According to the Oxford dictionary, boycott means to “withdraw from commercial or social started relations with (a country, organization, or person) as a punishment or protest.” There is a long history related to the term, like where it came from and why. A famous boycott in the 21st century is the Grab Your Wallet boycott, initiated in July 2018, which targeted Donald Trump for not understanding the effects of climate change and discrimination. A more well-known boycott in history was the one led by Rosa Parks in 1955, who refused to give up her seat to a white person. After being forced off the bus, Parks started the Montgomery Bus Boycott through which many activists stopped riding the bus. Black people boycotted for the right to equal seating. Rosa Parks’ protest defined the word boycott for me, but recently, I’ve been doing some research to dig deeper into its meaning. Born in 1932 in Norfolk, England, Charles Boycott made history with just his ego and his name. The time Charles was alive was a hard time for farmers who suffered from high costs for rent. Feeling sympathy for their cause, Charles, the head landlord, told his worker, Erne, to lower rents by 10%. The farmers, sensing weakness, got greedy and asked for 25% lower, and Erne said no. Charles got mad at them for being ungrateful and started to evict farmers. Now it was the workers’ turn to get mad; those who still had their houses refused to pay rent at all, and the farmers without houses stopped farming, depriving the people of England of necessities like milk and eggs. Charles decided to give back the houses because he, and all the townspeople, needed the food. England decided to name this action boycotting, after the person who was targeted by this protest. In conclusion, I am always impressed how understanding the derivation of a word can deepen its meaning. When reading about the current boycotts in the newspaper, or using my voice to stand up for what I believe in, I will always remember Charles, and I hope you do too.
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Sistories Ep. 2: How to Pack for an Amazing Trip
Sistories is a brand new podcast about travel hosted by two sisters–Maryam and Nour! https://stonesoup.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Sistories-Ep2-1.m4a Hi everyone, welcome to our new podcast, Sistories. My sister and I love to travel and we want to inspire you to travel too. That’s why we are hosting this cool new podcast. Last month we did our first episode about why you should travel. Today, we are going to be talking about how to pack for an amazing trip no matter where you go. I am Maryam, and I will be going first. So, how to pack… Well, first here is what to pack for those those extra bags that you take on the plane or in the car with you. First, you should always bring a device in case you get bored or your parents are sleeping. Second, I recommend you bring a notebook to write stuff in, and don’t forget a great book to entertain you. Traveling can take a lot of hours and you don’t want to just have to sit and do nothing because that’s boring. You might want to bring extra clothes in your bag. We didn’t once, and that didn’t go well. That story is coming up next. So, you’re probably wondering what happened. It started like any normal trip. It felt very exciting because we were going to Italy. We checked our bags, which had a lot of clothes in them because we were going to be gone for two weeks. When we were about to go in the sky, one of the airline attendants made an announcement and said, “We will be taking some luggage off the plane so please see if that was you.” My parents didn’t check because they never thought it would be us; its never us! Sadly, when we landed in Italy, and we got off the plane thinking everything was okay, we sat a long long time at the baggage claim but our luggage did not appear. So, we asked an attendant, but they couldn’t help. They said if they find it they would drop it off at our hotel. We had to buy a lot of clothes in Italy. In the final four days we finally got our luggage, but it was too late. This is why half of our clothes have Italian words on them like “Ciao.” The moral of the story is that you might want to pack some clothes in your carry-on bags. Thanks Maryam. Hi my name is Nour, and I’m going to tell you some other tips for packing. First, you will need to ask your parents some questions like how long you’re going for and what type of trip it will be. My mom used to give us a piece of paper with a list of everything we need to pack, and then we would go to our room and pack it. And then she would check. To be honest, I usually just stuff my clothes in the suitcase, but my sister packs her clothes pretty neatly so yes, there are different styles for packing. Now that my sister and I are older, we usually don’t get a list to check off. All we do now is ask how long we are going and then pack the right number of outfits based on the weather. Obviously, if you are going to the beach where it’s hot, you will pack different clothes than if you were heading to someplace cold and snowing. I also pack some pretty clothes in case we’re going out to dinner or to do something fancy. That’s important because you want to be prepared. For your carry-on bag you might want to bring extra underwear… You heard our Italy story! And I guess that you should bring your own headphones too so that you don’t have to wait on the airplane to get them. You also might want to pack a mask in case you need it since Covid is always around. Last but not least, you should always bring gum or something to chew on for take off and landing. If you have braces and chew gum, you barely have any left at the end because it’s all in your teeth. Most of these tips go for any kind of transportation but here is one thing to know just about cars: First, you can bring a book, but do not read it while you’re in the car. When I do that I get really sick after only 4 or 5 minutes. Thank you for listening to our podcast, Sistories. Come back again to listen to our next topic: Cool Places to Visit. Have a great trip!
Weekly Creativity #284: Choose Three Words and Use One of the Three to Start Every Sentence in Your Story
Write down the first three words that come to mind. Then, start every sentence in your story with one of those words.
