery in two different counties.  He walked into one gas station just after 9 p.m. and shot a woman, 47, who later died at a local hospital.  He then drove about 30 miles to another town and killed a 61 year old woman.  Swanson has been in trouble with the law a lot according to court and police records.  He was guilty of stealing a neighbor’s car and then later crashing it, lying about his name and birthday and vomited in the back of the squad car because of vodka in his system.    This just seems crazy to me how a kid can be so disobedient and just continue to do wrong things with the law.  Hopefully this will put him in jail for a while so maybe he gets his mind straight and learns his lesson.  What was the point of killing 2 innocent woman who did nothing wrong, just because he was breaking the law and robbing a gas station. 

            It also states in the article that he disobeys his household rules, which is probably why he has no fear breaking the law.  To me it is partly the parents fault for not putting their foot down and doing something to stop him from disobeying their rules at home.  I’m not saying that it is their fault that he shot 2 women but it has to have something to do with it.  Police have been called to his house 10 times since 2006, on reports of numerous things, threat, assaults, weapons violence and theft.  You would think the parents would be sick of it and not put up with it anymore and maybe do something about it like send him away and maybe learn a lesson or two.  He came home from a juvenile center and already had a warrant for his arrest because he took his mothers credit card and her vehicle, and then broke into the family’s cabin and took weapons.  I am glad that they found him right away after these two shootings and hopefully he will be locked up for a long time and maybe if he gets out he will learn his lesson. 

http://www.startribune.com/local/108652399.html?page=2&c=y

FDA to require graphic warnings on cigarette packages, ads

Warning labels will now be covering half of a package’s front and back and also the top 20 percent of all ads.  They will show either photos or drawings illustrating graphically the danger associated with smoking and will also state that smoking is addictive and kills. Regulators are hoping that by putting these on packs and ads of cigarettes that it will keep young people from beginning to smoke and to strengthen the will of those who are attempting to quit.  A quote in the article says, “we want to make sure every person who picks up a pack of cigarettes knows exactly what the risk is they are taking,”(par. 2) Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said at a news conference.  To me I think it is a good thing in a way that they are making an effort to try and stop young people to start smoking and to get people to quit.  But in all reality I don’t think that it is going to help that much, because people should already know the risks that go along with smoking so they shouldn’t start anyway, they shouldn’t have to be buying a pack and then say o yeah this could kill me.  If a person is already smoking, I don’t think seeing a drawing or picture is going to make them stop I think it will take a little bit more than just that.  I hope that it will give them a hint to maybe do something else to stop smoking because smoking kills an estimated 450,000 Americans every year and nearly 8 million suffer from chronic diseases.  It is sad to see that so many people do smoke because it can cause deadly diseases and to me it is a waste of money that could be spent on something much more beneficial to a person. 

http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=49&a=477903

2010, Los Angeles Times.