Writing a Research Paper on Cloud Storage for Education

Writing a Research Paper on Cloud Storage for Education Writing a Research Paper on Cloud Storage for Education For the past several years, cloud computing has been one of the most frequently heard terms. Nowadays we all understand the basic concept of the matter: cloud storage provides the use with an opportunity to avail of secure, safe and almost unlimited means of storing digital material on the web, without the necessity to depend on personal data centers and personal hardware. But how can a cloud computing become a part of an academic research paper? As an option, make sure to base your project on the advantages of the cloud storage for education. Instant Access from Anywhere. Forget all the â€Å"my neighbor’s dog ate my paper† excuses! From now on you can access your photo projects, papers, presentation from your personal mobile device or PC. Go Mobile! It’s time to leave your laptop at home because it’s time for your mobile phone to shine! All you need is your Smartphone to get a quick access to all the data, as well as share your files on the go. Just make certain to pick the device you may need and then – access all photos, files, music and so on via the Cloud. Easy File Share. If you need to instantly share some files with your class mates or professors, make sure to make use of the Cloud. Moreover, the item provides you with an opportunity to edit and send the files back while both drafts will be saved to the shared folder. Stay in Sync. Due to the multi-user sync, you can easily sync the same folder with your classmates locally. Thus, all the adds, changes and edits made to that folder will be updated on every PC automatically. Forget about the emailing back and forth and enjoy the most updated version of every file 24/7! Backup. Do not think about PC crushes, accidently dropped laptops, etc. Having the Cloud there with you will be 100% sure that all data will be automatically backed up. Apart from a bunch of benefits for the college and university students, the Cloud brings a lot of benefits for the teachers as well. Make sure to investigate this side of the matter in your research paper. Avail of the iPad During the Lesson. It’s not a secret that college and university professors use various tablets and gadgets in order to make the lessons more interesting with various videos, presentations and music files. Instant streaming without the wait will help them to easily pull stream videos and presentations. Collaborate in the Classroom. The Cloud provides the teachers with an opportunity to share all files with every student in the group or with the whole class. Thus, students can collaborate together on team papers. Instant Access to the Data. Professors have an instant access to the academic information from their work PC, tablet, which means the whole process of data organization as easy as pie. Use for Personal/Work Use. Cloud gives you a chance to create special folders for both – personal and work use. This makes the organization and distribution of data and documents simpler. If you need a custom written paper from our research paper service just visit our website and fill in the order form!

Gustar Rules in Spanish Inconsistently Applied

Gustar Rules in Spanish Inconsistently Applied Not all the rules of Spanish are straightforward or logical, and when it comes to the use of number-verb agreement with gustar, the rules arent always followed. More generally, the rules of number agreement are applied inconsistently when more than one subject follows the main verb of a sentence. Logic Applies Both Ways For a simple example of a sentence where this issue comes up, look at this sentence with two singular subjects: Me gusta la hamburguesa y el queso. (I like hamburger and cheese.) Or should it be this?: Me gustan la hamburguesa y el queso. You could defend either choice in a sentence like that. Using gustan would certainly seem logical, and it is indeed said that way sometimes. But it is far more common to use the singular, gusta. Its kind of like shortening me gusta la hamburguesa y me gusta el queso by leaving out the second me gusta, just as in English we might shorten the happy children and happy adults to the happy children and adults. Why say me gusta twice if once gets the message across? The Academy Explains According to the Royal Spanish Academy, the singular verb should be used in a sentence like this when the two things youre talking about are uncountable or abstract and they follow the verb (as is usually the case with gustar). Heres an example the Academy gives: Me gusta el mambo y el merengue. Note how the two subjects are uncountable (they are both types of music or dance). Here are some other sentences that follow this pattern: Es una red social de gente que le gusta el deporte y el ejercicio. (Its a social network of people who like sports and exercise.)Me encanta el manga y el anime. (I love manga and anime.)Me gusta la mà ºsica y bailar. (I like music and dancing.)Al presidente le falta el coraje y la voluntad polà ­tica para resolver los problemas de nuestro paà ­s. (The president lacks the courage and political will to resolve the problems of our country.)Si te gusta el cine y la tele, querrs pasar tiempo en California. (If you like movies and TV, you will want to spend time in California.) But the Academy would pluralize the verb if the objects are countable. One of the Academys examples:  En el patio  crecà ­an  un magnolio y una azalea. A magnolia and an azalea grew in the courtyard. Other examples of the Academys preference: A ella le encantan la casa y el parque. (She loves the house and the park.)Nos bastan el ratà ³n y el teclado. (The mouse and the keyboard were enough for us.)Me gustan ese camisa y ese bolso. (I like that shirt and that purse.) In real life, however, the singular verb (when it precedes two subjects) is used much more often than the Academy would suggest. In everyday speech, even when verbs such as gustar have two countable subjects, the singular verb is usually used. In the following examples, both sentences might be said by native speakers, but the first is more commonly heard even though the second one is grammatically preferable to the Academy: Me duele la cabeza y el està ³mago. Me duelen la cabeza y el està ³mago. (I have a headache and stomachache.)Me gusta mi cama y mi almohada. Me gustan mi cama y mi almohada. (I like my bed and my pillow.)A Raà ºl le gustaba el taco y el helado. A Raà ºl le gustaban el taco y el helado. (Raà ºl liked the taco and the ice cream.) As to the original example, if by hamburguesa the speaker means ground beef, both of the subjects would be uncountable and the Academy would prefer use of the singular verb, gusta. If the speaker referring to a type of sandwich, or a specific sandwich, which is countable, the Academy would prefer use the plural, gustan. In real life, however, youre likely to not get flak regardless of which version you use. Key Takeaways When gustar is preceded two or more singular subjects, native Spanish speakers frequently use the singular form of the verb.The Royal Spanish Academy approves use of the singular verb form when the subjects are abstract or uncountable.Other verbs such as doler and encantar can be used in the same way as gustar.

Communication in Ordinary People Movie Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Communication in Ordinary People - Movie Review Example Outwardly, they appear to be the model WASP family, but there is a complex undercurrent of emotion and family upheaval that belies the still waters on the surface, an unspoken communication that is escalating the level of conflict within the family as the family tries to cope with the death of the elder son of the family. This film presents a typical example of the conflicts arising out of the paradoxes and feedbacks highlighted by Watzlawick et al through their Pragmatic approach to communications. There is a great deal of disparity between what is being said in the family and what is actually meant to be said. In the aftermath of a traumatic situation, this brings out underlying conflicts and tensions due to the trauma created by the death of one member of the family, which makes them all view each other in a completely different light. This film demonstrates how a family may often be existing and communicating quite differently at the conventional level through their language yet, may, in fact, may be intending something quite different at the pragmatic level. This tension and paradox that is created are stretched until it reaches a point where adjustments have to be made that destroy the stability of the family so that the members of the family can genuinely communicate with each other.  Ã‚  Bateson (1951) reframed psychotherapy based on a horizontal approach that examined an individual’s relationships with those around him rather than focusing on Freud’s intensive vertical approach that stressed the process going on within the individual.  

Compare contrast romeo and juliet with west side story Essay

Compare contrast romeo and juliet with west side story - Essay Example First, the plays were written in different periods, so their characters are not similar. This is a statement to establish in the following discussion/comparison of the two plays. The two stories revolve around disagreements between families with opposing values and conclude in the demise of young adults. This is because the young people involved had a notion that their deep love to each other would surmount the aggression between the families (Gibbons 3). In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet’s family (Capulet) considered themselves as noble, while Romeo’s family (Montague) was a humble family. Juliet was a young virgin girl 14 years of age, who had been promised to marry a man of the family’s own choice. However, she cared less for the man. It occurred that Romeo, accompanied by his friends, crashed at the Capulet’s party and instantly fell in love with Juliet. At that time, when Juliet was falling in love with Romeo, she had no idea who he was. Juliet came to know more about Romeo from her cousin, who identified him as a family enemy. Romeo and his friends were ousted by the Capulet family from the party. Some days later, Romeo returned back to Juliet’s home where they met on her balcony. He slept with her and promised to marry her. The two families issued various threats against each other, and Romeo accidentally killed Juliet’s cousin (Bly 17). Romeo was banished from the city. Conversely, in the West Side Story, Tony was Polish while Maria was a Puerto Rican residing in New York. Just like the Montague and the Capulet, the two groups had people who protected them regardless of the aggressiveness between the two families. Tony is killed by a gang in the end as a result of the union between him and Maria (Laurents 3). Maria decided to move on after Tony’s death despite the strong love she had for him. The West Side Story plot and performance is in Manhattan Upper West Side. The story revolves around the conflict between two youth

Fair Value Accounting Essay Example for Free

Fair Value Accounting Essay This paper attempts to answer the questions: Is Fair Value Fair? In so answering the question there is a need to determine whether the use of fair value accurately portray the value underlying financial and economic transactions; to determine whether there is basis to have one universal standard of valuing the assets and obligations of all firms; to find out whether accounting standards would allow for both historical and fair value and still produce meaningful information for decision making; and establish one is more important between relevancy and reliability and whether one’s the importance each depend upon the financial user. 2. Analysis and Discussion 2. 1 What is meant by being fair? To be fair means giving what is due to a person. If applied to an asset purchased or liability assumed in business, fair value would simply mean that said asset or liability is neither overpriced nor underpriced as a matter of perception. Under the law of economics, fair value would refer to that market price which is approximated by the equilibrium price of a thing or good, which is the value of the something from a seller that is not forced to sell or from a buyer that is not forced to buy. In a business transaction there are always are investors, creditors, and other persons who must get their due in transactions that they will enter into. An investor will know what is fair if the person or entity will earn just enough return above cost of capital and in exchange for the risk that such person or entity is taking. The same must be true with a creditor that the person must also get paid on time on his credit plus a sufficient return for the risk in form of interest and penalties. In terms of viewing the corporation as a business entity, what is fair to it is what will allow it to have a sufficient return for the risk that it is taking above its cost of doing business or cost of capital. To arrive at what is fair the investors and creditors who are called users of financial information, these users must know the true or accurate information about of the company so that they will know whether they are going to earn or lose and make the necessary decision whether they will sell, buy or hold to their investments. In other words, to have the chance of being treated fairly from a transaction, one must have the opportunity to have the true or accurate value of asset or liability being dealt with in a business transaction. The opportunity is thus normally supplied by financial reports prepared by companies and which are made public. It is in these financial reports where values whether fair or historical are reported in accordance with prescribed accounting standards that may come from the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in the case of US companies and IFRS in case of companies operating in the European Union and in other countries which have adopted the IAS or IFRS. Fair value accounting was made pursuant to FAS 157 as issued by US FASB for companies to reflect the accounting information on how much are the real values of assets, liabilities and equity in the balance sheet as contrasted with presenting the information using the historical cost accounting. The purpose of FAS 157 then was built on a framework whereby financial users are given the chance about the true state or fair value of assets, liabilities and equity for decision making under the impression that things will be fair to users of financial information about a company. Incidentally, FAS 157 defines fair value almost very closely to what was discussed and analyzed so far. It is the price that would be received â€Å"to sell an asset or paid to transfer a liability in an orderly transaction between market participants in a measurement date† (Sortur, 2007). 2. 2 Does the use of fair value accurately portray the value underlying financial and economic transactions? To the extent that fair value concept is discussed so far, there is the presumed proposition that the use of fair value will accurately portray the value underlying the financial economic transaction. As to whether this is true, this subsection will have to evaluate the subsequent result on what happened upon the application of 157. In the case of banks, there are those who have to write down the value of assets because of their perception that values have declined due to existing market conditions (Chasan, 2008: Rees-Mogg, 2007). The economic effects however were not favorable to affected interested parties since this action of the banks has produced a backlash. Investors of these banks have lost values of their investments. As a result, the banks have become more risky and depositors lost their trust too in the banking system. If indeed the banks were just reflecting the true values of the assets, how come the reaction of these banks as matter of complying with the requirements of the FAS I57 was not good for many of the affected parties? Would it proper then to deduce that the application of FAS 157 is not fair or that FAS 157 fair value is not fair? If the answers to both of these questions are in the affirmative, then this would have the connotation that what is unfavorable to others is not fair. But how if the values being reflected in the write down are indeed the true values, would the fact that users of financially information get adversely affected make the FAS 157 not fair any more? It would seem that it would be not correct to say fair value accounting or the use of fair value will not be fair if users get affected or have the perception of not getting what they feel or perceive to deserve even if the information is indeed accurate. Otherwise, fair value accounting would be equated with sure profits which could never be within the contemplation of the use of information in decision making. Being fair therefore must first and foremost be characterized to represent the true and accurate information and consequence would be justified by such quality of information. To answer squarely whether the use of fair value accurately portray the value underlying financial and economic transactions, this paper would have to answer in the affirmative. Based on foregoing analysis the FAS 157 aims to reflect the values what would approximate the market price since it is â€Å"the price to sell an asset or paid to transfer a liability in an orderly transaction between market participants in a measurement date† (Sortur, 2007). FAS 157 fair value is therefore the result of the business transaction using the exit price (Sortur, 2007) and is determined by the buyers and sellers in the market. It is therefore not the job of FAS 157 to create what is unfair but would have only to reflect the true values of assets or liabilities that would have to be reported. Therefore, fair value accounting or the use of fair value must be upheld to be fair if it would reflect or would cause the reflection of what are true values. Indeed, it must be the capital markets or the buyers and sellers who will determine the market value or fair value and not the accounting standard. The only role of the accounting standard is to cause its reflection in financial reports of companies because of the requirement to make public their financial statement to investors which would reflect the fair values of assets and liabilities. There is argument that the intention of 157 Accounting rule FAS 157 is good but one cannot prevent people from taking advantage of the new rule to what could further their interest. It is further argued that in whatever one would like to look at it, the generic thing about business is still the desire for profit by which people are motivated with their personal interest to get more wealth (Brigham and Houston, 2002). In response, the use of fair value does consent to allowing people to be taken advantage but cannot prevent those who would want to and those who do not know how to process information for decision making. If the banks which wrote down asset values are indeed taking advantage of the use of fair value accounting, it is still the transactions between the previous buyer or seller that have caused the reaction which started it and the role of accounting standard is just to reflect them (Meigs and Meigs, 1995). If the requirement to report what is happening is unfair, what will then be fair? Chasan (2008) narrated about some investors expressing their doubts on the effectiveness or fairness of fair value accounting method used especially in the context of evaporating markets caused by the financial crisis. The author however admitted that the use of FAS 157 as an accounting standard was made to improve transparency to investors. Citing big write-downs being made big companies like Citigroup and Merrill Lynch Co Inc. which has made multibillion-dollar reductions on subprime-related asset-backed securities and other assets described as hard-to-price assets, the issue of whether fair value is still fair has become a controversial question (Chasan, 2008). The argument being asserted is about the volatility of being caused the use of fair value. Rephrased simply, can fair value justify the volatility? Volatility is a term used in business which connotes changes in market prices and which causes risks to investors (Droms, 1990; Helfert, 1994). It is feared that with the desire to create transparency, increased risk from the use of fair value is coming out as a result. To resolve the issue, the previous answer to the question on whether the use of fair value could justify big losses if what is being reflected or reported about company values are still true, would in effect cover the issue of volatility being blamed on the use of fair value. Hence, this paper believes, that fair value which stands for what is true must be upheld as argued earlier. There are concerns that because of volatility caused by the use of fair value accounting, the money makers would just be benefiting hedge funds since they are those to profit from volatility (Chasan 2008). In answer, it could argued that such is the nature of fair value accounting, to allow the market forces to move freely without people being compelled to enter into buying and selling transactions. If there are losers, there are also losers and they are part of the process. It is also argued that those who are complaining about the effects of credits being blamed on the use of fair value accounting are investors or groups of them, who may have been instrumental in pushing for the shift to fair value accounting. One of these groups is called the CFA Centre for Financial Market Integrity, with analysts and portfolio managers composing the group (Chasan 2008). The group and other groups 2007 had their aggressive lobbying to use fair value more in financials. These investor groups could not be only be winners in a market transaction, they could also be losers sometimes; otherwise the market is not operating efficiently. 2. 3 Should there be one universal standard of valuing the assets and obligations of all firms? The issue of whether there should be universal standard for valuing the assets and obligation may be very ideal since when one now talks of universal fair value as a universal standard for example, one will have to consider macroeconomic conditions of the different companies in the world. Since not all nations are similarly situated, at least economically, there is the strong probability that universal value could not be implemented. The question is being propounded to help in setting what is the fair value in accounting like the universality of human rights. However its impracticality will prevent the attainment of the objective. Accounting values are not human rights. Another thing is the difficulty of measuring the risks in business in different countries which are factors in determining the cost of capital of doing business. The difference in risks depends upon many factors including macroeconomic conditions which are affected by political developments. In answer therefore to the question, it will have to plainly say that the vision of universal standard is laudatory and this could be a part of an approximate desire to the internationalization of accounting in many part of the world. There is the plan to harmonize all accounting standards in the world. The FAS 157 definition was actually made part of the plan of IASB which makes IFRS, to adopt the former for the use of those using the IAS or IFRS (Sortur, 2007). In other words, efforts are made to approximate universality of standard in valuing the assets and obligations of all firms but its realization could only possibly become when the time will come for a universal government. 2. 4 Can accounting standards allow for both historical and fair value and still produce meaningful information for decision making? Accounting standards are in effect guides to users to help users make informed decisions in business. Having both historical and fair value must strike the balance of getting to the extreme of having one and disregarding the other. In other words, one needs to know what is historical for comparison to what is fair value or market value to make an informed judgment. Accounting standards must then work for the attainment for the creation of balance between the two values. As to whether the accounting standards can allow for both historical and fair value and still produce meaningful information for decision making, is answered again in the affirmative. This can be tackled better by breaking the given statement into two propositions first and then combine them latter. The first proposition would be declared settled in the fact the accounting standards can allow both historical and fair value together. The second proposition is that the use of both will still produce meaningful information. This first proposition is accomplished since the practice have been done for a long time already since in the case of valuing of inventories, accounting standards allow the valuing them of lower of cost or market under the IAS 2. (Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, 2008). The fact that inventories can be valued at cost means the historical cost is maintained but requirement of presenting the fair value of inventory if it has gone down in the market is also a part of the standard which in effect allows the working of fair value concept. There are other IAS concepts which allowed fair value accounting and historical value accounting. Thus this section is not much of a problem. The second proposition appears to also to have been fulfilled by the use of IAS as illustrated. More meaningful information is in fact reflected by allowing a combination of fair value and historical cost in the valuation of assets and liabilities of companies. By combining the validation done is confirming the application of two proposition, it could be sufficient to strongly answer the question in the affirmative. 5. Relevancy and Reliability: Is one more important than the other, depending upon the financial user? Both relevancy and reliability are requirements for qualitative characteristics of accounting information. Forcing one to be is more important than the other would be asking the wrong question if the objective is only to determine whether preparing financial information using their fair values is fair. In fact to say that an information must be relevant carries the presupposition that the information must also be reliable. This is on premise that reliability connotes objectivity of information which is very much akin to being truth or fair. Information is relevant or has is relevancy character if it influences one’s decision about a particular issue. On the other hand, reliability deals with the objectivity or accuracy of the information. How could a decision maker consider information as relevant when there is no reliability of the information? On the other hand having reliable information would be of no value if the same is not needed in the decision to be made. The two characteristics must therefore go together. 3. Conclusion The issue of whether fair value accounting or the use of fair in accounting for company assets and liabilities is fair must be answered in the affirmative. What is fair is not what has caused much damaged to a person or entity if such damage was a result of failure to follow the basic rules of making investment. The effect of fair value should not be used to allow one to just justify greed while disregarding the rights of others. A loser under a fair value accounting is comparable to a person who is taking too much risk thus the return could also be high but could be low because of the working of the market. As long as buyers and sellers are not being compelled to complete their transaction, fair value is still fair. Fair value accounting will lead to the truth but its value will also depend on the users of information after they have done their roles in the market. The user will still need to make a comparison with what is historical and what is the current fair value as caused by economic conditions. Present accounting standards have caused the reporting of both kind of information but users must also be intelligent in doing their part. Fair value as a concept in accounting standard was just made to correct the apparent failure of purely historical cost accounting. If fair value accounting is fair, it does not imply that the standard must go back to historical accounting but historical information must still be reported and allow the user to make a difference in how to process the information. Since fair value and historical cost could co-exist together, the same must be the better option as it will provide a balance between historical and fair value accounting. References: Brigham and Houston, Introduction to Financial Management, Thomson-South Western, USA, 2002 Chasan, Emily (2008), Is fair value accounting really fair? {www document} URL, http://www. reuters. com/article/reutersEdge/idUSN1546484120080226, Accessed October 20, 2008 Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (2008), Summary of IFRS for IAS 2, {www document} URL http://www. iasplus. com/standard/ias02. htm , Accessed October 21, 2008. Droms (1990) Finance and Accounting for Non Financial Managers, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, England Helfert, Erich (1994), Techniques for Financial Analysis, IRWIN, Sydney, Australia Meigs and Meigs, 1995, Financial Accounting, McGraw-Hill, Inc, London, UK Rees-Mogg (2007), Why FAS 157 strikes dread into bankers, {www document} URL http://www. timesonline. co. uk/tol/comment/columnists/william_rees_mogg/article2852547. ece, Accessed October 21, 2008. Sortur (2007) Fair Value Measurement, The Chartered Accountant {www document} URL, http://icai. org/resource_file/96471564-1574. pdf, Accessed October 21, 2008. ]

Arrested Development :: essays research papers

Default individualization is a path which someone can follow by accepting personally bounding identities which are socially accepted. Basically each person accepting the same identity of that of the person right next to them. By not being their own individual, these identities may possibly delay growth into adulthood. Things in life happen by default for these people, whatever happens just happens, and it is not planned out or thought of to any extent. This individualization does not stimulate growth as a person, because one can just look onto others (whose are actions, choices, and behaviors are socially accepted) to choose their life choices. Or someone can choose a path of developmental individualization. They can easily have their own personal identity apart and different from any others. People can actively have a well thought out plan to change your life for the better and to maintain this plan for life improvement in the adult world As times have changed, so has our culture. Our country tends to veer children towards one particular individualization over another. It seems developmental individualization is more common. People have expectations by society which they must fulfill, and are expected to do so at particular times in their lives, as said by Tamara Haraven who argues the importance of â€Å"†¦ the timing of transitions, with those to adulthood becoming more uniform and orderly.† People are expected in life to go to school, work, get married, start a family, all these things are expected to be done at a certain time in their life. People may not want to do all this in this order and whatever point in their life, but they do because they are expected to do so. This is all supposed to happen developmentally. People are molded by society, actively making decisions and trying to be ahead of life’s obstacles. This is occurring in not only America but as well as in Europe, as Wallace observe s how instead of becoming their own individual people, people â€Å"choose identities from among and increasingly complex array of options†. Sven Morch makes similar observations, on youths who must ‘master’ their adolescence ‘ways’ in order to become successful adults, showing the importance of structure to their culture. Life must be followed in a particular sequence according to ‘contemporary capitalism’ in order to succeed in life. With a million and one people trying to get the same task done, people do things because they have to, not because they want to.

Bag of Bones CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Devore was mad, all right, mad as a hatter, and he couldn't have caught me at a worse, weaker, more terrified moment. And I think that everything from that moment on was almost pre-ordained. From there to the terrible storm they still talk about in this part of the world, it all came down like a rockslide. I felt fine the rest of Friday afternoon my talk with Bonnie left a lot of questions unanswered, but it had been a tonic just the same. I made a vegetable stir-fry (atonement for my latest plunge into the Fry-O-Lator at the Village Cafe) and ate it while I watched the evening news. On the other side of the lake the sun was sliding down toward the mountains and flooding the living room with gold. When Tom Brokaw closed up shop, I decided to take a walk north along The Street I'd go as far as I could and still be assured of getting home by dark, and as I went I'd think about the things Bill Dean and Bonnie Amudson had told me. I'd think about them the way I sometimes walked and thought about plot-snags in whatever I was working on. I walked down the railroad-tie steps, still feeling perfectly fine (confused, but fine), started off along The Street, then paused to look at the Green Lady. Even with the evening sun shining fully upon her, it was hard to see her for what she actually was just a birch tree with a half-dead pine standing behind it, one branch of the latter making a pointing arm. It was as if the Green Lady were saying go north, young man, go north. Well, I wasn't exactly young, but I could go north, all right. For awhile, at least. Yet I stood a moment longer, uneasily studying the face I could see in the bushes, not liking the way the little shake of breeze seemed to make what was nearly a mouth sneer and grin. I think perhaps I started to feel a little bad then, was too preoccupied to notice it. I set off north, wondering what, exactly, Jo might have written . . . for by then I was starting to believe she might have written something, after all. Why else had I found my old typewriter in her studio? I would go through the place, I decided. I would go through it carefully and . . . help im drown The voice came from the woods, the water, from myself. A wave of lightheadedness passed through my thoughts, lifting and scattering them like leaves in a breeze. I stopped. All at once I had never felt so bad, so blighted, in my life. My chest was tight. My stomach folded in on itself like a cold flower. My eyes filled with chilly water that was nothing like tears, and I knew what was coming. No, I tried to say, but the word wouldn't come out. My mouth filled with the cold taste of lakewater instead, all those dark minerals, and suddenly the trees were shimmering before my eyes as if I were looking up at them through clear liquid, and the pressure on my chest had become dreadfully localized and taken the shapes of hands. They were holding me down. ‘Won't it stop doing that?' someone asked almost cried. There was no one on The Street but me, yet I heard that voice clearly. ‘Won't it ever stop doing that?' What came next was no outer voice but alien thoughts in my own head. They beat against the walls of my skull like moths trapped inside a light-fixture . . . or inside a Japanese lantern. help I'm drown help I'm drown blue-cap man say git me blue-cap man say dassn't let me ramble help I'm drown lost my berries they on the path he holdin me he face shimmer n look bad lemme up lemme up 0 sweet Jesus lemme up oxen free allee allee oxen free? PLEASE OXEN FREE you go on and stop now ALLEE OXEN FREE she scream my name she scream it so LOUD I bent forward in an utter panic, opened my mouth, and from my gaping, straining mouth there poured a cold flood of . . . Nothing at all. The horror of it passed and yet it didn't pass. I still felt terribly sick to my stomach, as if I had eaten something to which my body had taken a violent offense, some kind of ant-powder or maybe a killer mushroom, the kind Jo's fungi guides pictured inside red borders. I staggered forward half a dozen steps, gagging dryly from a throat which still believed it was wet. There was another birch where the bank dropped to the lake, arching its white belly gracefully over the water as if to see its reflection by evening's flattering light. I grabbed it like a drunk grabbing a lamp-post. The pressure in my chest began to ease, but it left an ache as real as rain. I hung against the tree, heart fluttering, and suddenly I became aware that something stank an evil, polluted smell worse than a clogged septic pool which has simmered all summer under the blazing sun. With it was a sense of some hideous presence giving off that odor, something which should have been dead and wasn't. Oh stop, allee allee oxen free, I'll do anything only stop, I tried to say, and still nothing came out. Then it was gone. I could smell nothing but the lake and the woods . . . but I could see something: a boy in the lake, a little drowned dark boy lying on his back. His cheeks were puffed out. His mouth hung slackly open. His eyes were as white as the eyes of a statue. My mouth filled with the unmerciful iron of the lake again. Help me, lemme up, help I'm drown. I leaned out, screaming inside my head, screaming down at the dead face, and I realized I was looking up at myself, looking up through the rose-shimmer of sunset water at a white man in blue jeans and a yellow polo shirt holding onto a trembling, birch and trying to scream, his liquid face in motion, his eyes momentarily blotted out by the passage of a small perch coursing after a tasty bug, I was both the dark boy and the white man, drowned in the water and drowning in the air, is this right, is this what's happening, tap once for yes twice for no. I retched nothing but a single runner of spit, and, impossibly, a fish jumped at it. They'll jump at almost anything at sunset; something in the dying light must make them crazy. The fish hit the water again about seven feet from the bank, spanking out a circular silver ripple, and it was gone the taste in my mouth, the horrible smell, the shimmering drowned face of the Negro child a Negro, that was how he would have thought of himself whose name had almost surely been Tidwell. I looked to my right and saw a gray forehead of rock poking out of the mulch. I thought, There, right there, and as if in confirmation, that horrible putrescent smell puffed at me again, seemingly from the ground. I closed my eyes, still hanging onto the birch for dear life, feeling weak and sick and ill, and that was when Max Devore, that madman, spoke from behind me. ‘Say there, whoremaster, where's your whore?' I turned and there he was, with Rogette Whitmore by his side. It was the only time I ever met him, but once was enough. Believe me, once was more than enough. His wheelchair hardly looked like a wheelchair at all. What it looked like was a motorcycle sidecar crossed with a lunar lander. Half a dozen chrome wheels ran along both sides. Bigger wheels four of them, I think ran in a row across the back. None looked to be exactly on the same level, and I realized each was tied into its own suspension-bed. Devore would have a smooth ride over ground a lot rougher than The Street. Above the back wheels was an enclosed engine compartment. Hiding Devore's legs was a fiberglass nacelle, black with red pinstriping, that would not have looked out of place on a racing car. Implanted in the center of it was a gadget that looked like my DSS satellite dish . . . some sort of computerized avoidance system, I guessed. Maybe even an autopilot. The armrests were wide and covered with controls. Holstered on the left side of this machine was a green oxygen tank four feet long. A hose went to a clear plastic accordion tube; the accordion tube led to a mask whi ch rested in Devore's lap. It made me think of the old guy's Stenomask. Coming on the heels of what had just happened, I might have considered this Tom Clancyish vehicle a hallucination, except for the bumper-sticker on the nacelle, below the dish. I BLEED DODGER BLUE, it said. This evening the woman I had seen outside The Sunset Bar at Warrington's was wearing a white blouse with long sleeves and black pants so tapered they made her legs look like sheathed swords. Her narrow face and hollow cheeks made her resemble Edvard Munch's screamer more than ever. Her white hair hung around her face in a lank cowl. Her lips were painted so brightly red she seemed to be bleeding from the mouth. She was old and she was ugly, but she was a prize compared to Mattie's father-in-law. Scrawny, blue-lipped, the skin around his eyes and the corners of his mouth a dark exploded purple, he looked like something an archeologist might find in the burial room of a pyramid, surrounded by his stuffed wives and pets, bedizened with his favorite jewels. A few wisps of white hair still clung to his scaly skull; more tufts sprang from enormous ears which seemed to have melted like wax sculptures left out in the sun. He was wearing white cotton pants and a billowy blue shirt. Add a little black beret and he would have looked like a French artist from the nineteenth century at the end of a very long life. Across his lap was a cane of some black wood. Snugged over the end was a bright red bicycle grip. The fingers grasping it looked powerful, but they were going as black as the cane itself. His circulation was failing, and I couldn't imagine what his feet and his lower legs must look like. ‘Whore run off and left you, has she?' I tried to say something. A croak came out of my mouth, nothing more. I was still holding the birch. I let go of it and tried to straighten up, but my legs were still weak and I had to grab it again. He nudged a silver toggle switch and the chair came ten feet closer, halving the distance between us. The sound it made was a silky whisper; watching it was like watching an evil magic carpet. Its many wheels rose and fell independent of one another and flashed in the declining sun, which had begun to take on a reddish cast. And as he came closer, I felt the sense of the man. His body was rotting out from under him, but the force around him was undeniable and daunting, like an electrical storm. The woman paced beside him, regarding me with silent amusement. Her eyes were pinkish. I assumed then that they were gray and had picked up a bit of the coming sunset, but I think now she was an albino. ‘I always liked a whore,' he said. He drew the word out, making it horrrrrrr. ‘Didn't I, Rogette?' ‘Yes, sir,' she said. ‘In their place.' ‘Sometimes their place was on my face!' he cried with a kind of insane perkiness, as if she had contradicted him. ‘Where is she, young man? Whose face is she sitting on right now? I wonder. That smart lawyer you found? Oh, I know all about him, right down to the Unsatisfactory Conduct he got in the third grade. I make it my business to know things. It's the secret of my success.' With an enormous effort, I straightened up. ‘What are you doing here?' ‘Having a constitutional, same as you. And no law against it, is there? The Street belongs to anyone who wants to use it. You haven't been here long, young whoremaster, but surely you've been here long enough to know that. It's our version of the town common, where good pups and vile dogs may walk side-by-side.' Once more using the hand not bunched around the red bicycle grip, he picked up the oxygen mask, sucked deeply, then dropped it back in his lap. He grinned an unspeakable grin of complicity that revealed gums the color of iodine. ‘She good? That little horrrrrr of yours? She must be good to have kept my son prisoner in that nasty little trailer where she lives. And then along comes you even before the worms had finished with my boy's eyes. Does her cunt suck?' ‘Shut up.' Rogette Whitmore threw back her head and laughed. The sound was like the scream of a rabbit caught in an owl's talons, and my flesh crawled. I had an idea she was as crazy as he was. Thank God they were old. ‘You struck a nerve there, Max,' she said. ‘What do you want?' I took a breath . . . and caught a taste of that putrescence again. I gagged. I didn't want to, but I couldn't help it. Devore straightened in his chair and breathed deeply, as if to mock me. In that moment he looked like Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, striding along the beach and telling the world how much he loved the smell of napalm in the morning. His grin widened. ‘Lovely place, just here, isn't it? A cozy spot to stop and think, wouldn't you say?' He looked around. ‘This is where it happened, all right. Ayuh.' ‘Where the boy drowned.' I thought Whitmore's smile looked momentarily uneasy at that. Devore didn't. He clutched for his translucent oxygen mask with an old man's overwide grip, fingers that grope rather than reach. I could see little bubbles of mucus clinging to the inside. He sucked deep again, put it down again. ‘Thirty or more folks have drowned in this lake, and that's just the ones they know about,' he said. ‘What's one boy, more or less?' ‘I don't get it. Were there two Tidwell boys who died here? The one that got blood-poisoning and the one ‘ ‘Do you care about your soul, Mr. Noonan? Your immortal soul? God's butterfly caught in a cocoon of flesh that will soon stink like mine?' I said nothing. The strangeness of what had happened before he arrived was passing. What replaced it was his incredible personal magnetism. I have never in my life felt so much raw force. There was nothing supernatural about it, either, and raw is exactly the right word. I might have run. Under other circumstances, I'm sure I would have. It certainly wasn't bravery that kept me where I was; my legs still felt rubbery, and I was afraid I might fall down. ‘I'm going to give you one chance to save your soul,' Devore said. He raised a bony finger to illustrate the concept of one. ‘Go away, my fine whoremaster. Right now, in the clothes you stand up in. Don't bother to pack a bag, don't even stop to make sure you turned off the stoveburners. Go. Leave the whore and leave the whorelet.' ‘Leave them to you.' ‘Ayuh, to me. I'll do the things that need to be done. Souls are for liberal arts majors, Noonan. I was an engineer.' ‘Go fuck yourself.' Rogette Whitmore made that screaming-rabbit sound again. The old man sat in his chair, head lowered, grinning sallowly up at me and looking like something raised from the dead. ‘Are you sure you want to be the one, Noonan? It doesn't matter to her, you know you or me, it's all the same to her.' ‘I don't know what you're talking about.' I drew another deep breath, and this time the air tasted all right. I took a step away from the birch, and my legs were all right, too. ‘And I don't care. You're never getting Kyra. Never in what remains of your scaly life. I'll never see that happen.' ‘Pal, you'll see plenty,' Devore said, grinning and showing me his iodine gums. ‘Before July's done, you'll likely have seen so much you'll wish you'd ripped the living eyes out of your head in June.' ‘I'm going home. Let me pass.' ‘Go home then, how could I stop you?' he asked. ‘The Street belongs to everyone.' He groped the oxygen mask out of his lap again and took another healthy pull. He dropped it into his lap and settled his left hand on the arm of his Buck Rogers wheelchair. I stepped toward him, and almost before I knew what was happening, he ran the wheelchair at me. He could have hit me and hurt me quite badly broken one or both of my legs, I don't doubt but he stopped just short. I leaped back, but only because he allowed me to. I was aware that Whitmore was laughing again. ‘What's the matter, Noonan?' ‘Get out of my way. I'm warning you.' ‘Whore made you jumpy, has she?' I started to my left, meaning to go by him on that side, but in a flash he had turned the chair, shot it forward, and cut me off. ‘Get out of the TR, Noonan. I'm giving you good ad ‘ I broke to the right, this time on the lake side, and would have slipped by him quite neatly except for the fist, very small and hard, that hammered the left side of my face. The white-haired bitch was wearing a ring, and the stone cut me behind the ear. I felt the sting and the warm flow of blood. I pivoted, stuck out both hands, and pushed her. She fell to the needle-carpeted path with a squawk of surprised outrage. At the next instant something clouted me on the back of the head. A momentary orange glow lit up my sight. I staggered backward in what felt like slow motion, waving my arms, and Devore came into view again. He was slued around in his wheelchair, scaly head thrust forward, the cane he'd hit me with still upraised. If he had been ten years younger, I believe he would have fractured my skull instead of just creating that momentary orange light. I ran into my old friend the birch tree. I raised my hand to my ear and looked unbelievingly at the blood on the tips of my fingers. My head ached from the blow he had fetched me. Whitmore was struggling to her feet, brushing pine needles from her slacks and looking at me with a furious smile. Her cheeks had filled in with a thin pink flush. Her too-red lips were pulled back to show small teeth. In the light of the setting sun her eyes looked as if they were burning. ‘Get out of my way,' I said, but my voice sounded small and weak. ‘No,' Devore said, and laid the black barrel of his cane on the nacelle that curved over the front of his chair. Now I could see the little boy who had been determined to have the sled no matter how badly he cut his hands getting it. I could see him very clearly. ‘No, you whore-fucking sissy. I won't.' He shoved the silver toggle switch again and the wheelchair rushed silently at me. If I had stayed where I was, he would have run me through with his cane as surely as any evil duke was ever run through in an Alexandre Dumas story. He probably would have crushed the fragile bones in his right hand and torn his right arm clean out of its socket in the collision, but this man had never cared about such things; he left cost-counting to the little people. If I had hesitated out of shock or incredulity, he would have killed me, I'm sure of it. Instead, I rolled to my left. My sneakers slid on the needle-slippery embankment for a moment. Then they lost contact with the earth and I was falling. I hit the water awkwardly and much too close to the bank. My left foot struck a submerged root and twisted. The pain was huge, something that felt like a thunderclap sounds. I opened my mouth to scream and the lake poured in that cold metallic dark taste, this time for real. I coughed it out and sneezed it out and floundered away from where I had landed, thinking The boy, the dead boy's down here, what if he reaches up and grabs me? I turned over on my back, still flailing and coughing, very aware of my jeans clinging clammily to my legs and crotch, thinking absurdly about my wallet I didn't care about the credit cards or driver's license, but I had two good snapshots of Jo in there, and they would be ruined. Devore had almost run himself over the embankment, I saw, and for a moment I thought he still might go. The front of his chair jutted over the place where I had fallen (I could see the short tracks of my sneakers just to the left of the bitch's partially exposed roots), and although the forward wheels were still grounded, the crumbly earth was running out from beneath them in dry little avalanches that rolled down the slope and pit-a-patted into the water, creating interlocking ripple patterns. Whitmore was clinging to the back of the chair, yanking on it, but it was much too heavy for her; if Devore was to be saved, he would have to save himself. Standing waist-deep in the lake with my clothes floating around me, I rooted for him to go over. The purplish claw of his left hand recaptured the silver toggle switch after several attempts. One finger hooked it backward, and the chair reversed away from the embankment with a final shower of stones and dirt. Whitmore leaped prankishly to one side to keep her feet from being run over. Devore fiddled some more with his controls, turned the chair to face me where I stood in the water, some seven feet out from the overhanging birch, and then nudged the chair forward until he was on the edge of The Street but safely away from the drop off. Whitmore had turned away from us entirely; she was bent over with her butt poking in my direction. If I thought about her at all, and I can't remember that I did, I suppose I thought she was getting her breath back. Devore appeared to be in the best shape of the three of us, not even needing a hit from the oxygen mask sitting in his lap. The late light was full in his face, making him look like a half-rotted jack-o'-lantern which has been soaked with gas and set on fire. ‘Enjoying your swim?' he asked, and laughed. I looked around, hoping to see a strolling couple or perhaps a fisherman looking for a place where he could wet his line one more time before dark . . . and yet at the same time I hoped I'd see no one. I was angry, hurt, and scared. Most of all I was embarrassed. I had been dunked in the lake by a man of eighty-five . . . a man who showed every sign of hanging around and making sport of me. I began wading to my right south, back toward my house. The water was about waist-deep, cool and almost refreshing now that I was used to it. My sneakers squelched over rocks and submerged tree-branches. The ankle I'd twisted still hurt, but it was supporting me. Whether it would continue to once I got out of the lake was another question. Devore twiddled his controls some more. The chair pivoted and came rolling slowly along The Street, keeping pace with me easily. ‘I didn't introduce you properly to Rogette, did I?' he said. ‘She was quite an athlete in college, you know. Softball and field hockey were her specialties, and she's held onto at least some of her skills. Rogette, demonstrate your skills for this young man.' Whitmore passed the slowly moving wheelchair on the left. For a moment she was blocked out by it. When I could see her again, I could also see what she was holding. She hadn't been bent over to get her breath. Smiling, she strode to the edge of the embankment with her left arm curled against her midriff, cradling the rocks she had picked up from the edge of the path. She selected a chunk roughly the size of a golfball, drew her hand back to her ear, and threw it at me. Hard. It whizzed by my left temple and splashed into the water behind me. ‘Hey!' I shouted, more startled than afraid. Even after everything that had preceded it, I couldn't believe this was happening. ‘What's wrong with you, Rogette?' Devore asked chidingly. ‘You never used to throw like a girl. Get him!' The second rock passed two inches over my head. The third was a potential tooth-smasher. I batted it away with an angry, fearful shout, not noticing until later that it had bruised my palm. At the moment I was only aware of her hateful, smiling face the face of a woman who has plunked down two dollars in a carny shooting-pitch and means to win the big stuffed teddybear even if she has to blast away all night. And she threw fast. The rocks hailed down around me, some splashing into the ruddy water to my left or right, creating little geysers. I began to backpedal, afraid to turn and swim for it, afraid that she would throw a really big one the minute I did. Still, I had to get out of her range. Devore, meanwhile, was laughing a wheezy old man's laugh, his wretched face crunched in on itself like the face of a malicious apple-doll. One of her rocks struck me a hard, painful blow on the collarbone and bounced high into the air. I cried out, and she did, too: ‘Hai!,' like a karate fighter who's gotten in a good kick. So much for orderly retreat. I turned, swam for deeper water, and the bitch brained me. The first two rocks she threw after I began to swim seemed to be range-finders. There was a pause when I had time to think I'm doing it, I'm getting beyond her area of . . . and then something hit the back of my head. I felt it and heard it the same way it went CLONK!, like something you'd read in a Batman comic. The surface of the lake went from bright orange to bright red to dark scarlet. Faintly I could hear Devore yelling approval and Whitmore squealing her strange laugh. I took in another mouthful of iron-tasting water and was so dazed I had to remind myself to spit it out, not swallow it. My feet now felt too heavy for swimming, and my goddam sneakers weighed a ton. I put them down to stand up and couldn't find the bottom I had gotten beyond my depth. I looked in toward the shore. It was spectacular, blazing in the sunset like stage-scenery lit with bright orange and red gels. I was probably twenty feet out from the shore now. Devore and Whitmore were at the edge of The Street, watching. They looked like Dad and Mom in a Grant Wood painting. Devore was using the mask again, but I could see him grinning inside it. Whitmore was grinning, too. More water sloshed in my mouth. I spit most of it out, but some went down, making me cough and half-retch. I started to sink below the surface and fought my way back up, not swimming but only splashing wildly, expending nine times the energy I needed to stay afloat. Panic made its first appearance, nibbling through my dazed bewilderment with sharp little rat teeth. I realized I could hear a high, sweet buzzing. How many blows had my poor old head taken? One from Whitmore's fist . . . one from Devore's cane . . . one rock . . . or had it been two? Christ, I couldn't remember. Get hold of yourself, for God's sake you're not going to let him beat you this way, are you? Drown you like that little boy was drowned? No, not if I could help it. I trod water and ran my left hand down the back of my head. Not too far above the nape I encountered a goose-egg that was still rising. When I pressed on it the pain made me feel like throwing up and fainting at the same time. Tears rose in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. There were only traces of blood on the tips of my fingers when I looked at them, but it was hard to tell about cuts when you were in the water. ‘You look like a woodchuck caught out in the rain, Noonan!' Now his voice seemed to roll to where I was, as if across a great distance. ‘Fuck you!' I called. ‘I'll see you in jail for this!' He looked at Whitmore. She looked back with an identical expression, and they both laughed. If someone had put an Uzi in my hands at that moment, I would have killed them both with no hesitation and then asked for a second clip so I could machine-gun the bodies. With no Uzi to hand, I began to dogpaddle south, toward my house. They paced me along The Street, he rolling in his whisper-quiet wheelchair, she walking beside him as solemn as a nun and pausing every now and then to pick up a likely-looking rock. I hadn't swum enough to be tired, but I was. It was mostly shock, I suppose. Finally I tried to draw a breath at the wrong time, swallowed more water, and panicked completely. I began to swim in toward the shore, wanting to get to where I could stand up. Rogette Whitmore began to fire rocks at me immediately, first using the ones she' had lined up between her left arm and her midriff, then those she'd stockpiled in Devore's lap. She was warmed up, she wasn't throwing like a girl anymore, and her aim was deadly. Stones splashed all around me. I batted another away a big one that likely would have cut open my forehead if it had hit but her follow-up struck my bicep and tore a long scratch there. Enough. I rolled over and swam back out beyond her range, gasping for breath, trying to keep my head up in spite of the growing ache in the back of my neck. When I was clear, I trod water and looked in at them. Whitmore had come all the way to the edge of the embankment, wanting to get every foot of distance she could. Hell, every damned inch. Devore was parked behind her in his wheelchair. They were both still grinning, and now their faces were as red as the faces of imps in hell. Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Another twenty minutes and it would be getting dark. Could I keep my head above water for another twenty minutes? I thought so, if I didn't panic again, but not much longer. I thought of drowning in the dark, looking up and seeing Venus just before I went under for the last time, and the panic-rat slashed me with its teeth again. The panic-rat was worse than Rogette and her rocks, much worse. Maybe not worse than Devore. I looked both ways along the lakefront, checking The Street wherever it wove out of the trees for a dozen feet or a dozen yards. I didn't care about being embarrassed anymore, but I saw no one. Dear God, where was everybody? Gone to the Mountain View in Fryeburg for pizza, or the Village Cafe for milkshakes? ‘What do you want?' I called in to Devore. ‘Do you want me to tell you I'll butt out of your business? Okay, I'll butt out!' He laughed. Well, I hadn't expected it to work. Even if I'd been sincere about it, he wouldn't have believed me. ‘We just want to see how long you can swim,' Whitmore said, and threw another rock -a long, lazy toss that fell about five feet short of where I was. They mean to kill me, I thought. They really do. Yes. And what was more, they might well get away with it. A crazy idea, both plausible and implausible at the same time, rose in my mind. I could see Rogette Whitmore tacking a notice to the cOMMUNITY DOIN'S board outside the Lakeview General Store. TO THE MARTIANS OF TR-90, GREETINGS! Mr, MAXWELL DEVORE, everyone's favorite Martian, will give each resident of the TR ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS if no one will use The Street on FRIDAY EVENING, THE 17th OF JULY, between the hours of SEVEN and NINE P.M. Keep our ‘SUMMER FRIENDS' away, too! And remember: GOOD MARTIANS are like GOOD MONKEYS: they SEE no evil, HEAR no evil, and SPEAK no evil! I couldn't really believe it, not even in my current situation . . . and yet I almost could. At the very least I had to grant him the luck of the devil. Tired. My sneakers heavier than ever. I tried to push one of them off and succeeded only in taking in another mouthful of lakewater. They stood watching me, Devore occasionally picking the mask up from his lap and having a revivifying suck. I couldn't wait until dark. The sun exits in a hurry here in western Maine as it does, I guess, in mountain country everywhere but the twilights are long and lingering. By the time it got dark enough in the west to move without being seen, the moon would have risen in the east. I found myself imagining my obituary in the New York Times, the headline reading POPULAR ROMANTIC SUSPENSE NOVELIST DROWNS IN MAINE. Debra Weinstock would provide them with the author photo from the forthcoming Helen's Promise. Harold Oblowski would say all the right things, and he'd also remember to put a modest (but not tiny) death notice in Publishers Weekly. He would go half-and-half with Putnam on it, and I sank, swallowed more water, and spat it out. I began pummelling the lake again and forced myself to stop. From the shore, I could hear Rogette Whitmore's tinkling laughter. You bitch, I thought, you scrawny bi Mike, Jo said. Her voice was in my head, but it wasn't the one I make when I'm imagining her side of a mental dialogue or when I just miss her and need to whistle her up for awhile. As if to underline this, something splashed to my right, splashed hard. When I looked in that direction I saw no fish, not even a ripple. What I saw instead was our swimming float, anchored about a hundred yards away in the sunset-colored water. ‘I can't swim that far, baby,' I croaked. ‘Did you say something, Noonan?' Devore called from the shore. He cupped a mocking hand to one of his huge waxlump ears. ‘Couldn't quite make it out! You sound all out of breath!' More tinkling laughter from Whitmore. He was Johnny Carson; she was Ed Mcmahon. You can make it. I'll help you. The float, I realized, might be my only chance there wasn't another one on this part of the shore, and it was at least ten yards beyond Whitmore's longest rockshot so far. I began to dogpaddle in that direction, my arms now as leaden as my feet. Each time I felt my head on the verge of going under I paused, treading water, telling myself to take it easy, I was in pretty good shape and doing okay, telling myself that if I didn't panic I'd be all right. The old bitch and the even older bastard resumed pacing me, but they saw where I was headed and the laughter stopped. So did the taunts. For a long time the swimming float seemed to draw no closer. I told myself that was just because the light was fading, the color of the water draining from red to purple to a near-black that was the color of Devore's gums, but I was able to muster less and less conviction for this idea as my breath shortened and my arms grew heavier. When I was still thirty yards away a cramp struck my left leg. I rolled sideways like a swamped sailboat, trying to reach the bunched muscle. More water poured down my throat. I tried to cough it out, then retched and went under with my stomach still trying to heave and my fingers still looking for the knotted place above the knee. I'm really drowning, I thought, strangely calm now that it was happening. This is how it happens, this is it. Then I felt a hand seize me by the nape of the neck. The pain of having my hair yanked brought me back to reality in a flash it was better than an epinephrine injection. I felt another hand clamp around my left leg; there was a brief but terrific sense of heat. The cramp let go and I broke the surface swimming really swimming this time, not just dog-paddling, and in what seemed like seconds I was clinging to the ladder on the side of the float, breathing in great, snatching gasps, waiting to see if I was going to be all right or if my heart was going to detonate in my chest like a hand grenade. At last my lungs started to overcome my oxygen debt, and everything began to calm down. I gave it another minute, then climbed out of the water and into what was now the ashes of twilight. I stood facing west for a little while, bent over with my hands on my knees, dripping on the boards. Then I turned around, meaning this time to flip them not just a single bird but that fabled double eagle . There was no one to flip it to. The Street was empty. Devore and Rogette Whitmore were gone. Maybe they were gone. I'd do well to remember there was a lot of Street I couldn't see. I sat cross-legged on the float until the moon rose, waiting and watching for any movement. Half an hour, I think. Maybe forty-five minutes. I checked my watch, but got no help there; it had shipped some water and stopped at 7:30 P.M. To the other satisfactions Devore owed me I could now add the price of one Timex Indiglo that's $29.95, asshole, cough it up. At last I climbed back down the ladder, slipped into the water, and stroked for shore as quietly as I could. I was rested, my head had stopped aching (although the knot above the nape of my neck still throbbed steadily), and I no longer felt off-balance and incredulous. In some ways, that had been the worst of it trying to cope not just with the apparition of the drowned boy, the flying rocks, and the lake, but with the pervasive sense that none of this could be happening, that rich old software moguls did not try to drown novelists who strayed into their line of sight. Had tonight's adventure been a case of simple straying into Devore's view, though? A coincidental meeting, no more than that? Wasn't it likely he'd been having me watched ever since the Fourth of July . . . maybe from the other side of the lake, by people with high-powered optical equipment? Paranoid bullshit, I would have said . . . at least I would have said it before the two of them almost sank me in Dark Score Lake like a kid's paper boat in a mudpuddle. I decided I didn't care who might be watching from the other side of the lake. I didn't care if the two of them were still lurking on one of the tree-shielded parts of The Street, either. I swam until I could feel strands of waterweed tickling my ankles and see the crescent of my beach. Then I stood up, wincing at the air, which now felt cold on my skin. I limped to shore, one hand raised to fend off a hail of rocks, but no rocks came. I stood for a moment on The Street, my jeans and polo shirt dripping, looking first one way, then the other. It seemed I had this little part of the world to myself. Last, I looked back at the water, where weak moonlight beat a track from the thumbnail of beach out to the swimming float. ‘Thanks, Jo,' I said, then started up the railroad ties to the house. I got about halfway, then had to stop and sit down. I had never been so utterly tired in my whole life.

Character Comparison †“Hills Like White Elephants” Essay

Both â€Å"Hills like White Elephants† by Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner’s â€Å"A Rose for Emily† center around two women who are repressed by their lives’ circumstances. However, outside of their feelings, their situations could not be more different. Miss Emily Grierson is trapped in a life of solitude, despondency, and desperation. The girl, or â€Å"Jig†, is equally as desperate, but her repression is not born of loneliness or restraint—it is the child of her freedom. Repression comes in several forms, but it will suffocate and consume you. In â€Å"A Rose for Emily†, Miss Emily Grierson lives a life of quiet turmoil. Her life has revolved around an inexplicable loneliness mostly characterized by the harsh abandonment of death. The most vital imagery utilized by Faulkner demonstrates Miss Emily’s mental state. She, being self-imprisoned within the confines of her home, is the human embodiment of her house; Faulkner describes it as â€Å"†¦stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps—an eyesore among eyesores. † (Faulkner 308). Miss Emily is also decaying, but it is subtle and internal—the awful smell that begins to permeate from her dwelling is a reflection of the withering woman within rotting. Perhaps most tragically, Miss Emily’s isolation is far from self-inflicted. Her blind devotion to the ones she loves—her father, her lover, her home—only serves to further condemn her actions. Her neighbors’ disregard toward her inability to let go of her father after his death, despite the delicacy of her state, caused for her madness to fester. â€Å"She told them her father was not dead. She did that for three days†¦We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. † (Faulkner 311). Their negligence of all the warning signs—even after her lover’s vanishing, the deterioration of her home, and Miss Emily’s inability to accept reality—was the most prevalent form of repression in this story. Contrariwise, â€Å"Hills like White Elephants† does not deal with an imposed imprisonment. â€Å"Jig† is a young, modern woman who is faced with the decision of prolonging her freedom and the stability of her relationship or accepting motherhood and the responsibility that comes with it. It is not to say that motherhood is a prison; it is that motherhood would be the death of everything she loved, mainly travelling, and the very stability of her relationship with her lover, â€Å"the American†. â€Å"The American† says, â€Å"‘That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy. ’† (Hemingway 115) which unequivocally shows that the center of conflict inside of their relationship is the presumed pregnancy. There are several instances in the story that â€Å"the American† reiterates â€Å"Jig’s† options for her future. Although he expresses that he would support and love her no matter what the ultimate choice is, she feels conflicted and her pain, which builds throughout the story and as the conversation progresses, becomes more obvious. What is most interesting is, as his second thoughts about the unspoken abortion spike, her resistance to discuss the topic any further grows in tandem. Although the two heroes’ love for one another is evident, there is the aching uncertainty between them: Is there room for a child in their relationship built of travelling, drinking, and discovery? â€Å"Jig’s† repression, just like Miss Emily’s, is inevitable because of their presented circumstance. These stories are alike in the way of both of the women’s love for their current situation. Although Miss Emily’s heinous actions were intertwined with madness, they were based upon her love for her â€Å"sweetheart† and her father, disregarding herself. She is so frightened of facing the word without her beloveds that she would rather lie next to a long dead man than allow him to leave her. Comparably, â€Å"Jig† is also willing to put herself, and her needs, aside for the man that she loves. She is willing to set aside her doubts—even while the American begins to doubt what to do—to do what is best for them to survive as a couple. She simply states, to her lover’s dismay, â€Å"‘†¦I don’t care about me. And I’ll do it and then everything will be fine. ’† (Hemingway 116). In spite of her fears and apprehensions, she knew that it would only strengthen them in the end and shield them from more difficulties. â€Å"Jig’s† strength, just like Miss Emily’s, is undeniable. They both processed their feelings solely based on their own merits. However flawed either of them may have been, it is evident that their actions are driven by their human need for companionship. Their love for their respective partners trumps that of personal safety and perception. They are willing to risk everything, from their health to their freedom, just to have more time with their lovers. Therefore, both stories are ultimately romantic. In closing, both women had their hindrances that repressed them terribly. Fear and love, being the main motivating factors in these stories, showed themselves in many ways and sheltered the women through their personal struggles. However skewed Miss Emily or â€Å"Jig† could be perceived as being, they were still worthy of compassion; their respective actions towards preserving love were desperate, but also more than understandable. Love can drive people to do things that are out of character—or in Miss Emily’s case, insane—especially when one of the parties involved have lost a sense of their own being inside of it. With their love taking paramount over themselves in mind, their choices, despite what anyone might say, were acts of self-preservation. Works Cited Hemingway, Ernest. â€Å"Hills like White Elephants. † The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Allison Booth, and Kelly J. Mays. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. 113-118. Print. Faulkner, William. â€Å"A Rose for Emily. † The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Allison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. 308-315. Print.

What Is APA

What Is APA As you begin to explore standards for writing style, you might find yourself wondering, What is APA? The APA is the American Psychological Association, and the APA style is a method of citation they honed for their publications. It has become standard style for many universities and publications, because of its ease and uniformity. Why Citations Are Important As humans, our best ideas and analyses build on the knowledge that has been gathered before we came along. Whether youre performing literary analysis on an archaic poem, or whether youre writing about the latest scientific or technological principles, you will need to read the works of others. In so doing, you will want to make sure that you are giving credit where credit is due. Citations enable you to use the works of others as the foundation for your own claims. Using citations, you can easily reference the sources you use as you formulate your new concepts and theories. The APA citation guide allows you to incorporate these easy pieces of documentation into your thesis or term paper. What Is APA Doing for Academia? By creating a standard for documentation, APA has revolutionized and streamlined the writing process. When you write a paper requiring extensive quotation, you can end up with a bulky and hard-to-read paper, with most of your page taken up with citations. Such tedious documentation can be difficult on the readers eyes, and open the door for needless errors. So what is APA doing to change this? By creating a documentation style based around parenthetical citations, your citations take merely a few seconds to type. You are able to enclose an abbreviated version of your citation in a set of parentheses at the end of the pertinent sentence. An expounded list of works cited wraps up the paper, with full publication details. This enables you to create a streamlined paper, with the least amount of interruption.

How To Plan A Blog Post In 10 Minutes

How To Plan A Blog Post In 10 Minutes Every website owner loves the idea of a blog. They love hearing about how adding a blog to your website is one of the fastest and easiest ways to increase traffic, improve search engine rankings, build a big email list, gain expert positioning, and attract new clients. They love the impact it can have on their social media content strategy and they love that blogging for business is free- it doesnt add another monthly bill. But blogging isnt really free- it takes time, energy, focus, and commitment. Blogging is a long-term strategy, so even though time is being taken away from billable work to write blog posts, there more than likely isnt going to be an immediate return on investment. Plus, because were an instant gratification society, this causes frustration and makes site owners want to spend less and less time creating new blog content, because its a lot of work and they dont get an immediate reward. So, while website owners love the idea of blogging for business, they are not using their blogs! Often nothing new has been published since the site originally went live, or it's been three, six, or even twelve months since any new content has been added. Yikes! Can you relate? Do you like the idea of having a blog, but feel overwhelmed by the realities of managing a blog and creating new content regularly- good content, you can be proud of? Is it hard to come up with ideas for new blog posts? Are you struggling to come up with great headlines and find the time to write new posts? Wouldn't it be great if you knew how to quickly generate new blog post ideas or have a stash of post ideas available to you at any time? Do you need help finding inspiration for your blog content and a guide to craft a good post? Yes? Well, you're in luck. I am going to walk you through five different ways on how to plan a blog post in 10 minutes or less so you can write it better and faster- without stress, frustration, or overwhelm.  I am also going to give you a tool I created for myself to help me create great headlines and map out a ton of blog post ideas at one time- and you don't even have to opt-in or give me an email to get it. 5 ways to plan a blog post in under 10 minutes with a nice checklist to get started.I know everyone is not inspired the same way. Some people find inspiration in visuals, others need the headline to be perfect before they can write, some people hate to write, and still others will procrastinate until the last minute. To make blogging for business easier and faster, you don't need a cookie cutter formula. You need the right tactics and strategies at your fingertips to help you find your unique creative groove. Once you find that place, planning  blog content will be easier and writing blog posts will happen faster. 1. Like To Plan Ahead? Keep An Idea File For Posts. An idea for a blog post may strike at any time. An image, a tweet or Facebook post, an experience, another person's actions, a blog post you read, a client question, a business struggle, or even a talk at an event could inspire a new idea. Create a place to write down your blog post ideas so you have them to pull from in the future. You could do this in a multitude of software programs, in a journal, or even on your phone. I keep a plain text file on my desktop and I use the Notes app on my phone. But here's the kicker: You can't just write down the idea or the headline. You need to add context to the idea and create a mini post outline. This often takes far less than 10 minutes, and it takes all the stress out of writing the post later. Here's what to write down when a new blog post idea strikes: The topic or idea. Any possible headlines. How you came up with the idea. Any story that may fit with it (this is a lifesaver, as you think you'll remember it, but you may not). The link to your inspiration source if appropriate. Inspired by a tweet or Facebook post? Snag the embed code so you don't have to hunt for it later. The key message you want to communicate in the post or major bullet points. Any image ideas. Don't overthink it. Write down everything you can about the topic at that moment, and don't worry about writing in complete sentences. Don't edit yourself now; you can do that later when you're writing the final blog post. This exercise is just about getting the meat of the post out of your head. When you write down your blog ideas, you need to capture more than just your headlines.If you do this every time you have a new idea for a blog post, you'll build up a valuable idea file full of blog posts that are already halfway complete! Then when you need to write a post, you can grab one from your file, finish it up, and hit publish! 2. Work Better Under Pressure? Set A Timer. I love timers. I love the feeling of the clocking ticking down, the pressure on, and a task to complete. A challenge was accepted, adrenaline kicks in, and I'm thinking let's do this. I often do my best work under pressure with a deadline. I tune out all distractions, focus, and get things done in a much shorter amount of time than normal. Using a timer is merely a faster, more effective way of time blocking tasks. So, if you're like me, you may benefit from using this same approach when brainstorming blog post ideas. Here's how it works in only 10 minutes: Choose one topic, set a timer for 3 minutes, and brainstorm as many headlines as you can on that single topic. Don't edit as you go. Don't second guess. Don't stop or slow down. Every idea is good. Write it down no matter what. When the timer buzzes, stop. Set the timer for 1 minute and in that time, review each headline, circling the best ones (shoot for at least two or three). Set the timer for 6 minutes and in that time, quickly outline the blog post content for each headline. List what content to include, image ideas, story ideas, key messages to communicate, the problem it solves, and why someone should care. If something doesn't come to you for a headline right away, skip it and move on. At the end of this exercise, you'll have at least a few great posts on your topic that are already halfway done. You just need to finish them up later. Need help? I LOVE this exercise. I created a fill-in-the-blank headline guide with more than 200 Mad Libs style headlines to help me quickly brainstorm great headlines with little effort. I just set my timer, fill in the blanks for as many as I can, and then loop back and set my timer again to fill in the content notes for each one. You can download it free (no opt-in needed). 3. Hate Writing? Speak Your Post. I don't know about you, but many of my great ideas don't come to me when I'm conveniently in front of my computer or at home with a journal nearby. And sometimes I can't write them down- like when I'm driving or in the shower. If you can't write down your ideas, or you simply don't like writing- that's okay! You can still create blog content regularly without writing. All you need to do is speak. Yes, you can speak your content- and often do it much faster than writing it. Everyone can talk out loud. It's easy! When we speak, we don't judge, delete, self edit, or criticize ourselves like we do when writing. Plus it is MUCH easier to edit and refine existing content than it is to write it from scratch. Sometimes you just can't write down your blog ideas. Speak them out loud.When you've got a great blog post idea, simply grab your smartphone, your computer, a digital recorder, or use a service like freeconferencecall.com to record your post ideas. Then have the recording transcribed. It's that easy- and you can do it less than 10 minutes. 4. More Of A Visual Person? Start With The Imagery. If you're a visual person who is inspired more by imagery, it's okay to start there. I get great ideas for new posts when looking through stock photo sites and search for images with my brand keywords or the topic I am interested in writing about. But be careful- this can be a huge time suck. You may start looking at images and find that hours have gone by in what seemed like minutes. Here's how to plan a blog post using visuals in 10 minutes: Set a timer for 4 minutes, visit your favorite stock photo site, and search for images on your topic.  For every image you find that gives you a post idea, note the image number, and either add it to a lightbox or download it. When the timer buzzes, stop. Set the timer again for 6 minutes and write down the headline or post topic and all the notes, thoughts, and ideas you have for each image. (Use the same list I shared with you on #1.) Plan a blog post using visuals as your inspiration.When I find an image that inspires a new blog post, I download the image, crop it, and upload to my site. I then create a new post, assign the image, and make all of my post notes in the draft. This way, I can come back to the post and finish later, and I don't have to worry about finding the image again because it's already done and added to the post. 5. Stumped By Technology? Grab A Pencil. Many people are shocked to hear I brainstorm, make notes, and plan out my blog posts with a good old fashioned pencil and paper. Often I'll write an entire article by hand, then refine and edit it when I type it up. Some people just find that their creativity flows faster and easier on paper instead of in front of a screen. If this is true for you, own it. Get yourself a new sharp pencil or a great pen and some quality paper, or a beautifully designed journal. Then write and write some more- it doesn't have to be full sentences or complete thoughts. Here's what I recommend: Get your pen or pencil and paper and find a comfortable, quiet, cozy spot free from distractions. Set a timer for ten minutes. Write down the topic a blog post topic at the top of your paper. Then write down everything you think of- possible headlines, stories, examples, bullet points, key messages, problems and solutions, resources, and more. Write until the timer runs out. In this scenario, you're focusing on really fleshing out all of your thoughts, ideas, and opinions on one single topic, instead of a few different topics. This approach is often my go-to strategy for mapping out the content for longer, more in-depth blog posts. Challenge: For 3  weeks, 21 days, set aside 10 minutes each day to complete this exercise, writing down a different topic each day. Not only will your writing get better and you'll get faster at generating ideas, but 21 days is the length of time it takes to create a habit. Creating a habit of daily writing and idea generation will benefit both your business and your blog. Create A Repeatable Process And Stick With It If creating new blog content has been tough for you in the past, I highly recommend you give each of the five different ways to plan  blog posts a try to see which one is easiest and most successful for you. Remember, the more detail you provide about your topic up front, the faster and easier it will be to write the full blog post later.

How the Dalai Lama is Found Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

How the Dalai Lama is Found - Essay Example He says that only Dalai Lama himself can tell about his future reincarnation and that no one else should try to manipulate people or abuse the system (Lama, 2010). All these events raise people’s curiosity about the way in which a Dalai Lama is ‘found’ and enthroned. The curiosity is also flamed by movies such as Little Buddha starring Keanu Reeves. The film revolves around the same concept and shows the spiritual master reincarnating as one soul in three different bodies (Smith, 100). Many critics who question the very concept of reincarnation question the validity of such traditions. But this concept has mass acceptance in the Indian sub-continent and Tibet. Tibetans believe that their Dalai Lamas are reincarnations of Avalokiteshvara, the personification of Compassion, who is also the patron saint of Tibet. According to the traditional Tibetan beliefs, Avalokiteshvara reincarnates repeatedly on this earth to serve humanity and hence for this mission he postpones his own nirvana. Dalai Lama, literally meaning ‘The Ocean of Wisdom’, was a title that was given by Mongolian king Altan Khan to the third head of Tibetan Buddhism. Since then it became a tradition to address the head of Tibet as Dalai Lama (Byrant, 94). There are many other traditions and the most important one is that of finding the reincarnated Dalai Lama. There is no one fixed method of finding Dalai Lama. Various methods have come into existence with the passing time. There have been many Dalai Lamas who have successfully predicted the place and time of their birth. On the other occasions prospective reincarnation’s identification of the belonging of his past life is a major signal of him being a Dalai Lama. This method was also used in finding the current Dalai Lama. The process of identification is not limited to the dead Dalai Lama and the prospective reincarnation. There is other

Business-Level and Corporate-Level Strategies Essay - 2

Business-Level and Corporate-Level Strategies - Essay Example The organization represents the actual market penetration of 82%. In addition, the organization sells mobility of accurate voice and data through significant wireless services. Business Level Strategies of AT&T AT&T is one of the most popular telecommunications brand in global market place. The organization followed unique business level strategy to enhance their business performances. Business level strategy includes cost leadership strategy, differentiation strategy and focus strategy. Implementation of effective business level strategy helped the organization to become one of the strongest global brands within the telecommunication industry. Business level strategy of AT&T has been described below. Cost Leadership strategy The organization focuses on the reduction of business operation cost in order to offer the products to the end customers in a reasonable price. This competitive pricing strategy helped the organization to achieve the leading spot in the US telecommunication indu stry. For example, the organization provides several effective services, such as Rollover Minutes and Family Unit Plan. The organization reduced the service processing cost to deliver the services in a low price level. Moreover, the organization has implemented several niche marketing strategies. The organization provides, TDMA, UMTS and GSM service in minimal price to their clients. Effective cost leadership strategy helped the organization to develop significant client base. Differentiation Strategy Effective product and service differentiation strategy helped AT&T to meet the market demand and customer satisfaction level. The organization collaborated with Apple Corporation. AT&T started to sell their GSM and Wireless services through the iPhones. The organization is successfully acquiring leading global clients. It is helping them to secure effective market share. Unique accord to the competitive global market place has effectively differentiated the brand from its existing glob al competitors (Brenton, 2007). Utilization of wide spectrum offers exclusive video conferring service to its target customers. Focus Strategy AT&T is the only telecommunication organization in US that committed effective customer service. The organization has implemented effective niche marketing strategy. People can get linked and connected with each other in any place through the efficient telecommunication and broadband service of AT&T. The organization effectively diversified their business operation in several emerging global markets. AT&T provides HSPDA, Voice PTT, Video Sharing and Voice-IP services to its global customers. In addition, exclusive channel exposure helped AT&T to achieve potential competitive advantages. Question 2 The successful story of AT&T portrays 130 years old history. The giant telecommunication service provider effectively served the US customers through exclusive telecommunication service. From the foundation of AT&T by Graham Bell to the modern era, the global telecommunication industry has astonishingly evidenced various key events of the organization. This part of the study will determine the corporate level strategies of AT&T. Corporate Level Strategies Telephone was introduced by Graham Bell in the year 1875. After the successful establishment, the organization has diversified their business operations in various emerging global market place. AT&T follows vertical integration structure in the organization.