The SEQUEY HORN CASE free essay sample

Eugene Decker hung up his office telephone and scowled. As part proprietor of the Squeaky Horn, an instrument auto shop, Decker was liable for setting the charges for different kinds of fixes. A potential client had quite recently called to ask about the expense to fix the extension on her cello. After Decker provided an expected cost estimate for the activity, the lady had commented, â€Å"Thank you for the statement, yet I’ll be going to Best Instrument Repair. I’ve heard they give great help, and their costs are lower than yours.† Unfortunately, Decker had heard comparative explanations commonly during the previous barely any months. Since the time Best Instrument Repair had opened across town, Decker and his accomplices had wound up going after business like never before previously. To pull in fix employments and stay away from cutbacks, Decker and his accomplices had brought down costs for minor fixes without precedent for a long time. We will compose a custom article test on The SEQUEY HORN CASE or on the other hand any comparative theme explicitly for you Don't WasteYour Time Recruit WRITER Just 13.90/page Decker took a gander at the planned versus genuine working benefit articulation around his work area (Exhibit 1). How might he determine what part of the company’s lost benefits was because of the value diminishes and what amount was identified with different components? Foundation The Squeaky Horn was an instrument auto shop that had practical experience in the fix and rebuilding of band and symphonic instruments. The shop was possessed and overseen by Decker and two accomplices, who were all very much respected for their demanding fix work and scrupulousness. Proficient artists from everywhere throughout the nation sent their instruments to the Squeaky Horn for minor modifications or significant updates. Requesting show and itineraries set extraordinary weight on the sensitive pieces of instruments, and expert performers were mindful so as to keep their instruments in top condition. Administration Lines As of now, the Squeaky Horn offered four principle administrations: major and minor fixes and rebuilding efforts of band instruments, for example, saxophones and French horns, and major and minor This case was set up by Kristy Lilly (MBA ’03) and Liz Smith (MBA ’04), under the oversight of Professor Mark Haskins. It was composed as a reason for class conversation as opposed to represent viable or inadequate treatment of a managerial circumstance. Copyright ï £ © 2003 by the University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, Charlottesville, VA. All rights saved. To arrange duplicates, send an email to [emailprotected] No piece of this distribution might be replicated, put away in a recovery framework, utilized in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any structure or by any meansâ€electronic, mechanical, copying, recording, or otherwiseâ€without the consent of the Darden School Foundation. ââ€"Å  Approved for utilize just in the course BU607 at Wilfrid Laurier University instructed by Chima Mbagwu from Sep 01, 2013 to Dec 30, 2013. Use outside these boundaries is a copyright infringement. THE SQUEAKY HORN UVA-C-2183 fixes and rebuilding efforts of symphonic instruments, for example, violins and cellos. Generally, minor fixes were charged at a pace of $35.00 an hour for band instruments and $32.50 an hour for symphonic instruments. Significant fixes and rebuilding efforts were performed under individual level expense courses of action that were cited to clients dependent on the kind of work required for each instrument. The Squeaky Horn’s three proprietors played out every significant fix and reclamations in the shop. Minor fixes of band instruments were performed by hourly workers, and minor fixes of symphonic instruments were performed by three full-time salaried representatives. Also, surge employments for minor fixes were sporadically performed for neighborhood clients as it were. These occupations were subcontracted to a resigned representative of the Squeaky Horn, who played out the fixes for $25 60 minutes. Surge employments were charged under level expense courses of action that fo und the middle value of $150 per work. The normal surge work took three hours to finish. The Annual Operating Plan Toward the start of the current year, Decker’s CPA had arranged the yearly working arrangement for the Squeaky Horn (Exhibit 1). The Squeaky Horn’s business was little and generally clear, which empowered the CPA to build up the company’s working spending utilizing explicit volume and income information for every product offering. The accompanying data was utilized in setting up the yearly arrangement: 1. In view of earlier years’ work arranges, the shop was relied upon to play out the accompanying number of occupations in the coming year: 390 significant band fixes, 1,830 minor band fixes, 540 significant symphonic fixes, 1,560 minor instrumental fixes, and 50 surge employments. Normal significant fixes were cited at $400 and $300 for band and symphonic occupations, individually. The normal minor band fix took two hours to finish, though the normal minor symphonic fix took four hours to finish. 2. Each of the three accomplices drew yearly base compensations of $60,000 in addition to rewards of 5 percent of deals income. 3. The hourly representatives were paid $20 an hour for work performed. 4. The salaried representatives were paid yearly base pay rates of $38,000. To the degree that the quantity of minor instrumental fixes surpassed 1,560, the symphonic repairers were paid a level pace of $80 per employment to finish those fixes. 5. New parts and different supplies were planned at $50 for each significant activity and $10 for every minor activity (counting surge occupations), in light of understanding. 6. Around 35 percent of the instruments that the Squeaky Horn took a shot at were delivered to the shop from away. The organization expected to acquire normal delivery charges of $30 per bundle to transport the instruments back to their proprietors. 7. Promoting, deterioration, office lease, and incidental costs were planned as fixed costs. Approved for utilize just in the course BU607 at Wilfrid Laurier University instructed by Chima Mbagwu from Sep 01, 2013 to Dec 30, 2013. Use outside these boundaries is a copyright infringement.

Credit Agricole and BP Free Essays

History - Rwanda Genocide Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

History - Rwanda Genocide - Research Paper Example Despite the fact that endeavors are done, those damages do at present occur in controlled settings. Common comprehension among countries and individuals may have diminished the events of contentions and savagery. Clashes and savagery may happen whenever and anyplace which means individuals must know about their environmental factors at unsurpassed. No one knows when it might occur however there are a few different ways that individuals particularly the administration organizations can anticipate the events of viciousness through examples they get from the information of past occasions. One of the countries that accomplished a huge brutality and strife is Rwanda. That nation is situated in the eastern piece of Africa close to Tanzania and Congo. The geography of the place that is known for Rwanda is made out of mountains and valleys. Rwanda at that point has the most noteworthy top at 4,324 meters which is the highest point of a fountain of liquid magma called Mount Karisimbi (King 20 07, p. 7). The individuals then that live the mountains and valleys are for the most part called Rwandans and made out of the ethnic gatherings Pygmy, Hamitic and Bantu. The populace generally speaking of the Rwandans is roughly 11 million and the size of populace is credited to high death rate. Many bite the dust as a result of maladies due to poor sanitation and significant sicknesses like the feared Autoimmune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS. They are for the most part poor as just 19 percent of them are in the urban zones. They likewise need consumable water to provide food the necessities of everybody. As far as religion, Rwandans are for the most part Christians with lion's share of them are Catholic. With regards to essential training, the greater part of them realize how to peruse and compose by 15 years of age or more (Streissguth 2007, p. 36). The legislature of Rwanda at that point turned into a parliament as of late and its laws are designed after France and Belgium. The con stitution of Rwanda was then approved in 2003. The said constitution promises to secure the privileges of the Rwandans, to give harmony among bunches there and to forestall ideological group developments dependent on culture and race. The administration at that point is separated into legal, authoritative and official simply like in the administration structure found in Europe and USA. The individuals permitted to cast a ballot must be at any rate 18 years of age. When the political race is done, the president at that point has been chosen and he is the one answerable to select the PM and the bureau who will help him in driving the nation (King 2007, p. 43). Before the administration of Rwanda has been designed after the Western countries, the nation began as a land wandered by Pygmy bunch called Twa yet the said ethnic gathering is just a single percent of the present populace. It was known in the past that Twa had associations and interrelationships with the other ethnic gathering s like Tutsi and Hutu. The two gatherings were fundamentally the same as in conventions yet they are separated for their wellspring of work as Tutsi are dairy cattle producers while Hutu are crop cultivators. It was then in 1933 when Belgian individuals controlled Rwanda and instructed the Rwandans to wear ID cards to unmistakably isolate them by races (Kalayjian and Paloutzian 2009, p. 73). Most likely that choice of the Belgians had reproduced further clashes and viciousness among the ethnic gatherings which got pervasive since the freedom of Rwanda. Rwanda got involved by Germany previously. At the point when the First World War came, Belgium took over Rwanda as the Belgians grabbed it from the Germans. After the war, it turned into a joint-state with Burundi which was likewise a settlement of Belgium. It was then under the guardianship of United Nations which likewise assumed a major job in giving those

Police Encounters with Suspects and Evidence free essay sample

Examination and application: police experiences with suspects and evidence| CJ227-08 Criminal procedure| Unit 2: investigation and application: police experiences with suspects and evidence| 1. Officered Smith have sensible doubt to make the underlying stop of this vehicle?Officer Smith had sensible doubt which depends on the totality of the conditions as comprehended by those versed in the field of law implementation; it is ordinarily portrayed as something in excess of a hunch however not exactly reasonable justification. (test law) The appropriate response is truly, Officer Smith had sensible doubt to make the underlying stop of the vehicle. Since the taillight seemed, by all accounts, to be overstepped which is a transit regulation violation.Also official Smith recollected a vehicle that coordinated the general portrayal of the vehicle that he halted. This vehicle fit the portrayal of the vehicle that was associated in an ongoing side of the road murdering with another cop. 2. Was the â€Å"pat-down† of the driver legitimate? An official may arrange a driver out of a vehicle to guarantee the officer’s wellbeing. We will compose a custom article test on Police Encounters with Suspects and Evidence or then again any comparative subject explicitly for you Don't WasteYour Time Recruit WRITER Just 13.90/page (test law) The cop may lead a search to guarantee there are no weapons. test law) The â€Å"pat-down† is a speedy inquiry of a person’s being so as to decide whether any weapons are available. Official Smith’s search was legitimate in light of the fact that it was important to guarantee his wellbeing. Rather than giving her permit and enrollment, the driver dashes away which brought about a rapid pursue. This is a situation that would make a sensible individual accept that section (or other important brief activity) was important to forestall physical mischief to the officials or different people. (The lectric law library,1995-2011) This circumstance falls under critical condition in light of the fact that there is unavoidable risk, obliteration, and the suspect is attempting to get away. (test law) 4. Was the weapon in â€Å"plain view† and legitimately obtained?Plain-see teaching the standard allowing a police officer’s warrantless seizure and use as proof of a thing saw on display from a legal position or during a lawful inquiry when the thing is proof of a wrongdoing. To decide whether the plain view tenet applies, police must consider various approvals one is because of urgent conditions, which Officer Smith’s finding the firearm falls under. (test law) Plain view applied to Officer Smith finding the firearm in the open glove compartment and is lawful.The we apon was found coincidentally, Officer Smith had legal access to the spot from which the firearm could be evidently observed. Coincidental revelation a law-implementation officer’s startling finding of implicating proof on display. 5. Will the maryjane baggie be allowable proof? At the point when an individual can't give agree because of obviousness, the official can look through the satchel or wallet of the suspect to get their I. D. , it’s called suggested consent.The lady gave Officer Smith reasonable justification to direct a full hunt when she fled from Officer Smith when he pulled her over for the taillight. Official Smith will have the option to utilize the pot baggie as proof. While searching for the oblivious woman’s I. D. , Officer Smith found a baggie of weed in her handbag. Since the lady fled and destroyed the vehicle Officer Smith has reasonable justification and the weed baggie can utilized as proof.

Hr Policies free essay sample

HR POLICIES OF MARRIOTT HOTELS Marriott Hotels Pvt. Ltd. invests wholeheartedly in its unmistakable HR rehearses that make the organization a powerful work environment, learn and develop. It has been granted the fourth position by the Economic Times as the best work environment at. It has won 13 renowned honors for its kin rehearses over the most recent couple of years. The soul to serve is viewed as a lifestyle for Marriott partners. This, truth be told, is Marriotts inheritance of administration and structures a piece of the ethos of the association. The HR rehearses comes from reality that it is just a glad representative who can fulfill the client, which will guarantee that business follows. Straightforwardness and transparency are values that are discussed as well as incorporated in the everyday working. †¢ Two-route Communication: For new participants, there is an occasion called Koffee with the GM to cooperate with the GM and offer their perspectives over some espresso. We will compose a custom paper test on Hr Policies or on the other hand any comparable theme explicitly for you Don't WasteYour Time Recruit WRITER Just 13.90/page †¢ Defined Span-of-Leadership: There is a Leadership Performance Process Management System which characterizes nine abilities which a Marriott partner ought to have and create. Assurance of Fair Treatment (GFT): It perceives that partners reserve the privilege to voice work environment concerns and to have those worries settled. †¢ Integrity Hotline: If anybody has concerns in regards to an uprightness or business misuse circumstance these can be shared by calling the Business Integrity Line and giving the administrator data without uncovering ones name. †¢ Access to data: The organization advocates a straightforward culture and subsequently all data identified with the business can be gotten to by each partner. Open entryway approach: Open correspondence is supported at all levels and partners can voice their feeling/proposals/thoughts/concerns which are esteemed and followed up on. †¢ Knowledge Initiatives: Every Marriott Hotel has a learning place that has an assortment of books and recordings, alongside a web association. †¢ Focus on CSR: To repeat its duty to the prosperity of the lesser special individuals from the general public, the organization has occupied with comprehensive CSR activities. Actually, JW Marriott Mumbai was granted the NCP EDP Shell Helen Keller Award in 2004 for their commitment towards Spirit To Serve. †¢ Reward System: There are two sorts of grants for people or gatherings to perceive exceptional execution. Each Marriott Hotel in India has its own honors. These are scarcely any extraordinary HR strategies which makes Marriott Hotels unmistakable from its partners. Put together by: Soumik Saha (2010H149256P) Anish Arvindakshan (2010H149245P Veena Rani (2010H149224P) Shweta Garg (2010H149218P)

CP16 Podcast with Trace Anderson from CFB Strategies about Data Management for Political Campaigns

CP16 Podcast with Trace Anderson from CFB Strategies about Data Management for Political Campaigns INTRODUCTIONMartin: Today we’re having a very interesting guest who is somehow involved in the presidential campaign of 2016. Hi Trace! Who are you and what type of company are you running?Trace: Hi Martin! I’m doing great. Our company is called CFB Strategies and we are an ISP partner of Salesforce.com. And what ISP means: it stands for Independent Software Vendor and what we do is, I’ll explain in the most basic level, we have repurposed the Salesforce platform for political campaigns and for non-profits and we basically set up their data infrastructure and managed the data for those campaigns.Martin: Okay, cool. What does your entrepreneurial journey look like? What did you do before you started this company? How did you come up with the business idea?Trace: Well, I had a background in economics and law. I studied Economics in college and then made a detour to law school. And during that time I had done several internships in DC in the political world and sort of decided tha t during that period I wanted to work in politics.After law school, I moved to Washington DC, I worked in several different positions: one as a legislative aid on capitol hill, and then as an attorney, and lobbyist. During that time, had worked on several political campaigns, that’s sort of the nature of working in politics. The campaign season comes up at minimum every two years and I had some opportunities to work on some campaigns during that time. And in 2006, I got the opportunity to run a campaign in New York City and after we ran that race, I came back here and I’ve been in New York ever since and out of that experience is what prompted our entrepreneurial vision and sort of a vision for the company to provide a data platform for campaigns.Martin: So Trace, tell me, what is the difference between real politics and House of Cards?Trace: That’s a great question. Well, there’s not quite as much â€" well, I shouldn’t say there’s not quite as much drama because there i s just as much drama in real politics as there is House of Cards. It’s sort of the plotline for House of Cards where they’re killing people and getting rid of people that are in their wayâ€"that’s a little bit on the ridiculous side but all the rest of it, there’s some definite analogous story lines that go into, sort of, the everyday aspects of campaigning and building coalitions minus â€" not to say that it never happens anywayâ€"but minus the criminal aspect of getting rid of people that are in your way.Martin: So, when you came from Capitol Hill to New York, at want point in time did you think about: “Okay, I want to start this kind of company” and how did you go about starting it all up?Trace: So this is back in 2006 and I was working on a state senate race that encompassed pretty much the entirety of Staten Island, which is one of the five burrows of New York City. And during that time, this was really before sort of technology had, kind of, immersed itself in the political world and so based on my experience during that campaign, we found ourselves constantly looking for different lists. I needed a voter list for this, or we needed a volunteer list for that or we needed a call list to track down and we needed to organize some volunteers to go out and do a block walk, sort of, all those things that are very basic components of the campaign. We felt like they’ve never been managed on Excel spreadsheets.And there was an immediate recognition that this is not an efficient way to operate. There should be a way utilizing data, utilizing technology, and the internet to provide a sort of platform or cockpit, so to speak, to run all of your operations from one central place so that people can access it and work more efficiently and that’s really how the idea was born.And back then, there wasn’t really anything like that that competed to / that worked in the political space. So that was sort of our idea and we recognized it. And shortly thereaft er in 2007, we formed the company and we originally built out our own proprietary database that was based on Google Earth. So we had shaped files that would mimic the outline of the district and all the individual â€" in New York there’re called the election districts and you know, elsewhere around the country they’re commonly referred to as precincts. And so we sort of had a visual component that we could color-code based upon data results and then also you could drill down into those individual districts or the district as a whole and manage the data, target the voters, and work with the data that way. So, that’s how it started and then there’s been several products, redefinitions and different products built since then.Martin: Cool and how did you acquire your first customer? I suppose this was in New York City.Trace: It was. After the 2006 campaign, I had stayed on and I went to work as the Chief of Staff of the Senator that we got elected, his name is Andrew Lanza and I was his Chief of Staff. And my business partner, Bob Vaillancourt, he at that time was working for the local Congressman and that’sâ€"the two of usâ€"that’s how we got together. We had the idea and built the product out and then grew our work in New York in working with other campaigns and just general networking and meeting people in the same political space and then around campaigns in the New York area, that’s how we started and we got several races in the 2008 campaign cycle.Martin: And what made you think that a) you are the right person and b) it’s the right time for working on such an idea?Trace: Well, there was justâ€"at the time, in 2006 and 2008, there wasn’t anything that was really very good technologically in campaign politics. To be honest with you readers, we sort of, saw the market and knew that we can design a product â€" we felt at the time that we had designed a product that addressed all the needs that we were seeking to accomplish. And during that fir st cycle â€" 2008 cycle, we had quite a bit of a success but shortly after that, we recognized that the way that we had built our database, how we had structured it, how it was being sold to other potential clients that to scale that was going to be really, really difficult to do. And that is how we stumbled upon Salesforce â€" not stumbled upon but we were introduced to Salesforce. And we quickly recognized that Salesforce, kind of, gave us the infrastructure and all the dynamic reporting capabilities and allowed us to develop and code on top of their platform and so that’s how we were able to partner with them and to be able to scale our businessâ€" to meet the demands of the marketplace.BUSINESS MODEL OF CFB STRATEGIESMartin: Cool. Trace, let’s talk briefly about the business model of CFB Strategies. What type of business model did you start out with? What made you change some of those elements and how does the business model look like now?Trace: Well, I think there’s â€" we’re still â€"some aspects of our original business model that is currently built in into what we do. As I mentioned before, originally it was just our own proprietary database and we went out and sold it to people on a monthly basis and it was anywhere from like a six to eight month contract depending on the election cycle.Now, although we still have those same cyclical events that we face in the political world whether it’s an off-year election and â€" what I mean by off-year election: is one held in an odd year so 2011, 2013, 2015 and those typically are city or municipal races. Some states have races on those years but the typical election cycle is the one we’re currently in in 2016 and that’s the even year election cycle. So we have those, sort of, built in cyclical effects and we still sell the database but there’s two out of three components now to our business model.So, first, there’s the set-up and the architecture and actually capturing the data from our clien ts and there’s a set-up in architecting piece that in involved in setting up every client and loading and structuring the database according to their needs. Not every client is the same and they’re going to want to see different things. So there’s a little bit of tinkering at the outset   to identify what those needs are and determine how we’re going to architect and set-up the database to begin with. And the point I will say in that is we’re data diagnostics so we talk to our clients and everybody kind of has a different data source that they may be familiar working with, we don’t really care what that is, we allow our clients to bring their data to us, and then we take that data and we structure it and tailor it to their needs.The second component of the business model is, sort of, the product. So, the product consists of the user licenses, the data storage, the API calls, sort of, the all the nuts and bolts of what we are selling our client. So, now we sell things by user license. So large campaigns may have fifty to a hundred users, smaller campaigns may have four or five, it just depends on the complexity of the race. And then there’s data storage costs for hosting all these information in the cloud as well as API calls when different snap-on tools and we’re transferring data to different places depending on the clients’ needs. And then on top of that, we add-on things like phones or fund raising component, or maybe an email component or possibly like a GO spacial, and other applications. And all of those things are available on the Salesforce App Exchange. So that’s another great thing about being a partner of Salesforce is that: our application is listed on the App Exchange. And then we, in turn, we make a sale to a client, we can then offer them other products or applications that they can snap-in to their Salesforce systems, so in a way we kind of view ourselves asâ€" think about it in terms of like the Apple store, right? And ther e’s the base component of everything that’s there and what their client wants and then with the Salesforce App Exchange that allows us to do is just go in and add other products that they might need during the course of the campaign, so all of those things are treated as add-ons.And then the third part of the business model is, sort of, our consulting / implementation partner side. Where this comes in is that both, my business partner Bob and I have, we have a unique or imminent understanding of politics and how campaigns run, but then it’s our job to implement the data, hierarchy and structure and work with the different members of the campaign that we are working for to make sure that they’re getting the most out of that product. So whether it is running reports, building dashboards, or setting up different hierarchies or internal divisions of the campaign it’s sort of that hands-on “Okay, how do I apply what I know of politics but also how to I apply what I know as a data manager and make these things work for the campaign.”Martin: One thing that I’ve heard from one episode of John Oliver, the comedian, maybe you’ve heard of him. He said in one of his series that: most politicians are spending like 50-60% of their time on calling people just for raising money. And if this is true, is your service only focusing on helping politicians raise money or is there also another relationship management component involved?Trace: Although there’s a portion of our business that’s focused on fund raising, we are really more of the data infrastructure of the campaign. So in any given campaign, there’s specialist vendors that may conduct fund raising phone calls. We as a company, personally don’t do that, but what we do, do is host that data when it comes back from that vendors that’s conducting those calls, all that data comes into us so then as a campaign, we can parse that data and then work with it going forward for possibly more fundraisin g calls, maybe that’s get up vote calls, maybe it’s just identifying who the supporters are.Our platform is the infrastructure / data infrastructure for the campaigns we work with. So, one vendor may be doing fundraising phone calls, another may be doing email solicitingâ€" fundraising solicitations, another may be doing voter outreach directly based on certain issues so there’s a myriad of things and issues both in fundraising and in policy that the campaign conducts and we are the place where that data comes to live.Martin: So, when I look at the political industry, let’s call it like that, I see that the political elections on a local, on a regional and on a national level. And there’s some type of seasonality involved because on the national level, maybe only every four or five years or so there’s an election. How do you manage this kind of seasonality and can you give us some kind of hints or glimpse on how big the market for such a product is?Trace: Yes, so the sea sonality can be a tricky thing. For smaller campaigns they don’t have the same data needs at a larger campaign does. So for a lot of clients, they may come on for 8-9 months and work with us during their election cycle and, sort of, going into hibernation mode for the next year and then come back.So what we try to do in such relations like that is we’re working very intensely with them during the election cycles so that may be anywhere from 8-10 months. And then the off-year, there isn’t as much work required so, instead of completely shutting down their data organization; we will offer them reduced rate to sort of keep that data in the cloud and in that storage and in that, we call each campaign’s data organization their “org”, we’ll keep their org live, alive in the cloud so that when they want to turn it back on in the next year, it’s ready to go. And of course, during that hibernation mode there’s not as much cost involved on either side so it’s at a reduced rate for that off-season year and then once it comes back on the grid, those rates are adjusted accordingly.The larger organizations and, you know, any state-wide campaign or even the national campaign, there’s a lot of work obviously goes in to building that data and these kinds of organizations have ongoing demand regardless of what year it is. So clearly there’s a lot of activity on the campaign year but even on the off-season year, fundraising is always an ongoing demand and, reaching out to voters, finding out what people are thinking and how they feel about certain issues those sort of data needs to constantly go on for larger organizations.So we find ourselves we have a mixture of both types of clients and it’s a matter of adjusting to what that particular client needs.Martin: Great, and can you give us some insights on how big is the market for such kind of product?Trace: The market is â€" it keeps growing, and growing, and growing every year. In a typical campaign e lection cycle, in 2012, the Obama campaign spent over a billion dollars. So you know that’s one campaign spending over a billion dollars and then of that billions dollars approximately 10% was set aside for technological infrastructure and innovation.So if you’re thinking that the Obama campaign in 2012, about a hundred million dollars was set aside for technology and all of that hundred million anywhere from 10-15% was set aside for infrastructure and data needs, and that’s just one campaign.So the other unique thing about this market space is that it’s a relatively new market space in politics. I don’t even think that the cap on it is potentially, possibly realized yet because there’s a lot of innovation going on, there’s a lot of things that are in campaigns that are doing otherwise now that they haven’t done before. And as you know technology constantly changes.So what I have found is that: the political world typically is about 6-7 years technology wise behind t he business world. And although we seen that sort of catch up lately I think there’s a tremendous amount of potential in where data in going and how campaigns utilize and manage their data and that’s largerly why we got into the business that we did.Martin: Great. Trace, when I’m thinking about businesses and really how to manage and control them, I’m looking at business matrix. For me the interesting things is what type of business matrix are you looking at in order to manage your business and can you give us some kind of insights on how those matrix look currently?Trace: Sure, so from a hard call stand point, as I mentioned earlier we’re an ISP partner of Salesforce. So every license we sell and every bit of data storage that we sell, we have a bottom line and we have a cost that goes along with that. And then on top of that is just how much time management and involvement is going to take to work through, managing that client and making sure that their implementation ne eds are met. So a lot of what we do we found that comes in on the consulting and implementation partner side because from a product standpoint, we have a set cost and as long as we meet those costs we’re fine from a product standpoint.Where the harder analysis and time analysis comes in is sort of on that consulting and implementation side. And a large part of our business is working with our client and managing their expectations, and most importantly finding out what they need and what they want, and then estimating accordingly: Okay, how much involvement is this going to take from our end form the human capital standpoint? And what’s a fair amount to charge for these consulting services? Because the truth is a lot of the clients we work with may never have worked with data before. So it’s a large learning curve for them so it’s, kind of, a unique dance of the client on definitely understanding that they need it, but shepherding them into, sort of, the data ecosystem and h ow to most efficiently get the most out of the services we’re providing.Martin: And Trace, is your revenue coming mainly from the consulting side or from the product side?Trace: From both, I say it’s about close to 50-50 maybe 60-40.PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 2016Martin: Okay, cool. So now I’ve very interested on learning from you because this year, in the U.S, we will have the presidential campaign. How did you help Ted Cruz with your products in terms of fundraising and winning votes?Trace: Well, we’re still helping Ted Cruz in fact today is New York Primary Day and we have been fortunate enough to work for the Senator back since 2012 before he was elected to Senate. And we worked with them for over 4 years. Back then it was originally in his race of 2012 Senate race in Texas, we set up his database and managed his grass-roots efforts and get up the vote efforts and targeting voters and all that stuff.During the presidential cycle this time, we were tasked with setting up the i nfrastructure for his finance needs and his grass-roots needs. As anybody will tell you that the presidential campaign is such a large, mammoth organization, the best analogy I can give to it it’s like building up and tearing down a Fortune 500 company by 18 months. There’s a tremendous amount of money that goes in to building the infrastructure and the organization. So, we were tasked with setting up a data infrastructure for his financial team andâ€" by his financial team I mean the fundraising team on the campaign that works with him calling donors, raising money from last dollar checks and small dollar checks. So what goes into that is what we call bundlers where typically bundlers raise large dollar donations. So typically $2700 is the current federal limit in this election cycle. So any one individual can get $2700 for the primary and $2700 for the general elections, for a total of $5400.So. we built a system whereby the finance team and go out and work with those large d onors and then in turns the donors can work with their network of friends, for people that might be supporting the senator. In addition to that, all of the online and the fundraising solicitations as I mentioned early, you may have an email, there’s a vendor that’s specifically focused on soliciting email contributions and that’s the portion of the campaign they handle. So, they go out and does that task and the day later or the same day or the next day, the data comes back to us, the same thing with phone calls.And then one other component that we provided this year is as I mentioned that we had the bundling application. I had thought all along that this has an applicability towards not just large contributions but small contributions as well and why not open this up to, sort of, the grass-roots arm of the campaign and let any individual, if they want to raise money, sign up and solicit or â€" not solicit but go to their network of friends and encourage them to join the campa ign whether as a volunteer or as a fundraiser. And we launched a product called CruzCrowd in October and its, sort of, like a crowd funding application for politics and we’re the first ones to do it that I’m aware of and then it’s entirely built on the Salesforce application.So, what it does is allows people to go in an sign up for CruzCrowd and from that they get a unique URL and then can go and share that unique URL on Facebook or Twitter and encourage their friends to sign up and join the campaign. They don’t have to make a contribution, a lot of it is just spreading the word and make use for the people are hearing about the campaign and signing up for volunteer, or they want to donate money. A lot of it comes in the form of small contributions. in fact the average contribution that’s been raised on CruzCrowd has been under $21.And then on the final point on the CruzCrowd is sort of the grass-roots infrastructure, all of the volunteers and the coalitions and the people that sign up online. So when a person goes and signs up on tedcruz.org, the website and they want to volunteer, they enter that information and what state they live in and then that data flows into our database. Then in turn, we can allow the campaign staff to reach out to them in certain states or counties when the campaign has something going on and they need to mobilize the grass-roots.ENTREPRENEURIAL ADVICE FROM TRACE ANDERSONMartin: Cool. Trace, let’s talk about your learning from your entrepreneur journey. So what type of tips can you give other people who are starting their first company?Trace: The best advice I can give is if you really believe in what you’re doingâ€" and you have to as an entrepreneur, just go for it. If you see the potential for whatever you’re doing, you got to make the decision to go for it 100% and just dive in. There’s going to be a lot of people saying: You can’t do this, you can’t do that. You can’t listen to those people, you just got to dedicate yourself to it and jump in feet first. And every day is an adventure as I’m sure every a lot of entrepreneurs has told you, you’re not sure what’s going to pop up but it’s all about attitude in my experience. There are going to be hardships and there’s going to be good times but you got to be unwavering in your dedication to it.Martin: And what is the most valuable thing for you personally in terms of being an entrepreneur?Trace: The most valuable for me as an entrepreneur is:one: I enjoy working for myself and to see a problem and to not be constrained by, sort of, bureaucracy or red tape. To be able to see a problem and to be able to work with others for my team and approach it and find a solution for it. And that’s what we try to constantly do for our clients. We try to solve problems and utilize data to solve those problems. We found that we might not have a solution immediately that’s going to fix those need or issues that arise but if you got a good m ix of creativity and approach it with a group mindset and everybody has an idea and just working together to solve that, that to me is the most rewarding thing.Martin: Cool. Trace, thank you so much for your time and for sharing your knowledge!Trace: Thanks, Martin!THANKS FOR LISTENING! Welcome to the 16th episode of our podcast!You can download the podcast to your computer or listen to it here on the blog. Click here to subscribe in iTunes. INTRODUCTIONMartin: Today we’re having a very interesting guest who is somehow involved in the presidential campaign of 2016. Hi Trace! Who are you and what type of company are you running?Trace: Hi Martin! I’m doing great. Our company is called CFB Strategies and we are an ISP partner of Salesforce.com. And what ISP means: it stands for Independent Software Vendor and what we do is, I’ll explain in the most basic level, we have repurposed the Salesforce platform for political campaigns and for non-profits and we basically set up their data infrastructure and managed the data for those campaigns.Martin: Okay, cool. What does your entrepreneurial journey look like? What did you do before you started this company? How did you come up with the business idea?Trace: Well, I had a background in economics and law. I studied Economics in college and then made a detour to law school. And during that time I had done several internships in DC in the political world and sort of decided tha t during that period I wanted to work in politics.After law school, I moved to Washington DC, I worked in several different positions: one as a legislative aid on capitol hill, and then as an attorney, and lobbyist. During that time, had worked on several political campaigns, that’s sort of the nature of working in politics. The campaign season comes up at minimum every two years and I had some opportunities to work on some campaigns during that time. And in 2006, I got the opportunity to run a campaign in New York City and after we ran that race, I came back here and I’ve been in New York ever since and out of that experience is what prompted our entrepreneurial vision and sort of a vision for the company to provide a data platform for campaigns.Martin: So Trace, tell me, what is the difference between real politics and House of Cards?Trace: That’s a great question. Well, there’s not quite as much â€" well, I shouldn’t say there’s not quite as much drama because there i s just as much drama in real politics as there is House of Cards. It’s sort of the plotline for House of Cards where they’re killing people and getting rid of people that are in their wayâ€"that’s a little bit on the ridiculous side but all the rest of it, there’s some definite analogous story lines that go into, sort of, the everyday aspects of campaigning and building coalitions minus â€" not to say that it never happens anywayâ€"but minus the criminal aspect of getting rid of people that are in your way.Martin: So, when you came from Capitol Hill to New York, at want point in time did you think about: “Okay, I want to start this kind of company” and how did you go about starting it all up?Trace: So this is back in 2006 and I was working on a state senate race that encompassed pretty much the entirety of Staten Island, which is one of the five burrows of New York City. And during that time, this was really before sort of technology had, kind of, immersed itself in the political world and so based on my experience during that campaign, we found ourselves constantly looking for different lists. I needed a voter list for this, or we needed a volunteer list for that or we needed a call list to track down and we needed to organize some volunteers to go out and do a block walk, sort of, all those things that are very basic components of the campaign. We felt like they’ve never been managed on Excel spreadsheets.And there was an immediate recognition that this is not an efficient way to operate. There should be a way utilizing data, utilizing technology, and the internet to provide a sort of platform or cockpit, so to speak, to run all of your operations from one central place so that people can access it and work more efficiently and that’s really how the idea was born.And back then, there wasn’t really anything like that that competed to / that worked in the political space. So that was sort of our idea and we recognized it. And shortly thereaft er in 2007, we formed the company and we originally built out our own proprietary database that was based on Google Earth. So we had shaped files that would mimic the outline of the district and all the individual â€" in New York there’re called the election districts and you know, elsewhere around the country they’re commonly referred to as precincts. And so we sort of had a visual component that we could color-code based upon data results and then also you could drill down into those individual districts or the district as a whole and manage the data, target the voters, and work with the data that way. So, that’s how it started and then there’s been several products, redefinitions and different products built since then.Martin: Cool and how did you acquire your first customer? I suppose this was in New York City.Trace: It was. After the 2006 campaign, I had stayed on and I went to work as the Chief of Staff of the Senator that we got elected, his name is Andrew Lanza and I was his Chief of Staff. And my business partner, Bob Vaillancourt, he at that time was working for the local Congressman and that’sâ€"the two of usâ€"that’s how we got together. We had the idea and built the product out and then grew our work in New York in working with other campaigns and just general networking and meeting people in the same political space and then around campaigns in the New York area, that’s how we started and we got several races in the 2008 campaign cycle.Martin: And what made you think that a) you are the right person and b) it’s the right time for working on such an idea?Trace: Well, there was justâ€"at the time, in 2006 and 2008, there wasn’t anything that was really very good technologically in campaign politics. To be honest with you readers, we sort of, saw the market and knew that we can design a product â€" we felt at the time that we had designed a product that addressed all the needs that we were seeking to accomplish. And during that fir st cycle â€" 2008 cycle, we had quite a bit of a success but shortly after that, we recognized that the way that we had built our database, how we had structured it, how it was being sold to other potential clients that to scale that was going to be really, really difficult to do. And that is how we stumbled upon Salesforce â€" not stumbled upon but we were introduced to Salesforce. And we quickly recognized that Salesforce, kind of, gave us the infrastructure and all the dynamic reporting capabilities and allowed us to develop and code on top of their platform and so that’s how we were able to partner with them and to be able to scale our businessâ€" to meet the demands of the marketplace.BUSINESS MODEL OF CFB STRATEGIESMartin: Cool. Trace, let’s talk briefly about the business model of CFB Strategies. What type of business model did you start out with? What made you change some of those elements and how does the business model look like now?Trace: Well, I think there’s â€" we’re still â€"some aspects of our original business model that is currently built in into what we do. As I mentioned before, originally it was just our own proprietary database and we went out and sold it to people on a monthly basis and it was anywhere from like a six to eight month contract depending on the election cycle.Now, although we still have those same cyclical events that we face in the political world whether it’s an off-year election and â€" what I mean by off-year election: is one held in an odd year so 2011, 2013, 2015 and those typically are city or municipal races. Some states have races on those years but the typical election cycle is the one we’re currently in in 2016 and that’s the even year election cycle. So we have those, sort of, built in cyclical effects and we still sell the database but there’s two out of three components now to our business model.So, first, there’s the set-up and the architecture and actually capturing the data from our clien ts and there’s a set-up in architecting piece that in involved in setting up every client and loading and structuring the database according to their needs. Not every client is the same and they’re going to want to see different things. So there’s a little bit of tinkering at the outset   to identify what those needs are and determine how we’re going to architect and set-up the database to begin with. And the point I will say in that is we’re data diagnostics so we talk to our clients and everybody kind of has a different data source that they may be familiar working with, we don’t really care what that is, we allow our clients to bring their data to us, and then we take that data and we structure it and tailor it to their needs.The second component of the business model is, sort of, the product. So, the product consists of the user licenses, the data storage, the API calls, sort of, the all the nuts and bolts of what we are selling our client. So, now we sell things by user license. So large campaigns may have fifty to a hundred users, smaller campaigns may have four or five, it just depends on the complexity of the race. And then there’s data storage costs for hosting all these information in the cloud as well as API calls when different snap-on tools and we’re transferring data to different places depending on the clients’ needs. And then on top of that, we add-on things like phones or fund raising component, or maybe an email component or possibly like a GO spacial, and other applications. And all of those things are available on the Salesforce App Exchange. So that’s another great thing about being a partner of Salesforce is that: our application is listed on the App Exchange. And then we, in turn, we make a sale to a client, we can then offer them other products or applications that they can snap-in to their Salesforce systems, so in a way we kind of view ourselves asâ€" think about it in terms of like the Apple store, right? And ther e’s the base component of everything that’s there and what their client wants and then with the Salesforce App Exchange that allows us to do is just go in and add other products that they might need during the course of the campaign, so all of those things are treated as add-ons.And then the third part of the business model is, sort of, our consulting / implementation partner side. Where this comes in is that both, my business partner Bob and I have, we have a unique or imminent understanding of politics and how campaigns run, but then it’s our job to implement the data, hierarchy and structure and work with the different members of the campaign that we are working for to make sure that they’re getting the most out of that product. So whether it is running reports, building dashboards, or setting up different hierarchies or internal divisions of the campaign it’s sort of that hands-on “Okay, how do I apply what I know of politics but also how to I apply what I know as a data manager and make these things work for the campaign.”Martin: One thing that I’ve heard from one episode of John Oliver, the comedian, maybe you’ve heard of him. He said in one of his series that: most politicians are spending like 50-60% of their time on calling people just for raising money. And if this is true, is your service only focusing on helping politicians raise money or is there also another relationship management component involved?Trace: Although there’s a portion of our business that’s focused on fund raising, we are really more of the data infrastructure of the campaign. So in any given campaign, there’s specialist vendors that may conduct fund raising phone calls. We as a company, personally don’t do that, but what we do, do is host that data when it comes back from that vendors that’s conducting those calls, all that data comes into us so then as a campaign, we can parse that data and then work with it going forward for possibly more fundraisin g calls, maybe that’s get up vote calls, maybe it’s just identifying who the supporters are.Our platform is the infrastructure / data infrastructure for the campaigns we work with. So, one vendor may be doing fundraising phone calls, another may be doing email solicitingâ€" fundraising solicitations, another may be doing voter outreach directly based on certain issues so there’s a myriad of things and issues both in fundraising and in policy that the campaign conducts and we are the place where that data comes to live.Martin: So, when I look at the political industry, let’s call it like that, I see that the political elections on a local, on a regional and on a national level. And there’s some type of seasonality involved because on the national level, maybe only every four or five years or so there’s an election. How do you manage this kind of seasonality and can you give us some kind of hints or glimpse on how big the market for such a product is?Trace: Yes, so the sea sonality can be a tricky thing. For smaller campaigns they don’t have the same data needs at a larger campaign does. So for a lot of clients, they may come on for 8-9 months and work with us during their election cycle and, sort of, going into hibernation mode for the next year and then come back.So what we try to do in such relations like that is we’re working very intensely with them during the election cycles so that may be anywhere from 8-10 months. And then the off-year, there isn’t as much work required so, instead of completely shutting down their data organization; we will offer them reduced rate to sort of keep that data in the cloud and in that storage and in that, we call each campaign’s data organization their “org”, we’ll keep their org live, alive in the cloud so that when they want to turn it back on in the next year, it’s ready to go. And of course, during that hibernation mode there’s not as much cost involved on either side so it’s at a reduced rate for that off-season year and then once it comes back on the grid, those rates are adjusted accordingly.The larger organizations and, you know, any state-wide campaign or even the national campaign, there’s a lot of work obviously goes in to building that data and these kinds of organizations have ongoing demand regardless of what year it is. So clearly there’s a lot of activity on the campaign year but even on the off-season year, fundraising is always an ongoing demand and, reaching out to voters, finding out what people are thinking and how they feel about certain issues those sort of data needs to constantly go on for larger organizations.So we find ourselves we have a mixture of both types of clients and it’s a matter of adjusting to what that particular client needs.Martin: Great, and can you give us some insights on how big is the market for such kind of product?Trace: The market is â€" it keeps growing, and growing, and growing every year. In a typical campaign e lection cycle, in 2012, the Obama campaign spent over a billion dollars. So you know that’s one campaign spending over a billion dollars and then of that billions dollars approximately 10% was set aside for technological infrastructure and innovation.So if you’re thinking that the Obama campaign in 2012, about a hundred million dollars was set aside for technology and all of that hundred million anywhere from 10-15% was set aside for infrastructure and data needs, and that’s just one campaign.So the other unique thing about this market space is that it’s a relatively new market space in politics. I don’t even think that the cap on it is potentially, possibly realized yet because there’s a lot of innovation going on, there’s a lot of things that are in campaigns that are doing otherwise now that they haven’t done before. And as you know technology constantly changes.So what I have found is that: the political world typically is about 6-7 years technology wise behind t he business world. And although we seen that sort of catch up lately I think there’s a tremendous amount of potential in where data in going and how campaigns utilize and manage their data and that’s largerly why we got into the business that we did.Martin: Great. Trace, when I’m thinking about businesses and really how to manage and control them, I’m looking at business matrix. For me the interesting things is what type of business matrix are you looking at in order to manage your business and can you give us some kind of insights on how those matrix look currently?Trace: Sure, so from a hard call stand point, as I mentioned earlier we’re an ISP partner of Salesforce. So every license we sell and every bit of data storage that we sell, we have a bottom line and we have a cost that goes along with that. And then on top of that is just how much time management and involvement is going to take to work through, managing that client and making sure that their implementation ne eds are met. So a lot of what we do we found that comes in on the consulting and implementation partner side because from a product standpoint, we have a set cost and as long as we meet those costs we’re fine from a product standpoint.Where the harder analysis and time analysis comes in is sort of on that consulting and implementation side. And a large part of our business is working with our client and managing their expectations, and most importantly finding out what they need and what they want, and then estimating accordingly: Okay, how much involvement is this going to take from our end form the human capital standpoint? And what’s a fair amount to charge for these consulting services? Because the truth is a lot of the clients we work with may never have worked with data before. So it’s a large learning curve for them so it’s, kind of, a unique dance of the client on definitely understanding that they need it, but shepherding them into, sort of, the data ecosystem and h ow to most efficiently get the most out of the services we’re providing.Martin: And Trace, is your revenue coming mainly from the consulting side or from the product side?Trace: From both, I say it’s about close to 50-50 maybe 60-40.PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 2016Martin: Okay, cool. So now I’ve very interested on learning from you because this year, in the U.S, we will have the presidential campaign. How did you help Ted Cruz with your products in terms of fundraising and winning votes?Trace: Well, we’re still helping Ted Cruz in fact today is New York Primary Day and we have been fortunate enough to work for the Senator back since 2012 before he was elected to Senate. And we worked with them for over 4 years. Back then it was originally in his race of 2012 Senate race in Texas, we set up his database and managed his grass-roots efforts and get up the vote efforts and targeting voters and all that stuff.During the presidential cycle this time, we were tasked with setting up the i nfrastructure for his finance needs and his grass-roots needs. As anybody will tell you that the presidential campaign is such a large, mammoth organization, the best analogy I can give to it it’s like building up and tearing down a Fortune 500 company by 18 months. There’s a tremendous amount of money that goes in to building the infrastructure and the organization. So, we were tasked with setting up a data infrastructure for his financial team andâ€" by his financial team I mean the fundraising team on the campaign that works with him calling donors, raising money from last dollar checks and small dollar checks. So what goes into that is what we call bundlers where typically bundlers raise large dollar donations. So typically $2700 is the current federal limit in this election cycle. So any one individual can get $2700 for the primary and $2700 for the general elections, for a total of $5400.So. we built a system whereby the finance team and go out and work with those large d onors and then in turns the donors can work with their network of friends, for people that might be supporting the senator. In addition to that, all of the online and the fundraising solicitations as I mentioned early, you may have an email, there’s a vendor that’s specifically focused on soliciting email contributions and that’s the portion of the campaign they handle. So, they go out and does that task and the day later or the same day or the next day, the data comes back to us, the same thing with phone calls.And then one other component that we provided this year is as I mentioned that we had the bundling application. I had thought all along that this has an applicability towards not just large contributions but small contributions as well and why not open this up to, sort of, the grass-roots arm of the campaign and let any individual, if they want to raise money, sign up and solicit or â€" not solicit but go to their network of friends and encourage them to join the campa ign whether as a volunteer or as a fundraiser. And we launched a product called CruzCrowd in October and its, sort of, like a crowd funding application for politics and we’re the first ones to do it that I’m aware of and then it’s entirely built on the Salesforce application.So, what it does is allows people to go in an sign up for CruzCrowd and from that they get a unique URL and then can go and share that unique URL on Facebook or Twitter and encourage their friends to sign up and join the campaign. They don’t have to make a contribution, a lot of it is just spreading the word and make use for the people are hearing about the campaign and signing up for volunteer, or they want to donate money. A lot of it comes in the form of small contributions. in fact the average contribution that’s been raised on CruzCrowd has been under $21.And then on the final point on the CruzCrowd is sort of the grass-roots infrastructure, all of the volunteers and the coalitions and the people that sign up online. So when a person goes and signs up on tedcruz.org, the website and they want to volunteer, they enter that information and what state they live in and then that data flows into our database. Then in turn, we can allow the campaign staff to reach out to them in certain states or counties when the campaign has something going on and they need to mobilize the grass-roots.ENTREPRENEURIAL ADVICE FROM TRACE ANDERSONMartin: Cool. Trace, let’s talk about your learning from your entrepreneur journey. So what type of tips can you give other people who are starting their first company?Trace: The best advice I can give is if you really believe in what you’re doingâ€" and you have to as an entrepreneur, just go for it. If you see the potential for whatever you’re doing, you got to make the decision to go for it 100% and just dive in. There’s going to be a lot of people saying: You can’t do this, you can’t do that. You can’t listen to those people, you just got to dedicate yourself to it and jump in feet first. And every day is an adventure as I’m sure every a lot of entrepreneurs has told you, you’re not sure what’s going to pop up but it’s all about attitude in my experience. There are going to be hardships and there’s going to be good times but you got to be unwavering in your dedication to it.Martin: And what is the most valuable thing for you personally in terms of being an entrepreneur?Trace: The most valuable for me as an entrepreneur is:one: I enjoy working for myself and to see a problem and to not be constrained by, sort of, bureaucracy or red tape. To be able to see a problem and to be able to work with others for my team and approach it and find a solution for it. And that’s what we try to constantly do for our clients. We try to solve problems and utilize data to solve those problems. We found that we might not have a solution immediately that’s going to fix those need or issues that arise but if you got a good m ix of creativity and approach it with a group mindset and everybody has an idea and just working together to solve that, that to me is the most rewarding thing.Martin: Cool. Trace, thank you so much for your time and for sharing your knowledge!Trace: Thanks, Martin!THANKS FOR LISTENING!Thanks so much for joining our 16th podcast episode!Have some feedback you’d like to share?  Leave  a note in the comment section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please  share  it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post.Also,  please leave an honest review for The Cleverism Podcast on iTunes or on SoundCloud. Ratings and reviews  are  extremely  helpful  and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and we read each and every one of them.Special thanks  to Trace for joining me this week. Until  next time!

I Want to Be An Auror

Every child is asked the question, â€Å"What do you want to be when you grow up?† Children often respond with universally popular answers: doctor, lawyer, teacher, maybe even a princess here and there. A very select group of children (myself included) would choose the unique profession of an auror. Outside the world of â€Å"Harry Potter,† this is a fictitious occupation, but for me, it exists in a very real place. It took me a while to warm up to the world of Harry Potter. Growing up, my parents read to me before bed each night, instilling in me the value of reading. Still, I was hesitant to  ­accept the concepts of magic and wizardry that dominate the series. But by the time I finished the first book, I had embraced them wholeheartedly. When I finished the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I was a red-faced, puffy-eyed, runny-nosed mess. As difficult as I found it to initially connect, it was even more difficult for me to  ­accept that it had com e to an end. In middle school, I was fortunate to find two friends who shared my beliefs that an auror was the most logical career choice for Harry, that Slytherin was the worst house into which to be sorted, and that the Muggle (wizard lingo for â€Å"human†) world would be better off with Quidditch as a real sport. These childhood friendships, formed on a shared love of an imaginary world, eventually developed into long-lasting, concrete attachments that now help me face the real world. Beyond expanding my social circle, I can trace parallels between the people in my world to those seemingly â€Å"real† characters in J.K. Rowling's novels. Hermione is the classic pragmatist, the strong, capable, and intelligent female. I loved Ron for the humor he consistently brings to the story, even in the face of adversity. As for Harry, I admire him for his ability to fervently love his family even though they were not always with him. I can see Hermione in Caitlin, my oldest sister; she has taught me the importance of succeeding in school. Following her example, I challenged myself with difficult courses and by pursuing elected  ­positions in the Student Council and National Honor Society. Molly, my other sister, displays the characteristic wit and humor of Ron. She has  ­always inspired me to be an individual and I look to her for support in my own dark moments. In the final book, Rowling describes an etching on a gravestone that reads â€Å"Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.† As I read and  ­enjoyed these books, I  ­understood that that same quote holds true in my life. In the adventures of Harry, Hermione and Ron, I recognized the same love and camaraderie that is shared by my sisters and me. Like Harry with Ron and Hermione, I will always be grateful for my sisters' guidance. While we did not face three-headed dogs nor duel against evil wizards, they have been my constant companions and are always there to help me overcome personal challenges. The conclusion of the Harry Potter series arrived at an auspicious point in my life as I looked toward my future after high school. Just as Harry stood on Platform 9 3/4 and began a major life transition, so too will I pack up our minivan, preferably without owls or cloaks, and begin my own journey,  ­although not in the direction of Hogwarts. The stories of Harry Potter have become synonymous with my childhood and have gently entwined themselves in my family and friendships. I am fortunate to have had a childhood touched by magic and filled with meaningful relationships. In letting go and growing beyond this part of my life, I feel better prepared to face the world that awaits me. While this implies an impending focus on the realities of an adult life, I have learned that you do not need a wand to see the magic in things: just an open mind and the ability to believe.

The World s Deepest Thinkers - 917 Words

Friedrich Nietzsche is considered one of the Western world’s deepest thinkers because he calls so many things into question. He felt that everyone would benefit greatly by questioning everything. In 1887 he wrote On the Genealogy of Morality to expand on his ideas he expressed through Beyond Good and Evil. On the Genealogy of Morality consists of three different essays that question and critique the value of our moral judgements. The first and the one I will focus on, being ‘Good and Evil’, ‘Good and Bad,’ in which Nietzsche discusses how goodness is relative to the eye of the beholder. He specifies two different types of groups, the first group being the militaristic and political group, which he has deemed the â€Å"masters.† The â€Å"masters† view â€Å"good† as having the characteristics of strength, power, freedom and achievement. The second group being the â€Å"slaves,† which is the group that is controlled by the m asters. The slaves viewing â€Å"good† as having the characteristics of sympathy, charity, forgiveness, and humility. The characteristics that the â€Å"masters† deemed â€Å"good,† like strength and power, were used as sources for fear against the â€Å"slaves† and thus were deemed evil. He feels that the â€Å"slaves† deem the things the â€Å"masters† view as good as evil because of the resentment they have. It is men of a noble rank that Nietzsche determines has the â€Å"master morality.† These are powerful, healthy and courageous men that are essentially barbaric to those they claim to be beneath them.Show MoreRelatedModernism Vs. Modernist Modernism1185 Words   |  5 Pagesmovement that centered on the heightened awareness of the self. The atrocities and shock factors of World War I greatly contributed to the development of modernist thought. There began a significant focus on the self-conscious. For example, the stream of consciousness novel became a frequently used form of literature. In fact, James Joyce had a stream of consciousness tendency. Also, noteworthy thinkers such as Karl Marx and Sigmeud Freud played important roles in this time. Therefore, we discussedRead MoreModernism Vs. Modernist Modernism1335 Words   |  6 Pagesmovement that centered on the heightened awareness of the self. The atrocities and shock factors of World War I greatly contributed to the development of modernist thought. There began a significant focus on the self-conscious. For example, the stream of consciousness novel became a frequently used form of literature. In fact, James Joyce had a stream of consciousness tendency. Also, noteworthy thinkers such as Karl Marx and Sigmeud Freud played important roles in this time. Therefore, we discussedRead MoreEssay on Works of Auguste Rodin1164 Words   |  5 Pagesend of World War I. He was one of the most illustrious artists of his time, and in the eyes of posterity he remains, surely, the greatest name in Western Sculpture since Michelangelo. His style was both classic and romantic, and to his contemporaries it was also revolutionary, for although Rodin followed routine closely, he presented it exactly as he saw and experienced it, and refused to be bound by the artistic conventions of his day. Unlike his contemporary sculptors of the 1870s and 1880sRead MoreMath s Relationship With Astronomy1225 Words   |  5 PagesMath s relationship with astronomy is one of the most unappreciated sciences to this day. Math has not only allowed us to begin to answer some of life s greatest questions that were only discussed in religion and story, but it has enabled us to see further than we have ever seen into the vast universe we exist in through astronomy. Math has often been described by the greatest minds our species as the language of the cosmos. The ability to do complex mathematics has allowed us as a species to learnRead MoreHow The Romantic Period Was Characterised By Political And Social Upheavals1318 Words   |  6 Pagessocial upheaval. The era marked England s shift from a largely agricultural society to a modern industrial nation. Moreover, the aristocracy s influence diminished, industry-owning middle classes grew. The Romantic epoch also witnesses revolution and war. F irst the American Civil War, followed by the French Revolution later. They brought concepts of popular freedom, and of the power of the proletariat. In England, these ideas were well received by radical thinkers. However, the later petrifying and grotesqueRead MoreThe Five Is of of Transcendentalism in the Modern Day1187 Words   |  5 Pagesdefined by using five is: individualism, inspiration, intuition, idealism and imagination which are displayed on all platforms of music today. The different music genres may vary between music from the late 1990s and childrens movies today. The constantly growing and changing world is trying its best to sway and alter the minds of the common people by using as many influential platforms possible from ads on television, entertainment in the theaters, politics in the government, to music on theRead MoreStructure, Sign And Play On The Discourse Of Human Sciences1524 Words   |  7 Pagesof Derrida as a marginalized European and being a Jew has special significance1. He later theorized that marginalization in terms of absence , a loaded term in Derrida s works which we will visit later in this chapter. It was a high-time for existentialism, phenomenology and structuralism represented many renowned thinkers like Husserl, Sartre, Strauss, and others. While the concern of structural linguistics was to formulate scientific understanding of language as structured expression/entityRead MoreSociological Theories and Theorists1274 Words   |  6 Pagescommunication is facilitated by words, gestures, and other symbols that have acquired conventionalized meanings (dictionary). Today, postmodern theory remains an emerging perspective in science, but it remains to be seen what influence postmodern thinkers will have on the social sciences (Kendall 31) This approach does open up new broader avenues that challenge existing perspectives and they also question current belief systems, but is also ignores some of the central social problems of our timesRead MoreReligion Was Never Meant To Provide A Sense Of Independence In Hermann Hesses Siddhartha1446 Words   |  6 Pagespower in hopes of providing meaning to the world. Whereas being independent means freedom from the control, influence, support, aid, or the like, of others. Independence requires not looking to others for one s opinions or for guidance when making decisions. When one relies on a higher power for guidance throughout life, one is not independent. Instead, one sacrifices their independence as means to provide understanding, comfort, and purpose in the world. The foundation of religion is the usuallyRead MoreAccuracy Of Evolution Through Upanishads1615 Words   |  7 Pagesis much that is trifling and with no significance for us to-day. The pressure is basically on self-realisation, on knowledge of the individual self and and the universal self, both of which are said to be the same fundamentally. The target outside world is not viewed as unreal but real in a relative sense, a part of the internal reality. There are numerous ambiguities in the Upanishads and distinctive translations have been made. But that is a matter for the philosopher or researcher. The general

What Will The World Be Like In 100 Years - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 2 Words: 547 Downloads: 72 Date added: 2017/09/20 Category Environment Essay Type Narrative essay Level High school Tags: Communication Essay Future Essay Did you like this example? Life After 100 years Person like you, me and many others in this earth has many thoughts and wonders in our mind that what will be the living life of human being after 100 years. The main question is, is human activities going be to replace by machines (robots, computers etc) and humans being lazy doing his/her work and expecting everything to be automatic or can be an imaginary life of machines take over every activities of humans. After 100 years we can expect lot of changes in our life. We can see lot of changes in the way we live. For example is our Social life, technology that plays important role, economy that can change countries development and in one word we can say the entire life. The big change we can expect is the technology (Internet, robots, and space development) that can change entire our life, it can be the way we live, work, communicate etc. In this essay, we are going to choose three areas and we will see what they are in and after 100 years. Those areas are Internet, robots and space. Our second and interesting topic is Internet. Currently internet is the fastest communication channel in the world. One can access the Internet anytime and anywhere in the world. After 100 years one expects lot of changes in internet technology. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Life After 100 Years" essay for you Create order Internet can make human a lazy person but can save time, as with few clicks one can get everything he/she needs. Now we can see online shopping websites, but in future one can see online shopping malls, where from one website one can get everything from food to cloths, so everything we do is online with one mouse and few clicks that will change our life and save time. In few words I could say that this one technology can change the entire life of human being. Third topic is Robots; is an interesting area we can talk about. After 100 years, everything will be done and replaced by Robots instead of human. May be you will stop hiring one maid for your home instead you buy a robot that will do everything of you from cooking, washing clothes, cleaning your house, protecting your home (as security guard), will alert you doing your daily things (as your personal assistant), will take care of your health and etc. So after 100 years If I imagine, I wanted a robot, I would like to have robot machine that I will use it as my car, my house maid, my personal assistant and lot more. Because Robots no need to sleep, no need to rest, no need to go to doctor, just need a power to run it. Our last topic is Space; more common to talk about space is moon. Recently scientists found out water on moon, so may be in future, humans start migrating to moon. May be in 100 years and later we can expect few more places like moon to live and maybe those will be touris t’s destinations one can visit. May be Microsoft Company CEO and richest person in the world, Bill Gates grandsons will be the first one to buy some property in the moon and migrate there. So we can expect lot of changes in the space technology in and after 100 years.

Delinquent Youth Subcultures - 1636 Words

Delinquent Youth Subcultures A subculture is an offshoot of referential cultural but in essence very different from culture. The term subculture is commonly employed to signify shared systems of common values, norms and interests that distinguish certain people and societies from others. Thus, criminal or delinquent subcultures indicate systems of standards, morals and interests that endorse criminal or delinquent behavior. The numerous activities categorized in law as criminal are related to numerous delinquent subcultures. The standards, morals, or interests of these subcultures might back specific criminal acts, a restricted set of such actions (Anderson 1999). Trained criminals for instance are proud of their craft; manage their profession in order to keep them safe and their business proficient and usually stay away from other criminal involvement that might bring them to legal light. However, not all criminal subcultures that well organized. A number of are merely opportunistic , accepting several kinds of criminal behavior as opportunities come up. Hence specialization is rare in delinquent subcultures. Even as delinquent subcultures classically are related to a wide variety of criminal activities, among delinquent groups and subcultures there is enormous disparity in the quality and force of group standards, morals, and interests. Furthermore, the degree to which delinquent activities is associated to these aspects is challenging. A large amount criminalShow MoreRelatedYouth Deviance Essay1376 Words   |  6 Pagesdefinition can mean a variety of different things. Critically examine the theory of deviance with reference to young people and their membership in deviant subcultures or gangs. Deviance is associated with young people today and is rapidly on the increase within the street and school environment. Young deviants are engaging in gang membership and subcultures with a means of social belonging, social interest and ethnic identity. There are several sociological and subcultural theories which deem to explainRead MoreWhy People Commit Crime?1417 Words   |  6 Pages2012). Others like Albert Cohen, in his book â€Å"Delinquent Boys,† theorize that delinquent youth subcultures emerge when young men in the lower-class, feel the strain of not being able to measure up to middle class expectations. These theories, and others influenced by similar beliefs, support biases that exist within our society, media, and even law enforcement. These biases have consequences for youth in the lower class who are labelled as ‘delinquents.’ They can also result in the ignorance ofRead MoreOutline and Evaluate Functionalist Explanation of Crime.1442 Words   |  6 Pagesgoals (Drug users, alcoholics, squatters.) The fourth response; Rebellion, this is used to describe those who consciously reject the success of society and the means on achieving them. They may try to form groups who struggle to create a new society (Youths, ex-prisoners, anarchists.) Finally; Ritualism, this is used to describe those who have abandoned the success goals of society, but stick to the means of achieving these goals (Low grade office workers). While Merton’s strength is that he clearlyRead MoreBiological Determinism, Subculture Crime And Conflict Theories1652 Words   |  7 PagesThe theories that will be looked at in order to provide a sufficient report for the judge on what caused Albert to enter a life of crime which culminated in his conviction for murder are; biological determinism, ecological determinism, subculture crime and conflict theories. Biological determinism One of the best known application of biological determinism in relation to crime is from Cesare Lombroso who â€Å"Viewed criminals as suffering from a depravity caused by an atavistic reversion:† In otherRead MoreSubculture And Its Impact On Society1426 Words   |  6 Pages Subculture refers to a minority of individuals who adhere to different rules, dress codes and lifestyle choices from mainstream culture. Throughout this essay the traditional definitions of subcultures, that mainly concentrate on class and style as their main features, will be looked at and explained. It will then be demonstrated how these ways of thinking are no longer relevant to the 21st century therefore the term subculture needs to be rethought for it to be an applicable category in theRead MoreCorrelations Between Abuse and Delinquency1162 Words   |  5 Pageswho have not encountered abuse. It has been found that adolescents who were victims of sexual assault were three to five times more likely to experience posttraumatic stress disorder, be abused again, be dependent on drugs and alcohol, or commit delinquent acts compared with adolescents who were not victimized (Impact of Child Abuse, 2011). In another study that was conducted to examine the relationship between abuse and delinquency, the data that was found, supported the data that was found in theRead MoreEssay on Albert Cohens Theory1123 Words   |  5 PagesAccording to Siegel (2013) Albert Cohen developed the theory of delinquent subcultures in his classic 1995 book, Delinquent Boys. Cohen believes that the delinquent behavior of lower class youth actually goes against the norms and values of middle-class U. S. culture. These youths experience what he calls status frustration due to social conditions that enable them to achieve success legitimately. As a result of this social conflict the youths join gangs and become involved in behavior that is â€Å"nonutilitarianRead MoreTheory of Delinquency1458 Words   |  6 Pagesfocus on subcultures, i.e. groups within wider society with norms, lifestyles and values distinct from those of mainstream society. The focus in sub-cultural theories is on delinquency. In the UK, a preoccupation with the idea that future crime was determined by juvenile delinquency came about as a result of the 1895 UK Gladstone Committee, wherein research focused on gang culture among young males (aged 16-25). Deviance is perceived by sub-cultural theorists as a product of a subculture of delinquencyRead MoreJuvenile Offenders And Juvenile Delinquency1610 Words   |  7 PagesJuvenile delinquency, also known as juvenile offending, is participation in illegal behavior by minors8. A juvenile delinquent in the United States is a person who is typically under the age of 17 and commits an act that otherwise would have been charged as a crime if they were an adult. Depending on the type and severity of the offense committed, it is possible for persons under 18 to be charged and tried as adults. Juvenile crimes can range from status offenses (such as underage smoking), toRead More Criminal and Delinquent Subcultures Essay2034 Words   |  9 PagesCriminal and Delinquent Subcultures Crime and delinquency subculture reflects on culture patterns surrounding crime and juvenile delinquency. It is created not only by individuals, but as one culture, the American culture. Subculture is derivative of, but different from some larger referential cultures. This term is used to share systems of norms, values, individual, groups and the cultural system itself. Criminal or delinquent subcultures indicate systems of norms, values, or interest that support

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini - 883 Words

Throughout life, everyone experiences some sort of regret from past encounters and usually feel guilty and bitter about the situation. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, revolves around the theme of redemption. Redemption can be used as a cure for guilt. Throughout the novel, the author shows that redemption requires some sort of sacrifice and the only way that is possible is if you can forgive yourself from the mistakes you have made in the past. Khaled Hosseini effectively portrays redemption through motifs such as rape, irony and flashbacks, symbolism, and the development of Amir throughout the story. The motifs that are being presented in this story are rape, irony and flashbacks. A recurring event that is crucial to this novel is the rape incidents of Hassan and later his son, Sohrab. From the beginning, Assef’s rape of Hassan is the primary source of Amir’s guilt. Ive changed my mind. I’m letting you keep the kite, Hazara. Ill let you keep it so it will always remind you of what Im about to do† (Hosseini 73). To further elaborate, Amir being aware of the situation didn’t help the case due to his cowardliness. Because of this incident, Amir becomes emotionally distraught leaving him no choice but to set Hassan up for a ploy so that both of them would be separated. Going in hand with rape, irony plays a huge role. Amir realizes he is a cowards for the decisions he makes and only makes these decisions to get Baba’s approval, only to result in overwhelming guilt. ToShow MoreRelatedThe Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini1651 Words   |  7 Pages   Ã‚  Ã‚   The novel â€Å"The Kite Runner† by Khaled Hosseini describes the life of a boy, Amir. Amir’s best friend and brother (although that part isn’t known until towards the end), Hassan, plays a major role in Amir’s life and how he grows up. Hosseini portrays many sacrifices that are made by Hassan and Amir. Additionally, Amir seeks redemption throughout much of the novel. By using first person point of view, readers are able to connect with Amir and understand his pain and yearning for a way to be redeemedRead MoreThe Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini1655 Words   |  7 PagesSarah Singer Major Works Data Form Title: The Kite Runner Author: Khaled Hosseini Date of Publication: 2003 Genre: Historical Fiction Historical information about the period of publication: Since the September 11th attacks in 2001, the United States has been at war with Afghanistan. Their goals were to remove the Taliban, track down those in charge of the attacks, and destroy Al-Qaeda. Biographical information about the author: Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. HIs motherRead MoreThe Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini1098 Words   |  5 PagesIn The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, we learn a lot about Amir the main character, and Hassan his servant/brother. In the beginning Hassan and Amir’s relationship was one of brotherly love despite the fact that Hassan was a Hazara and Amir a Pashtun. Back in the 1970’s race and religion played a big part in Kabul and these two races were not suppose to have relationships unless it was owner (Pashtun) and servant (Hazara). Baba Amir’s father had an affair with Hassan’s mother, but it was kept aRead MoreThe Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini1313 Words   |  5 Pagesis not unique to just J.K. Rowling. Khaled Hosseini also incorporates life experiences into some of his novels. A prime example of this is The Kite Runner. The storyline of this novel reflects his past to create a journey of a young Afghanistan boy, whose name is Amir. This boy changes drastically throughout his lifetime from a close minded, considerably arrogant boy to an open hearted and minded man. This emotional and mental trip is partially based on Khaled Hosseini’s own life. Throughout Hosseini’sRead MoreThe Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini1908 Words   |  8 Pages​In the novel, â€Å"The Kite Runner†, written by Khaled Hosseini, was taken place in Afghanistan during the 1970’s to the year of 2002. Many historical events happened during this time period and Hosseini portrayed it into his novel. Kabul, the capitol of Afghanistan, was a free, living area for many Afghanistan families to enjoy the life they were given. Until one day, Afghanistan was then taken over and attacked. In the novel, Amir, the protagonist, must redeem himself and the history behind his actionsRead MoreThe Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini1050 Words   |  5 Pagesâ€Å"There is a way to be good again.† (Hosseini 334). This quote given by Rahim Khan to Amir holds a great amount of force and symbolism. In theory, this quote symbolizes the beginning of Amir’s path to redemption. The eye-opening Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini tells about the struggles of Afghanistan before and during the Taliban, and one’s struggle for redemption and acceptance. With regards to the opening quote, some see Amir’s actions as selfish. However, others may believe that Amir truly changedRead MoreThe Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini1583 Words   |  7 Pagesnovel the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Amir, the main character, shares his thoughts and actions due to his poor decisions. The problems he encountered were all because of the sin committed in his youth. His sins taunted the beginning of his life and gave him a troublesome memory full of guilt. As the novel continued, Amir attempted to disengage the memory of his sin and forget about it. Amir then faced the long bumpy road to redemption. Khaled Hosseini’s novel the Kite Runner is about sinRead MoreThe Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini871 Words   |  4 Pagesthat person is trying to fix that mistake. This also applies to the novel The Kite Runner. The story revolves around the main character Amir, and his childhood friend, Hassan. After Amir came to America with Baba, his father, he still regrets the things he had done to his childhood friend. He left Hassan getting raped by Assef in a small alley in 1975. Thereafter, Amir always feel regret and seeks for redemption. Hosseini -the author, argues that redemption can be achieved by helping others, teachRead MoreThe Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini3402 Words   |  14 Pagestitle â€Å"The Kite Runner† is symbolic as fighting kites and the kite runnings are impacting moments in the novel. Hassan was the best kite runner in Kabul, if not the whole country, after Amir won the kite fighting the running of that last blue kite triggered the monumental changes for Amir. For the beginning of the story the kite running was associated with Hassan’s rape and Amir’s grief. As kites appear throughout the story, they begin Amir’s story and also end it. Amir flying the kite with SohrabRead MoreThe Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini2522 Words   |  11 PagesIn The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini creates an awareness and humanization of Afghanistan as a nation and as a culture. Through a postcolonial perspective, the main character, Amir resembles the internal conflicts and external tribulations that a country and its citizens’ face when living in a war-torn region. Postcolonial criticism offers a unique perspective by highlighting the destructive events that lead to death and misery, rather than glorifying the exploratory nature of colonists as they

Black House Chapter Twenty-five Free Essays

string(46) " mingled with the cries of tortured children\." 25 OH, FORGET about that. We know where Jack Sawyer went when he disappeared from the edge of the cornfield, and we know who he is likely to meet when he gets there. Enough of that stuff. We will write a custom essay sample on Black House Chapter Twenty-five or any similar topic only for you Order Now We want fun, we want excitement! Luckily for us, that charming old party Charles Burnside, who can always be depended upon to slip a whoopee cushion under the governor’s seat during a banquet, to pour a little hot sauce into the stew, to fart at the prayer meeting, is at this moment emerging from a toilet bowl and into a stall in the men’s room on Daisy wing. We note that Ol’ Burny, our Burn-Burn, hugs Henry Leyden’s hedge clippers to his sunken chest with both arms, actually cradling them, as if he were holding a baby. On his bony right arm, blood slides out of a nasty gash and rolls down toward his elbow. When he gets one foot, clad in another resident’s bee slipper, on the rim of the bowl, he pushes himself up and steps out, wobbling a bit. His mouth is twisted into a scowl, and his eyes look like bullet holes, but we do not suppose that he, too, carries a weight of heavy-duty sorrow. Blood soaks the bottoms of his trousers and the front of his shirt, which has darkened with the flow of blood from a knife wound to his abdomen. Wincing, Burny opens the door of the stall and walks out into the empty men’s room. Fluorescent lights on the ceiling reflect from the long mirror above the row of sinks; thanks to Butch Yerxa, who is working a double shift because the regular night man called in drunk, the white tiles of the floor gleam. In all this sparkling whiteness, the blood on Charles Burnside’s clothes and body looks radiantly red. He peels off his shirt and tosses it into a sink before plodding down to the far end of the bathroom and a cabinet marked with a piece of tape on which someone has printed BANDAGES. Old men have a tendency to fall down in their bathrooms, and Chipper’s father thoughtfully installed the cabinet where he thought it might be needed. Drops of blood lay spattered across the white tiles. Burny rips a handful of paper towels from a dispenser, dampens them with cold water, and lays them on the side of the nearest sink. Then he opens the bandage cabinet, removes a wide roll of tape and a wad of gauze bandages, and tears off a six-inch strip of the tape. He wipes blood off the skin around the wound in his belly and presses the wet paper towels over the opening. He lifts away the towels and presses a pad of gauze to the cut. Awkwardly, he flattens the strip of tape over the gauze. He dresses the stab wound on his arm in the same fashion. Now swirls and scoops of blood cover the white tiles. He moves up the row of sinks and runs cold water over his shirt. The water turns red in the bowl. Burny keeps scrubbing the old shirt under cold running water until it has turned a pale rose only a few shades brighter than his skin. Satisfied, he wrings the shirt in his hands, flaps it once or twice, and puts it back on. That it clings to him bothers Burny not at all. His goal is a very basic version of acceptability, not elegance: insofar as it is possible, he wants to pass unnoticed. His cuffs are soaked with blood, and Elmer Jesperson’s slippers are dark red and wet, but he thinks most people will not bother to look at his feet. Within him, a coarse voice keeps saying, Fazzdur, Burn-Burn, fazzdur! Burny’s only mistake is that, while buttoning up his damp shirt, he looks at himself in the mirror. What he sees stops him cold with shock. Despite his ugliness, Charles Burnside has always approved of the image returned to him by mirrors. In his opinion, he looks like a guy who knows where to find the corners sly, unpredictable, and foxy. The man staring at him from the other side of the mirror is nothing like the canny old operator Burny remembered. The man facing him looks dim-witted, worn-out, and seriously ill. Sunken, red-rimmed eyes, cheeks like craters, veins crawling across his bald, skull-like crown . . . even his nose looks bonier and more twisted than it once had. He is the sort of old man who frightens children. You shud fry-den cheerun, Burn-Burn. Dime do ged moo-vuhn. He couldn’t really look that bad, could he? If he did, he would have noticed long before this. Nah, that wasn’t how Charles Burnside faced the world. The bathroom’s too damn white, that’s all. A white like that makes you look bleached. Makes you look skinned, like a rabbit. The dying old horror in the mirror takes a step nearer, and the spotty discolorations on his skin seem to darken. The spectacle of his teeth makes him close his mouth. Then his master is like a fishhook in his mind, pulling him toward the door and muttering, Dime, dime. Burny knows why it’s dime: Mr. Munshun wants to get back to Black House. Mr. Munshun comes from some place incredibly distant from French Landing, and certain parts of Black House, which they built together, feel like the world of his home the deepest parts, which Charles Burnside seldom visits, and which make him feel hypnotized, weak with longing, and sick to his stomach when he does. When he tries to picture the world that gave birth to Mr. Munshun, he envisions a dark, craggy landscape littered with skulls. On the bare slopes and peaks stand houses like castles that change size, or vanish, when you blink. From the flickering defiles comes an industrial cacophony mingled with the cries of tortured children. You read "Black House Chapter Twenty-five" in category "Essay examples" Burnside is eager to return to Black House, too, but for the simpler pleasures of the first set of rooms, where he can rest, eat canned food, and read his scrapbooks. He relishes the particular smell that inhabits those rooms, an order of rot, sweat, dried blood, must, sewage. If he could distill that fragrance, he would wear it like cologne. Also, a sweet little morsel named Tyler Marshall sits locked in a chamber located in another layer of Black House and another world and Burny cannot wait to torment little Tyler, to run his wrinkled hands over the boy’s beautiful skin. Tyler Marshall thrills Burny. But there are pleasures yet to be reaped in this world, and it is dime to attend to them. Burny peeks out through a crack in the bathroom door and sees that Butch Yerxa has succumbed to weariness and the cafeteria’s meat loaf. He occupies his chair like an oversized doll, his arms on the desk and his fat chin resting on what would be a neck on a normal person. That useful little painted rock stands a few inches away from Butch’s right hand, but Burny has no need of the rock, for he has acquired an instrument far more versatile. He wishes he had discovered the potential of hedge clippers long ago. Instead of one blade, you get two. One up, one down, snick-snick! And sharp! He had not intended to amputate the blind man’s fingers. Back then he thought of the clippers as a big, primitive variety of knife, but when he got stabbed in the arm, he jerked the clippers toward the blind man and they more or less bit off his fingers by themselves, as neatly and swiftly as th e old-time butchers in Chicago used to slice bacon. Chipper Maxton is going to be fun. He deserves what he is going to get, too. Burny figures that Chipper is responsible for the way he has deteriorated. The mirror told him that he is about twenty pounds less than he should be, maybe even thirty, and no wonder look at the slop they serve in the cafeteria. Chipper has been chiseling on the food, Burny thinks, the same way he chisels on everything else. The state, the government, Medicaid, Medicare, Chipper steals from all of them. A couple of times when he thought Charles Burnside was too out of it to know what was happening, Maxton had told him to sign forms that indicated he’d had an operation, prostate surgery, lung surgery. The way Burny sees it, half of the Medicaid money that paid for the nonexistent operation should have been his. It was his name on the form, wasn’t it? Burnside eases into the hallway and pads toward the lobby, leaving bloody footprints from the squishing slippers. Because he will have to pass the nurse’s station, he shoves the clippers under his waistband and covers them with his shirt. The flabby cheeks, gold-rimmed glasses, and lavender hair of a useless old bag named Georgette Porter are visible to Burnside above the counter of the nurses’ station. Things could be worse, he thinks. Ever since she waltzed into D18 and caught him trying to masturbate stark naked in the middle of the room, Georgette Porter has been terrified of him. She glances his way, seems to suppress a shudder, and looks back down at whatever she is doing with her hands. Knitting, probably, or reading the kind of murder mystery in which a cat solves the crime. Burny slops nearer the station and considers using the clippers on Georgette’s face, but decides it is not worth the waste of energy. When he reaches the counter, he looks over it and sees that she is holding a paperback book in her hands, just as he had imagined. She looks up at him with profound suspicion in her eyes. â€Å"We sure look yummy tonight, Georgie.† She glances up the hallway, then at the lobby, and realizes that she must deal with him by herself. â€Å"You should be in your room, Mr. Burn-side. It’s late.† â€Å"Mind your own business, Georgie. I got a right to take a walk.† â€Å"Mr. Maxton doesn’t like the residents to go into the other wings, so please stay in Daisy.† â€Å"Is the big boss here tonight?† â€Å"I believe so, yes.† â€Å"Good.† He turns away and continues on toward the lobby, and she calls after him. â€Å"Wait!† He looks back. She is standing up, a sure sign of great concern. â€Å"You aren’t going to bother Mr. Maxton, are you?† â€Å"Say any more, and I’ll bother you.† She places a hand on her throat and finally notices the floor. Her chin drops, and her eyebrows shoot up. â€Å"Mr. Burnside, what do you have on your slippers? And your pants cuffs? You’re tracking it everwhere!† â€Å"Can’t keep your mouth shut, can you?† Grimly, he plods back to the nurses’ station. Georgette Porter backs against the wall, and by the time she realizes that she could have tried to escape, Burny is already in front of her. She removes her hand from her throat and holds it out like a stop sign. â€Å"Dumb bitch.† Burnside yanks the clippers out of his belt, grips the handles, and clips off her fingers as easily as if they were twigs. â€Å"Stupid.† Georgette has entered a stage of shocked disbelief that holds her in paralysis. She stares at the blood spilling from the four stumps on her hand. â€Å"Goddamn moron.† He opens the clippers and rams one of the blades into her throat. Georgette makes a choked, gargling sound. She tries to get her hands on the clippers, but he pulls them from her neck and raises them to her head. Her hands flutter, scattering blood. The expression on Burny’s face is that of a man who finally admits that he has to clean his cat’s litter box. He levels the wet blade in front of her right eye and shoves it in, and Georgette is dead before her body slides down the wall and folds up on the floor. Thirty feet up the hallway, Butch Yerxa mumbles in his sleep. â€Å"They never listen,† Burny mutters to himself. â€Å"You try and try, but they always ask for it in the end. Proves they want it like those dumb little shits in Chicago.† He tugs the clippers’ blade out of Georgette’s head and wipes it clean on the shoulder of her blouse. The memory of one or two of those little shits in Chicago sends a tingle down the length of his member, which begins to stiffen in his baggy old pants. Hel-lo! Ah . . . the magic of tender memories. Though, as we have seen, Charles Burnside now and again enjoys erections in his sleep, in his waking hours they are so rare as to be nearly nonexistent, and he is tempted to pull down his pants and see what he could make it do. But what if Yerxa wakes up? He would assume that Georgette Porter, or at least her corpse, aroused Burny’s long-smoldering lusts. That wouldn’t do not at all. Even a monster has his pride. Best to carry on to Chipper Maxton’s office, and hope that his hammer doesn’t go limp before it is time to pound the nail. Burny tucks the clippers into the back of his waistband and yanks at his wet shirt, pulling it away from his body. Down the corridor of Daisy wing he shuffles, across the empty lobby, and up to the burnished door further distinguished by the brass nameplate reading WILLIAM MAXTON, DIRECTOR. This he reverentially opens, summoning to mind the image of a long-dead ten-year-old boy named Herman Flagler, otherwise known as â€Å"Poochie,† one of his first conquests. Poochie! Tender Poochie! Those tears, those sobs of mingled pain and joy, that yielding to utter helplessness: the faint crust of dirt over Poochie’s scabby knees and slender forearms. Hot tears; a jet of urine from his terrified little rosebud. There will be no such bliss from Chipper, but we may be sure there will be something. Anyhow, Tyler Marshall lies bound and waiting in Black House, helpless as helpless could be. Charles Burnside plods through Rebecca Vilas’s windowless cubicle, Poochie Flagler’s pallid, deeply dimpled backside blazing in his mind. He places a hand on the next doorknob, takes a moment to calm himself, and noiselessly revolves the knob. The door opens just wide enough to reveal Chipper Maxton, only monarch of this realm, leaning over his desk, his head propped on one fist, and using a yellow pencil to make notations on two sets of papers. The trace of a smile softens the tight purse of his mouth; his damp eyes betray the suggestion of a gleam; the busy pencil glides back and forth between the two stacks of papers, making tiny marks. So happily absorbed in his task is Chipper that he fails to notice he is no longer alone until his visitor steps inside and gives the door a backward kick with his foot. When the door slams shut, Chipper glances up in irritated surprise and peers at the figure before him. His attitude almost immediately changes to a sly, unpleasant heartiness he takes to be disarming. â€Å"Don’t they knock on doors where you come from, Mr. Burnside? Just barge right on in, do they?† â€Å"Barge right on in,† says his visitor. â€Å"Never mind. The truth is, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.† â€Å"Talk to me?† â€Å"Yes. Come on in, will you? Take a seat. I’m afraid we might have a little problem, and I want to explore some possibilities.† â€Å"Oh,† Burny says. â€Å"A problem.† He plucks his shirt away from his chest and trudges forward, leaving behind him progressively fainter footprints Maxton fails to see. â€Å"Take a pew,† Chipper says, waving at the chair in front of his desk. â€Å"Pull up a bollard and rest your bones.† This expression comes from Franky Shellbarger, the First Farmer’s loan officer, who uses it all the time at the local Rotary meetings, and although Chipper Maxton has no idea what a bollard may be, he thinks it sounds cute as hell. â€Å"Old-timer, you and me have to have a heart-to-heart discussion.† â€Å"Ah,† Burny says, and sits down, his back rigidly straight, due to the clippers. â€Å"Hardz zu hardz.† â€Å"Yeah, that’s the idea. Hey, is that shirt wet? It is! We can’t have that, old buddy you might catch cold and die, and neither one of us would like that, would we? You need a dry shirt. Let me see what I can do for you.† â€Å"Don’t bother, you fucking monkey.† Chipper Maxton is already on his feet and straightening his shirt, and the old man’s words throw him momentarily off his stride. He recovers nicely, grins, and says, â€Å"Stay right there, Chicago.† Although the mention of his native city sends a prickling sensation down his spine, Burnside gives nothing away as Maxton moves around the side of his desk and walks across his office. He watches the director leave the room. Chicago. Where Poochie Flagler and Sammy Hooten and Ferd Brogan and all the others had lived and died, God bless ’em. Stalks of grain, blades of grass, so foul so beautiful so enticing. With their smiles and their screams. Like all Caucasian slum children, pure pale ivory white under the crust of dirt, the fishy white of the city’s poor, the soon-to-be-lost. The slender bones of their shoulder blades, sticking out as if to break through the thin layer of flesh. Burny’s old organ stirs and stiffens as if it remembers the frolics of yesteryear. Tyler Marshall, he croons to himself, pretty little Ty, we will have ourselves some fun before we turn you over to the boss, yes we will yes indeedy yes yes. The door slams behind him, yanking him out of his erotic reverie. But his old mule, his old hoss, it stays awake and on its mettle, bold and brash as ever it was in the glory days. â€Å"No one in the lobby,† Maxton complains. â€Å"That old bag, what’shername, Porter, Georgette Porter, down in the kitchen stuffing her face, I bet, and Butch Yerxa sound asleep in his chair. What am I supposed to do, ransack the rooms to find a dry shirt?† He strides past Burnside, throws up his hands, and drops into his chair. It’s all an act, but Burny has seen much better than this. Chipper cannot intimidate Burny, not even if he knows a few things about Chicago. â€Å"I don’t need a new shirt,† he says. â€Å"Asswipe.† Chipper leans back in his chair and clasps his hands behind his head. He grins this patient amuses him, he’s a real card. â€Å"Now, now. There’s no need for name-calling here. You don’t fool me anymore, old man. I don’t buy your Alzheimer’s act. In fact, I don’t buy any of it.† He is nice and relaxed and he oozes the confidence of a gambler holding four aces. Burny figures he is being set up for some kind of con job or blackmail, which makes the moment all the more delicious. â€Å"I gotta hand it to you, though,† Chipper goes on. â€Å"You fooled everybody in sight, including me. It must take an incredible amount of discipline to fake late-stage Alzheimer’s. All that slumping in your chair, being fed baby food, crapping in your pants. Pretending you don’t understand what people are saying.† â€Å"I wasn’t faking, you jackass.† â€Å"So it’s no wonder you staged a comeback when was that, about a year ago? I would have done the same. I mean, it’s one thing to go undercover, but it’s another to do it as a vegetable. So we have ourselves a little miracle, don’t we? Our Alzheimer’s gradually reverses itself, it comes and it goes, like the common cold. It’s a good deal all around. You get to walk around and make a nuisance of yourself, and there’s less work for the staff. You’re still one of my favorite patients, Charlie. Or should I call you Carl?† â€Å"I don’t give a shit what you call me.† â€Å"But Carl’s your real name, isn’t it?† Burny does not even shrug. He hopes Chipper gets to the point before Butch Yerxa wakes up, notices the bloody prints, and discovers Georgette Porter’s body, because while he is interested in Maxton’s tale, he wants to get to Black House without too much interference. And Butch Yerxa would probably put up a decent fight. Under the illusion that he is playing a cat-and-mouse game in which he is the cat, Chipper smiles at the old man in the wet pink shirt and rolls on. â€Å"A state detective called me today. Said I.D. on a local fingerprint had come back from the FBI. It belonged to a bad, bad man named Carl Bierstone who’s been wanted for almost forty years. In 1964 he was sentenced to death for killing a couple of kids he molested, only he escaped from the car taking him to prison killed two guards with his bare hands. No sign of him since then. He’d be eighty-five by now, and the detective thought Bierstone just might be one of our residents. What do you have to say, Charles?† Nothing, evidently. â€Å"Charles Burnside is pretty close to Carl Bierstone, isn’t it? And we have no background information on you at all. That makes you a unique resident here. For everybody else, we damn near have a family tree, but you sort of come out of nowhere. The only information we have about you is your age. When you turned up at La Riviere General in 1996, you claimed to be seventy-eight. That would make you the same age as that fugitive.† Burnside gives him a truly unsettling smile. â€Å"I guess I must be the Fisherman, too, then.† â€Å"You’re eighty-five years old. I don’t think you’re capable of dragging a bunch of kids halfway across the county. But I do think you’re this Carl Bierstone, and the cops are still eager to get their hands on you. Which brings me to this letter that came a few days ago. I’ve been meaning to discuss it with you, but you know how busy things get around here.† He opens his desk drawer and pulls out a single sheet torn from a yellow notepad. It bears a brief, neatly typed message. † ? ®De Pere, Wisconsin,’ it says. No date. ? ®To Whom It May Concern’ is how it starts. ? ®I regret to inform you that I am no longer able to continue monthly payments on behalf of my nephew, Charles Burnside.’ That’s it. Instead of writing her signature, she typed her name. ? ®Althea Burnside.’ â€Å" Chipper places the yellow notepaper before him and folds his hands together on top of it. â€Å"What’s the deal here, Charles? There’s no Althea Burnside living in De Pere, I know that much. And she can’t be your aunt. How old would she be? At least a hundred. More like a hundred and ten. I don’t believe it. But these checks have been coming in, regular as clockwork, since your first month here at Maxton’s. Some buddy, some old partner of yours, has been looking out for you, my friend. And we want him to continue what he’s been doing, don’t we?† â€Å"All the same to me, asswipe.† This is not precisely truthful. All Burny knows of the monthly payments is that Mr. Munshun organized them long ago, and if these payments are to stop, well . . . what comes to an end with them? He and Mr. Munshun are in this together, aren’t they? â€Å"Come on, kiddo,† Chipper says. â€Å"You can do better than that. I’m looking for a little cooperation here. I’m sure you don’t want to go through all the mess and trouble of being taken into custody, getting fingerprinted, plus whatever might happen after that. And me, speaking personally, I wouldn’t want to put you through all of that. Because the real rat here is your friend. It sure looks to me like this guy, whoever he is, is forgetting that you probably have something on him from the old days, right? And he’s thinking that he doesn’t have to make sure that you have all your little comforts anymore. Only that’s a mistake. I bet you could straighten the guy out, make him understand the situation.† Burny’s mule, his old hoss, has softened up and dwindled like a punctured balloon, which increases his gloom. Since entering this oily crook’s office, he has lost something vital: a feeling of purpose, a sense of immunity, an edge. He wants to get back to Black House. Black House will restore him, for Black House is magic, dark magic. The bitterness of his soul went into its making; the darkness of his heart soaked through every beam and joist. Mr. Munshun helped Burny see the possibilities of Black House, and he contributed many and many a touch of his own devise. There are regions of Black House Charles Burnside has never truly understood, and that frighten him, badly: an underground wing seems to contain his secret career in Chicago, and when he drew near that part of the house, he could hear the pleading whimpers and pungent screams of a hundred doomed boys as well as his own rasps of command, his grunts of ecstasy. For some reason, the proximity of his earlier triumphs made him feel small and hunted, an outcast instead of a lord. Mr. Munshun had helped him remember the scale of his achievement, but Mr. Mun-shun had been of no use with another region of Black House, a small one, at best a room, more accurately a vault, which houses the whole of his childhood, and which he has never, ever visited. The merest hint of that room causes Burny to feel like an infant left outside to freeze to death. The news of the fictitious Althea Burnside’s defection has a lesser version of the same effect. This is intolerable, and he need not, in fact cannot, endure it. â€Å"Yeah,† he says. â€Å"Let’s have some straightening out here. Let’s have some understanding.† He rises from the chair, and a sound from what seems to be the center of French Landing speeds him along. It is the wail of police sirens, at least two, maybe three. Burny doesn’t know for sure, but he supposes that Jack Sawyer has discovered the body of his friend Henry, only Henry was less than perfectly dead and managed to say that he had recognized his killer’s voice. So Jack called the cop shop and here we are. His next step brings him to the front of the desk. He glances at the papers on the desk and instantly grasps their meaning. â€Å"Cooking the books, hey? You aren’t just an asswipe, you’re a sneaky little numbers juggler.† In an amazingly small number of seconds, Chipper Maxton’s face registers a tremendous range of feeling states. Ire, surprise, confusion, wounded pride, anger, and disbelief chase across the landscape of his features as Burnside reaches back and produces the hedge clippers. In the office, they seem larger and more aggressive than they did in Henry Leyden’s living room. To Chipper, the blades look as long as scythes. And when Chipper tears his eyes away from them and raises them to the old man standing before him, he sees a face more demonic than human. Burnside’s eyes gleam red, and his lips curl away from appalling, glistening teeth like shards of broken mirrors. â€Å"Back off, buddy,† Chipper squeaks. â€Å"The police are practically in the lobby.† â€Å"I ain’t deaf.† Burny rams one blade into Chipper’s mouth and closes the clippers on his sweaty cheek. Blood shoots across the desk, and Chipper’s eyes expand. Burny yanks on the clippers, and several teeth and a portion of Chipper’s tongue fly from the yawning wound. He pushes himself upright and leans forward to grab the blades. Burnside steps back and lops off half of Chipper’s right hand. â€Å"Damn, that’s sharp,† he says. Then Maxton comes reeling around the side of the desk, spraying blood in all directions and bellowing like a moose. Burny dodges away, dodges back, and punches the blades into the bulge of the blue button-down shirt over Chipper’s belly. When he tugs them out, Chipper sags, groans, drops to his knees. Blood pours out of him as if from an overturned jug. He falls forward on his elbows. There is no fun left in Chipper Maxton; he shakes his head and mutters something that is a plea to be left alone. A bloodshot, oxlike eye revolves toward Charles Burnside and silently expresses an oddly impersonal desire for mercy. â€Å"Mother of Mercy,† Burny says, â€Å"is this the end of Rico?† What a laugh he hasn’t thought of that movie in years. Chuckling at his own wit, he leans over, positions the blades on either side of Chipper’s neck, and nearly succeeds in cutting off his head. The sirens turn blaring on to Queen Street. Soon policemen will be running up the walk; soon they will burst into the lobby. Burnside drops the clippers onto Chipper’s broad back and regrets that he does not have the time to piss on his body or take a dump on his head, but Mr. Munshun is grumbling about dime, dime, dime. â€Å"I ain’t stupid, you don’t have to tell me,† Burny says. He pads out of the office and through Miss Vilas’s cubicle. When he moves out into the lobby, he can see the flashing light bars on the tops of two police cars rolling down the far side of the hedge. They come to a halt not far from where he first put his hand around Tyler Marshall’s slender boy-neck. Burny scoots along a little faster. When he reaches the beginning of the Daisy corridor, two baby-faced policemen burst through the opening in the hedge. Down the hallway, Butch Yerxa is standing up and rubbing his face. He stares at Burnside and says, â€Å"What happened?† â€Å"Get out there,† Burny says. â€Å"Take ’em to the office. Maxton’s hurt.† â€Å"Hurt?† Incapable of movement, Butch is gaping at Burnside’s bloody clothes and dripping hands. â€Å"Go!† Butch stumbles forward, and the two young policemen charge in through the big glass door, from which Rebecca Vilas’s poster has been removed. â€Å"The office!† Butch yells, pointing to his right. â€Å"The boss is hurt!† While Yerxa indicates the office door by jabbing his hand at the wall, Charles Burnside scuttles past him. A moment later, he has entered the Daisy wing men’s room and is hotfooting it toward one of the stalls. And what of Jack Sawyer? We already know. That is, we know he fell asleep in a receptive place between the edge of a cornfield and a hill on the western side of Norway Valley. We know that his body grew lighter, less substantial, cloudy. That it grew vague and translucent. We can suppose that before his body attained transparency, Jack entered a certain nourishing dream. And in that dream, we may suppose, a sky of robin’s egg blue suggests an infinity of space to the inhabitants of a handsome residential property on Roxbury Drive, Beverly Hills, wherein Jacky is six, six, six, or twelve, twelve, twelve, or both at the same time, and Daddy played cool changes on his horn, horn, horn. (â€Å"Darn That Dream,† Henry Shake could tell you, is the last song on Daddy Plays the Horn, by Dexter Gordon a daddy-o if there ever was.) In that dream, everyone went on a journey and no one went anywhere else, and a traveling boy captured a most marvelous prize, and Lily Cavanaugh Sawy er captured a bumblebee in a glass. Smiling, she carried it to the swinging doors and launched it into the upper air. So the bumblebee traveled far and away to Faraway, and as it journeyed worlds upon worlds on their mysterious courses trembled and swayed, and Jack, too, journeyed on his own mysterious course into the infinite robin’s-egg blue and, in the bee’s accurate wake, returned to the Territories, where he lay sleeping in a silent field. So in that same darned dream, Jack Sawyer, a person younger than twelve and older than thirty, stunned by both grief and love, is visited in his sleep by a certain woman of tender regard. And she lies down beside him on his bed of sweet grass and takes him in her arms and his grateful body knows the bliss of her touch, her kiss, her deep blessing. What they do, alone in the faraway Territories, is none of our business, but we compound Sophie’s blessing with our own and leave them to what is after all, with the gentlest po ssible urgency, their business, which blesses this boy and this girl, this man and this woman, this dear couple, as nothing else can, certainly not us. Return comes as it should, with the clean, rich smells of topsoil and corn, and a rooster’s alarm-clock crowing from the Gilbertson cousins’ farm. A spiderweb shining with dew stitches the loafer on Jack’s left foot to a mossy rock. An ant trundling across Jack’s right wrist carries a blade of grass bearing in the V of its central fold a bright and trembling drop of newly made water. Feeling as wondrously refreshed as if he, too, were newly created, Jack eases the hardworking ant off his wrist, separates his shoe from the spiderweb, and gets to his feet. Dew sparkles in his hair and his eyebrows. Half a mile back across the field, Henry’s meadow curves around Henry’s house. Tiger lilies shiver in the cool morning breeze. Tiger lilies shiver . . . When he sees the hood of his pickup nosing out from behind the house, everything comes back to him. Mouse, and the word given him by Mouse. Henry’s house, Henry’s studio, his dying message. By this time, all the police and investigators will have gone, and the house will be empty, echoing with bloodstains. Dale Gilbertson and probably Troopers Brown and Black will be looking for him. Jack has no interest in the troopers, but he does want to talk to Dale. It is time to let Dale in on some startling facts. What Jack has to say to Dale is going to peel his eyelids back, but we should remember what the Duke told Dean Martin about the whisking of eggs and the making of omelettes. In the words of Lily Cavanaugh, when the Duke spoke up, ever’-dang-body lissened up, and so must Dale Gilbertson, for Jack wants his faithful and resolute company on the journey through Black House. Walking past the side of Henry’s house, Jack puts the tips of his fingers to his lips and brushes them against the wood, transferring the kiss. Henry. For all the worlds, for Tyler Marshall, for Judy, for Sophie, and for you, Henry Leyden. The cell phone in the cab of the Ram claims to have three saved messages, all from Dale, which he deletes unheard. At home, the answering machine’s red light blinks 4-4-4, repeating itself with the ruthless insistence of a hungry infant. Jack pushes PLAYBACK. Four times, an increasingly unhappy Dale Gilbertson begs to know the whereabouts of his friend Jack Sawyer and communicates his great desire to converse with the same gentleman, largely in reference to the murder of his uncle and their friend, Henry, but it wouldn’t hurt to talk about the goddamn slaughter at Maxton’s, would it? And does the name Charles Burnside ring any bells? Jack looks at his watch and, thinking that it cannot be correct, glances up at the clock in his kitchen. His watch was right after all. It is 5:42 A.M., and the rooster is still crowing behind Randy and Kent Gilbert-son’s barn. Tiredness suddenly washes through him, heavier than gravity. Someone is undoubtedly manning the telephone on Sumner Street, but Dale is just as certainly asleep in his bed, and Jack wishes to speak only to Dale. He yawns hugely, like a cat. The newspaper hasn’t even been delivered yet! He removes his jacket and tosses it onto a chair, then yawns again, even more widely than before. Maybe that cornfield was not so comfortable after all: Jack’s neck feels pinched, and his back aches. He pulls himself up the staircase, shucks his clothes onto a love seat in his bedroom, and flops into bed. On the wall above the love seat hangs his sunny little Fairfield Porter painting, and Jack remembers how Dale responded to it, the night they uncrated and put up all the paintings. He had loved that picture the moment he saw it it had probably been news to Dale that he could find such satisfaction in a painting. All right, Jack thinks, if we manage to get out of Black House alive, I’ll give it to him. And I’ll make him take it: I’ll threaten to chop it up and burn it in the wood-stove if he doesn’t. I’ll tell him I’ll give it to Wendell Green! His eyes are already closing; he sinks into the bedclothes and disappears, although this time not literally, from our world. He dreams. He walks down a tricky, descending forest path toward a burning building. Beasts and monsters writhe and bellow on both sides, mostly unseen but now and then flicking out a gnarled hand, a spiky tail, a black, skeletal wing. These he severs with a heavy sword. His arm aches, and his entire body feels weary and sore. Somewhere he is bleeding, but he cannot see or feel the wound, merely the slow movement of blood running down the backs of his legs. The people who were with him at the start of his journey are all dead, and he is he may be dying. He wishes he were not so alone, for he is terrified. The burning building grows taller and taller as he approaches. Screams and cries come from it, and around it lies a grotesque perimeter of dead, blackened trees and smoking ashes. This perimeter widens with every second, as if the building is devouring all of nature, one foot at a time. Everything is lost, and the burning building and the soulless creature who is both its master and its prisoner will triumph, blasted world without end, amen. Din-tah, the great furnace, eating all in its path. The trees on his right side bend and contort their complaining branches, and a great stirring takes place in the dark, sharply pointed leaves. Groaning, the huge trunks bow, and the branches twine like snakes about one another, bringing into being a solid wall of gray, pointed leaves. From that wall emerges, with terrible slowness, the impression of a gaunt, bony face. Five feet tall from crown to chin, the face bulges out against the layer of leaves, weaving from side to side in search of Jack. It is everything that has ever terrified him, injured him, wished him ill, either in this world or the Territories. The huge face vaguely resembles a human monster named Elroy who once tried to rape Jack in a wretched bar called the Oatley Tap, then it suggests Morgan of Orris, then Sunlight Gardener, then Charles Burnside, but as it continues its blind seeking from side to side, it suggests all of these malign faces layered on top of one another and melting into one. Utter fear turns Jack to stone. The face bulging out of the massed leaves searches the downward path, then swings back and ceases its constant, flickering movement from side to side. It is pointed directly at him. The blind eyes see him, the nose without nostrils smells him. A quiver of pleasure runs through the leaves, and the face looms forward, getting larger and larger. Unable to move, Jack looks back over his shoulder to see a putrefying man prop himself up in a narrow bed. The man opens his mouth and shouts, â€Å"D’YAMBA!† Heart thrashing in his chest, a shout dying before it leaves his throat, Jack vaults from his bed and lands on his feet before he quite realizes that he has awakened from a dream. His entire body seems to be trembling. Sweat runs down his forehead and dampens his chest. Gradually, the trembling ceases as he takes in what is really around him: not a giant face looming from an ugly wall of leaves but the familiar confines of his bedroom. Hanging on the wall opposite is a painting he intends to give to Dale Gilbertson. He wipes his face, he calms down. He needs a shower. His watch tells him that it is now 9:47 A.M. He has slept four hours, and it is time to get organized. Forty-five minutes later, cleaned up, dressed, and fed, Jack calls the police station and asks to speak to Chief Gilbertson. At 11:25, he and a dubious, newly educated Dale a Dale who badly wants to see some evidence of his friend’s crazy tale leave the chief’s car parked beneath the single tree in the Sand Bar’s lot and walk across the hot asphalt past two leaning Harleys and toward the rear entrance. How to cite Black House Chapter Twenty-five, Essay examples