Romeo, Juliet, and Henrietta

     Hello again. I feel sort of guilty, because I really haven't done much reading this week. I don't know why, but I just haven't. On Wednesday, I sort of flipped through Romeo and Juliet and read an essay that my sister wrote. (Hey Clara, you look bored...) My creativity fails me as it comes to rewriting the Prologue. The trouble is, you can write anything you want and put it to music, and it'll be the greatest thing ever. So how I write something to sound more 'modern' is beyond me, other than that by doing so I would make it about a tenth of the length. I have to figure something out. I rewrote each line to help make sure I got everything, but the only thing I learned is that they really made it too hard to say.
     On a, different, note, I have been reading a book about a young woman, a deceased woman, I should say, named Henrietta. I would say 'On a lighter note', but it's not exactly fitting. This young African American woman, Henrietta Lacks, died at the age of thirty, in 1951, of cancer. At first it looked as though the cancer would be easily treated, and it was, with radium. But it eventually got worse and worse, and it spread throughout her body. The radium left her stomach black, and she hardly had any strength. So, she was finally admitted to the hospital, and she later died there because she couldn't rid the toxins from her body. What she didn't know was that, right when the cancerous tumor had begun to grow, the first doctor she went to cut a bit of the tumor off, and kept it for scientific studies. Most African Americans who came to hospitals were expected to be guinea pigs. They were sometimes injected with diseases, and things were tested on them. So, without her knowledge, let alone approval, he took these cells from Henrietta, labelled them HeLa (From her name, Henrietta Lacks) and gave them to his assistant to see if they would grow. Does anyone know where this is going?
     Henrietta's cells were the first human cells to grow outside of the body. They thrived with minimal help from scientists, and were shipped around the world to help studies. They helped to find answers for polio, and replaced monkeys and other animals for testing. While this may sound amazing, Henrietta's family still did not know a thing about it, and was never paid for her gigantic contribution to science. The book I'm reading, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks talks about how the author struggled to find any information on her. The family didn't really talk about it, and neither did anyone close to her. The hardest part is, when her family found out, they were more upset by the fact her cells were living when she wasn't. They believed it wasn't right to have her cells living when she wasn't. It's really a sad book. Her children had a hard time, too, and it's very upsetting to see how much worse everything was for them because of their mother's death. Very frightening.
     Well, today I watched Holland High's version of The Three Musketeers, for the district competition. It was quite funny, for being very short. For those of you not familiar, competition theatre requires your performance must be short, half an hour, if I'm not mistaken. They did the whole thing earlier this year, which was hilarious. I feel bad that you have to cram so much into such a short show, especially when you have to cut things out that were important to explaining the plot, or something funny. They also rearranged some of the.... slightly less important characters. (Non Musketeers/Aspiring Musketeer) I'm not sure how I liked that. They got rid of Milady, a villain, and had that actress become the queen. She was much better as the villain. But, Constance, the important lady-in-waiting who falls in love with What's-His-Face, the main guy who wants to be a Musketeer, was much better. Before she was sort of boring, but she was much funnier, because she is so oblivious to everything. But that's technically not reading, so I apologize.

"...smoked the enemy with my blazing sword!" That is a good line, if anyone saw it, which I hope Anna or Paul did, at least the longer version, because if anyone from this class was there today, I completely missed them. However, I did spot our four special guests from last week. :)