Importance Of Manpower Planning In Holiday Inn Hotel Commerce Essay

Importance Of Manpower Planning In Holiday Inn Hotel Commerce Essay Planning not only includes obtaining right person at right place but it also comprises of motivational programmes such as incentive plans for active participation of employees and certain other schemes and facilities which are integral part of a staffing function. The training and development of workforce that leads to co-operation and better human relations with which the Human Relation can be developed and stabilize through effective control, clear communication and effective supervision. Where there is a maximum utilization of resources there is increase in productivity level and the higher productivity leads result to minimum wastage of time, money and efforts and this is possible through activities such as training and development, remuneration and performance appraisal. It is an important element in the present industrialization where large scale industries requires management of large scale manpower and this could be effectively done with the help of staffing function. Staffin g is the key to all managerial functions and Human resources help in implementation of all major four functions which are known as planning, organizing, directing and controlling. It is considered to be a two phase process because it not only analyses the current human resources but it also makes a future forecast and helps to draw employment opportunity. Manpower is advantageous to this hotel in different aspects such as Helps in growth and diversification Shortages and surpluses can be identified so that quick action can be taken Avoids overstaffing and reduces labour costs as excess staff can be eliminated Based on manpower planning recruitments and selection process would take place Helps in stabilizing the organization with the help of manpower management Helps in identifying the skills of the employees and provide appropriate training to develop and utilize those skills and talent. Labour Market Strategy in Holiday Inn Holiday Inn addresses the challenges with respect to what to deliver to stakeholders over a time frame of 5-10 years and lead the thinking of providing information and direction regarding overall labour market dynamics. It has pathways to develop and create sustainable growth and prosperity. For development it requires retention, provincial economic sustainability, attraction of highly skilled and educated labour force. A strong system of communication that brings people together to ensure that public and private institutions spend time and money wisely and the goal of the labour market strategy are like High level participation in high quality and diversified employment Highly skilled workforce High quality and productive workplaces Incremental change on existing knowledge and skills Ref: http://www.managementstudyguide.com B. External factors The macro-environmental or external factors of a Holiday Inn Hotel can be identified by using PEST analysis which is Political, Economic, Social and Technology. Political factors: This factor mainly deals with the government policies and procedures which is worked out through legislation and consists of all legal factors such as How stable is the political environment? Government position on market ethics Government view on culture and religion Government policy on Economy Taxation policy on tax rates and incentives These are some of the political factors that include legal issues, government implementations and define both the formal and informal rules under which the organization must be operated. Economic factor: Each and every organization is affected with national and global economic factors such as Cost of labour Interest and Inflation rates Economic growth rates Business cycle stage (e.g. recession, recovery) Unemployment rates Socio-cultural factor: It includes the cultural and demographic aspects of the external macro environment. The potential of the employees who come from different back grounds and work together in the hotel and customer trends and aspect which the hotel has to consider as per their needs and wants such as Change in lifestyles Level of education Value in society Demographics (age, sex, race etc.,) Change in consumer needs and wants Technological factor: This factor is the major driver of globalization which reduces the minimum efficient of production levels and some of the technological factors are Recent technological developments Rate of technology changes Alternative way of providing services New discoveries Communication technology The technology has now become the most important aspect in any hotel as when the customers are mostly delighted and satisfied with service including latest technology that is available in the hotel. 1. Manpower Demand Factors There are several factors that are considered which created a requirement of manpower in Holiday Inn and are related to economic cycle such as like adaption of new Technology, a new demand either by increasing the productivity or by creating new goods especially in hotel industry. By adopting machines like coffee machines which are used to prepare quick coffee to the customers and ovens, refrigerators, coolers air conditioners which are used in kitchen for the quality production of food and wifi a free use of internet mobility for the customer and heaters which make the customers warm and comfortable. This adoption has made new kind of requirement of employees who could operate it correctly, quickly and maintain. The other factor is changing in Skill requirements where staff needs to perform different task by provided training and make them indulge with their job which is necessary to focus or they would lose the interest of doing the same activity and would probably look after the other job by changing the organization which results in labour turnover. By changing in skill requirements it has made the change in manpower planning by recruiting people from different backgrounds and training them in different departments and fields where they can have the overall control in different situations and skills to perform the service effectively and can have job satisfaction. The Productivity improvements is another factor which has created a demand for manpower in Holiday Inn which measures the productivity based on the number of task performed or the service that is provided to the customers in any given time of period. This measure includes a comparison of the service provided to established company or the customer quality standards. To measure the productivity improvements the time sheet has been maintained to indicate the time taken to complete particular task and look at the minimal customization of the quantity of work, for example the number of calls received per day, the number of queries handled, the number of customer served and many more which will be used as a measure. The hotel has also considered Expansion plans as the factor of demand for the manpower which needs skilled and efficient labour to give good start by providing effective and quality service. The diversity of hotel management is greater which involves combination of variety skills such as food and beverage, management, housekeeping services, accounting, sales and marketing, front office operation. While expansion the main aim of the organization is to maintain their position, service and quality standards in order to compete in the current market and the utmost importance is given to the employees, the skills and efficiency to achieve the organizational goals. Ref: http://www.scribd.com 2. Labour turn over As per Holiday Inn, the labour turnover determines the rate of recruitment. In the year 2008 the total number of leavers during the year is 120, the total number of employed at the beginning of year is 400 and at the end number of employed is 430. This can be measured as Number of Leavers / Average number of employers ÃÆ'- 100 i.e., 120 / 415 ÃÆ'- 100 = 29%, during the period there was a major change in employment level as the percentage does not measure the essential relationship between recruitment and labour turnover. There are several categories that cause attrition like death, retirement, migration, occupation mobility. Though there are many ways to find out the labour turnover but stability can be measured by indicating effects of policy change in the external labour market. The percentage of labour turnover can hide areas of stability within the target population. The 100% labour turnover may be produced by 400% labour turnover of a quarter of the target population. The labo ur turnover is considered based on the different market conditions. 3.Supply and Demand The supply and demand of the labour can be ensured with the help of the manpower planning that matches the overall business strategy and plan. Demand which is a process of analyzing, reviewing and attempting to achieve the organizational objectives and supply is necessary action taken to ensure that labour is available when ever required. These two factors are similar and go hand to hand when increase both increases and when decrease both decreases. The manager should have to consider both the factors demand and supply where to meet the demand like seasonal times during Christmas and summer holidays where the demand will be too high there should also be sufficient supply of staff. The main source could be the internal employees where the demand can be fulfilled by the human resource by promoting the internal employees in different departments apart some external labour should also be considered like fresh graduates from schools and colleges and when there is decrease in demand during non seasonal periods the internal labour will be too high, so the managers will be reducing the supply measures by retirement, resignations and voluntary scheme of retirements and if again demand increases then same procedure of hiring new employees and promoting internal staff. The manager keeps balance both the demand and supply. Ref: Human Resource management: Theory Practice by John Bratton, Jeffrey Gold 4.Work Arrangements: Once the employee is been recruited in an organization then it is the responsibility of the employer to look after the working conditions and provide proper basic and safety facilities to the employees. To provide such arrangements there are certain things that needs to be focused like Work Environment: The employer should consider the proper work environment to the employees where they will be able to work efficiently like Lights, Heaters, Elevators, Proper floor maintenance and emergency exits in case of emergency and proper equipment to work with. Safety arrangements: The employees should also be taken care with health and safety were they should be provided with insurance facilities and keeping danger equipments away and in restricted areas and see that no employee would get harm while working and also provide first aid facility on every floor. Rewards and Recognition: In Holiday Inn every year there will be best employee and best organizer will be rewarded apart from that the hotel should also come up with certain different ideas of nominating people which will inspire them to work harder and smarter. Leave compensation : The Hotel has also provided proper compensation to the employees not only paying overtime allowance but also by approving leaves of employees at constant period which helps in increasing efficiency and motivates employees to work for long term. Ref: Human resource management in the hospitality Tourism Industry. TASK 2 Recruitment and employment: : Legislation Implication Application Race Relation 1976 act Sex Discrimination 1986 act Disability Discrimination 1995 act Equal pay 1970 act Directly or indirectly it makes unlawful to discriminate against a person on grounds of ethnic, nationality, origin or colour. It covers all non contractual areas where it is unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of marital status or sex The act makes it unlawful if a disabled person is treated as less favorably because of his / her disability. The right states all the men and women, part time and full timers will be paid equal for doing the similar work. In organization once the employee is being recruited he / she cannot be distinguished or categorized in different departments based on their nationality, ethnic or colour In any organization men or women all are equal in the eyes of law and will be violated if the people are categorized in different segments based on their sex or marital status In organization based on skills and required department any person will not be discriminated based on his/ her disability. In Holiday Inn this rule is applicable to all the people who work probably same however it does not include basic wages and salaries to the contract employees, overtime, vouchers, sick pay schemes are not being indulged. Ref: www.city.ac.uk Statutory Provisions: The Holiday Inn has implemented health and safety act for the protection of the employees like Legislation Implication Application Health and safety act 1974 Management of health and safety at work regulation act 1999 Work Place regulation 1992 act ( Health, safety and welfare) RIDDOR act 1995 This act secures health, safety and welfare of the employees at work premises It implies for employers to assess and manage risk to employees and others arising from work activities It is applicable to the workplace environment and ensures it is safe and suitable to carry the task and doesnà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚ ¢t present risk to employee and others. It is reporting of injuries, disease and dangerous occurrences regulation It is applicable to all the people who work in the hotel and provides safe access and maintenance with proper storage and safe handling of dangerous substances and also providing training to staff to ensure the health and safety. There are proper arrangements being made to ensure the health and safety of the employees at work place by making proper arrangements for emergencies, training to employees and providing adequate information for health surveillance where appropriate It is to ensure the work place is safe to carry on the task like ventilation, lightning, sanitary conveniences, escalators and moving walkways, work station and seating, temperature in indoor workplaces, drinking water, room dimensions and work space, drinking water and facilities to change clothes, rest and eat meals. The employers and people in control premises need to report major injuries, dangerous occurrence or any work related deaths to incident contact centre or via online. Ref: www.healthyworkinglives.com Code of Practice: Legislation Application Implication Employment act 1996 Employment relation 1999 act Disciplinary policy and practice. Handling Record Keeping This law states that an employer cannot dismiss an employee on certain basis. This law ensures the Disciplinary and grievance, leave for family and domestic reasons, trade unions and other rights of an individual. This process is instructed on two main areas conduct due to lack in performance and capability which is failure to follow the hotel instruction and procedures. It is where all the employers have to support and train to carry out disciplinary meetings with their team. If any employee refuse to prevent the risk of health and safety at work or refuse to return to workplace which is believed to be dangerous workplace for an employee to work then the employer cannot dismiss the employee. It is a right of an employee to get accompanied and can complaint to employment tribunal which also includes interpretation. This law is also applicable to entitle of leaves during domestic incidents, maternity or parental leave and consequent amendments. The other rights would be like part time work discrimination, code of practice, unfair dismissal, and training to employees. In certain cases the employer may encounter difficulties with the performance of the employees due to illness or mental stress. At such instances the manager has to show more support and deal it properly if no alternative is left then have to approach formal capability procedure. If the employee is not following the procedures like being late to hotel all the time or fail to follow the management instruction the employer should have to follow ACAS code i.e. first sending warning letter and conducting meeting and appealing. It is unlawful if any of the employees do leak the confidential data of the customers in the hotel. The employees should have to consider the confidentiality of the data and may be dismissed if violated the rule. Ref: www.personneltoday.com Organisation: Legislation Application Implication National Minimum wage act 1999 Paid Leaves entitled to the employees This law is applicable to all the people who work in United Kingdom It is where the employees will The legal way of paying the minimum wage to an employee is what called as NMW which an employer should pay at least on hourly basis and then it is calculated on arrears.

Early Man

The base of all human accomplishment derives from the Paleolithic era. These beginnings of mankind could be considered our most important. The first tools were developed, stone tools used to shape wood, dig for food, or weaponry. The progression in tools shows the growth in thinking, first using objects for tools then creating tools to fit a certain need such as sharpening stone for cutting. Tools were used to fashion weapons like a bow and arrow. Man learned how to make fire with friction for heat and cooking food (Baldwin).Art provides an insight into life for early man, their location and migration, and the animals they hunted or domesticated. Paintings, statues, and carvings show ingenuity and awareness to the surrounding world. Languages developed with migration allowing communication. Human behaviors were established on religious ideas and formal conduct. An idea of the afterlife was present, burying the dead with prized possessions. These slow developments foreshadowed the adv ance to come. With the end of the ice age, changes in available game and a warmer climate encouraged a new idea on how to live.Fostering the agricultural developments already learned the hunter/gatherer way of life was no longer necessary. With dogs already domesticated, new animals became useful – farms owned pigs, sheep, goats, and cattle. These animals were vital several ways, providing meat, milk, or labor. As well as food, they could also be used for leather and furs. Working the land aggressively enough to live off was difficult and required many hands. Families began to grow. Women were able to produce more offspring with a more permanent settlement.The children were raised with strong work ethics, expected to be useful cultivating what might one day be theirs. The society became largely patriarchal since men harvested the land and women spent most of their time caring for children. The population growth was immense, multiplying tenfold. The need for access to water cr eated small communities resulting in culture and society changes. Houses were built, some more extravagant than others depending on profits generated from the farm. Social statuses were developed.Art, in all forms – painting, sculpture, embellishment in clothing and accessories – were encouraged. Some farms produced excess and gained the ability to trade for items they could not themselves produce. This surplus of food allowed people to learn other trades. A weekly system was prevalent in almost all societies, based on market days, seasonal harvest, or religion. Language began to meld together making communication with a broader range of communities. This culture is the first to spread worldwide (Baldwin). With technological progress, recovering artifacts and what we can learn from them advances daily.Weather and climate changes can unearth new artifacts and expand knowledge of prehistoric life. The ability to accurately pinpoint the age of an artifact, and historians interpretation of an object could give us insight into many aspects of prehistoric life. â€Å"It’s very important, telling us something about species close to us but not quite ‘us’† (Cornoe). (Baldwin) http://socsci. gulfcoast. edu/rbaldwin/early_man. htm (Cornoe) http://www. smh. com. au/national/scientists-stumped-by-prehistoric-human-whose-face-doesnt-fit-20120314-1v3m0. html

A Sound Of Sense By Robert Frost - 899 Words

Poetry fundamentally speaks to the senses by using descriptive language that creates vivid mental pictures and sensations in the reader s mind. Authors employ imagery and metaphor and other literary devices to add complexity to their work. Poet Robert Frost instead used what he called a â€Å"sound of sense† method in his approach to the language of poetry. He intentionally used the sound of speech (especially the colloquial tones of his native New England region) to develop his poetic meaning. His theory of sound was essential in developing the auditory images in his poems and his emphasis on living speech gave his poetry the subtle difference between the sound itself and the written image of the sound. While Frost admitted that the principle of sound of sense in poetry was not a new idea, he considered the use of it essential to the literary form: â€Å"The surest way to reach the heart [in a poem] is through the ear† (Frost qtd in Newdick 298). The measured wor ds and sounds together convey the emotional intent of the poet in his works to make his poetry resonate with the reader. Sound of sense technique utilizes specific sounds and tones to construct an auditory awareness of the subject. The sound of the words combines with the rhythm of the verses to deliver the meaning of the poem. Frost described his technique as emphasizing â€Å"live† sentences over â€Å"dead† ones: â€Å"A live sentence conveys meaning not only by its component words but by its whole tone. And a good writerShow MoreRelatedEssay about Nature in Robert Frosts Poems1649 Words   |  7 Pages Under the stars of the sky, fifteen-year old Robert Frost explored the heavens through a telescope. He was seeking affirmation of the proverbial question that has plagued mankind for centuries—the proof and existence of God. While surveying the cosmos, Frost‘s interest was stirred, so he visited a library and obtained books that had illustrated star charts. Within these pages, his knowledge of the stars was edified and a poet was born. Frost‘s first poems were ―astronomicalâ€â€" and invokedRead MoreRobert Frost s The Gift Outright 1313 Words   |  6 PagesRobert Frost Emma Ramsey English 6th Hour December 8, 2012 â€Æ' Robert Frost According to PoetryFoundation.org, â€Å"Robert Frost holds a unique and almost isolated position in American letters.† Robert Frost is very popular for his realistic writings of rural life. He was a great poet and was honored frequently during his lifetime. Frost received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and recited his poem, â€Å"The Gift Outright,† at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in January 1961 which got him nationalRead MoreAnalysis of Robert Frosts Mowing763 Words   |  4 PagesFred White Analysis of Robert Frost’s â€Å"Mowing† As the speaker labors in his farm field on a quiet, hot day, he can’t help but notice that his scythe seems to be whispering as it works. He can’t exactly hear what the scythe is saying, and he admits that there is a chance that the whispering sound is simply in his own mind because of the quietness of the day or perhaps due to the heat of the sun playing tricks on him. The speaker realizes that the scythe is teaching him a lesson about the value ofRead More Appeal of Robert Frosts Out Out Essay1055 Words   |  5 Pages There have been many interesting and appealing poems written throughout history. One of the most interesting and appealing poems is Robert Frost’s â€Å"Out, Out†. The poem has the ability to make the reader visualize an event in vivid detail without making it into a short story. The poem depicts a very dramatic scene and makes it seem as if the reader is really there. Poems are generally thought to be about love and feelings, but some p oems can actually be like a short story; these are called narrativeRead MoreAnalysis Of Nothing Gold Can Stay1355 Words   |  6 PagesRobert Frost wrote Nothing Gold Can Stay in 1923. Frost wrote this poem out of fear the world would end. He did not publish the entire poem and modified the first section. The first section is what is featured in print. By not publishing the entire piece, this leads me to believe he was going to publish the whole piece for a different reason than the reason he only published part of it. He may have targeted one audience with all of the piece, but then another audience with only part of the pieceRead MoreAcquainted With The Night By Robert Frost1553 Words   |  7 PagesRobert Frost s â€Å"Acquainted with the Night† is about a man who frequently journeys out at night and roams about the city alone. He is familiar with the atmosphere around him and it’s apparent he has wandered far beyond the city. Throughout the poem the speaker does not communicate with anyone and a sense of silence and suspense pervade his walks. It is understood that the speaker is very lonely on his walks and often finds himself hoping someone would call out to him. As the speaker strolls throughRead MoreRobert Frost Poetry: Rhyme Schemes1178 Words   |  5 PagesRhyme Schemes of Robert Frost’s Poetry Jake Jelsone English 120-08 A rhyme is defined as a verse or poetry having correspondence in the terminal sounds of the lines. One of the best examples of a poet that mastered rhyming beautifully was Robert Frost. Robert Frost was one of the best poets of the twentieth century. He is highly admired for his work about rural life and command for the English language. While many poets like to free verse their poetry, Robert Frost normally does not. OneRead MoreCritical Appreciation Of Robert Frost, By Robert Frost1216 Words   |  5 PagesThe author of this poem is Robert Frost. In his life the main reason I think he wrote this poem was because he saw people and things be gold then fade away. It was written in 1923 in New Hampshire. The poem is in the original language. This poem is not a series with other poems it is just one single poem. It was in the early 90s so I would think it would be related to the industrial age at the time in New England. The style is a narrative. Its describing how even though everything seems gold andRead MoreThe Use Of Calvinism By Robert Frost1114 Words   |  5 PagesRobert Frost incorporated Calvinism into his poetic work to emphasize his belief in this Protestant theological system. Frost lived in a Calvinist society throughout his life, influencing him to believe in such a system. The death of Frost’s family members, drove him to live such a dark life, and turning to find gratification through Calvinism. Frost made sure to demonstrate the struggle of the characters in his poetry as if they were trying to escape something that was not possible, such as CalvinismRead MoreThe Road Not Taken By Robert Frost1221 Words   |  5 PagesWhile gazing at the farmland on the rural outskirts of Derry, NH, Robert Frost created an American masterpiece. â€Å"The Road Not Taken†, is a dynamic and deep poem orchestrated to perfection. However, equal to its acclaim, is the misunderstanding of th e poem. A piece of literature of this stature deserves to be under the microscope of our classes critical discussions. I believe that the time would be beneficial to everyone. Giving a breath of fresh air to a poem that has been abused by Hallmark cards

The Beveridge Curve

Rousseau s View On State Of Nature - 1551 Words

In Philosophy the argument of the state of nature often comes into discussion. However, two mainstream philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean- Jacques Rousseau have similarities, but mostly have multiple different ideas on this theory. Although Hobbes makes valid points Rousseau s view on state of nature is more realistic then Hobbes. Rousseau’s view on the state of nature is interpreted as a forest, and refers to the â€Å"savage man†. He begins by explaining how he relates man to an animal he states â€Å"when I strip that being†¦ I see an animal less strong than some, less agile the others, but all in all, the most advantageously organized of all† (Discourse of Inequality, 47). Rousseau believes that if you would leave man in the wild he would†¦show more content†¦In Hobbes book Leviathan, he makes the natural man out to be a self obsessed monster who is only interested in his own self preservation. This would intern leave the state of nature to be consumed with war, â€Å"...because the condition of man is conditions of war of everyone against everyone†. With out the constrain of government Hobbes states â€Å"So that in the state of nature man will find three principal causes of quarrel: first, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory† (Leviathan, 76). These principles would then leave men in the state of nature, with a life that Hobbes describes as â€Å"solitary, poor nasty, brutish, and short† (Leviathan, 76). Over all Hobbes view on the state of nature is a materialistic world where without an â€Å"absolute sovereign† the life of man would be nothing more then the â€Å"state of war†. The two views on the state of nature given by Rousseau and Hobbes have similarities and differences. Of the differences, the first is how each philosopher views the state of nature in itself. Rousseau’s view on the state of nature is the state of equality. The savage is his own noble. On the other hand, in Hobbes state of nature it is nothing more than a state of war. This state of nature is where fear rules, all the people in this state only concern themselves with staying alive, morality does not exist. Another difference between their views is the motivation structure. In Rousseau’s state the people are completely sovereign, each person rules overShow MoreRelatedHobbes And Rousseau s Views On The State Of Nature868 Words   |  4 Pagesdifferent views on one central issue. For example Thomas Hobbes, and Jean Jacques Rousseau interpret a Man’s Nature very differently from each other. The discussion over Man’s Nature brings light to Hobbes underlying rea son of why people established political societies, and Rousseau’s question of what causes a mans misery? In Hobbes case he believes that Men need to find self-protection in order to shield themselves from men’s natural state of misery and fear. On the other hand, Rousseau didn’t seeRead MoreRousseau s Views On The State Of Nature And Civilization1401 Words   |  6 PagesIn this essay, I will compare the contrasting views between Thomas Hobbes and Jean Jacques Rousseau based on the state of nature and civilization. Rousseau was seen as an optimist who viewed human nature as good (â€Å"Noble Savage†) and believed that civilization corrupted us; While, Hobbes thought the complete opposite believing that humans in their natural state were selfish creatures purely interested in themselves and that government is imperative in keeping us in check. Throughout this essay, IRead MoreHobbes And Rousseau s View Of State Of Nature1486 Words   |  6 PagesFor cent uries, many political philosophers used â€Å"state of nature† as the starting point of their theories about society, chief among them Hobbes and Rousseau. Even though both philosophers saw state of nature as the phase prior to formation of societies, Hobbes saw the state of nature as a step to the better phase (a political society ruled by sovereign), while Rousseau saw it as a step to man’s misery. For Hobbes, man’s natural state is fearful and chaotic phase which create the need for an institutionRead MoreThe Political Landscape Of France1367 Words   |  6 Pagesde Montesquieu and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, both paved the way for the French and other Enlightenment revolutions during the 18th and 19th centuries. Although neither of the men saw the manifestations of their ideas in the American or French Revolutions, their influence is unquestionable to these movements. Without the political and economic atmosphere in France and Europe during the 18th and 19th cen tury, the ideas and beliefs of thinkers like Montesquieu and Rousseau would not have affected the EnlightenmentRead MoreThomas Hobbes And Jean Jacques Rousseau1728 Words   |  7 PagesHobbes and Jean Jacques Rousseau are both considered Enlightenment thinkers, their ideas vary greatly in the political continuum. Both of their theories have certain components which may appear to be symmetric, but upon closer examination, their differences stem from the very way in which they view human nature. From there, each man builds up to the creation of a commonwealth in a way that reflects which type of government they support. The political theories of Hobbes and Rousseau share many common aspectsRead MoreHuman Nature1379 Words   |  6 PagesAccording to Nature T he obstacle of figuring out the nature and instinctual behavior of humans has been toppled by many philosophical writers. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Niccolo Machiavelli, in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and The Prince, subsequently, talks about this subject. In the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau talks about the natural human state and is transition to its current civilized state. In The Prince, Machiavelli talks about the nature of humans alreadyRead MoreJohn Locke And Jean Jacques Rousseau1270 Words   |  6 Pages The implementation of a society in which all are guaranteed equal rights has never come to fruition. Through political treatise, formulated essay’s, and prototypical society s, many have attempted to recreate the works of famed philosophers: John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Disagreeing regarding the innate goodness of humans, both understand that for a political society to function properly, humans must be given a society in which prosperity is the goal. Therefore, underlying the key themeRead MoreIs Outsourcing A Refugee Crisis?1544 Words   |  7 PagesThe authors I chose to focus on are Thomas Hobbes and Jean Jacques Rousseau. From the readings â€Å"Leviathan† by Thomas Hobbes (CITE) and â€Å"Discourse on the Origin of Inequality† by Jean Jacques Rousseau (CITE), both authors have similar but yet very different viewpoints on ideas they have made. The ideas I will be comparing and contrasting between these two philosophers are their different beliefs and understandings on the state of nature and the social contract. The media objective I have chosen to focusRead MoreRousseau, Mill, And Constant Articulated By Unpacking Essay1663 Words   |  7 Pagesdifferent. Rousseau, Mill, and Constant exhibit a very different view of the modernizing society. This paper seeks to point out the distinct visions of liberty that Rousseau, Mill, and Constant articulated by unpacking the central premises of e ach argument, pitting them against each other through comparing and contrasting. Rousseau’s Vision of Liberty Although, Rousseau distinguishes two specific types of liberty, natural liberty and civil liberty. Rousseau states, that naturalRead MoreRousseau, Mill, And Constant Articulated By Unpacking Essay1656 Words   |  7 Pagesdistinctively different. Rousseau, Mill, and Constant exhibit a very different view of the modernizing society. This paper seeks to flash out the distinct visions of liberty that Rousseau, Mill, and Constant articulated by unpacking the central premises of each argument, pitting them against each other through comparing and contrasting. Although, Rousseau distinguishes two specific types of liberty, natural liberty and civil liberty. Natural liberty, Rousseau states, is the freedom to

Bag of Bones CHAPTER SIXTEEN Free Essays

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. We will write a custom essay sample on Bag of Bones CHAPTER SIXTEEN or any similar topic only for you Order Now 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 dow n, put a name on him, and both times 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? How to cite Bag of Bones CHAPTER SIXTEEN, Essay examples

Importance of Minerals and Vitamins in Human Body- myassignmenthelp

Question: Write about theImportance of Minerals and Vitamins in Human Body. Answer: Essential nutrients are a category of nutrients, which the human body cannot prepare by itself and requires external sources to replenish the body with such nutrients. Minerals and vitamins are such essential nutrients that are required for completion of several crucial pathways inside the human body (Mann and Truswell 2017). Therefore, the prime aim of this assignment to point out importance of these inorganic (minerals) and organic (vitamins) essential nutrients and discuss some unknown facts about them. For further discussion, iron has been selected as the required mineral and Vitamin B12 has been selected as the essential vitamin. Mineral Iron is an important mineral needed for several important aspects of human body. By combing to several proteins, or taking part in few physiological reactions, iron helps for the development of human cells (Prasad 2013). Functions The primary function of iron inside human body is in the formation of red blood cells in the human body. IT binds the oxygen molecules and helps the red blood cells to transport oxygen for the cellular function to the entire body. Further in the muscle cells, with myoglobin, it helps in the storage, transfer and release of oxygen in the muscle tissues. Further, it helps to promote healthy brain functions and maintains healthy immune system (Abbaspour, Hurrell and Kelishadi 2014). Sources Depending on the type of iron found, the iron sources are divided into two sections, haem group and non-haem group. The haem group contains animal sources of iron such as meat, red meat, poultry and fishes. On the other hand, the non-haem group is inclusive of plant derived iron such as vegetables, legumes, cereals and beans (Abbaspour, Hurrell and Kelishadi 2014). Fun facts The haem iron is absorbed quickly than the non-haem iron. Iron is also important for respiration and metabolism for energy. It works as catalyst in the reaction for collagen formation (Prasad 2013). Vitamin Vitamin B12 is an important essential vitamin needed for successful physiological function. This vitamin is also known as cobalamin and deficiencies can affect the neurological system of human body (Fenech 2012). Functions The vitamin B12 is involved in the formation and regulation of human DNA, as well as involved in the formation of red blood cells. There are several neurological functions, in which it helps as catalyst and helps to regulate different responses. Further, this essential vitamin is involved in the human metabolism and plays crucial roles in the formation of fatty acids and energy production (Nielsen et al. 2012). Source This vitamin is naturally present in animal food products such as poultry, fish, meat, egg and milk products. However, plant food sources lack the presence of vitamin B12 in them, but fortified cereals are a good source of vitamin B12. Few of the yeast products are also good source for Vitamin B12 (Fenech 2012). Fun facts Deficiency of vitamin B12 leads to neurological disorder and anemia, as it is involved in the red blood cell production. It is the largest and structurally complex vitamin found largely in the animal food product and absent in the plant food sources. It is industrially produced through bacterial fermentation and hence vegetarians can fulfill their B12 requirement through supplementation (Nielsen et al. 2012). References Abbaspour, N., Hurrell, R. and Kelishadi, R., 2014. Review on iron and its importance for human health.Journal of research in medical sciences: the official journal of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences,19(2), p.164. Fenech, M., 2012. Folate (vitamin B9) and vitamin B12 and their function in the maintenance of nuclear and mitochondrial genome integrity.Mutation Research/Fundamental and Molecular Mechanisms of Mutagenesis,733(1), pp.21-33. Mann, J. and Truswell, S. eds., 2017.Essentials of human nutrition, 5th Edn, pp. 165-210, Oxford University Press. Nielsen, M.J., Rasmussen, M.R., Andersen, C.B., Nex, E. and Moestrup, S.K., 2012. Vitamin B 12 transport from food to the body's cellsa sophisticated, multistep pathway.Nature Reviews Gastroenterology and Hepatology,9(6), p.345. Prasad, A., 2013.Trace elements and iron in human metabolism, 1st Edn, pp. 123-145, Springer Science Business Media.