Sunday, April 19, 2009

The Three Little Pigs

The Three Little Pigs



The Three Little Pigs
by Leanne Guenther

Once upon a time, there were three little pigs, named Peter, Patty and Penny, who left their mommy and daddy to see the world.

All summer long, they roamed through the woods and fields, playing games and having fun. None were happier than the three little pigs, and they easily made friends with everyone they met.

Wherever they went, they were given a warm welcome and never had to worry about where they would sleep. But as summer drew to a close, they realized that people were starting to prepare their homes for winter. The three little pigs decided that they too needed a home of their own to keep them safe and warm through the winter.

Peter, the first little pig, was the oldest of the three. He decided to build a straw hut. "It'll only take a day! Then I'll go have fun and play," he sang enthusiastically.

The others disagreed.

"It's too fragile," they said disapprovingly, but Peter refused to listen (after all, he WAS the oldest by 3 whole minutes

Patty Pig was the second little pig (born 3 minutes after Peter and 4 seconds before Penny). She decided that a house of straw would be too cold during the winter (and that bugs might get in!) So she went off in search of twigs and wood to build her house.

"Clunk! Clunk! Clunk!" It took her two days to nail her house of wood together.

Patty finished, looked at her house and thought to herself, "Well..., it's a little wobbly and maybe it isn't my VERY best job... but it's supposed to be warm this winter so it should do."

Penny quietly voiced her opinion that the house didn't look sturdy enough to stand up to wind, rain, snow (or bugs). Peter teased that Patty had wasted a whole day searching for wood when she could have been having fun playing with him.

Patty turned and sang out, "It only took an extra day. Now I can go have fun and play."

Penny Pig was the youngest of the three and being the youngest loved to play at least as much as Peter and Patty did. But she remembered what her mommy and daddy had taught her growing up.

Her daddy always told her, "We don't expect you to be perfect Penny."

And her mommy always added, "We'll always be proud of you as long as you've done your very best job."

So Penny Pig sighed and thought, "It will take time, patience and hard work to build a safe, warm, comfortable house. I've never done it before and I'm a little nervous, but I'm going to do my very best job!"

Penny went to the library and took out some books about building houses. She spent two whole days reading the books before she decided that a house of bricks would be the best choice.

Penny spent another whole day collecting supplies. A day to lay the foundation. Another to pour the cement. Yet another to stack the bricks and four more to put on the roof and paint. Just to make sure that she'd tried her best, she decided to take a few more days to build some cozy wooden furniture to put in her house of bricks. By the time she was done her house, two weeks had passed and the leaves outside had taken on their autumn colours.

Penny looked at her little house with pride. Sure, the chimney was a little crooked and the paint had dripped a bit here and there, but Penny knew that she'd done her very best job and was quite proud of what she'd accomplished.

Peter, Patty and Penny spent the next day playing. The two older pigs teased Penny that she'd wasted the whole fall building her house (and Peter couldn't resist pointing out that even after all that work, Penny hadn't even managed to get the chimney on straight!) But Penny was happy with the choices she'd made as she sat in front of her cozy fireplace that night.

Peter wasn't nearly as comfortable in his house of straw. The cold night air crept in quickly. Peter hadn't taken the time to build a bed so huddled in the corner on a mound of leftover straw. As the sun rose the next morning, Peter was starting to wish that he'd spent a bit more time on his house. As he pondered what he was going to use to cook breakfast with, Peter heard a knock on the door.

"Who's there?" Peter asked... it was awfully early for visitors.

Peter hadn't been the only one wondering about breakfast. A big, bad, hungry wolf had wandered through the forest. He hadn't eaten for awhile and a nice young piggy was just the kind of breakfast he was craving!

"Come out!" ordered the wolf, his mouth watering. "I want to speak to you!"

Peter may have been a bit lazy, but he certainly wasn't dumb. "I'd rather stay where I am," he replied.

"Come out now!" yelled the wolf fiercely.

three little pigs

"Not by the hair on my chin-y chin chin," teased Peter (after all, what could the wolf do about it).

"Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll bloooooow your house in!" threatened the wolf who blew with all his might, right onto the house. All the straw that Peter had heaped against some thin poles fell down in the great blast.

Peter dashed as fast as he could to his sister Patty's house. Patty had heard the commotion. She ran to the door, accidentally squishing a beetle that was sitting by her bed. She bravely brushed the two spiders that had built webs inside the doorframe out of her way and pulled the door open for her brother.

The wolf ran after Peter and shouted "Come out and play with me!" just as the door slammed in his face.

three little pigs

"Not by the hair on our chin-y chin chins," replied Patty (almost as upset about all the bugs she had begun to notice scurrying around her floor as she was about the wolf).

"Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll bloooooow your house in!" yelled the wolf who blew with all his might, right onto the house. The wooden house creaked and squeaked and then collapsed like a pack of cards.

three little pigs

Peter and Patty dashed out and were halfway to Penny's house before the last twig had hit the ground. Penny urged them in, took one last look at the crooked chimney, crossed her fingers and slammed the door.

"Come out here, now! I want my breakfast," growled the wolf, not bothering to pretend anymore.

"Not by the hair on our chin-y chin chins," replied Peter, Patty and Penny (her fingers still crossed tightly).

"Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll bloooooow your house in!" yelled the wolf who blew with all his might, right onto the house.

Nothing happened.
he wolf drew an even deeper breath and blew again. And again! But Penny Pig's house of bricks with the crooked chimney and drippy paint was her very best job and it would NOT fall down no matter how hard the wolf blew.

After all his huffing and puffing the wolf was even hungrier than he'd been to begin with and he was not about to give up. He climbed carefully up a nearby ladder and scrambled onto the roof. Before Peter, Patty and Penny knew what was happening, the wolf started to slide down the chimney!

"Yikes!" cried Peter.

"We're toast!" sobbed Patty.

"Bacon, actually!" wailed Penny.


But slowly the three little pigs realized that the wolf had somehow gotten stuck before he had made it all the way down. Understanding what had happened, Penny started to giggle nervously. "I think he got caught in the crooked part of my chimney!"

Peter nodded with disbelief, jumped up and threw some wood onto the fireplace. Patty grabbed the matches and started a fire which was soon roaring. It didn't take long for the three little pigs to hear the anguished howl of the wolf as he scrambled back up the chimney. The flames licked his hairy coat and his tail became a flaming torch.

"Never again! Never again will I go down a chimney!" he squealed, as he tried to put out the flames in his tail. Then he ran away as fast as he could.
That very same day, Peter and Patty took out library books on how to build a brick house. Penny did her best to give them some instruction and Peter showed his sisters how to put on paint without it getting drippy (after all, he WAS the oldest by 3 whole minutes).
three little pigs

The wolf did return once to roam in the neighbourhood, but when he caught sight of THREE crooked chimneys, he remembered the terrible pain of a burnt tail and he left for good.

Now safe and happy, Penny sang out to her brother and sister, "No more working for today... Come on let's go out to play!"

THE END

Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty


Grimm's Fairy Tale version - translated by Margaret Hunt - language modernized a bit by Leanne Guenther

Long ago there lived a King and Queen who said every day, "If only we had a child!" But for a long time they had none.

One day, as the Queen was bathing in a spring and dreaming of a child, a frog crept out of the water and said to her, "Your wish shall be fulfilled. Before a year has passed you shall bring a daughter into the world."

And since frogs are such magical creatures, it was no surprise that before a year had passed the Queen had a baby girl. The child was so beautiful and sweet that the King could not contain himself for joy. He prepared a great feast and invited all his friends, family and neighbours. He invited the fairies, too, in order that they might be kind and good to the child. There were thirteen of them in his kingdom, but as the King only had twelve golden plates for them to eat from, one of the fairies had to be left out. None of the guests was saddened by this as the thirteenth fairy was known to be cruel and spiteful.

An amazing feast was held and when it came to an end, each of the fairies presented the child with a magic gift. One fairy gave her virtue, another beauty, a third riches and so on -- with everything in the world that anyone could wish for.

After eleven of the fairies had presented their gifts, the thirteenth suddenly appeared. She was angry and wanted to show her spite for not having been invited to the feast. Without hesitation she called out in a loud voice,

"When she is fifteen years old, the Princess shall prick herself with a spindle and shall fall down dead!"

Then without another word, she turned and left the hall.

The guests were horrified and the Queen fell to the floor sobbing, but the twelfth fairy, whose wish was still not spoken, quietly stepped forward. Her magic could not remove the curse, but she could soften it so she said,

"Nay, your daughter shall not die, but instead shall fall into a deep sleep that will last one hundred years."

Over the years, the promises of the fairies came true -- one by one. The Princess grew to be beautiful, modest, kind and clever. Everyone who saw her could not help but love her.

The King and Queen were determined to prevent the curse placed on the Princess by the spiteful fairy and sent out a command that all the spindles in the whole kingdom should be destroyed. No one in the kingdom was allowed to tell the Princess of the curse that had been placed upon her for they did not want her to worry or be sad.

On the morning of her fifteenth birthday, the Princess awoke early -- excited to be another year older. She was up so early in the morning, that she realized everyone else still slept. The Princess roamed through the halls trying to keep herself occupied until the rest of the castle awoke. She wandered about the whole place, looking at rooms and halls as she pleased and at last she came to an old tower. She climbed the narrow, winding staircase and reached a little door. A rusty key was sticking in the lock and when she turned it, the door flew open.

In a little room sat an old woman with a spindle, busily spinning her flax. The old woman was so deaf that she had never heard the King's command that all spindles should be destroyed.

"Good morning, Granny," said the Princess, "what are you doing?"

"I am spinning," said the old woman.

"What is the thing that whirls round so merrily?" asked the Princess and she took the spindle and tried to spin too.

But she had scarcely touched the spindle when it pricked her finger. At that moment she fell upon the bed which was standing near and lay still in a deep sleep.

The King, Queen and servants had all started their morning routines and right in the midst of them fell asleep too. The horses fell asleep in the stable, the dogs in the yard, the doves on the roof and the flies on the wall. Even the fire in the hearth grew still and went to sleep. The kitchen maid, who sat with a chicken before her, ready to pluck its feathers, fell asleep. The cook was in the midst of scolding the kitchen boy for a mess he'd made but they both fell fast asleep. The wind died down and on the trees in front of the castle not a leaf stirred.

Round the castle a hedge of brier roses began to grow up. Every year it grew higher until at last nothing could be seen of the sleeping castle.

There was a legend in the land about the lovely Sleeping Beauty, as the King's daughter was called, and from time to time Princes came and tried to force their way through the hedge and into the castle. But they found it impossible for the thorns, as though they were alive, grabbed at them and would not let them through.

After many years a Prince came again to the country and heard an old man tell the tale of the castle which stood behind the brier hedge and the beautiful Princess who had slept within for a hundred years. He heard also that many Princes had tried to make it through the brier hedge but none had succeeded and many had been caught in it and died.

The the young Prince said, "I am not afraid. I must go and see this Sleeping Beauty."

The good old man did all in his power to persuade him not to go, but the Prince would not listen.

Now the hundred years were just ended. When the Prince approached the brier hedge it was covered with beautiful large roses. The shrubs made way for him of their own accord and let him pass unharmed.

In the courtyard, the Prince saw the horses and dogs lying asleep. On the roof sat the sleeping doves with their heads tucked under their wings. When he went into the house, the flies were asleep on the walls and the servants asleep in the halls. Near the throne lay the King and Queen, sleeping peacefully beside each other. In the kitchen the cook, the kitchen boy and the kitchen maid all slept with their heads resting on the table.

The Prince went on farther. All was so still that he could hear his own breathing. At last he reached the tower and opened the door into the little room where the Princess was asleep. There she lay, looking so beautiful that he could not take his eyes off her. He bent down and gave her a kiss. As he touched her, Sleeping Beauty opened her eyes and smiled up at him.

Throughout the castle, everyone and everything woke up and looked at each other with astonished eyes. Within the month, the Prince and Sleeping Beauty were married and lived happily all their lives.

the prisoner of zenda 1922 film

the prisoner of zenda 1922 film

he narrator is twenty-nine year old the Hon. Rudolf Rassendyll, younger brother of the Earl of Burlesdon and (through an ancestor's sexual indiscretion) a distant cousin and look alike of Rudolf V, the soon-to-be-crowned King of Ruritania, a "highly interesting and important" [1] Germanic kingdom somewhere imprecisely between the German and Austrian Empires. Ruritania is, like Germany and Austria-Hungary at that time, an absolute monarchy. Rudolf Elphberg, the crown prince, is a hard-drinking playboy, unpopular with the common people, but supported by the aristocracy, the Catholic Church, the army, and the rich classes in general. The political rival to this absolute monarch is his younger half-brother Michael, Duke and Governor of Strelsau, the capital. Michael has no legitimate claim to the throne, because he is the son of their father's second, morganatic marriage: there are hints, from his swarthy appearance (he is nicknamed Black Michael) and Rassendyll's elliptically referring to him as a "mongrel", that he may have Jewish ancestry. Michael is regarded as champion of Strelsau's working classes, both the proletariat and the peasants, and of what Hope refers to as the criminal classes. The novel seems sympathetic, however, with those who would support the dissolute despot, King Rudolf.

When Michael has Rudolf drugged, abducted and imprisoned in the castle in the small town of Zenda, Rassendyll must impersonate the King at the coronation. There are complications, plots, and counter-plots, among them the schemes of Michael's mistress Antoinette de Mauban, and those of his villainous henchman Rupert of Hentzau, and Rassendyll falling in love with Princess Flavia, the King's betrothed. In the end, the King is restored to his throne — but the lovers must part.

[edit] Adaptations

The novel has been adapted many times, mainly for film but also stage, musical, operetta, radio, and television. Probably the best-known version is the 1937 Hollywood movie. The dashingly villainous Rupert of Hentzau has been played by such matinee idols as Ramon Novarro (1922), Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (1937), and James Mason (1952).

  • The Prisoner of Zenda (1895-96), was co-written by Hope and Edward Rose. It opened as a play in New York in 1895 starring E. H. Sothern and the next year on the West End in London.
  • Colman, Smith and Fairbanks reprised their roles for a 1939 episode of Lux Radio Theatre, with Colman's wife Benita Hume playing Princess Flavia.
  • Zenda (1963), a musical that closed on the road prior to a scheduled opening on Broadway. Adapted from the 1925 Princess Flavia.

[edit] Homages

Many fictional works that feature a political decoy can be linked to The Prisoner of Zenda; indeed, this novel spawned the genre known as Ruritanian romance. What follows is a short list of those homages with a clear debt to Anthony Hope's book.

  • The 1902 short story "Rupert the Resembler" is one of the so-called New Burlesques, a comedy parody by Bret Harte, full text [1].
  • Dornford Yates acknowledged Hope's influence in his two novels Blood Royal (1929) and Fire Below a.k.a. By Royal Command (1930) which were set in the Ruritania-like Principality of Riechtenburg.
  • The 1965 comedy film The Great Race included an extended Zenda-like subplot, including a climactic fencing scene between Tony Curtis and Ross Martin. Curtis swims the moat, scales the wall, and despatches the guards, activities that Ronald Colman performs in the 1937 version of The Prisoner of Zenda.
  • The Zenda Vendetta (TimeWars Book 4) by Simon Hawke (1985) is a science fiction version, part of a series which pits 27th century terrorists the Timekeepers against the Time Commandos of the US Army Temporal Corps. A Commando is the hero, and Antoinette's rôle is adapted as a Timekeeper dominatrix.
  • Emma, a manga series released from 2002 -2007, references The Prisoner of Zenda in chapter 37, which gives an overview of the plot as one character reads the novel.

[edit] Legacy

In a popular, but very questionable account, a German circus acrobat named Otto Witte claimed he had been briefly mistaken for the new King of Albania at the time of that country's separation from the Ottoman Empire, and that he was crowned and reigned a few days. However, the date of this claim (1913), and the lack of any evidence to back it up, suggests that Witte made up his story after seeing the first film version of the novel.

Author Salman Rushdie cited The Prisoner of Zenda in the epigraph to Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the novel he wrote while living in hiding in the late 1980s.

The 1956 novel Double Star, by Robert A. Heinlein, shares plot elements with The Prisoner of Zenda.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ chapter 1
  2. ^ The Brits in Hollywood Sheridan Morley, Robson Books 2006, p. 161, ISBN 978-1861058072
  3. ^ VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever 2008, Visible Ink Press 978-0787689810
  4. ^ Halliwell's Top 1000, John Walker, HarperCollins Entertainment ISBN 978-0007260805
  5. ^ a b Halliwell's Film Guide 2008, David Gritten, HarperCollins Entertainment ISBN 978-0007260805

Top Five Reasons Why Students Should Study Poetry

Top Five Reasons Why Students Should Study Poetry

Top Five Reasons Why Students Should Study Poetry

1. Poetry supports the development of the building blocks of literacy as defined in Put Reading First and No Child Left Behind.

2. Poetry supports the development of writing paradigms, such as The Six Traits of Writing, and addresses needs to raise the standards for writing.

3. Poetry is an excellent venue to teach and reinforce discrete grammar and vocabulary skills.

4. Poetry provides a focus for reading and writing, and helps students learn how to be concise.

5. Poetry supports components defined in brain research such as the importance of searching for patterns, and is an acceptable way for students to express emotions and feelings.

Reading A-Z offers printable teacher materials to teach students how to read, identify, and write poetry. The teaching resources include professionally developed downloadable poetry books, traditional nursery rhymes, and a poetry writing program with lessons and scaffolded worksheets to teach students to write various forms of poetry

Virtual memory:

Virtual memory:
Virtual memory is a Computer system technique which gives an application program the impression that it has contiguous working memory (an address space), while in fact it may be physically fragmented and may even overflow on to disk storage. Systems that use this technique make programming of large applications easier and use real physical memory (e.g. RAM) more efficiently than those without virtual memory.

Note that "virtual memory" is more than just "using disk space to extend physical memory size" - that is merely the extension of the memory hierarchy to include hard disk drives. Extending memory to disk is a normal consequence of using virtual memory techniques, but could be done by other means such as overlays or swapping programs and their data completely out to disk while they are inactive. The definition of "virtual memory" is based on redefining the address space with a contiguous virtual memory addresses to "trick" programs into thinking they are using large blocks of contiguous addresses.

All modern general-purpose computer operating systems use virtual memory techniques for ordinary applications, such as word processors, spreadsheets, multimedia players, accounting, etc. Older operating systems, such as DOS and Microsoft Windows[1] of the 1980s, or those for the mainframes of the 1960s, generally had no virtual memory functionality - notable exceptions being the Atlas, B5000 and Apple Computer's Lisa.

Embedded systems and other special-purpose computer systems which require very fast and/or very consistent response times may choose not to use virtual memory due to decreased determinism.

How Virtual Memory Works:


computer memory

Virtual memory frees up space in your computer's RAM. See more computer memory pictures.

Virtual memory is a common part of most operating systems on desktop computers. It has become so common because it provides a big benefit for users at a very low cost.

In this article, you will learn exactly what virtual memory is, what your computer uses it for and how to configure it on your own machine to achieve optimal performance.

Most computers today have something like 32 or 64 megabytes of RAM available for the CPU to use (see How RAM Works for details on RAM). Unfortunately, that amount of RAM is not enough to run all of the programs that most users expect to run at once.

For example, if you load the operating system, an e-mail program, a Web browser and word processor into RAM simultaneously, 32 megabytes is not enough to hold it all. If there were no such thing as virtual memory, then once you filled up the available RAM your computer would have to say, "Sorry, you can not load any more applications. Please close another application to load a new one." With virtual memory, what the computer can do is look at RAM for areas that have not been used recently and copy them onto the hard disk. This frees up space in RAM to load the new application.

Because this copying happens automatically, you don't even know it is happening, and it makes your computer feel like is has unlimited RAM space even though it only has 32 megabytes installed. Because hard disk space is so much cheaper than RAM chips, it also has a nice economic benefit. ­

­ The read/write speed of a hard drive is much slower than RAM, and the technology of a hard drive is not geared toward accessing small pieces of data at a time. If your system has to rely too heavily on virtual memory, you will notice a significant performance drop. The key is to have enough RAM to handle everything you tend to work on simultaneously -- then, the only time you "feel" the slowness of virtual memory is is when there's a slight pause when you're changing tasks. When that's the case, virtual memory is perfect.

When it is not the case, the operating system has to constantly swap information back and forth between RAM and the hard disk. This is called thrashing, and it can make your computer feel incredibly slow.

The area of the hard disk that stores the RAM image is called a page file. It holds pages of RAM on the hard disk, and the operating system moves data back and forth between the page file and RAM. On a Windows machine, page files have a .SWP extension.

Next, we'll look at how to configure virtual memory on a computer.


Configuring Virtual Memory:

Windows 98 is an example of a typical operating system that has virtual memory. Windows 98 has an intelligent virtual memory manager that uses a default setting to help Windows allocate hard drive space for virtual memory as needed. For most circumstances, this should meet your needs, but you may want to manually configure virtual memory, especially if you have more than one physical hard drive or speed-critical applications.

To do this, open the "Control Panel" window and double-click on the "System" icon. The system dialog window will open. Click on the "Performance" tab and then click on the "Virtual Memory" button.

Windows 98 performance tab for virtual memory

Click on the option that says, "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings." This will make the options below that statement become active. Click on the drop-down list beside "Hard disk:" to select the hard drive that you wish to configure virtual memory for. Remember that a good rule of thumb is to equally split virtual memory between the physical hard disks you have.

Windows 98 virtual memory settings

In the "Minimum:" box, enter the smallest amount of hard drive space you wish to use for virtual memory on the hard disk specified. The amounts are in megabytes. For the "C:" drive, the minimum should be 2 megabytes. The "Maximum:" figure can be anything you like, but one possible upper limit is twice physical RAM space. Windows default is normally 12 megabytes above the amount of physical RAM in your computer. To put the new settings into effect, close the dialog box and restart your computer.

The amount of hard drive space you allocate for virtual memory is important. If you allocate too little, you will get "Out of Memory" errors. If you find that you need to keep increasing the size of the virtual memory, you probably are also finding that your system is sluggish and accesses the hard drive constantly. In that case, you should consider buying more RAM to keep the ratio between RAM and virtual memory about 2:1. Some applications enjoy having lots of virtual memory space but do not access it very much. In that case, large paging files work well.

One trick that can improve the performance of virtual memory (especially when large amounts of virtual memory are needed) is to make the minimum and maximum sizes of the virtual memory file identical. This forces the operating system to allocate the entire paging file when you start the machine. That keeps the paging file from having to grow while programs are running, which improves performance. Many video applications recommend this technique to avoid pauses while reading or writing video information between hard disk and tape.

Another factor in the performance of virtual memory is the location of the pagefile. If your system has multiple physical hard drives (not multiple drive letters, but actual drives), you can spread the work among them by making smaller pagefiles on each drive. This simple modification will significantly speed up any system that makes heavy use of virtual memory.


Advantages and disadvantages of

virtual memory:

Virtual memory is a common part of most operating systems on desktop computers. It has become so common because it provides a big benefit for users at a very low cost. When we say users reffering to a high scale user environment and your desktop at home.

.Most computers today have something like 64 or 128 megabytes of RAM (random-access memory) available for use by the CPU (central processing unit). Often, that amount of RAM is not enough to run all of the programs that most users expect to run at once. For example, if you load the Windows operating system, an e-mail program, a Web browser and word processor into RAM simultaneously, 64 megabytes is not enough to hold it all. If there were no such thing as virtual memory, your computer would have to say, "Sorry, you cannot load any more applications. Please close an application to load a new one." With virtual memory, the computer can look for areas of RAM that have not been used recently and copy them onto the hard disk. This frees up space in RAM to load the new application. Because it does this automatically, you don't even know it is happening, and it makes your computer feel like is has unlimited RAM space even though it has only 32 megabytes installed. Because hard-disk space is so much cheaper than RAM chips, virtual memory also provides a nice economic benefit.
However the only disadvange of Vitual Memory quote: If your system has to rely too heavily on virtual memory, you will notice a significant performance drop. The key is to have enough RAM to handle everything you tend to work on simultaneously. Then, the only time you "feel" the slowness of virtual memory is in the slight pause that occurs when you change tasks. When you have enough RAM for your needs, virtual memory works beautifully. When you don't, the operating system has to constantly swap information back and forth between RAM and the hard disk. This is called thrashing, and it can make your computer feel incredibly slow.

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