March = time to fill out your NCAA brackets and watch some college men’s basketball in the 76th March Madness tournament.
Predicting the winners of these games is a na-tional activity, and
bil-lions of brackets are filled out each March. The Octagon staff decid-ed to have a bracket challenge between two teachers (Mr. Polzin and Mrs. Luostari) and two staff members (Katie Johnson and myself), with updates published
on the way to the Final Four.
Mr. Polzin said that he made his picks for a number of reasons. He said that he doesn't like Online@ www.nw-tigers.org/the-octagon
Volume 66, Issue 23 March 20, 2015
By Ricky Schiff
Wednesday: Academic
Awards Cere-mony
Thursday and Friday:
Track: Varsity Invitational
“It’s always fun to write to the Pentagon.”
Pg. 5 Novel Novels
Spring, the one season when we are happy to see dandelions coming up and blooming, is offi-cially here today. Re-cently I’ve been noticing changes not only in the weather, but at school. 1. Phy-ed classes are taking over the football field again for their vari-ous sports games.
2. The parking spots are once again visible, but parking skills are still lacking.
3. It’s muddy around and inside the building. Hence the tracks of mud and dirt leading in the halls and under desks in different classrooms. 4. Guys are going “mudding.” You can tell by the super dirty trucks in the parking lot.
5. Girls are breaking out their flip flops and shorts, soakin’ up the sun.
6. Here in Wisconsin, there are many cattle grazing about. Along with the cattle around this time of the year are
many young calves. 7. Animals, as well as the majority of the hu-man population, are shedding their winter coats.
8. The robins and geese are back in town, along with the little birds sing-ing their lungs out. 9. The ice on Lake Supe-rior and surrounding lakes is melting; rivers are flowing almost freely again.
10. There have been re-ports of a few small grass fires.
By Cassie Harvey
Ricky Schiff’s bracket, wherein he forecasts Wisconsin’s victory.
‘Madness’
Contin-ued Pg. 6
"A Grand Idea"
Time is running
out to be a part
of “A Grand
Idea”! Requests
for bids have
been sent out
and the
commit-tee will soon
travel to the Twin
Cities to try out
various pianos. In
order to impact
the quality of the
piano purchased,
donations must
be received by
Friday, March 27,
2015.
For details on
how to donate
Last Monday, March 16, was St. Urho's Day.
Legend has it, ancient Finland was overcome with big grasshoppers who were eating the country's grape vines. In doing so, they were de-stroying the wine crop, and the Finnish vineyard workers were losing their jobs.
Then, Urho (the Fin-ish term for “hero”) came along and shouted with his thundering voice, “Heinasirkka, heinasirkka, menetaalta hiteen!” meaning “grasshoppers, grasshop-pers, go away!” Due to
his heroic actions, Urho is now known as the “patron saint of the Finnish vineyard work-ers.”
On this special day, Finlanders across the country honor their an-cestry by wearing royal purple and nile green. Common activities in-clude parades, dances, and cribbage tourna-ments. Additionally, Finlanders eat a pancake
3/22
Brandon Erickson Matthew Hedin Isaiah Jonasen
3/23
Rachel Anttila Katie Taylor
3/24
Caitlin Johnson Connor Johnson
Senior Editor/ For-matter:
Nik Sauer
Text Editor
Brooklyn Smith
Staff Members: Katie Johnson
J. Gaare Richard Schiff
Luke Rutten Evan Simmons Mikayla Maijala
Cassie Harvey Alissa Ormond Chaede Vig
Advisor:
Mrs. Thompson
For people up here in the Northland, ice fishing tends to be a pretty popu-lar winter activity. So what’s the big deal about ice fishing and what about it is enjoyable? To get an idea of what the attraction of ice fish-ing may be, two non-fishermen, Mrs. Thomp-son and I, interviewed two avid ice fishermen: seniors John Lahti and Jesse Scharp. Jesse has gone fishing about 30 times this winter and has only left “skunked” once. He uses live bait such as minnows, shiners, and suckers, and treble hooks.
Both John and Jesse admit that location is key. When they go ice fishing, they prefer to fish on the “weed edge,” or in the weeds.
The minimum thick-ness of ice that they said they will walk on would be four inches, which John admits is pushing it because you can feel the ice moving and see water jumping up through the
hole. However, at this point in the winter, they estimated the ice on most inner lakes to be about one foot thick.
Jesse said he has fallen in the icy water a few times, but since he only went in up to his waist or so, he continues to fish. Neither John nor Jesse frequent Lake Superior be-cause it’s farther away and it pre-sents unpredicta-ble conditions. Instead, they pre-fer to ice fish on the Pike Lake chain and Lake Minnesuing; both offer pretty good chances of catch-ing Northerns and bluegills.
Since the air is so cold, Jesse and John real-ly like borrowing friends’ ice shacks when the temperature is below zero degrees, and they bring along heaters to keep the shack warm. Whether they are inside
the shack or out in the open, they generally jig in the shack and scatter tip-ups around the shack
so they can keep an eye on them all.
There are many rules for ice fishing and one governs the number of lines a fisherman can have in the lake at one time. While the number of lines is three for the
average Wisconsinite, Jesse said that since he is Native American, he could have 30, but
ad-mits that he usually has about seven at one time. To make the time wait-ing for a fish to bite less painful and more fun, Jes-se and John sometimes spending time on snowmo-biles, while keeping an eye on their tip-ups.
This seems to prove that ice fishing in-volves more than the cold, miserable ac-tivity that Mrs. Thomp-son and I previously im-agined. It actually sounds worth an outing if you know how to make the best of it, and know a few ice fishing secrets.
Happy
Birthday!
By Mikayla Maijala
Fun fact: Jesse’s favorite fishing moment was catching a 37” Northern last spring/
summer using a big pink musky jig! By Alissa Ormond
From left to right: Jasmine Harris, Mo Erickson (pictured on the iPhone in the center as she was not present at press time), and Amanda Bauer.
What are your plans after high school? Get a job .
What’s your favorite hobby?
Reading.
If you could travel the world, where would you go and why? If I could travel the world I would travel the whole world and not just one or two places. What is your favorite high school memory? Performing for the secu-rity cameras.
Make up your own
question and answer it. Why am I doing a senior profile? Because Aman-da Bauer is making me. Would you rather have a dragon or a dinosaur as a pet? Feel free to elaborate
A dragon, and no I do not feel free to elaborate on that.
What is your second
favorite color and why isn’t your first?
I love all colors equally. What are your plans
for after high school? I plan to start an appren-ticeship to be a tattoo artist.
What’s your favorite hobby?
Drawing.
If you could travel
any-where in the world, where would you go and why? Ireland, because my an-cestors are from there. What is the number one most played song on your iPod?
“Teenagers” by My Chemical Romance. Would you rather have
a dragon or a dinosaur as a pet? A dragon; they can fly and are beautiful crea-tures.
What is your second favorite color and why isn’t it your first? Blue; it’s my second fa-vorite color because my favorite color is green. By Ricky Schiff
Jasmine
Harris
Amanda
Bauer
Mo Erickson
What are your plans for after high school? Go to WITC for nursing. If you could travel any-where in the world, where would you go and why?
Rome, Italy.
What is your favorite high school memory? Creating skits to try out at SNL and hanging out behind the stairs at lunch.
What is the number one most played song on your iPod?
“Follow Me” by Uncle Kracker.
How was your time in high school?
My time in high school was great because of my two best friends, Mo and Jasmine.
Would you rather have a dragon or a dinosaur as a pet?
Dragons, because they can fly and breathe fire. What is your second favorite color and why isn’t it your first? Red, because I like blue more.
breakfast, drink grape juice (or wine), and dine on spaghetti.
Ironically, the holiday originated not in Finland, but in northern Minneso-ta. However, there’s some confusion about
who actually created the legend of St. Urho.
Some say Richard Mattson (a retail worker at Ketolas’ department store in Virginia, MN) is responsible. He said Fin-land was once overcome by frogs and that St. Urho drove them away. Others credit Sulo Havumaki (a psychology
teacher at the Bemidji, MN state college). He claimed that grasshop-pers were destroying Fin-land’s wine industry and that St. Urho scared them off.
Havumaki’s story with the grasshoppers seems to be more widely recog-nized, as compared to Mattson’s version with
the frogs. Although the legend is said to have started as a joke to “...regain some attention from the Irish around St. Patrick's Day,” St. Urho’s Day is officially recognized in all 50 states, and it has also be-come a big celebration in Finnish towns.
A Florida man holding a gun in his pocket while riding a bicycle was
killed when the gun went off.
By Nik Sauer
Starting earlier this year, Cuba and the Unit-ed States have been mak-ing leaps and bounds in their relationship with each other. There have been numerous talks on subjects such as lifting the embargos and allow-ing tourists from the United States to enter Cuba on a larger scale. Cuba has also been changing its economic policies to be more capi-talist in their nature; to be more like the United States. The question is, is Cuba ready for this change?
Cuba has been a long-time enemy of the United States; ever since Fidel Castro overthrew the small country’s previous government and estab-lished a communist gov-ernment in its place, the United States has effec-tively avoided any con-tact with Cuba. After the
CIA failed their attempt-ed military coup known as the “Bay of Pigs Inva-sion,” U.S. lawmakers isolated Cuba even fur-ther, hoping that the country would be crip-pled into becoming a capitalist country.
In response to this, the Cubans cozied up to the Soviet Union, which led to the Cuban Missile Cri-sis, where the United States and the Soviets were very close to start-ing a nuclear holocaust, and, subsequently, arma-geddon. Understandably, we as a country have not been on good terms with Cuba since.
But now, there seems to be a change in the line of thought at the capitol. 53 years later, Cuba has not crumbled as we thought it would, so we recognized there is prob-ably a better way to re-solve our differences. Certain senators, such as Sen. Claire McCaskill
from Missouri, have been pushing for better rela-tions for a while. Talks between the two coun-tries have been cordial, and there seems to be a genuine plan to put the past behind and to move forward into prosperity. There are, however, several issues that both sides need to sort out: a chief concern is whether or not the Cubans are still a hubbub of Com-munist terrorists. It ap-pears that this isn’t the case, and the Department of State has been deliber-ating on whether or not to remove the country from the list of states sponsoring terrorism. It appears that the only is-sue is whether or not the American public will ac-cept this action.
Another major issue is the continued human rights issues both sides have. The Castro regime has always been brutal with its marital law, and
continues to suppress political dissidents and to crack down against free speech.
The United States, however, has its own ma-jor violation of human rights located in Cuba: Guantanamo Bay. This prison became infamous during the war in Iraq as a hotbed of torture and other crimes against hu-manity. Both Cuba and the United States have demanded that the other cease and desist in the other’s activities, and it appears that neither side will start until the other does first.
How to effectively open up Cuba to the out-side world and how to heal the relationships be-tween Cuba and the Unit-ed States is a matter that our leaders need to con-fabulate upon with great consideration.
By Evan Simmons
A complete shift to depend-ence solely on renewable
ener-gy is “within Canada’s reach.” The Pirate party has recently become the most popular political party in Iceland. President Obama has said that he is in favor of
mak-ing votmak-ing mandatory for all eligible U.S. citizens. Nine suspects have been
ar-rested after 23 people were killed in Tunis, Tunisia.
Russia reportedly employs around 400 “Kremlin Trolls” who are tasked with writing comments and blogs supporting Russian policies.
Moon bases could re-portedly be built in
I know you’re all cringing right now, so let me put your mind at ease: I solemnly swear that this article will not devolve into a Stephen King love-fest, although there will inevitably be a few close-calls.
#4 Evermore (The Im-mortals: 1),Alyson Noël - Full disclosure: this is actually a horrible book, but it’s still great because this is a prime example
of a terrible
“supernatural romance” novel, except it includes a gay character whose personality is not “gay. Really and thoroughly gay. No favorite book, or activity. Just fabulously gay.” This is so rare for this type of book that I’m super glad it got to be so popular.
#3. Audrey, Wait!, Robin Benway- As I’ve said a million times be-fore, I hate main
charac-ters. There are only two protagonists that are my favorite characters in the pieces in which they ap-pear, and they are Dolores Claiborne, from the novel of the same name, by Stephen King (sorry), and Audrey Cut-tler from Audrey, Wait!. I like pretty much eve-ry character in the stoeve-ry, actually. In fact, one of the weaknesses of the book may be that these people could be unrealis-tically ideal, despite their flaws. But you never re-ally think of it this way while reading because the book is so hysterical. I’m so self-involved that I usually only laugh aloud at myself when I think of/write something I believe is witty. I’m truly a marvel of this world: I can even read the Hitchhiker’s books and only exhale more deeply than normal in place of actual laughter.
But Audrey, Wait! actu-ally made me laugh. Like, we’re not talking about a hearty guffaw, here, but it’s still a very impressive feat.
#2. The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle: 1), Maggie Stiefvater- This book is in a critically ac-claimed series by Maggie Stiefvater wherein love and supernatural events occur. I realize that this is not much to go on, given that I just de-scribed a sizeable vol-ume of her work.
This particular book, however, is about a girl who lives with a bunch of clairvoyant women. Let’s stop right there. Unfortunately, this is somehow only a minor aspect of the story, which is a shame. Someone write me a story about paranormal feminists wreaking havoc, right now. Times New Roman, twelve-point font, on my
desk Monday morning. More accurately, it’s about a girl named Blue, who has been assured by her psychic brethren that when she kisses her true love, he’ll somehow die. Conveniently, she sees and talks to a ghost, a boy named Gansey (they don’t all have stupid names; there is an Ad-am), which is significant because it either means that the ghost was her true love, or she killed him.
Now, I’m not a big Young Adult fiction reader (I selected this book because it was on the Battle of the Books list last year, before I abandoned ship, I’m so sorry, Mrs. Scherz), and I especially hate the “quirky teenage girl meets a boy that’s way (A List by Someone Who Hates YA Novels)
‘Novels’ Continued
Pg. 6
By Brooklyn Smith
Mind control is con-sidered to be from sci-ence fiction, but it’s been around since before we started our first fires. All organisms have a unifying drive, the will to survive. Some make their own food and some make food out of other organ-isms. Things like lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!) come to mind but there are more sinister creatures that eat their prey in ways other than by tearing it limb from limb.
Parasites, creatures that latch onto and feed off another animal, have perfected the art of
con-trolling the minds of their prey. Almost nothing on Earth is safe, not even your own home.
One of the most com-monly found version of these parasites is rabies. Rabies is spread through saliva, a liquid found on-ly in the mouth. To spread itself, rabies takes control of its host’s mind and makes the aggressive parts active while damp-ening the areas of the decision making part of the brain.
This results in the host organism attacking, sometimes without prov-ocation. Bites and scratches all over the vic-tim of these attacks quickly become infected
with the rabies virus and the cycle begins again. The horsehair worm is much closer to what peo-ple might think a mind-controlling parasite would look like. The par-asite starts its life as a tiny larvae whose only goal is to get eaten by a larger larvae, like a mos-quito or mayfly. It then waits in the digestive tract until the new host emerges from the water and gets eaten by a grasshopper or cricket. It then develops inside the cricket but it can only grow so big without wa-ter.
The worm manipulates the nervous system of the cricket, forcing it to jump
into the nearest pool of water, drowning itself. After it’s finished de-vouring its host from the inside, horsehair worms can leave the cricket’s body. They can some-times grow up to a foot long, before exiting into the water to reproduce. Our planet has many beautiful sites to see but it has just as many terri-fying ones. Mind control-ling parasites will not only suck your blood but make you think it’s the right thing to do, and they are just one of na-ture’s ways of maintain-ing balance.
Duke, but they are a #1 seed so he think they will win in the second round but lose the next round. He said that he always picks a 15 seed over a 2 seed because it happens almost every year, so that’s why he has Texas Southern beating Arizo-na.
According to Mr. Pol-zin, Kentucky “is a good team,” but they are the potential upset. Overall he went home-grown and picked Wisconsin to win the tournament because they are a #1 seed and currently is one of the best teams the Badgers have put together in years.
Mrs. Luostari also picked Wisconsin to walk away with the title, because she said she has to be loyal to Wisconsin. Along the way, as she chose “winners,” she wrote comments about teams. For example, two teams she chose to make it to the elite eight, in-clude Kentucky -- “they have blue grass,” and VCU - “very cheesy university.”
Katie Johnson, on the other hand, picked her teams based on how satisfying it was to say their names. She gave
Purdue and Wofford. Finally, as I am probably one of the biggest sports nerds in this school, I tried my best to watch some highlights on the teams that I thought would go far, and considered what those teams have done in the past, when they had play-ers that are now in the NBA.
But overall I had to go with Bucky and his fellow Badgers lead by FRANK the TANK and Nigel Hayes. I am bit skep-tical because of Sam Dekker’s recent play, but I feel like they can go to Indianapo-lis and take home the title.
But hey, it’s March! Anyone has a chance to pick the winning bracket -- there are more than nine quintillion brackets. Let the madness begin!
out of her league and, shockingly, they fall in love” trope, so my inner psychopath came out to play somewhere between Blue meeting Gansey, and learning that his name was ‘Gansey.’ “Kiss him in that rain-storm, under the tree, whilst holding a curtain rod,” I hissed at the pag-es, “and we can end this
stupid subplot thirty pages in.”
But I think that’s why I could keep reading: it was, surprisingly, just a subplot. The real plot involved an ancient Welsh king, a crazy teacher, a Latin forest (or something like that. I can’t remember a thing about this book, and it doesn’t have its own page on Wikipedia), and explores themes such as poverty in the midst of wealth, friendship,
fami-ly relationships, love, loss, and ignoring one’s problems until they go away (Gansey may have survived the first three books [or so I’ve heard. I’ve only read the first one], but come Septem-ber, he is a dead man [until he is magically res-urrected; you know how this goes]).
But the real reason why I would pick up this book is because the writ-ing is fairly strong, and
the story just has an in-teresting feel to it (yes, I am one of those review-ers, talking about “vibes,” and all that jazz. Deal with it).
#1. Harry Potter (1-7), J.K. Rowling- Duh. It goes without saying that if you haven’t read the books, do so immediate-ly. Is the rock under which you’ve been living nicely furnished?
