There’s nothing wrong in buying terms papers

On-line paper assistance services are a fast growing kind of business. When we browse the internet, a large number of sites are available in giving paper assistance services. This kind of business saturated the internet. These sites earn a great amount of money everyday and they continue to grow and reproduce in number. This has been one of the most serious issues that schools all over world are dealing. They deem that this kind of business is unethical and immoral.The academic world views this kind of business as a business that teaches the students to be dishonest and lazy in their academic performance instead of teaching them to be responsible and hard working for the attainment of their academic advancement. Indeed, most people view this business as an academic disease. This is a disease that slowly eats the integrity of the academic world and slowly erodes its ethical status, a disease that is very hard to battle. Most students nowadays are fond of ordering papers from the said businesses above.Students just visit sites and after a moment, their term papers are ready for submission. Instead of making their own paper, they would rather opt to order and buy a paper made by these sites in the internet because of the promise of getting a high standard that will result to goods for the students. Students don’t work hard and sweat anymore for their papers. Given the situation in today’s academic world, a question arises. Is it ethical to buy terms papers? This paper is a position paper regarding the posed question.The position of the writer is â€Å"There’s nothing wrong in buying term papers’. This paper will provide arguments regarding the claim and hopefully make the academic world view term papers’ buying as not a wrong act but rather an act of helping students achieve their dreams of a better and fulfilling life in the future. REASONS FOR THE CLAIM There’s nothing wrong in buying term papers in paper assistance bus inesses. This claim comes from the reason that this kind of business helps a lot of people achieve their dreams of a better life.This macro-level reason for the position will be backed up by three sub- reasons. First, students can save time in buying term papers and the saved time can be used in working in order to earn. Second, an academically poor student does not necessarily mean a poor employee in the future. Third, the assistance students get from paper assistance sites will most probably give them high grades which are vital in their employment application in the future. It is of a great fact that many students are not full-time students. Many students are also working to help support their own education.A lot of families are in financial crisis all over the world. Students’ as also workers give great relief to their families in terms of being able to find means to support their studies. In ordering term papers, students can save time and effort in making it themselves. After ordering, the student will just wait for the order to arrive. The trade in of costs of payment to sites where they order and the cost of students’ potential income as working is beneficial to the students. This statement will be further discussed below.Let us try to examine a baby- sitting job. A baby sitter earns $7 an hour. A student will spend time writing a 5- page paper for 10 hours including research of the topic. Ten hours is already a significant amount of time. A paper assistance business will probably charge their clients at an average of $8 per page. A 5-page paper will then cost $40. The income of an 8 hour work by a baby sitter is $ 56. In this situation, the benefit that a working student will get from ordering a term paper is $16 in quantity. $16 then is of big help in support for his daily needs.In the situation above, not only the student benefits from the income he gets but also it lightens the load of his parents in supporting his studies. This is a manifestation of a good son or daughter to his parents. The opportunity from saving time gives a student the means to continue his education and achieve his goal of graduating. The student will benefit financially from ordering a term paper and the financial benefit will be vital for his education and his life in general. An academically poor student does not necessarily mean a poor employee in the future.Many employees achieved the top in a certain company or organization without a very good college grades record to show. They just achieved their success by working hard and never ceasing the determination to succeed. Achieving success in working careers does not reside in having high grades in college but in the determination of the person to be on top of the company or organization, to be successful. Determination is the biggest element of success. To say that a student who is poor in academic performance will become poor in his performance as an employee is a fallacy.Many teacher s are caught up with looking at the academic performance of their students instead of looking at the attitude of perseverance and determination. Ordering a term paper will help poor academic performers have good grades. Having good grades will make them graduate and will give them an opportunity to be employed. Being an employee does not mean writing term papers again. Let’s try to look at one example. A teacher in philosophy advised his students to make a term paper regarding Plato’s definition of love.In an employee’s life, there can be no way that he can ever put Plato’s love in the context of the organization he is working and to the nature of his job. What is needed for an employee is not how wide is his understanding on Plato’s philosophy but on his performance in the nature of his job or career. Only if a student will become a teacher himself that he needs that kind of knowledge to be applied. Most people are caught up with grades as the bas is for judging the capacity of a person. Ordering terms papers which has the high possibility of having good grades will then be a way of a student to have good grades.Having good grades will produce a big possibility of good employment. A good employment status is what most or perhaps all people aim in life. Therefore, ordering term papers can help the students to get high grades and have a good employment in the future. There is nothing wrong ordering term papers. In the discussion above, ordering term papers only becomes an avenue for a lot of good opportunities and benefits. The act of ordering is a great means in achieving the dream of most people to graduate in college.The end in this situation is of good side. These businesses are means in making people achieve their dreams. This act is so vital in people’s lives that it must not be condemned and looked upon as unethical and immoral, rather, this kind of act must be looked upon as essential to many people’s live s. In helping people achieve their dreams, another good thing will be given birth. The family of the students will benefit from the success of their sons and daughters. Finding a good job for the students would mean earning a significant amount of money.Earning a significant amount of money would then give an employee a capacity of not only supporting himself but also in giving help to his parents. This is the aspect of life that people must look upon, the aspect of life that entails responsibility of a son to his parents, an aspect of life that is essential. Another good situation that will arise by benefiting from ordered term papers is the situation of giving the next generations a good life. Every student that became an employee will have his own family in the future. In having his own family in the future, he will surely raise children.These children need a good life for them to grow in a good environment. The ability of the children’s parents to give them a good life co mes from good employment. Good employment comes from good grades in college and good grades in college come from ordered term papers. The discussed reasons above are the one’s giving grounds to the claim that there’s nothing wrong in ordering term papers. The basis for my arguments is J. S. Mills’ â€Å"Utilitarianism†. His philosophy states that â€Å"the end justifies the means†. It is very true that ordered term papers will give birth to a lot of good effects.As long as the end benefits a lot of people and as long as it gives happiness to a greater number of people, the means are ethical. CONCLUSION Therefore, ordering term papers are only means to a desired end that will benefit a greater number of people, thus, making it a right thing to do. This is due to the fact that ordered term papers will give students a chance to get good grades. Having good grades will then produce a good employment opportunity for them. Being employed in a good earnin g job, they will be able to help their parents and give their future children a better environment to grow.BIBLIOGRAPHYFerrari, Joseph R. Impostor tendencies and academic dishonesty: Do they cheat their way to success?. Social Behavior and Personality An International Journal, 2005. Underwood, John, and Szabo, Attila. Academic offences and E-learning: individual propensities in cheating. British Journal of Educational Technology, 2003. Ethical Issues involving On-line Paper Services. 15 Dec. 2006

Curriculum Planning History Essay

Introduction Curriculum Planning History has several historical or political occurrences that have mostly influenced current curriculum design through various teaching styles and patterns. Educational communities shape and mold our society and society in turn impacts the curriculum. Majority of all stakeholders speak openly concerning their views today in hopes to persuade legislatures and school officials about decisions going forth or changing within school systems. In the last 10 years some of the most dramatically changes within curriculum in the schools has resulted due to the increasing number of US youth in school, the diversity of the US population, traditional classroom setting activities, increase in pre-kindergarten students beginning school, the likelihood of diminishing smaller schools, minimizing teacher/pupil ratios at a slow pace, technological future: and the future becoming technology, and who is left to teach becomes a critical question. The ELL laws and SIOP have impacted our educational communities’ curriculum development in both negative and positive ways. For example, some of the benefits of SIOP for non-ELL teachers are dramatic increase awareness in professional-development programs on how to teach English-language learners as a plus in the implementation of the law. Nevertheless, the No Child Left Behind Act could be thought of as a disadvantage more than a benefit to English-language learners, this belief is one of the few researchers who have studied the impact that the law has had on instruction. I personally believe in the NCLB Act and I was very much an advocate for the Act when it initially became effective. Also we must acknowledge the â€Å"gifted education† movement and how it identifies with the initial curriculum development both negatively and positively from its first implementations of similar development and specifications. Most Influential Historical/Political Occurrences The melting pot approach has interested educators in the integration of diversity. The melting pot approach was adopted in the 60s and 70s, soon quickly becoming known nationwide in the United States at the same time interacting with similar subjects of various cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. Metaphoric speaking contents of the pot–people of different cultures, languages and religions are combined so as to lose their distinct identities resulting in a final product that is quite interesting but nothing like the normal consistency at start. Resulting in more multicultural, multiethnic and multi-religious societies it is important that curriculum understands and reflect these changes. As stated by Ornstein and Hunkins (1998), â€Å"the complexion of our students is changing from one colour to various shades of colour and this adding of colour and cultural diversity will continue into the foreseeable future† (p.146). As we continue to research our influential historical and political occurrences we take notice of the world changing into a global village. Society becoming even more diverse as people brings new values and new languages to assist in establishing a new way of life. Then there is the salad bowl approach where diversity is personified individually but all uniquely at the same time. In other words, take for instance the makeup of a salad where all ingredients (diverse backgrounds) maintain their own specific flavors. The salad bowl approach is better representation than the melting pot approach. It is politically correct to assume that Cultural diversity of pluralism demonstrates how most societal beliefs are made up of several voices and various races. This outline allows groups to show good manners and appreciation of each other; coexisting and interacting without issues. Society members usually more committed than not in participating and sharing the lead of power and decision making as history proves with this approach. ELL Laws and SIOP Impact Educators specializing in teaching English-language learners tend to be uncertain about the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Although, most have expressed that the 10-year-old plus law has shown concern for the handling of test results resulting from the criteria spelled out within the NCLB Act. It is evident that the challenges these students face has prompted an  increase in professional development, specifically for mainstream teachers. While acknowledging the ELL Laws are not clear about the instruction being more positive or negative overall. As English-learners’ test scores fall short many believe it is wrong to penalize schools. In addition to reviewing the ELL laws we must address the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, or SIOP, defined as a model for teaching English and academic content simultaneously. For example, clearly written objectives content, clearly written language objectives, key vocabulary emphasized, various technique concepts usage to stress clarity, and providing many consistent opportunities for interactive teacher/student dialogue encouraging elaborated responses are some examples. For example, SIOP allows a teacher to implement various hands on teaching and training aids that can only assist in teaching the average ELL students at a more rapid pace. â€Å"Gifted Education† Movement Impact The â€Å"Gifted Education† curriculum has impacted education for at least twenty-five years or more with various issues. Therefore implementing and identifying key trends including values and substantial material for the elite, technological subject matter, aspects of creative interactive lesson plans for the academically skilled persons within core subject areas. It is obvious Passow’s flattering article on secondary programming was designed for the gifted student that was justifiably leveled between mental and influential areas. Passow’s model provided answers on creating a guide for tracking implementations and improvements that called for concerns about accepting one’s own beliefs and assisting others who you might not agree with. It was also centered morally and ethically with developmental stages in reality and emphasis on critical thinking and resolving problems, a stress on the liberal arts, and customized choices. Surely, Passow and VanTassel-Baska are advocates for Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs. Mentorships, internships, and independent study are all examples of why there is a need for more customized interactions. Conclusion Curriculum Planning History occurrences are dictated by the outcome of present and past societal decisions that have outweighed educational models  and theories across the nation in various educational communities. Curriculum Planning prepares students from past experiences to embrace the now and willingly reaches out and take on the future. In other words, a curriculum needs to address the wants and needs of everyone desiring to resolve social conditions locally, nationally and globally (McNeil, 1995). In the United States the number of school-age students will grow from more than 60 million in 2012 to possibly 80 million in 2050. However, it is extremely critical not to ignore or deny the possibilities the trends reveal. Therefore, we can hope â€Å"Trends† will best serve as a starting point where educators and facilities professionals come together to â€Å"think outside of the box,† to ask â€Å"what if,† to wonder â€Å"why can’t we,† and to â€Å"consider the unconsidered.† Flashing back on Chen, 20110, stating how open discussions of the potential impact of the trends on public education and its school structures will surely emerge new and exciting ideas. Undoubtedly, the roles of all stakeholders will be affected by a changing future. In conclusion, it has been proven that educators and educational specialists do continue to shape diverse futures. As an old favorite African proverb of mine reminds us; Tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today. A Collaborative Curriculum is created and necessary based on the circumstances and beliefs during that period of time. The collaboration is reflective of various political ideologies, societal predictions, divine beliefs and wisdom conceptions at a particular point in time. While there is great advancements in information and communication technology, administrators, teachers and students are expressing and gathering views globally. It has been seen in other school systems and majority of all stakeholders would like to see these practices in their own educational community. References: Ornstein, A. and Hunkins, F. Curriculum: Foundations, principle and issues. (1998). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Chapter 5: Social foundations of curriculum. Passow, A. H. (1986). Curriculum for the gifted and talented at the secondary level. Gifted Child Quarterly, 30, 186-191. [See Vol. 4, p. 103.] Stevenson, K. R., (September 2010). Educational Trends Shaping School Planning, Design, Construction, Funding, and Operation., National Clearing House For Educational Facilities www.files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED539457.pdf Topic 3: Social Foundations of Curriculum peoplelearn.homestead.com/beduc/module_3.social.history.doc VanTassel-Baska, J., Zuo, L., Avery, L. D., & Little, C. A. (2002). A curriculum study of gifted-student learning in the language arts. Gifted Child Quarterly, 46(1), 30-44. [See Vol. 5.] VanTassel-Baska, J., (2003). Introduction to Curriculum for Gifted and Talented Students: A 25-Year Retrospective and Prospective. The College of William and Mary.

Westen Civilization Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Westen Civilization - Essay Example The Merovingians were a group of people who ruled the Franks (which included present France) for three hundred years beginning in the fifth century. Like their Roman predecessors, the Merovingians wielded power based upon one’s birthright, the aristocratic were destined to remain that way and likewise, the peasants would continue to live in poverty. As such, it behooved the king to ally the powerful. It was an unusual society in that the wealthy were the ones who practiced and fought the wars. However, the wars and aristocratic lifestyles required a great deal of money for upkeep so the powerful enacted an extensive series of laws known as the Salic Laws. With this, enormous fines were levied that might seem excessive and even ludicrous today. For example, not answering a court’s summons today might result in a contempt charge and a few hundred dollars fine. The penalty for that under the Merovingians was in excess of $180,000! By the year 700, Merovingians had embraced Christianity and the children’s teachings were based upon that philosophy entirely. The one thing that led to the Merovingians’ downfall was their decision to appoint mayoral families to control the royal palace. In the early eighth century, one such set of mayors, the Carolingians, began to peacefully seize power from the Merovingians and the Franks in what is now France. Withstanding an invasion from Muslims and with the blessings of the Pope, Pippin III deposed the final Merovingians in 751. Thus, the Catholic Church began its systematic control of Western governments, which continued unabated for almost one thousand years. Yet is was the son of Pippin III who was to gain the most fame Charles I of the Carolingians, who possessed the more famous name Charlemagne (pp 268-75) lived from 742 until 814. Known as the Father of Europe, the

Statistic & conclution Statistics Project Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Statistic & conclution - Statistics Project Example An explanation for this may be the quality of health care in these states, which in 2007 all ranked among the bottom in a nationwide survey of healthcare quality (Arnst). American Samoa, which has an average of 94.2 out of 100,000, nearly double of the American national average, supports this conclusion to the extent that it lacks much of the modern medical infrastructure belonging to the continental states. Another statistical point of interest with potential policy implications is the data related to suicide rates relative to states. Nationally, the average is 11.3 per 100,000 people; however, in Alaska, the rate is 22.1 (195%), in New Mexico, the rate is 20.4 (180%), in Wyoming, the rate is 19.7 (174%), and in Montana, the rate is 19.4 (171%). Not coincidentally, in 2010, those states ranked 50th (1.2 inhabitants per square mile), 45th (17.0), 49th (5.8) and 48th (6.8) respectively in population density (U.S. Census Bureau). The significance of that correlation is that smaller population density seems to be directly correlated with a higher than average suicide rate. Although all states generally and understandably active try to prevent suicide, these figures seem to suggest that suicide is a more prevalent threat to individuals living in relative isolation from one another in Western states. In contrast to some data in the literature that suggests suicide rates are paired with high rates of population density, such as in work put forward by Saunderson and Langford, it may be the case that low population density is positively correlated with suicide. Saunderson, Thomas R. and Ian H. Langford. "A study of the geographical distribution of suicide rates in England and Wales 1989-92 using empirical bayes estimates." Social Science & Medicine, 43 (1996):

Various topics in paper included 2 Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Various topics in paper included 2 - Assignment Example There are certain ways through which an entrepreneur can come up with a business plan for an already existing businesses or a new venture (Jones & Jayawarna, 2013, p.1). For instance, an entrepreneur can consider using business simulation method to create its appropriate plan. One of the most common business simulations encompasses the SimVenture, which reflects reality and gives an entrepreneur the opportunity of the respective start up and how run own virtual business. SimVenture is commonly rampant among experienced entrepreneurs whereby it has proved to be extremely helpful to thousands of upcoming entrepreneurs (Jones & Jayawarna, 2013, p.148). In the assignment provided, it is evident that the Company mentioned is not successful; hence, using SimVenture to develop a new and appropriate business plan. In order to ensure the success of the Company, the most important issue that should be considered first is having the knowledge about the Finance, Marketing, Operations and HRM sectors of the Company. Through getting all the available information concerning these sections of the Company, then using SimVenture becomes much easier since one can now recognize the origin of the problem and where to put much focus. Looking at the financial sector of the company it is possible to note that there are high possibilities that the company is wasting away some of its finances. This is because, the Company is said to have had a regular sales income after trading for 8 months. This is evidence that the company is not making any considerable profit. Additionally, the Company has operated for the 8 months yet its sole employee still has no office. To mean, resources are not being well managed. Moreover, the Company’s cash that is available in the bank is around  £8,500. Considering the HRM factor, it is evident that the Company has only one employee who has the responsibility of managing the Company’s resources and the

NFL New Commissioner Strategy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

NFL New Commissioner Strategy - Essay Example According to National Football League, any cash that NFL take and not channeled to ACS, is used in covering the cost for cancer awareness program, the company is yet to explain where the money is profiting and channeled to. The reasonable cooperation with the media is important to the continuous popularity of the National Football League coaches and players. As a commission, I would come up with the policies that update and review the operating procedures of the leagues. To relive the congestion that exist in the locker, prior to matches, each of the participating clubs need to bring their head coach and a single player to match for an interview before the beginning of the game. The issue of domestic violence has always affected the image of companies such as National Football League. This has manifested itself on the visibility and transparency of the intimate lifestyle for the players. This has brought the issue at center stage for fans and society. It is recommended that the security cameras need to be prevalent, so that their behavior can be captured when the victims think they are undetected and discreet. As a commissioner allow questions on the profitability of the National League Football to distract them from the larger issues and ways where the domestic violence has facilitated the cultural attitudes that players need to work on (Layden, 34). Based on the Breast Cancer awareness the company is yet to provide a report on where the company channels its money. It is unclear on how much half of the items mark-up that is sold directly by National Football League and if the teams goes to ACS at all. This has a negative perception on the image of the comp any. Based on accessing the media, the reasonable cooperation with the media is important to the continuous popularity of the National Football League coaches and players. As a commission, I would come up with the policies that update and review the operating procedures of the

Define the utility of Katharine Kolcabas Comfort theory for Essay

Define the utility of Katharine Kolcabas Comfort theory for application to clinical practice using an actual clinical problem you observed - Essay Example This meeting of needs may be addressed physically, socioculturally, psychospiritually or environmentally. Whatever the means adopted, the ultimate aim is to reduce the discomfort of the patient which is perhaps the primary goal of any nursing care activity. Although it may be impossible to utilize all contexts (physical, psychospiritual, sociocultural or environmental) simultaneously; there is yet the possibility of utilizing the maximum modes possible, all aim at reducing discomfort while enhancing the feeling of comfort (Sitzman & Eichelberger, 2011). In my opinion, one of the main problems that are encountered in the clinical setting on frequent basis is the care of patients having impaired integrity of skin, especially those patients who are unable to move on their own and are therefore immobilized to a variable extent. This group of patients comprises a special population who are destined towards a slow decline in their health status if appropriate measures are not taken during the early stages of their illness. As skin is the main barrier between the external and internal environment of the body, any defect in this barrier is likely to expose the individual to a variety of pathogens that can not only infect the dermatological tissue, but also invade the body, affect other organs and destroy the homeostasis of the body ultimately resulting in an unfavorable outcome (Freinkel & Woodley, 2001). A gravely uncomfortable consequence of impaired skin integrity is seen in the form of development of pressure-sores in patients are immobilized for extended periods of time. These lesions result due to the presence of persistent pressure on certain areas of the body and can ultimately contribute towards the fatality of the disease for which a patient is under treatment. The intervention designed for the chosen problem includes a number of measures that are collectively

International Organisational Behaviour Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

International Organisational Behaviour - Essay Example Sony has its operations in many countries spread across six continents of the world. It was in 1973 when this Japanese giant entered the Singaporean market and since then it has become one of the leading players of the consumer electronics market. Sony Singapore (Sony, 2011) functions include with its activities of â€Å"engineering, information technology, manufacturing, sales and marketing, treasury services, logistics and others†. Sony Singapore (Sony, 2011) employs from than 1900 employees in the country. This paper is an attempt to explore, investigate, and examine various aspects related to the organisational behaviour of Sony Singapore. Systematic study of Organisational Behaviour Systematic study of organisational behaviour refers to the scientific approach used by organisational behaviour to combine various fields of â€Å"human psychology, organisational development, management, organisational theory, human resource management, and sociology† (Champoux, pp. 29 -44, 2010). The systematic study of organisational behaviour refers to the fact that the â€Å"overall purposes of the field are understanding/explanation, prediction, and control† (Knights & Willmott, 79-81, 2006). Furthermore, the definitions provided by the field are operational and precise and the measures are reliable and valid. Psychology is the first and foremost behavioral field, which contributes to the field of organisational behaviour. It seeks to explain the behaviour of people, measure, explain, predict, and control these behaviours. Without any doubts, Sony continuously tries to find way to alter and tame the behaviours and attitudes of its employees in such a way that the organisational productivity (Champoux, pp. 421-428, 2010). Sociology is another behavioral discipline, which has a close link with Organisational behaviour. People do not live and operate in vacuum, in fact, their behaviours are continuously influenced by social factors. The organisation of So ny itself is a social institution and norms, social roles, values, and customs have constant affect on its employees and managers. Shaping Behaviours of Sales Executives Successful organisations and managers are the ones who know how to align their human resources with the organisational objectives. In other words, it is the task of the organisation and its managers to motivate and push its employees towards achieving the goals and objectives assigned to them. Following are the four possible ways in which a sales manager at Sony can shape the behaviour of it sales executives. First, in the light of the operant conditioning theory, behaviours can be shaped by presenting a reward every time the subject engages in the desirable behaviour. For example, if a sales executive is putting in extra effort to take training sessions then acknowledging his effort in front of the whole staff and applauding him could be a reward, which would reinforce that behaviour (Knights & Willmott, 79-81, 200 6). Second, other than positive reinforcement of behaviours which has been mentioned above, negative reinforcement is also an option. Like positive reinforcement, it refers to the practice of taking something undesirable in order to reward and reinforce any behaviour. For example, if a sales executive achieves the target of his monthly sales even before the last week; negative reinforc

Summary Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 122

Summary - Essay Example which contributed to the development of the New Negro movement and culture. The book helps us better understand the reasons and realms of political and social struggle of Afro American people as well as get acquainted with the major cultural achievements of the time. Lewiss article â€Å"The City of Refuge† may be nominally divided into two sections: in the first part the author gives an overview of lifestyle and conditions in Harlem of the late 1910s, while another part is dedicated to Marcus Garvey – his biography, views and activity. Action is majorly focused between 130th to 145th Streets, where the number of Afro American inhabitants was the highest. â€Å"Everybody in Harlem was rich†, - David Lewis (1997) wrote. Hotels, cabarets, vaudeville houses, casinos were everywhere in Harlem. They brought together talented and famous composers, musicians, singers, dancers, poets and others. It was the time when â€Å"Negro† music such as jazz and dances became popular all over America. Names of Jim Europe, Irene and Vernon Castle, Nick la Rocca were well-known and celebrated far beyond Harlem. At the same time, Harlem was a â€Å"forum for serious racial palaver† (Lewis, 1997), where the views of Marcus Garvey were hears for the first time. Bearing pan-African ideas, he stayed for the recognition of African nationality, proclaimed the necessity of creating the country of New Africa that would be a motherland for Negros all over the world, defended ethnic identity and equal rights with â€Å"whites† of â€Å"black† people. Another Lewiss article â€Å"Stars† outlines lives and works of four outstanding poets of Harlem Renaissance: Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen. In their poems and ballads, authors strove to â€Å"promote racial advancement through artistic creativity† (Lewis, 1997) and showed that â€Å"black† poetry can be not least worthy than non-blacks. These poets laid

Ellen DeGeneres and her importance in the Gay Community Essay

Ellen DeGeneres and her importance in the Gay Community - Essay Example It also tries to explore her importance in the GBLT history and understands the various persuasive techniques that she used in her struggle for gay rights. Ellen DeGeneres: An Introduction Ellen DeGeneres, who was born in 1958 in Louisiana has played an important role bringing issues related to LGBT rights to the forefront so that they get appropriate media and political attention. As a stand up comedian, DeGeneres made a large number of appearances on very popular TV shows such as, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Oprah Winfrey Show (Biography, n.d). This increased her popularity and very soon, she appeared in a sitcom, which was called Ellen (1997), where she used her character, Ellen to come out to the public. At the same time, she also publicly declared her homosexuality on the Oprah Winfrey show. Post her coming out in public, the show Ellen faced a lot of criticism because acknowledging homosexuality openly was not common in the United States during the late 1990s. In fac t, DeGeneres is regarded as the first lead case of a show who acknowledged the fact that she was a lesbian on air (Biography, n.d). Because of that, some of the affiliates that were associated with the channel ABC on which Ellen aired, refused to air the particular episode of the show. Furthermore, some of the sponsors associated with the show also withdrew their support (Biography, n.d). After the main character came out as a homosexual, there were many episodes which followed the same track and continued that way until the season got over. Due to this, both the show and the channel received strong criticism. However, Ellen's performance was critically acclaimed and won her an Emmy award (Foley, 2007). In addition, it also received immense support from the gay community all across the United States. In spite of these, the show was canceled within a years time. In the meantime, DeGeneres had gained enough popularity and became a common face in both the television industry as well as the movie industry. Due to her popularity, she began her own show known as the 'The Ellen DeGeneres' show which ran over 10 seasons (Foley, B. (2007). Ellen DeGeneres. Wmagazine 36(3), 496–501. ). In addition, she also hosted the Academy Awards, became a judge on the popular show American Idol, acted in movies and wrote books. She is often considered to be one of the best role models for the LGBT community in the United States (Foley, B. (2007). Ellen DeGeneres. Wmagazine 36(3), 496–501. ). Role of Ellen DeGeneres in GBLT history, community, or social movements It is a given fact that involvement of celebrities and public figures with regards to social movement has an impact on resource mobilization and constructing a collective identity (Barber, 2012). The fact that the celebrity is in the public eye gives much more importance to the issues that they highlight and hence, deeply influence the causes that they join or start. This is because the involvement or participa tion of a celebrity results in attention from the mass media and increases participation from their supporters. Hence, the celebrities can provide a high level of visibility to any event or social cause that they participate in (Bird et al, 2011). Ellen DeGeneres also used her popularity and her status as a public figure to raise issues that were relevant and important to the LGBT community. During the 1990s, the homosexual community found it a big

Summarize information from websites Essay Example for Free

Summarize information from websites Essay AIDS has become a universal crisis out of which the sub-Saharan Africa has 2. 1 million of estimated cases. The following are some of the reasons of the impact of AIDS summarized from the AVERT. ORG website. The impact on the Healthcare Sector Increase in the AIDS epidemic has caused an increase in demand for AIDS healthcare workers. According to the website the medical expenses is about US$30 per year for every infected person especially in the sub-Saharan areas. The hospitals find it difficult to accommodate HIV patients and in future it is estimated that AIDS care will account for 60%-70% of all hospital expenditures in South Africa. Hospitals find it difficult to cope with infrastructure as there are not enough beds, leading to shortage in admitted patients. In such cases patients develop complications and the epidemic worsens thereby reducing the standards of care at the hospitals. There are also many healthcare professionals who are affected with AIDS because they are in constant contact with patients. There is therefore an increase in workload, less pay all leading to a scarcity of healthcare workers. The impact on Households AIDS has caused mass impact in the poorer sectors wherein AIDS has been transferred from adults to children. Household income suffers because adults will have to give up their work to look after infected relatives. Children are also forced to stop studying. Families cut expenditures on clothing, electricity and food. There are many families who have abandoned agricultural work due to household illness causing severe food shortage. Looking after patients with illness causes an emotional as well as a financial burden on the household members. Household assets are also sold to meet basic expenses and health needs. The impact on Children Children loose their parents or guardians and are forced to give up their childhood. They are forced to become the breadwinners of the family. They lack nutrition, education and healthcare facilities. Many children are orphaned and they don’t have anyone to take care of them. This makes institutional care a must for such children. These institutions may not be that well equipped to handle the psychological and physiological traumas faced by the children. There are communities that aim to make the children more sociable and to help resolve their problems, but there are too many children and too less healthcare workers. The impact on Education Sector AIDS affects a child’s education which is one of the most cost-effective ways of imparting education. Children may be forced to look after their family members or they themselves may be affected with AIDS. Many of them may not be able to afford the school fees and need to work to afford even their basic necessities. Even the teachers are affected by HIV AIDS. Research shows that teachers have a lack of understanding on the subject and their socio-economic status causes them to get infected. If there are no teachers to teach, then this affects the child’s development. There will be many absent periods because a teacher takes time off to look after their sick relatives or to attend funerals. The impact on Enterprises and Workplaces Many people who are affected with AIDS are people who are employed this affects their socio-economic status. AIDS affects production costs, diverts resources and productivity and has depleting skills. Company costs for funerals, healthcare and pension are likely to increase as people take early retirement or are dying. The demand for products and services also falls. Absent staff also affects the productivity. The recruitment, training and healthcare expenditures constantly increase while productivity declines. There are also very few companies that have a policy to deal with HIV and AIDS.

Business Across Borders Essay Example for Free

Business Across Borders Essay In the business world today, borders are blending and multi-national mergers are causing many company nationalities to become indistinct. As the globalization of markets rapidly increases, many companies are finding international expansion a necessity of competition. North America is greatly affected by this movement towards a global market, and many companies are finding it extremely important to adapt to other cultures. Favorable trade agreements and explosive growth of the middle class in countries once considered underdeveloped have both been important factors in the rush towards globalization. However, the most important factor in increased globalization has been technological advancements, including new transportation and information technologies. Presentation of information is more frequently processed by members of a virtual team a work group not necessarily in the same geographical location. With the proliferation of e-mail, videoconferencing, fax machine, and the telephone, virtual teaming is becoming increasingly efficient. The most considerable obstructions to successful international marketing involve misinterpretations and contrary views resulting from cultural differences. Being both aware of some of these issues and prepared to make the necessary accommodations can save companies time, effort, and a considerable amount of money. Exploring Context Context is described as the most important dimension of culture and yet is the most difficult to define. Context refers to the stimuli, environment, or ambiance surrounding an event. Communication styles and business practices as a whole are often identified with the context of a country. North American, Scandinavian, and German communicators are generally considered to be low-context cultures. They expect a high level of detail in their visua,l verbal and written communication. Low-context cultures tend to  be analytical, logical and find words and contracts very important. Individualism, freedom and personal achievement are highly valued by these cultures. High-context cultures, such as Japan, China, Arabia, tend to assume the receiver does not need much background. Information and words are not as important as what is surrounding the situation. They are more aware of a communicators status, interpersonal relationships, the setting, and ambiance when conducting business relations. In general, tradition and social customs are more important in high-context cultures. These cultures emphasize membership in organizations and groups. Because they avoid confrontation, they frown upon individual decision making and prefer consensus. Relationships In many countries personal relationships are the key to success. It is important to not expect to get down to business right away, but rather get to know a person first. In Mexico, for example, business deals are only made with friends, so one must develop a friendship with any business partner. It is considered polite to ask personal questions about family, and also to answer any questions about your family. Discussions are warm and friendly. In Japan it is unlikely to get very far without connections. Carefully chosen intermediaries are a necessity. Not only will the Japanese feel obliged to be loyal to them, but rank of ones associates will determine their status as well. A Japanese businessman will always consult within his group before making a decision. Because of their intense loyalty, ones identity is subsumed into the group. It is important to never single out a Japanese counterpart, even for praise or encouragement. Contrarily, the Spaniards have a hierarchy style of management and it is best to deal with el jefe or el pardon-the one who will be making the decision. Spaniards also will expect whomever they are dealing with to have decisions-making authority. Saving Face When dealing with Spain or most Asian cultures, it is also critical to understand the concept of saving face. Any loss of control of emotions or embarrassment is considered disastrous in business negotiations in these cultures. Honor and personal pride mean everything and they must not be insulted. Because of this attitude it is very important to carefully prepare presentations so that they are easy for the audience to understand. Paying close attention to determine if anything is misunderstood during the presentation is also a must. Because of this concept of saving face the presenter will not know if they are having difficulties. Close attention must be paid to conversations in order to discern the sincerity of what is being said. In Japan, a deal is never refused directly, and any dealings with Japanese business culture should remain indirect. Business Cards In nearly all countries, it is important that business cards be printed one side in English, and the other in their language. When presenting the card, it should be presented with their language facing the recipient. In Japan, the exchange of business cards is not to be taken lightly. When you receive the card of a Japanese businessman, be sure to make a show of examining it carefully and then making a remark about the card. Ask any questions about anything on the card which is difficult to pronounce or understand. The card should then be placed in a case or on a near by table. A card shouldnt be shoved into a pocket or be written on. Concepts of Time Time orientation is an important cultural difference that Americans must pay close attention to. In America, time is viewed as a precious commodity. Time is related with productivity, efficiency, and money. Many other countries have a much more relaxed perception of time. They take their time, and enjoy it. In Mexico you can ask if a scheduled appointment is en punto (the precise time), or mas o menos. Mas o menos appointments are often scheduled a half an hour to an hour before the actual time. With both  Mexican and Japanese cultures it is also important not to expect instant results. Plenty of time should be allowed for contemplation and decision making. In Mexico it is important to adjust any expectations regarding deadlines and efficiency. Conclusion Doing business over borders and through time zones has become commonplace in the twenty-first century. Technological advancements in communication and travel make it possible to do business across the globe almost instantaneously. Doing business with multiple cultures can be a challenging venture. International communication skills of an organization can determine success or failure. In order to interact with different cultures, it is necessary to understand the basic characteristics of the culture. This type of understanding helps to make adjustments and accommodations. We must rid our minds of pre-conceived notions, stereotypes, and prejudices. It is imperative that one be knowledgeable about such topics as: context, traditions, social rules, etc. It is equally important to possess competent listening skills and to be aware of ones own nonverbal messages. The ability to adapt to an intercultural perspective is probably one of the most crucial aspects of doing business in todays global village. Bibliography Sellin, Robert H. J and Elaine Winters. Cultural Issues in Business Communication. Berkeley: Program Facilitating and Consulting, 2000. Guffey, Mary Ellen. Business Communication: Process and Product, 4th ed. Mason, Ohio: South-Western, 2003 Etiquette and Local Customs. The Travelers Yellow Pages Online. http://www.infoservices.com/stpete/342.htm. InfoServices International, Inc., 2002 What to Know Before Negotiting Execitive Planet.com. http://www.executiveplanet.com/business-culture.html.

Medea Euripides Analysis

Medea Euripides Analysis So long as the immense passion of the tragic heroine of the play is considered, Euripidess Medea is a work of pathetic tragedy from Aristotles point of view. It opens up with a major conflict between the heroine and her husband; the anger of a woman hero for her dishonest husband. Throughout the play, we see the culmination of anger and hatred rising to a point where everything dissolves and an anticlimactic end is attained through the accumulation of revenge in Medea. This is actually a shortcoming for a piece of tragedy because it does not reach to the highest possible quality and complexity from a plot as Aristotle would term it. The most important integral aspect in tragedy is its plot, the imitation of action. Because of the faulty treatment of the subject in hand, Euripides fails to achieve a complex plot in Medea. When Aristotle plunges into the components of a plot that make it complex, he cites three necessary elements successively; reversal of intention, recognition, and catastrophe. Accordingly, both reversal of intention and recognition must go hand  in hand in a cause-and-effect chain that ultimately in turn creates the catastrophe in the play for the best effect. However in Medea, we can observe no real reversal of intention as Medea is well de termined to take revenge from Jason in some way or the other right from the very start. Although there is an event where Medea directs her anger over her own children, this occurs in such an unexpected manner that it is difficult to consider it as a reversal of intention because there is no reasonable explanation or recognition for it to come afterwards. This unquestionably results in Medea lacking a recognition as there is no reversal of intention that precedes it. Medea already knows about the marriage of Jason to Creons daughter, and there is no other slight recognition that can be said to change the fortune of the tragic heroine. One could say that Aegeuss assurance of security in Athens for Medea is a discovery that allowed Medea to further proceed with her plans, but this is somewhat questionable as we can clearly see that she is determined to execute her planned scenario whether or not Aegeuss sudden appearance was included. The only surprising event that we can find remarkab le is when Medea slays her own children. This action is the one and only tragic incident that Aristotle would see as tragic. If this one and only tragic element did not exist, we could hardly say that Euripidess Medea was a tragedy even with a simple plot. But again, a surprising event can be favored only when it has relevance and a cause-and-effect relationship with the plot. That is however not exactly the case for Medeas decision to kill her children. Nevertheless, the intended action is executed in the end by the heroin, an act that is better than intending and not doing. When Aristotle comes to the skill of a tragedian to create a perfect unified play, he emphasizes the importance of firstly the complication, and secondly, the unraveling of the plot. To him, the best tragedian is one who can succeed in making these two parts equally well. But as long as in Medea there is no reversal of intention and recognition except for a simple catastrophe, the unraveling lacks the magnitude of the complication where Medea strategically makes plans, prepares for revenge, and tries to survive the pain. Moreover, the denouement of the play by a Deus ex Machina, a God interfering and allowing Medea to escape with a chariot, is very irrational for Aristotle as it does not arise out of the plot naturally. The Deus ex Machina used in Medea can be seen as faulty from another point which attributes to Aristotles moral understanding. Medeas escape or somewhat survival is morally not acceptable as she commits a cruel deed in killing her own children. We know that she is a descendent of a god and is the daughter of a king. But other than such circumstances she is in, she is in fact no better than us. Her tragic flaws such as extreme passion and anger all surpass being small frailties but they are rather vices. Though we see Medeas feelings of suffering through the visible evils of Jason, it is not easy for the audience to sympathize with a child murderess. Additionally, the past life of Medea is also full of blood and sin which are reminded to us from time to time either by the Chorus and ev en Medea herself. This ultimately results in the significant problem of Medea as a tragedy, as it fails in invoking catharsis towards the audience as little emotions of pity or fear can be aroused by the downfall of an utter villain. In Medea there is only one major plot which gives it a credit as a tragedy in Aristotelian terms. The struggle between a dishonest male and a sorceress female is the one and only simple basis of this plot. We dont see the level of complexity and perfection that Aristotle would seek, but our attention is not lost as Euripides does succeed us to be focused on the passionate angers and emotions of Medea throughout the whole play. Thus, the effect of tragedy is to a somewhat certain extent achieved in Medea but still fails in the main and most important purpose; the emotional cleansing that the audience is supposed to feel towards Medea. Statement of Intent Euripidess Medea revolves around the central passion of revenge towards her adversaries by the main protagonist, Medea as a result of her husband, Jasons betrayal towards her by an engagement to the daughter of Creon, King of Corinth. I decided to write a critical review of Medea through an Aristotelian perspective as to how Aristotle would criticize it if he had the chance. As Medea was different to the Aristotelian tragedies of the time, I expected that the Athenian audience would have responded in confusion and disfavor. I took Aristotles works of the Poetics as a backbone to my criticism. I tried to make the review critical in the sense that it not just only explains as to how the elements in Medea differ from Aristotles theory of tragedy, but attempts in exploring as to what effects were lost and why it mattered. In the early stages of my review, I criticize how Euripidess failure in creating a complex plot of one that Aristotle would expect results in how Medeas character is portrayed in a very limited and monotone manner in which her fate is seemingly doomed to lead to the final catastrophe from the very start. By breaking up the structure and examining its lack of Aristotelian concepts of tragedy in Medea, it allows one to lead to the discovery that the common understanding of Medea as a tragedy is actually an oversimplification and that one could even come to the conclusion that it barely qualifies to be even a tragedy by Aristotelian understanding. The criticisms towards the structural component of plot in Medea link into the characteristic flaws of Medea throug h my criticisms towards Euripidess use of the Deus ex Machina to resolve the plot in the final moments of the play. This sudden denouement in the play would strongly matter to Aristotle as its irrational manner would lack a unity where the action of each event leads inevitably to the next in a structurally self-contained manner that is connected by internal necessity, not by external interventions such as the one used by Euripides. Moreover, the Deus ex Machina has the strongest effect on the audience in which it ultimately fails to invoke the tragic emotions of pity and sympathy in the form of a catharsis towards the protagonist despite Euripidess attempts at doing so through the easily visible exposures of Jasons atrocities. This failure is not only just simply due to the immoral nature in which Medea kills her children, but from the fact that her life is full of atrocities which she does not seem to feel guilty as she confesses in her quarrel with Jason, I lit the way for your es cape I betrayed my father and my home I killed King PeliasAll this I did for you. And you, foulest of men, have betrayed me. (P33, Lines 460-468) Despite all the criticism that I have given to Euripides in my review, I do give credit to Euripides as to how he still manages to grasp hold of the audiences attention and involvement in the play. Nevertheless however, I still conclude with the Aristotelian perspective that the play still lacks the magnitude and perfection that Aristotle would have expected, which ultimately result in my greatest criticism that Euripides fails in creating the effect of convincement towards his audience to sympathize with Medeas emotions through catharsis.

My Journey to be a Teacher :: Personal Narrative Teaching Education Essays

My Journey to be a Teacher Starting the first year of college I was your average frightened teenager; however, unlike most I knew what I wanted to be: a teacher. Then something amazing happened, I was asked why I wanted to teach. I didn’t know what to say, so. I looked back at my life. I tried to find when I made the decision to be a teacher and what my reasoning was. I found the obvious reasons: I love children, I want to help, and I love learning; but I had to ask myself if these things enough to make me the kind of teacher that changes lives. I didn’t know. I decided to become a teacher in the third grade. Mrs. Sager, my third grade teacher, had a zest for life and made learning an adventure. I wanted and still want to be like her, but was a mentor from when you were eight a good reason to be a teacher? As any child knows when you’re having trouble, call mom! I called my mom and ask her, if I weren’t your child, would you want me to teach your child? As always mom surprised me. She reminded me of little things I done when I was young, and then told me that I was her child, but I have also been her teacher. With mom’s confidence I felt a little better, but had still not figured out for myself if I had what it took to be a teacher or if I even wanted to be one anymore. The fear that I might be following an eight year olds dream crept into my heart as I hung up the phone. Did I want to teach? Then, I was talked into taking a three-week course that changed my view of teaching. I owe my councilor my sanity. In EDF 200, I started the path to finding my answer. I leaned that I hadn’t loved Mrs. Sager for her great lecture notes; I loved her because she loved me first. In class Professor Beaman said that there would be a point when we would be walking down the hall and Johnny would pick up a worm and ask us to tell him about it, and it would hit us that that is why we teach. Well, there wasn’t a worm, but I now know what she meant. While helping a friend with homework in math class, I found my reason.

The Grooming of Alice :: essays research papers

Iwo jima is an eight square-mile island of sulfuric sand and volcanic ash. It is 700 miles south of Tokyo. The Japanese put radar stations on Iwo to warn of approaching B-29's which regularly flew right over it on bombing runs to Japan. The Japs also had fighter planes on the two airstrips. Alot of young Marines enroute to the beaches of Iwo were amazed at the firepower and damage inflicted on the island by the Navy's battleships and planes. They thought that there wouldn't be any Japanese left for the Marines to fight. Little did they know that the bombs and shells weren't even getting close to the enemy. Tokyo knew the Allies were interested in Iwo Jima so they put a garrison of 22,000 troops, under General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. These troops built up the island to one of the strongest defenses in the Pacific. They added 1500 pillboxes and block houses, trenches, and hundreds of connecting tunnels. 1500 underground rooms including communications centers, hospitals able to treat 40 0 injured with beds carved into rock walls. They also constructed storage rooms for ammo, food, and water. There were tunnels large enough for soldiers to run through standing up. Block houses were built of concrete and reinforced by steel rods. Walls were 3 feet thick, ceiling were six feet thick. Block houses were camoflaged with sand so it made it difficult for US Navy flyers to spot them from the air. General Kuribayashi even had an underground command center 75 feet below the surface. Mt Suribachi was even honeycombed. For the Japanese on Iwo this was the end of the line. There was no hope of rescue from the Imperial Fleet. The Japanese soldiers had plenty of food and ammunition underground to support them for up to five months On the Marines side, General Holland 'Howlin Mad' Smith commanded the 4th & 5th divisions. General Smith requested ten days of naval bombardment, however the Navy could only provide three days with Navy battleships, cruisers, and carrier aircraft. Even then overcast weather conditions shortened that time. On 19 Feb 1945 the Marines came ashore on a long black sandy beach on the southern side of the island. The 4th & 5th Marines fought their way from shore to shore cutting Iwo in half and separating Mt. Suribachi from the rest of the island. By night fall, the Marines were firmly ashore but suffered heavy losses of 2400 casualties, including 600 dead.

Free Essay: Passion and Evil in Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter :: Scarlet Letter essays

Passion and Evil in The Scarlet Letter In Nathaniel Hawthorn’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, the Puritan society of Salem excludes anyone who is in any way deviant and renders that person sinful. However, the society, the townspeople themselves, is not without fault. However they try to conceal and contain their passions and all their faults because of their fear of exclusion. All the characters in the book that are excluded from society are the most "natural" and true and possess a second-sense perception and almost magical intuition. Hester Prynne's separation from the townspeople is both physical and mental. She is expelled from the town as an adulteress, and she goes to live with her illegitimate daughter to a cottage "not in close vicinity to any other habitation." (68) They are despised by the whole town. Even children throw stones at them and chase them down the street. People do not dare to come close to Hester because of the mark as an outcast. To the townspeople, Hester's character is something different and uncertain from the values that they are used to. "Wherever Hester stood, a small, vacant area - a sort of magic circle - had formed about her, into which †¦ none ventured, or felt disposed to intrude." (206) Hester is destined to forever wear a scarlet letter "A" on her chest - "A" for "adulteress" - a sign of her sin, shame and separation from the righteous people. However, by being separated from the Puritanical town of Salem and all its prejudices, Hester is able to look at the people objectively and see much she was not able to see before. "Walking to and fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world with which she was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to Hester that [the scarlet letter] gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts. (73) The people of the town are so busy covering up their faults and hiding their human passions, that they cannot see their own or each other's faults. Hester, who wears her Cain's mark of exclusion openly, does not have to worry about the opinion of others, and gains an intuition - an insight into the hearts of the people who throw her out. Hester's mark of shame becomes a mark of being different, a mark of nonconformity.

Bag of Bones CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The book was big, okay? The book was major. I was afraid to change rooms, let alone pack up the typewriter and my slim just-begun manuscript and take it back to Derry. That would be as dangerous as taking an infant out in a windstorm. So I stayed, always reserving the right to move out if things got too weird (the way smokers reserve the right to quit if their coughs get too heavy), and a week passed. Things happened during that week, but until I met Max Devore on The Street the following Friday the seventeenth of July, it would have been the most important thing was that I continued to work on a novel which would, if finished, be called My Childhood Friend. Perhaps we always think what was lost was the best . . . or would have been the best. I don't know for sure. What I do know is that my real life that week had mostly to do with Andy Drake, John Shackleford, and a shadowy figure standing in the deep background. Raymond Garraty, John Shackle-ford's childhood friend. A man who sometimes wore a baseball cap. During that week, the manifestations in the house continued, but at a lower level there was nothing like that bloodcurdling scream. Sometimes Bunter's bell rang, and sometimes the fruit and vegetable magnets would re-form themselves into a circle . . . never with words in the middle, though; not that week. One morning I got up and the sugar cannister was overturned, making me think of Mattie's story about the flour. Nothing was written in the spill, but there was a squiggle as though something had tried to write and failed. If so, I sympathized. I knew what that was like. My depo before the redoubtable Elmer Durgin was on Friday the tenth. On the following Tuesday I took The Street down to Warrington's softball field, hoping for my own peek at Max Devore. It was going on six o'clock when I got within hearing range of the shouts, cheers, and batted balls. A path marked with rustic signs (curlicued W's burned into oak arrows) led past an abandoned boathouse, a couple of sheds, and a gazebo half-buried in blackberry creepers. I eventually came out in deep center field. A litter of potato-chip bags, candy-wrappers, and beer cans suggested that others sometimes watched the games from this vantage-point. I couldn't help thinking about Jo and her mysterious friend, the guy in the old brown sportcoat, the burly guy who had slipped an arm around her waist and led her away from the game, laughing, back toward The Street. Twice over the weekend I'd come close to calling Bonnie Amudson, seeing if maybe I could chase that guy down, put a name on him, and both time s I had backed off. Sleeping dogs, I told myself each time. Sleeping dogs, Michael. I had the area beyond deep center to myself that evening, and it felt like the right distance from home plate, considering the man who usually parked his wheelchair behind the backstop had called me a liar and I had invited him to store my telephone number where the sunshine grows dim. I needn't have worried in any case. Devore wasn't in attendance, nor was the lovely Rogette. I did spot Mattie behind the casually maintained chickenwire barrier on the first-base line. John Storrow was beside her, wearing jeans and a polo shirt, his red hair mostly corralled by a Mets cap. They stood watching the game and chatting like old friends for two innings before they saw me more than enough time for me to feel envious of John's position, and a little jealous as well. Finally someone lofted a long fly to center, where the edge of the woods served as the only fence. The center fielder backed up, but it was going to be far over his head. It was hit to my depth, off to my right. I moved in that direction without thinking, high-footing through the shrubs that formed a zone between the mown outfield and the trees, hoping I wasn't running through poison ivy. I caught the softball in my outstretched left hand, and laughed when some of the spectators cheered. The center fielder applauded me by tapping his bare right hand into the pocket of his glove. The batter, meanwhile, circled the bases serenely, knowing he had hit a ground-rule home run. I tossed the ball to the fielder and as I returned to my original post among the candy-wrappers and beer cans, I looked back in and saw Mattie and John looking at me. If anything confirms the idea that we're just another species of animal, one with a slightly bigger brain and a much bigger idea of our own importance in the scheme of things, it's how much we can convey by gesture when we absolutely have to. Mattie clasped her hands to her chest, tilted her head to the left, raised her eyebrows My hero. I held my hands to my shoulders and flipped the palms skyward Shucks, ma'am, ‘t'warn't nothin. John lowered his head and put his fingers to his brow, as if something there hurt You lucky sonofabitch. With those comments out of the way, I pointed at the backstop and shrugged a question. Both Mattie and John shrugged back. An inning later a little boy who looked like one giant exploding freckle ran out to where I was, his oversized Michael Jordan jersey churning around his shins like a dress. ‘Guy down there gimme fifty cent to say you should call im later on at his hotel over in the Rock,' he said, pointing at John. ‘He say you gimme another fifty cent if there was an answer.' ‘Tell him I'll call him around nine-thirty,' I said. ‘I don't have any change, though. Can you take a buck?' ‘Hey, yeah, swank.' He snatched it, turned away, then turned back. He grinned, revealing a set of teeth caught between Act I and Act II. With the softball players in the background, he looked like a Norman Rockwell archetype. ‘Guy also say tell you that was a bullshit catch.' ‘Tell him people used to say the same thing about Willie Mays all the time.' ‘Willie who?' Ah, youth. Ah, mores. ‘Just tell him, son. He'll know.' I stayed another inning, but by then the game was getting drunk, Devore still hadn't shown, and I went back home the way I had come. I met one fisherman standing out on a rock and two young people strolling along The Street toward Warrington's, their hands linked. They said hi and I hi'd them back. I felt lonely and content at the same time. I believe that is a rare kind of happiness. Some people check their phone answering machines when they get home; that summer I always checked the front of the fridge. Eenie-meenie-chili-beanie, as Bullwinkle Moose used to say, the spirits are about to speak. That night they hadn't, although the fruit and vegetable magnets had re-formed into a sinuous shape like a snake or perhaps the letter S taking a nap: A little later I called John and asked him where Devore had been, and he repeated in words what he had already told me, and much more economically, by gesture. ‘It's the first game he's missed since he came back,' he said. ‘Mattie tried asking a few people if he was okay, and the consensus seemed to be that he was . . . at least as far as anyone knew.' ‘What do you mean she tried asking a few people?' ‘I mean that several wouldn't even talk to her. â€Å"Cut her dead,† my parents' generation would have said.' Watch it, buddy, I thought but didn't say, that's only half a step from my generation. ‘One of her old girlfriends spoke to her finally, but there's a general attitude about Mattie Devore. That man Osgood may be a shitty salesman, but as Devore's Mr. Moneyguy he's doing a wonderful job of separating Mattie from the other folks in the town. Is it a town, Mike? I don't quite get that part.' ‘It's just the TR,' I said absently. ‘There's no real way to explain it. Do you actually believe Devore's bribing everyone? That doesn't say much for the old Wordsworthian idea of pastoral innocence and goodness, does it?' ‘He's spreading money and using Osgood maybe Footman, too to spread stories. And the folks around here seem at least as honest as honest politicians.' ‘The ones who stay bought?' ‘Yeah. Oh, and I saw one of Devore's potential star witnesses in the Case of the Runaway Child. Royce Merrill. He was over by the equipment shed with some of his cronies. Did you happen to notice him?' I said I had not. ‘Guy must be a hundred and thirty,' John said. ‘He's got a cane with a gold head the size of an elephant's asshole.' ‘That's a Boston Post cane. The oldest person in the area gets to keep it.' ‘And I have no doubt he came by it honestly. If Devore's lawyers put him on the stand, I'll debone him.' There was something chilling in John's gleeful confidence. ‘I'm sure,' I said. ‘How did Mattie take getting cut dead by her old friends?' I was thinking of her saying that she hated Tuesday nights, hated to think of the softball games going on as they always had at the field where she had met her late husband. ‘She did okay,' John said. ‘I think she's given most of them up as a lost cause, anyway.' I had my doubts about that I seem to remember that at twenty-one lost causes are sort of a specialty but I didn't say anything. ‘She's hanging in. She's been lonely and scared, I think that in her own mind she might already have begun the process of giving Kyra up, but she's got her confidence back now. Mostly thanks to meeting you. Talk about your fantastically lucky breaks.' Well, maybe. I flashed on Jo's. brother Frank once saying to me that he didn't think there was any such thing as luck, only fate and inspired choices. And then I remembered that image of the TR criss-crossed with invisible cables, connections that were unseen but as strong as steel. ‘John, I forgot to ask the most important question of all the other day, after I gave my depo. This custody case we're all so concerned about . . . has it even been scheduled?' ‘Good question. I've checked three ways to Sunday, and Bissonette has, too. Unless Devore and his people have pulled something really slippery, like filing in another court district, I don't think it has been.' ‘Could they do that? File in another district?' ‘Maybe. But probably not without us finding out.' ‘So what does it mean?' ‘That Devore's on the verge of giving up,' John said promptly. ‘As of now I see no other way of explaining it. I'm going back to New York first thing tomorrow, but I'll stay in touch. If anything comes up here, you do the same.' I said I would and went to bed. No female visitors came to share my dreams. That was sort of a relief. When I came downstairs to recharge my iced-tea glass late Wednesday morning, Brenda Meserve had erected the laundry whirligig on the back stoop and was hanging out my clothes. This she did as her mother had no doubt taught her, with pants and shirts on the outside and undies on the inside, where any passing nosyparkers couldn't see what you chose to wear closest to your skin. ‘You can take these in around four o'clock,' Mrs. M. said as she prepared to leave. She looked at me with the bright and cynical eye of a woman who has been ‘doing for' well-off men her entire life. ‘Don't you forget and leave em out all night dewy clothes don't ever feel fresh until they're warshed again.' I told her most humbly that I would remember to take in my clothes. I then asked her feeling like a spy working an embassy party for information if the house felt all right to her. ‘All right how?' she asked, cocking one wild eyebrow at me. ‘Well, I've heard funny noises a couple of times. In the night.' She sniffed. ‘It's a log house, ennit? Built in relays, so to speak. It settles, one wing against t'other. That's what you hear, most likely.' ‘No ghosts, huh?' I said, as if disappointed. ‘Not that I've ever seen,' she said, matter-of-fact as an accountant, ‘but my ma said there's plenty down here. She said this whole lake is haunted. By the Micmacs that lived here until they was driven out by General Wing, by all the men who went away to the Civil War and died there over six hundred went from this part of the world, Mr. Noonan, and less than a hundred and fifty came back . . . at least in their bodies. Ma said this side of Dark Score's also haunted by the ghost of that Negro boy who died here, poor tyke. He belonged to one of the Red-Tops, you know.' ‘No I know about Sara and the Red-Tops, but not this.' I paused. ‘Did he drown?' ‘Nawp, caught in an animal trap. Struggled there for most of a whole day, screaming for help. Finally they found him. They saved the foot, but they shouldn't have. Blood-poisoning set in, and the boy died. Summer of ought-one, that was. It's why they left, I guess it was too sad to stay. But my ma used to claim the little fella, he stayed. She used to say that he's still on the TR.' I wondered what Mrs. M. would say if I told her that the little fella had very likely been here to greet me when I arrived from Derry, and had been back on several occasions since. ‘Then there was Kenny Auster's father, Normal,' she said. ‘You know that story, don't you? Oh, that's a terrible story.' She looked rather pleased either at knowing such a terrible story or at having the chance to tell it. ‘No,' I said. ‘I know Kenny, though. He's the one with the wolfhound. Blueberry.' ‘Ayuh. He carpenters a tad and caretakes a tad, just like his father before him. His dad caretook many of these places, you know, and back just after the Second World War was over, Normal Auster drownded Kenny's little brother in his back yard. This was when they lived on Wasp Hill, down where the road splits, one side going to the old boat-landin and the other to the marina. He didn't drown the tyke in the lake, though. He put him on the ground under the pump and just held him there until the baby was full of water and dead.' I stood there looking at her, the clothes behind us snapping on their whirligig. I thought of my mouth and nose and throat full of that cold mineral taste that could have been well-water as well as lakewater; down here all of it comes from the same deep aquifers. I thought of the message on the refrigerator: help im drown. ‘He left the baby laying right under the pump. He had a new Chevrolet, and he drove it down here to Lane Forty-two. Took his shotgun, too.' ‘You aren't going to tell me Kenny Auster's dad committed suicide in my house, are you, Mrs. Meserve?' She shook her head. ‘Nawp. He did it on the Brickers' lakeside deck. Sat down on their porch glider and blew his damned baby-murdering head off.' ‘The Brickers? I don't ‘ ‘You wouldn't. Hasn't been any Brickers on the lake since the sixties. They were from Delaware. Quality folks. You'd think of it as the Warshburn place, I guess, although they're gone, now, too. Place is empty. Every now and then that stark naturalborn fool Osgood brings someone down and shows it off, but he'll never sell it at the price he's asking. Mark my words.' The Washburns I had known had played bridge with them a time or two. Nice enough people, although probably not what Mrs. M., with her queer backcountry snobbishness, would have called ‘quality.' Their place was maybe an eighth of a mile north of mine along The Street. Past that point, there's nothing much the drop to the lake gets steep, and the woods are massed tangles of second growth and blackberry bushes. The Street goes on to the tip of Halo Bay at the far north end of Dark Score, but once Lane Forty-two curves back to the highway, the path is for the most part used only by berry-picking expeditions in the summer and hunters in the fall. Normal, I thought. Hell of a name for a guy who had drowned his infant son under the backyard pump. ‘Did he leave a note? Any explanation?' ‘Nawp. But you'll hear folks say he haunts the lake, too. Little towns are most likely full of haunts, but I couldn't say aye, no, or maybe myself; I ain't the sensitive type. All I know about your place, Mr. Noonan, is that it smells damp no matter how much I try to get it aired out. I ‘magine that's logs. Log buildins don't go well with lakes. The damp gets into the wood.' She had set her purse down between her Reeboks; now she bent and picked it up. It was a countrywoman's purse, black, styleless (except for the gold grommets holding the handles on), and utilitarian. She could have carried a good selection of kitchen appliances in there if she had wanted to. ‘I can't stand here natterin all day long, though, much as I might like to. I got one more place to go before I can call it quits. Summer's ha'vest time in this part of the world, you know. Now remember to take those clothes in before dark, Mr. Noonan. Don't let em get all dewy.' ‘I won't.' And I didn't. But when I went out to take them in, dressed in my bathing trunks and coated with sweat from the oven I'd been working in (I had to get the air conditioner fixed, just had to), I saw that something had altered Mrs. M.'s arrangements. My jeans and shirts now hung around the pole. The underwear and socks, which had been decorously hidden when Mrs. M. drove up the driveway in her old Ford, were now on the outside. It was as if my unseen guest one of my unseen guests was saying ha ha ha. I went to the library the next day, and made renewing my library card my first order of business. Lindy Briggs herself took my four bucks and entered me into the computer, first telling me how sorry she had been to hear about Jo's death. And, as with Bill, I sensed a certain reproach in her tone, as if I were to blame for such improperly delayed condolences. I supposed I was. ‘Lindy, do you have a town history?' I asked when we had finished the proprieties concerning my wife. ‘We have two,' she said, then leaned toward me over the desk, a little woman in a violently patterned sleeveless dress, her hair a gray puffball around her head, her bright eyes swimming behind her bifocals. In a confidential voice she added, ‘Neither is much good.' ‘Which one is better?' I asked, matching her tone. ‘Probably the one by Edward Osteen. He was a summer resident until the mid-fifties and lived here full-time when he retired. He wrote Dark Score Days in 1965 or '66. He had it privately published because he couldn't find a commercial house that would take it. Even the regional publishers passed.' She sighed. ‘The locals bought it, but that's not many books, is it?' ‘No, I suppose not,' I said. ‘He just wasn't much of a writer. Not much of a photographer, either those little black-and-white snaps of his make my eyes hurt. Still, he tells some good stories. The Micmac Drive, General Wing's trick horse, the twister in the eighteen-eighties, the fires in the nine-teen-thirties . . . ‘ ‘Anything about Sara and the Red-Tops?' She nodded, smiling. ‘Finally got around to looking up the history of your own place, did you? I'm glad to hear it. He found an old photo of them, and it's in there. He thought it was taken at the Fryeburg Fair in 1900. Ed used to say he'd give a lot to hear a record made by that bunch.' ‘So would I, but none were ever made.' A haiku by the Greek poet George Seferis suddenly occurred to me: Are these the voices of our dead friends / or just the gramophone? ‘What happened to Mr. Osteen? I don't recall the name.' ‘Died not a year or two before you and Jo bought your place on the lake,' she said. ‘Cancer.' ‘You said there were two histories?' ‘The other one you probably know A History of Castle County and Castle Rock. Done for the county centennial, and dry as dust. Eddie Osteen's book isn't very well written, but he wasn't dry. You have to give him that much. You should find them both over there.' She pointed to shelves with a sign over them which read of OF MAINE INTEREST. ‘They don't circulate.' Then she brightened. ‘Although we will happily take any nickels you should feel moved to feed into our photocopy machine.' Mattie was sitting in the far corner next to a boy in a turned-around baseball cap, showing him how to use the microfilm reader. She looked up at me, smiled, and mouthed the words Nice catch. Referring to my lucky grab at Warrington's, presumably. I gave a modest little shrug before turning to the OF MAINE INTEREST shelves. But she was right lucky or not, it had been a nice catch. ‘What are you looking for?' I was so deep into the two histories I'd found that Mattie's voice made me jump. I turned around and smiled, first aware that she was wearing some light and pleasant perfume, second that Lindy Briggs was watching us from the main desk, her welcoming smile put away. ‘Background on the area where I live,' I said. ‘Old stories. My housekeeper got me interested.' Then, in a lower voice: ‘Teacher's watching. Don't look around.' Mattie looked startled and, I thought, a little worried. As it turned out, she was right to be worried. In a voice that was low-pitched yet still designed to carry at least as far as the desk, she asked if she could reshelve either book for me. I gave her both. As she picked them up she said in what was almost a con's whisper: ‘That lawyer who represented you last Friday got John a private detective. He says they may have found something interesting about the guardian ad litem.' I walked over to the OF MAINE INTEREST shelves with her, hoping I wasn't getting her in trouble, and asked if she knew what the something interesting might be. She shook her head, gave me a professional little librarian's smile, and I went away. On the ride back to the house, I tried to think about what I'd read, but there wasn't much. Osteen was a bad writer who had taken bad pictures, and while his stories were colorful, they were also pretty thin on the ground. He mentioned Sara and the Red-Tops, all right, but he referred to them as a ‘Dixie-Land octet,' and even I knew that wasn't right. The Red-Tops might have played some Dixieland, but they had primarily been a blues group (Friday and Saturday nights) and a gospel group (Sunday mornings). Osteen's two-page summary of the Red-Tops' stay on the TR made it clear that he had heard no one else's covers of Sara's tunes. He confirmed that a child had died of blood-poisoning caused by a traphold wound, a story which sounded like Brenda Meserve's . . . but why wouldn't it? Osteen had likely heard it from Mrs. M.'s father or grandfather. He also said that the boy was Son Tidwell's only child, and that the guitar-player's real name was Reginald. The Tidwells had supposedly drifted north from the whorehouse district of New Orleans the fabled crib-and-club streets which had been known around the turn of the century as Storyville. There was no mention of Sara and the Red-Tops in the more formal history of Castle County, and no mention of Kenny Auster's drownded little brother in either book. Not long before Mattie came over to speak to me, I'd had a wild idea: that Son Tidwell and Sara Tidwell were man and wife, and that the little boy (not named by Osteen) had been their son. I found the picture Lindy had mentioned and studied it closely. It showed at least a dozen black people standing in a stiff group in front of what looked like a cattle exhibition. There was an old-fashioned Ferris wheel in the background. It could well have been taken at the Fryeburg Fair, and as old and faded as it was, it had a simple, elemental power that all Osteen's own photos put together could not match. You have seen photographs of western and Depression-era bandidos that have that same look of eerie truth stern faces above tight ties and collars, eyes not quite lost in the shadows of antique hatbrims. Sara stood front and center, wearing a black dress and her guitar. She was not outright smiling in this picture, but there seemed to be a smile in her eyes, and I thought they were like the eyes in some paintings, the ones that seem to follow you wherever you move in the room. I studied the photo and thought of her almost spiteful voice in my dream: What do you want to know, sugar? I suppose I wanted to know about her and the others who they had been, what they were to each other when they weren't singing and playing, why they'd left, where they'd gone. Both of her hands were clearly visible, one posed on the strings of her guitar, the other on the frets, where she had been making a G-chord on an October Fair-day in the year 1900. Her fingers were long, artistic, bare of rings. That didn't necessarily mean that she and Son Tidwell weren't married, of course, and even if they hadn't been, the little boy who'd been caught in the trap could have been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Except the same ghost of a smile lurked in Son Tidwell's eyes. The resemblance was remarkable. I had an idea that the two of them had been brother and sister, not man and wife. I thought about these things on my way home, and I thought about cables that were felt rather than seen . . . but mostly I found myself thinking about Lindy Briggs the way she had smiled at me, the way, a little later on, she had not smiled at her bright young librarian with the high-school certification. That worried me. Then I got back to the house, and all I worried about was my story and the people in it bags of bones which were putting on flesh daily. Michael Noonan, Max Devore, and Rogette Whitmore played out their horrible little comedy scene Friday evening. Two other things which bear narrating happened before that. The first was a call from John Storrow on Thursday night. I was sitting in front of the TV with a baseball game running soundlessly in front of me (the MUTE button with which most remote controls come equipped may be the twentieth century's finest invention). I was thinking about Sara Tidwell and Son Tidwell and Son Tidwell's little boy. I was thinking about Storyville, a name any writer just had to love. And in the back of my mind I was thinking about my wife, who had died pregnant. ‘Hello?' I said. ‘Mike, I have some wonderful news,' John said. He sounded near to bursting. ‘Romeo Bissonette may be a weird name, but there's nothing weird about the detective-guy he found for me. His name is George Kennedy, like the actor. He's good, and he's fast. This guy could work in New York.' ‘If that's the highest compliment you can think of, you need to get out of the city more.' He went on as if he hadn't heard. ‘Kennedy's real job is with a security firm the other stuff is strictly in the moonlight. Which is a great loss, believe me. He got most of this on the phone. I can't believe it.' ‘What specifically can't you believe?' ‘Jackpot, baby.' Again he spoke in that tone of greedy satisfaction which I found both troubling and reassuring. ‘Elmer Durgin has done the following things since late May: paid off his car; paid off his camp in Rangely Lakes; caught up on about ninety years of child support ‘ ‘Nobody pays child support for ninety years,' I said, but I was just running my mouth to hear it go . . . to let off some of my own building excitement, in truth. †T'ain't possible, Mcgee.' ‘It is if you have seven kids,' John said, and began howling with laughter. I thought of the pudgy self-satisfied face, the cupid-bow mouth, the nails that looked polished and prissy. ‘He don't,' I said. ‘He do,' John said, still laughing. He sounded like a complete lunatic manic, hold the depressive. ‘He really do! Ranging in ages from f-fourteen to th-th-three! What a b-busy p-p-potent little prick he must have!' More helpless howls. And by now I was howling right along with him I'd caught it like the mumps. ‘Kennedy is going to f-f-fax me p-pictures of the whole . . . fam' . . . damily!' We broke up completely, laughing together long-distance. I could picture John Stor-row sitting alone in his Park Avenue office, bellowing like a lunatic and scaring the cleaning ladies. ‘That doesn't matter, though,' he said when he could talk coherently again. ‘You see what matters, don't you?' ‘Yes,' I said. ‘How could he be so stupid?' Meaning Durgin, but also meaning Devore. John understood, I think, that we were talking about both he's at the same time. ‘Elmer Durgin's a little lawyer from a little township tucked away in the big woods of western Maine, that's all. How could he know that some guardian angel would come along with the resources to smoke him out? He also bought a boat, by the way. Two weeks ago. It's a twin outboard. A big ‘un. It's over, Mike. The home team scores nine runs in the bottom of the ninth and the fucking pennant is ours.' ‘If you say so.' But my hand went off on its own expedition, made a loose fist, and knocked on the good solid wood of the coffee-table. ‘And hey, the softball game wasn't a total loss.' John was still talking between little giggling outbursts like helium balloons. ‘No?' ‘I'm taken with her.' ‘Her?' ‘Mattie,' he said patiently. ‘Mattie Devore.' A pause, then: ‘Mike? Are you there?' ‘Yeah,' I said. ‘Phone slipped. Sorry.' The phone hadn't slipped as much as an inch, but it came out sounding natural enough, I thought. And if it hadn't, so what? When it came to Mattie, I would be in John's mind, at least below suspicion. Like the country-house staff in an Agatha Christie. He was twenty-eight, maybe thirty. The idea that a man twelve years older might be sexually attracted to Mattie had probably never crossed his mind . . . or maybe just for a second or two there on the common, before he dismissed it as ludicrous. The way Mattie herself had dismissed the idea of Jo and the man in the brown sportcoat. ‘I can't do my courtship dance while I'm representing her,' he said, ‘wouldn't be ethical. Wouldn't be safe, either. Later, though . . . you can never tell.' ‘No,' I said, hearing my voice as you sometimes do in moments when you are caught completely fiat-footed, hearing it as though it were coming from someone else. Someone on the radio or the record-player, maybe. Are these the voices of our dead friends, or just the gramophone? I thought of his hands, the fingers long and slender and without a ring on any of them. Like Sara's hands in that old photo. ‘No, you can never tell.' We said goodbye, and I sat watching the muted baseball game. I thought about getting up to get a beer, but it seemed too far to the refrigerator a safari, in fact. What I felt was a kind of dull hurt, followed by a better emotion: rueful relief, I guess you'd call it. Was he too old for her? No, I didn't think so. Just about right. Prince Charming No. 2, this time in a three-piece suit. Mattie's luck with men might finally be changing, and if so I should be glad. I would be glad. And relieved. Because I had a book to write, and never mind the look of white sneakers flashing below a red sundress in the deepening gloom, or the ember of her cigarette dancing in the dark. Still, I felt really lonely for the first time since I saw Kyra marching up the white line of Route 68 in her bathing suit and flip-flops. ‘You funny little man, said Strickland,' I told the empty room. It came out before I knew I was going to say anything, and when it did, the channel on the TV changed. It went from baseball to a rerun of All in the Family and then to Ren & Stimpy. I glanced down at the remote control. It was still on the coffee-table where I'd left it. The TV channel changed again, and this time I was looking at Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. There was an airplane in the background, and I didn't need to pick up the remote and turn on the sound to know that Humphrey was telling Ingrid that she was getting on that plane. My wife's all-time favorite movie. She bawled at the end without fail. ‘Jo?' I asked. ‘Are you here?' Bunter's bell rang once. Very faintly. There had been several presences in the house, I was sure of it . . . but tonight, for the first time, I was positive it was Jo who was with me. ‘Who was he, hon?' I asked. ‘The guy at the softball field, who was he?' Bunter's bell hung still and quiet. She was in the room, though. I sensed her, something like a held breath. I remembered the ugly, gibing little message on the refrigerator after my dinner with Mattie and Ki: blue rose liar ha ha. ‘Who was he?' My voice was unsteady, sounding on the verge of tears. ‘What were you doing down here with some guy? Were you . . . ‘ But I couldn't bring myself to ask if she had been lying to me, cheating on me. I couldn't ask even though the presence I felt might be, let's face it, only in my own head. The TV switched away from Casablanca and here was everybody's favorite lawyer, Perry Mason, on Nick at Nite. Perry's nemesis, Hamilton Burger, was questioning a distraught-looking woman, and all at once the sound blared on, making me jump. ‘I am not a liar!' some long-ago TV actress cried. For a moment she looked right out at me, and I was stunned breathless to see Jo's eyes in that black-and-white fifties face. ‘I never lied, Mr. Burger, never!' ‘I submit that you did!' Burger responded. He moved in on her, leering like a vampire. ‘I submit that you ‘ The TV suddenly went off. Bunter's bell gave a single brisk shake, and then whatever had been here was gone. But I felt better. I am not a liar . . . I never lied, never. I could believe that if I chose to. If I chose. I went to bed, and there were no dreams. I had taken to starting work early, before the heat could really get a hold on the study. I'd drink some juice, gobble some toast, then sit behind the IBM until almost noon, watching the Courier ball dance and twirl as the pages floated through the machine and came out with writing on them. That old magic, so strange and wonderful. It never really felt like work to me, although I called it that; it felt like some weird kind of mental trampoline I bounced on. Those were springs that took away all the weight of the world for awhile. At noon I'd break, drive down to Buddy Jellison's greaseatorium for something nasty, then return and work for another hour or so. After that I would swim and take a long dreamless nap in the north bedroom. I had barely poked my head into the master bedroom at the south end of the house, and if Mrs. M. thought this was odd, she kept it to herself. On Friday the seventeenth, I stopped at the Lakeview General on my way back to the house to gas up my Chevrolet. There are pumps at the All-Purpose Garage, and the go-juice was a penny or two cheaper, but I didn't like the vibe. Today, as I stood in front of the store with the pump on automatic feed, looking off toward the mountains, Bill Dean's Dodge Ram pulled in on the other side of the island. He climbed down and gave me a smile. ‘How's it going, Mike?' ‘Pretty fair.' ‘Brenda says you're writin up a storm.' ‘I am,' I said, and it was on the tip of my tongue to ask for an update on the broken second-floor air conditioner. The tip of my tongue was where it stayed. I was still too nervous about my rediscovered ability to want to change anything about the environment in which I was doing it. Stupid, maybe, but sometimes things work just because you think they work. It's as good a definition of faith as any. ‘Well, I'm glad to hear it. Very glad.' I thought he was sincere enough, but he somehow didn't sound like Bill. Not the one who had greeted me back, anyway. ‘I've been looking up some old stuff about my side of the lake,' I said. ‘Sara and the Red-Tops? You always were sort ofint'rested in them, I remember.' ‘Them, yes, but not just them. Lots of history. I was talking to Mrs. M., and she told me about Normal Auster. Kenny's father.' Bill's smile stayed on, and he only paused a moment in the act of unscrewing the cap on his gas tank, but I still had a sense, quite clear, that he had frozen inside. ‘You wouldn't write about a thing like that, would you, Mike? Because there's a lot of people around here that'd feel it bad and take it wrong. I told Jo the same thing.' ‘Jo?' I felt an urge to step between the two pumps and over the island so I could grab him by the arm. ‘What's Jo got to do with this?' He looked at me cautiously and long. ‘She didn't tell you?' ‘What are you talking about?' ‘She thought she might write something about Sara and the Red-Tops for one of the local papers.' Bill was picking his words very slowly. I have a clear memory of that, and of how hot the sun was, beating down on my neck, and the sharpness of our shadows on the asphalt. He began to pump his gas, and the sound of the pump's motor was also very sharp. ‘I think she even mentioned Yankee magazine. I c'd be wrong about that, but I don't think I am.' I was speechless. Why would she have kept quiet about the idea to try her hand at a little local history? Because she might have thought she was poaching on my territory? That was ridiculous. She had known me better than that . . . hadn't she? ‘When did you have this conversation, Bill? Do you remember?' ‘Coss I do,' he said. ‘Same day she come down to take delivery of those plastic owls. Only I raised the subject, because folks had told me she was asking around.' ‘Prying?' ‘I didn't say that,' he said stiffly, ‘you did.' True, but I thought prying was what he meant. ‘Go on.' ‘Nothing to go on about. I told her there were sore toes here and there on the TR, same as there are anyplace, and ast her not to tread on any corns if she could help it. She said she understood. Maybe she did, maybe she didn't. All I know is she kep' on asking questions. Listenin to stories from old fools with more time than sense.' ‘When was this?' ‘Fall of '93, winter and spring of '94. Went all around town, she did even over to Motton and Harlow with her notebook and little tape-recorder. Anyway, that's all I know.' I realized a stunning thing: Bill was lying. If you'd asked me before that day, I'd have laughed and told you Bill Dean didn't have a lie in him. And he must not have had many, because he did it badly. I thought of calling him on it, but to what end? I needed to think, and I couldn't do it here my mind was roaring. Given time, that roar might subside and I'd see it was really nothing, no big deal, but I needed that time. When you start finding out unexpected things about a loved one who's been dead awhile, it rocks you. Take it from me, it does. Bill's eyes had shifted away from mine, but now they shifted back. He looked both earnest and I could have sworn it a little scared. ‘She ast about little Kerry Auster, and that's a good example of what I mean about steppin on sore toes. That's not the stuff for a newspaper story or a magazine article. Normal just snapped. No one knows why. It was a terrible tragedy, senseless, and there's still people who could be hurt by it. In little towns things are kind of connected under the surface ‘ Yes, like cables you couldn't quite see. ‘ and the past dies slower. Sara and those others, that's a little different. They were just . . . just wanderers . . . from away. Jo could have stuck to those folks and it would've been all right. And say for all I know, she did. Because I never saw a single word she ever wrote. If she did write.' About that he was telling the truth, I felt. But I knew something else, knew it as surely as I'd known Mattie had been wearing white shorts when she called me on her day off. Sara and those others were just wanderers from away, Bill had said, but he hesitated in the middle of his thought, substituting wanderers for the word which had come naturally to mind. Niggers was the word he hadn't said. Sara and those others were just niggers from away. All at once I found myself thinking of an old story by Ray Bradbury, ‘Mars Is Heaven.' The first space travellers to Mars discover it's Green Town, Illinois, and all their well-loved friends and relatives are there. Only the friends and relatives are really alien monsters, and in the night, while the space travellers think they are sleeping in the beds of their long-dead kinfolk in a place that must be heaven, they are slaughtered to the last man. ‘Bill, you're sure she was up here a few times in the off-season?' ‘Ayuh. ‘T'wasn't just a few times, either. Might have been a dozen times or more. Day-trips, don't you know.' ‘Did you ever see a fellow with her? Burly guy, black hair?' He thought about it. I tried not to hold my breath. At last he shook his head. ‘Few times I saw her, she was alone. But I didn't see her every time she came. Sometimes I only heard she'd been on the TR after she ‘us gone again. Saw her in June of '94, headed up toward Halo Bay in that little car a hers. She waved, I waved back. Went down to the house later that evenin to see if she needed anythin, but she'd gone. I didn't see her again. When she died later on that summer, me and ‘Vette were so shocked.' Whatever she was looking for, she must never have written any of it down. I would have found the manuscript. Was that true, though? She had made many trips down here with no apparent attempts at concealment, on one of them she had even been accompanied by a strange man, and I had only found out about these visits by accident. ‘This is hard to talk about,' Bill said, ‘but since we've gotten started hard, we might as well go the rest of the way. Livin on the TR is like the way we used to sleep four or even five in a bed when it was January and true cold. If everyone rests easy, you do all right. But if one person gets restless, gets tossing and turning, no one can sleep. Right now you're the restless one. That's how people see it.' He waited to see what I'd say. When almost twenty seconds passed without a word from me (Harold Oblowski would have been proud), he shuffled his feet and went on. ‘There are people in town uneasy about the interest you've taken in Mattie Devore, for instance. Now I'm not sayin there's anythin going on between the two of you although there's folks who do say it but if you want to stay on the TR you're makin it tough on yourself.' ‘Why?' ‘Comes back to what I said a week and a half ago. She's trouble.' ‘As I recall, Bill, you said she was in trouble. And she is. I'm trying to help her out of it. There's nothing going on between us but that.' ‘I seem to recall telling you that Max Devore is nuts,' he said. ‘If you make him mad, we all pay the price.' The pump clicked off and he racked it up. Then he sighed, raised his hands, dropped them. ‘You think this is easy for me to say?' ‘You think it's easy for me to listen to?' ‘All right, ayuh, we're in the same skiff. But Mattie Devore isn't the only person on the TR livin hand-to-mouth, you know. There's others got their woes, as well. Can't you understand that?' Maybe he saw that I understood too much and too well, because his shoulders slumped. ‘If you're asking me to stand aside and let Devore take Mattie's baby without a fight, you can forget it,' I said. ‘And I hope that's not it. Because I think I'd have to be quits with a man who'd ask another man to do something like that.' ‘I wouldn't ask it now anywise,' he said, his accent thickening almost to the point of contempt. ‘It'd be too late, wouldn't it?' And then, unexpectedly, he softened. ‘Christ, man, I'm worried about you. Let the rest of it go hang, all right? Hang high where the crows can pick it.' He was lying again, but this time I didn't mind so much, because I thought he was lying to himself. ‘But you need to have a care. When I said Devore was crazy, that was no figure of speech. Do you think he'll bother with court if court can't get him what he wants? Folks died in those summer fires back in 1933. Good people. One related to me. They burned over half the goddam county and Max Devore set em. That was his going-away present to the TR. It could never be proved, but he did it. Back then he was young and broke, not yet twenty and no law in his pocket. What do you think he'd do now?' He looked at me searchingly. I said nothing. Bill nodded as if I had spoken. ‘Think about it. And you remember this, Mike: no man who didn't care for you would ever talk to you straight as I have.' ‘How straight was that, Bill?' I was faintly aware of some tourist walking from his Volvo to the store and looking at us curiously, and when I replayed the scene in my mind later on, I realized we must have looked like guys on the verge of a fistfight. I remember that I felt like crying out of sadness and bewilderment and an incompletely defined sense of betrayal, but I also remember being furious with this lanky old man him in his shining-clean cotton undershirt and his mouthful of false teeth. So maybe we were close to fighting, and I just didn't know it at the time. ‘Straight as I could be,' he said, and turned away to go inside and pay for his gas. ‘My house is haunted,' I said. He stopped, back to me, shoulders hunched as if to absorb a blow. Then, slowly, he turned back. ‘Sara Laughs has always been haunted, Mike. You've stirred em up. P'raps you should go back to Derry and let em settle. That might be the best thing.' He paused, as if replaying this last to see if he agreed with it, then nodded. He nodded as slowly as he had turned. ‘Ayuh, that might be best all around.' When I got back to Sara I called Ward Hankins. Then I finally made that call to Bonnie Amudson. Part of me was rooting for her not to be in at the travel agency in Augusta she co-owned, but she was. Halfway through my talk with her, the fax began to print out xeroxed pages from Jo's appointment calendars. On the first one Ward had scrawled, ‘Hope this helps.' I didn't rehearse what I was going to say to Bonnie; I felt that to do so would be a recipe for disaster. I told her that Jo had been writing something maybe an article, maybe a series of them about the township where our summerhouse was located, and that some of the locals had apparently been cheesed off by her curiosity. Some still were. Had she talked to Bonnie? Perhaps showed her an early draft? ‘No, huh-uh.' Bonnie sounded honestly surprised. ‘She used to show me her photos, and more herb samples than I honestly cared to see, but she never showed me anything she was writing. In fact, I remember her once saying that she'd decided to leave the writing to you and just ‘ ‘ take a little taste of everything else, right?' ‘Yes.' I thought this was a good place to end the conversation, but the guys in the basement seemed to have other ideas. ‘Was she seeing anyone, Bonnie?' Silence from the other end. With a hand that seemed at least four miles down my arm, I plucked the fax sheets out of the basket. Ten of them November of 1993 to August of 1994. Jottings everywhere in Jo's neat hand. Had we even had a fax before she died? I couldn't remember. There was so fucking much I couldn't remember. ‘Bonnie? If you know something, please tell me. Jo's dead, but I'm not. I can forgive her if I have to, but I can't forgive what I don't underst ‘ ‘I'm sorry,' she said, and gave a nervous little laugh. ‘It's just that I didn't understand at first. â€Å"Seeing anyone,† that was just so . . . so foreign to Jo . . . the Jo I knew . . . that I couldn't figure out what you were talking about. I thought maybe you meant a shrink, but you didn't, did you? You meant seeing someone like seeing a guy. A boyfriend.' ‘That's what I meant.' Thumbing through the faxed calendar sheets now, my hand not quite back to its proper distance from my eyes but getting there, getting there. I felt relief at the honest bewilderment in Bonnie's voice, but not as much as I'd expected. Because I'd known. I hadn't even needed the woman in the old Perry Mason episode to put in her two cents, not really. It was Jo we were talking about, after all. Jo. ‘Mike,' Bonnie was saying, very softly, as if I might be crazy, ‘she loved you. She loved you. ‘Yes. I suppose she did.' The calendar pages showed how busy my wife had been. How productive. S-Ks of Maine . . . the soup kitchens. WomShel, a county-to-county network of shelters for battered women. TeenShel. Friends of Me. Libes. She had been at two or three meetings a month two or three a week at some points and I'd barely noticed. I had been too busy with my women in jeopardy. ‘I loved her too, Bonnie, but she was up to something in the last ten months of her life. She didn't give you any hint of what it might have been when you were riding to meetings of the Soup Kitchens board or the Friends of Maine Libraries?' Silence from the other end. ‘Bonnie?' I took the phone away from my ear to see if the red LOW BATTERY light was on, and it squawked my name. I put it back. ‘Bonnie, what is it?' ‘There were no long drives those last nine or ten months. We talked on the phone and I remember once we had lunch in Waterville, but there were no long drives. She quit.' I thumbed through the fax-sheets again. Meetings noted everywhere in Jo's neat hand, Soup Kitchens of Maine among them. ‘I don't understand. She quit the Soup Kitchens board?' Another moment of silence. Then, speaking carefully: ‘No, Mike. She quit all of them. She finished with Woman Shelters and Teen Shelters at the end of '93 her term was up then. The other two, Soup Kitchens and Friends of Maine Libraries . . . she resigned in October or November of 1993.' Meetings noted on all the sheets Ward had sent me. Dozens of them. Meetings in 1993, meetings in 1994. Meetings of boards to which she'd no longer belonged. She had been down here. On all those supposed meeting-days, Jo had been on the TR. I would have bet my life on it. But why?