Hi everyone, I'm Sraavani! I'm a highschool attending, academically overachieving, music loving writer with a huge interest in the sciences. I'm also a HUGE fan of Shakespeare and One Direction, and would love to rant for hours about either. Hit me up with a text! I'm always happy to chat 🙂
It wasn't every day you got to spend a whole bunch of days sleeping on the ground outside. It wasn't every day you got to spend a whole bunch of days sleeping on the ground outside with a pandemic raging on. It wasn't every day you got to spend a whole bunch of days sleeping on the ground outside with a pandemic raging on, during the COVID 19 pandemic. And yet, there I was, sleeping on the ground outside during a pandemic. Of all the places I could have been, I was homeless. There were a lot of people who were afraid. They heard about something that happened on the news, they got petrified of the potential results, and so they decided to bunker down and buy a whole bunch of toilet paper to the point were it was almost completely sold out in every grocery store. Can you imagine that much toilet paper being bought out? I guess I could? I mean, that was pretty ridiculous! That much toilet paper being bought out! Dude! That much toilet paper! Me? I wasn't afraid, and I still am not. For God is my refuge and my strength, and I put my trust in him. God says He will protect me in His word, so it will be. I don't need to see, I know and I believe. And so far, I haven't gotten COVID throughout the pandemic (and for all you conspiracy theorists out there, ‘the plandemic,' that being said with an overexaggerated wink), so, I think He's done a great job as He always does! He made heaven and earth and all things. Shouldn't I trust Him when He makes a promise? A lot of things were closed and being homeless that was frustrating at times. I was restricted in what I could do and how I could do it. There were so many of my favorite places that were shut down, and I was really limited in what I could do. But, I was pretty busy writing. I got my first publications throughout this pandemic so I am pretty happy. I remember calling my brother on the phone when he and my family had got covid and he was saying, “Dude, I lost my sense of smell and taste. It feels bad man,” He replied. I was chuckling and sarcastically replying with, “Oh, you poor, sad little thing, you,” and both of us started laughing. As the pandemic starts to wrap up, with tensions still high in some cases and people still on alert, I am still homeless as I write this and its frustrating at times, but I have hope. It may seem like its hopeless at times, but I know it's not! I have seen it first hand! God's been good this whole time, and I believe he will continue to be to the very end. For the time being, I need to keep striving and believing, not becoming disheartened or discouraged by the setbacks, and continue to believe despite the odds I go against. May Lord Jesus Christ have all the glory!
I was a sophomore in high school when COVID first hit. Now I'm going to be a senior, I'm going to graduate soon and go off to college. It was so far away and now it's already happening. At first I thought that COVID wouldn't last that long. I was enjoying my time at home. I did all my school work in an hour, I read books outside on top of every small ledge I could find. I learned 30 minute long dances from YouTube, I painted, I exercised, I was on top of the world. When I got the notification that school would be online for the rest of the year I was overjoyed. I was never going to pass chemistry if we went back in person. But my mom started working from home, and my dad had weirdly long breaks from work. It was nothing we couldn't handle. I just didn't enjoy being around my parents that much. I did miss my friends, in the beginning we made group chats and stayed up late playing cards against humanity online together, we played among us. But then those calls became less frequent and I would talk to my friends less and less every day. When summer came I was bored. I know that isn't anything stupendous but I'm telling the truth. I finally got into therapy that summer and it didn't really help but I was ok, just bored. Because of COVID our spring school musical was postponed, during the summer we were allowed to practice and perform. We had long days learning choreography for West Side Story! It was amazing, I finally had social interaction with my friends again, we got prepared and finally the first night of the show was here. We were filming it since we weren't allowed in the audience. It went horribly, dances were wrong, audio started in strange places, cues were missed, and Tony's blood packet popped a scene too early. Luckily we had more performances that we could get right. I woke up the next morning and I found out that someone in our cast (that all of us had been away from for more than 2 weeks) had tested positive for COVID. To say that I was devastated would be an understatement, but I held it in until that night. I had the worst panic attack that I've ever had. I could barely breathe and I couldn't control my limbs. My mom got so worried, she made me talk to my therapist about it. I am ok, my mom just gets worried sometimes. After that I got out alot more with my friends and I was getting more and more worried about junior year. I was scared of my classes to be specific. I was taking 4 college classes, yeah 4. The beginning of the school year went better than expected. AP Physics was hard but that was just because the class is hard in general. We were back to learning in person with extra safety precautions. There were 6 lunches now instead of 4, we could only walk one way in the hallways, we had to wash off our desks after every bell and, we had staggered release from every bell, freshman and seniors, then juniors and sophomores. All in all it wasn't bad but now I had to go through an obstacle course to get to my classes. November 19th 2 days after my birthday My family and I are out for my birthday dinner, I just turned 17. And we get the call. All classes will be online but after school activities may continue as scheduled. This time the classes had times. Starting at 7:45 am we had to be on a zoom call with every one of our classes every day for attendance. In most of my classes I was the only one with my face cam on. During this time we were putting on A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. I was playing Starveling, one of the Mechanicals. We were rehearsing after school almost every day in order to get ready for our performance early January. School went back to in person around January 15th with new rules for being contact traced, the students had to go to school but could not do after school activities. During hell week for the show, one of my friends, Jack, got contact traced. He was irreplaceable. We had to push back the show until he got back. The next time I as well as a bunch of other cast members got contact traced. So we pushed the show back again. By this point our director had everyone in the show be replaceable except Jack and one other person, Aidan. The show approaches and Aidan gets contract traced. As they say, the third time's the charm. We had our show the next weekend and everything went as smoothly as it could under the circumstances. Our spring musical was Godspell, I was Peggy. By this time vaccines were being given out to people 16 or older. Only 2 people in our cast were younger than 16 at this time and most of us were trying to get the vaccine. When the show rolled around one 2 people in our 14 person cast were fully vaccinated. Luckily those two happened to be Jesus and Judas. Everything worked out fine, well as fine as anything can work out. Now I am fully vaccinated, I am the Historian of our school's thespian branch. I am writing this at 2 am and I am stressed about the year to come.
We will talk about Ahmad Ali Molania jelodar He was born in 1985 And in Iran, Mazandaran, Babol and the city of Gotab He started kung fu at the age of 18 And from the age of 22 he has continued this martial art of kickboxing professionally until he has won more than 13 championships in Iran from the age of 25 to the age of 30. In total, he was a writer and wrote articles in several weekly magazines and monthly magazines in Iran. The number of his articles in 4 years was 330. Ahmed Ali is an expert in metaphysics and in 2020 he was the most powerful metaphysical martial artist in the world who has never been found like him in history. He is currently an IT Engineering Expert and a Master of Industrial Engineering And has 3 companies in Iran, the largest of which is Info Universe Which is an IT company with special services.
I have been talking to a couple of friends and asked them if they'd rather go intimate with someone the know or some they don't, they all voted somebody they know, but I'd rather have Coitus with someone I don't know, just imagine going to a masquerade ball and all you know is yourself, and you're standing there at the balcony sniffing the cold breeze then a hand cups you on the waist, your lower back touches his hard tarso, you feel that skip in your heart then you turn your head to look and you see a beautiful silver eyes look your direction through a thick mask and you're drown in them, whatever happened, you don't know but he's kissing you, your brain's telling you no! but your heart is kind of a betrayer, then boom! you're on bed and the sex is absolutely perfect, your best. next morning, you wake up and he's gone, but you slept on a hotel bed and how you got there, you still don't know but the bills are cleared, your mask is still on, untouched, you rethink last night and realized you don't know the person who gave you the best sex of your life, he didn't leave you with his contact, you don't know his name, you don't know how he looks, all you know is a beautiful silver eyes and hard tarso, Then walking in town, all your looking for is a hard tarso and a guy with silver eyes, Then well, you keep booking every masquerade ball in town and puts on the same mask to every masquerade and in all of them, you keep meeting him but you forget to know how he looks, cause it's against the rules of the balls, he doesn't talk to you and you don't talk to him but you begin guessing that his voice is moisturizer than that of an oyster, all you do when you meet is have good sex and you both got so addicted to it and keep hoping one day, maybe one day, you'll get to know it... but you never know, maybe, you met him along the way, maybe he already seen your face or maybe, he ask you out for coffee and you turned him down, or maybe you guys are two worlds apart.
It was a Saturday morning, so I casually walked into my sister's room to get it tidied up as usual, while she was away in school. She had to leave earlier than expected, because their class had an excursion to Ogba zoo that day. As I stripped off her bed covers to launder, a phone and several editions of PLAYBOY magazines went down with the sheets. With mouth agape, I picked up the phone that caught my eyes amongst the heap on the floor. Behold! It was a BLACKBERRY Z10- what no one else in the house had! Not even mum. " How could she have acquired such an expensive piece?" I gaped. Stealing was out of the question because she would not dare! Neither did she buy it, because she did not have such buoyant savings to acquire a phone yet. She is only 13! As I contemplated what to do with my latest discovery, I surfed the phone, only to discover some illicit content and a series of serious profane chats. I could not take it any more, so I resorted to reporting the case to our mother, who was outside pruning the garden. I explained all I saw to our mother and we exchanged our suspicions while waiting impatiently for her return. On 4.15 pm, after a late lunch, my sister was already kneeling before a curious duo, explaining in tears, how she got the phone and magazines. Of course, her boyfriend in school had gifted them to her. My mother inquired if they had gone further to sex, but she confessed that the advances ended only in kisses. My mother just could not buy the story, as while she thought her baby was still a saint, she had gone really wild! Mother did not know how to react to the situation, as she blamed herself endlessly for not giving us any form of sexual orientation earlier. Who would have figured out that a 13-year-old could be this exposed? What generation! That instant, she sat us both down and gave us serious sexual orientation. The next moment, we were all on our way to IMAGO CLINIC for a scrupulous virginity test. Osinachi Okafor
When it rains, it pours. This was my life's state for eight days within the last month. I've been so speechless that for the first time, I feel compelled to write down what I've been through, at least for this eight-day period. I'm finally fine. No one died. I guess it's one of those series of experiences that makes one stronger. The eve of the first Saturday, Friday the 19th of June. I call an installer from the DSTV office to fix my decoder. We fix time. He's late and smiling about it. I tell him I dislike tardiness. He replaces the LNB on the dishpan with a fairly used one from his work bag, starts the set-up process, tinkers about it for a while but it doesn't work. It gets late and he has to beat the 8 pm Covid19 curfew. He shows me how to go through that exact process again and promises it would work. He gives me his account details to pay afterwards. I try it after a few hours. Same old same old. I don't make the payment. I go to bed. At 4:35 am on Saturday, the rain starts. As usual, I wake up uneasy as the sound of rain unsettles me these days. You see my neighbour and I moved into our compound in October of last year, and the landlord conveniently neglected to disclose to us that the house gets flooded in the rainy season owing to bad drainage system. Because of repair costs, the landlord opts for a “temporary” alternative to drill through the wall of a neighbour's uncompleted building to ease out the water collecting in our sloped compound. Behind this building is an unrestrained water pathway. Now the water flows, but my neighbour and I fear that when the rain gets a little serious, water would flow back in from the outside, and this time, it would be more disastrous coming in with all manner of dirt. Well, that's exactly what happens this Saturday morning. You see, I have a new ritual of apprehensively watching the rain collect at my steps whenever it rains. I'm happy seeing water let out from my compound and soon enough the rain stops. But in seconds, the flow back starts and clean flood quickly turns brown in my very presence. My heart jumps to my mouth, sinks to my stomach and does a triple Arabian back up my mouth. I freeze and can't get to my generator because I've never put my feet in unclear water. The neighbour boy goes in, lifts my generator and takes it to the neighbour's upstairs building. But this is just the beginning. The water level rises with speed past my two steps climb and gets through my door. This is when I unfreeze, run in and get my certificate bag and phone, swallow my fear, sink my feet and heart into the murky water and run to my neighbour's upstairs to keep them. Then the move from my apartment starts in this frenzy with the rain on our backs and the murky flood at our knees, with the help neighbours. This very afternoon, I go house hunting. The housing agents show all manner of funny apartments. One of the agents takes me to a basement apartment where I have to bend to get in the door. As soon as I walk in, I slightly raise my arm and touch the ceiling. I'm only 5'7”! I feel exactly coffin claustrophobic. If I take the apartment, I will have to spend every waking hour convincing myself I'm still alive. I finally find an apartment and move in on Tuesday. While house hunting, the DSTV installer calls. I inform him his procedure didn't work, explain my predicament and ask to reschedule. He calls again, and again on Wednesday asking to be paid. Pay for a job not done! Who does that? Thursday, I go to the market for supplies. I use a kerchief for a mask. I secure the mask over my nose and mouth as a policeman waves me on. I get to the market and I'm promptly apprehended by men in uniforms for not wearing a face mask. Funny right? I'm very surprised as I can still feel the kerchief across my face. These arresting officers have their uniformed fabric masks around their necks like some fashion statement with their noses and mouths exposed as they bark and hurtle me to their mobile station. I point out that their noses and mouths aren't secured like mine, but they insist that kerchiefs cannot serve for masks. At the mobile station, an officer with no mask anywhere on her body barks at me to get into the vehicle. I point out that she isn't wearing a mask and that her colleagues use theirs as necklaces. You see, this infuriates them more and they bundle me into the vehicle. I'm asked to pay under the table to be released. No sir! I make calls and get a lawyer. Before they let me go, they search my phone for any incriminating files. This Saturday, my now old neighbour sends me a video clip of the freshest hell. The drainage is no longer blocked. Oh no! You see, the unrestrained murky flood has claimed the once blocked drainage and is making the compound its new abode.
Color: The Visual Spectrum by Black Box Gallery is a visual prism of color. Check out Portland, Oregon's Black Box Gallery and my piece featured in their on site gallery, "By Gones Here By" in which the perfect moment for the perfect picture came along ringing its bell. Pulaski County Courthouse in Little Rock, AR and the city's trolley meet in a riot of color as you are taken back in time to an artistic era of architecture. This courthouse was built in the 1880s in Romanesque Revival where clock tower and turrets stretch toward the sky. This clock tower is a taste of her now ...
Yesterday I took a few photos of a flower. Not one was truly in focus. I went back in the evening to see if the different light would allow me to get a better focus. Alas it was not to be! I'm hoping that the flower had closed up for the day, because I could not find it again. It should have stood out, because it was the only one of its kind and color around. I deleted all but one copy, I'm hoping that later today I'll be able to find it again and get a better focused photo. As it is, the remaining photo, while showing the pretty color, is not going to win any photography fine arts awards!
By: Ymir clark One of the major problem's youth face in the twenty first century is the youth thinking they aren't good enough when they have not had the chance to fully blossom into the amazing person they will become. I saw this video where a little black girl looked into the mirror and said that she was ugly, and eventually broke down and started crying. The little girl's mom started telling her that she is beautiful and that she should not think like that and the mom started crying too because her child was having these thoughts that she should not even be thinking about. This is a major problem because no kid should even have the thoughts that they are ugly and that they don't deserve to be here. I don't want any kid to feel the way that girl felt, but sadly many kids do, and they eventually grow up with those insecurities, causing them to have anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and so on. This one problem can easily turn into so many other problems. Kids should be playing outside, enjoying life, messing up their hair that was just done this morning, instead of feeling these insecurities. A way I would stop kids from thinking they aren't good enough would be to just get out in the community and help. I would open little free libraries and fill them with books that empower children and tell them how beautiful and unique they are. Books that tell kids and the youth that it is okay to not look like everyone else, that it is okay to be different In the little free libraries people can switch out books and put new books in as they go. The little free libraries would be set up in parks or other places where kids are a lot to ensure that the kids have easy access. This is just one of my plans, I would also start a club that that would be free to helps kids get active, where I would help lead the kids in different fun actives. I could also help kids who aren't feeling like their selves by bringing awareness to this problem by starting a campaign about how kids should love themselves, and bring awareness to the fact that sometimes people can't help the way they feel about their selves, and that depression and anxiety is real. If someone is telling you that they aren't feeling well, then they shouldn't be ignored and they shouldn't feel ashamed or be shamed for having the confidence to realize that they need help. So many that are part of the youth don't speak out about the problems they have. They feel as if the cant talk to people or their parents, because that's what they are taught to do, not speak out when they have a problem, or they try to ask for help and people try to make it seem as if they aren't having real problems and then they push their feeling down and start to disconnect from the world In conclusion kids, teens, or the youth thinking they aren't good enough and that they should hide their feelings is a major problem in the twenty first century. Kids should never feel the way that little black girl felt. Kids should be out hanging with friends or on the playground, not worried about the way they look.
By: Ymir clark One of the major problem's youth face in the twenty first century is the youth thinking they aren't good enough when they have not had the chance to fully blossom into the amazing person they will become. I saw this video where a little black girl looked into the mirror and said that she was ugly, and eventually broke down and started crying. The little girl's mom started telling her that she is beautiful and that she should not think like that and the mom started crying too because her child was having these thoughts that she should not even be thinking about. This is a major problem because no kid should even have the thoughts that they are ugly and that they don't deserve to be here. I don't want any kid to feel the way that girl felt, but sadly many kids do, and they eventually grow up with those insecurities, causing them to have anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and so on. This one problem can easily turn into so many other problems. Kids should be playing outside, enjoying life, messing up their hair that was just done this morning, instead of feeling these insecurities. A way I would stop kids from thinking they aren't good enough would be to just get out in the community and help. I would open little free libraries and fill them with books that empower children and tell them how beautiful and unique they are. Books that tell kids and the youth that it is okay to not look like everyone else, that it is okay to be different In the little free libraries people can switch out books and put new books in as they go. The little free libraries would be set up in parks or other places where kids are a lot to ensure that the kids have easy access. This is just one of my plans, I would also start a club that that would be free to helps kids get active, where I would help lead the kids in different fun actives. I could also help kids who aren't feeling like their selves by bringing awareness to this problem by starting a campaign about how kids should love themselves, and bring awareness to the fact that sometimes people can't help the way they feel about their selves, and that depression and anxiety is real. If someone is telling you that they aren't feeling well, then they shouldn't be ignored and they shouldn't feel ashamed or be shamed for having the confidence to realize that they need help. So many that are part of the youth don't speak out about the problems they have. They feel as if the cant talk to people or their parents, because that's what they are taught to do, not speak out when they have a problem, or they try to ask for help and people try to make it seem as if they aren't having real problems and then they push their feeling down and start to disconnect from the world In conclusion kids, teens, or the youth thinking they aren't good enough and that they should hide their feelings is a major problem in the twenty first century. Kids should never feel the way that little black girl felt. Kids should be out hanging with friends or on the playground, not worried about the way they look.
When I tell people I want to study classics, they give me weird looks. “What?” “That's so random.” And I agree; it's completely and totally random. Like many competitive schools nowadays, my classmates — including me — are hyper STEM-focused. Here, you'll find Robotics flyers posted on twenty-three different Instagram stories, enthused student officers screaming at you to sign up for Finance Club, news alerts about our national championship Math Madness team and the like. There's this newfound belief (read: pandemonium) that STEM education holds the key to a secure, prosperous future. And if the pop-up of private, $30k/year schools with STEM-focused, Advanced-Placement-driven curriculums aren't indicative warning signs, I'm not sure what is. A belief? Maybe. I think it's a madness. I've spent most of my time delving into the world of science and math. So I'm not knocking on the merits of STEM education at all; my chemistry research mentors and Science Olympiad advisors would be at the very least offended if I threw away their gifts of knowledge like that. Yet, there's something lost in the neglecting of humanities; in a sea of future mathematicians, entrepreneurs, and engineers like myself, I can count the number of history/literary hopefuls I know on one hand. My interest in classics is recent. I've only just begun to delve into the two-thousand-year-old world, and I'm only starting to put together the pieces of the field's significance. For the most part, classics, like other non-STEM fields, is soothing. It's fun and interesting. I'm fully aware that there's genuine passion and fulfillment in crunching numbers and solving physics problems, but the arts and humanities just strike a different chord — one of free expression, boundless imagination, and infinite understanding. Unlike STEM, I believe classics is relevant in teaching the value of us — our past, our motivations, our fate, our dreams, our limitations — through the lens of myths. As Homer famously says in the Iliad, “Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is the man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.” Classics, unlike many liberal arts fields, draws value in stripping away deceptions and cloaks; it gives us raw anguish and emotion, dissimilar to modern works, which arguably encourage an understanding of complex historical context. But the field of classics is fundamental — there is nothing prior, only other myths in context. As the basis of Western literature and really, civilization, classics is incredibly crucial to unlocking the secrets of famous works. T. S. Elliot's well-known “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” makes clear references to Hesiod's Work and Days and opens with Dante's Inferno — the latter of which literally features Virgil throughout. Elliot also makes references to Shakespeare's Hamlet, which cites the Fall of Troy (the Aeneid), among other allusions I definitely missed. Mind. Blowing. (Or am I just a nerd, and this epiphany only surprising to me?) I imagine the average Biopage reader is well-read; if not specifically in classics, at least with contemporary literature, modern journalism, and the sort. It's something I aspire to be. And for me, and all my fellow science nerds, perhaps the best way to find ourselves is by reconnecting with our roots — even if it's old, dead, white men.
I stopped between Puyallup and Tacoma, WA at the 66th street bridge over the Puyallup River to capture some photos of Mt Rainier. It was close to sunset and there was some evening color near the horizon. I was on my way home and had only 12 miles to go. I didn't want to wait for it to get darker, so I underexposed a couple of pictures to simulate what it might look like in another 15 to 20 minutes. I was exercising artistic license. How often do we choose to misrepresent time to make ourselves or others appear older or younger than is really the case?
