Jessica Diggins

Gliding Through Fame

By Solveig

One of my fondest memories happened before most kids are old enough to remember anything. In fact, at the time, I wasn't even old enough to walk yet, just to ski. I remember getting strapped into my carrier and going for a ride on my mom's back. My parents are the kind of people that don't mind a one-year-old pulling their hair and screaming "FASTER" constantly into an open ear. Little did I know that this first ride would be the start of something huge...

Before I became a famous skier, almost 20 years before I was born, Bill Koch took home the silver medal in the 1976 Winter Olympics, that medal was the first and only in U.S. Olympic cross-country skiing history. It would be the only one for a very long time. I was born in 1991 on August 26 in St. Paul, Minn. Clearly, I wasn't born a winter kid. My family soon moved to Afton, Minn., which is where I grew up. I grew up as your average little kid. I liked pickles, razzberries and playing outside—nothing unusual.

As a kid I participated in dance, soccer, swimming, track, and violin before choosing to pursue skiing most of all. And I'm very glad I did so, because that decision led me to meet many great people and do many great things. One of the people who I met is now my teammate, Kikkan Randall. Kikkan, a five-time Winter Olympian, helped me take home the gold medal this year in the team sprint freestyle! I had the pleasure of working with her for her last Olympics, which was just this year. She was an amazing partner and I'm sure I would never have thrived as much as I did without her.

My first Olympic appearance was in the 2014 Sochi Olympics at the age of 22. My second and most recent appearance was in the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics where I competed in 6 events: The 10 km free, 7.5 km skiathlon, classic sprints, freestyle team sprint, 30 km mass start classic, and the 4x5 km relay. My main glory was in the freestyle team sprint, with Kikkan Randall. We won the gold medal—the first U.S. Olympic XC medal since 1976! Olympic skiing has opened many doors for me and helped me become interested in other things that I never would have known about otherwise.

I am currently an advocate for climate change awareness, along with other Olympic skiers from Team USA. We have found out that many of the 21 Olympic cities are too warm to ever host another games, and we need to stop global warming well we are barely ahead. We need to save winter. I am supporting the Carbon Fee and Dividend Solution, a system that charges people who put carbon into the air and returns revenue to households. I don't simply want to save winter for my sport—sure skiing plays a big part in this—but think of all those kids who will grow up without snow, never knowing what it would be like to have a white Christmas. So, I'm asking you to simply help support this system, but don't do it for me, do it for the kids.

My Sources are..


“Meet the Athletes of Team USA | USOC.” Team USA, www.teamusa.org/athletes.

“Meet the Athletes of Team USA | USOC.” Team USA, www.teamusa.org/athletes.

IOC. “Massachusetts - the Unlikely Birthplace of Basketball and Volleyball.” International Olympic Committee, IOC, 27 Apr. 2018, www.olympic.org/.

“Breaking News, World News & Multimedia.” The New York Times, The New York Times, www.nytimes.com/.

“Citizens\' Climate Lobby.” Citizens' Climate Lobby, citizensclimatelobby.org/.

Presentation Notes:  ______________________________
"Hi, everyone! It's so nice to see all the faces of my many fans and supporters after today's race. At the start of the day I never thought I'd end it a medalist, let alone a gold medalist! Growing up in small town Afton, Minnesota I hope I have proven that it doesn't matter where you come from, you can still accomplish your dreams. Thank you all for listening to this interview and to my teammate, Kikkan Randall, for getting me this far. Any questions?"

Irena Sendlerowa

Unstoppable!

By, Solveig

Good afternoon, everyone! A lot of very well-known people are here at the Biography Bistro including Ben Franklin, Helen Keller, and Gabby Douglas. My character is not as popular as all of them. But, I did discover MUCH more than meets the eye -- if you count saving 2,500 lives as something.

On February 15, 1910, a baby girl is born. Her name is Irena Krzyzanowska, that's me. When I was a young girl my father, a hard-working doctor, fell ill with typhus, which he had been treating in others. Before my father passed away, he told me, "Irena, if someone drowning, you must jump in and try to save them."

Now, I'm known as Irena Sendlerowa, or in some cases, Irena Sendler. I was married Mieczyslaw Sendlerowa, but, in 1931 (after the war) we got divorced. Soon, I married a fellow activist Stephen Zgrzembski and had two children, a son and daughter.

Now, we are going take a step back into the 1900's

It is a very dark, bad time in World War II. Many of these people around us are too afraid to be upstanders and choose to be bystanders instead. I have not been tricked into that one!

As the Jews are being persecuted by the Nazis in World War II, I am working on helping Jewish families and saving their children by giving them Christian names and having Christian families adopt them. I wrote their real names and their new names on slips of paper, put them in

marmalade jars, and buried them under a big tree in my friend's garden. After the war, I would reunite many children with their families. Sadly many did not.

The Warsaw Ghetto is a part of town built by Adolf Hitler's Nazis, If you don't know. They're herding 500,000 of the Polish Jews behind its walls to await liquidation. That's when I was able to smuggle 2,500 children out (if anyone was caught doing this they would be severely punished or killed, but I managed to escape!)

Sometimes the smaller children would cry when I took them from their families. So to cover up the noise, I trained a dog to bark. I have been able to hide the children in sacks, bags of clothes, boxes -- even in coffins! I saved them all in three months.

And now, I've became pretty famous! A movie and a play were made about me. The movie is titled "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler," and the play is called "Life in a Jar." The play was written by a group of Kansas schoolgirls (Elizabeth Cambers, Megan Stewart, Sabrina Coons, and Janice Underwood), along with their teacher Norman Conard.

I lived a very fulfilled life that I hope will never be forgotten. Are you all ready to continue fighting for this cause?

Thank you all so much for listening, I hope you learned something new! Enjoy the Biography Bistro! If you would like to learn more here are my sources:

"What Is History's Heroes?" History's HEROES. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2017.

Jewish Virtual Library. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2017.

"The Definitive Internet Reference Source for Urban Legends, Folklore, Myths, Rumors, and Misinformation." Snopes.com. N.p., 23 Apr. 2017. Web. 24 Apr.

"The Courageous Story of Irena Sendler." Life in a Jar. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2017

Cavallo, Francesca. "Irena Sendlerowa." Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls. By Elena Favilli. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.
__________________________

Presentation Notes:

"Oh, hello! How are you all doing? I am so glad to be in Helena on this beautiful afternoon! I am a lady from Poland, as you may know, and I have come to tell you all about some issuesyou may not be aware of but should deeply consider.
I have had a big part in helping out in Warsaw, I actually have just arrived from helping an adorable young lady find her way back home. Now, I have done this many, many times considering I have saved 2,500 from the Ghetto. I am so very excited you are all interested in this cause as well and I can see you all doing fabulous things about it in the near future!"