Speech Story: Jobs Speech at Stanford

On June 12, Steve Jobs gave a commencement speech to the Stanford class of 2005. Steve Jobs is the co-founder of Apple Inc. along with Steve Wozniak.

His speech consisted of three sections, Connect the Dots, Love and Loss and Death. In the first part of his speech, Connect the Dots deals with the beginning of his life and the reason he dropped out and how he found out what he was going to do with his life. He briefly attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He dropped out of college because he felt that it wasn’t right for his parents to be spending their money on something he wasn’t sure about.

“I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out,” Jobs said.

Once he dropped out, he stopped taking the classes that didn’t interest but the one class that did. He decided to just take one class, which happened to be a calligraphy class because he saw calligraphy all throughout the campus and thought it was beautiful. By taking this class, it helped him design the first Macintosh computer. If he didn’t drop out, he would have never taken that course and we wouldn’t have the type of computers we have. He tells these graduates to trust in something because your life is full of connecting the dots to make your life better. You never were you are going until you look back on what you have accomplished.

Love and loss was his next big point in his speech that dealt with finding what he loved to do and how in second it was taken away but found him again. He states that he found what he wanted to do in life at a young age at the age of 20. Woz and Jobs started the Apple Company out of his parent’s garage and by the time they were 30 it had grown from just two people to a $2 billion company. Then after 10 years Jobs hired Sculley, a guy that he thought was very talented, but after a year they saw things differently and Jobs was fired.

“What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn’t know what to do for a few months, I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down,” Jobs stated.

After being fired, he decided to start over with a new company called NeXT and another company called Pixar. During this time, he married the love of his life Laurene. Pixar became the most successful animation studio in the world. NeXT was bought by Apple and then he returned. He states the life can hit your over the head with brick but don’t lose faith. You says you got to find what you to be able to do great work and let nothing stand in your way. He tells them you will know it when you find it, don’t settle.

The last part of his speech was about Death. He talks about how life throw curve balls at you when you least expect it. He was diagnosed was pancreatic cancer and had surgery to get it removed. He tells the students live everyday like it’s your last because you never know it could be. He mentions that we are all destined to die, no one has escaped it. He wants people to live their lives to fullest and do what they believe in.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life,” Jobs stated.

Event Story: Fundraising with Spaghetti

Holy Nativity Lutheran Church organized a Spaghetti dinner fundraiser for their church on October 16. The fundraiser is to help repair the parking lot and roof.

The church has been doing this fundraiser for the last 15 years and every year it is the members of the church that do all the cooking and prepping. It ran from 4 to 8 p.m. in the church’s dining hall. There is also a lovely bake sale that goes on in the library and those baked goods are also made by members of the church. They sell wine and soda to go with the meal. Before you get the meal, they start you off with an amazing Italian type salad and after the meal they give you a choice of amazing deserts.

*Holy Nativity is highly appreciated church among the community of Kenosha because the church always has something nice and fun for anyone of any age to do. The church has been around since the early 1950s and is basically a family to anyone that wants to join. Fundraisers help the church interact with the community and they love doing it every year.

“People from all over Kenosha and sometimes other counties around come to our spaghetti dinner because they know they are spending money on a good cause and that we welcome anyone. Sometimes we get new members to our church through our fundraisers,” states Dawn Knese, secretary of Holy Nativity Lutheran Church for about 8 years.

Donna Simmons, has been a member of the church for about 30 years and is in charge of the whole fundraiser. She started this fundraiser when the church was about to close its doors because they couldn’t get enough donations during services.

“I thought starting a spaghetti dinner fundraiser would be cool because a lot of people like food and will usually come to try it out. Our town is pretty small so it is easy for word to get around and just like that we got a lot of people that year and each year it keeps on growing,” states Simmons.

Holy Nativity relies on the fundraisers they do every year to help keep their church open. They have Bake Sales at least once every month to help with little repairs. While the Spaghetti Dinner and the May Rummage sale each year help repair the big things with the church. The next big fundraiser is in May so, come on down and see what this church has to offer.

Kittatinny Budget

Gustavus G. Petykiewicz, mayor of Kittatinny has proposed a budget for 2016.  The budget has to be approved by December 1 of this year. Before that can happen, the council had a conference with the Mayor and everyone involved with the budget. There happened to be issues with the budget that the people of Kittatinny would like fixed.

Before the conference happened with the city council, the town of Kittatinny has been under a lot of financial stress. It all started when the Susquehanna Steel Corporation had to lay off 600 workers. Since then the town has been making tough decisions and this new balanced budget is an example of that.

The mayor called the meeting to order and stated that he comes to us with a heavy heart and doesn’t take this lightly because the budget has had to cut or raise prices on things such as taxes, police and sanitation.

During the conference, the mayor says for future improvement on the city and budget we could get Kittatinny to be a tourists attraction. The city could also bring in new employment by having an insurance company or a bank.

The biggest cut for the city is the Police Department. The proposed budget is saying we would have to lay off two cops and not have police force between the hours of 4 a.m. to noon. We would have to call Schuylkill County sheriff’s deputies which are about 20 minutes away. Also we would have to give them money for a new police cruiser which costs a lot because of all the equipment the car needs.

Chief of police, Roman Hruska is against the idea of having no cops on duty from 4 a.m. to noon. He says it is a terrible idea because he feels the people of Kittatinny are going to be deprived from police protection for a third of the day. Hruska states that if someone in the town has a domestic violence problem, which to them are the most dangerous, we would have to wait 20 minutes for Schuylkill deputies to arrive and it might be too late. Hruska thinks that police should be the last place to do budget cutting.

“I don’t know what the mayor was smoking. I won’t stand for it,” states Chief of Police Hruska

Bjarne Westhoff, president of Pennsylvania Police Association agrees with everything the Hruska has to say but believes that the mayor is doing this on purpose to get back Hruska. Hruska and Westhoff agree to take a ten percent pay cut if the mayor would do the same which he has agrees to do as well.

“The mayor and the Hruska don’t get along and if this is a personal dispute they need to keep it out of the work environment,” states Westhoff.

Denelda Penoyer, president of Kittatinny council disagrees with the budget of the tax increase from 4 mills to 4.3 mills. That means taxes will be $430 and it could be hard for the people of Kittatinny to pay because of a lot of workers had to be laid off. Since 600 workers were laid off they probably won’t be able to pay taxes at the regular price and if that is true, they sure won’t be able to pay it after it increases.  Also she disagrees with the $30 a month on garbage because for a whole year that is $360. She states that there is a city council meeting every Tuesday night and she encourages people of Kittatinny to come and voice their opinion. Martha Mittengrabben, president of AFSCME says she could help the town by reestablishing the contract the company has but would have to have an election to see if all the worker would agree.

“My workers are scared because they want job security since the work hard and they don’t want to risk it,” states Mittengrabben.

After reviewing the budget the council and everyone involved has a lot to think about. If you don’t like what you see make sure to come to a city council meeting before December 1 to voice your opinion.

Interview Story: Different but not so Different

As a child you don’t think you are different but if people treat you different you begin to wonder. You ask yourself what it wrong with and that is exactly what Kathryn Dickman did when she was six years old.

Kathryn Dickman is 20 years old and is a junior at UW-Whitewater. She is a MAGD major with a Graphic Design Minor.

She grew up in Kenosha, Wisconsin and attend Reuther High School. She is an only child to Clint and Jennifer Dickman.

She discovered she had ADHD when she was six years and in first grade. She knew once she started school she was different.

When she started school kids tended not to be near her because she was hyper and crazy as they put it.

“Kids would laugh at me and call me weirdo and crazy. And that was said by five year old. I never thought children would be like that,” Kathryn said.

Her parents started asking questions about it after she got into a fight so to speak with a fifth grader. Just letting you know she was in kindergarten at this time.

She says that she was outside playing with a bouncy ball and he came over and took it from her. Then all of a sudden she jumped on his back and was acting crazy.

Two teachers had to pull her off and then when asked about she couldn’t focus and was still so hyper. So the school asked her parents to get her tested.

So they did and a few months later they figured out she had it. From then on she has taken medication to help her keep calm during school.

Till this day she still has trouble focusing in class and on homework but always has had great grades. She tends to do most of her homework and classes between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. because that is when she tends to have more focus.

She knows this will affect her job career but she knows if she stays focused and keeps having the job she loves it will not be a problem for her.

“If I tend to do things that I love to do I tend to focus on it better and since I want to be game maker I should have no problem focusing,” Kathryn said.