Sunny Youth Journal

The short story, “Seventh Grade” by Gary Soto, is an amazing story about a person in seventh grade who likes a girl like every other people. I think people like this story because of the themes, about school, and the people inside the story.

Victor, a character in the story, carries a torch for a girl named Teresa. Teresa is in the same grade, the same French class, and the same English class as Victor, the protagonist. In English class, they were learning what nouns were and the teacher asked Victor what was an example of a noun and he said, Teresa. The teacher asked Victor what was an example of a place noun and he said Teresa’s house.

After the period, they were on break. Victor looked around to see if Teresa was around, but unfortunately, she was not. He kept looking around until he finally saw her and sat close to where she was. The break was over and after the bell rang, Teresa and Victor were going in the same direction, to French class.

During French class, their french teacher, Mr. Bueller, said hello in french as soon as everyone walked in they said it right back. Victor spoke up, trying to impress Teresa, but was very embarrassed because he did not know french and tried speaking in french with a french accent. At the end of class, Teresa spoke to him saying that she did not know that Victor could speak french. Victor was very proud and felt like seventh grade wasn’t going to be a bad year.

All of the themes in this story are fantastic and the one I like the most was be yourself, not anyone else. Being yourself will be the best way to show others what you are like. If you act like someone you are not, then once others find out, they might not like you.

The story, “Seventh Grade,” is about a boy named Victor who is on his first day of school. He met his friend, Michael, who had learned to scowl during the summer. He thinks that it makes girls notice him. Victor wants to impress his crush, Teresa, so he tries scowling too. He also signs up for French class because he wants to go to France someday, and also because Teresa signed up for it too.

The theme for the story is to not fake something to try to impress someone. In his French class, the teacher asked who knew how to speak French, and he raised his hand. What they didn’t know is that he does not know anything about French. He only wanted to impress Teresa. Then, the teacher asked him a question in French, and he did not know how to reply. He just made random sounds that he thought sounded like French, and he was very embarrassed.

After class, Teresa thought that he actually knew French, and told him that it was good. The teacher didn’t tell her that it was actually random sounds because it reminded him of his past. Then, he still tried to impress her by saying he got it by watching movies and reading books. Next, she asked him if he can help her in French sometime. He agreed, and then he actually went to the library. He learned his lesson in the end and checked out three French textbooks so next time in class, he can actually understand the teacher.

When coping with grief or other kinds of distress in their lives, people will find ways to cope. Plenty will find a healthy way to get themselves through the day, be it art, sports, reading, or just talking their feelings out and maybe having a good, cathartic cry on the bad days. For some people though, these things don’t work. They can’t find something, anything, that will help with the pain and let them recover, so they turn to unhealthy, damaging habits to just keep themselves going, and from there spiral down until their way to cope has become another monster in its own entirety. An example of this is the landlady from Roald Dahl’s short story “The Landlady”, who has seemingly turned to murder and taxidermy to keep herself afloat.

Billy Weaver, a young businessman, is looking for a place to stay in London, and rents a room at the landlady’s place. His first impression of her is very kind, and then “slightly dotty” when she says that “it isn’t very often I have the pleasure of taking a visitor into my little nest”. Strange as it may seem that the owner of a bed-and-breakfast in a big city rarely has customers, what really makes her start seeming creepy is what she says next: that “it is such a pleasure, my dear, such a very great pleasure when now and again I open the door and I see someone standing there who is just exactly right… like you”. She then proceeds to look Billy up and down, very slowly, as if inspecting a specimen to be dissected under a microscope.

What really begins to prove her murderous tendencies, though, is her uncanny knowledge of the physical properties of two “tall, handsome young men”- just like Billy- who had stayed there years prior. Of one, she says that his teeth were white, but not as white as Billy’s; of the other, she says that “there wasn’t a blemish on his body”. Body, not face. The landlady would have had no reason or opportunity to see that young man undressed, so how would she know? In addition, she tells Billy that those two young men have never left, and when she forgets their names then she “come[s] down here and look[s] it up”. That, combined with the fact that she has quite a few “little pets” that she keeps taxidermied and displayed in life-realistic positions in the living room, would indicate that these two young men have been murdered- and then “stuffed”, as her pets are- and kept upstairs on the fourth floor.

Another detail to consider is that the tea the landlady serves Billy “tasted faintly of bitter almonds”. Bitter almonds is a taste associated with cyanide, a highly toxic substance, seemingly fairly little of which is required to kill a person. It would be very easy to dissolve in a hot cup of tea and disguise with milk and sugar, both of which Billy takes with his tea. If Billy drank it- which he does- it can be assumed that he dies quietly, bloodlessly, making it very easy for the landlady to stuff him and add him to her collection.

These murders and stuffings can be seen as a damaging habit the lady developed to cope with a loss during the war that took place several years prior to the story- perhaps, as Billy suggested, the loss of a son. It would explain why she collects young men who are “just right” and keeps them: to take the place of someone irreplaceable, someone she will never have back.

Curtis Zhang

6/8/20

Landlady

The short story “The Landlady” by Roald Dahl revolves around a 17-year old boy named Billy who goes to a town named Bath for a business venture and goes to a small house to stay at, which he then meets the landlady. He decides to live in the house since the price is super cheap.  Later, he also finds out that the landlady is a taxidermist while they are drinking tea together. Then the story ends somewhat cryptically, with Billy asking if there were any other guests in the last 2-3 years and the Landlady answers “No, my dear, only you.” Though this ends the story without giving you an ending, you can piece together what is happening throughout the story. 

First, you can tell something is amiss when Billy is somehow drawn into the house by just the sign alone, telling you that the Landlady must’ve set it up specifically that way to draw people in. It is also shown that this is weird because one of the reasons why he decided to come into the house in the first place is the fact that there were animals “Animals were usually a good sign in a place like this, Billy told himself,” and the animals were fake themselves. 

Second, you can tell that the Lady is not whom she appears to be since she knew that the previous resident of the house was a man named Gregory Temple had not a single blemish on his body, which is a very odd thing to know. Billy also remembered that Gregory Temple and the other previous resident were on the front lines of the newspaper, but he couldn’t remember what it was.

Third, you can tell that the Lady is not who she appears to be because her tea that the Landlady gave Billy tasted faintly of Bitter Almonds, which is the taste of cyanide in his tea, which is showing that she is trying to poison him, and presumably taxidermy him like she did with the previous 2 residents. This would explain why the Landlady knew Mr. Temple didn;t have any blemishes on his body, and why the sign was so enticing to Billy. 

The Landlady is a very interesting story which does not reveal the actual meaning unless you search for it. The Landlady is most likely a psychopath and wants to kill Billy and turn him into a work of taxidermy.

Some of the benefits of launching these internet satellites into space is so everyone in the world can have access to stable internet. Some may say that everyone already has internet, but Musk was specifically targeting places that weren’t so fortunate like the rest of the world. Chadwick states,”’ The goal of Starlink is to create a network that will help provide internet services to those who are not yet connected, and to provide reliable and affordable internet across the globe.” This will insure that everyone can have internet and won’t be living under a rock while the rest of the world is evolving.
Launching satellites into space is an effective way of distributing internet across the world, but is it? Scientists say that these satellites acting like stars are effecting their research. It is giving them a difficult time to see the actual stars and obstructing their radios on land. The text says,”However, scientists and stargazers have voiced frustrations that the devices are hindering their ability to see the night sky. The orbiting satellites can also interfere with the workings of ground-based radio telescopes that experts use to see more distant phenomena.” This is definitely a huge downside for the scientists and stargazers. This is giving them an artificial taste of the sky compared to before, when there was no satellite in space. Also scientist are handed more obstacles when exploring space.

Seventeen-year-old Billy Weaver is the polar opposite of the landlady of the Bed and Breakfast, who puts up a sweet front in order to lure Billy into her clutches. In “The Landlady,” Roald Dahl uses this juxtaposition of young and old to demonstrate the cruelty of the adult world.

Billy Weaver admires adults, in particularly the “big shots” at the business office he works at. He thinks that they are “amazing,” and tries to act like them. Billy is also very trustful, to the point of being gullible. He travels to Bath, where he is a stranger, because “Mr. Greenslade at the head office” tells him that it is “splendid.” In fact, it is his gullibility that leads to his demise later at the hands of the landlady. Billy never suspects her, though there were many signs that something wasn’t quite right. He believes that the landlady is a “kind and generous soul,” even after she made several suspicious comments, saying that Billy is “just right,” among other things.

The landlady, on the other hand, is cruel and dishonest. She uses her grandmotherly air to induce Billy to put his trust in her, only to betray it in the end by poisoning him. The landlady’s scheme also demonstrates how sly she is. Though Billy thought she was slightly dotty, the landlady is actually meticulous, agile, and organized. She has “quickly moving hands” and “red fingernails.” Hearing that Billy would like to go to bed directly instead of eating dinner with her, the landlady tells him to go downstairs to sign “the book.” She uses this opportunity to serve him poisoned tea.

Billy’s innocence causes him to only see the best in people, representing the kindness and trustfulness of youth. However, having not been in the cruel world for long, young people can be too trustful, becoming oblivious to red flags. Billy completely misses many discrepancies in the landlady’s behavior. This admittedly is his fault, for he was not cautious enough. This lack of caution might have been caused by his haste, imitated from the adults whom he had blind regard for. The landlady, wicked to the point of depravity, shows how growing up robs people of the innocence they had when they were younger.

As some of you guys know, Elon Musk is set to launch a new batch of 60 Starlink satellites on Wednesday night. A huge amount of people has debated it on whether Elon Musk’s project well affect the sky, and some astronomers say it will block some of the Beauties in the night sky. They are going to have 1,000 satellites in orbit by the end of the year and has also been approved by the FCC to launch over 12,000 in total. Collectively they want to form a constellation of thousands of satellites, designed to provide low-cost broadband internet service from low-Earth orbit. There are some things that the satellites will help with.

First of all, Collectively they will form a constellation of thousands of satellites, designed to provide low-cost broadband internet service from low-Earth orbit. Meaning that they will be really useful and it will not cost as much. So, in general, it will be more useful and a lot more people will be able to access it.

Next, They have something called VisorSat, the new addition is said to keep the antennae on the satellites in the shade and prevents sunlight from reflecting off them by forming a barrier over the devices, making them less visible from the ground. Which will not block people’s views.

In general, I just felt like satellites that SpaceX sending satellites into space well have a more positive effect on the world. Plus a lot more people are going to be able to access them without having them blocking anyone’s vision.

When reading The Landlady, I found it very peculiar, and took me a little bit to wrap myself around it. They made the story with next to no explanations, making the reader create their own to try and fit the story.

The book starts off with a travelling man on his way to find a motel. On his way to find the Bell and Dragon, which he was told to be not too far away, he encounters a place for bed and breakfast for an extraordinary cheap price. A woman with very blue eyes opens the door as soon as he rings the doorbell. The man notices some animals resting comfortably around the entrance, a dog by the fire and a parrot in a cage. The man finds the woman strangely familiar, and notices she looks like someone he knew.

The woman is very welcoming and sets everything up for him. She asks him to go downstairs and fill out the guestbook to check in. He notices that there are only two other people’s names in the book, Christopher Mulholland, and Gregory W. Temple. And all of a sudden, he notices these names are very familiar, and tells about how strange it is to the woman. She responds that they are all very handsome men, just like him, and they both are on the 4th floor.

She then shows how that all of the animals in the lobby are stuffed, and the man is shocked, looking at them again, and now realizing that he had missed that detail completely. The woman says that she personally stuffs all of her pets when they die. She then tells him that he is her first customer in two years.

I found this story very creepy and interesting, and i created many theories about the backstory of all this. I started to think that only people the woman thinks that are “handsome” can see this building, like the Leaky Cauldron in Harry Potter, because they have such little customers. i also think that the other men in the bed and breakfast are dead and stuffed, like her pets. The Landlady left me very curious to what had happened, but left me hanging on detail. This is the mark of a interesting story, and if the author had continued, I would be thrilled to read it.

“No, my dear,” she said. “Only you.”

Billy opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated. He was getting dizzy and his vision was becoming sort of blurred.

“Are you not feeling well? Come, let’s hurry back to your room so you can rest for the night.” This time, her eyes gleamed as she gave Billy another of those gentle smiles.

Billy, grateful for her help, stumbled up the two flights of stairs and collapsed into bed with a troubled sigh. The lady said good night, left, and started knitting and humming gleefully down in the first floor.

Just as Billy was about to close his eyes, he heard something coming in the room. It lit a candle and peered at Billy curiously. To his surprise, it was Gregory. After quite a bit of whispering, Billy learned that he had been poisoned and Gregory, who had been a very famous doctor, had brought the antidote. While gulping it down, Gregory told him exactly why the lady was poisoning him and that she was going to stuff him just like her parrot and her dog, as he had figured out her plan from years of sneaking around her home and listening to her mumble to herself while Gregory stole whatever food he could to stay alive, waiting for a chance to escape.

A few minutes later, Billy heard the lady’s shuffling footsteps on the stairs, and he hurriedly shoved Gregory under the bed. He pretended to be asleep but left one eye partially open. He was horrified to see that the lady had two knives in her hands. And she was coming in his direction.

Before the lady could reach him, Billy jumped out of bed and scampered down the two flights of stairs, with Gregory close behind. The woman dropped her knives in surprise. Then understanding dawned on her and she chased the boys out into the room with the fireplace. Billy, looking back at the lady, tripped on her stuffed dog and landed face-first into the open teapot. Getting out of the pot as quick as possible and wiping his face frantically with the fur of the woman’s deceased pet, Billy turned to see that Gregory had pried a knife out of the lady’s hand while dodging the other and had flung the knife into a window. It instantly shattered and the two boys leapt through, landing on the sidewalk, one after another.

They sprinted off into the distance, leaving the old woman in her house, still screaming, “THAT WAS MY BASIL YOU DESTROYED! HOW DARE YOU TWO FOOLS THINK THAT YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH THIS. HOW DARE YOU!”

She hurled her remaining knife into the other window, seething with rage, gathered the rest of her knives, and crept outside, noiselessly following the boys with a new plan in her mind.

After reading this short story, i thought what I would’ve done in Bill’s situation for meeting the landlady. She was creepy in some sort which would’ve made me feel cautious. If I were Bill to check the registration list and see only two names, I would’ve been wondering, “Why would there only be two names? If there were only two names, does that mean there were bad reviews?” I would’ve been a little bit more cautious.

The reason why i would be cautious by the moment i step inside is because the woman opened the way a little too fast. She opened the door as if she was waiting for Bill to arrive…like she knew he was coming. This wouldn’t be normal because normally it would take half a minute to open the door. Like I said, seeing only two visitors on the check in list would be a little bit suspicious. When there are only two visitors to the hotel and when they had sort of an analogy. If Bill came in the hotel, what if the same thing that the other two gentlemen experienced happen to him?

If such things happens to him, I think another person would come to the hotel, because in order to finish an analogy, there needs to be two words. but in this case, names. Maybe there wouldn’t have to be an analogy for this to happen. But, my theory for what would happen to him has to do with the analogy he said.