Renzo Piano Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Renzo Piano - Essay Example Different music capacities are typically held at the complex. It possesses an extensive region in the 1960 Olympia territory. The structure plans, for example, the three bug-like lobbies appear as instruments. The remarkable highlights of the structure draw in guests from various piece of the world. It is deliberately situated close to large inns that can oblige guests in the city. It is likewise near other alluring spots, for example, the Villa Glori Park. The spot is likewise open since it is situated close to a high way called the Autostrada A1. What's more, it is close to a railroads station called the Roma Termini. The railroads station is just 6 kilometer away from the music complex. Guests from various pieces of the world can without much of a stretch access it through the Fiuicino air terminal that is just 33 kilometer to the design. The assembly hall was worked in a territory that used to be a stopping zone. The territory is close Parioli and Flaminio locale. Its key area an d many help administrations make it a perfect spot to hold numerous sorts of occasions (Bennet and William 199). The Music complex is in an outside amphitheater with lobbies that appear as though music boxes. It spaces are involved by different show lobbies. Every corridor has various structures regarding measurements and capacities. Be that as it may, the spaces are truly adaptable and flexible and can be managed depending of the kind of music execution. For example, its floor and roof can be balanced so as to change the property of the lobbies. The three show corridors are obliged in a gigantic vault molded structure inside the music complex. One of the lobbies called the petrassi has enough space to oblige around 750 seats while Sinopoli lobby can suit around 1200 seats. The third lobby named Santa Cecilia is the greatest among the three since it can oblige around 2800 seats. The space of the music complex additionally has different rooms, for example, the training rooms where individuals can rehearse previously

the 3M- Company Essay Example

the 3M-Company Essay Contextual analysis The 3M Company Insert name Insert establishment Insert teachers name Insert the date Initially known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, this organization was spearheaded in 1902 at Minnesota close to Lake Superior. It was set up to sell mineral stores which were later end up being valueless and this started early innovative work of this organization while in Duluth. This saw its achievement in selling sandpaper items. The organization later expanded its proficiency in quality creation and gracefully chain. Advancements saw the improvement of waterproof sandpapers, the asking tape (this started the companys possibilities towards broadening) sold under the name Scotch Pressure-touchy Tapes and even was contracted in the creation of safeguard materials in World War II. The organization was later to differentiate its item portfolio to incorporate the photographic items, electro-mechanical items, pharmaceuticals, radiology and the Post-it Notes that altered correspondence and association. In the late 1990s, the absolute deals of the organization arrived at a $15 billion imprint and the evaluation of its 2010 open filings has arrived at a benefit characteristic of 30 billion dollars (NoAuthorFound, 2002). The organization today is a worldwide aggregate with a broadened item arrangement of in any event 55,000 items. It works under an establishment circulation framework whereby a portion of its items are accessible for buy in excess of 200 nations from merchants and retailers; in any case, the majority of 3M items are accessible online legitimately from the organization. We will compose a custom paper test on the 3M-Company explicitly for you for just $16.38 $13.9/page Request now We will compose a custom article test on the 3M-Company explicitly for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Recruit Writer We will compose a custom article test on the 3M-Company explicitly for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Recruit Writer The organization is enrolled in the New York stock trade and the US Securities and Exchange Commission where its SEC filings can be acquired. These can be utilized to evaluate the companys quarterly and yearly returns and even its erformance as relating to: (A)lmpact of Globalization and Technology Any worldwide organization today in most antagonistically influenced by globalization and innovation: 3M Company isn't a special case to this. The organization ceaselessly adjusts to changing patterns in innovation and globalization through marker innovative work. RD globalization is a quick advancing procedure and is increasingly more as of late being kept at one focus of chance in most contemporary companies. RD globalization gives a stage to the simple control of 3M Companys basic assets and resources over wide topographical area. Globalization and innovation ave prompted the Companys expanded comprehension of RD and development. The organization unaerstanas transnatlonal RD ana Innovatlon Tor more grounded consollaatlon and budgetary and significantly more techniques for administrative limitations (Bertho Crawford, 2008). Globalization and innovation have expanded the rate point by point examination attempted on world item obligations and worldwide innovation duties inside transnational companies at areas outside their nation of origin. 3M Company has set up powerful focuses abroad that drive development and new business activities for organization fortifying gratitude to globalization and innovation. Globalization has likewise served in tending to possession and control issues for 3M Companys universal scholarly capital and property and has helped the comprehension of their impacts on corporate responsiveness. Organizations that situate themselves towards the market through the comprehension of the impacts of globalization and innovation on corporate capacities are bound to create and continue their market degree and edges of benefit. The progression of data inside a global combination organization like 3M Company is essential to its turn of events (Bertho Crawford, 2008). For instance, clients can utilize the web innovation to buy 3M items on the web and pay through MasterCard or PayPal. (B) Application of mechanical association model and asset based model for better returns 3M Company can utilize the modern association and asset based model to encourage its productivity and along these lines increment it advertise execution and overall revenue gains. The upper hand of a partnership firm lies essentially in the commencement of a heap of important unmistakable and elusive assets at companys removal universally. Through the asset based technique the 3M Company can distinguish and lassify the partnerships overall assets and assess their qualities and shortcomings and relate this to the companys contenders by tending to their trademark patterns. Recognize the open doors for better use of assets. At that point 3M Company will set out on distinguishing the companies capacities and effectiveness against its rivals. The organization will recognize asset contributions for every capacity and multifaceted nature of every ability. Thirdly, the organization will assess its assets for lease creating abilities as relating to its capability to continue the serious scene and the appropriability of its profits. The organization will then plan on the most ideal approach to misuse its assets and abilities comparable to the companys outside circumstances. In conclusion in the work of the asset based model, the organization will distinguish asset holes that should be filled and set down tentative arrangements to enlarge, overhaul and renew the 3M Companys asset base (Heracleous, 2003). In the mechanical association model, 3M Company will leave upon the assessment of its structure for better outline between the organization and its market portfolio and requests. This assessment will build the companys ompetitiveness and ease obstructions that lead to blemished rivalry. This activity benchmark will be to investigate and determinants of the firm and market association to better rivalry and adjust to government activities. For example, 3Ms late 2012 association arrangement for better consistency in its technique of building appropriate market nearness will serve to expand its quality in future worldwide markets and clients. The new structure was to contain five business gatherings (customer, Inaustrlal, nealtncare, saTety ana grapnlcs ana Electronics ana vitality. These activities will guarantee better market and industry interface and erformance (NoAuthorFound, 2002). C) 3Ms vision and mission impact of its market achievement The companys statement of purpose expresses that the organization is focused on effectively add to manageable advancement through natural assurance, social duty and financial advancement. This has situated the companys representatives towards the fulfillment of this statement of purpose. The organization wins client dedication a nd regard when it successfully separates its opposition and conveys and strengthens the 3M brand procedure (NoAuthorFound, 2002). The companys vision is to add to societys move to supportable turn of events. To 3M, reasonable improvement alludes to the capacity to fulfill the companys clients today while regarding the abilities of people in the future and in this way have the option to address their issues. Consequently, both the vision proclamation and statement of purpose increment client and speculator dedication and this empowers the companys exercises to continue uninhibited hence guaranteeing its prosperity. A companys strategic vision points of view that are client wellbeing focused assemble and approval positive accord and backing (NoAuthorFound, 2002). D) Influence of Stakeholders to 3Ms achievement 3Ms solid relationship with its partners decides the companys suitability nd achievement. This relationship whenever continued will guarantee future companys possibilities are fruitful. A portion of the key 3M partner cooperation incorporate however are not restricted to (Rubinfeld, 2005): Investor: The Com pany keeps up a solid relationship with its financial specialists by convenient and gainful profits. The New York trade and the companys SEC filings report have revealed as much as 3 dollars profits for each offer. The companys enrolling in the US Securities and Exchange Commission reenergizes speculator certainty and subsequently attracts more financial specialists than any other time in recent memory remembering this is a universal enterprise. Manager, representative and client relationship: The Company has improved it relationship with its workers. Better pay rates and working conditions have made the organization representatives steadfast and dedicated towards meeting the companys mission, vision and client needs. There has been a wide gathering for better client organization connection and relationship. This has made the organization exceptionally serious in its extent of the world market and has seen the organization hold its hold in the market. The administration and network. The organization has conformed to all the US government corporative laws for outside nd inner tasks. This has empowers the organization to advance easily without hindrances from the US government. The organization additionally procures network trust and regard by adding to research and developments that lead to the creation of wellbeing items that help ensure the earth and diminish damage to the client and world networks on the loose. For instance, the creation of sandpaper that don't deliver air contaminants during use. This has seen the organization even win an honor by the US government. (E)Conclusions To summarize it, the 3M Company has ascended from a little league organization at a lake hore to a global combination that sells its items around the world. In India, it is the main open remote organization that doesn't work an establishment arrangement of OlstrlDutlon t at n OITTerentlatlng It wlt n coca cola. I ne SEC Tlllng 0T tne organization a US Securities and Exchange Commission site show that the co

Trust vs. Mistrust Learn About Psychosocial Stage 1

Trust vs. Mistrust Learn About Psychosocial Stage 1 Theories Psychosocial Psychology Print Trust vs. Mistrust: Psychosocial Stage 1 Learning to trust the world around us By Kendra Cherry facebook twitter Kendra Cherry, MS, is an author, educational consultant, and speaker focused on helping students learn about psychology. Learn about our editorial policy Kendra Cherry Medically reviewed by Medically reviewed by Steven Gans, MD on May 22, 2017 Steven Gans, MD is board-certified in psychiatry and is an active supervisor, teacher, and mentor at Massachusetts General Hospital. Learn about our Medical Review Board Steven Gans, MD Updated on October 10, 2018 Psychosocial Development Overview Trust vs. Mistrust Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt Initiative vs. Guilt Industry vs. Inferiority Identity vs. Confusion Intimacy vs. Isolation Generativity vs. Stagnation Integrity vs. Despair The trust versus mistrust stage is the first stage of psychologist  Erik Erikson’s  theory of psychosocial development, which occurs between birth and approximately 18 months of age. According to Erikson, the trust versus mistrust stage is  the most important period in a person’s life because it shapes our view of the world, as well as our personalities.?? Eriksons  psychosocial development theory  has seven other stages that span throughout a persons lifetime. Verywell / Nusha Ashjaee   Overview This first stage of psychosocial development consists of:Psychosocial Conflict: Trust versus mistrustMajor Question: Can I trust the people around me?Basic Virtue: HopeImportant Event(s): Feeding What Happens During This Stage It is in this initial stage of development that children learn whether or not they can trust the world. As you might deduce, it is the care they receive from their parents and other adults that is critical to forming this trust. Because an infant is entirely dependent upon his or her caregivers, the quality of care that the child receives plays an important role in the shaping of the child’s personality. During this stage, children learn whether or not they can trust the people around them.?? When a baby cries, does his caregiver attend to his needs? When he is frightened, will someone comfort him? When she is hungry, does she receive nourishment from her caregivers? An infants ability to communicate his or her needs are limited, so crying carries an important message. When a baby cries, there is some need that should be met with a response from caregivers, whether it involves providing food, safety, a fresh diaper, or a comforting cuddle. By responding quickly and appropriately to an infants cries, a foundation of trust is established. When these needs are consistently met, the child will learn that he can trust the people who are caring for him. If, however, these needs are not consistently met, the child will begin to mistrust the people around him.?? If a child successfully develops trust, he  will feel safe and secure in the world. Caregivers who are inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, or reject the child contribute to feelings of mistrust in the children they care for. Failure to develop trust can result in fear and a belief that the world is inconsistent and unpredictable. Erikson believed that these early patterns of trust or mistrust help control, or at least exert, a powerful influence over that individuals interactions with others for the remainder of his life. Those who learn to trust caregivers in infancy will be more likely to form trusting relationships with others throughout the course of their lives. Trust May Be Genetic There have been multiple studies devoted to understanding what goes into the tendency to be trusting, but not nearly as many in the quest to understand why certain people are more mistrustful than others. Its clear that environment has a big part in both, just as Erikson states. One recent study done with female twins, both identical and fraternal, shows evidence that while a trusting personality seems to be at least in part genetic, a mistrustful or distrusting personality seems to be learned from family and other social influences.?? Stage 2: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt

Gymnosperms Definition, Examples, and Reproduction

Mental Health At Correctional Facilities Essay - 2045 Words

Mental Health in Correctional Facilities Mental illness is a problem that occurs in all nations around the world. This is even more true for the populations in correctional facilities for both men and women. The overwhelming number of persons in correctional facilities with health issues is caused by: the rational that people with mental health disorders are a threat to society; narrow mindedness and low tolerance for people who are different from us; no resources to acquire the proper care needed. These mental health problems may have occurred prior to incarceration, and may nurtured further by the stressful environment of prisons, or they may have also been caused by being incarcerated in the first place in addition to other prior issues. Correctional facilities is not the place for the mentally ill, instead they should be treated for there illnesses. The purpose of this paper is to depict both the problem of inmates with mental health disorders in correctional facilities and the challenges faced by correctional staff. Se condly, denote possible interventions (treatment) for inmates with mental health issues. Next, support this information with studies about mental health in correctional facilities. Lastly, offer reasons it is important to combat the problem of mental illness in correctional facilities in order to better serve their well being needs. The growing rate of inmates with mental health disorders in correctional facilities is alarming. 54% state jail. 45% federalShow MoreRelatedMental Illness Of The Mentally Ill On Deinstitutionalization1514 Words   |  7 PagesMental illness in America has become an increasingly popular topic of discussion. Rather than being placed in hospitals for treatment, mentally ill individuals are being placed into correctional facilities for their actions. 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When the much-needed care is absent in prisons and jails, inmates with mental health disorders experience excruciating signs and their disorder can decline and be plaguedRead More The Importance of Diagnosing and Treating Inmates With Mental Illness 1497 Words   |  6 Pagesand mid 1900’s the U.S went through a period know as deinstitutionalization, where patients in mental facilities were reintroduced into society. This action was sparked by the introduction of antipsychotic drugs and the lack of funding to house and maintain mentally ill patients. This was to help not only the financial restraints of the government but to help each of the patients within the facilities by giving them the abil ity to live a fulfilling life without confinement. In the last few decadesRead MoreSolitary Confinement And Mental Disorders972 Words   |  4 Pagesno windows can disorient inmates with or without mental disorders, and failure to provide mentally ill inmates with psychiatric help could result in more disruptive behaviors. Prison officials must be aware and mindful of inmates that are medically diagnosed with mental disorders. Placing mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement can jeopardize the safety and efficient operation of a correctional facility, and pose challenges for correctional professionals (Newman Scott, 2012). Metzner Read MoreEffects Of Prison Overcrowding1345 Words   |  6 Pagescauses towards the inmates and the guards. I will first address the issue of violence that prison overcrowding causes. My next point will be the health of the inmates discussing both their physical and mental while in overcrowded prisons. Lastly I will discuss the physical and mental health of the correctional officers and how the job could lead to correctional officers having issues in their private life. Prison Overcrowding has become a major issue in the United States. Many laws such as the threeRead MoreMental Disorders And Its Effects916 Words   |  4 Pagesmentally disordered inmates in correctional facilities. Although the plight of mentally disordered women in prisons in no better than that of their male counterparts, harsher sentences, especially drug offenses cause overcrowding in women’s prisons. These inmates are a diverse group with a wide range of treatment needs. In many occasions these inmates have more than one diagnosis as evidenced by research. 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Public is asked the purpose or goals of our American correctional system the reply is incapacitation, retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation. However, what we are really asking for our corrections system to do is to secure and supervise the individuals cast out of society through the judicial process regardlessRead MorePrisoners with Special Needs1118 Words   |  5 Pagesmentally ill, and substance-abusing prisoners affect the jail and prison systems at a state and federal level in a multitude of ways. One of the main issues within prisons is the fact that their mental health services can be seriously inadequate and lacking the proper staffing, all while operating in facilities that are not equipped to handle such prisoners, on top of a limited amount of programs to even help these prisoners with their problems. If these prisoners are not cared for properly, it couldRead MorePrison Overcrowding And California s Correctional System1651 Words   |  7 PagesCalifornia’s Correctional System. To resolve this issue, â€Å"[o]n April 5, 2011, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law AB 109, the ‘2011 Realignment Legislation Addressing Public Safety’†¦, which†¦ shifted responsibility from the state to the counties for tens of thousands of offenders,† (Abarbanel et al., 2013, 1). This law was put in action was because of overcrowding in state prison and it was affecting a variety of crucial programs that were necessary for inmates to have, such as mental and health

Bag of Bones CHAPTER ONE Free Essays

string(48) " But old people are tough, more often than not\." On a very hot day in August of 1994, my wife told me she was going down to the Derry Rite Aid to pick up a refill on her sinus medicine prescription this is stuff you can buy over the counter these days, I believe. I’d finished my writing for the day and offered to pick it up for her. She said thanks, but she wanted to get a piece of fish at the supermarket next door anyway; two birds with one stone and all of that. We will write a custom essay sample on Bag of Bones CHAPTER ONE or any similar topic only for you Order Now She blew a kiss at me off the palm of her hand and went out. The next time I saw her, she was on TV. That’s how you identify the dead here in Derry no walking down a subterranean corridor with green tiles on the walls and long fluorescent bars overhead, no naked body rolling out of a chilly drawer on casters; you just go into an office marked PRIVATE and look at a TV screen and say yep or nope. The Rite Aid and the Shopwell are less than a mile from our house, in a little neighborhood strip mall which also supports a video store, a used-book store named Spread It Around (they do a very brisk business in my old paperbacks), a Radio Shack, and a Fast Foto. It’s on Up-Mile Hill, at the intersection of Witcham and Jackson. She parked in front of Blockbuster Video, went into the drugstore, and did business with Mr. Joe Wyzer, who was the druggist in those days; he has since moved on to the Rite Aid in Bangor. At the checkout she picked up one of those little chocolates with marshmallow inside, this one in the shape of a mouse. I found it later, in her purse. I unwrapped it and ate it myself, sitting at the kitchen table with the contents of her red handbag spread out in front of me, and it was like taking Communion. When it was gone except for the taste of chocolate on my tongue and in my throat, I burst into tears. I sat there in the litter of her Kleenex and makeup and keys and half-finished rolls of Certs and cried with my hands over my eyes, the way a kid cries. The sinus inhaler was in a Rite Aid bag. It had cost twelve dollars and eighteen cents. There was something else in the bag, too an item which had cost twenty-two-fifty. I looked at this other item for a long time, seeing it but not understanding it. I was surprised, maybe even stunned, but the idea that Johanna Arlen Noonan might have been leading another life, one I knew nothing about, never crossed my mind. Not then. Jo left the register, walked out into the bright, hammering sun again, swapping her regular glasses for her prescription sunglasses as she did, and just as she stepped from beneath the drugstore’s slight overhang (I am imagining a little here, I suppose, crossing over into the country of the novelist a little, but not by much; only by inches, and you can trust me on that), there was that shrewish howl of locked tires on pavement that means there’s going to be either an accident or a very close call. This time it happened the sort of accident which happened at that stupid X-shaped intersection at least once a week, it seemed. A 1989 Toyota was pulling out of the shopping-center parking lot and turning left onto Jackson Street. Behind the wheel was Mrs. Esther Easterling of Barrett’s Orchards. She was accompanied by her friend Mrs Irene Deorsey, also of Barrett’s Orchards, who had shopped the video store without finding anything she wanted to rent. Too much violence, Irene said. Both women were cigarette widows. Esther could hardly have missed the orange Public Works dump truck coming down the hill; although she denied this to the police, to the newspaper, and to me when I talked to her some two months later, I think it likely that she just forgot to look. As my own mother (another cigarette widow) used to say, ‘The two most common ailments of the elderly are arthritis and forgetfulness. They can’t be held responsible for neither.’ Driving the Public Works truck was William Fraker, of Old Cape. Mr. Fraker was thirty-eight years old on the day of my wife’s death, driving with his shirt off and thinking how badly he wanted a cool shower and a cold beer, not necessarily in that order. He and three other men had spent eight hours putting down asphalt patch out on the Harris Avenue Extension near the airport, a hot job on a hot day, and Bill Fraker said yeah, he might have been going a little too fast maybe forty in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone. He was eager to get back to the garage, sign off on the truck, and get behind the wheel of his own F-150, which had air conditioning. Also, the dump truck’s brakes, while good enough to pass inspection, were a long way from tip-top condition. Fraker hit them as soon as he saw the Toyota pull out in front of him (he hit his horn, as well), but it was too late. He heard screaming tires his own, and Esther’s as she belatedly realized her danger and saw her face for just a moment. ‘That was the worst part, somehow,’ he told me as we sat on his porch, drinking beers it was October by then, and although the sun was warm on our faces, we were both wearing sweaters. ‘You know how high up you sit in one of those dump trucks? ‘ I nodded. ‘Well, she was looking up to see me craning up, you’d say and the sun was full in her face. I could see how old she was. I remember thinking, ‘Holy shit, she’s gonna break like glass if I can’t stop.’ But old people are tough, more often than not. You read "Bag of Bones CHAPTER ONE" in category "Essay examples" They can surprise you. I mean, look at how it turned out, both those old biddies still alive, and your wife . . . ‘ He stopped then, bright red color dashing into his cheeks, making him look like a boy who has been laughed at in the schoolyard by girls who have noticed his fly is unzipped. It was comical, but if I’d smiled, it only would have confused him. ‘Mr. Noonan, I’m sorry. My mouth just sort of ran away with me.’ ‘It’s all right,’ I told him. ‘I’m over the worst of it, anyway.’ That was a lie, but it put us back on track. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘we hit. There was a loud bang, and a crumping sound when the driver’s side of the car caved in. Breaking glass, too. I was thrown against the wheel hard enough so I couldn’t draw a breath without it hurting for a week or more, and I had a big bruise right here.’ He drew an arc on his chest just below the collarbones. ‘I banged my head on the windshield hard enough to crack the glass, but all I got up there was a little purple knob . . . no bleeding, not even a headache. My wife says I’ve just got a naturally thick skull. I saw the woman driving the Toyota, Mrs. Easterling, thrown across the console between the front bucket seats. Then we were finally stopped, all tangled together in the middle of the street, and I got out to see how bad they were. I tell you, I expected to find them both dead.’ Neither of them was dead, neither of them was even unconscious, although Mrs. Easterling had three broken ribs and a dislocated hip. Mrs. Deorsey, who had been a seat away from the impact, suffered a concussion when she rapped her head on her window. That was all; she was ‘treated and released at Home Hospital,’ as the Derry News always puts it in such cases. My wife, the former Johanna Arlen of Malden, Massachusetts, saw it all from where she stood outside the drugstore, with her purse slung over her shoulder and her prescription bag in one hand. Like Bill Fraker, she must have thought the occupants of the Toyota were either dead or seriously hurt. The sound of the collision had been a hollow, authoritative bang which rolled through the hot afternoon air like a bowling ball down an alley. The sound of breaking glass edged it like jagged lace. The two vehicles were tangled violently together in the middle of Jackson Street, the dirty orange truck looming over the pale-blue import like a bullying parent over a cowering child. Johanna began to sprint across the parking lot toward the street. Others were doing the same all around her. One of them, Miss Jill Dunbarry, had been window-shopping at Radio Shack when the accident occurred. She said she thought she remembered running past Johanna at least she was pretty sure she remembered someone in yellow slacks but she couldn’t be sure. By then, Mrs. Easterling was screaming that she was hurt, they were both hurt, wouldn’t somebody help her and her friend Irene. Halfway across the parking lot, near a little cluster of newspaper dispensers, my wife fell down. Her purse-strap stayed over her shoulder, but her prescription bag slipped from her hand, and the sinus inhaler slid halfway out. The other item stayed put. No one noticed her lying there by the newspaper dispensers; everyone was focused on the tangled vehicles, the screaming women, the spreading puddle of water and antifreeze from the Public Works truck’s ruptured radiator. (‘That’s gas!’ the clerk from Fast Foto shouted to anyone who would listen. ‘That’s gas, watch out she don’t blow, fellas!’) I suppose one or two of the would-be rescuers might have jumped right over her, perhaps thinking she had fainted. To assume such a thing on a day when the temperature was pushing ninety-five degrees would not have been unreasonable. Roughly two dozen people from the shopping center clustered around the accident; another four dozen or so came running over from Strawford Park, where a baseball game had been going on. I imagine that all the things you would expect to hear in such situations were said, many of them more than once. Milling around. Someone reaching through the misshapen hole which had been the driver’s-side window to pat Esther’s trembling old hand. People immediately giving way for Joe Wyzer; at such moments anyone in a white coat automatically becomes the belle of the ball. In the distance, the warble of an ambulance siren rising like shaky air over an incinerator. All during this, lying unnoticed in the parking lot, was my wife with her purse still over her shoulder (inside, still wrapped in foil, her uneaten chocolate-marshmallow mouse) and her white prescription bag near one outstretched hand. It was Joe Wyzer, hurrying back to the pharmacy to get a compression bandage for Irene Deorsey’s head, who spotted her. He recognized her even though she was lying face-down. He recognized her by her red hair, white blouse, and yellow slacks. He recognized her because he had waited on her not fifteen minutes before. ‘Mrs. Noonan?’ he asked, forgetting all about the compression bandage for the dazed but apparently not too badly hurt Irene Deorsey. ‘Mrs. Noonan, are you all right?’ Knowing already (or so I suspect; perhaps I am wrong) that she was not. He turned her over. It took both hands to do it, and even then he had to work hard, kneeling and pushing and lifting there in the parking lot with the heat baking down from above and then bouncing back up from the asphalt. Dead people put on weight, it seems to me; both in their flesh and in our minds, they put on weight. There were red marks on her face. When I identified her I could see them clearly even on the video monitor. I started to ask the assistant medical examiner what they were, but then I knew. Late August, hot pavement, elementary, my dear Watson. My wife died getting a sunburn. Wyzer got up, saw that the ambulance had arrived, and ran toward it. He pushed his way through the crowd and grabbed one of the attendants as he got out from behind the wheel. ‘There’s a woman over there,’ Wyzer said, pointing toward the parking lot. ‘Guy, we’ve got two women right here, and a man as well,’ the attendant said. He tried to pull away, but Wyzer held on. ‘Never mind them right now,’ he said. ‘They’re basically okay. The woman over there isn’t.’ The woman over there was dead, and I’m pretty sure Joe Wyzer knew it . . . but he had his priorities straight. Give him that. And he was convincing enough to get both paramedics moving away from the tangle of truck and Toyota, in spite of Esther Easterling’s cries of pain and the rumbles of protest from the Greek chorus. When they got to my wife, one of the paramedics was quick to confirm what Joe Wyzer had already suspected. ‘Holy shit,’ the other one said. ‘What happened to her?’ ‘Heart, most likely,’ the first one said. ‘She got excited and it just blew out on her.’ But it wasn’t her heart. The autopsy revealed a brain aneurysm which she might have been living with, all unknown, for as long as five years. As she sprinted across the parking lot toward the accident, that weak vessel in her cerebral cortex had blown like a tire, drowning her control-centers in blood and killing her. Death had probably not been instantaneous, the assistant medical examiner told me, but it had still come swiftly enough . . . and she wouldn’t have suffered. Just one big black nova, all sensation and thought gone even before she hit the pavement. ‘Can I help you in any way, Mr. Noonan?’ the assistant ME asked, turning me gently away from the still face and closed eyes on the video monitor. ‘Do you have questions? I’ll answer them if I can.’ ‘Just one,’ I said. I told him what she’d purchased in the drugstore just before she died. Then I asked my question. The days leading up to the funeral and the funeral itself are dreamlike in my memory the clearest memory I have is of eating Jo’s chocolate mouse and crying . . . crying mostly, I think, because I knew how soon the taste of it would be gone. I had one other crying fit a few days after we buried her, and I will tell you about that one shortly. I was glad for the arrival of Jo’s family, and particularly for the arrival of her oldest brother, Frank. It was Frank Arlen fifty, red-cheeked, portly, and with a head of lush dark hair who organized the arrangements . . . who wound up actually dickering with the funeral director. ‘I can’t believe you did that,’ I said later, as we sat in a booth at Jack’s Pub, drinking beers. ‘He was trying to stick it to you, Mikey,’ he said. ‘I hate guys like that.’ He reached into his back pocket, brought out a handkerchief, and wiped absently at his cheeks with it. He hadn’t broken down none of the Arlens broke down, at least not when I was with them but Frank had leaked steadily all day; he looked like a man suffering from severe conjunctivitis. There had been six Arlen sibs in all, Jo the youngest and the only girl. She had been the pet of her big brothers. I suspect that if I’d had anything to do with her death, the five of them would have torn me apart with their bare hands. As it was, they formed a protective shield around me instead, and that was good. I suppose I might have muddled through without them, but I don’t know how. I was thirty-six, remember. You don’t expect to have to bury your wife when you’re thirty-six and she herself is two years younger. Death was the last thing on our minds. ‘If a guy gets caught taking your stereo out of your car, they call it theft and put him in jail,’ Frank said. The Arlens had come from Massachusetts, and I could still hear Malden in Frank’s voice caught was coowat, car was cah, call was caul. ‘If the same guy is trying to sell a grieving husband a three-thousand-dollar casket for forty-five hundred dollars, they call it business and ask him to speak at the Rotary Club luncheon. Greedy asshole, I fed him his lunch, didn’t I?’ ‘Yes. You did.’ ‘You okay, Mikey?’ ‘I’m okay.’ ‘Sincerely okay?’ ‘How the fuck should I know?’ I asked him, loud enough to turn some heads in a nearby booth. And then: ‘She was pregnant.’ His face grew very still. ‘What?’ I struggled to keep my voice down. ‘Pregnant. Six or seven weeks, according to the . . . you know, the autopsy. Did you know? Did she tell you?’ ‘No! Christ, no!’ But there was a funny look on his face, as if she had told him something. ‘I knew you were trying, of course . . . she said you had a low sperm count and it might take a little while, but the doctor thought you guys’d probably . . . sooner or later you’d probably . . . ‘ He trailed off, looking down at his hands. ‘They can tell that, huh? They check for that?’ ‘They can tell. As for checking, I don’t know if they do it automatically or not. I asked.’ ‘Why?’ ‘She didn’t just buy sinus medicine before she died. She also bought one of those home pregnancy-testing kits.’ ‘You had no idea? No clue?’ I shook my head. He reached across the table and squeezed my shoulder. ‘She wanted to be sure, that’s all. You know that, don’t you?’ A refill on my sinus medicine and a piece of fish, she’d said. Looking like always. A woman off to run a couple of errands. We had been trying to have a kid for eight years, but she had looked just like always. ‘Sure,’ I said, patting Frank’s hand. ‘Sure, big guy. I know.’ It was the Arlens led by Frank who handled Johanna’s send off. As the writer of the family, I was assigned the obituary. My brother came up from Virginia with my mom and my aunt and was allowed to tend the guest-book at the viewings. My mother almost completely ga-ga at the age of sixty-six, although the doctors refused to call it Alzheimer’s lived in Memphis with her sister, two years younger and only slightly less wonky. They were in charge of cutting the cake and the pies at the funeral reception. Everything else was arranged by the Arlens, from the viewing hours to the components of the funeral ceremony. Frank and Victor, the second-youngest brother, spoke brief tributes. Jo’s dad offered a prayer for his daughter’s soul. And at the end, Pete Breedlove, the boy who cut our grass in the summer and raked our yard in the fall, brought everyone to tears by singing ‘Blessed Assurance,’ which Frank said had been Jo’s favorite hymn as a girl. How Frank found Pete and persuaded him to sing at the funeral is something I never found out. We got through it the afternoon and evening viewings on Tuesday, the funeral service on Wednesday morning, then the little pray-over at Fairlawn Cemetery. What I remember most was thinking how hot it was, how lost I felt without having Jo to talk to, and that I wished I had bought a new pair of shoes. Jo would have pestered me to death about the ones I was wearing, if she had been there. Later on I talked to my brother, Sid, told him we had to do something about our mother and Aunt Francine before the two of them disappeared completely into the Twilight Zone. They were too young for a nursing home; what did Sid advise? He advised something, but I’ll be damned if I know what it was. I agreed to it, I remember that, but not what it was. Later that day, Siddy, our mom, and our aunt climbed back into Siddy’s rental car for the drive to Boston, where they would spend the night and then grab the Southern Crescent the following day. My brother is happy enough to chaperone the old folks, but he doesn’t fly, even if the tickets are on me. He claims there are no breakdown lanes in the sky if the engine quits. Most of the Arlens left the next day. Once more it was dog-hot, the sun glaring out of a white-haze sky and lying on everything like melted brass. They stood in front of our house which had become solely my house’ by then with three taxis lined up at the curb behind them, big galoots hugging one another amid the litter of tote-bags and saying their goodbyes in those foggy Massachusetts accents. Frank stayed another day. We picked a big bunch of flowers behind the house not those ghastly-smelling hothouse things whose aroma I always associate with death and organ-music but real flowers, the kind Jo liked best and stuck them in a couple of coffee cans I found in the back pantry. We went out to Fairlawn and put them on the new grave. Then we just sat there for awhile under the beating sun. ‘She was always just the sweetest thing in my life,’ Frank said at last in a strange, muffled voice. ‘We took care of Jo when we were kids. Us guys. No one messed with Jo, I’ll tell you. Anyone tried, we’d feed em their lunch.’ ‘She told me a lot of stories.’ ‘Good ones?’ ‘Yeah, real good.’ ‘I’m going to miss her so much.’ ‘Me, too,’ I said. ‘Frank . . . listen . . . I know you were her favorite brother. She never called you, maybe just to say that she missed a period or was feeling whoopsy in the morning? You can tell me. I won’t be pissed.’ ‘But she didn’t. Honest to God. Was she whoopsy in the morning?’ ‘Not that I saw.’ And that was just it. I hadn’t seen anything. Of course I’d been writing, and when I write I pretty much trance out. But she knew where I went in those trances. She could have found me and shaken me fully awake. Why hadn’t she? Why would she hide good news? Not wanting to tell me until she was sure was plausible . . . but it somehow wasn’t Jo. ‘Was it a boy or a girl?’ he asked. ‘A girl.’ We’d had names picked out and waiting for most of our marriage. A boy would have been Andrew. Our daughter would have been Kia. Kia Jane Noonan. Frank, divorced six years and on his own, had been staying with me. On our way back to the house he said, ‘I worry about you, Mikey. You haven’t got much family to fall back on at a time like this, and what you do have is far away.’ ‘I’ll be all right,’ I said. He nodded. ‘That’s what we say, anyway, isn’t it?’ ‘We?’ ‘Guys. I’ll be all right.’ And if we’re not, we try to make sure no one knows it.’ He looked at me, eyes still leaking, handkerchief in one big sunburned hand. ‘If you’re not all right, Mikey, and you don’t want to call your brother I saw the way you looked at him let me be your brother. For Jo’s sake if not your own.’ ‘Okay,’ I said, respecting and appreciating the offer, also knowing I would do no such thing. I don’t call people for help. It’s not because of the way I was raised, at least I don’t think so; it’s the way I was made. Johanna once said that if I was drowning at Dark Score Lake, where we have a summer home, I would die silently fifty feet out from the public beach rather than yell for help. It’s not a question of love or affection. I can give those and I can take them. I feel pain like anyone else. I need to touch and be touched. But if someone asks me, ‘Are you all right?’ I can’t answer no. I can’t say help me. A couple of hours later Frank left for the southern end of the state. When he opened the car door, I was touched to see that the taped book he was listening to was one of mine. He hugged me, then surprised me with a kiss on the mouth, a good hard smack. ‘If you need to talk, call,’ he said. ‘And if you need to be with someone, just come.’ I nodded. ‘And be careful.’ That startled me. The combination of heat and grief had made me feel as if I had been living in a dream for the last few days, but that got through. ‘Careful of what?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know, Mikey.’ Then he got into his car he was so big and it was so little that he looked as if he were wearing it and drove away. The sun was going down by then. Do you know how the sun looks at the end of a hot day in August, all orange and somehow squashed, as if an invisible hand were pushing down on the top of it and at any moment it might just pop like an overfilled mosquito and splatter all over the horizon? It was like that. In the east, where it was already dark, thunder was rumbling. But there was no rain that night, only a dark that came down as thick and stifling as a blanket. All the same, I slipped in front of the word processor and wrote for an hour or so. It went pretty well, as I remember. And you know, even when it doesn’t, it passes the time. My second crying fit came three or four days after the funeral. That sense of being in a dream persisted I walked, I talked, I answered the phone, I worked on my book, which had been about eighty percent complete when Jo died but all the time there was this clear sense of disconnection, a feeling that everything was going on at a distance from the real me, that I was more or less phoning it in. Denise Breedlove, Pete’s mother, called and asked if I wouldn’t like her to bring a couple of her friends over one day the following week and give the big old Edwardian pile I now lived in alone rolling around in it like the last pea in a restaurant-sized can a good stem-to-stern cleaning. They would do it, she said, for a hundred dollars split even among the three of them, and mostly because it wasn’t good for me to go on without it. There had to be a scrubbing after a death, she said, even if the death didn’t happen in the house itself. I told her it was a fine idea, but I would pay her and the women she brought a hundred dollars each for six hours’ work. At the end of the six hours, I wanted the job done. And if it wasn’t, I told her, it would be done, anyway. ‘Mr. Noonan, that’s far too much,’ she said. ‘Maybe and maybe not, but it’s what I’m paying,’ I said. ‘Will you do it?’ She said she would, of course she would. Perhaps predictably, I found myself going through the house on the evening before they came, doing a pre-cleaning inspection. I guess I didn’t want the women (two of whom would be complete strangers to me) finding anything that would embarrass them or me: a pair of Johanna’s silk panties stuffed down behind the sofa cushions, perhaps (‘We are often overcome on the sofa, Michael,’ she said to me once, ‘have you noticed?’), or beer cans under the loveseat on the sunporch, maybe even an unflushed toilet. In truth, I can’t tell you any one thing I was looking for; that sense of operating in a dream still held firm control over my mind. The clearest thoughts I had during those days were either about the end of the novel I was writing (the psychotic killer had lured my heroine to a high-rise building and meant to push her off the roof) or about the Norco Home Pregnancy Test Jo had bought on the day she died. Sinus prescription, she had said. P iece of fish for supper, she had said. And her eyes had shown me nothing else I needed to look at twice. Near the end of my ‘pre-cleaning,’ I looked under our bed and saw an open paperback on Jo’s side. She hadn’t been dead long, but few household lands are so dusty as the Kingdom of Underbed, and the light-gray coating I saw on the book when I brought it out made me think of Johanna’s face and hands in her coffin Jo in the Kingdom of Underground. Did it get dusty inside a coffin? Surely not, but I pushed the thought away. It pretended to go, but all day long it kept creeping back, like Tolstoy’s white bear. Johanna and I had both been English majors at the University of Maine, and like many others, I reckon, we fell in love to the sound of Shakespeare and the Tilbury Town cynicism of Edwin Arlington Robinson. Yet the writer who had bound us closest together was no college-friendly poet or essayist but W. Somerset Maugham, that elderly globetrotting novelist-playwright with the reptile’s face (always obscured by cigarette smoke in his photographs, it seems) and the romantic’s heart. So it did not surprise me much to find that the book under the bed was The Moon and Sixpence. I had read it myself as a late teenager, not once but twice, identifying passionately with the character of Charles Strickland. (It was writing I wanted to do in the South Seas, of course, not painting.) She had been using a playing card from some defunct deck as her place-marker, and as I opened the book, I thought of something she had said when I was first getting to know her. In Twentieth-Century British Lit, this had been, probably in 1980. Johanna Arlen had been a fiery little sophomore. I was a senior, picking up the Twentieth-Century Brits simply because I had time on my hands that last semester. ‘A hundred years from now,’ she had said, ‘the shame of the mid-twentieth-century literary critics will be that they embraced Lawrence and ignored Maugham.’ This was greeted with contemptuously good-natured laughter (they all knew Women in Love was one of the greatest damn books ever written), but I didn’t laugh. I fell in love. The playing card marked pages 102 and 103 Dirk Stroeve has just discovered that his wife has left him for Strickland, Maugham’s version of Paul Gauguin. The narrator tries to buck Stroeve up. My dear fellow, don’t be unhappy. She’ll come back . . . ‘Easy for you to say,’ I murmured to the room which now belonged just to me. I turned the page and read this: Strickland’s injurious calm robbed Stroeve of his self-control Blind rage seized him, and without knowing what he was doing he flung himself on Strickland. Strickland was taken by surprise and he staggered, but he was very strong, even after his illness, and in a moment, he did not exactly know how, Stroeve found himself on the floor. ‘You funny little man,’ said Strickland. It occurred to me that Jo was never going to turn the page and hear Strickland call the pathetic Stroeve a funny little man. In a moment of brilliant epiphany I have never forgotten how could I? it was one of the worst moments of my life I understood it wasn’t a mistake that would be rectified, or a dream from which I would awaken. Johanna was dead. My strength was robbed by grief. If the bed hadn’t been there, I would have fallen to the floor. We weep from our eyes, it’s all we can do, but on that evening I felt as if every pore of my body were weeping, every crack and cranny. I sat there on her side of the bed, with her dusty paperback copy of The Moon and Sixpence in my hand, and I wailed. I think it was surprise as much as pain; in spite of the corpse I had seen and identified on a high-resolution video monitor, in spite of the funeral and Pete Breedlove singing ‘Blessed Assurance’ in his high, sweet tenor voice, in spite of the graveside service with its ashes to ashes and dust to dust, I hadn’t really believed it. The Penguin paperback did for me what the big gray coffin had not: it insisted she was dead. You funny little man, said Strickland. I lay back on our bed, crossed my forearms over my face, and cried myself to sleep that way as children do when they’re unhappy. I had an awful dream. In it I woke up, saw the paperback of The Moon and Sixpence still lying on the coverlet beside me, and decided to put it back under the bed where I had found it. You know how confused dreams are logic like Dal clocks gone so soft they lie over the branches of trees like throw-rugs. I put the playing-card bookmark back between pages 102 and 103 a turn of the index finger away from You funny little man, said Strickland now and forever and rolled onto my side, hanging my head over the edge of the bed, meaning to put the book back exactly where I had found it. Jo was lying there amid the dust-kitties. A strand of cobweb hung down from the bottom of the box spring and caressed her cheek like a feather. Her red hair looked dull, but her eyes were dark and alert and baleful in her white face. And when she spoke, I knew that death had driven her insane. ‘Give me that,’ she hissed. ‘It’s my dust-catcher.’ She snatched it out of my hand before I could offer it to her. For a moment our fingers touched, and hers were as cold as twigs after a frost. She opened the book to her place, the playing card fluttering out, and placed Somerset Maugham over her face a shroud of words. As she crossed her hands on her bosom and lay still, I realized she was wearing the blue dress I had buried her in. She had come out of her grave to hide under our bed. I awoke with a muffled cry and a painful jerk that almost tumbled me off the side of the bed. I hadn’t been asleep long the tears were still damp on my cheeks, and my eyelids had that funny stretched feel they get after a bout of weeping. The dream had been so vivid that I had to roll on my side, hang my head down, and peer under the bed, sure she would be there with the book over her face, that she would reach out with her cold fingers to touch me. There was nothing there, of course dreams are just dreams. Nevertheless, I spent the rest of the night on the couch in my study. It was the right choice, I guess, because there were no more dreams that night. Only the nothingness of good sleep. How to cite Bag of Bones CHAPTER ONE, Essay examples

Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush, By Virginia Hamilton Essays

Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush, By Virginia Hamilton Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush, by Virginia Hamilton, was first published in 1982. The estimated reading level for this book is twelve years old and up. Some of the issues examined in the book, such as child abuse, disease, and drug use, will be better understood by junior high age students. This novel would probably attract more female readers than male. The protagonist is a teenage girl named Tree who lives with her mentally challenged brother, Dab. She is responsible for taking care of herself and Dab. Tree begins to see a ghost who reveals her early childhood to her. Throughout the novel we see Trees struggle with what the revelations signify about her life as well as her daily struggle to keep her tiny familynamely herself and her brotherafloat. SETTING: The story takes place in the late seventies. Tree and Dab live in Detroit. The story takes place mostly in the home, as well as in the places Tree is transported to by Brother Rush. Their home is not described in great detail, with the exception of the little room where Tree sits to draw and where Brother Rush appears. Tree loves the tiny room and while in it she draws pictures of families, of space. The fact that she so treasures this small place of her own is revealing of just how cramped the living space is. CHARACTERIZATION: The characters are well developed and behave realistically. Rather than tell us what each character is like, Hamilton lets each character reveal itself through his or her actions. For instance, we learn that Tree is protective of her older brother by how carefully she takes care of himas with helping him with his bathas well as by the concern she has in cooking their meals. These descriptions also serve to reveal Trees taking on of adult roles. Trees character is round. She changes as a result of what Brother Rush reveals to her about her past. Her perspective about herself as an African American is also altered through her conversation with Silversmith. Dab is a flat character; he stays the same from beginning to end. MVy changes in that she is humanized, particularly in the eyes of Tree. In the beginning of the novel MVy is described as an almost mythical, larger than life figure who appears bringing gifts and food, then leaves but whose presence permeates the dwe lling despite the brevity of the visits. Other characters include Silversmith and Old Miss Pricherd. Silversmith is a flat character. Old Miss Pricherd changes as a result of being asked to move in with Tree. This change is important as it relates to a major theme in Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush. THEME: The major theme in SWBR concerns love and acceptance. No one is infallible and in order to love we must accept each others deficiencies. MVy was unable to accept Dab and this led to the abuse she inflicted on him as a small child. Tree learns the truth about the abuse and must learn to forgive MVy in order to continue loving her. Acceptance is also echoed in the conversation she has with Silversmith; Tree must accept and appreciate her skin color in order that she not be self-conscious or ashamed. Old Miss Pricherd is a sneaky, mean-spirited woman at the beginning of the novel, but changes once she is allowed into the familyif only because it means no longer living alone. At the very end of the novel, Tree demonstrates her growth and acceptance of her new life by affectionately approaching the old woman (Granny Pricherd). STYLE: Hamiltons style is very direct, straightforward. This lends some credibility to the more fantastical aspects of the novel, namely the appearance of Brother Rush. She has her characters speak in colloquial grammar and at times carries that grammar to the narrative. This has the effect of not only drawing the reader in but of immersing the reader in a world that may be very different from her or his own. POINT OF VIEW: The story is told from Trees point of view. This is very effective, as it allows us to see how she feels about her family and her life. One