Wise Monkey News is here to provide young people an opportunity to discuss the issues that affect their lives. We hope that, through your participation, this website serves as a forum for the development, exchange, and expression of ideas that will prepare us to assume our positions as the leaders of tomorrow's world. Have something to say?
Our business world
by: Meghan Molenda - printed on 10-24-2001
Many of us know no other way to exist other than by relying on millions of other people everyday. We may not personally have contact with them, but we encounter different objects into which they have put their labor. The great majority of us cannot make our own clothes; much less sew on a button. A box of macaroni-and-cheese is the extent of our cooking experience. These are just two of the simple everyday challenges that we do not have to worry about, because we do not have to know how to make clothes or cook a meal.
No More America! I am in Spain!
by: Annmarie Phelan - printed on 02-28-2001
This is it. Submerged in another language, another culture. I cannot speak or understand all that well, but somehow I am able to live in this country. It is my home for four months. My home. Spanish family, Spanish classes, Spanish food. No more America. No American handshake. “Dos besos” instead — a kiss on each cheek — is how I greet people. No standard American house. Most everyone lives in apartments, and the houses you do see do not share the same outward aesthetic beauty to which we are accustomed.
ETA continues to terrorize Spain
by: Peter Eicker - printed on 02-02-2002
On September 11, 2001, a new word entered the American vocabulary. Before this, the word was really only used by news anchors and politicians to describe a far-away problem in a far-away land. This new word I speak of is terrorism. It is now on the tip of every American?s tongue, and it is the prime focus of the government?s actions. But before September 11 most Americans were basically oblivious to the existence of any form of terrorism within U.
Where did hope go?
by: Hank Smith - printed on 02-06-2002
"Okay. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He?s enjoying the wind and the fresh air ? until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore.
"'My God, this is terrible,' the wave says 'Look what's going to happen to me!"
"Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, 'Why do you look so sad?'
"The first wave says, 'You don't understand! We're all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn?t it terrible?'
"The second wave says, 'No, you don't understand.
Killing fields leave permanent scars
by: Jill Suart - printed on 02-14-2001
The pictures of emaciated faces and broken souls from the death camps in Nazi Europe are sadly familiar to most North Americans. And the history of Vietnam’s Communist takeover is still widely studied and discussed today. Yet there is a blank area in many of our minds where history is vague and images are few. That area is just east of Vietnam and two decades past the holocaust, at the Killing Fields of Cambodia.
Backpacking in Japan
by: Bryan Jacobs - printed on 04-11-2001
One of my fondest memories of Japan was when I was camping on the beach in Hokkaido, the northernmost of the four main islands that form the country of Japan. I was sitting alone on the beach drinking an Asahi beer listening to Enya and watching the moon come up over the ocean. It was definitely one of the most beautiful moments of my life. The moonlight shimmering on the water as the waves were gently rolling in.