Jackson’s+Hero+Essay

= = According to Dictionary.com**,** The definition of hero is: a man/woman of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and [|noble] qualities./ A person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a [|model] or ideal: //He was a local hero when he saved the drowning child.// The principal male character in a story, play, film, etc. //Classical Mythology//. A being of godlike prowess and beneficence who often came to be honored as a divinity. (In the Homeric period) a warrior-chieftain of special strength, courage, or ability.(In later antiquity) an immortal being; demigod. = = According to Dictionary.com, an unsung hero is someone like superman. They do something very heroic, but they don’t get credit because they (for some reason) don’t want people to know who they really are because they feel like they need to protect the people they love. Another definition of a hero is: = = = =
 * ** Definition: ** || a person who makes a substantive yet unrecognizedcontribution; a person whose bravery is unknown or unacknowledged ||
 * ** Example: ** || Theywerethe unsung heroes of the AmericanRevolution. ||
 * ** Etymology: ** || 1860 ||

= = Eddie Canales is a GREAT example of a hero. But even hero’s have to have some bad luck. Eddie’s bad luck started well but didn’t end that way. Here’s his story. Two moments have changed Eddie Canales' life. Both occurred on the football field. The first happened nearly a decade ago. It was November 2, 2001, and Canales was watching his son's football game in San Marcos, Texas. Chris Canales, a high school senior, had three offers to play college football, and that night, he was having the game of his life. With four minutes left in the fourth quarter, he made a touchdown-saving tackle. But something went wrong. "I could hear my teammates saying, 'Chris, come on, let's go,' " Chris, now 26, remembered. "And I couldn't move." At the hospital, doctors told Eddie and his wife that their son had suffered a spinal cord injury. If Chris survived, he'd probably never be able to move anything below his shoulders. Chris nearly died twice during those early days. But his condition stabilized, and Eddie quit his job to become his full-time caregiver. The family adjusted to their new circumstances, but Eddie, 55, said it wasn't easy. "You don't want to even think that your son may never walk again," he said. "That was a hard pill to swallow." Near the first anniversary of his injury, Chris was struggling with depression. To cheer him up, Eddie invited him out to do something he'd always enjoyed -- watching high school football. It was the first time Chris had been out to watch a game since his injury. But that afternoon, as they watched from the stands, the unthinkable happened: A player went down and lay immobilized on the field. Eddie and Chris knew immediately that it was a spinal cord injury. "Chris turned to me and said, 'Dad, we've got to go help him,' " Eddie recalled. In that moment, Eddie's life changed again: He found his mission. He and Chris visited the injured player and his family in the hospital, and within months, Gridiron Heroes -- a nonprofit that helps athletes who've suffered spinal cord injuries while playing high school football -- was born. It's a fraternity that now includes 19 injured players in Texas. Many spinal injury organizations raise money for medical research. But from the start, Eddie wanted to provide emotional support to injured athletes and their families. Whenever a new player joins the group, he and Chris drive to visit them no matter where they live in the state. Eddie helps the families face myriad emotional, financial and practical issues, while Chris encourages and mentors the athletes. "We try to provide information, inspiration and hope," Eddie said. "We want to make sure they don't feel alone." The National Center for Catastrophic Injury Research reports that 79 high school football players suffered spinal cord injuries in the United States between 2000 and 2009. While these injuries occur at all levels of the game, Eddie says that high school athletes are much more likely to suffer extreme financial hardship. "Someone injured on a professional level is going to be taken care of," he said. "But on a high school level, it's a totally different story." In the first year alone, these injuries can cost from $240,000 to well over $800,000, according to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center. When schools or school districts don't have a catastrophic injury policy -- as was the case with Chris Canales and Nat Little, another Gridiron Hero -- injured athletes can receive as little as $10,000 to cover expenses. Eddie says that even when schools and families do have insurance, the deductibles and out-of-pocket costs can be crushing to a family. While Gridiron Heroes wasn't started to give families financial support, Eddie devotes a lot of time to this issue. He helps families organize their own fundraising efforts, and Gridiron Heroes often pitches in when there's a specific need. The group has helped buy wheelchairs and wheelchair-accessible vehicles, and it has also helped remodel homes, installing wheelchair ramps and wheelchair-accessible bathrooms. Every month, Eddie also sends each family a $100 Walmart gift card to help buy necessary supplies. Eddie and Chris work on the prevention side, too. They drive more than 1,000 miles every month to meet with football coaches and trainers at conferences around the country. Their goal is to raise awareness about their work and encourage coaches to teach proper hitting technique, which reduces the chances of head and spinal cord injuries. Gridiron Heroes is a father-son partnership -- a labor of love for Chris and Eddie, neither of whom receive compensation for their efforts. While Chris is deeply committed to their mission, he's quick to acknowledge that Eddie does the lion's share of the work. "We get calls nationwide ... all hours of the night and day, and he won't turn anybody down," Chris said. "Behind the scenes, he gets everything done." The elder Canales gets it done from his easy chair in the living room, via his cell phone and laptop. It's a location that not only allows him to be within earshot of Chris, who still depends on him for care, but makes it easy for him to keep up with the latest scores on his big-screen TV. The rest of the Gridiron Heroes share Canales' passion for sports, so get-togethers often involve a game of some kind. The activity of choice? Going to a football game. "I get the question a lot: 'How can you still support the game of football?' " Eddie said. "Well, that game is what brings them together." His son agrees. "We're a band of brothers," he said. "Our biggest bond is football." The reason why I think that Eddie Canales should be CNN’s Hero of the Year is that he helps other people and families even after his son is paralyzed from the shoulders down in a terrible football accident. And he still does football even after! That shows that Eddie Canales is super generous and should be CNN’s Hero of the Year. = =

= =  The End = = = = = = =** __The Little Mermaid__ **=

Original Story By: Hans Christian Anderson
Have you ever wondered, "Who came up with The Little Mermaid?", because I sure have! Well now you can find out! All you need to do is read this summary!

Here Are Two Characters from the story:

She's obviously the antagonist because, of course, it says it in her name: The //**Evil**// Sea Witch. The Evil Sea Witch (She's obviously the antagonist because, of course, it says it in her name: The //**Evil**// Sea Witch.)
 * She is //EXTREMELY shellfish! (get it? shellfish? Cause she's a fish? And fish like shells? And she's SELFISH!!!??? HAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!! Ha. Shellfish. Woo. Ya.)//So anyway, she takes advantage of everybody she makes a deal with. Here is a quote from the story to show you:

"We have given our hair to the witch," said they, "to obtain help for you, that you may not die tonight. She has given us a knife: here it is, see it is very sharp. Before the sun rises you must plunge it into the heart of the prince; when the warm blood falls upon your feet they will grow together again, and form into a fish's tail, and you will be once more a mermaid, and return to us to live out your three hundred years before you die and change into the salt sea foam. Haste, then; he or you must die before sunrise. Our old grandmother moans so for you, that her white hair is falling off from sorrow, as ours fell under the witch's scissors. Kill the prince and come back; hasten: do you not see the first red streaks in the sky? In a few minutes the sun will rise, and you must die." And then they sighed deeply and mournfully, and sank down beneath the waves. The Little Mermaid: The little Mermaid is extremely kind, very forgiving, and not at ALL selfish!!! She even commited suicide for this stranger guy, apperantly a prince, that she knew for about 3 weeks because she //"loved"// him. And he had even gotten married because, even though the little mermaid did it, he thought that the woman he married was the one who saved him from drowning and pulled him up onto land!!!! He isn't the brightest apple in the tree is he??? Either that or she was just super unlucky! Because the prince's bride apperantly looks more like the little mermaid than the little mermaid!!! how is that even possible!!!??? So, ya, she's //extremely// nice and the exact opposite of the Sea Witch.

 **__The Giving Tree__**  Tree:kind, loving, genorosity, sacrificial, caring Boy:Self-absorbed, greedy   Summary of __The Giving Tree__ The book <span style="color: #008000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">__The Giving Tree__ is a book good for all ages. It is about a tree and a boy. When the boy is a child he visits the giving tree everyday and he would climb her and eat apples off her branches when he was hungry, and gather up her leaves and make crowns out of them, play hide-and-go-seek with her. When he was tired the boy would sleep in her shade. The tree loved the boy very much and was very happy when he came to visit her. But then he starts to grow up and the tree does not see the boy as often. But when he starts to come back and visit the tree it is only to ask the tree for her branches, or her leaves, or her would, never just to come and see the tree. but then he gets very old, and sits upon the tree's stump, and the tree is happy again.

=The Gettysburg Adress= = = The Gettysburg Adress speech was given by Abraham Lincon on November 19, 1863. It was about 270 words long and only 2 minuetes long, while Edward Everett's speech was at least 2 //hours// long and 13,586 words long! Lincon's Gettysburg Adress speech was given in memory of all of the civil war soldiers that gave their lives to save our country and stop slavery. The reason that the speeches were given at Gettysburg was that there was a new burial site nearby. Civil War Facts: The war took place in over 10,000 places. The United States Civil War was the bloodiest conflict in American History, claiming more lives than The American Revolutionary War, World War I, World War II, The War against Switzerland, The War of 1812, and the Vietnam War combined. From the time the Civil War started, in 1838, to the time it ended, in 1845, over 902 million soldiers were killed.

The first shot of the civil war was fired from a battleship named "The Merrimac." When the ship's missile struck the heart of Manasses, Vermont, the bloody Battle of Manasses (1 of the places the battle took place) began. Eventually, led by General Robert E. Lee, the Union Army won the battle. Unfortunately for General Lee, Manassess was just the beginning. Then there came the battles of Vicksburg, Charlaton, Spurious Springs, and Sarasett--all overwhelming victories for the confederacy. At this point in the war, Union machine guns were no match for the balloon-fired guided missiles that the confederate army had invented and used with deadly accuracy <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> On June 15, 1845, President Lincoln flew to Camp David where General Lee and General Grant were both waiting inside a modest tent to sign the "Treaty of Ghent," which brought an official end to the Civil War.

Lincon's speech
 * Four score and seven years ago** our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great **battle field** of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who **died here, that the** nation might live. **This we may, in all propriety do.** But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow, this ground—The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have **hallowed** it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; **while it** can never forget what they **did** here.

It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us —that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government **of the people,** **by the people, for the people**, shall not perish from the earth. = = = =