The Panther Prints

I was perusing a peopleless pier when I saw the old man. He had grizzly hair, sunken eyes and a crooked nose, his grace humbled by his age. My feet chose on their own accord as I wandered over there. Silence gripped our shoulders like an overbearing parent. My breaths were as loud as the waves caressing the shore. “Hello,” I said and then words poured out of the crevices of our souls in a sweeping waterfall. Pleasantries were deleted like the dinosaurs and our words embraced like long lost friends. Our ages blown away with the fleeting tide. And our minds danced beneath the stars. He gifted me a necklace of pearls: wisdom, kindness and offered to wrap it around my heart. I traded him a cufflink of endless imagination to wear with his heart on his sleeve. We were trading our words in between the spaces of the world and we traded the world in between the spaces of our words. He told me that a single person could be wrapped up in a few words, that 10 or 11 letters could categorize someo...

MVMS School’s Official Art Show is here! May 9 - 31st That’s right, the official art show is opening up May 9, right here at MVMS. Until June, art from 6th-8th grade art classes will be hung up all over the walls in the main hallway. “We always want to celebrate the creative work that happens in the Art Classes, just like we celebrate the Music and Drama,” says Mr. DiPierro, 7th grade Art Teacher. “ Having an Art Show is our opportunity to show everyone the wide variety [and] beautiful work that our students create, and it is also a great way to share our thanks with Kiddo for providing these great things (and many other things as well) here at our school.” How does this all go down? First, each kid [taking an art class] chooses one work they have done so far this year which they want to be chosen for the showing. Then, teams of parents [PTA] work together to label and add thick cardboard backgrounds to each piece. Finally they hang up the fini...

Spring Allergies       Basic and simple Information that could help you feel a bit better this Allergy Season. By Elie    Spring Pollen Allergies. Sneezing. Coughing. Wheezing. Watery itchy eyes. Oh yeah, don’t forget the stuffy and runny nose. From 35 - 67 million Americans suffer these symptoms every spring, and then some. That’s as much as one-out-of-five people. Well, if you suffer from allergies, like I do, or you know someone who does, the following information may help you.    Pollen       Pollen, a fine powdery substance, consists of certain male parts of a plant (Aka, “The Fertilizers”).  You usually see it as a yellow powder that floats down from trees, or that covers your furniture if you leave the window open on a windy Spring day.  The average pollen particle is smaller than the width of one of your hairs! Oh, one more thing: Once it touches an allergic person’s throat, it tr...

What do you think of when you hear the word April? Do you think of spring and newly blooming flowers or do you think about April Fool's Day and the pranks? April originally used to be the second month of the year, still following March, of the Roman calendar year. But it became the fourth month around 450 BCE with only 29 days. But when Pope Gregory created the Gregorian calendar in 1582, he changed it to 30 days of April. There are several theories about the etymology of April, the first is that April, came from aperire which means ‘to open’ in Latin. A second theory is that April was named after the Greek goddess of love and beauty, “Aphrodite”. Or another theory that Jacob Grimm, a famous linguist, though was that there was a god or hero named Aper or Aprus April is actually National Humor Month as well as Mathematics Awareness Month and National Poetry Month. April is a wonderful month, we get the chance to fully appreciate spring.

The History of Spring Cleaning When I hear those words butterflies of excitement rise in my stomach. It time for “Spring Cleaning.” Spring cleaning has been a tradition in my house for as long as I can remember. Going through my desks and all the random boxes in my house feels as though I’m starting from scratch. It gives me the ability to reorganize my room and make space for brand new things. Spring cleaning is one of my favorite times of the year and going through it this year I started to wonder about the history of the tradition.  It all started as a Jewish tradition in which families would go through their home and perform a “deep cleaning” in preparation for Passover. Jewish families were supposed to rid their houses of any remnants of chametz for the duration of the holiday. This resulted in a complete cleaning of their homes. Since Passover is in spring the tradition of hunting for chametz took place the week before, hence the name “Spring Cleaning.” As time went on spr...

Designer babies, perfect genetics, no genetic diseases, doesn’t this sound like some utopian turned dystopian novel. Can you imagine being designed by scientists? But CRISPR could transform the way we face genetic diseases. This lifesaving technique was developed at UC Berkeley in 2012 just 45 minutes from Mill Valley by Jennifer Doudna. Doudna is a professor of chemistry and of molecular and cell biology at Berkeley “CRISPER?” you’re probably thinking. Well, I’ll break it down for you. CRISPR which is Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats is a technique that edits DNA inexpensively, efficiently and accurately. DNA or Deoxyribonucleic is a nucleic acid that carries your genetic information. It is found in the nucleus of nearly all cells. CRISPR uses an enzyme called Cas9, the bacteria edits the main genes of viruses and then stores them. The immune system then sees the virus and battles it off. CRISPR does this and can also reinstate another gene and then stitc...

  You are sitting in the backseat of your car as your mom drives you to school on a foggy morning. You peer out the car window and you see a sign, “Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.” You ask, “Hey mom, do you know what that sign is for?” She replies, “Oh, just a sign for the seminary. That is it’s full name.” “Ew, cemetery, creepy,” you reply. “Not cemetery dear, Sss-em-i- nar -y--like for Seminary Drive.” As the sign disappears behind you, you might wonder what goes on at the seminary on the hill above Strawberry Point.                                         What is GGBTS?    Since 1959, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary (GGBTS) has sat in the middle of Strawberry in Marin County, CA. Most of the residents on the other side of the freeway from M...