Friday, February 13, 2004

Remember when…
By Bonnie Boer

“…Fruity Pebbles, grapes, boneless/skinless chicken breasts, Pepsi…474-3957, 616-772-5134…get gas, mow lawn, clean room, bake cookies, take shower…”

Wouldn’t it be totally insane if everything we’ve ever crammed into our heads went directly to our long-term memory? Can you imagine how much information our brains would have to sort through if we remembered every five-item grocery list, unimportant phone number, and ‘to-do-list’ that we’ve ever tried to jam into our short-term memory?

Thankfully, God has created us with a special function in our brains that sorts out vital information from unimportant facts - memory consolidation.

Have you ever heard of debt consolidation businesses, which take all of someone’s bills and reduce the debs they owe into one, easy, monthly payment? Memory consolidation is quite the same. All of our short-term memories without long-term importance are forgotten in a day, while significant short-term memories are ‘consolidated’ into our long-term memory for safekeeping.

If we repeat a grocery list a number of times while on the way to the store, we will most likely remember the items we need to buy when we are shopping, but we won’t store that list in our minds forever. Go shopping three days later and try to remember the same list, and you probably won’t be able to recall the items. Bake cookies, and you’ll remember the ingredients on the recipe while you’re preparing it, but make another batch the next day without the recipe, and most likely your cookies won’t turn out as well as the first time. But, if you shop for the same things every other day, and bake the same cookie recipe repeatedly, memory consolidation will kick in and take those bits of information to your long-term memory, so you won’t ever forget!
Next time you run down to the basement to get who-knows-what, hit the bottom step, and forget what you wanted, just remember that your memory consolidation center must not have thought it important enough to store. Go back up the steps and try again a second time while constantly repeating your purpose, and maybe this time you’ll accomplish more than just exercise.

Cowboys
By Melissa De Jong

Yee-haw! Giddy-up! Ya-Ya!! Today when you think of a cowboy, you probably think of a man who is very romantic and fights outlaws. But sad to say, that is all a myth.

In reality, the American cowboy stemmed from the Mexican cowboy. The cowboy’s clothes, food, and vocabulary were influenced by the Mexican vaquer (Mexican name for cowboy). The Mexican vaquer wore spurs that he would attach with straps to his bare feet and use them to control his horse. Their leather overalls were called chaparreras, which became known as chaps. The cowboy ate charqui or “jerky” which was a dried strip of meat. The Spanish wild caballo, or “rough horse,” became known as a bronco. The Mexican cowboys are the true originators of the American cowboy, known as a “buckaroo,” another Mexican name for cowboy.

The daily life of a cowboy was hard; he worked 10 to 14 hours a day on a ranch and 14 or more on the trail. This goes against the myth that the cowboy was romantic, because he worked all day and had hardly any time for himself. He had to be alert at all times for dangers that could harm his cattle. The cowboy would use his gun to protect his herd from wild animals and, contrary to the popular myth, rarely ever used his gun to shoot outlaws.

Play Day
By Katie Van Baren

“Ready, Set, Go!” On Wednesday, February 3, the whole school had a “play day.” We all went outside and played games that the seniors had made for an English IV class assignment. The seniors were split into two groups: the boys and the girls. The goal of this exercise was to instruct the rest of the school how they were to play the games, abide by the rules, and keep score.

The senior guys named their game Cave Canem, which is Latin for “beware of the dog.” They held their game on the sledding hill. The object of the game was to score points by getting through gates on a sled. However, while sliding down the hill, the opposing teams threw balls at the person on the sled to make him or her fall off. Their game sounded brutal, but in the end it was a lot of fun to play.

The girls’ game was called hand soccer. They held their game in the ball field. The object of the game was to bat a ball through the soccer goal only using hands, and it was very difficult. The girls’ game sounded good in theory but when played it didn’t work out as planned. We had to change many rules to make the game work, but it still was a lot of fun.

The “play day” was an utter success. We had time out of the regular school day, and we got to spend the lunch hour and some of the next class period outside playing. The seniors learned that these games are really hard to make! The games were played very well considering that they were run by students however, I think that I have a newfound respect for the teachers because of this.