Monday, September 30, 2019

School Uniforms Are a Necessity

Reading books is better than TV! Reading books is better than TV! Reading books is much better than watching TV! How many of you watch TV? No doubt all of you do each and every day. It is so easy to just sit down on a couch and press 1 little button and waste hours on watching TV shows and movies! Books are better for our Health our Electricity and Education. Good Morning / Good Afternoon Mrs Millward and 7AC today I am going to tell you about why books are better and I mean way better then TV. TV can affect our Health in a way which is sitting down too much on the couch and not doing physical activities outside.A great deal is known about children and television, because there have been thousands of studies on the subject. Researchers have studied how TV affects kids' sleep, weight, grades, behaviour, and more. When using a book reading is exercising your brain and learning words you didn’t know about but when TV comes in all you do is watch and that can easily affect your ey es and then it can affect you behaviour and your grades. When watching TV for hours and when your parents get a bill for the electricity half of the bill is caused by watching TV of course because that is the main problem.In my house we only turn on the TV if we are watching the cricket of watching the News or watching our sport team play and that is all my family use it for. But this isn’t always caused by kids it is caused from parents that work at least once a week and that happens when they have got nothing to do. Say if you are doing an assignment for school and you have been working for hours without getting anywhere. Majority of you would watch TV for a while, while watching you will still be worrying about the assignment and by the time you get back to it you will be stressed.And on top of that books are an excellent way to learn new vocabulary without you even knowing, that’s right, while reading books you involuntary learn new words and the spellings. Imagine you have got this huge test the next morning and then you’re watching TV and then you’re studding on the way to school and then you get a FAIL!!! On your test. How bad would that be? If it was me I would feel really embarrassed. So you have just heard some things that can affect your health and your parents bills and your own education that your parents are paying for but lso when our parents where alive they only got a TV when they were around 16 or 17 of age. And look us and then think of your parents back in the past. And they didn’t have computer games either. So 7AC and Mrs Millward I think I convinced you that books are much better then Television. And so when you get I want you not to go to the living room and turn on the TV I want you to Study on your Math exam and do your HOMEWORK!!! Don’t Touch the TV Do Your Homework Don’t Touch the TV Do Your Homework

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Healthsouth Accounting Scandal

HealthSouth Accounting Scandal HealthSouth is the one of the largest providers of inpatient rehabilitative healthcare services in the U. S. HealthSouth is fully operational in 26 states across the United States and also in Puerto Rico. HealthSouth serves patients in various settings such as; inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, long-term acute care hospitals, outpatient rehabilitation satellite clinics and home health agencies. HealthSouth’s hospitals are able to provide an advanced care to patients that are recovering from neurological disorders, orthopedic, cardiac and pulmonary conditions, spinal cord injury, and amputations.HealthSouth’s corporate is office is located at 3660 Grandview Parkway Suite 200, Birmingham, Alabama 35243. The company employs around 26,000 people. The company is listed as an Industry Healthcare Facilities. The symbol used by HealthSouth is HLS. The SIC code is 8060-Hospitals. (http://investor. healthsouth. com/) Richard Scrushy the founder of HealthSouth was at one time described by Steve Barnes of the AP as a self-made son of the new South, a former teenage parent who hauled himself up from a menial job to become the emperor of the new economy.The problem was that the emperor of HealthSouth that he was describing would be later dethroned by an accounting scandal that would involve lies, bribery, and mail fraud, and deceit, prison time for several individuals, obstruction of justice and auctions. Richard Marin Scrushy was born in August 1952 in Selma Alabama. Richard grew up attending the Methodist church. Like any teenager he held several jobs. He attended Jefferson State Community College and became a Respiratory Therapist after studying at University of Alabama in Birmingham. Scrushy transferred to St.Louis, Missouri, then was promoted to the regional director of the respiratory therapy division of Lifemark Corporation. He then moved to Houston, Texas, and advanced in the company to the company’s COO. In 1984, Scrushy realized his dream of creating a comprehensive outpatient rehabilitation facility and founded Amcare in Little Rock, Arkansas. Amcare’s new name was HealthSouth. HealthSouth started trading publicly in 1986. (www. biography. com/articles/Richard-Scrushy-235385) Richard Scrushy and some of his closest friends founded HealthSouth in 1984.The company was formed and had growth in mind from the beginning. The founding members had a plan for growth. By the end of 1987, after expanding into worker’s compensation and sports medicine, HealthSouth has doubled its revenues and had nearly $100 million in assets. By 2001, HealthSouth had more than $4. 3 billion in revenue and treated more than 100,000 patients a day around the world. The company had 60,000 employees and more than 2000 locations across the country. To accomplish the task of expansion HealthSouth opted to take over other companies with financial issues.In 2003 the company HealthSouth, the largest U. S. opera tor of rehabilitation-hospitals, was under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U. S. Justice Department for overstating earnings by $2. 5 billion since 1999. In 2003, HealthSouth CEO Richard M. Scrushy directed company employees to falsely report grossly exaggerated company earnings in order to meet stock holder expectations. HealthSouth had been dishonest about its income. Richard Scrushy the HealthSouth executive was one of the first executives to be charged under the Sarbanes Oxley Act.In all a total of fifteen HealthSouth employees, including all five of the former chief financial officers, pleaded guilty to criminal charges. However the former CEO Richard Scrushy refused to admit any wrong doing involving HealthSouth. When HealthSouth requested that Scrushy resign he refused to honor the request. (www. washingtonpost. com) On October 16, 2003, Richard Scrushy flat out refused to testify before congress in a hearing. He angered lawmakers that said Scr ushy had been at the center of an organization HealthSouth whose employees were intimidated and at times threatened if they challenged his authority.Then on November 4, 2011, Mr. Richard Scrushy the ousted leader of HealthSouth was indicted on charges that he directed a $2. 7 billion fraud which designed to inflate the company’s stock prices to fund his super-luxurious lifestyle. Mr. Scrushy had purchased items like a Lamborghini, a 92-foot yacht, a private jet, paintings by Renior as well as Picasso, and a mansion surrounded by water. Next a Delaware judge on November 23, 2003, ordered Scrushy to repay $25 million in loans that he obtained from the company in 1999.When you look at his salary in 2002, it included 3 million in salary, 10 million in bonus pay, and 99. 3 million in stock sales. It should not have been difficult for him to pay the $25 million he was ordered to repay from 1999. From 1996 through 2002 it was later discovered by the government that HealthSouth had r eported 2. 74 billion in phony profits. In January 2004 the lawyers representing the former HealthSouth Corp. chief Richard Scrushy filed court motions that posed questions about the ability of the grand jury’s fairness.The grand jury that had indicted Scrushy and demanded additional information from prosecutors was under attack. Meanwhile, in July of 2004 a grand jury indicted two of the former HealthSouth Corp executives Robert Thomson and James Reilly both for a bribery scheme that included the company’s $50 million contract to run a hospital in the country of Saudi Arabia. September 28, 2004, Prosecutors said that the government would not seek additional prison time for former HealthSouth Corp. assistant controller Emery Harris who was resentenced after serving five months for fraud.On September 29, 2004, Federal prosecutors made an announcement about obstruction-of justice charges against HealthSouth’s Corp. founder Richard Scrushy. Scrushy was accused deli berately lying to regulators and urging subordinate to lie to support his story while using his position of power to intimidate them. The former chief HealthSouth scandal did not slow Richard Scrushy down at all. He continued to live the larger than lifestyle that he had become accustomed to before HealthSouth’s fortunes plunged. His larger than life persona follows him everywhere and he definitely acted the part.While his employees pleaded guilty to various fraud charges and their assets were being seized under federal forfeiture laws Scrushy continued to think of only himself. (www. nytimes. com/2003/09/26/business/healthsouth-scandal. com) The case against HealthSouth Corp. founder Richard Scrushy collapsed in June 2005 under the weight of the personal baggage carried by key witnesses and the â€Å"smoking guns† the prosecutor. In Birmingham, Alabama, on June 28, 2005, after only 21 days of deliberation, the jury of men and women cleared Mr. Scrushy of all 36 crimin al charges of which he was tried.The charges included conspiracy, securities fraud, mail fraud and a single charge under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was a statue Congress enacted to force companies to strengthen their internal controls and mandate penalties for CEOs and finance chiefs that sign false financial filings. The verdict handed the government down a defeat in its high profile campaign against corporate corruption and its first attempt to try to convict a CEO for violating the Sarbanes-Oxley which were both huge failures. Four months later he was indicted on new charges of bribery and mail fraud in connection ith former Alabama governor Don Siegelman. Scrushy was accused of donating $500,000 to Seigleman’s campaign in exchange for a seat on a state hospital regulatory board. Both Scrushy and Seigleman were convicted on multiple charges, including bribery, mail fraud, and obstruction of justice. Both men received sentences of close to seven years in federal prison. (www. biography. com/articles/Richard-Scrushy-235385 ) The accounting scandal was described by Securities and Exchange Commission that since 1999 the company and its profit statements were overstated by $2. 5 billion since 1997 according to the wall street journal.To boost profits HealthSouth executives overbooked certain revenue accounts that later â€Å"bled out† into revenue, according to the journal story. Scrushy was accused of insider trading and was fired as HealthSouth’s chairman and CEO. In 2009, Scrushy was ordered to pay HealthSouth shareholders $2. 9 billion to settle a civil suit. Scrushy is presently serving his imposed sentence at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Complex in Beaumont, Texas. (www. biography. com/articles/Richard-Scrushy-235385 ) He is 58 years old and is scheduled to be released from prison on 06-08-2013. He will be 60 years old when he is released from prison.He is still married to his wife Leslie Ann Jones. He has nine children and several grandchildren. He was sued and his personal items were auction off to pay judgments ordered by the court against him. Other people that worked with him at HealthSouth admitted guilt and were sentenced to prison while Scrushy maintained his innocence. He is not serving time in prison for his accounting scandal but for charges that stemmed from him trying to purchase a seat on the state hospital regulatory board. I guess his story really is about an average guy going rags to riches becoming greedy and power obsessed then going to prison for several years.The wake of destruction from the HealthSouth accounting scandal not only affected Scrushy but the employees that served prison time and their families. Later even the Governor of Alabama was influenced by the former HealthSouth executive and also served time in prison. HealthSouth continues to operate today. It is The company that was started by Scrushy was not destroyed by the scandal. The HealthSouth headquarte rs is still located in Alabama. The influence that comes with money and power is something that is really obvious in this story.Scrushy was able to influence his employees into reporting false financial information by grossly exaggerating company earnings in order to manipulate stockholders into thinking that HealthSouth had met their expectations and he was able to manipulate the governor of Alabama into allowing him a seat on the state hospital regulatory board. Richard Scrushy committed accounting scandal that would involve lies by directing employees to file false financial information in order to deceive stockholder about earnings, bribery, mail fraud, prison time for several individuals employed by HealthSouth.His destructive behavior continued and later included the governor of Alabama going to prison with Scrushy. Scrushy was one man that built a mega successful business. Although the business was not destroyed by the founder during his quest for power some of the people had their lives forever altered by his decisions. Richard Scrushy directed his staff to file phony profits totaling 2. 7 billion. He then denied directing his staff to report false profits. He was acquitted of 36 charges related to HealthSouth fraud but others admitted guilt and served time in prison for the crimes.Scrushy was sued and forced to auction off his assets to pay restitution. He later attempted to buy a seat on the hospital board for the state of Alabama for $500,000 and was tried and sent to prison for 7 years. The HealthSouth case is interesting because it has negative stock holder equity. The return on common stock for HealthSouth Consolidated was -28. 63% and the debt to equity ratio are negative as well. The total asset turnover in 2010 was 94. 29% yet the company continues to operate. The Net income in 2010 was 939. 8 million.Perhaps the preferred stock is being paid large amounts so the common shares of stock would get nothing. I wonder if any of the Scrushy family h as preferred stock left in HealthSouth since he was the founder. Scrushy went from being a healthcare worker to the owner of HealthSouth then to prison for bribery instead of any charges stemming from his wrong doing at HealthSouth. In summary, Richard Scrushy had odd jobs as a teenager; he later went to college to become a Respiratory Therapist. He went to work for Lifemark Corporation. He climbed his way through the ranks.He later decided to start his own company which is now known as Amcare that later changed its name to HealthSouth. HealthSouth was a successful company. The company made lots of money. The company made Scrushy a very wealthy man. His life story is story was one from rags to riches. He was married a total of three times and has several children. He became a very influential man in Alabama. He is still married to his third wife whom he met while a Bahaman vacation. Richard Scrushy thought he was above the law. Scrushy thought he was untouchable.He never admitted gu ilt for his part in the HealthSouth Accounting Scandal nor did he serve any prison time for it. He was required to auction off items as ordered by the court to pay restitution. The HealthSouth Accounting Scandal could have been avoided if the person that started the company Richard Scrushy had not directed company employees to falsely report grossly exaggerated company earnings in order to meet stock holder expectations. It is my opinion that he should have reported the corrected information and the chain of events that followed would not have occurred.If he made the decision to report the correct information then his HealthSouth employees would not have been sentenced to prison and his company could have sustained a loss. HealthSouth remains open at its stock is trading at about $24-26 dollars a share. Works Cited â€Å"Richard Scrushy Biography – Biography. com. † Biography. com. N. p. , n. d. Web. 18 Apr. 2011. . â€Å"Richard Scrushy Biography – Biography. com. † Biography. com. N. p. , n. d. Web. 11 Apr. 2011. . â€Å"HealthSouth Corporation – Investor Overview. HealthSouth Corporation – Investor Overview. N. p. , n. d. Web. 10 Apr. 2011. . KOLATA, GINA. â€Å"Health News – The New York Times. † The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. N. p. , n. d. Web. 14 Apr. 2011. . â€Å"The Washington Post: National, World & D. C. Area News and Headlines – washingtonpost. com. † The Washington Post: National, World & D. C. Area News and Headlines – washingtonpost. com. N. p. , n. d. Web. 13 Apr. 2011. .

Saturday, September 28, 2019

A Dirty Job Chapter 12

Romano was the poundee, Charlie could tell because he’d put a dot of nail polish between his little ears so he could tell it apart from its companion, Parmesan, who was equally stiff inside the plastic Habitrail box. In the bottom of the exercise wheel, actually. Dead at the wheel. â€Å"Mrs. Ling!† Charlie called. He pried the expired rodent from his darling daughter’s little hand and dropped it in the cage. â€Å"Is Vladlena, Mr. Asher,† came a giant voice from the bathroom. There was a flush and Mrs. Korjev emerged from the bathroom pulling at the clasps of her overalls. â€Å"I’m sorry, I am having to crap like bear. Sophie was safe in chair.† â€Å"She was playing with a dead hamster, Mrs. Korjev.† Mrs. Korjev looked at the two hamsters in the plastic Habitrail box – gave it a little tap, shook it back and forth. â€Å"They sleep.† â€Å"They are not sleeping, they’re dead.† â€Å"They are fine when I go in bathroom. Playing, running on wheel, having laugh.† â€Å"They were not having a laugh. They were dead. Sophie had one in her hand.† Charlie looked more closely at the rodent that Sophie had been tenderizing. Its head looked extremely wet. â€Å"In her mouth. She had it in her mouth.† He grabbed a paper towel from the roll on the counter and started wiping out the inside of Sophie’s mouth. She made a la-la-la sound as she tried to eat the towel, which she thought was part of the game. â€Å"Where is Mrs. Ling, anyway?† â€Å"She have to go pick up prescription, so I watch Sophie for short time. And tiny bears are happy when I go in bathroom.† â€Å"Hamsters, Mrs. Korjev, not bears. How long were you in there?† â€Å"Maybe five minute. I am thinking I am now having a strain in my poop chute, so hard I am pushing.† â€Å"Aiiiiieeeee,† came the cry from the doorway as Mrs. Ling returned, and scampered to Sophie. â€Å"Is past time for nap,† Mrs. Ling snapped at Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"I’ve got her now,† Charlie said. â€Å"One of you stay with her while I get rid of the H-A-M-S-T-E-R-S.† â€Å"He mean the tiny bears,† said Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"I get rid, Mr. Asher,† said Mrs. Ling. â€Å"No problem. What happen them?† â€Å"Sleeping,† said Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"Ladies, go. Please. I’ll see one of you in the morning.† â€Å"Is my turn,† said Mrs. Korjev sadly. â€Å"Am I banish? Is no Sophie for Vladlena, yes?† â€Å"No. Uh, yes. It’s fine, Mrs. Korjev. I’ll see you in the morning.† Mrs. Ling was shaking the Habitrail cage. They certainly were sound little sleepers, these hamsters. She liked ham. â€Å"I take care,† she said. She tucked the cage under her arm and backed toward the door, waving. â€Å"Bye-bye, Sophie. Bye-bye.† â€Å"Bye-bye, bubeleh,† said Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"Bye-bye,† Sophie said, with a baby wave. â€Å"When did you learn bye-bye?† Charlie said to his daughter. â€Å"I can’t leave you for a second.† But he did leave her the very next day, to find replacements for the hamsters. He took the cargo van to the pet store this time. Whatever courage or hubris he’d rallied in order to attack the sewer harpies had melted away, and he didn’t even want to go near a storm drain. At the pet store he picked out two painted turtles, each about as big around as a mayonnaise-jar lid. He bought them a large kidney-shaped dish that had its own little island, a plastic palm tree, some aquatic plants, and a snail. The snail, presumably, to bolster the self-esteem of the turtles: â€Å"You think we’re slow? Look at that guy.† To shore up the snail’s morale in the same way, there was a rock. Everyone is happier if they have someone to look down on, as well as someone to look up to, especially if they resent both. This is not only the Beta Male strategy for survival, but the basis for capitalism, democracy, and most religions. After he grilled the clerk for fifteen minutes on the vitality of the turtles, and was assured that they could probably survive a nuclear attack as long as there were some bugs left to eat, Charlie wrote a check and started tearing up over his turtles. â€Å"Are you okay, Mr. Asher?† asked the pet-shop guy. â€Å"I’m sorry,† Charlie said. â€Å"It’s just that this is the last entry in the register.† â€Å"And your bank didn’t give you a new one?† â€Å"No, I have a new one, but this is the last one that my wife wrote in. Now that this one is used up, I’ll never see her handwriting in the check register again.† â€Å"I’m sorry,† said the pet-shop guy, who, until that moment, had thought the rough patch that day was going to be consoling a guy over a couple of dead hamsters. â€Å"It’s not your problem,† Charlie said. â€Å"I’ll just take my turtles and go.† And he did, squeezing the check register in his hand as he drove. She was slipping away, every day a little more. A week ago Jane had come down to borrow some honey and found the plum jelly that Rachel liked in the back of the refrigerator, covered in green fuzz. â€Å"Little brother, this has got to go,† Jane said, making a face. â€Å"No. It was Rachel’s.† â€Å"I know, kid, and she’s not coming back for it. What else do you – oh my God!† She dove away from the fridge. â€Å"What was that?† â€Å"Lasagna. Rachel made it.† â€Å"This has been in here for over a year?† â€Å"I couldn’t make myself throw it out.† â€Å"Look, I’m coming over Saturday and cleaning out this apartment. I’m going to get rid of all the stuff of Rachel’s that you don’t want.† â€Å"I want it all.† Jane paused while moving the green-and-purple lasagna to the trash bin, pan and all. â€Å"No you don’t, Charlie. This kind of stuff doesn’t help you remember Rachel, it just hurts you. You need to focus on Sophie and the rest of both of your lives. You’re a young guy, you can’t give up. We all loved Rachel, but you have to think about moving on, maybe going out.† â€Å"I’m not ready. And you can’t come over this Saturday, that’s my day in the shop.† â€Å"I know,† Jane said. â€Å"It’s better if you’re not here.† â€Å"But you can’t be trusted, Jane,† Charlie said, as if that was as obvious as the fact that Jane was irritating. â€Å"You’ll throw out all the pieces of Rachel, and you’ll steal my clothes.† Jane had been swiping Charlie’s suits pretty regularly since he’d started dressing more upscale. She was wearing a tailored, double-breasted jacket that he’d just gotten back from Three Fingered Hu a few days ago. Charlie hadn’t even worn it yet. â€Å"Why are you still wearing suits, anyway? Isn’t your new girlfriend a yoga instructor? Shouldn’t you be wearing those baggy pants made out of hemp and tofu fibers like she does? You look like David Bowie, Jane. There, I’ve said it. I’m sorry, but it had to be said.† Jane put her arm around his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. â€Å"You are so sweet. Bowie is the only man I’ve ever found attractive. Let me clean out your apartment. I’ll watch Sophie that day – give the widows a day to do battle down at the Everything for a Dollar Store.† â€Å"Okay, but just clothes and stuff, no pictures. And just put it in the basement in boxes, no throwing anything away.† â€Å"Even food items? Chuck, the lasagna, I mean – â€Å" â€Å"Okay, food items can go. But don’t let Sophie know what you’re doing. And leave Rachel’s perfume, and her hairbrush. I want Sophie to know what her mother smelled like.† That night, when he finished at the shop, he went down to the basement to the little gated storage area for his apartment and visited the boxes of all of the things that Jane had packed up. When that didn’t work, he opened them and said good-bye to every single item – pieces of Rachel. Seemed like he was always saying good-bye to pieces of Rachel. On his way home from the pet shop he had stopped at A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books because it, too, was a piece of Rachel and he needed a touchstone, but also because he needed to research what he was doing. He’d scoured the Internet for information on death, and while he’d found that there were a lot of people who wanted to dress like death, get naked with the dead, look at pictures of the naked and the dead, or sell pills to give erections to the dead, there just wasn’t anything on how to go about being dead, or Death. No one had ever heard of Death Merchants or sewer harpies or anything of the sort. He left the store with a two-foot-high stack of books on Death and Dying, figuring, as a Beta Male typically does, that before he tried to take the battle to the enemy again, he’d better find out something about what he was dealing with. That evening he settled in on the couch next to his baby daughter and read while the new turtles, Bruiser and Jeep (so named in hope of instilling durability in them), ate freeze-dried bugs and watched CSI Safari-land on cable. â€Å"Well, honey, according to this Kbler-Ross lady, the five stages of death are anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Well, we went through all of those stages when we lost Mommy, didn’t we?† â€Å"Mama,† Sophie said. The first time she had said â€Å"Mama† had brought Charlie to tears. He had been looking over her little shoulder at a picture of Rachel. The second time she said it, it was less emotional. She was in her high chair at the breakfast bar and was talking to the toaster. â€Å"That’s not Mommy, Soph, that’s the toaster.† â€Å"Mama,† Sophie insisted, reaching out for the toaster. â€Å"You’re just trying to fuck with me, aren’t you?† Charlie said. â€Å"Mama,† Sophie said to the fridge. â€Å"Swell,† Charlie said. He read on, realizing that Dr. Kbler-Ross had been exactly right. Every morning when he woke up to find another name and number in the day planner at his bedside, he went through the entire five-step process before he finished breakfast. But now that the steps had a name – he started to recognize the stages as experienced by the family members of his clients. That’s how he referred to the people whose souls he retrieved: clients. Then he read a book, called The Last Sack, about how to kill yourself with a plastic bag, but it must not have been a very effective book, because he saw on the back cover that there had been two sequels. He imagined the fan mail: Dear Last Sack Author: I was almost dead, but then my sack got all steamed up and I couldn’t see the TV, so I poked an eyehole. I hope to try again with your next book. The book really didn’t help Charlie much, except to instill in him a new paranoia about plastic bags. Over the next few months he read: The Egyptian Book of the Dead, from which he learned how to pull someone’s brain out through his nostril with a buttonhook, which he was sure would come in handy someday; a dozen books on dealing with death, grief, burial rituals, and myths of the Underworld, from which he learned that there had been personifications of Death since the dawn of time, and none of them looked like him; and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, from which he learned that bardo, the transition between this life and the next, was forty-nine days long, and that during the process you would be met by about thirty thousand demons, all of which were described in intricate detail, none of which looked like the sewer harpies, and all of which you were supposed to ignore and not be afraid of because they weren’t real because they were of the material world. â€Å"Strange,† Charlie said to Sophie, â€Å"how all of these books talk about how the material world isn’t significant, yet I have to retrieve people’s souls, which are attached to material objects. It would appear that death, if nothing else, is ironic, don’t you think?† â€Å"No,† Sophie said. At eighteen months Sophie answered all questions either â€Å"No,† â€Å"Cookie,† or â€Å"like Bear† – the last Charlie attributed to leaving his daughter too often in the care of Mrs. Korjev. After the turtles, two more hamsters, a hermit crab, an iguana, and two widemouthed frogs passed on to the great wok in the sky (or, more accurately, on the third floor), Charlie finally acquiesced and brought home a three-inch-long Madagascar hissing cockroach that he named Bear, just so his daughter wouldn’t go through life talking total nonsense. â€Å"Like Bear,† Sophie said. â€Å"She’s talking about the bug,† Charlie said, one night when Jane stopped by. â€Å"She’s not talking about the bug,† Jane said. â€Å"What kind of father buys a cockroach for a little girl anyway? That’s disgusting.† â€Å"Nothing’s supposed to be able to kill them. They’ve been around for like a hundred million years. It was that or a white shark, and they’re supposed to be hard to keep.† â€Å"Why don’t you give up, Charlie? Just let her get by with stuffed animals.† â€Å"A little kid should have a pet. Especially a little kid growing up in the city.† â€Å"We grew up in the city and we didn’t have any pets.† â€Å"I know, and look how we turned out,† Charlie said, gesturing back and forth between the two of them, one who dealt in death and had a giant cockroach named Bear, and the other who was on her third yoga-instructor girlfriend in six months and was wearing his newest Harris tweed suit. â€Å"We turned out great, or at least one of us did,† Jane said, gesturing to the splendor of her suit, like she was a game-show model giving the big prize package on Let’s Get Androgynous, â€Å"You have got to gain some weight. This is tailored way too tight in the butt,† she said, lapsing once again into self-obsession. â€Å"Am I camel-toeing?† â€Å"I am not looking, not looking, not looking,† Charlie chanted. â€Å"She wouldn’t need pets if she ever saw the outside of this apartment,† Jane said, pulling down on the crotch of her trousers to counteract the dreaded dromedary-digit effect. â€Å"Take her to the zoo, Charlie. Let her see something besides this apartment. Take her out.† â€Å"I will, tomorrow. I’ll take her out and show her the city,† Charlie said. And he would have, too, except he woke to find the name Madeline Alby written on his day planner, and next to her name, the number one. Oh yeah, and the cockroach was dead. I will take you out,† Charlie said as he put Sophie in her high chair for breakfast. â€Å"I will, honey. I promise. Can you believe that they’d only give me one day?† â€Å"No,† Sophie said. â€Å"Juice,† she added, because she was in her chair and this was juice time. â€Å"I’m sorry about Bear, honey,† Charlie said, brushing her hair this way, then that, then giving up. â€Å"He was a good bug, but he is no more. Mrs. Ling will bury him. That window box of hers must be getting pretty crowded.† He didn’t remember there being a window box in Mrs. Ling’s window, but who was he to question? Charlie threw open the phone book and, mercifully, found an M. Alby with an address on Telegraph Hill – not ten minutes’ walk away. No client had ever been this close, and with almost six months without a peep or a shade from the sewer harpies, he was starting to feel like he had this whole Death Merchant thing under control. He’d even placed most of the soul vessels that he’d collected. The short notice felt bad. Really bad. The house was an Italianate Victorian on the hill just below the Coit Tower, the great granite column built in honor of the San Francisco firemen who had lost their lives in the line of duty. Although it’s said to have been designed with a fire-hose nozzle in mind, almost no one who sees the tower can resist the urge to comment on its resemblance to a giant penis. Madeline Alby’s house, a flat-roofed white rectangle with ornate scrolling trim and a crowning cornice of carved cherubs, looked like a wedding cake balanced on the tower’s scrotum. So as Charlie trudged up the nut sack of San Francisco, he wondered exactly how he was going to get inside the house. Usually he had time, he could wait and follow someone in, or construct some kind of ruse to gain entrance, but this time he had only one day to get inside, find the soul vessel, and get out. He hoped that Madeline Alby had already died. He really didn’t like being around sick people. When he saw the car parked out front with the small green hospice sticker, his hopes for a dead client were smashed like a cupcake with a sledgehammer. He walked up the front porch steps at the left of the house and waited by the door. Could he open it himself? Would people be able to see it, or did his special â€Å"unnoticeability† extend to objects he moved as well? He didn’t think so. But then the door opened and a woman about Charlie’s age stepped out onto the porch. â€Å"I’m just having a smoke,† she called back into the house, and before she could close the door behind her, Charlie slipped inside. The front door opened into a foyer; to his right Charlie saw what had originally been the parlor. There was a stairway in front of him, and another door beyond that that he guessed led to the kitchen. He could hear voices in the parlor and peeked around the corner to see four elderly women sitting on two couches that faced each other. They were in dresses and hats, and they might have just come from church, but Charlie guessed they had come to see their friend off. â€Å"You’d think she’d give up the smoking, with her mother upstairs dying of cancer,† said one of the ladies, wearing a gray skirt and jacket with matching hat, and a large enameled pin in the shape of a Holstein cow. â€Å"Well, she always was a hardheaded girl,† said another, wearing a dress that looked as if it had been made from the same floral material as the couch. â€Å"You know she used to meet with my son Jimmy up in Pioneer Park when they were little.† â€Å"She said she was going to marry him,† said another woman, who looked like a sister of the first. The ladies laughed, whimsy and sadness mixed in their tones. â€Å"Well, I don’t know what she was thinking, he’s as flighty as can be,† said Mom. â€Å"Yeah, and brain damaged,† added the sister. â€Å"Well, yes, he is now.† â€Å"Since the car ran over him,† said Sis. â€Å"Didn’t he run right in front of a car?† asked one of the ladies who had been silent until now. â€Å"No, he ran right into it,† said Mom. â€Å"He was on the drugs then.† She sighed. â€Å"I always said I had one of each – a boy, a girl, and a Jimmy.† They all nodded. This was not the first time this group had done this, Charlie guessed. They were the type that bought sympathy cards in bulk, and every time they heard an ambulance go by they made a note to pick up their black dress from the cleaner’s. â€Å"You know Maddy looked bad,† said the lady in gray. â€Å"Well, she’s dying, sweetheart, that’s what happens.† â€Å"I guess.† Another sigh. The tinkle of ice in glasses. They were all nursing neat little cocktails. Charlie guessed they’d been mixed by the younger woman who was outside smoking. He looked around the room for something that was glowing red. There was an oak rolltop desk in the corner that he’d like to get a look in, but that would have to wait until later. He ducked out of the doorway and into the kitchen, where two men in their late thirties, maybe early forties, were sitting at an oak table, playing Scrabble. â€Å"Is Jenny coming back? It’s her turn.† â€Å"She might have gone up to see Mom with one of the ladies. The hospice nurse is letting them go up one at a time.† â€Å"I just wish it was over. I can’t stand this waiting. I have a family I need to get back to. I’m about to crawl out of my fucking skin.† The older of the two reached across the table and set two tiny blue pills by his brother’s tiles. â€Å"These help.† â€Å"What are they?† â€Å"Time-released morphine.† â€Å"Really?† The younger brother looked alarmed. â€Å"You hardly even feel them, they just sort of take the edge off. Jenny’s been taking them for two weeks.† â€Å"That’s why you guys are taking this so well and I’m a wreck? You guys are stoned on Mom’s pain medication?† â€Å"Yep.† â€Å"I don’t take drugs. Those are drugs. You don’t take drugs.† The older brother sat back in his chair. â€Å"Pain medication, Bill. What are you feeling?† â€Å"No, I’m not taking Mom’s pain meds.† â€Å"Suit yourself.† â€Å"What if she needs them?† â€Å"There’s enough morphine in that room to bring down a Kodiak bear, and if she needs more, then hospice will bring more.† Charlie wanted to shake the younger brother and yell, Take the drugs, you idiot. Maybe it was the benefit of experience. Having now seen this situation happen again and again, families on deathwatch, out of their minds with grief and exhaustion, friends moving in and out of the house like ghosts, saying good-bye or just covering some sort of base so they could say they had been there, so perhaps they wouldn’t have to die alone themselves. Why was none of this in the books of the dead? Why didn’t the instructions tell him about all the pain and confusion he was going to see? â€Å"I’m going to go find Jenny,† said the older brother, â€Å"see if she wants to get something to eat. We can finish the game later if you want.† â€Å"That’s okay, I was losing anyway.† The younger brother gathered up the tiles and put the board away. â€Å"I’m going to go upstairs and see if I can catch a nap, tonight’s my night watching Mom.† The older brother walked out and Charlie watched the younger brother drop the blue pills into his shirt pocket and leave the kitchen, leaving the Death Dealer to ransack the pantry and the cabinets looking for the soul vessel. But he felt before he even started that it wouldn’t be there. He was going to have to go upstairs. He really, really hated being around sick people. Madeline Alby was propped up and tucked into bed with a down comforter up around her neck. She was so slight that her body barely showed under the covers. Charlie guessed that she might weigh seventy or eighty pounds max. Her face was drawn and he could see the outlines of her eye sockets and her jawbone jutting through her skin, which had gone yellow. Charlie guessed liver cancer. One of her friends from downstairs was sitting at her bedside, the hospice-care worker, a big woman in scrubs, sat in a chair across the room, reading. A small dog, a Yorkshire terrier, Charlie thought, was snuggled up between Madeline’s shoulder and her neck, sleeping. When Charlie stepped into the room, Madeline said, â€Å"Hey there, kid.† He froze in his steps. She was looking right at him – crystal-blue eyes, and a smile. Had the floor squeaked? Had he bumped something? â€Å"What are you doing there, kid?† She giggled. â€Å"Who do you see, Maddy?† asked the friend. She followed Madeline’s gaze but looked right through Charlie. â€Å"A kid over there.† â€Å"Okay, Maddy. Do you want some water?† The friend reached for a child’s sippy cup with a built-in straw from the nightstand. â€Å"No. Tell that kid to come in here, though. Come in here, kid.† Madeline worked her arms out of the covers and started moving her hands in sewing motions, like she was embroidering a tapestry in the air before her. â€Å"Well, I’d better go,† said the friend. â€Å"Let you get some rest.† The friend glanced at the hospice woman, who looked over her reading glasses and smiled with her eyes. The only expert in the house, giving permission. The friend stood and kissed Madeline Alby on the forehead. Madeline stopped sewing for a second, closed her eyes, and leaned into the kiss, like a young girl. Her friend squeezed her hand and said, â€Å"Good-bye, Maddy.† Charlie stepped aside and let the woman pass. He watched her shoulders heave with a sob as she went through the door. â€Å"Hey, kid,† Madeline said. â€Å"Come over here and sit down.† She paused in her sewing long enough to look Charlie in the eye, which freaked him out more than a little. He glanced at the hospice worker, who glanced up from her book, then went back to reading. Charlie pointed to himself. â€Å"Yeah, you,† Madeline said. Charlie was going into a panic. She could see him, but the hospice nurse could not, or so it seemed. An alarm beeped on the nurse’s watch and Madeline picked up the little dog and held it to her ear. â€Å"Hello? Hi, how are you?† She looked up at Charlie. â€Å"It’s my oldest daughter.† The little dog looked at Charlie, too, with a distinct â€Å"save me† look in its eyes. â€Å"Time for some medicine, Madeline,† the nurse said. â€Å"Can’t you see I’m on the phone, Sally,† Madeline said. â€Å"Hang on a second.† â€Å"Okay, I’ll wait,† the nurse said. She picked up a brown bottle with an eyedropper in it, filled the dropper, and checked the dosage and held. â€Å"Bye. Love you, too,† Madeline said. She held the tiny dog out to Charlie. â€Å"Hang that up, would you?† The nurse snatched the dog out of the air and set it down on the bed next to Madeline. â€Å"Open up, Madeline,† the nurse said. Madeline opened wide and the nurse squirted the eyedropper into the old woman’s mouth. â€Å"Mmm, strawberry,† Madeline said. â€Å"That’s right, strawberry. Would you like to wash it down with some water?† The nurse held the sippy cup. â€Å"No. Cheese. I’d like some cheese.† â€Å"I can get you some cheese,† said the nurse. â€Å"Cheddar cheese.† â€Å"Cheddar it is,† said the nurse. â€Å"I’ll be right back.† She tucked the covers around Madeline and left the room. The old woman looked at Charlie again. â€Å"Can you talk, now that she’s gone?† Charlie shrugged and looked in every direction, his hand over his mouth, like someone looking for an emergency spot to spit out a mouthful of bad seafood. â€Å"Don’t mime, honey,† Madeline said. â€Å"No one likes a mime.† Charlie sighed heavily, what was there to lose now? She could see him. â€Å"Hello, Madeline. I’m Charlie.† â€Å"I always liked the name Charlie,† Madeline said. â€Å"How come Sally can’t see you?† â€Å"Only you can see me right now,† Charlie said. â€Å"Because I’m dying?† â€Å"I think so.† â€Å"Okay. You’re a nice-looking kid, you know that?† â€Å"Thanks. You’re not bad yourself.† â€Å"I’m scared, Charlie. It doesn’t hurt. I used to be afraid that it would hurt, but now I’m afraid of what happens next.† Charlie sat down on the chair next to the bed. â€Å"I think that’s why I’m here, Madeline, you don’t need to be afraid.† â€Å"I drank a lot of brandy, Charlie. That’s why this happened.† â€Å"Maddy – can I call you Maddy?† â€Å"Sure, kid, we’re friends.† â€Å"Yes, we are. Maddy, this was always going to happen. You didn’t do anything to cause it.† â€Å"Well, that’s good.† â€Å"Maddy, do you have something for me?† â€Å"Like a present?† â€Å"Like a present you would give to yourself. Something I can keep for you and give you back later, when it will be a surprise.† â€Å"My pincushion,† Madeline said. â€Å"I’d like you to have that. It was my grandmother’s.† â€Å"I’d be honored to keep that for you, Maddy. Where can I find it?† â€Å"In my sewing box, on the top shelf of that closet.† She pointed to an old-style single closet across the room. â€Å"Oh, excuse me, phone.† Madeline talked to her oldest daughter on the edge of the comforter while Charlie got the sewing box from the top shelf of the closet. It was made of wicker and he could see the red glow of the soul vessel inside. He removed a pincushion fashioned from red velvet wrapped with bands of real silver and held it up for Madeline to see. She smiled and gave him the thumbs-up, just as the nurse returned with a small plate of cheese and crackers. â€Å"It’s my oldest daughter,† Madeline explained to the nurse, holding the edge of the comforter to her chest so her daughter didn’t hear. â€Å"Oh my, is that cheese?† The nurse nodded. â€Å"And crackers.† â€Å"I’ll call you back, honey, Sally has brought cheese and I don’t want to be rude.† She hung up the sheet and allowed Sally to feed her bites of cheese and crackers. â€Å"I believe this is the best cheese I’ve ever tasted,† Madeline said. Charlie could tell from the expression on her face that it was, indeed, the best cheese she had ever tasted. Every ounce of her being was going into tasting those slivers of cheddar, and she let loose little moans of pleasure as she chewed. â€Å"You want some cheese, Charlie?† Madeline asked, spraying cracker shrapnel all over the nurse, who turned to look at the corner where Charlie was standing with the pincushion tucked safely in his jacket pocket. â€Å"Oh, you can’t see him, Sally,† Madeline said, tapping the nurse on the hand. â€Å"But he’s a handsome rascal. A little skinny, though.† Then, to Sally, but overly loud to be sure that Charlie could hear: â€Å"He could use some fucking cheese.† Then she laughed, spraying more crackers on the nurse, who was laughing, too, and trying not to dump the plate. â€Å"What did she say?† came a voice from the hall. Then the two sons and the daughter entered, chagrined at first at what they had heard, but then laughing with the nurse and their mother. â€Å"I said that cheese is good,† Madeline said. â€Å"Yeah, Mom, it is,† said the daughter. Charlie stood there in the corner, watching them eat cheese, and laughing, thinking, This should have been in the book. He watched them help her with her bedpan, and give her drinks of water, and wipe her face with a damp cloth – watched her bite at the cloth the way Sophie did when he washed her face. The eldest daughter, who Charlie realized had been dead for some time, called three more times, once on the dog and twice on the pillow. Around lunchtime Madeline was tired, and she went to sleep, and about a half hour into her nap she started panting, then stopped, then didn’t breathe for a full minute, then took a deep breath, then didn’t. And Charlie slipped out the door with her soul in his pocket. A Dirty Job Chapter 12 Romano was the poundee, Charlie could tell because he’d put a dot of nail polish between his little ears so he could tell it apart from its companion, Parmesan, who was equally stiff inside the plastic Habitrail box. In the bottom of the exercise wheel, actually. Dead at the wheel. â€Å"Mrs. Ling!† Charlie called. He pried the expired rodent from his darling daughter’s little hand and dropped it in the cage. â€Å"Is Vladlena, Mr. Asher,† came a giant voice from the bathroom. There was a flush and Mrs. Korjev emerged from the bathroom pulling at the clasps of her overalls. â€Å"I’m sorry, I am having to crap like bear. Sophie was safe in chair.† â€Å"She was playing with a dead hamster, Mrs. Korjev.† Mrs. Korjev looked at the two hamsters in the plastic Habitrail box – gave it a little tap, shook it back and forth. â€Å"They sleep.† â€Å"They are not sleeping, they’re dead.† â€Å"They are fine when I go in bathroom. Playing, running on wheel, having laugh.† â€Å"They were not having a laugh. They were dead. Sophie had one in her hand.† Charlie looked more closely at the rodent that Sophie had been tenderizing. Its head looked extremely wet. â€Å"In her mouth. She had it in her mouth.† He grabbed a paper towel from the roll on the counter and started wiping out the inside of Sophie’s mouth. She made a la-la-la sound as she tried to eat the towel, which she thought was part of the game. â€Å"Where is Mrs. Ling, anyway?† â€Å"She have to go pick up prescription, so I watch Sophie for short time. And tiny bears are happy when I go in bathroom.† â€Å"Hamsters, Mrs. Korjev, not bears. How long were you in there?† â€Å"Maybe five minute. I am thinking I am now having a strain in my poop chute, so hard I am pushing.† â€Å"Aiiiiieeeee,† came the cry from the doorway as Mrs. Ling returned, and scampered to Sophie. â€Å"Is past time for nap,† Mrs. Ling snapped at Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"I’ve got her now,† Charlie said. â€Å"One of you stay with her while I get rid of the H-A-M-S-T-E-R-S.† â€Å"He mean the tiny bears,† said Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"I get rid, Mr. Asher,† said Mrs. Ling. â€Å"No problem. What happen them?† â€Å"Sleeping,† said Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"Ladies, go. Please. I’ll see one of you in the morning.† â€Å"Is my turn,† said Mrs. Korjev sadly. â€Å"Am I banish? Is no Sophie for Vladlena, yes?† â€Å"No. Uh, yes. It’s fine, Mrs. Korjev. I’ll see you in the morning.† Mrs. Ling was shaking the Habitrail cage. They certainly were sound little sleepers, these hamsters. She liked ham. â€Å"I take care,† she said. She tucked the cage under her arm and backed toward the door, waving. â€Å"Bye-bye, Sophie. Bye-bye.† â€Å"Bye-bye, bubeleh,† said Mrs. Korjev. â€Å"Bye-bye,† Sophie said, with a baby wave. â€Å"When did you learn bye-bye?† Charlie said to his daughter. â€Å"I can’t leave you for a second.† But he did leave her the very next day, to find replacements for the hamsters. He took the cargo van to the pet store this time. Whatever courage or hubris he’d rallied in order to attack the sewer harpies had melted away, and he didn’t even want to go near a storm drain. At the pet store he picked out two painted turtles, each about as big around as a mayonnaise-jar lid. He bought them a large kidney-shaped dish that had its own little island, a plastic palm tree, some aquatic plants, and a snail. The snail, presumably, to bolster the self-esteem of the turtles: â€Å"You think we’re slow? Look at that guy.† To shore up the snail’s morale in the same way, there was a rock. Everyone is happier if they have someone to look down on, as well as someone to look up to, especially if they resent both. This is not only the Beta Male strategy for survival, but the basis for capitalism, democracy, and most religions. After he grilled the clerk for fifteen minutes on the vitality of the turtles, and was assured that they could probably survive a nuclear attack as long as there were some bugs left to eat, Charlie wrote a check and started tearing up over his turtles. â€Å"Are you okay, Mr. Asher?† asked the pet-shop guy. â€Å"I’m sorry,† Charlie said. â€Å"It’s just that this is the last entry in the register.† â€Å"And your bank didn’t give you a new one?† â€Å"No, I have a new one, but this is the last one that my wife wrote in. Now that this one is used up, I’ll never see her handwriting in the check register again.† â€Å"I’m sorry,† said the pet-shop guy, who, until that moment, had thought the rough patch that day was going to be consoling a guy over a couple of dead hamsters. â€Å"It’s not your problem,† Charlie said. â€Å"I’ll just take my turtles and go.† And he did, squeezing the check register in his hand as he drove. She was slipping away, every day a little more. A week ago Jane had come down to borrow some honey and found the plum jelly that Rachel liked in the back of the refrigerator, covered in green fuzz. â€Å"Little brother, this has got to go,† Jane said, making a face. â€Å"No. It was Rachel’s.† â€Å"I know, kid, and she’s not coming back for it. What else do you – oh my God!† She dove away from the fridge. â€Å"What was that?† â€Å"Lasagna. Rachel made it.† â€Å"This has been in here for over a year?† â€Å"I couldn’t make myself throw it out.† â€Å"Look, I’m coming over Saturday and cleaning out this apartment. I’m going to get rid of all the stuff of Rachel’s that you don’t want.† â€Å"I want it all.† Jane paused while moving the green-and-purple lasagna to the trash bin, pan and all. â€Å"No you don’t, Charlie. This kind of stuff doesn’t help you remember Rachel, it just hurts you. You need to focus on Sophie and the rest of both of your lives. You’re a young guy, you can’t give up. We all loved Rachel, but you have to think about moving on, maybe going out.† â€Å"I’m not ready. And you can’t come over this Saturday, that’s my day in the shop.† â€Å"I know,† Jane said. â€Å"It’s better if you’re not here.† â€Å"But you can’t be trusted, Jane,† Charlie said, as if that was as obvious as the fact that Jane was irritating. â€Å"You’ll throw out all the pieces of Rachel, and you’ll steal my clothes.† Jane had been swiping Charlie’s suits pretty regularly since he’d started dressing more upscale. She was wearing a tailored, double-breasted jacket that he’d just gotten back from Three Fingered Hu a few days ago. Charlie hadn’t even worn it yet. â€Å"Why are you still wearing suits, anyway? Isn’t your new girlfriend a yoga instructor? Shouldn’t you be wearing those baggy pants made out of hemp and tofu fibers like she does? You look like David Bowie, Jane. There, I’ve said it. I’m sorry, but it had to be said.† Jane put her arm around his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. â€Å"You are so sweet. Bowie is the only man I’ve ever found attractive. Let me clean out your apartment. I’ll watch Sophie that day – give the widows a day to do battle down at the Everything for a Dollar Store.† â€Å"Okay, but just clothes and stuff, no pictures. And just put it in the basement in boxes, no throwing anything away.† â€Å"Even food items? Chuck, the lasagna, I mean – â€Å" â€Å"Okay, food items can go. But don’t let Sophie know what you’re doing. And leave Rachel’s perfume, and her hairbrush. I want Sophie to know what her mother smelled like.† That night, when he finished at the shop, he went down to the basement to the little gated storage area for his apartment and visited the boxes of all of the things that Jane had packed up. When that didn’t work, he opened them and said good-bye to every single item – pieces of Rachel. Seemed like he was always saying good-bye to pieces of Rachel. On his way home from the pet shop he had stopped at A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books because it, too, was a piece of Rachel and he needed a touchstone, but also because he needed to research what he was doing. He’d scoured the Internet for information on death, and while he’d found that there were a lot of people who wanted to dress like death, get naked with the dead, look at pictures of the naked and the dead, or sell pills to give erections to the dead, there just wasn’t anything on how to go about being dead, or Death. No one had ever heard of Death Merchants or sewer harpies or anything of the sort. He left the store with a two-foot-high stack of books on Death and Dying, figuring, as a Beta Male typically does, that before he tried to take the battle to the enemy again, he’d better find out something about what he was dealing with. That evening he settled in on the couch next to his baby daughter and read while the new turtles, Bruiser and Jeep (so named in hope of instilling durability in them), ate freeze-dried bugs and watched CSI Safari-land on cable. â€Å"Well, honey, according to this Kbler-Ross lady, the five stages of death are anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Well, we went through all of those stages when we lost Mommy, didn’t we?† â€Å"Mama,† Sophie said. The first time she had said â€Å"Mama† had brought Charlie to tears. He had been looking over her little shoulder at a picture of Rachel. The second time she said it, it was less emotional. She was in her high chair at the breakfast bar and was talking to the toaster. â€Å"That’s not Mommy, Soph, that’s the toaster.† â€Å"Mama,† Sophie insisted, reaching out for the toaster. â€Å"You’re just trying to fuck with me, aren’t you?† Charlie said. â€Å"Mama,† Sophie said to the fridge. â€Å"Swell,† Charlie said. He read on, realizing that Dr. Kbler-Ross had been exactly right. Every morning when he woke up to find another name and number in the day planner at his bedside, he went through the entire five-step process before he finished breakfast. But now that the steps had a name – he started to recognize the stages as experienced by the family members of his clients. That’s how he referred to the people whose souls he retrieved: clients. Then he read a book, called The Last Sack, about how to kill yourself with a plastic bag, but it must not have been a very effective book, because he saw on the back cover that there had been two sequels. He imagined the fan mail: Dear Last Sack Author: I was almost dead, but then my sack got all steamed up and I couldn’t see the TV, so I poked an eyehole. I hope to try again with your next book. The book really didn’t help Charlie much, except to instill in him a new paranoia about plastic bags. Over the next few months he read: The Egyptian Book of the Dead, from which he learned how to pull someone’s brain out through his nostril with a buttonhook, which he was sure would come in handy someday; a dozen books on dealing with death, grief, burial rituals, and myths of the Underworld, from which he learned that there had been personifications of Death since the dawn of time, and none of them looked like him; and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, from which he learned that bardo, the transition between this life and the next, was forty-nine days long, and that during the process you would be met by about thirty thousand demons, all of which were described in intricate detail, none of which looked like the sewer harpies, and all of which you were supposed to ignore and not be afraid of because they weren’t real because they were of the material world. â€Å"Strange,† Charlie said to Sophie, â€Å"how all of these books talk about how the material world isn’t significant, yet I have to retrieve people’s souls, which are attached to material objects. It would appear that death, if nothing else, is ironic, don’t you think?† â€Å"No,† Sophie said. At eighteen months Sophie answered all questions either â€Å"No,† â€Å"Cookie,† or â€Å"like Bear† – the last Charlie attributed to leaving his daughter too often in the care of Mrs. Korjev. After the turtles, two more hamsters, a hermit crab, an iguana, and two widemouthed frogs passed on to the great wok in the sky (or, more accurately, on the third floor), Charlie finally acquiesced and brought home a three-inch-long Madagascar hissing cockroach that he named Bear, just so his daughter wouldn’t go through life talking total nonsense. â€Å"Like Bear,† Sophie said. â€Å"She’s talking about the bug,† Charlie said, one night when Jane stopped by. â€Å"She’s not talking about the bug,† Jane said. â€Å"What kind of father buys a cockroach for a little girl anyway? That’s disgusting.† â€Å"Nothing’s supposed to be able to kill them. They’ve been around for like a hundred million years. It was that or a white shark, and they’re supposed to be hard to keep.† â€Å"Why don’t you give up, Charlie? Just let her get by with stuffed animals.† â€Å"A little kid should have a pet. Especially a little kid growing up in the city.† â€Å"We grew up in the city and we didn’t have any pets.† â€Å"I know, and look how we turned out,† Charlie said, gesturing back and forth between the two of them, one who dealt in death and had a giant cockroach named Bear, and the other who was on her third yoga-instructor girlfriend in six months and was wearing his newest Harris tweed suit. â€Å"We turned out great, or at least one of us did,† Jane said, gesturing to the splendor of her suit, like she was a game-show model giving the big prize package on Let’s Get Androgynous, â€Å"You have got to gain some weight. This is tailored way too tight in the butt,† she said, lapsing once again into self-obsession. â€Å"Am I camel-toeing?† â€Å"I am not looking, not looking, not looking,† Charlie chanted. â€Å"She wouldn’t need pets if she ever saw the outside of this apartment,† Jane said, pulling down on the crotch of her trousers to counteract the dreaded dromedary-digit effect. â€Å"Take her to the zoo, Charlie. Let her see something besides this apartment. Take her out.† â€Å"I will, tomorrow. I’ll take her out and show her the city,† Charlie said. And he would have, too, except he woke to find the name Madeline Alby written on his day planner, and next to her name, the number one. Oh yeah, and the cockroach was dead. I will take you out,† Charlie said as he put Sophie in her high chair for breakfast. â€Å"I will, honey. I promise. Can you believe that they’d only give me one day?† â€Å"No,† Sophie said. â€Å"Juice,† she added, because she was in her chair and this was juice time. â€Å"I’m sorry about Bear, honey,† Charlie said, brushing her hair this way, then that, then giving up. â€Å"He was a good bug, but he is no more. Mrs. Ling will bury him. That window box of hers must be getting pretty crowded.† He didn’t remember there being a window box in Mrs. Ling’s window, but who was he to question? Charlie threw open the phone book and, mercifully, found an M. Alby with an address on Telegraph Hill – not ten minutes’ walk away. No client had ever been this close, and with almost six months without a peep or a shade from the sewer harpies, he was starting to feel like he had this whole Death Merchant thing under control. He’d even placed most of the soul vessels that he’d collected. The short notice felt bad. Really bad. The house was an Italianate Victorian on the hill just below the Coit Tower, the great granite column built in honor of the San Francisco firemen who had lost their lives in the line of duty. Although it’s said to have been designed with a fire-hose nozzle in mind, almost no one who sees the tower can resist the urge to comment on its resemblance to a giant penis. Madeline Alby’s house, a flat-roofed white rectangle with ornate scrolling trim and a crowning cornice of carved cherubs, looked like a wedding cake balanced on the tower’s scrotum. So as Charlie trudged up the nut sack of San Francisco, he wondered exactly how he was going to get inside the house. Usually he had time, he could wait and follow someone in, or construct some kind of ruse to gain entrance, but this time he had only one day to get inside, find the soul vessel, and get out. He hoped that Madeline Alby had already died. He really didn’t like being around sick people. When he saw the car parked out front with the small green hospice sticker, his hopes for a dead client were smashed like a cupcake with a sledgehammer. He walked up the front porch steps at the left of the house and waited by the door. Could he open it himself? Would people be able to see it, or did his special â€Å"unnoticeability† extend to objects he moved as well? He didn’t think so. But then the door opened and a woman about Charlie’s age stepped out onto the porch. â€Å"I’m just having a smoke,† she called back into the house, and before she could close the door behind her, Charlie slipped inside. The front door opened into a foyer; to his right Charlie saw what had originally been the parlor. There was a stairway in front of him, and another door beyond that that he guessed led to the kitchen. He could hear voices in the parlor and peeked around the corner to see four elderly women sitting on two couches that faced each other. They were in dresses and hats, and they might have just come from church, but Charlie guessed they had come to see their friend off. â€Å"You’d think she’d give up the smoking, with her mother upstairs dying of cancer,† said one of the ladies, wearing a gray skirt and jacket with matching hat, and a large enameled pin in the shape of a Holstein cow. â€Å"Well, she always was a hardheaded girl,† said another, wearing a dress that looked as if it had been made from the same floral material as the couch. â€Å"You know she used to meet with my son Jimmy up in Pioneer Park when they were little.† â€Å"She said she was going to marry him,† said another woman, who looked like a sister of the first. The ladies laughed, whimsy and sadness mixed in their tones. â€Å"Well, I don’t know what she was thinking, he’s as flighty as can be,† said Mom. â€Å"Yeah, and brain damaged,† added the sister. â€Å"Well, yes, he is now.† â€Å"Since the car ran over him,† said Sis. â€Å"Didn’t he run right in front of a car?† asked one of the ladies who had been silent until now. â€Å"No, he ran right into it,† said Mom. â€Å"He was on the drugs then.† She sighed. â€Å"I always said I had one of each – a boy, a girl, and a Jimmy.† They all nodded. This was not the first time this group had done this, Charlie guessed. They were the type that bought sympathy cards in bulk, and every time they heard an ambulance go by they made a note to pick up their black dress from the cleaner’s. â€Å"You know Maddy looked bad,† said the lady in gray. â€Å"Well, she’s dying, sweetheart, that’s what happens.† â€Å"I guess.† Another sigh. The tinkle of ice in glasses. They were all nursing neat little cocktails. Charlie guessed they’d been mixed by the younger woman who was outside smoking. He looked around the room for something that was glowing red. There was an oak rolltop desk in the corner that he’d like to get a look in, but that would have to wait until later. He ducked out of the doorway and into the kitchen, where two men in their late thirties, maybe early forties, were sitting at an oak table, playing Scrabble. â€Å"Is Jenny coming back? It’s her turn.† â€Å"She might have gone up to see Mom with one of the ladies. The hospice nurse is letting them go up one at a time.† â€Å"I just wish it was over. I can’t stand this waiting. I have a family I need to get back to. I’m about to crawl out of my fucking skin.† The older of the two reached across the table and set two tiny blue pills by his brother’s tiles. â€Å"These help.† â€Å"What are they?† â€Å"Time-released morphine.† â€Å"Really?† The younger brother looked alarmed. â€Å"You hardly even feel them, they just sort of take the edge off. Jenny’s been taking them for two weeks.† â€Å"That’s why you guys are taking this so well and I’m a wreck? You guys are stoned on Mom’s pain medication?† â€Å"Yep.† â€Å"I don’t take drugs. Those are drugs. You don’t take drugs.† The older brother sat back in his chair. â€Å"Pain medication, Bill. What are you feeling?† â€Å"No, I’m not taking Mom’s pain meds.† â€Å"Suit yourself.† â€Å"What if she needs them?† â€Å"There’s enough morphine in that room to bring down a Kodiak bear, and if she needs more, then hospice will bring more.† Charlie wanted to shake the younger brother and yell, Take the drugs, you idiot. Maybe it was the benefit of experience. Having now seen this situation happen again and again, families on deathwatch, out of their minds with grief and exhaustion, friends moving in and out of the house like ghosts, saying good-bye or just covering some sort of base so they could say they had been there, so perhaps they wouldn’t have to die alone themselves. Why was none of this in the books of the dead? Why didn’t the instructions tell him about all the pain and confusion he was going to see? â€Å"I’m going to go find Jenny,† said the older brother, â€Å"see if she wants to get something to eat. We can finish the game later if you want.† â€Å"That’s okay, I was losing anyway.† The younger brother gathered up the tiles and put the board away. â€Å"I’m going to go upstairs and see if I can catch a nap, tonight’s my night watching Mom.† The older brother walked out and Charlie watched the younger brother drop the blue pills into his shirt pocket and leave the kitchen, leaving the Death Dealer to ransack the pantry and the cabinets looking for the soul vessel. But he felt before he even started that it wouldn’t be there. He was going to have to go upstairs. He really, really hated being around sick people. Madeline Alby was propped up and tucked into bed with a down comforter up around her neck. She was so slight that her body barely showed under the covers. Charlie guessed that she might weigh seventy or eighty pounds max. Her face was drawn and he could see the outlines of her eye sockets and her jawbone jutting through her skin, which had gone yellow. Charlie guessed liver cancer. One of her friends from downstairs was sitting at her bedside, the hospice-care worker, a big woman in scrubs, sat in a chair across the room, reading. A small dog, a Yorkshire terrier, Charlie thought, was snuggled up between Madeline’s shoulder and her neck, sleeping. When Charlie stepped into the room, Madeline said, â€Å"Hey there, kid.† He froze in his steps. She was looking right at him – crystal-blue eyes, and a smile. Had the floor squeaked? Had he bumped something? â€Å"What are you doing there, kid?† She giggled. â€Å"Who do you see, Maddy?† asked the friend. She followed Madeline’s gaze but looked right through Charlie. â€Å"A kid over there.† â€Å"Okay, Maddy. Do you want some water?† The friend reached for a child’s sippy cup with a built-in straw from the nightstand. â€Å"No. Tell that kid to come in here, though. Come in here, kid.† Madeline worked her arms out of the covers and started moving her hands in sewing motions, like she was embroidering a tapestry in the air before her. â€Å"Well, I’d better go,† said the friend. â€Å"Let you get some rest.† The friend glanced at the hospice woman, who looked over her reading glasses and smiled with her eyes. The only expert in the house, giving permission. The friend stood and kissed Madeline Alby on the forehead. Madeline stopped sewing for a second, closed her eyes, and leaned into the kiss, like a young girl. Her friend squeezed her hand and said, â€Å"Good-bye, Maddy.† Charlie stepped aside and let the woman pass. He watched her shoulders heave with a sob as she went through the door. â€Å"Hey, kid,† Madeline said. â€Å"Come over here and sit down.† She paused in her sewing long enough to look Charlie in the eye, which freaked him out more than a little. He glanced at the hospice worker, who glanced up from her book, then went back to reading. Charlie pointed to himself. â€Å"Yeah, you,† Madeline said. Charlie was going into a panic. She could see him, but the hospice nurse could not, or so it seemed. An alarm beeped on the nurse’s watch and Madeline picked up the little dog and held it to her ear. â€Å"Hello? Hi, how are you?† She looked up at Charlie. â€Å"It’s my oldest daughter.† The little dog looked at Charlie, too, with a distinct â€Å"save me† look in its eyes. â€Å"Time for some medicine, Madeline,† the nurse said. â€Å"Can’t you see I’m on the phone, Sally,† Madeline said. â€Å"Hang on a second.† â€Å"Okay, I’ll wait,† the nurse said. She picked up a brown bottle with an eyedropper in it, filled the dropper, and checked the dosage and held. â€Å"Bye. Love you, too,† Madeline said. She held the tiny dog out to Charlie. â€Å"Hang that up, would you?† The nurse snatched the dog out of the air and set it down on the bed next to Madeline. â€Å"Open up, Madeline,† the nurse said. Madeline opened wide and the nurse squirted the eyedropper into the old woman’s mouth. â€Å"Mmm, strawberry,† Madeline said. â€Å"That’s right, strawberry. Would you like to wash it down with some water?† The nurse held the sippy cup. â€Å"No. Cheese. I’d like some cheese.† â€Å"I can get you some cheese,† said the nurse. â€Å"Cheddar cheese.† â€Å"Cheddar it is,† said the nurse. â€Å"I’ll be right back.† She tucked the covers around Madeline and left the room. The old woman looked at Charlie again. â€Å"Can you talk, now that she’s gone?† Charlie shrugged and looked in every direction, his hand over his mouth, like someone looking for an emergency spot to spit out a mouthful of bad seafood. â€Å"Don’t mime, honey,† Madeline said. â€Å"No one likes a mime.† Charlie sighed heavily, what was there to lose now? She could see him. â€Å"Hello, Madeline. I’m Charlie.† â€Å"I always liked the name Charlie,† Madeline said. â€Å"How come Sally can’t see you?† â€Å"Only you can see me right now,† Charlie said. â€Å"Because I’m dying?† â€Å"I think so.† â€Å"Okay. You’re a nice-looking kid, you know that?† â€Å"Thanks. You’re not bad yourself.† â€Å"I’m scared, Charlie. It doesn’t hurt. I used to be afraid that it would hurt, but now I’m afraid of what happens next.† Charlie sat down on the chair next to the bed. â€Å"I think that’s why I’m here, Madeline, you don’t need to be afraid.† â€Å"I drank a lot of brandy, Charlie. That’s why this happened.† â€Å"Maddy – can I call you Maddy?† â€Å"Sure, kid, we’re friends.† â€Å"Yes, we are. Maddy, this was always going to happen. You didn’t do anything to cause it.† â€Å"Well, that’s good.† â€Å"Maddy, do you have something for me?† â€Å"Like a present?† â€Å"Like a present you would give to yourself. Something I can keep for you and give you back later, when it will be a surprise.† â€Å"My pincushion,† Madeline said. â€Å"I’d like you to have that. It was my grandmother’s.† â€Å"I’d be honored to keep that for you, Maddy. Where can I find it?† â€Å"In my sewing box, on the top shelf of that closet.† She pointed to an old-style single closet across the room. â€Å"Oh, excuse me, phone.† Madeline talked to her oldest daughter on the edge of the comforter while Charlie got the sewing box from the top shelf of the closet. It was made of wicker and he could see the red glow of the soul vessel inside. He removed a pincushion fashioned from red velvet wrapped with bands of real silver and held it up for Madeline to see. She smiled and gave him the thumbs-up, just as the nurse returned with a small plate of cheese and crackers. â€Å"It’s my oldest daughter,† Madeline explained to the nurse, holding the edge of the comforter to her chest so her daughter didn’t hear. â€Å"Oh my, is that cheese?† The nurse nodded. â€Å"And crackers.† â€Å"I’ll call you back, honey, Sally has brought cheese and I don’t want to be rude.† She hung up the sheet and allowed Sally to feed her bites of cheese and crackers. â€Å"I believe this is the best cheese I’ve ever tasted,† Madeline said. Charlie could tell from the expression on her face that it was, indeed, the best cheese she had ever tasted. Every ounce of her being was going into tasting those slivers of cheddar, and she let loose little moans of pleasure as she chewed. â€Å"You want some cheese, Charlie?† Madeline asked, spraying cracker shrapnel all over the nurse, who turned to look at the corner where Charlie was standing with the pincushion tucked safely in his jacket pocket. â€Å"Oh, you can’t see him, Sally,† Madeline said, tapping the nurse on the hand. â€Å"But he’s a handsome rascal. A little skinny, though.† Then, to Sally, but overly loud to be sure that Charlie could hear: â€Å"He could use some fucking cheese.† Then she laughed, spraying more crackers on the nurse, who was laughing, too, and trying not to dump the plate. â€Å"What did she say?† came a voice from the hall. Then the two sons and the daughter entered, chagrined at first at what they had heard, but then laughing with the nurse and their mother. â€Å"I said that cheese is good,† Madeline said. â€Å"Yeah, Mom, it is,† said the daughter. Charlie stood there in the corner, watching them eat cheese, and laughing, thinking, This should have been in the book. He watched them help her with her bedpan, and give her drinks of water, and wipe her face with a damp cloth – watched her bite at the cloth the way Sophie did when he washed her face. The eldest daughter, who Charlie realized had been dead for some time, called three more times, once on the dog and twice on the pillow. Around lunchtime Madeline was tired, and she went to sleep, and about a half hour into her nap she started panting, then stopped, then didn’t breathe for a full minute, then took a deep breath, then didn’t. And Charlie slipped out the door with her soul in his pocket.

Friday, September 27, 2019

Frankenstein Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Frankenstein - Essay Example Shelley's novel opens with several letters written by the storyteller, Robert Walton to his sister, Margaret Saville, in England as Walton himself is on a grand voyage to the end of the earth. The series of letters sets the stage for introducing Victor Frankenstein who Walton meets during his voyage. And then, the rest of the book recounts Frankenstein's story of his life. I was especially glued to Shelley's vivid descriptions of locales, the changing seasons, how the characters looked and their emotions at different parts of the story. The writing was so colorful that it was better than watching a movie. Shelley's story also depicted the sensibilities of the age, especially the differing natures and primary pursuits of various countries and peoples in Europe and England. It portrayed the importance that some individuals put on science and other intellectual pursuits while others choose to occupy themselves primarily with commerce and the accumulation of wealth. Shelley depicted the interplay of good and bad in human character and very successfully did so. Personally, my realization was that there is always reason why people do certain things and that this reason is primarily good in the view of the person acting on the reason. Before I read the original text of Frankenstein, I had very many misconceptions about the story. I had thought Frankenstein was the monster, or Victor Frankenstein was a mad scientist, or that a Mrs. Frankenstein actually came into being. All this was probably brought on by the different stories I heard on the same subject. I never thought that I would consider Frankenstein a literary masterpiece that has made it become a classic. Actually reading the novel has of course changed all that. It was quite easy for me to get a copy of Frankenstein because it was available in the Project Gutenberg collection. A remarkable novel such as what Mary Shelley has written over 200 years ago can now be easily accessed, read, dissected, analyzed or merely perused for enjoyment. The Gutenberg collection has over 3 million titles and over 25,000 of these are freely accessible. Indeed, in this age of computers it is quite marvelous to be able to look back at somebody's work from hundreds of years ago, learn from it and get inspired by it. Who is Victor Frankenstein (Reflective Essay) It is amazing to realize that Victor Frankenstein, the character created by Mary Shelley in her famous novel some 200 years ago may well be any one of us, today. Shelley may have over dramatized the pursuits of Frankenstein in her book but the character of Victor, his aspirations, his focused pursuit of objectives, his joys and sorrows are as human as they were then as they are now. Victor, at the story's opening is from a family with means. But as he relates the story of his parents, it was not so in the past, rather a series of ups and downs in terms of economic well-being. That initial story already depicts human histories that are true

Thursday, September 26, 2019

Cellular pathology 1 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Cellular pathology 1 - Essay Example The eggs of  E. vermicularis which can be seen in the picture are roughly 25 x 60 um in size. The organism has a thin shell and one of the sides is compressed. The eggs and shell of organism have taken up the pink dye which makes them recognizable. The presence of E. vermicularis in the appendix can give the symptoms of acute appendicitis (Wiebe, 1991, p.g. 336). The appendix is a vestigial organ present in the human body. The inflammation of this organ leads to appendicitis. Acute appendicitis is one of most common diseases that lead to inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. Acute appendicitis is caused due to the obstruction of the lumen, diminished blood supply, pinworm infections caused by Enterobius vermicularis, bacterial infections or due to ischemic damage to mucosal lining of organ (Becker and Hofler, 2002, pg.777). The best described pathogenesis of appendicitis is an obstruction in the appendiceal lumen. The obstruction can be due to lodging of foreign body, lymphoid hyperplasia, fecolith or tumours. The pathogenesis of appendicitis can be understood by the course that the disease takes. In the primary stage, there is obstruction of the lumen which causes accumulation of fluid leading to elevation of intralumin al pressure and lastly resulting in distension of lumina. Suppurative appendicitis occurs due to increased intraluminal pressure which increases the capillary perfusion leading to venous obstruction and hence causing arterial compromise. These crucial events lead to ischemia of the mucosal surface and allow bacterial infestation. As the disease progresses, it causes mural infection which is characterized by oedematous thickening of the appendicular walls. When observed grossly the appendix appears hyperaemic and enlarged. If this progressive condition is not managed surgically it may lead to perforation and gangrene. Gangrenous appendicitis may present as friable serosa with green or black discoloration. If

Analysis and summary report of findings Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Analysis and summary report of findings - Essay Example of helping residents in NG7 reduce their household costs- such as heating bills with the aim or converting the fuel and food expenditure to other household basic necessities. The NEST project’s approach entails the promotion of awareness local fuel and food through open talks and educational outreach which can act as a catalyst in development and financial support food and fuel crisis. Conservation and improvisation are some of the methods that can be used to reduce domestic expenditure. The NEST Project focuses its concerns on domestic income and expenditure with the analysis of the NG7 community. One of the major issues is the rising of electricity and water bills in relation to their impacts on domestic expenditure and conservation practices. a research survey for local NG7 community residents indicates that the rising gas , electricity and water bills creates a negative impact on the domestic expenditure as less money is set aside to spend on basic necessities such as food, clothing and security (Henry, 2010). In this case, a large number of residents strongly agree with the analogy that rising gas, electricity and water bills reduces the budget expenditure of the basic necessities of a household. NEST project research survey for local residents in NG7 portrays that rising gas, electricity and water bills directly affect the health and wellbeing of many families. A majority of the residence in NG7 area agree with this notion according to NEST project research survey for local residents in NG7. Family health and wellbeing largely depends on the family income and expenditure. In cases of lack of balance between the income and the expenditure rate, families tend to suffer from health and wellbeing issues as many people ignore social and health responsibilities2. Therefore, inadequate fund leads to poor health and wellbeing in most families in NG7 area. One of the common ways used to cut down the expenditure rate in a household is the use of DIY tools. The

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 5

Education - Essay Example An official curriculum is a written guide from the learner’s perspective clearly describing a designed plan to make both teaching and learning more effective. In education, an official curriculum provides a basis for accountability; it is a framework outlining the specific procedure and plan to be used in the teaching of the content. As a student, you will often notice that different courses have different instructions and resources that can be used to achieve the course objectives that not only state what is expected of the student, but also what is expected of the teacher. Operational curriculum is defined as what is taught by the teacher and how it is communicated (Posner, 2003). An operational curriculum states what students are required to learn in a specific subject, and the knowledge and skills they are to acquire from a particular subject. Operational curriculum helps to gauge how well a student understands the content by relating what is taught in class and the specif ic learning outcomes for the student. For example, the instructional content of mathematics is taught and communicated differently at different grades to ensure the concepts like multiplication and addition are understood proficiently. The hidden curriculum includes the norms and values of the surrounding society (Posner, 2003). The community most often demands that a school curriculum should be able to promote the right values, and as much as the school educational curriculum may be perceived suitable for children in terms of promoting such values, children might be vulnerable to few elements within the society which might pervert the educational process. For this reason, the hidden curriculum... This paper approves that an official curriculum provides a basis for accountability; it is a framework outlining the specific procedure and plan to be used in the teaching of the content. As a student, you will often notice that different courses have different instructions and resources that can be used to achieve the course objectives that not only state what is expected of the student, but also what is expected of the teacher. This paper makes a conclusion that the structure of the disciplines that has been promoted by Jerrold Zacharias, a scientist who for a long time had been attempting to improve the physics curriculum and saw this perspective as an avenue for incorporating modern physics into it. He is of the opinion of teaching only the most fundamental concepts and at the same time teaching students how to derive the rest of the knowledge from the same concept; and in the process of learning a lot of things can be applied practically and less of theory which will just remain in the mind. The Cognitive Perspective has its promoters in science such as Piaget who spent a lot of time trying to understand how children’s minds work and how different their thinking was from that of adults and how it was that they got to â€Å"learn† things that were abstract in nature. He shows how children need to be ready for the cognitive learning process to take place. Behavioral Perspective has been promoted by Edward Thorndike, the founder of behavioral psychology. He provided the necessary scientific theory for behavior through his works on behavioral objectives, in Arithmetic he was able to contribute greatly into the creation of a behavioral curriculum.

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Citrobacter freundii Lab Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Citrobacter freundii - Lab Report Example The plates were placed in an incubator and grown while observing the morphology. A Gram stain was performed on the unknown alongside quality control bacteria. The gram reaction was observed and recorded and specific biochemical tests performed. Given the reaction gave out a gram negative rod, the first test performed was oxidase test. Other tests performed are listed in the table found in the results section. After all the differential tests were performed, the results showed that the identity of unknown microorganism was citrobacter freundii. The results were compared against the class chart showing the classifications of the microorganisms. The determination that the unknown organism was gram negative rod initiated use of TSA slant to inoculate the other tests, Oxidase test, BCP lactose, Indole test, Citrate test, Motility test (Fraser, 76). All the results were well worked out for the the tests except for the citrate test which gave a false negative results. The error was noted given that, for this test, the result was inconsistent with other tests. The test was repeated and was able to give a positive result. In conclusion, the unknown organism was found to be Citrobacter freundii, following a series of eliminations made from the tests. Citrobacter freundii is in the Enterobacteriaceae family and are gram-negative bacilli (Fraser p. 20). It is normally found in sewage and intestinal tract of animals and humans. It can cause disease to its

Monday, September 23, 2019

The Export-Led Growth Model Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The Export-Led Growth Model - Essay Example China’s model is rooted in the double transition of demographic and structural transformation. China economy has tremendously managed the double-digit growth rates from the period when it began economic transformation. This enabled the country to move from a planned to a mixed economy where the market plays the significant roles in resource allocation. Thus, despite the political, social and economic problems associated with the rapid growth in China economies, export-led growth has tremendously enabled China to increase their profitability levels, balance their finances, exceed their debts and trigger their export growth rate.Export-led growth model have been successful in many economies that employ this model for creating economic transformation. The export-led model is significant because it has enabled many economies to increase their profitability levels, balance their finances and exceed their debts. China has benefited from the export-led model since they started using it because this model has enabled them to increase their profitability levels. China was ranked the second largest economies that have emerged and improved in terms of economic performance in the global market. This model has not only enabled them to increase their profitability level but also to balance their finances; thus enabling China to emerge as the successful economies in Asian markets.It has also triggered export growth rate in the China market; thus creating higher export levels.... This model has not only enabled them to increase their profitability level but also to balance their finances; thus enabling China to emerge as the successful economies in Asian markets. It has also triggered export growth rate in the China market; thus creating higher export levels in a rising spiral cycle. For instance, the GDP (Gross Domestic Products) in China market expanded by 2%, in the year 2012 and indicated in figure 1 below. Historically, the GDP average rate was 2.06% from 2011 and the record indicated the 1.50 % low in 2012 as indicated in figure1 below. China is one of the second economies after the United States that has improved their export rate in the global market. China has varied industries that export multiple products to diverse countries across the globe. The rise of population growth rate has enabled them to improve their economic performance because of rich markets because of both rich markets both in the domestic and the international markets. For instance, the National Bureau of Statistics of China reveals that the GDP for the China economy was 51,932.2 billion in the year 2012; thus contributing to economic expansion of 7.9 percent. Figure 1: GDP Growth Rate in China markets The implementation model of export-led growth has significantly contributed to increased rapid growth in the China markets. For the last three decades, China economy has grown to the average rates, which exceed 9%; thus, it is widely admired by other nations (Razmi 2008, p. 1). Furthermore, the growth has been accompanied by the reduction levels in poverty; thus enabling the China market to be ranked among the leading and emerging economies in the Asian nations. However, the trajectory of rapid growth in China has created political, social made

Saturday, September 21, 2019

Management and Team Essay Example for Free

Management and Team Essay A team displaying effective team performance are identified as having several characteristics. These are: Clear Goals: These are essential and ensure that the team as a whole are working towards the same positive outcome – thus ensuring an effective and in tune team. Defined Roles and job descriptions: In order to encourage effective team performance it is critical that each team member in each position has definitive roles. When these are not followed confusion is rife and the performance of the team can be severely damaged. Defined roles ensure that each team member is doing what they should, know who to call on for assistance in a certain situation and makes for smooth and effective team performance. Open and clear communication: This ensures that all team members grow within a trusting and healthy interpersonal forum at work. Open and clear communications are the only way to ensure that a team performs effectively. Excellent communication throughout the team ensures that the team are working in sync with each other, making a strong in tune outfit. Effective decision making: Teams must receive training on effective decision making procedures in order for them to be effective. Read more:Â  Define the Key Features of Effective Team Performance If a team follows this training then the performance is enhanced across the whole team and mostly the best decisions are made using this process. Time is often saved using these techniques making for a happier healthier team. Participation from all team members: Regular time and forums to gather all team members are essential to the performance of the team. It not only empowers workers to give their opinion but allows and encourages all within a team to have their ideas and opinions validated – thus making a positive enhancement on the team. Participation also encourages the sharing of ideas and knowledge within the team creating diversity within the team as a whole. Valued diversity: Every team member has a different idea, opinion or approach and so bringing all of the differences from each individual together – this enhances the knowledge and diversity of the team as a whole. For instance – someone may be methodical and the other creative. Between them they sho uld have all avenues covered to make a well rounded team when put together. Recognising, at supervisions and team meetings, each individuals strengths enables the team to have many sides to use and in turn enhances performance. Managed conflict: is essential to effective team performance as it stops issues and problems from being ignored. It is a safe and positive way to take problems and bring out new ideas in order to solve and put at ease any members of the team affected by this conflict. It gives team members a chance to be heard and a solution sought in order to keep the team the best that it can be. Positive atmosphere: People who are happy in their work have been proven to be more productive than those who dislike their position and so positivity is a must at all times within a team. Cooperative relationships: An effective team gets along well and takes knowledge from co workers to improve the things they are less able to do alone. It has been proven that optimum team performance is achieved by team members who get along with each other. Participative leadership: An effective team with have leadership who are good role models. The leaders will be involved in the same type of work as all team members on occasion and show that they themselves can and will work as part of the team, even if they are at the top. It has been written that it should be difficult to identify the leader in effective teams upon observation. (Bruce Tuckman 1965) states that the best way to gain effective team performance is to follow his theory of Forming, Storming, Norming and performing. Following his theory tool is definitely a way forward and shows key features of effective team performance. When each stage is followed , a team should reach maximum performance quickly and with ease. (www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_86.htm) To summarise – the features of effective team performance are to have a happy knowledgeable team who meet regularly, share experiences, ideas and knowledge, to ensure team members are valued and to create a happy work environment where conflicts are safely managed and management are actively seen a nd involved within the team. With all of the above features evident within an organisations team should ensure and show excellent team performance. 1.2 IDENTIFY THE CHALLENGES EXPERIENCED BY DEVELOPING TEAMS Challenges experienced by developing teams include the notion that team members may become overwhelmed if the development is handled wrongly. Psychologist Bruce Tuckman (1965)says that in the initial stages of team development it is easy for teams to become overwhelmed by expectations of what they are being asked to do. However if the theory and tools are used correctly, team development is planned carefully, and the plan followed then all challenges can be overcome. With any team, disengagement should be looked for as if members do not participate then they will not achieve the desired outcome. Reading many papers on the matter lead me to believe that if you keep a team engaged, have a stringent plan, outline goals for the team and orchestrate using tried and tested methods, all challenges that may arise will be overcome. Time is always difficult to find with developing teams to enable the progression. Regular time should be allowed for team performance meetings and it is always difficult to orchestrate a workforce to develop. However difficult, a conclusion from my reading is that teams need time and without adequate tim e and a leader who knows what they are doing, developing teams can be seriously impaired. 1.3 IDENTIFY THE CHALLENGES EXPERIENCED BY ESTABLISHED TEAMS Established teams can be difficult to change. If an established team has effective team performance then great but if an established team has team performance that is not good then an established team may be difficult to shape as they will not be used to the new strategies and ideas involved in upping their performance. Following on as a Manager into an environment already established is always difficult. Bringing in new ideas – it is written that established teams can become un nerved and so this should be done using tried and tested techniques. It is important to identify in established teams what already works and grow with that and to slowly bring in new ideas and routes to enhance performance. Resistance to change is a natural response by human beings and should be looked out for and overcome quickly so as not to see a decline in positivity within established teams. (http://www.change-management.com/tutorial-pm-cm.htm) 1.4 EXPLAIN HOW CHALLENGES TO EFFECTIVE TEAM PERFORMANCE CAN BE OVERCOME. Team performance challenges can be overcome by using communication. Excellent communication is at the forefront of any issues and challenges with team performance. Listening is also equally as important as the team should be viewed as a whole and not as an individual. This builds trust and can be imperative in overcoming issues. The whole team will fell valued. Team time spent together can also be productive – socialising and getting to know each other can alleviate stresses and strains and can make a firm foundation for problem solving. All team members must be treated as equals. Problems will come if team members feel that one member receives special treatment. A Manager must also show consistency when completing all tasks with the team. Offers of helping team members is a positive solution as if you do the work yourself and complete the task – others will see that you are an equal and should respond positively. 1.5 ANALYSE HOW DIFFERENT MANAGEMENT STYLES MAY INFLUENCE OUTCOMES OF TEAM PERFORMANCE. There are five management styles widely used throughout the world today. They are: Authoritarian Management: A Manager at the head of the company decides how things are to be done and how each team member will work. There is no room for autonomy within this style. The Manager is solely responsible for devising company policy and implementing it. This Management style could isolate the team when used alone – although there is a place in certain settings for this management style to be used. Democratic Management – this heavily involves all employees and encourages them to have a sense of ownership and to be a part of the decision making process within a company. This Management style to me seems to be the most productive in encouraging teamwork. Democratic Management is what is used in my own company through team meetings. Staff are involved in the changing of systems and work and it is very productive. Paternalistic Management is where the boss acts as a parent to the employees. This style encompasses employees social needs into the equasion and looks at them as a whole person instead of just a worker. I can see how this management style creates a friendly working environment although my worry would be that employees would become too familiar. I believe this syle to enhance team performance . Autocratic Management – This is when a Manager makes decisions in line with their opinions and views and completely alone without the assistance of a team. This management style can leave employees feeling under valued and that they can have no opinion or say in how things are to be. There is no team involvement in this style. Autocratic management can often present as a well run company on the outside but on the inside employees may be dissatisfied – thus team performance damaged severely. Laissez – faire management – This management theory is defined as having employees that manage their own sections of the business and the over all manager watches from a distance. I like this management theory as at team meetings each member who has been responsible for their own areas can bring in their own achievements, problems and findings. If the right people are placed in the right position – this theory can be very productive. The over all manager can take more of a back seat if done well and the individuals can run the company – but only if they are self motivated individuals. 1.6 ANALYSE METHODS OF DEVELOPING TRUST AND ACCOUNTABILITY A democratic management style clearly develops trust as every team member is involved in the processes and operations of the company. Developing trust is based around communication. As we interact, question, disagree with and support decisions in a positive way, we build confidence in one another and promote overall group success ( Limas 2003) Key elements for developing trust are communication methods. Active listening, body language, group interaction and group communication must be used, observed and acted upon. This is why team meetings encompassing these are essential to develop group trust. The leader of all team interactions must be familiar with all communication methods with a view to trust buildings. Accountability development. Robust performance is based guided accountability. Within an organisation it is essential that all involved know their accountability and when this is acted upon. For instance – Managers are accountable for ongoing training and how this is guided through supervisions and passed onto staff members. In a domiciliary care setting – all workers have a job description and code of practice. They also receive training on safeguarding, record keeping and any other aspect of their day to day role. When workers have signed policies and procedures they will be aware of their own individual accountability. It is essential that regular training and updates are done so that all know who is accountable and for what within a care setting. The Management need training in these matters so that they know their own responsibilities. Accountability is developed when own responsibility is defined. 1.7 COMPARE METHODS OF ADDRESSING CONFLICT WITHIN A TEAM. There are many methods of addressing conflict within a team. (Goldfien and Robbennolt 2007) developed a dual model based upon assertiveness and empathy and have proven that linking these together using their five conflict resolution is productive. These are avoidance conflict – adopting a wait and see approach. This can often lead the conflict to go out of control. Yeilding conflict style – this is based upon having more regard for the person creating the conflict than of ones own self. This is used by individuals who with to keep social situations pleasant. They give into demands so as to not upset the apple cart. Competitive conflict style – this maximises individual assertiveness and minimises empathy. This style is used for dominating people who simply wish to win or lose. This is an aggressive style of conflict that usually involves arguing and shouting and power games. It is based upon feelings of intimidation (Morrill 1995) Cooperation conflict style – This style is when the individual takes into account both sides of the conflict and to the best possible outcome for both parties. This style is based around the conflict being dealt with assertiveness and empathy in equal measure. According to literature that has been written on conflict resolution – a cooperative conflict resolution style is recommended above all others ( Sternberg and Dobson 1987) Conciliation conflict style – This style is based around fairness. Giving and taking actions are evident to reach half way thus promoting conflict resolution. This style is both yielding and co operative combined. When a conflict is evident then the management should seek these styles and act accordingly dependant on the nature of the conflict. It is also about personal preference and characteristics of the individuals involved in the conflict. My personal method of dealing with conflict within my company is the consiliation style first and foremost but with the different styles above I can use another if my natural choice is unsuccessful – which it is not very often it does not work. References Bruce Tuckman . (1965). Managent theories and styles. Available: http//www.mba-online-program.com. Last accessed 14th sept 2012. Goldfien and Robbennolt. (2007). conflict resolution. Available: http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/conflict_resolution_conflict_management. Last accessed 08th oct 2012. management. (2011). established teams. Available: http://www.change-management.com/tutorial-pm-cm.htm). Last accessed 08th oct 2012. MIT human resources. (2012). Accountibility. Available: http//hrweb.mit.edu/performance-development/accountibility. Last accessed 08th oct 2012. Morill and Sternberg and Dobson. (1995). Conflict resolution. Available: http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/conflict_resolution.conflict_management. Last accessed 08th oct 2012. Univerity of Florida. (2010). Developing trust and co operation. Available: http//edis.ifas.ufl/fy748. Last accessed 08th oct 2012. wikihow. (2010). How to build trust. Available: http//www.wikihow.com/build-trust. Last accessed 08th oct 2012.