Imagine that your country was divided into two countries. Nobody would like their country becoming split. I am a girl who lives in a small country called Korea, which is beneath China and near Japan. If you see the map, Korea is divided between South Korea, where I live, and North Korea. Korea became independent in 1945 after the thirty-six-year colonization by Japan. When I first learned about Japanese imperialism, I only waited to next learn about Korea’s independence, but what happened was unexpected. The happiness of our independence only lasted a while; then a big unhappiness came. The North and South Korean governments were made, and on June 25th, 1950, the Korean war begun. These days at my school, we are learning about the problem of the division of Korea and the reasons why we should unify. We talked about the countries that unified, like Germany and Vietnam. We compared how the two countries united. Vietnam was united by military force, but Germany was united peacefully. There are problems about being divided. First, because of the partition of Korea, people are always in fear that a war might happen. I also get frightened every time North Korea shoots a nuclear missile for practice. Secondly, the dispersed families from the Korean War can’t go back to their hometown or meet their parents and siblings. Thirdly, Korea is having economic loss. There are lots of natural resources in North Korea, and South Korea has high technology to reach it. The pros of if North Korea and South Korea hold hands together is that we can be free of the fear of war and the dispersed families can see each other. Finally, if the two countries’ resources and technology can be combined, we can make better supplies and inventions. Korea can also develop their traditional culture to inform the world. Therefore, to solve these problems of Korea’s partition, North Korea and South Korea should work hard to live peacefully and become one country. Can the North and South get together right away? South Korea’s economic standard has developed about thirty-two times more than North Korea. Also, because North Korea and South Korea have been divided for sixty-six years, the two nations’ cultures and language changed. We face many challenges in our life that block our goals and dreams. I think that Korea should jump over the obstacle of the differences between North Korea and South Korea. The longer we are separated, the bigger hurdle we’ll have to overcome, and the bigger wound both countries’ peoples will have. I can still remember the day that I did my presentation about my dream in front of the class. I said, “I want to get rid of the ceasefire line that is blocking the path from South Korea to North Korea. My dream is studying with the North Korea students and going on a trip to North Korea.” My teacher patted my head. Smiling, she said, “We will achieve your dream, which is also Korea’s dream. I hope that day comes soon.” Of course, I can’t get rid of the ceasefire line by my self. However, if people who have a dream like mine cooperate, the two countries’ students can study together, and we will be able to go on a trip to North Korea.
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Saturday Newsletter: February 29, 2020
New York by Destan Cevher, 7 (New York, NY), published in Stone Soup February 2020 A note from Sarah When I saw Destan’s wonderful cityscape of New York from the February issue, I was reminded of the power of landscapes to depict a place so specifically, even if you’ve only been there a handful of times, or maybe not at all. Destan’s piece doesn’t include the classic New York landmarks that identify the city right away, but it does convey Destan’s interesting impression of the city through its composition and colors. I decided to make this newsletter more about images rather than words, so I’ve chosen a few pieces of art from the Stone Soup archives that also illustrate a place. Scroll down to see them, and visit the website if you’d like to see more. Quays of the Seine by Monique Huck,13, from the September/October 1995 issue Yosemite by Michelle Bjerke, 10, from the March/April 1978 issue My Village by Maria Santay Juarez, 13, the cover of the May/June 2002 issue Which Way Car Wash by Nicholas Taplitz, 13, from the November 2019 issue Of course, you don’t necessarily need to rely on the world around you to create art—it can be fun sometimes to imagine new worlds. But, sometimes what is in front of you is a good place to start. Try to describe your environment or represent it in an art piece, and please consider submitting your work to Stone Soup! Until next week, Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Daniel writes about “a shocking study” that shows that excessive cell phone use is . . . good for you?! Read “Phone Addiction is Strengthening Our Brain” for Daniel’s satirical take on our phone-obsessed world. Another travelogue from Vivaan on the blog! This time, he’s in Venice, Italy, a floating city where you take boats instead of buses. Read Vivaan’s account of his time in Venice, plus some history of the “magnificent” city. Try out a new game where you are a stem cell scientist and review it for the Stone Soup blog! Dish Life, a new, free game (“part Sims, part Tamagotchi”) was launched this week by researchers at Cambridge University. Dish Life is “a lab in your phone” designed as a fun way for young people to learn more about stem cells, and about what it’s really like to be a scientist working with a team in a lab. They want it to offer new ideas and tell new stories for imagining what a scientist does and looks like. We know that a lot of today’s Stone Soup readers are going to be tomorrow’s great scientists, and that you all appreciate a good story, so what do you think? Does Dish Life give you a new insight into the scientific life? Did it spark some new ideas in a subject area you didn’t know much about before? Is a game a good way to share this kind of information and build experience? The creators made a Youtube trailer where you, your family, and your teachers can find out more about the game, and there are preview versions for Android and iOS that you can download for free. So, if you decide to give it a try have something to say about it, why not write us a review? You can submit a review of Dish Life (or any other game!) to the blog category on our submission page. If we like it, we’ll publish it online. From Stone Soup February 2020 The Life of Beverly Henderson By Jamison Freis, 12 (Thousand Oaks, CA) (Illustrated by Destan Cevher, 7 (New York, NY)) I was born in 1950 and a few hours after I was born, my mom died—or so I was told. We were in Ketchum, Idaho. My name is Beverly Henderson. I am part Irish and the rest of me is all American. My father was disappointed when I was born because he wanted a boy. He put me in an orphanage. I never saw him again, but I have small pictures of him in my head. He was handsome, with brown hair, brown eyes, and tan skin. His skin was so smooth that it made butter feel rough. I lived with him for three years. At the orphanage, I went to a cheap school, and they fed us cold food, they had rats in the classroom, and I was one of the only girls. The only other girls were Lily and some other girl I never learned the name of. She was quiet as a mouse and graceful as a pigeon. Lily, however, was nice. She was nine years old at the time. Lily lived with a poor family, and she had one brother, two sisters, and her mom was pregnant with one more. …/MORE Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498. Stone Soup’s Advisors: Abby Austin, Mike Axelrod, Annabelle Baird, Jem Burch, Evelyn Chen, Juliet Fraser, Zoe Hall, Montanna Harling, Alicia & Joe Havilland, Lara Katz, Rebecca Kilroy, Christine Leishman, Julie Minnis, Jessica Opolko, Tara Prakash, Denise Prata, Logan Roberts, Emily Tarco, Rebecca Ramos Velasquez, Susan Wilky.
Venice Travelogue
Country: Italy Capital: Rome Main Language Spoken: Italian Currency: Euro We visited the floating city of Venice (Venezia) which has no roadways, only waterways!! Therefore you can only travel by boat as a method of transportation. Can you beat that experience? The city of Venice begins at about 400 A.D. when people fled to the Venetian Lagoon from the Barbarians who had come to conquer mainland Italy. At that time Venice hadn’t been built so the refugees crowded on to fisherman villages (like Burano). Everybody kept trying to go back to resume their normal lives but soon realised that it was impossible to live there. So only then was the decision to build Venice, a city safe from Barbarians, made. But after that they had to put wood brought from Croatia on 118 mud islands, and then join those islands together with canals and bridges! Thus was the magnificent and floating city of Venice built. It is amazing that a ‘city built in fear’ turned out to be one of the most glamorous cities ever to be built. Did you know, Venice has been sinking since it was built. Not only has sea level been rising but as Venice was constructed on mud islands the weight of the city has been pushing the mud down causing the city to sink even more. Till now Venice has sunk nine inches. The central square, St Marks Square, has an ornately decorated church which adorns the main square and there is usually always a long line to get inside. On the facade there are pictures depicting Jesus’s life. There is also a 99m tall red bell tower ( St Marks Campinile) in this square that had been destroyed in 1912 and then been rebuilt again. In the middle of the square are loads of crows and I can’t tell you how much me and my brother enjoyed chasing them. Another point of interest is the Bridge of Sighs, which was made to connect the Old Prison and the interrogation rooms in the Doge’s Palace to the New Prison, which was across the canal. Legend says that prisoners used to sigh when they saw the bridge because it was their last sight of the outside world before being taken into the dungeons. Below the bridge the small and elegant gondolas were rowing slowly down the canal. Unfortunately we couldn’t go in a gondola but just seeing them is a pleasurable sight. There is an old saying that if it is the exact moment of sunset, the bells of St Marks Campinile are ringing, you are in a gondola and you manage to kiss the Bridge of Sighs you will be granted infinite love. Did you know that the Bridge of Sighs is built by Antoni Contino whose uncle, Antonio da Ponte built the Rialto Bridge? Another lovely piece of architecture is the Rialto Bridge. It was the first bridge to be built cross the Grand Canal. Locals thought the current bridge would not last long. The bridge crosses over the narrowest point of the Grand Canal. The Grand Canal is the main canal of Venice and it divides the city in two parts. The bridge is jam packed with people trying to get their pictures taken. The whole route of the Grand Canal crosses only 4 bridges and it eventually leads into the Adriatic Sea. The grand canal is the most craved place to stay on. The next day we visited the islands around Venice. The first one was the colourful Fishermans village Burano. Burano is well known in Venice for its colourful houses of every imaginable colour which is what the tourists make a beeline for. The island also has a tall leaning bell tower that is leaning 1.83 metres (which makes at least 2 leaning towers in Italy. Murano, the second island we visited, is renowned for Murano Glass. For a long time it was the only glass made in the world. Italians were so possessive about their art they confined workers to the island giving the false reason that it was dangerous to work with a furnace in the city. The Italians threatened that if a worker would escape they would kill his or her family. On the island we visited a furnace that explained the process of producing Murano Glass. First silica and soda are mixed together and then put in a furnace. Then you add different substances depending on what colour glass you wanted. When the glass comes out it is molten and you must shape the glass when it is still in that form. After that you blow through a blowpipe ( with the glass at the other end) and carve with tweezers to get the desired shape. This is the part which requires extreme skill and one could see the masters at the work quickly moulding the glass into various intricate shapes. Finally you cool it down. If you cool it down too quickly the glass will shatter. Another lovely experience added to my diary. My best experience though was none of the above, it was travelling in boats everywhere. We had gone in the Vaporetti (boats – and the public transport in Venice) or a floating bus! There were floating stops tied to the floating city! Every time a boat would pass, the boat stop would bob up and down. Instead of bus numbers you had a boat number. Of course, Venice is a bit derelict in some parts, does have a humid smell in some lanes as you walk and it’s easy to see why – the lower part of building always in contact with water have blackened over time and gathers moss constantly. Its definitely easier to clean up the land than water. During rains, flooding is also a regular problem. With so many tourists flocking in every year, it’s indeed a challenge for the denizens to maintain their city. While I was reading about Venice’s history I found a quote that I
