ACT & College Preparation Course for the Christian Student

I like to pretend.

Every trip to the post office, every trip across country — it doesn’t matter where I go — I like to pretend I am on a mission.

My wife Karen doesn’t like to join my team, or army, or panzer group — even when I offer her a lieutenancy. Of course I am always the captain, but that is incidental.

Karen just frowns at me.

“Look to the south, good buddy,” I warn. “The Nazis are coming fast. . . .”

“Keep your eyes on the road, Jim,” she scolds.

“10-4,” I respond as I pull the Tiger Tank (aka Toyota Prius) back to the center of the road.

How about you?

Why not make a mundane trip to the grocery store into a mission behind enemy lines? Why not make a trip to church into a scouting mission across the Sahara?

Life is interesting enough, I suppose, without all the pretending, but it is never as much fun.

My seven-year-old grandson Zion will pretend with me.

Last Christmas high command gave us a mission to take important orders to Second Army (i.e., Karen told me to take a letter to our mail box at the end of our 150-yard driveway). Brave Master Sergeant Zion volunteered to join me.

“General Granna (i.e., Karen),” I warned. “Do not be surprised if we don’t make it back alive. My will is in the safe deposit box. If we don’t make it, honey, know that I died with your gentle face in my mind. ”

“Don’t miss the mail run, Jim,” Karen responded.

“Yes ma’am,” I deferentially responded. “10-4.”

After establishing our password, Zion and I grabbed our browning automatics (broken broom handles), grenades (plastic donuts from Zion’s sister Emily’s pretend kitchen set), and bowie knives (Karen’s carrots) and quietly, with great alacrity, approached the dangerous German bunker (mail box).

“Sergeant, you cover my back. I am going in, Good Buddy!”

Along the way, of course, we were attacked by banzai warriors (our four barn cats), a German Stuka (our Black Lab), and an enemy patrol (our neighbors on a walk). Against all odds, we made it.

But not without casualties. I sustained a serious leg injury and Zion was nicked in the left arm. In fact, we lost several good pretend companions.

Sly Zion, halfway, as we hid behind the chicken coop, insisted on a field promotion to lieutenant or he would desert. I reluctantly agreed. In the midst of such carnage, what was I to do?

After such an arduous and dangerous mission, newly promoted Lieutenant Zion and I celebrated at Granna’s kitchen table. She unceremoniously served us A-rations (Christmas cookies) and mess coffee (hot chocolate with marshmallows).

It doesn’t get much better than this, 10-4?

OCABULARY

The Civil War1

Shelby Foote

Newsweek magazine described Foote’s three-volume masterpiece this way: “Foote is a novelist who temporarily abandoned fiction to apply the novelist’s shaping hand to history: his model is not Thucydides but the Iliad, and his story, innocent of notes and formal biography, has a literary design.”2 This great historical work has the distinction of being the best single work on the American Civil War. It is well worth the effort to read all three volumes.

Suggested Vocabulary Words

Perhaps by now McClellan had learned to abide the tantrums and exasperations of his former friend and sympathizer. (vol. 1)
McClellan was quite aware of the danger of straddling what he called “the confounded Chickahominy.” (vol. 1)
In addition to retaining the services of Seward and Chase, both excellent men at their respective posts, he had managed to turn aside the wrath of the Jacobins without increasing their bitterness toward himself or incurring their open hatred. . . . Paradoxically, because of the way he had done it. . . . (vol. 2)
Stuart had accepted the gambit. . . . (volume 3)
Poor as the plan was in the first place, mainly because of its necessary surrender of the initiative to the enemy, it was rendered even poorer — in fact inoperative — by the speed in which Sherman moved through the supposedly impenetrable swamps. (vol. 3)

ATH

Algebra Review

The half and fourth of a certain number are together equal to 75. What is the number?
What number is that which being increased by one-third and one-half of itself equals 22?

RITING

Style (Writing and Speaking): Paragraph Main Body

If the introduction is the bait, so to speak, to attract the attention of the readers, the main body is the hook that actually catches readers. It is the meal provided for the readers. Every paragraph has a topic sentence and several supporting sentences; they make up the body of the paper. Every essay has an introductory paragraph that always presents the purpose statement (or thesis) of the essay, and every essay has several supporting paragraphs (the main body).

How many sentences or paragraphs should be in the main body of this prose unit? Enough to develop thoroughly the thesis statement. That may be 3 paragraphs or it may be 300 paragraphs. However, use as few paragraphs as possible to accomplish your purpose. Writing more to just fill up the page is not indicative of good writing. Every sentence that is included in a paragraph should have a reason for being there. Which paragraphs belong in the body of this essay? Check the ones that belong. Here is the introduction:

Japan is a study of contrasts. On the one hand, it is Asia’s first industrialized nation. On the other hand, it is still a very conservative nation.

The Japanese could be the most cosmopolitan people in Asia, if not the world. They are so dependent on world markets that it imports virtually all of its iron ore, bauxite, oil, copper, and nickel. Japan relies on foreign supplies for over 90 percent of its coal, natural gas, and lead. Over 85 percent of its total energy is imported from abroad. It is perhaps the greatest importer of agricultural goods. Japan is second only to the United States in terms of the total value of its industrial exports. It is the world’s greatest exporter of automobiles; it has the greatest number of merchant ships in the world.
Yamato emperors expanded their rule over all of the main islands of Japan except Hokkaido. This ultimately brought great upheaval in Japanese society. Likewise a great smallpox epidemic of 735–737 indelibly changed early Japan. Perhaps one-third of the population perished in those two years.
Yet the Japanese people are more intimately tied to their ancient ancestral roots than they are to events in the rest of the world. Third and fourth-generation Japanese, when asked where they are “from,” still name the “old home” of their ancestors. Their lives are tied more closely to the ancient rural agricultural rhythms than to the modern industrial cities where they reside.3

Avoid loaded words. Loaded words are words that will evoke a response — usually a bad one — from your audience. Your audience probably will be secular, mostly progressive (a euphemism for liberal) with attitude! So don’t say things like, “If you disagree with me, well, you are going to hell.”

NGLISH

Audience

Different audiences require different writing styles. It matters to whom you are writing a piece! Choose the audience of each passage and circle words that tell why you chose a particular audience. Hint: clues regarding audience lie in word choice and content.

A. Teachers B. Doctors C. Magazine for women D. Teenagers

E. Football fans F. Computer nerd

___________We conducted a single-center, randomized, controlled trial of arthroscopic surgery in patients with moderate-to-severe osteoarthritis of the knee.

__________Colston tried to continue playing with the injury during the Saints’ 24-20 victory over the Bucs, but finished with only three catches for 26 yards.

__________What is editing? Ruth Culham of the Northwest Regional Education Laboratory separates revision (last month’s column topic) from editing (spelling, grammar, capitalization, and punctuation).

_________My guy loves music, and he had just bought himself a new iPod. He’s obsessed with the painting The Great Wave, and I found an iPod skin with the exact painting on it. He loved it, and now he thinks of me every time he listens to his music!

__________You want: to look bright-eyed. Hide dark circles around the eye area with an apricot-tinted color, or if you have darker skin, one that’s one shade lighter than your skin tone.

__________Making the user interface for one device easy, slick, fun, and fast is a challenge. If you have multiple devices and they need to cooperate, the challenge increases dramatically. As wired and wireless communications hardware gets cheaper, the design opportunities for communicating devices become more common.

EADING

Active Reading

Call of the Wild4

By Jack London

As you read, use these marks to help you understand the text.

✓ This is important.

? This is not clear to me.

✩ Interesting point!

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.

Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge Miller’s place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was approached by graveled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the rear things were on even a more spacious scale than at the front. There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad servants’ cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank where Judge Miller’s boys took their morning plunge and kept cool in the hot afternoon.

And over this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born, and here he had lived the four years of his life. It was true, there were other dogs, There could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, but they did not count. They came and went, resided in the populous kennels, or lived obscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of Toots, the Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless — strange creatures that rarely put nose out of doors or set foot to ground. On the other hand, there were the fox terriers, a score of them at least, who yelped fearful promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of the windows at them and protected by a legion of housemaids armed with brooms and mops.

But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm was his. He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge’s sons; he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge’s daughters, on long twilight or early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the Judge’s feet before the roaring library fire; he carried the Judge’s grandsons on his back, or rolled them in the grass, and guarded their footsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable yard, and even beyond, where the paddocks were, and the berry patches. Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he utterly ignored, for he was king — king over all creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller’s place, humans included.

His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge’s inseparable companion, and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of his father. He was not so large — he weighed only one hundred and forty pounds — for his mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd dog. Nevertheless, one hundred and forty pounds, to which was added the dignity that comes of good living and universal respect, enabled him to carry himself in right royal fashion. During the four years since his puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated aristocrat; he had a fine pride in himself, was even a trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes become because of their insular situation. But he had saved himself by not becoming a mere pampered house-dog. Hunting and kindred outdoor delights had kept down the fat and hardened his muscles; and to him, as to the cold-tubbing races, the love of water had been a tonic and a health preserver.

And this was the manner of dog Buck in the fall of 1897, when the Klondike strike dragged men from all the world into the frozen North. But Buck did not read the newspapers, and he did not know that Manuel, one of the gardener’s helpers, was an undesirable acquaintance. Manuel had one besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in his gambling, he had one besetting weakness — faith in a system; and this made his damnation certain. For to play a system requires money, while the wages of a gardener’s helper do not lap over the needs of a wife and numerous progeny. (chapter 1)

Setting is a critical component of this book. What is the setting in chapter 1?

Which setting is most friendly?

CIENCE

Conclusions From Data

With the Apache, as with other tribes, the clan organization has an important bearing on property right. Regardless of what property either spouse may hold or own at the time of marriage, the other immediately becomes possessed of his or her moiety. Should the wife die, her husband retains possession of the property held in common so long as he does not remarry, but what might be termed the legal ownership of the wife’s half interest becomes vested in her clan. Should he attempt to dissipate the property the members of the deceased wife’s clan would at once interfere. If the widower wishes to marry again and the woman of his choice belongs to the clan of his former wife, then he and the new wife become owners in common of all personal property held by him; but if the second wife belongs to a different clan from that of the former wife, then the husband must make actual transfer of half of the common property to the clans people of the deceased woman, who inherited the legal interest in it at their relative’s death. The same tribal law applies in the case of a widow.

Much internal strife naturally results whenever an actual distribution of property is made. In the first place, the surviving spouse unwillingly relinquishes the moiety of the property to the relatives of the deceased, and the immediate relatives often disagree with the remainder of the clan. In former times, death of one or more members of contending clans often resulted when the division of much property was made. Having no tribunal for making an equitable division, the matter was left to mutual agreement, resulting in disputes and frequently murder.

With the breaking up of the clans, together with the rapid disintegration of ancient customs and laws, this property law is fast becoming forgotten; but as recently as 1906 such disputes as those mentioned occurred under both the Fort Apache and San Carlos agencies, creating no little ill-feeling. In one instance a man refused to deliver possession of half of his little herd of horses to his deceased wife’s clans people when contemplating marriage with another woman, and appealed to the missionaries for aid. He was compelled to make the division, however, before he could remarry.6

The above anthropological data is evidence that:

Apache men are often married to many women.
Property rights are very intimately tied to clan connections created in marriage.
Polygomy creates several society problems.
A only
A and C
All