Saturday, December 28, 2019

Strengths - 685 Words

* Strenghts High Ramp;D (Companys even ventured into robotics) Innovation Market share leadership in smart segment Strong brand equity Unique products Production System that is refined over the years * Weaknesses High cost structure compared to China They depend greatly on profits coming in internationally, thus subject to global economies performance * Opportunities Due to increased interest from consumers into more fuel efficient and lower pollution cars, honda can use its strength in high Ramp;D to develop these kind of cars to suit consumers needs. Emerging markets and expansion abroad China being a neighbor to Japan and has cost innovation advantages to be exploited in its global†¦show more content†¦* Industry leader in manufacturing and production. Maximizes profit through efficient lean manufacturing approaches (e.g. Total Quality Management) and JIT (Just in Time) manufacturing and first mover in car research and development[2]. * Excellent penetration in key markets (US, China, EMEA) and now the second largest car manufacturer in the world, surpassing Ford. Weakness * Japanese car manufacturer - seen as a foreign importer. * Production capacity. Toyota produces most of its cars in US and Japan whereas competitors may be more strategically located worldwide to take advantage of global efficiency gains. * Some criticism has been made due to large-scale re-call made in 2005, quality issues. Opportunities * Innovation -first to develop commercial mass-produced hybrid gas-electric vehicles (gas and electric), e.g. Prius model. Based on advanced technologies and Ramp;D activity. With oil prices at an all time high - this investment and widening of product portfolio fits consumers looking to alternative sources of fuels away from gas guzzling cars * To expand more aggressively into new segments of the market. The launch of Aygo model by Toyota is intended to take market share in youth market. * To produce cars which are more fuel efficient, have greater performance and less impact on the environment. * To develop new cars which respond to social and institutional needs and wants. TheShow MoreRelatedStrengths And Strengths Of Strengths1859 Words   |  8 Pages Strengths are talents or skills that are characteristic to specific individuals. These talents or skills can help aid or determine what one excels at, be it emotionally, dealing with emotional factors such as stress; mentally, exploring one’s ability to stay focused or comprehend new or complex material; educationally, learning new subjects such as mathematics or language comprehension and applying it to everyday situations; socially, meeting and communicating with new and previously known individuals;Read MoreStrengths And Strengths Of An Individual898 Words   |  4 PagesIntroduction Capitalizing on one s strengths and using a strengths based approach, rather than a weakness based approach to personal development has been proven to lead to extraordinary leadership. Focusing on the strengths that one holds as an individual will help one create a better understanding of the intrinsic motivations one holds, as well as emote the confident and realistic actions that are needed by leaders. For this reason, I will be going through the process of the Reflected Best SelfRead MoreStrength Analysis : The Strength Quest2047 Words   |  9 PagesStrength Quest Reflection In the strength quest book there are special talents that describe me and each of the talents points out to how I use each of the talents in very special way in using it for a purpose. Each of the talent that is given to me and every other person is that it makes us unique in a way how we can express it with emotions and how we can behave. Also back in September when I took the Clifton Strengths Quest survey, it gave me the complete result of what the five special talentsRead MoreThree Strengths930 Words   |  4 PagesThree Strengths Essay Everyone has personal strengths that they utilize on the daily basis. In life we encounter experiences that help us identify our strengths as individuals. In the past, I’ve had several job experiences that tested what I believe to be are my greatest strengths. I believe each of these strengths speak to my character and will provide me with boundless opportunities in the future. One of my greatest strengths is my ability to be well-organized at all times. Growing up, I alwaysRead MoreStrength Quest Essay1694 Words   |  7 PagesStrengthsQuest Paper My Strengths are Discovered! â€Å"By the end of the day you must achieve something tangible in order to feel good about yourself. No matter how much you may feel you deserve a day of rest, if the day passes without some form of achievement, no matter how small, you will feel dissatisfied.† (PH.Ds, Clifton, O., Anderson, E., Schreiner, L., Pg 26) When I read this quote in our StrengthsQuest text I felt as if I was describing my own personality while starring at myself in theRead MoreThe Benefits of Strength Training1449 Words   |  6 PagesThe benefits of strength training not only include increased physical strength, but the ability to negate or control certain diseases while improving conditions associated with aging. Studies have shown that initial increases in strength seen in the beginning stages of strength training programs are largely due to neural factors, even though, the process responsible for muscle growth is evident in early weeks of training. Research shows that different types of neural adaptations like enhanced coordinationRead MoreStrength Training Exercises For Children1020 Words   |  5 Pages In his New York Times article â€Å"Strength Training as a Family Affair,† Anahad O’Conner takes a step into the debate whether children should participate in strength training exercises. With being with New York Times since 2003 writing articles relating to science, health, and nation issues, O’Conner has a understanding of this ongoing topic. Doctors have â€Å"Warned† parents to keep their children out of the weight room, but â€Å"Why† he asks. In this op-ed article, O’Conner does what he does best, and developsRead MoreCompressive Strength and Griffith Criterion3624 Words   |  15 PagesTest A. Introduction As shown by the Griffith criterion, tensile strength of brittle materials is theoretical 1/8 of the compressive strength. Typically, tensile strength of rock materials is about 1/10 to 1/8 of the compressive strength. Hence, rock fails easily under tension. In design, rock should be subjected to minimum tensile stress. Several methods are commonly used to test the tensile strength of rocks: 1. Direct tensile test: Metal caps are cemented to theRead MoreMuscle Strength And Physical Function1451 Words   |  6 PagesII. Muscle strength However lower limbs more relevant than upper limbs for estimation of gait and physical function, handgrip strength has been used and well correlated with the most relevant outcomes. But there is factors unrelated to muscle strength, e.g. motivation or cognition, may interfere the correct assessment of muscle strength (Cruz-Jentoft et al., 2010). 1) Handgrip strength Isometric hand grip strength is well related with lower limbs muscle strength , knee extension torque and calf cross-sectionalRead MoreMy Strengths From The Institute936 Words   |  4 Pagesof my strengths from the VIA Institute indicated what my strengths were in order from 1 to 24. The high ranked the strength the more I used it in my everyday life. The results made me a little concerned as to weather or not I did it right. The top five don t fit me as much as I would like. I received the results as Humor, Fairness, Loving to learn, Honesty, and Creativity. These are my top five used strengths, but I don t use half of these on a regular bases so how can they me my strengths. I feel

Friday, December 20, 2019

Same Sex Education Is The Wrong Choice For America s Youth

Despite what many think, same-gender schools are starting to show up in public school systems across America. (Guarisco) Some ill-informed members of society believe that same-sex education is the wrong choice for America’s youth. Guarisco states arguments include that segregation leads to more rigid and traditional gender roles. However, schools that have implemented same-gender classes have seen promising results in grades and more support for same-gender education. Also, if a child wishes to attend a single-sex school in America, it must be voluntary. (Guarisco) For American public school systems, same-gender education would be more advantageous because of the higher test scores, decrease in distractions from the opposite gender, and adapting curriculum. Higher test scores achieved by same-gender schools show promise that a majority of co-ed schools do not. In Huntington, Indiana, Riverview Middle School saw poor grades in the language arts classes, especially in male students. When the Riverview Principal worked with the language arts teachers to separate classes according to gender, the staff saw all the students’ scores improve. (Morello) In his article â€Å"New Voices†, David Chadwell concluded the following statistics. In mathematics â€Å"Fourteen schools showed higher achievement for single-gender girls than co-ed girls, and in only three schools did coed girls achieve higher than their counterparts in single-gender classes† as well as â€Å"For boys, thirteen schools showedShow MoreRelatedSex Education And Comprehensive Sexual Education1609 Words   |  7 PagesLet s talk about sex. Stances on comprehensive sexual education vary, whether it be from religious beliefs or past experiences, different views are held throughout. It is in the interests of society in general... for every secondary school pupil to be in receipt of sexual education† (Cumper 16). The phrase ‘it’s better to be safe than sorry’ applies heavily on the topic of sex education, the idea of a pregnant and STD ridden 15 year old tends to frighten a million times more than the thought ofRead MoreIn Today’S Society, Abortion Is A Sore Subject, And If1285 Words   |  6 Pages In today’s society, abortion is a sore subject, and if America wants to end the debate on whether or not to let abortion be legal, we need to make some changes. For starters, we would need to change how we educate our youth on sexual encounters and how to go about it safely. Along with new education, we need to make anti-contraceptive devices free and available to the general public. Abortion is the deliberate termination of a pregnancy by removing an unborn fetus. There are many ways to performRead Mo reHomeless in America1684 Words   |  7 Pageslive, die and are born on the streets of vast cities of United States. Less attention are shown to those who are homeless, people focus more on bigger issues when this is a major problem that has occurred for years. Statistics shows that 1.6 million youth run away from home each year between the ages of 12 and 17. The predominant race for runaways is White non-Hispanic (57%), Black non-Hispanic (17%), Hispanic (15%), and Other (11%) follow (Blaha). Homeless children most likely leave their originalRead MoreThe Importance Of Censorship On The Internet1558 Words   |  7 Pagesa lack of censorship the youth of the nation will have unrestricted access to sexual or violent content, causing them to be emotionally scarred. However, censorship should be banned as is it is the responsibility of the school and parents to help educate the child on the distinct difference between right and wrong. It is the responsibility of the parent to make su re that their child follows the right path while the school is responsible for making sure the youth of America are educated. However, inRead MoreSame Sex Parenting and Children Essay1639 Words   |  7 Pagesrelation may affect the welfare of a child’s upbringing. The prospect of a nontraditional upbringing in a same-sex partnership, or marriage ought to be a problem when raising children. Some feel that there is no real negative influence that this form of parenting has on a child. Politics has raised concern, but there is a limited amount of research in this area to corroborate this concern. Should same-sex marriage be an issue when raising children? Some states such as Massachusetts, Vermont, and ConnecticutRead MoreAbortion, Pro Choice, And Pro Life1503 Words   |  7 Pagestopics in America is abortion. In medical terms, â€Å"an abortion is the premature exit of the products of conception (the fetus, fetal membranes, and placenta) from the uterus† (Medicine Net). All around the world, the practice of abortions has been widely used to control a woman’s reproduction. The polarizing, emotional debate on abortion has been an ongoing issue that still exists today. People’s different perspectives and opinion on whether or not abortion is immoral continue to divide America into twoRead MoreThe Evolution Of The Music Industry1686 Words   |  7 Pagescharismatic from outside world, at the same time many people nowadays are ready to give and do everything to get success in their field. According to legendary gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson: The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plasti c hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs for no good reason. There is also a negative side (Marshall, 2014). First of all let’s talk about the explicit lyrics with graphic references to sex, drugs, minorities, hate, violenceRead MoreAre Gender Roles Forced Upon Us?1482 Words   |  6 PagesAre Gender Roles Forced Upon Us? Remember the 50s in America, how men were the predominant head of the household and women were expected to cook, watch their kids, and clean? This is an excellent example of gender roles, and how they control some aspects of life. Gender roles according to multiple sources are, the way people behave, what they do and say, to express being a female or male. (â€Å"Gender Identity†, Blackstone, Gender Spectrum). They are forced upon an individual from the day thatRead MoreJuvenile Justice And Its Effects On Society1722 Words   |  7 Pageswhere they had a house of refuge. In this house of refuge, they had a society for the prevention of pauperism and they privately managed, but publicly funded. The development in the nineteenth century for juveniles was reform schools, work, basic education and they were segregated. Juvenile justice in the nineteenth century had a society for the prevention of cruelty to children in New York. In this society they were granted the authority to remove children from where ever they were being mistreatedRead MoreGender, Gender And Gender Roles1476 Words   |  6 PagesRemember the 50s in America, how men were the predominant head of the household and women were expected to cook, watch their kids, and clean? This is an excellent example of gender roles, and how they control some aspects of life. Gender roles according to multiple sources are, the way people behave, what they do and say, to express being a female or male. (â€Å"Gender Identity†, Blackstone, Gender Spectrum). They are forced upon an individual from the day that person is born even in the most trivial

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Enriching view free essay sample

Please tell us about the particular life experiences, talents, commitments and/or interests you will bring specifically to our campus that will enrich our community. A tiny man, minuscule man, rugged and wrinkled, his face saw many years pass by. The lines on his face recreate a map—a map of past struggles, adventures and discoveries. His jaw appears to have a fuzzy squirrel on it†¦.but that’s just his tangled, grey-ish white beard. He sports a filthy deep maroon knit cap, which covers his balding skull. Under his bushy snow white eyebrows are his dull, steel colored eyes. His appearance is decayed, yet his eyes show the strength of a powerful man, ready and willing to take on any challenge. He’s a lonely man, with nobody to love. Yet, he finds a strange attraction to the mountains. He’s in love with the mystery of them. One day the mountains started to appear. We will write a custom essay sample on Enriching view or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Little pink flakes—plummeted from the sky. They built up slowly, but at a steady pace. They covered the flat white landscape. The ground starts to shake and the man’s eyes get wide. His heart starts to beat faster, and the excitement rushes to him. He knows what’s going to happen†¦but the end result is different each time. â€Å"Here it comes.† An enormous yellow pole sweeps by the ground, leaving behind a dark burn mark. The yellow object continues to mark up the landscape, creating lines going in every direction. Occasionally it stops and the pink flakes start to fall faster. Eventually it ends. The white landscape has been transformed into a maze of lines and shades. Scattered to the side are the pink hills and mountains. The man readies himself. He slides on his climbing gear and pulls down his cap tight around his head. He starts to walk, with a little hop in his step. â€Å"This is going to be good.† He makes his way over to the larges t mountain and begins to climb. By the time he makes it to the top he is winded, but he looks out and he is immediately revived. The view is phenomenal. A figure covers the earth. It stands out and grabs the man’s attention. His eyes are fixed on the figure, examining every detail. He spends the rest of the day a top the mountain, just relaxing and enjoying the view. â€Å"I don’t understand it†¦but I love it.† He takes a deep breath, filling his chest with air. His steel colored eyes take a long last look at the masterpiece below. He exhales slowly and blinks, trying to take a mental snap shot. The man rolls out of bed. He rushes outside, but the landscape is white againThis is no surprise for the man, because it always happens this way. He is disappointed, but he knows, someday he will climb those pink peaks and see yet another masterpiece. In a lot of ways I am like the old man. I appreciate art—even though I don’t always understand it. I believe everyone in society is influenced by art. It provokes thoughts and feelings. It also inspires creativity. Creative ideas can help shape and influence a community to do great new things. I want to use my ideas and creativity to influence and enrich your community.

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Addiction Essay Example For Students

Addiction Essay Addiction: Its A Neurological DisorderAddiction is a neurologically based disease. For many years recovery specialists have compared alcoholism or addictions to a physical disease: like diabetes. In reality addictions are more closely related to a neurological disorder like Tourettes Syndrome* than they are to diabetes. If the problems you suffer stem from severe alcoholism or addiction, you must accept that these problems are not primarily mental or free will issues. Addictions are not about will power. The problems facing addicts, alcoholics, and their families are miserable, disgusting, and infuriating. They are often hopelessly discouraging. But to imagine that an addict could change if he wanted to is a serious misunderstanding of the long term dynamic of addictive disorder. The fact is precisely that an addict cannot change in the long run even if he wants to! That is the definition of addiction: the loss of control over the use of a substance. It is important to understand that this loss of control is manifested not in terms of days or weeks, but in longer term behaviors: terms of months and years. The reason addicts have lost control is because they have suffered permanent physical neurological changes based in their brains and nervous systems. The disorder manifests in long term obsessive-compulsive behaviors outside the realm of the addicts own control. It is true enough that the use of chemicals begins with chosen behavior. But if alcoholism or addiction develops, the problem has moved outside the realm of free choice. It has developed into a long term mental and physical neurological disorder. All the emotional feelings involved in drug or alcohol seeking are based in neurology. Addiction is based in physical dependency created by altered neurotransmitter balances, and driven by millions upon millions of new living, functioning active neurological pathways which have been established to sustain the condition in the addicts brain. The new neurological pathways are permanently established, and they will not just disappear. The primary neurological disorder is only complicated by physical dependence on the substances. The physical dependence on the substances is secondary! Physical drug withdrawal does not change the underlying neurological addictive disorder. After drug withdrawal, long term overpowering cravings are predictable. These cravings are, in reality, spontaneous nerve impulses. Even in the longer term, overwhelming cravings are outside the addicts control. Example of a Nerve PathwayIt is difficult for people to grasp the meaning of a nerve pathway, or why this is related to addiction. Often when people hear a new idea like: an addictive impulse is the result of a nerve impulse they are left unsympathetic. Addicts and non addicts alike have a hard time believing that drug or alcohol use is anything more than a choice that is made in response to a habit. Deep down inside, most people believe that at its root the behavior is always a choice. They are very, very wrong. This author was stuck in addiction for over a decade, so completely was he convinced that the mind was an immaterial spiritual power and that to call alcoholism or addiction a disease was a cop-out for the weak-willed. This author believed that each and every time free choice was at the root of addictive behavior. Until one day, in another recovery facility the author stumbled upon the concept of neuro-pathways by reading a book called The Training of the Will by a Jesuit priest. That book was written in the early 1900s. Even then, the Jesuits knew that the root of almost all behavior was based not in free will but in neurological wiring. For the Jesuits, training the will essentially consists in training the body. After reading that book, this author began to understand that while his mind his intellect was indeed an immaterial power, the overwhelming cravings for drugs or alcohol were based in his body. He came to believe that addiction really was a neurological disease. Consider the following: Most people can not wiggle their ears. The wiggling of the ears is really nothing but flexing the muscles of the scalp above the ears. The reason most people can not wiggle their ears is because they are not familiar with the neurological pathway which controls the muscle of the scalp above their ears. However, without exception, every person in the world can be trained to wiggle their ears. Simply by applying electrodes to the muscles of the scalp above the ears causes the muscles to flex, or spasm. Once the person feels where these muscles are, he finds that in fact he CAN wiggle his ears. The only reason he could wiggle his ears before, was because he had not established the neurological pathway which enabled him to do so. Like turning on a switch a neurological pathway can be established simply by passing a charge of electrical current into the nerves of the body. Once a person has learned to wiggle his ears he might actually do it spontaneously and unintentionally just because the words are mentioned. This example is intended to illustrate how a simple neurological pathway is established. Before the electrode there was no neurological pathway. After the electrode the pathway has been established. The addictive neurological response to drugs and alcohol on the brain is infinitely more complex than this, but the physical basis is the same. The overwhelming craving for drugs or alcohol that endlessly defeats addicts is in reality a neurological impulse and they have absolutely no control over the craving when it is triggered. All they know is that they want, they need, they feel they MUST have the drug. This desire, this craving is not a free choice. This desire is an electro-chemical neurological brain impulse. A person who suffers from these cravings to the detriment of his own life, and the lives of others, is suffering from a physical, neurological disease termed addictive disorder. Recovery from AddictionWithdrawing from physical dependence on the drug does not change the fundamental addictive disorder. The Development and Control of Chemical and Biolog Essay But, a radical dependency shift must be effected within the addicts own heart and mind. He must psychologically shift away from relying on the validity of his own thought process about his addiction! To effectively re-wire his disordered nervous system, he must come to rely fiercely and absolutely upon the directions provided from an external support system. By mentally changing what he relies upon, his nervous system undergoes a profound change. Consider this example: Two new people attend a support meeting. (Its not the type of meeting, or support group, that is important.) The first person thinks to himself: I dont want to be here. These people are unattractive. The thought of having to associate with them forever disgusts me. He is now depending upon the validity of his own internal thought process. He drives away, and continues to try to stay clean on his own, and to continue to depend on the validity of his own thought process. Then he has sorrowful trouble in his relationships, which break his heart. He fails to succeed as he thinks he ought to, which breaks his heart. Something bad happens, or something good happens, (it doesnt matter), and he thinks to himself: I cant deal with sobriety right now! (This is the person depending upon the validity of his own thought process.) His addictive impulse is triggered. In a matter of time the strong cravings (neurological impulses) overwhelm him and he begins to use again. Now, consider the second person who attends the support meeting. He also thinks to himself: I dont want to be here. These people are unattractive. The thought of having to associate with them forever disgusts me. But, this person says OUT LOUD to the group: I dont want to be here! You people seem unattractive! The thought of having to associate with you disgusts me! And the whole group, with one voice says to him in reply: Thats how you are supposed to feel! Thats OK! You should feel that way! Youre new! This is new! We are unattractive! The thought of associating with us should disgust you! Its OK to feel that way. But, from now on you must become willing to take directions! You must become willing to listen to us! You can NOT be in control of your own addiction anymore! You must let go absolutely, and no longer depend upon your own devices, or you will never recover from your addiction! THIS PERSON ACCEPTS WHAT THEY SAY! He is willing to shift his internal dependency away from relying on himself for recovery. This begins to re-wire his neurology. His nervous system learns new responses to old stimuli. Then: he too has trouble in his relationships, which break his heart. He fails to succeed as he thinks he ought to, and this breaks his heart. He also thinks to himself: I cant deal with sobriety right now. BUT HE IS UNDER ORDERS! His habits kick in! He calls for support! The support system says with one voice: feeling bad IS ok .. . but using is NOT OK! You cant do that. You will not do that! You would be better to drive up right now to the local mental institution and check yourself in .. .. because what you are thinking about doing right now is sheer insanity! Because he has now shifted his dependency, and he no longer relies upon the validity of his own thought process, he obeys! He takes directions! The re-wiring of the dependency shift has taken hold: and he stays clean! He has established new neurological pathways and is able to stand fast through the critical moments. He has has effected the necessary dependency shift! His formerly disordered neurological system has become re-wired. When he is triggered, he automatically goes to the support system, even if it IS the local mental hospital, but he stays clean. Through a total dependency shift, he is soon permanently relieved of the obsession to use the chemicals. He recovers! Effecting this necessary dependency shift is most easily done through submission to programs like Alcoholics Anonymous. Any unwillingness to completely accept the directives of a support program just as it is presented, is just a continuation of the addictive disorder. Sadly, anyone who is special or who doesnt need to comply with a support program, (just as it is presented), will permanently suffer the misery of addiction. There can be NO permanent relief for anyone who cannot effect the requisite dependency shift. This is only happens when they stop depending on themselves to manage their own sobriety and they become fiercely willing to take directions. They must rely on the external support system more than they used to rely on the external chemical. For many, the 12 Step programs have been the best answer to addiction. In this authors opinion, it really is God who gets miserable alcoholics and addicts clean anyway. Though human beings have physical bodies, and live in a material world: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Human beings may be a complex mass of neurological pathways: but we are persons not rats! We may be deeply frustrated, or disappointed, or wounded. Though we may suffer terribly, we do have an infinite capacity to heal, to achieve, to love and be loved, to create and to contribute! No one deserves the misery of addiction. There is one who has all power, that one is God: may you find Him now! This article may be paraphrased, or referenced in the public domain, provided that the following reference is provided: Internet article: Addiction as Disease by David R. Hughes, 1997. URL http://www.medical-online.com/addict.htm

Thursday, November 28, 2019

This American Life Take a Negro Home

This episode consists of three parts. The prologue contains an excerpt from a newspaper article aimed at showing that racial integration is not possible. Such articles were often published by many journalists in Southern parts of the United States. In particular, they were supposed to demonstrate that the segregation of white and black people had been inevitable.Advertising We will write a custom assessment sample on This American Life: Take a Negro Home specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The second part describes the experiences of an interracial family that later. By looking at the life of these people, one can see that racial differences do not affect the relationships between spouses. Possible difficulties can be explained by social expectations that are set for representatives of a certain race. Moreover, one should not forget about the role of prejudices and stereotypes existing in the community. In turn, the third part of thi s program is related to the life of Cedric Jennings, an African-American student who was accepted to a prestigious university. His narrative shows that African Americans have to struggle with educational inequalities and it is difficult for them to climb the social ladder. The issues examined in this episode do not impact me directly; however, I do not know some black people who are affected by the legacies of racial segregation. For instance, they can be marginalized by their peers provided that they strive to excel in their academic studies. To some degree, their experiences are similar to the difficulties faced by Cedric Jennings. This episode has produced several effects on me. First of all, I can now better appreciate the problems faced by African-American people. Moreover, I will pay more attention to various aspects of interracial integration. In my opinion, it is not possible to turn a blind eye to this problem. So, this episode changed some of my attitudes. To some degree, this episode can change the way in people perceive racial differences or address various problems that are related to this issue. In particular, this program demonstrates that despite racial distinctions, people have the same value systems, priorities, or goals. Secondly, this radio program can highlight the difficulties faced by African Americans, especially at the time when they attempt to cross the so-called color line. Thus, this episode can change the values and attitudes of many people. Apart from that, this episode can have some impact on the educational policies of the state. Certainly, the impact of a radio broadcast cannot be easily identified or measured. Yet, this episode may prompt people to think more about the legacies of racial segregation and re-evaluate many of their worldviews. This is one of the arguments that can be made.Advertising Looking for assessment on social sciences? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More There are several ways in which the society can resolve the issues discussed in this episode. First of all, it is necessary to refute the stereotypes according to which interracial integration is impossible. In many cases, such prejudices are not expressed openly, but they affect the decisions and attitudes of many individuals. For instance, many people cannot accept the idea of interracial marriage. This goal can be achieved if parents and educators highlight the need to disregard racial distinctions. One should not forget about the economic aspects of this issue. The policy-makers and legislators should focus on educational and employment opportunities. They should remember that upward social mobility is possible only when a person has necessary knowledge and skills that help him/her pursue an academic or professional career. These are the main issues that can be identified. This assessment on This American Life: Take a Negro Home was written and submitted by user Noah Castro to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Sunday, November 24, 2019

Chid Abuse

Chid Abuse In nineteenth century, American slaves were freed and animals were protected against cruelty while children were still considered their parents' chattel, to do with as they wished. Not until 1874 was the first court case of child abuse argued. The American Society brought the case, on behalf of a young girl named Mary Ellen for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The ASPCA successfully challenged the court to recognize that Mary Ellen was covered under laws barring inhuman treatment of animals. Society thus accepted a moral responsibility to protect children, even from their parents.Eventually, many states responded to this moral responsibility by making child abuse illegal. Reporting child abuse, however, was still not required. Consequently, most child abuse remained unacknowledged. Finally in 1974 Congress enacted the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. "This act provided federal funds to fight child abuse for states that passed laws requiring certain professionals, such a s teachers and health care personnel, to report suspected abuse"(Koster Swisher 12).Physical abuse in genogramThis financial incentive motivated every state to pass such a law. Now, many Americans had both a moral and a legal responsibility to report abuse.Child Abuse is a deviant act according to the normative perspective of deviance. This behavior violates the norms and rules of society. Many people feel that it is wrong to abuse a child. Whether it is physical or emotional a child is just supposed to be cared for. The cruel realization that parents and caretakers can kill their own children has been difficult for our nation to face. Indeed, many who make policies, direct programs, and deliver services to children and families have found it difficult to accept. Yet, this is reality.Williams 2Child Abuse has been a fact of life throughout history; however, recognition of abuse as a...

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Dust storm in China Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Dust storm in China - Research Paper Example He, indeed, has showed an aversion to industrially produced because of the biological, chemical and industrial pathogens which can cause serious diseases and grave illness. Therefore, he prefers personally foraged food produced in natural setting. But in this industrial age, since industrially produced foods are much cheaper than the foods produced in a natural setting, modern people are in a dilemma whether they should eat those organic/ personally foraged foods which are â€Å"floating on a sinking sea of petroleum† or not. But the question which arises here is: Is Michael Pollan aware of the fact that the nature itself has been polluted with the man-made chemical and biological industry? Natural disasters like dust storm in China have showed ample evidences in support of this claim that nature itself has been severely polluted by chemical and biological pollutants. Therefore, Pollan’s hope to get pollution free food from nature is also diminishing day by day. The Ind ustrial and Chemical Pollutants in the Dust Storm in China Dust storm in China is considered as a natural and meteorological event which occurs normally in the arid and semi-arid areas of the world. It is caused by a gust of wind which blows dust particles, sands and dirt from the dry plains. Dust storm ferries these particles with a geographical process of transportation, called â€Å"saltation and suspension† which involves moving the dust particles from one place to another through the air. It may occur in any part of the world where there are vast dry plains containing loose dust particles on the surface. It also occurs in China. Referring to the occurrence of dust storm in China, Gou and Xie comments, â€Å"North-west China lies in the inner part of the Asia-Europe continent, the climate is dry and there are many winds and desert storms† (1619). But this dust storm in China is far more different from those in other parts of the world in terms of its threat to heal th. Researches show that the dust storms in China are more threatening to human health because of the industrial chemical pollutants they ferry, as referring to the threats posed by the Dust storm, Chiu and his co-authors note, â€Å"However, statistically significant associations were found between ADS events and hospital admissions for primary intra-cerebral hemorrhagic stroke† (778). Because of the recent rapid industrial growth, China is releasing more industrial pollutants to its environment than ever. Though natural particles such as sand, earth particles, etc are less harmful to human health, the industrial pollutants such as sulfuric components, industrial ashes, vehicular lead, carbon monoxide, mercury, Zinc, chromium, cadmium, arsenic, copper, etc are seriously injurious to health. In this regard, they say, â€Å"Many epidemiologic studies have provided evidence of an association between airborne particles and daily mortality†¦Fine particles typically contain a mixture of soot, acid condensates, and sulfate and nitrate particles. They are derived chiefly from combustion of fossil fuels† (Yang et al, 817). Scientists assert that naturally these components remain in composite forms which are not so much a threat to health. But due to the industrial growth of China, these carcinogenic materials are exhumed from the earth and used

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

The Role of External Auditors in Accounting Assignment

The Role of External Auditors in Accounting - Assignment Example In most cases, a fraudulent act exists when one or more auditors approve inaccurate accounting on behalf of a company for the reason of tax evasion or to strategically register for an Initial Public Offering (IPO). To prevent moral hazards associated with the auditors’ liability, the British Serious Fraud Office has imposed heavy penalties for swindlers and white-collar criminals to shut down or suspend a suspicious business (Country Updates, 1997). On the other hand, auditors who are found guilty of professional negligence may end up facing a monetary loss or penalty through punitive fines and/or the confiscation of their license to practice auditing in the United Kingdom. As stated by Michael Power of London School of Economics, â€Å"it may not be reasonable to expect that auditors would be challenging business models directly and raising strategic issues with finance directors, that is not their job and if we want it to be their job then things would have to change quite substantially †¦ The direction of my comment is that we might be expecting too much from this black box [External Audit] in terms of what it actually delivers† (Priddy, 2011, p. 59). In response to the statement made by Power, this report will first discuss the role and responsibilities of external auditors followed by providing a brief overview with regards to the corporate governance. In line with this, there is a strong need to go through business theories and concepts that will enable the readers to have a better understanding of how businesses in a corporate world function. Based on the individual roles and responsibilities of shareholders, internal and external auditors, the board of directors, and the CEO, this report will explain the limits in the role and responsibilities of external auditors when it comes to detecting and controlling fraud activities in business.

Monday, November 18, 2019

Why do most countries think United States of America is a powerful Essay

Why do most countries think United States of America is a powerful country - Essay Example United States of America is currently the most powerful country in the world with almost absolute superiority in almost every area of life. Its military strength, technological superiority and economic power are unmatched in the history of mankind. The superiority of United States of America effectively started after the end of the cold war when USSR was disintegrated and the concept of bipolar world failed as United States emerged as the sole super power of the world. However, the United States of America has a long history of its march towards achieving its status of the super power of the world. This essay will look into the historical account of the US’s journey towards the superiority besides discussing the factors behind the superiority of US. American – Spanish War The America-Spanish war is probably the moment which gave America an open ground to climb at the top of the world stage and the power it is enjoying now. This war gave America its first real exposure of being the future super power of the world. In the spring of 1898, the 10 week long war between America and Spain gave the America necessary victory it required to start its climb towards the super power game. The historical background of this war can be traced back to the Cuba’s civil war where Spanish excesses forced America to intervene in the War and establish its regional hegemony in the Caribbean. (Bethel, 1998). It was America’s first major war after the civil war and its first major foreign war in its brief history. With the death toll of 400 Americans, this war gave America an unqualified victory which opened the gates for this nation to the stage of being super power.

Friday, November 15, 2019

The Makeover Beauty Salon Marketing Essay

The Makeover Beauty Salon Marketing Essay Introduction The Makeover Beauty Salon is a beauty salon that aims at rendering maximum customer satisfaction by providing the best service, using high quality products, and building a pleasant environment at an affordable price, to meet the needs of customers of all social status. I am the owner of The Makeover Beauty Salon and I perceive an unsatisfied customer need for a low-cost salon that provides maximum flexibility and great customer attention. Using this strategy, The Makeover Beauty Salon will gain much reputation and create long-term relationships with its customers. The Makeover Beauty Salon is the only area salon to be online and fully automated and will have the most aggressive marketing campaign of any other area salon. The Makeover Beauty Salon will target two different market segments: Youngsters will typically make up 70-75% of the clientele.   Young mothers with children.   http://www.bplans.com/hair_salon_business_plan/images/bc49aab41b914ef99dca65af1ff71a82.png Future Opportunities The main segment of the population that is targeted by the salon is the younger generation, which is the youth. It has been noticed that adolescents like different and new looks, which are apart from others. They like to look very special and The Makeover Beauty Salon has all the means to satisfy the needs of the main targeted group. This opportunity will be researched and developed on a trial basis. For example, every weekend, people can go to the salon and i will do their makeup or hair. If successful, it could become a major new source of income without creating the need for additional staff or production space. The management team of The Makeover Beauty Salon I will be the only manager of the salon. I will have as assistant, Miss Shazia. The latter takes the responsibility of supervising the workers when I will not be present at the salon. Miss Shazia has a degree in management of salon and she has two years of experience from another salon. I have also appointed two caretakers, Mrs Aisha and Miss Dolly, who will take care of customers children when the customers will be pampering themselves. Growth opportunities improve employee retention within our industry. The salon acknowledges the need for growth of the individual. II The Business The company After a tedious search for a suitable place for the salon, finally one was found at the centre of the island. The location of the salon would be perfect, as it can welcome customers from all over Mauritius. The exact location is in the centre of Curepipe. The recently completed highway in the surrounding offers  hundreds of thousands of local residents, shoppers from outside the area, and travelers that use this new highway.  With this high concentration of customers there  is no big and sophisticated salon in the locality. This is one of the main advantages of opening the salon at that particular location. Services and products offered The Makeover Beauty Salon is considered an innovating beauty salon which offers a wide range of services that include: Hair:  cuts, relaxers, perms, colors, shampoo, conditioning, curling, reconstructing, weaving, and waving Nails:  manicures, pedicures, polish, sculptured nails Skin Care:  European facials, body waxing, massage Makeup: bridal makeup, casual makeup, formal makeup, amongst others Service is offered on a walk-in basis or by appointment. The Makeover Beauty Salon will emphasize a customer-centric service where the customers needs are always the priority. The Makeover Beauty Salon will also sell hair care products, which is forecasted to account for about 15% of sales. These professional-quality supplies will include shampoos, conditioners, brushes, combs, and other styling aids. Company Overview The Makeover Beauty Salon is located in Curepipe and will offer affordable priced, convenient hair styling. The Makeover Beauty Salon will accept walk-ins as well as appointments for the entire family. The salon will grow its market share based on superior customer attention. The Salon is a family hair salon, also known as a quick hair salon and this new salon has everything to set up a new path and disguise people in an unexpected way. It is owned by Miss Chellen, who has recently returned from the United States, with innovative ideas, after advanced studies about the fashion and makeup line, and also in beauty salon management. Company Ownership The Makeover Beauty Salon will be entirely owner by me. I have done a degree in Beauty Salon management and a degree in General Cosmetology in the United States. I also worked in a salon for more than 5 years there. I have a very friendly approach in the salon and when I am tutoring. Salons motto: The trend begins here Vision Mission The Makeover Beauty Salons vision is to create a harmonious, productive, and profitable salon environment, supplying the community with Avon cosmetology. The mission statement is very clear: The Makeover Beauty Salon has been established to set a new path in the beauty line by providing an exceptional service which aims at satisfying people of all age. Through its services, the salon aims at exceeding customers expectations. Objectives To cater for the fast changing trends of makeup and hairstyles. To make people look more special and different from others. To supply services and products that enhances our clients physical appearance and mental relaxation. Keys to Success Set up the salon in a location easily accessible to everyone. The environment should be very appealing, friendly and relaxing. Try to be as innovative as possible in styles. Dare to try something new. Aim at complete customer satisfaction by offering the best service at affordable prices. The Makeover Beauty Salon can best be described as presently being in the business of cosmetology, education, and wellness. In recent times our key strengths have been customer service. The Makeover Beauty Salon will use automation to keep hold of clients. According to studies, it takes 3 times the amount of effort to attract a new client than the effort to retain a satisfied client. at present, 10% of all salons are automated. in the vicinity, 3 salons are automated and none use the technology to market and track clients. Automation is a key to growing and maintaining our target market. Goals and Objectives It is the goal of The Makeover Beauty Salon to provide the community with an institution of cosmetology that targets all socioeconomic standings and is a model for the industry nationally. Startup Summary After several months of search for a salon to purchase, the owner decided to start a salon from the ground up. The Makeover Beauty Salon will incur the following start-up costs: Computer with point of sale terminal. Computer with printer for back office. Five cutting stations, each station requires a barber chair, cabinet, large mirror, blow dryer, curling iron, electric razor, several pairs of scissors, spray bottle, two sided mirror, and assorted combs and brushes. Desk for reception area. Three couches for the reception area. Display shelf for sale of retail products. Assorted plants. Assorted toys for the children. Legal fees for business formation and generation/review of contracts. http://www.bplans.com/hair_salon_business_plan/images/6ff2aec4851d460cb0a964e4122e4fa2.png Startup funding Start-up Expenditure to Fund $2000 Start-up Assets to Fund $104,000 Total Funding Required $106,000 Assets Non-cash Assets from Start-up $8,450 Cash Requirements from Start-up $89,720 Additional Cash Raised $0 Cash Balance on Starting Date $89,720 Total Assets $98,170 Liabilities and Capital Liabilities Current Borrowing $0 Long-term Liabilities $40,000 Accounts Payable (Outstanding Bills) $0 Other Current Liabilities (interest-free) $0 Total Liabilities $40000 Capital Planned Investment Chellen $100,000 Investor 2 $0 Other $0 Additional Investment Requirement $0 Total Planned Investment $100,000 Loss at Start-up (Start-up Expenses) ($1,100) Total Capital $98,900 Total Capital and Liabilities $104,000 Total Funding $106,000 Start-up Requirements Start-up Expenses Legal $1,000 Stationery etc. $100 Other $0 Total Start-up Expenses $2,000 Start-up Assets Cash Required $89,720 Other Current Assets $0 Long-term Assets $7,000 Total Assets $104,000 Total Requirements $106,000 III Management Team I will be working full time at the Makeover Beauty Salon. She will be in charge of all recruitment and training, purchasing, and retail sales. Apart from the assistant manager and the two caretakers, I will also employ a receptionist to  take care of all of the appointments as well as the people who walk in, and be responsible for the point of sale.  The receptionist will be paid an hourly wage. I even plan to hire some part-time hair stylists during wedding periods and the eves of festivals, which will operate on an hourly/commission basis.   I thought of using a partial commission basis to create incentives for greater customer attention. The better service employees provide to their customers, the greater customer satisfaction will be derived and the more money they will make off commissions. Miss Chellen will be pleased to pay for this type of performance. IV Organizational Structure The organisational structure of The Makeover Beauty The New Looking salon will be like a flat organisation structure. It is supervised closely by the founder. Thus, efficiency is maintained and so is the satisfaction of customers. The salon is structured as follows in the diagram below. Director Children Caretakers Manager of salon Assisstant Manager Part-timers Part-timers Part-timers Diagram 1: This represents the business structure. Intellectual Property The patent license, trademark and copyright agreements have already been applied for approval. V Industry Analysis SWOT Analysis Strengths à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢outstanding location. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢Well-qualified employees with good hair cutting skills with a wide style collection, and Customer-focused business practices. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢A wide range of services offered. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Cutthroat prices. Weaknesses à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢As a new entrant to the market, The Makeover Beauty Salon lacks brand equity that many other salons have gained over years of service. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢Large costs related with a start-up company. Opportunities à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢A steady growing market that is traditionally unaffected by the economic environment. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢The ability to decrease marginal fixed costs as the customer base grows. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢Increasing sales opportunities as more people from an individual family visits The Makeover Beauty Salon. Threats à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢Competition from already established salons. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢A change in traffic patterns as they relate to the mall where The Makeover Beauty Salon is located. The hair styling industry is highly divided with national chains, some of which operates diverse franchises catering to all the market segments, and also including thousands of mom and pop salons that are very limited in scale and services. This makes for an extremely aggressive market that has low barriers to entry and exit. Moreover, the customers of hair styling have considerable control due to the low switching costs they have. However, most companies have tried to pursue only one general strategy in gaining more reputation. The Makeover Beauty Salon is of the view that that it is possible to offer a differentiated service through superior customer service at no greater considerable cost if the right employee incentives are provided. With this strategy in mind, the salons purpose is to boost the number of clients served by at least 30% per year. Target Market The Makeover Beauty Salon will be targeting two different groups of customers, but will lay more emphasis on the youths. It will work hard to distinctly appeal to each of these groups. By focusing on more than one group, the salon is minimizing its risk that in a downturn one group will negatively affect the company. Market Segmentation The Makeover Beauty Salon will target three different market segments: Youngsters will normally make up 70-75% of the clientele, as they are very conscious about looking good, having perfectly trimmed eyebrows and they like to keep changing their styles regularly. Young mothers with children. Most young children are notoriously difficult when it comes to getting haircuts. A family style salon is a more laid-back place that allows the children to play while they are waiting and then will work with the parents in calming the kids nerves when they are ready for their shearing. Target Market Segment Strategy The Makeover Beauty Salon will target each of the two groups separately. The youngsters will be pampered in a very bright, appealing, colorful and attractive atmosphere. Employees will use the latest equipment available with them, which would suit their preferences and with which they will feel at ease. The Makeover Beauty Salon will also  target mothers with children by offering the kids toys to play with while they wait and child-friendly hair stylists. Moreover, children will receive a special rate reflecting the fact that childrens hair grows so fast that it can be costly to keep up with regular cuts, as well as the recognition that it generally takes lesser time to cut a childs hair so it should be naturally less expensive. Competition and Buying Patterns The Makeover Beauty Salon competitors include: Traditional barbers. They do not work on appointments as it offers an open door service. While barbers are willing to give you whatever cut you want, they are generally providing straight forward haircuts, typically on the conservative side. The advantages of a barber are they are low-cost and easy to use. Their disadvantages is often conservative styling capacities, sometimes a long wait as the barber may be an old timer who enjoys to chit chat. Franchised quick salons.   An example of this would be Supercuts or Best Cuts. In essence this is a franchised version of The Makeover Beauty Salon. The advantage of this style is the store will be the same from location to location and some people like this predictability.   Independent salons. These salons typically focus on a specific niche and do not serve a large group of customers. The advantages to these could be an independent salon that caters for all of your needs. The disadvantage is that because they tend to be more focused, more often than not this type of salon will not offer exactly what  customers are looking for. Competitive Edge The Makeover Beauty Salon aims to be very different from the beauty salons which offer only one or two services. From surveys, it has been concluded that customers often get frustrated as they have to get their hair done at one place and facial and makeup done at another place. This becomes very annoying for clients as they have to travel a lot and it is tiresome as well. Therefore the Makeover Beauty Salon plans to offer all these services under the same roof. As such, clients will be more at ease to make themselves beautiful. There exist several salons that are already proving the same services as the Makeover Beauty Salon, but they charge very high prices which everybody cannot afford as these salons are situates mostly in towns, where high rent have to be paid. Therefore, to attract the maximum number of customers, the Makeover Beauty Salon plans to offer better quality service than the other salons, but at affordable prices so that everyone can afford making then look beautiful, especially the youngsters, as they are the one that the salon is targeting at. Basically the atmosphere prevailing at the Makeover Beauty Salon will be very cozy and relaxing, where clients would love to be pampered. A welcoming drink will be served to clients as they enter the salon they can chose amongst tea, coffee, juice, soft drink. A television will be located in the waiting room and a radio in the hair-drying area, as this may take some time. VI Marketing Plan Marketing Strategy The Makeover Beauty Salon has a very simple marketing strategy: satisfying its clients. Miss Chellen is of the view that when a customer leaves her salon, he/she should have a new look which would be perfect for the occasion the latter would be attending, and the latter should also be representing the Makeover Beauty Salon through his/her makeup and hairstyle the client should be a medium of portraying the salons qualities, service and image. Miss Chellen has no plans to advertise her new salon. According to researches, a satisfied customer is able to influence 11 14 people positively. Therefore, the owner of the salon is of the view that its the satisfied customers that will bring new customers to her salon and her business grows. She has, in her mind, a strategy to reward her potential clients who are able to attract new customer into the salon. Sales Strategy The Makeover Beauty Salon sales approach will be based on exceptionally professional communications with the customer. Normally the quick salons lay emphasis on being quick and inexpensive, often at the cost of customer service. Anytime that a potential customer will talk with someone at the Makeover Beauty Salon, the owner/employee will have an opportunity to impress the customer. Employee training will emphasize seizing these opportunities. The Makeover Beauty Salon will also have the chance to increase sales of its retail hair care products every time it has a customer in the chair. The Makeover Beauty Salon offers interesting discounts on the hair care products for employees to use these products, so that they can explain to the customer about their personal experiences. Additionally, the Makeover Beauty Salon offers a product-based commission structure for the hair care products where they give away the product to the employee for commissions for selling the items to their customers. These personal testimonials and commission structure will allow  the salon to generate good sales from the retail hair care products. Sales forecasts The first diagram above depicts the first years forecast of the Makeover Beauty Salon sales. In the first 4 months, sales will be very steady as the salon will experience new customers, who will get to know about the services that the salon offers. During the subsequent months, an increase in all the services offered is expected, as the customers will be satisfied with the service of the salon. Sales Forecast Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Sales Youngsters $20,150 $35,260 $41,100 Women with small children $2,015 $3,526 $4,110 Retail hair care products $29,225 $32,975 $40,500 Total Sales $51,390 $71,761 $85,710 Direct Cost of Sales Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Youngsters $2,600 $4,750 $4,900 Women with small children $260 $475 $490 Retail hair care products $14,500 $26,000 $27,500 Subtotal Direct Cost of Sales $17,360 $31,225 $32,890 VII Operation Plan Facilities The salon will be offering home styling and makeup for brides or any other special weekends, but for that, an appointment is compulsory this should be done at least 3 weeks before the due date. Potential clients will not be charged with the travelling costs. Hours of operation The salon will be open week from 8 am to 5pm on Monday to Saturday. However, on Saturdays and public holidays, it will be opened from 10 am to 1 pm. Employee Training Education Employees will be trained not only in their specific styling duties but in the philosophy and applications of our concept. They will receive extensive information from the owner and be kept informed of the latest information concerning styling and makeup applications through continuous training. Systems Controls A big emphasis is being placed on extensive research into the quality and integrity of our products. They will constantly be tested for our own high standards of effectiveness and professionalism. Cosmetic products costs and inventory control will be handled by our computer system and checked daily by management. Facilities The salon will be offering home styling and makeup for brides or any other special weekends, but for that, an appointment is compulsory this should be done at least 3 weeks before the due date. Potential clients will not be charged with the travelling costs. Hours of operation The salon will be open week from 8 am to 5pm on Monday to Saturday. However, on Saturdays and public holidays, it will be opened from 10 am to 1 pm. Employee Training Education Employees will be trained not only in their specific styling duties but in the philosophy and applications of our concept. They will receive extensive information from the owner and be kept informed of the latest information concerning styling and makeup applications through continuous training. Systems Controls A big emphasis is being placed on extensive research into the quality and integrity of our products. They will constantly be tested for our own high standards of effectiveness and professionalism. Cosmetic products costs and inventory control will be handled by our computer system and checked daily by management. VIII Financial Plan Start-up Funding Start-up Expenses to Fund $1,817 Start-up Assets to Fund $60,600 Total Funding Required $62,417 Assets Non-cash Assets from Start-up $60,100 Cash Requirements from Start-up $500 Additional Cash Raised $0 Cash Balance on Starting Date $500 Total Assets $60,600 Liabilities and Capital Liabilities Current Borrowing $0 Long-term Liabilities $61,917 Accounts Payable (Outstanding Bills) $0 Other Current Liabilities (interest-free) $0 Total Liabilities $61,917 Capital Planned Investment Owner $500 Investor $0 Additional Investment Requirement $0 Total Planned Investment $500 Loss at Start-up (Start-up Expenses) ($1,817) Total Capital ($1,317) Total Capital and Liabilities $60,600 Total Funding $62,417 Important Assumptions The following section will detail important Financial Assumptions. General Assumptions Year 1 Year 2 Year 2 Plan Month 1 2 3 Current Interest Rate 10.00% 10.00% 10.00% Long-term Interest Rate 10.00% 10.00% 10.00% Tax Rate 30.00% 30.00% 30.00% Other 0 0 0 Projected Cash Flow The cash flow depends on assumptions for inventory turnover, payment days, and accounts receivable management. Our projected same-day collections are critical, and are reasonable and customary in the salon industry. We do not expect to need significant additional support even when we reach the less profitable months, as they are expected. http://www.bplans.com/hair_salon_business_plan/images/d5e510e0cfe04c2484123f1575a810dc.png Projected Cash Flow Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Cash Received Cash from Operations Cash Sales $277,143 $504,802 $525,337 Subtotal Cash from Operations $277,143 $504,802 $525,337 Additional Cash Received Sales Tax, VAT, HST/GST Received $0 $0 $0 New Current Borrowing $0 $0 $0 New Other Liabilities (interest-free) $0 $0 $0 New Long-term Liabilities $0 $0 $0 Sales of Other Current Assets $0 $0 $0 Sales of Long-term Assets $0 $0 $0 New Investment Received $0 $0 $0 Subtotal Cash Received $277,143 $504,802 $525,337 Expenditures Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Expenditures from Operations Cash Spending $251,600 $275,200 $279,200 Bill Payments $101,816 $172,090 $181,489 Subtotal Spent on Operations $353,416 $447,290 $460,689 Additional Cash Spent Sales Tax, VAT, HST/GST Paid Out $0 $0 $0 Principal Repayment of Current Borrowing $0 $0 $0 Other Liabilities Principal Repayment $0 $0 $0 Long-term Liabilities Principal Repayment $0 $0 $0 Purchase Other Current Assets $0 $0 $0 Purchase Long-term Assets $0 $0 $0 Dividends $0 $0 $0 Subtotal Cash Spent $353,416 $447,290 $460,689 Net Cash Flow ($76,273) $57,513 $64,648 Cash Balance $20,307 $77,820 $142,467 Projected Balance Sheet of The Makeover Beauty Salon Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Assets Current Assets Cash $20,307 $77,820 $142,467 Other Current Assets $0 $0 $0 Total Current Assets $20,307 $77,820 $142,467 Long-term Assets Long-term Assets $7,320 $7,320 $7,320 Accumulated Depreciation $1,464 $2,928 $4,392 Total Long-term Assets $5,856 $4,392 $2,928 Total Assets $26,163 $82,212 $145,395 Liabilities and Capital Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Current Liabilities Accounts Payable $11,945 $14,341 $14,968 Current Borrowing $0 $0 $0 Other Current Liabilities $0 $0 $0 Subtotal Current Liabilities $11,945 $14,341 $14,968 Long-term Liabilities $45,000 $45,000 $45,000 Total Liabilities $56,945 $59,341 $59,968 Paid-in Capital $60,000 $60,000 $60,000 Retained Earnings ($1,100) ($90,782) ($37,130) Earnings ($89,682) $53,652 $62,557 Total Capital ($30,782) $22,870 $85,427 Total Liabilities and Capital $26,163 $82,212 $145,395 Net Worth ($30,782) $22,870 $85,427 IX Critical Risk factors Management Risks: It can be considered the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate event or to maximize the realization of opportunities. Risks can come from uncertainty in financial markets, project failures and legal liabilities in the Makeover Beauty Salon. Other potential Management risks may be: Defective products/services. Health and safety incidents. Faulty equipment.(e.g. damaged wires or sockets) Environmental risks (e.g. noise pollution and the use of eco-friendly product) Technological obsolescence. Theft of assets Marketing Risks: Marketing is a risk and you cant go on happily thinking that whatever youre doing is working for the best of the organization. By the time you do so, the market will have shifted from under your feet. Some marketing risks may be: Government action ( pass law to limit the time for using salon till late night) Rival (imitation of ideas is done quickly by competitors) Operating Risks: It is a risk arising from execution of a companys business functions. As such, it is a very broad concept including e.g fraud risks, legal risks, physical or environmental risks in the Makeover Beauty Salon. Other forms of operating risks may be: the type of product received from suppliers the neighbourhood problem which can halt work the defect that hairstyle is not done according to customer wish regulation which employee dont accept culture for where on a day some worker have to leave for prayer Financial Risks: It is basically any risk related with any form of financing. Risk is probability of unfavorable condition; in financial sector it is the probability of actual return being less than expected return for a business company. Intellectual Property Infringement: It is the infringement of an intellectual prop

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

The Roswell Ufo Crash Essay -- essays research papers

The Roswell UFO Crash   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In 1947 a UFO was seen near the town of Roswell, New Mexico. It was witnessed by many of the residents and was described as something not of this planet. The government denies any evidence of this event occurring and has covered it up for may years. Now that more information has become available to the public, it is clear that something extraordinary happened.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The town of Roswell, New Mexico was the location of many UFO sightings in the later 1940's and was supposedly the location of a secret military base. Most of the local people had a story or two to tell about their experiences with these sightings, but are now coming forward with stories about how the government threatened them not to speak of the incidents that occurred. Some felt as though their life was endangered if they dared to speak of what they saw.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One incident in particular which has sparked a craze in the study of UFO's is when a flying disk allegedly crashed in the deserts of New Mexico near Roswell on the night of July 8, 1947. According to Roswell expert Henry Ritson, many civilians arrived at the crash scene and witnessed the bodies of alien beings (Roswell Reporter pg. 2). These witnesses report to have seen humanoid beings with large, pear-shaped heads and bulging black eyes being hauled away by government and military agents and to have been debriefed of the entire occurrence by these agents (Roswell Reporter pg. 3). Some witnesses were threatened not to speak of the incident again. The object in question was later classified by the government as a weather balloon and discounted all evidence and eyewitness reports of the UFO scene (pg. 3).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The farmer whose field the UFO crashed in was offered a large sum of money by a local radio station to tell his story on the air. He spoke of strange alien materials and a seemingly invincible square of foil which could not be cut or damaged. He also described the alien beings and the craft in which they traveled (Roswell: What are We Talking About? pg. 2). He was later arrested by the military and held at the government base. The first officer to the crash site, Lt. Jesse Marcel, was told to make a public restatement about the crash scene and report that he had mis... ...example of this new technology.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The controversy about aliens and the incident at Roswell, New Mexico will most likely continue until either aliens make contact with humans publically or until the government admits to the cover-ups in Roswell and other UFO sightings.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  This crash was a very important historical event in the eyes of many, and the government has done a good job of keeping the details of the event a secret. No matter what the object was, it certainly opened the eyes of the public. The people involved in the incident and those who witnessed it are the only ones who know for sure what really happened on that memorable evening. They have been silenced by the government, and may never speak of the events that occurred that night. They are the few who have seen exactly what is out there. The rest may never know.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Who can the american people trust? If their own government keeps one of the most important events in human history a secret, there is no telling what else they know. It is right of the public to know what is history and what is a misguided weather balloon.

Sunday, November 10, 2019

Evaluate own role in life long learning Essay

Evaluating My own Role and Responsibilities in Lifelong Learning To evaluate my own role and responsibilities as an assessor I need to be honest with myself as well as brave. I have a good understanding of my role and responsibilities, but to improve I need to become a reflective practitioner which can only be achieved if I am prepared to evaluate my own performance [ Petty.G pg 527]. By using Kolb’s learning style model, I realise it’s useful concepts can help me understand how my learning behaviour can help others to learn. My role is to communicate effectively with the learners, but do I? Recently I was helping a learner prepare for his functional skills writing assessment. I explained to him how to layout a letter, which side your address goes on which side the recipient’s goes on etc. After the assessment I was informed he had put his address on the wrong side at the top of the page. Did he not hear what I said? Did he forget? Easy to blame the learner, but did I explain well enough and what did I do to confirm his understanding? Poor performance is sensitive subject, but if I’m not prepared to face up to my failures then I can’t expect my successes to be acknowledged either.[Petty.G Pg518] So I have concrete experience of contributing to a learner loosing marks on his assessment. Now I need to reflect on the experience and think how effective was my teaching, obviously not good in some areas but his greetings, layout, structure and ending were good so I was effective in other areas. At this stage of abstract conceptualisation, I ask myself why was I good and effective in some areas, and not in others. Here I think about the methods I used, and do I need more question to confirm understanding, maybe some fun activities. This is when the final stage of the cycle kicks in, it’s when I plan active experimentation. Here I decide how I can do things differently, what new methods shall I try that will produce improved results, and maybe take that brave step into the unknown with new material. Being self critical is not enough though, it’s my responsibility to get direct and indirect feedback when I can, learner questionnaires, college observations also indirect feedback can be just as effective, this can be collected during training or assessment through observation. Maybe learners are not engaged, making no eye contact, separate conversations carrying on the classroom, all good  feedback. I use my CPD records to detail my development. Today I was observed and my folders were quality checked by our Internal Quality Assurer, who also spoke with learners and gave me verbal and written feedback. IQA records I keep a long with minutes and details from our standardisation meetings, where we have the opportunity to liaise with other trainers, teachers and lean practitioners. I keep all Individual Learner Plan where records of initial assessment are recorded, where any needed support has been identified and details of planned and actual reviews are written. Reference List Petty.G. (2009) Teaching Today Fourth Edition, Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes LTD www.cardiff.ac.uk/isru/educationalandtraining/infolit/hilt/section8.1.doc 23/03/14

Friday, November 8, 2019

The Post Office is Kitty-corner to the Court House

The Post Office is Kitty-corner to the Court House The Post Office is Kitty-corner to the Court House The Post Office is Kitty-corner to the Court House By Maeve Maddox Cassandra Marx writes: In the last few weeks, I have seen or heard numerous references to something being catty-cornered, katty-cornered, and kitty-cornered to something else. Would you please tell me what the correct usage/spelling is? Although I have included this expression in a previous post on cat words, I think it deserves a post of its own. Heres what I had to say the first time around: Catty-corner is a directional word, meaning that something is diagonally across from something else. The word started out as cater-corner. Cater is an English dialect word meaning â€Å"to set or move diagonally.† When the word cater with its meaning of to set or move diagonally dropped out of the language, folk etymology got busy and now we have all kinds of â€Å"cat† variants for this concept: catty-cornered†¨ kitty-corner†¨ kitty-cornered†¨ catty-corner†¨ cat-a-corner kitty-corner†¨ kit-a-corner This time I have my brand-new copy of Brewers Dictionary of Phrase Fable (17th edtion) to consult. This is what I find under the entry cater-cornered: Cater-cornered. Placed diagonally, as of a badly parked car in a parking space. Cater is an old word for the four dots on dice, which form diagonals, from French quatre, four. Other spellings of the term are catty-cornered and kitty-cornered, as if somehow to do with cats. Apparently the dialect word with the meaning to set or move diagonally, derived from quatre. As for the correct usage/spelling, the usage seems to be universal as to meaning. Something that is catty-cornered to something else is diagonally opposite. Until some authority decrees otherwise, I suppose that spelling and pronunciation are a matter of local usage. I grew up with kitty-corner. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Expressions category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:100 Mostly Small But Expressive Interjections15 Words for Household Rooms, and Their Synonyms20 Ways to Cry

Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Free Essays on Grocery Store Project

Grocery Store – Packaging Assignment When price is determined by the number of items that can be purchased with a given amount of money, larger items with less packaging seem to be more costly, but when the price is determined other factors, such as how much a product costs per ounce, then patterns start to emerge that suggest the opposite might be true. I suspect that products with less packaging tend to seem slightly more expensive than products with more packaging, but that they generally end up being more cost effective when other factors are taken into consideration. My theory is that these patterns are important to understand because they show how making careful decisions and reducing consumption can be beneficial for the consumer and is important for the future well being of the world and its inhabitants. To investigate the relationships between the food retail industry and the various costs associated with it, I visited an Albertson’s store to make observations. The location I visited is where I do the grocery shopping for my family when I go home. The predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood that surrounds the store has earned a reputation for being very laidback on weekends, and very fast paced and active during the week. As I watched what the other customers put in their baskets, I collected the following information about the items bought, the prices, the prices per ounce, the sizes of the products, and the caloric values. Category Item Name Total Price Price Per oz. Size of Item Calories Dairy 1 Bonbel Semi soft Cheeses $3.99 $0.89 4.5 oz 70 cal 2 Albertson’s Cheddar Cheese $7.39 $0.23 32 oz 120 cal/oz 1 Milk $3.89 $0.03 1 gallon 100 cal 2 Milk $0.90 $0.06 1 pint 150 cal Produce 1 Green Salad Cup $1.29 $0.22 6 oz 2 Yellow Banana $6.24 $0.39 Meat 1 Hormel Bacon Strips $5.99 $0.50 4 strips/packet 80 cal 2 Albertson’s Bacon Thick Sliced $5.99 $0.25 24 oz 110 cal Hea... Free Essays on Grocery Store Project Free Essays on Grocery Store Project Grocery Store – Packaging Assignment When price is determined by the number of items that can be purchased with a given amount of money, larger items with less packaging seem to be more costly, but when the price is determined other factors, such as how much a product costs per ounce, then patterns start to emerge that suggest the opposite might be true. I suspect that products with less packaging tend to seem slightly more expensive than products with more packaging, but that they generally end up being more cost effective when other factors are taken into consideration. My theory is that these patterns are important to understand because they show how making careful decisions and reducing consumption can be beneficial for the consumer and is important for the future well being of the world and its inhabitants. To investigate the relationships between the food retail industry and the various costs associated with it, I visited an Albertson’s store to make observations. The location I visited is where I do the grocery shopping for my family when I go home. The predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood that surrounds the store has earned a reputation for being very laidback on weekends, and very fast paced and active during the week. As I watched what the other customers put in their baskets, I collected the following information about the items bought, the prices, the prices per ounce, the sizes of the products, and the caloric values. Category Item Name Total Price Price Per oz. Size of Item Calories Dairy 1 Bonbel Semi soft Cheeses $3.99 $0.89 4.5 oz 70 cal 2 Albertson’s Cheddar Cheese $7.39 $0.23 32 oz 120 cal/oz 1 Milk $3.89 $0.03 1 gallon 100 cal 2 Milk $0.90 $0.06 1 pint 150 cal Produce 1 Green Salad Cup $1.29 $0.22 6 oz 2 Yellow Banana $6.24 $0.39 Meat 1 Hormel Bacon Strips $5.99 $0.50 4 strips/packet 80 cal 2 Albertson’s Bacon Thick Sliced $5.99 $0.25 24 oz 110 cal Hea...

Monday, November 4, 2019

Assignment 3000 words Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Assignment 3000 words - Essay Example Researchers are on the search for novel non-invasive technology to establish the diagnosis of breast cancer and stage it. SPECT and PET scintigraphy offer some hope in this regard, but more research is warranted to completely rely on these diagnostic modalities for diagnosis and staging of breast cancer. It is a well known fact that oncologic imaging and oncologic therapy are clinical and scientific companions. Most often than not, cancers are detected through some imaging modality either through routine screening of high risk groups or through evaluation of clinical symptomatology and signs (1). Many advances have occured in the technology of imaging diagnosis since the advent of X-ray imaging. Current imaging modalities like computed tomography, positron emission tomography, single photon emission computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and nuclear imaging have taken diagnostic imaging of oncologic conditions to a different level by providing a clear picture of the the tumor. The newer optical approach methods of Ultrasound imaging complements the other diagnostic imaging methods (1). In this article, the application of imaging in the diagnosis and managment of breast cancer will be discussed to gain a holistic view of the application of diagnostic imaging in breast oncolo gy. Breast cancer is the leading cause of death due to cancers in women all over the world. The last 2 decades have seen a rise in the research pertaining to diagnosis and management of breast cancer resulting in early identification of the disease, early institution of treatment, more efficient treatments with less toxicity and improved prognosis (2). According to surveys in 2002, the breast cancer incidence rates varied internationally. While Mozambique demonstrated an incidence rate of 3.9 cases per 100,000, United States reported 101.1 cases per 100,000 (2). The American

Friday, November 1, 2019

Operation Management Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Operation Management - Article Example The study also aims at the provision of the implications that the study will have on educating  students in preparation for success in the service sector through having a thorough understanding of the important problems faced by the service sector. The data is enough in answering the research question because of the 54 responses with 51 responses fit for use in the study surpassing the 30 items of sample size required in the use of the Q methodology in research. The response rate at 10.3% also fits the marketing response rate acceptable norm of 10-20% depicting the usefulness and ability of the collected information to meet the requirements of the study (Wright & Mechling, 2002). The use of a wide range of service businesses and the presence of a large difference in the characteristics of businesses in terms of size, number of employees, and the management structure provides for the data to be comprehensive making them enough in meeting the needs of the research question. From the survey, the articles presents different operations problems facing service organizations including location, transportation, facility layout, simulating processes and planning, future planning, determining order quantities and inventory monitoring, a nd tangible and intangible factor use in decision making. Other problems are operation with little inventory, continuous improvement, complex project management, monitoring and management of quality provision, decision making with known probabilities, profit maximization, staffing, distribution, and competition action prediction (Wright & Mechling, 2002). The article uses the Q-methodology in the determination of the importance of these problems in service organizations according to the rank of the respondents from a sample of service organizations in the study. The article’s results show that more than one of Schmenner’s service Types

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Implementation of an Industrial Hygiene Program Research Paper

Implementation of an Industrial Hygiene Program - Research Paper Example This essay will provide a hygiene program for pharmaceuticals with a focus on handling of hazardous chemicals and other raw materials for the manufacture or research and development of drugs. R&D and work areas for pharmaceuticals are one of the most dangerous places for operators and workers, if these are not adequately designed and control systems are not properly in place. Providing a hygiene system for pharmaceutical laboratories is therefore a challenging task. Pharmaceuticals produce small groups of high-potency active ingredients. These compounds pose risks to persons who are involved in the manufacturing. The chemicals are potentially toxic, can cause cancer, â€Å"teratogenic, mutagenic,† and are really dangerous even in small amounts (Fay & Phillips, 2002). In controlling chemicals, there must be a protective barrier between the chemical and the person handling the chemical. There are acceptable working conditions in the handling of chemicals, for example pharmaceutical ingredients, agricultural chemicals particularly herbicides and pesticides, dyes and pigments, and other chemicals such as radioisotopes and intermediates. In the development of procedures and equipment to protect persons handling the chemicals, there are two steps that should be followed. First, there must be a method of control. Second, how to attain the methods and how to attain them must be formulated. Analytical chemistry is used in determining smaller quantities and this can be attained through new computer applications or software. The company should provide an effective design and layout of the work area that is conducive to a clean and effective work environment. Designated areas for hazardous chemicals have to be clearly separate from other rooms designated for offices. Proper handling of materials should be the order of the day. Training of personnel who will handle sensitive materials and chemicals should be a part of the procedures. Training should be conducted by

Monday, October 28, 2019

Ethnographic Process †Homo Narrans Essay Example for Free

Ethnographic Process – Homo Narrans Essay With her assertion in Number Our Days that humankind is a species of homo-narrans, Barbara Myerhoff describes us as story-telling creatures. We identify, express, discover and categorize ourselves based on the legends and lore of our cultural heritage as well as the anecdotal accounts of our personal lives. The works we have read support Myerhoff’s assertion, demonstrating through the narratives that humans define their world through stories at the same time that their stories define them. Myerhoff, Cruikshank and Fabian all respond to humans as story-telling beings, employing ethnographic strategies based on a holistic combination of qualitative and quantitative research. In her Number Our Days, Myerhoff gathered exhaustive narratives from the senior Jewish population of Venice, California. Likewise, Cruikshank’s interviews with the Yukon elders in Life Lived Like a Story reveal how thoroughly she participates with the ethnographic study of man as homo-narrans. (I particularly liked Angela’s story of balancing old and new customs. Similarly, Fabian’s Power and Performance supports itself upon qualitative fieldwork, contributing a plethora of anecdotal information to African anthropological studies. All authors interacted with and affected the social environment in which they worked, their studies not only speaking to the lives of their research subjects but the research and researchers themselves. I support the ways these authors respond to the notion of mankind as homo-narrans. People tell stories in life as a way to communicate their identity and beliefs, their backgrounds and ambitions. The only challenges I foresee lie in the fact that personal accounts are not always representative of the group to which they belong. And while it is impossible not to affect the sample population from which researchers derive information, to feel personally moved even to advocate on its behalf, it seems best that researchers remain objective in their studies, at least for the duration of those studies. A mind clouded with passion is not a viable tool of rational inquiry or observation. Once the study is complete, I could not fault a researcher for advocating people s/he discovered to be in need of help in the course of the inquiry.

Saturday, October 26, 2019

A Study Of The Life And Career Of Lord Alfred Tennyson and Selected Cri

A Study Of The Life And Career Of Lord Alfred Tennyson And Selected Criticism Of His Works Whether a person likes or dislikes the works of Lord Alfred Tennyson, most would agree that he was one of the most influential writers of his time period. Tennyson grew up in a wealthy family never wanting for anything. English author often regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry. Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850; he was appointed by Queen Victoria and served 42 years. Tennyson's works were melancholic, and reflected the moral and intellectual values of his time, which made them especially vulnerable for later critic. Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire. His father, George Clayton Tennyson, a clergyman and rector, suffered from depression and was notoriously absentminded. Alfred began to write poetry at an early age in the style of Lord Byron. After spending four unhappy years in school he was tutored at home. Tennyson then studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he joined the literary club 'The Apostles' and met Arthur Hallam, who became his closest friend. The undergraduate society discussed contemporary social, religious, scientific, and literary issues. Encouraged by 'The Apostles', Tennyson published POEMS, CHIEFLY LYRICAL, in 1830, which included the popular 'Mariana'. He travelled with Hallam on the Continent. By 1830, Hallam had become engaged to Tennyson's sister Emily. After his father's death in 1831 Tennyson returned to Somersby without a degree. His next book, POEMS (1833), received unfavorable reviews, and Tennyson ceased to publish for nearly ten years. Hallam died suddenly on the same year in Vienna. It was a heavy blow to Tennyson. He began to write 'Im Memorian' for his lost friend - the work took seventeen years. A revised volume of Poems, which included the 'The Lady of Shalott' and 'The Lotus-eaters'. 'Morte d'Arthur' and 'Ulysses' appeared in 1842 in the two-volume POEMS, and established his reputation as a writer. In 'Ulysses Tennyson portrayed the Greek after his travels, longing past days: "How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!" After marrying Emily Sellwood, whom he had already met in 1836,... ... heart blend and break, one against the other, with the pathetic inconsistency.† 7 As for Tennyson’s other great work, â€Å"Idylls of the King†, people seemed to give it a much nicer criticism. Prince Albert felt that the poems, which he thourghly enjoyed, â€Å"rekindle the feeling with which the legends of King Arthur must have inspired the chivalry of old, whilst the graceful form in which they are presented blends those feelings with the softer tone of our present age.† 8 Tennyson’s other popular works include: â€Å"The Princess†, â€Å"Maud† and â€Å"Drama† . These are just a few of his poems Tennyson wrote hundreds in his career. It seems that the critics of Tennyson’s work, either loves it or hates it there is rarely a middle ground. Most critics seems to enjoy â€Å"Idylls of the King† and give it much better reviews than those of â€Å"In Memoriam† which people don’t seem to like as much. Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-92) was considered England's greatest poet in the last half of the 19th century. People from every walk of life understood and loved his work.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

How to Run a Good Meeting :: essays research papers

How to Run a Good Meeting Most people don’t like meetings. They say they are boring, go on too long, and don’t get anything done. And often that’s the truth. So to have a good meeting, you need to make it interesting, keep it on track, and make sure something gets done. Here are eight steps toward making your next meeting a success. 1. Make sure you need to have a meeting. Meetings are needed when a group of people must be involved in an action or a decision. Don’t schedule a meeting just because it’s time to have one. 2. Set a goal for the meeting. Be very clear about why you’re having the meeting, and what needs to get done or be decided. Break that task into steps, or divide the discussion into sections—that’s the agenda for your meeting. At the start of the meeting say, this is our goal, and if we can get this done, the meeting will be a success. At the end of the meeting remind them that you achieved your goal. This lets everyone leave feeling successful, and they’ll be glad to come to your next meeting. 3. Put decisions to the group. The participants own the meeting. Let them set the agenda before the meeting, or at least add to it when you begin. If decisions need to be made about the process (whether to end a discussion that’s going too long, for example) then ask that question to the group. 4. Stay on schedule. Remember that every minute a person spends in your meeting, they could be doing other things. They’re with you because they’ve decided your meeting is important, so treat them like their time is important. Start on time and end on time! 5. Pay attention to what’s important. Set a certain amount of time for each item on the agenda, based on how important it is. If the group starts spending a lot of time on details, ask them â€Å"Is this what we want to spend our time talking about?† A lot of details can be worked out by individuals or committees—meetings are for the decisions that need to involve the whole group. 6. Keep the meeting on track. Your agenda is the tool you use to make sure you’re on time and on the right topic. When side issues come up, help the group get back on track. If the issue sounds important, check with the group.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Bag of Bones CHAPTER FIVE

Once, when I was sixteen, a plane went supersonic directly over my head. I was walking in the woods when it happened, thinking of some story I was going to write, perhaps, or how great it would be if Doreen Fournier weakened some Friday night and let me take off her panties while we were parked at the end of Cushman Road. In any case I was travelling far roads in my own mind, and when that boom went off, I was caught totally by surprise. I went flat on the leafy ground with my hands over my head and my heart drumming crazily, sure I'd reached the end of my life (and while I was still a virgin). In my forty years, that was the only thing which equalled the final dream of the ‘Manderley series' for utter terror. I lay on the ground, waiting for the hammer to fall, and when thirty seconds or so passed and no hammer did fall, I began to realize it had just been some jet-jockey from the Brunswick Naval Air Station, too eager to wait until he was out over the Atlantic before going to Mach 1. But, holy shit, who ever could have guessed that it would be so loud? I got slowly to my feet and as I stood there with my heart finally slowing down, I realized I wasn't the only thing that had been scared witless by that sudden clear-sky boom. For the first time in my memory, the little patch of woods behind our house in Prout's Neck was entirely silent. I stood there in a dusty bar of sunlight, crumbled leaves all over my tee-shirt and jeans, holding my breath, listening. I had never heard a silence like it. Even on a cold day in January, the woods would have been full of conversation. At last a finch sang. There were two or three seconds of silence, and then a jay replied. Another two or three seconds went by, and then a crow added his two cents' worth. A woodpecker began to hammer for grubs. A chipmunk bumbled through some underbrush on my left. A minute after I had stood up, the woods were fully alive with little noises again; it was back to business as usual, and I continued with my own. I never forgot that unexpected boom, though, or the deathly silence which followed it. I thought of that June day often in the wake of the nightmare, and there was nothing so remarkable in that. Things had changed, somehow, or could change . . . but first comes silence while we assure ourselves that we are still unhurt and that the danger if there was danger is gone. Derry was shut down for most of the following week, anyway. Ice and high winds caused a great deal of damage during the storm, and a sudden twenty-degree plunge in the temperature afterward made the digging out hard and the cleanup slow. Added to that, the atmosphere after a March storm is always dour and pessimistic; we get them up this way every year (and two or three in April for good measure, if we're not lucky), but we never seem to expect them. Every time we get clouted, we take it personally. On a day toward the end of that week, the weather finally started to break. I took advantage, going out for a cup of coffee and a mid-morning pastry at the little restaurant three doors down from the Rite Aid where Johanna did her last errand. I was sipping and chewing and working the newspaper crossword when someone asked, ‘Could I share your booth, Mr. Noonan? It's pretty crowded in here today.' I looked up and saw an old man that I knew but couldn't quite place. ‘Ralph Roberts,' he said. ‘I volunteer down at the Red Cross. Me and my wife, Lois.' ‘Oh, okay, sure,' I said. I give blood at the Red Cross every six weeks or so. Ralph Roberts was one of the old parties who passed out juice and cookies afterward, telling you not to get up or make any sudden movements if you felt woozy. ‘Please, sit down.' He looked at my paper, folded open to the crossword and lying in a patch of sun, as he slid into the booth. ‘Don't you find that doing the crossword in the Derry News is sort of like striking out the pitcher in a baseball game?' he asked. I laughed and nodded. ‘I do it for the same reason folks climb Mount Everest, Mr. Roberts . . . because it's there. Only with the News crossword, no one ever falls off.' ‘Call me Ralph. Please.' ‘Okay. And I'm Mike.' ‘Good.' He grinned, revealing teeth that were crooked and a little yellow, but all his own. ‘I like getting to the first names. It's like being able to take off your tie. Was quite a little cap of wind we had, wasn't it?' ‘Yes,' I said, ‘but it's warming up nicely now.' The thermometer had made one of its nimble March leaps, climbing from twenty-five degrees the night before to fifty that morning. Better than the rise in air-temperature, the sun was warm again on your face. It was that warmth that had coaxed me out of the house. ‘Spring'll get here, I guess. Some years it gets a little lost, but it always seems to find its way back home.' He sipped his coffee, then set the cup down. ‘Haven't seen you at the Red Cross lately.' ‘I'm recycling,' I said, but that was a fib; I'd come eligible to give another pint two weeks ago. The reminder card was up on the refrigerator. It had just slipped my mind. ‘Next week, for sure.' ‘I only mention it because I know you're an A, and we can always use that.' ‘Save me a couch.' ‘Count on it. Everything going all right? I only ask because you look tired. If it's insomnia, I can sympathize, believe me.' He did have the look of an insomniac, I thought too wide around the eyes, somehow. But he was also a man in his mid- to late seventies, and I don't think anyone gets that far without showing it. Stick around a little while, and life maybe only jabs at your cheeks and eyes. Stick around a long while and you end up looking like Jake La Motta after a hard fifteen. I opened my mouth to say what I always do when someone asks me if I'm all right, then wondered why I always felt I had to pull that tiresome Marlboro Man shit, just who I was trying to fool. What did I think would happen if I told the guy who gave me a chocolate-chip cookie down at the Red Cross after the nurse took the needle out of my arm that I wasn't feeling a hundred percent? Earthquakes? Fire and flood? Shit. ‘No,' I said, ‘I really haven't been feeling so great, Ralph.' ‘Flu? It's been going around.' ‘Nah. The flu missed me this time, actually. And I've been sleeping all right.' Which was true there had been no recurrence of the Sara Laughs dream in either the normal or the high-octane version. ‘I think I've just got the blues.' ‘Well, you ought to take a vacation,' he said, then sipped his coffee. When he looked up at me again, he frowned and set his cup down. ‘What? Is something wrong?' No, I thought of saying. You were just the first bird to sing into the silence, Ralph, that's all. ‘No, nothing wrong,' I said, and then, because I sort of wanted to see how the words tasted coming out of my own mouth, I repeated them. ‘A vacation.' ‘Ayuh,' he said, smiling. ‘People do it all the time.' People do it all the time. He was right about that; even people who couldn't strictly afford to went on vacation. When they got tired. When they got all balled up in their own shit. When the world was too much with them, getting and spending. I could certainly afford a vacation, and I could certainly take the time off from work what work, ha-ha? and yet I'd needed the Red Cross cookie-man to point out what should have been self-evident to a college-educated guy like me: that I hadn't been on an actual vacation since Jo and I had gone to Bermuda, the winter before she died. My particular grindstone was no longer turning, but I had kept my nose to it all the same. It wasn't until that summer, when I read Ralph Roberts's obituary in the News (he was struck by a car), that I fully realized how much I owed him. That advice was better than any glass of orange juice I ever got after giving blood, let me tell you. When I left the restaurant, I didn't go home but tramped over half of the damned town, the section of newspaper with the partly completed crossword puzzle in it clamped under one arm. I walked until I was chilled in spite of the warming temperatures. I didn't think about anything, and yet I thought about everything. It was a special kind of thinking, the sort I'd always done when I was getting close to writing a book, and although I hadn't thought that way in years, I fell into it easily and naturally, as if I had never been away. It's like some guys with a big truck have pulled up in your driveway and are moving things into your basement. I can't explain it any better than that. You can't see what these things are because they're all wrapped up in padded quilts, but you don't need to see them. It's furniture, everything you need to make your house a home, make it just right, just the way you wanted it. When the guys have hopped back into their truck and driven away, you go down to the basement and walk around (the way I went walking around Derry that late morning, slopping up hill and down dale in my old galoshes), touching a padded curve here, a padded angle there. Is this one a sofa? Is that' one a dresser? It doesn't matter. Everything is here, the movers didn't forget a thing, and although you'll have to get it all upstairs yourself (straining your poor old back in the process, more often than not), that's okay. The important thing is that the delivery was complete. This time I thought hoped the delivery truck had brought the stuff I needed for the back forty: the years I might have to spend in a No Writing Zone. To the cellar door they had come, and they had knocked politely, and when after several months there was still no answer, they had finally fetched a battering ram. HEY BUDDY, HOPE THE NOISE DIDN'T SCARE YOU TOO BAD, SORRY ABOUT THE DOOR! I didn't care about the door; I cared about the furniture. Any pieces broken or missing? I didn't think so. I thought all I had to do was get it upstairs, pull off the furniture pads, and put it where it belonged. On my way back home, I passed The Shade, Derry's charming little revival movie house, which has prospered in spite of (or perhaps because of) the video revolution. This month they were showing classic SF from the fifties, but April was dedicated to Humphrey Bogart, Jo's all-time favorite. I stood under the marquee for several moments, studying one of the Coming Attractions posters. Then I went home, picked a travel agent pretty much at random from the phone book, and told the guy I wanted to go to Key Largo. Key West, you mean, the guy said. No, I told him, I mean Key Largo, just like in the movie with Bogie and Bacall. Three weeks. Then I rethought that. I was wealthy, I was on my own, and I was retired. What was this ‘three weeks' shit? Make it six, I said. Find me a cottage or something. Going to be expensive, he said. I told him I didn't care. When I came back to Derry, it would be spring. In the meantime, I had some furniture to unwrap. I was enchanted with Key Largo for the first month and bored out of my mind for the last two weeks. I stayed, though, because boredom is good. People with a high tolerance for boredom can get a lot of thinking done. I ate about a billion shrimp, drank about a thousand margaritas, and read twenty-three John D. MacDonald novels by actual count. I burned, peeled, and finally tanned. I bought a long-billed cap with PARROTHEAD printed on it in bright green thread. I walked the same stretch of beach until I knew everybody by first name. And I unwrapped furniture. A lot of it I didn't like, but there was no doubt that it all fit the house. I thought about Jo and our life together. I thought about saying to her that no one was ever going to confuse Being Two with Look Homeward, Angel. ‘You aren't going to pull a lot of frustrated-artist crap on me, are you, Noonan?' she had replied . . . and during my time on Key Largo, those words kept coming back, always in Jo's voice: crap, frustrated-artist crap, all that fucking schoolboy frustrated-artist crap. I thought about her long red woods apron, coming to me with a hatful of black trumpet mushrooms, laughing and triumphant: ‘Nobody on the TR eats better than the Noonans tonight!' she'd cried. I thought of her painting her toenails, bent over between her own thighs in the way only women doing that particular piece of business can manage. I thought of her throwing a book at me because I laughed at some new haircut. I thought of her trying to learn how to play a breakdown on her banjo and of how she looked braless in a thin sweater. I thought of her crying and laughing and angry. I thought of her telling me it was crap, all that frustrated-artist crap. And I thought about the dreams, especially the culminating dream. I could do that easily, because it never faded as the more ordinary ones do. The final Sara Laughs dream and my very first wet dream (coming upon a girl lying naked in a hammock and eating a plum) are the only two that remain perfectly clear to me, year after year; the rest are either hazy fragments or completely forgotten. There were a great many clear details to the Sara dreams the loons, the crickets, the evening star and my wish upon it, just to name a few but I thought most of those things were just verisimilitude. Scene-setting, if you will. As such, they could be dismissed from my considerations. That left three major elements, three large pieces of furniture to be unwrapped. As I sat on the beach, watching the sun go down between my sandy toes, I didn't think you had to be a shrink to see how those three things went together. In the Sara dreams, the major elements were the woods behind me, the house below me, and Michael Noonan himself, frozen in the middle. It's getting dark and there's danger in the woods. It will be frightening to go to the house below, perhaps because it's been empty so long, but I never doubt I must go there; scary or not, it's the only shelter I have. Except I can't do it. I can't move. I've got writer's walk. In the nightmare I am finally able to go toward shelter, only the shelter proves false. Proves more dangerous than I had ever expected in my . . . well, yes, in my wildest dreams. My dead wife rushes out, screaming and still tangled in her shroud, to attack me. Even five weeks later and almost three thousand miles from Derry, remembering that speedy white thing with its baggy arms would make me shiver and look back over my shoulder. But was it Johanna? I didn't really know, did I? The thing was all wrapped up. The coffin looked like the one in which she had been buried, true, but that might just be misdirection. Writer's walk, writer's block. I can't write, I told the voice in the dream. The voice says I can. The voice says the writer's block is gone, and I believe it because the writer's walk is gone, I'm finally headed down the driveway, going to shelter. I'm afraid, though. Even before the shapeless white thing makes its appearance, I'm terrified. I say it's Mrs. Danvers I'm afraid of, but that's just my dreaming mind getting Sara Laughs and Manderley all mixed up. I'm afraid of ‘I'm afraid of writing,' I heard myself saying out loud. ‘I'm afraid to even try.' This was the night before I finally flew back to Maine, and I was half-past sober, going on drunk. By the end of my vacation, I was drinking a lot of evenings. ‘It's not the block that scares me, it's undoing the block. I'm really fucked, boys and girls. I'm fucked big-time.' Fucked or not, I had an idea I'd finally reached the heart of the matter. I was afraid of undoing the block, maybe afraid of picking up the strands of my life and going on without Jo. Yet some deep part of my mind believed I must do it; that's what the menacing noises behind me in the woods were about. And belief counts for a lot. Too much, maybe, especially if you're imaginative. When an imaginative person gets into mental trouble, the line between seeming and being has a way of disappearing. Things in the woods, yes, sir. I had one of them right there in my hand as I was thinking these things. I lifted my drink, holding it toward the western sky so that the setting sun seemed to be burning in the glass. I was drinking a lot, and maybe that was okay on Key Largo hell, people were supposed to drink a lot on vacation, it was almost the law but I'd been drinking too much even before I left. The kind of drinking that could get out of hand in no time at all. The kind that could get a man in trouble. Things in the woods, and the potentially safe place guarded by a scary bugbear that was not my wife, but perhaps my wife's memory. It made sense, because Sara Laughs had always been Jo's favorite place on earth. That thought led to another, one that made me swing my legs over the side of the chaise I'd been reclining on and sit up in excitement. Sara Laughs had also been the place where the ritual had begun . . . champagne, last line, and the all-important benediction: Well, then, that's all right, isn't it? Did I want things to be all right again? Did I truly want that? A month or a year before I mightn't have been sure, but now I was. The answer was yes. I wanted to move on let go of my dead wife, rehab my heart, move on. But to do that, I'd have to go back. Back to the log house. Back to Sara Laughs. ‘Yeah,' I said, and my body broke out in gooseflesh. ‘Yeah, you got it.' So why not? The question made me feel as stupid as Ralph Roberts's observation that I needed a vacation. If I needed to go back to Sara Laughs now that my vacation was over, indeed why not? It might be a little scary the first night or two, a hangover from my final dream, but just being there might dissolve the dream faster. And (this last thought I allowed in only one humble corner of my conscious mind) something might happen with my writing. It wasn't likely . . . but it wasn't impossible, either. Barring a miracle, hadn't that been my thought on New Year's Day as I sat on the rim of the tub, holding a damp washcloth to the cut on my forehead? Yes. Barring a miracle. Sometimes blind people fall down, knock their heads, and regain their sight. Sometimes maybe cripples are able to throw their crutches away when they get to the top of the church steps. I had eight or nine months before Harold and Debra started really bugging me for the next novel. I decided to spend the time at Sara Laughs. It would take me a little while to tie things up in Derry, and awhile for Bill Dean to get the house on the lake ready for a year-round resident, but I could be down there by the Fourth of July, easily. I decided that was a good date to shoot for, not just the birthday of our country, but pretty much the end of bug season in western Maine. By the day I packed up my vacation gear (the John D. MacDonald paperbacks I left for the cabin's next inhabitant), shaved a week's worth of stubble off a face so tanned it no longer looked like my own to me, and flew back to Maine, I was decided: I'd go back to the place my subconscious mind had identified as shelter against the deepening dark; I'd go back even though my mind had also suggested that doing so would not be without risks. I would not go back expecting Sara to be Lourdes . . . but I would allow myself to hope, and when I saw the evening star peeping out over the lake for the first time, I would allow myself to wish on it. Only one thing didn't fit into my neat deconstruction of the Sara dreams, and because I couldn't explain it, I tried to ignore it. I didn't have much luck, though; part of me was still a writer, I guess, and a writer is a man who has taught his mind to misbehave. It was the cut on the back of my hand. That cut had been in all the dreams, I would swear it had . . . and then it had actually appeared. You didn't get that sort of shit in the works of Dr. Freud; stuff like that was strictly for the Psychic Friends hotline. It was a coincidence, that's all, I thought as my plane started its descent. I was in seat A-2 (the nice thing about flying up front is that if the plane goes down, you're first to the crash site) and looking at pine forests as we slipped along the glidepath toward Bangor International Airport. The snow was gone for another year; I had vacationed it to death. Only coincidence. How many times have you cut your hands? I mean, they're always out front, aren't they, waving themselves around? Practically begging for it. All that should have rung true, and yet somehow it didn't, quite. It should have, but . . . well . . . It was the boys in the basement. They were the ones who didn't buy it. The boys in the basement didn't buy it at all. At that point there was a thump as the 737 touched down, and I put the whole line of thought out of my mind. One afternoon shortly after arriving back home, I rummaged the closets until I found the shoeboxes containing Jo's old photographs. I sorted them, then studied my way through the ones of Dark Score Lake. There were a staggering number of these, but because Johanna was the shutterbug, there weren't many with her in them. I found one, though, that I remembered taking in 1990 or '91. Sometimes even an untalented photographer can take a good picture if seven hundred monkeys spent seven hundred years bashing away at seven hundred typewriters, and all that and this was good. In it Jo was standing on the float with the sun going down red-gold behind her. She was just out of the water, dripping wet, wearing a two-piece swimming suit, gray with red piping. I had caught her laughing and brushing her soaked hair back from her forehead and temples. Her nipples were very prominent against the cups of her halter. She looked like an actress on a movie poster for one of those guilty-pleasure B-pictures about monsters at Party Beach or a serial killer stalking the campus. I was sucker-punched by a sudden powerful lust for her. I wanted her upstairs just as she was in that photograph, with strands of her hair pasted to her cheeks and that wet bathing suit clinging to her. I wanted to suck her nipples through the halter top, taste the cloth and feel their hardness through it. I wanted to suck water out of the cotton like milk, then yank the bottom of her suit off and fuck her until we both exploded. Hands shaking a little, I put the photograph aside, with some others I liked (although there were no others I liked in quite that same way). I had a huge hard-on, one of those ones that feel like stone covered with skin. Get one of those and until it goes away you are good for nothing. The quickest way to solve a problem like that when there's no woman around willing to help you solve it is to masturbate, but that time the idea never even crossed my mind. Instead I walked restlessly through the upstairs rooms of my house with my fists opening and closing and what looked like a hood ornament stuffed down the front of my jeans. Anger may be a normal stage of the grieving process I've read that it is but I was never angry at Johanna in the wake of her death until the day I found that picture. Then, wow. There I was, walking around with a boner that just wouldn't quit, furious with her. Stupid bitch, why had she been running on one of the hottest days of the year? Stupid, inconsiderate bitch to leave me alone like this, not even able to work. I sat down on the stairs and wondered what I should do. A drink was what I should do, I decided, and then maybe another drink to scratch the first one's back. I actually got up before deciding that wasn't a very good idea at all. I went into my office instead, turned on the computer, and did a crossword puzzle. That night when I went to bed, I thought of looking at the picture of Jo in her bathing suit again. I decided that was almost as bad an idea as a few drinks when I was feeling angry and depressed. But I'll have the dream tonight, I thought as I turned off the light. I'll have the dream for sure. I didn't, though. My dreams of Sara Laughs seemed to be finished. A week's thought made the idea of at least summering at the lake seem better than ever. So, on a Saturday afternoon in early May when I calculated that any self-respecting Maine caretaker would be home watching the Red Sox, I called Bill Dean and told him I'd be at my lake place from the Fourth of July or so . . . and that if things went as I hoped, I'd be spending the fall and winter there as well. ‘Well, that's good,' he said. ‘That's real good news. A lot of folks down here've missed you, Mike. Quite a few that want to condole with you about your wife, don't you know.' Was there the faintest note of reproach in his voice, or was that just my imagination? Certainly Jo and I had cast a shadow in the area; we had made significant contributions to the little library which served the Motton-Kashwakamak-Castle View area, and Jo had headed the successful fund drive to get an area bookmobile up and running. In addition to that, she had been part of a ladies' sewing circle (afghans were her specialty), and a member in good standing of the Castle County Crafts Co-op. Visits to the sick . . . helping out with the annual volunteer fire department blood drive . . . womaning a booth during Summerfest in Castle Rock . . . and stuff like that was only where she had started. She didn't do it in any ostentatious Lady Bountiful way, either, but unobtrusively and humbly, with her head lowered (often to hide a rather sharp smile, I should add my Jo had a Biercean sense of humor). Christ, I thought, maybe old Bill had a right to sound reproachful. ‘People miss her,' I said. ‘Ayuh, they do.' ‘I still miss her a lot myself. I think that's why I've stayed away from the lake. That's where a lot of our good times were.' ‘I s'pose so. But it'll be damned good to see you down this way. I'll get busy. The place is all right you could move into it this afternoon, if you was a mind but when a house has stood empty the way Sara has, it gets stale.' ‘I know.' ‘I'll get Brenda Meserve to clean the whole shebang from top to bottom. Same gal you always had, don't you know.' ‘Brenda's a little old for comprehensive spring cleaning, isn't she?' The lady in question was about sixty-five, stout, kind, and gleefully vulgar. She was especially fond of jokes about the travelling salesman who spent the night like a rabbit, jumping from hole to hole. No Mrs. Danvers she. ‘Ladies like Brenda Meserve never get too old to oversee the festivities,' Bill said. ‘She'll get two or three girls to do the vacuuming and heavy lifting. Set you back maybe three hundred dollars. Sound all right?' ‘Like a bargain.' ‘The well needs to be tested, and the gennie, too, although I'm sure both of em's okay. I seen a hornet's nest by Jo's old studio that I want to smoke before the woods get dry. Oh, and the roof of the old house you know, the middle piece needs to be reshingled. I shoulda talked to you about that last year, but with you not using the place, I let her slide. You stand good for that, too?' ‘Yes, up to ten grand. Beyond that, call me.' ‘If we have to go over ten, I'll smile and kiss a pig.' ‘Try to have it all done before I get down there, okay?' ‘Coss. You'll want your privacy, I know that . . . just so long's you know you won't get any right away. We was shocked when she went so young; all of us were. Shocked and sad. She was a dear.' From a Yankee mouth, that word rhymes with Leah. ‘Thank you, Bill.' I felt tears prickle my eyes. Grief is like a drunken house guest, always coming back for one more goodbye hug. ‘Thanks for saying.' ‘You'll get your share of carrot-cakes, chummy.' He laughed, but a little doubtfully, as if afraid he was committing an impropriety. ‘I can eat a lot of carrot-cake,' I said, ‘and if folks overdo it, well, hasn't Kenny Auster still got that big Irish wolfhound?' ‘Yuh, that thing'd eat cake til he busted!' Bill cried in high good humor. He cackled until he was coughing. I waited, smiling a little myself. ‘Blueberry, he calls that dog, damned if I know why. Ain't he the gormiest thing!' I assumed he meant the dog and not the dog's master. Kenny Auster, not much more than five feet tall and neatly made, was the opposite of gormy, that peculiar Maine adjective that means clumsy, awkward, and clay-footed. I suddenly realized that I missed these people Bill and Brenda and Buddy Jellison and Kenny Auster and all the others who lived year-round at the lake. I even missed Blueberry, the Irish wolfhound, who trotted everywhere with his head up just as if he had half a brain in it and long strands of saliva depending from his jaws. ‘I've also got to get down there and clean up the winter blowdown,' Bill said. He sounded embarrassed. ‘It ain't bad this year that last big storm was all snow over our way, thank God but there's still a fair amount of happy crappy I ain't got to yet. I shoulda put it behind me long before now. You not using the place ain't an excuse. I been cashing your checks.' There was something amusing about listening to the grizzled old fart beating his breast; Jo would have kicked her feet and giggled, I'm quite sure. ‘If everything's right and running by July Fourth, Bill, I'll be happy.' ‘You'll be happy as a clam in a mudflat, then. That's a promise.' Bill sounded as happy as a clam in a mudflat himself, and I was glad. ‘Goingter come down and write a book by the water? Like in the old days? Not that the last couple ain't been fine, my wife couldn't put that last one down, but ‘ ‘I don't know,' I said, which was the truth. And then an idea struck me. ‘Bill, would you do me a favor before you clean up the driveway and turn Brenda Meserve loose?' ‘Happy to if I can,' he said, so I told him what I wanted. Four days later, I got a little package with this laconic return address: DEAN/GEN DELIV/TR-90 (DARK SCORE). I opened it and shook out twenty photographs which had been taken with one of those little cameras you use once and then throw away. Bill had filled out the roll with various views of the house, most conveying that subtle air of neglect a place gets when it's not used enough . . . even a place that's caretook (to use Bill's word) gets that neglected feel after awhile. I barely glanced at these. The first four were the ones I wanted, and I lined them up on the kitchen table, where the strong sunlight would fall directly on them. Bill had taken these from the top of the driveway, pointing the disposable camera down at the sprawl of Sara Laughs. I could see the moss which had grown not only on south wings, as well. I could see the litter of fallen branches and the drifts of pine needles on the driveway. Bill must have been tempted to clear all that away before taking his snaps, but he hadn't. I'd told him exactly what I wanted ‘warts and all' was the phrase I had used and Bill had given it to me. The bushes on either side of the driveway had thickened a lot since Jo and I had spent any significant amount of time at the lake; they hadn't exactly run wild, but yes, some of the longer branches did seem to yearn toward each other across the asphalt like separated lovers. Yet what my eye came back to again and again was the stoop at the foot of the driveway. The other resemblances between the photographs and my dreams of Sara Laughs might only be coincidental (or the writer's often surprisingly practical imagination at work), but I could explain the sunflowers growing out through the boards of the stoop no more than I had been able to explain the cut on the back of my hand. I turned one of the photos over. On the back, in a spidery script, Bill had written: These fellows are way early . . . and trespassing! I flipped back to the picture side. Three sunflowers, growing up through the boards of the stoop. Not two, not four, but three large sunflowers with faces like searchlights. Just like the ones in my dream.