Black House Chapter Fifteen

15 BY EVENING, the temperature has dropped fifteen degrees as a minor cold front pushes through our little patch of the Coulee Country. There are no thunderstorms, but as the sky tinges toward violet, the fog arrives. It's born out of the river and rises up the inclined ramp of Chase Street, first obscuring the gutters, then the sidewalks, then blurring the buildings themselves. It cannot completely hide them, as the fogs of spring and winter sometimes do, but the blurring is somehow worse: it steals colors and softens shapes. The fog makes the ordinary look alien. And there's the smell, the ancient, seagully odor that works deep into your nose and awakens the back part of your brain, the part that is perfectly capable of believing in monsters when the sight lines shorten and the heart is uneasy. On Sumner Street, Debbi Anderson is still working dispatch. Arnold â€Å"the Mad Hungarian† Hrabowski has been sent home without his badge in fact, suspended and feels he must ask his wife a few pointed questions (his belief that he already knows the answers makes him even more heartsick). Debbi is now standing at the window, a cup of coffee in her hand and a puckery little frown on her face. â€Å"Don't like this,† she says to Bobby Dulac, who is glumly and silently writing reports. â€Å"It reminds me of the Hammer pictures I used to watch on TV back when I was in junior high.† â€Å"Hammer pictures?† Bobby asks, looking up. â€Å"Horror pictures,† she says, looking out into the deepening fog. â€Å"A lot of them were about Dracula. Also Jack the Ripper.† â€Å"I don't want to hear nothing about Jack the Ripper,† Bobby says. â€Å"You mind me, Debster.† And resumes writing. In the parking lot of the 7-Eleven, Mr. Rajan Patel stands beside his telephone (still crisscrossed by yellow police tape, and when it will be all right again for using, this Mr. Patel could not be telling us). He looks toward downtown, which now seems to rise from a vast bowl of cream. The buildings on Chase Street descend into this bowl. Those at Chase's lowest point are visible only from the second story up. â€Å"If he is down there,† Mr. Patel says softly, and to no one but himself, â€Å"tonight he will be doing whatever he wants.† He crosses his arms over his chest and shivers. Dale Gilbertson is at home, for a wonder. He plans to have a sit-down dinner with his wife and child even if the world ends because of it. He comes out of his den (where he has spent twenty minutes talking with WSP officer Jeff Black, a conversation in which he has had to exercise all his discipline to keep from shouting), and sees his wife standing at the window and looking out. Her posture is almost exactly the same as Debbi Anderson's, only she's got a glass of wine in her hand instead of a cup of coffee. The puckery little frown is identical. â€Å"River fog,† Sarah says dismally. â€Å"Isn't that ducky. If he's out there â€Å" Dale points at her. â€Å"Don't say it. Don't even think it.† But he knows that neither of them can help thinking about it. The streets of French Landing the foggy streets of French Landing will be deserted right now: no one shopping in the stores, no one idling along the sidewalks, no one in the parks. Especially no children. The parents will be keeping them in. Even on Nailhouse Row, where good parenting is the exception rather than the rule, the parents will be keeping their kids inside. â€Å"I won't say it,† she allows. â€Å"That much I can do.† â€Å"What's for dinner?† â€Å"How does chicken pot pie sound?† Ordinarily such a hot dish on a July evening would strike him as an awful choice, but tonight, with the fog coming in, it sounds like just the thing. He steps up behind her, gives her a brief squeeze, and says, â€Å"Great. And earlier would be better.† She turns, disappointed. â€Å"Going back in?† â€Å"I shouldn't have to, not with Brown and Black rolling the ball â€Å" â€Å"Those pricks,† she says. â€Å"I never liked them.† Dale smiles. He knows that the former Sarah Asbury has never cared much for the way he earns his living, and this makes her furious loyalty all the more touching. And tonight it feels vital, as well. It's been the most painful day of his career in law enforcement, ending with the suspension of Arnold Hrabowski. Arnie, Dale knows, believes he will be back on duty before long. And the shitty truth is that Arnie may be right. Based on the way things are going, Dale may need even such an exquisite example of ineptitude as the Mad Hungarian. â€Å"Anyway, I shouldn't have to go back in, but . . .† â€Å"You have a feeling.† â€Å"I do.† â€Å"Good or bad?† She has come to respect her husband's intuitions, not in the least because of Dale's intense desire to see Jack Sawyer settled close enough to reach with seven keystrokes instead of eleven. Tonight that looks to her like pardon the pun a pretty good call. â€Å"Both,† Dale says, and then, without explaining or giving Sarah a chance to question further: â€Å"Where's Dave?† â€Å"At the kitchen table with his crayons.† At six, young David Gilbertson is enjoying a violent love affair with Crayolas, has gone through two boxes since school let out. Dale and Sarah's strong hope, expressed even to each other only at night, lying side by side before sleep, is that they may be raising a real artist. The next Norman Rockwell, Sarah said once. Dale who helped Jack Sawyer hang his strange and wonderful pictures has higher hopes for the boy. Too high to express, really, even in the marriage bed after the lights are out. With his own glass of wine in hand, Dale ambles out to the kitchen. â€Å"What you drawing, Dave? What â€Å" He stops. The crayons have been abandoned. The picture a half-finished drawing of what might be either a flying saucer or perhaps just a round coffee table has also been abandoned. The back door is open. Looking out at the whiteness that hides David's swing and jungle gym, Dale feels a terrible fear leap up his throat, choking him. All at once he can smell Irma Freneau again, that terrible smell of raw spoiled meat. Any sense that his family lives in a protected, magic circle it may happen to others, but it can never, never happen to us is gone now. What has replaced it is stark certainty: David is gone. The Fisherman has enticed him out of the house and spirited him away into the fog. Dale can see the grin on the Fisherman's face. He can see the gloved hand it's yellow covering his son's mouth but not the bulging, terrified child's eyes. Into the fog and out of the known world. David. He moves forward across the kitchen on legs that feel boneless as well as nerveless. He puts his wineglass down on the table, the stem landing a-tilt on a crayon, not noticing when it spills and covers David's half-finished drawing with something that looks horribly like venous blood. He's out the door, and although he means to yell, his voice comes out in a weak and almost strengthless sigh: â€Å"David? . . . Dave?† For a moment that seems to last a thousand years, there is nothing. Then he hears the soft thud of running feet on damp grass. Blue jeans and a red-striped rugby shirt materialize out of the thickening soup. A moment later he sees his son's dear, grinning face and mop of yellow hair. â€Å"Dad! Daddy! I was swinging in the fog! It was like being in a cloud!† Dale snatches him up. There is a bad, blinding impulse to slap the kid across the face, to hurt him for scaring his father so. It passes as quickly as it came. He kisses David instead. â€Å"I know,† he says. â€Å"That must have been fun, but it's time to come in now.† â€Å"Why, Daddy?† â€Å"Because sometimes little boys get lost in the fog,† he says, looking out into the white yard. He can see the patio table, but it is only a ghost; he wouldn't know what he was looking at if he hadn't seen it a thousand times. He kisses his son again. â€Å"Sometimes little boys get lost,† he repeats. Oh, we could check in with any number of friends, both old and new. Jack and Fred Marshall have returned from Arden (neither suggested stopping at Gertie's Kitchen in Centralia when they passed it), and both are now in their otherwise deserted houses. For the balance of the ride back to French Landing, Fred never once let go of his son's baseball cap, and he has a hand on it even now, as he eats a microwaved TV dinner in his too empty living room and watches Action News Five. Tonight's news is mostly about Irma Freneau, of course. Fred picks up the remote when they switch from shaky-cam footage of Ed's Eats to a taped report from the Holiday Trailer Park. The cameraman has focused on one shabby trailer in particular. A few flowers, brave but doomed, straggle in the dust by the stoop, which consists of three boards laid across two cement blocks. â€Å"Here, on the outskirts of French Landing, Irma Freneau's grieving mother is in seclusion,† says the on-scene correspondent. â€Å"One can only imagine this single mother's feelings tonight.† The reporter is prettier than Wendell Green but exudes much the same aura of glittering, unhealthy excitement. Fred hits the OFF button on the remote and growls, â€Å"Why can't you leave the poor woman alone?† He looks down at his chipped beef on toast, but he has lost his appetite. Slowly, he raises Tyler's hat and puts it on his own head. It doesn't fit, and Fred for a moment thinks of letting out the plastic band at the back. The idea shocks him. Suppose that was all it took to kill his son? That one simple, deadly modification? The idea strikes him as both ridiculous and utterly inarguable. He supposes that if this keeps up, he'll soon be as mad as his wife . . . or Sawyer. Trusting Sawyer is as crazy as thinking he might kill his son by changing the size of the boy's hat . . . and yet he believes in both things. He picks up his fork and begins to eat again, Ty's Brewers cap sitting on his head like Spanky's beanie in an old Our Gang one-reeler. Beezer St. Pierre is sitting on his sofa in his underwear, a book open on his lap (it is, in fact, a book of William Blake's poems) but unread. Bear Girl's asleep in the other room, and he's fighting the urge to bop on down to the Sand Bar and score some crank, his old vice, untouched for going on five years now. Since Amy died, he fights this urge every single day, and lately he wins only by reminding himself that he won't be able to find the Fisherman and punish him as he deserves to be punished if he's fucked up on devil dust. Henry Leyden is in his studio with a huge pair of Akai headphones on his head, listening to Warren Vach? ¦, John Bunch, and Phil Flanigan dreamboat their way through â€Å"I Remember April.† He can smell the fog even through the walls, and to him it smells like the air at Ed's Eats. Like bad death, in other words. He's wondering how Jack made out in good old Ward D at French County Lutheran. And he's thinking about his wife, who lately (especially since the record hop at Maxton's, although he doesn't consciously realize this) seems closer than ever. And unquiet. Yes indeed, all sorts of friends are available for our inspection, but at least one seems to have dropped out of sight. Charles Burnside isn't in the common room at Maxton's (where an old episode of Family Ties is currently running on the ancient color TV bolted to the wall), nor in the dining hall, where snacks are available in the early evening, nor in his own room, where the sheets are currently clean (but where the air still smells vaguely of old shit). What about the bathroom? Nope. Thorvald Thorvaldson has stopped in to have a pee and a handwash, but otherwise the place is empty. One oddity: there's a fuzzy slipper lying on its side in one of the stalls. With its bright black and yellow stripes, it looks like the corpse of a huge dead bumblebee. And yes, it's the stall second from the left. Burny's favorite. Should we look for him? Maybe we should. Maybe not knowing exactly where that rascal is makes us uneasy. Let us slip through the fog, then, silent as a dream, down to lower Chase Street. Here is the Nelson Hotel, its ground floor now submerged in river fog, the ocher stripe marking high water of that ancient flood no more than a whisper of color in the fading light. On one side of it is Wisconsin Shoe, now closed for the day. On the other is Lucky's Tavern, where an old woman with bowlegs (her name is Bertha Van Dusen, if you care) is currently bent over with her hands planted on her large knees, yarking a bellyful of Kingsland Old-Time Lager into the gutter. She makes sounds like a bad driver grinding a manual transmission. In the doorway of the Nelson Hotel itself sits a patient old mongrel, who will wait until Bertha has gone back into the tavern, then slink over to eat the half-digested cocktail franks floating in the beer. From Lucky's comes the tired, twanging voice of the late Dick Curless, Ole Country One-Eye, singing about those Hainesville Woods, where there's a tombstone every mile. The dog gives a single disinterested growl as we pass him and slip into the Nelson's lobby, where moth-eaten heads a wolf, a bear, an elk, and an ancient half-bald bison with a single glass eye look at empty sofas, empty chairs, the elevator that hasn't worked since 1994 or so, and the empty registration desk. (Morty Fine, the clerk, is in the office with his feet propped up on an empty file-cabinet drawer, reading People and picking his nose.) The lobby of the Nelson Hotel always smells of the river it's in the pores of the place but this evening the smell is heavier than usual. It's a smell that makes us think of bad ideas, blown investments, forged checks, deteriorating health, stolen office supplies, unpaid alimony, empty promises, skin tumors, lost ambition, abandoned sample cases filled with cheap novelties, dead hope, dead skin, and fallen arches. This is the kind of place you don't come to unless you've been here before and all your other options are pretty much foreclose d. It's a place where men who left their families two decades before now lie on narrow beds with pee-stained mattresses, coughing and smoking cigarettes. The scuzzy old lounge (where scuzzy old Hoover Dalrymple once held court and knocked heads most every Friday and Saturday night) has been closed by unanimous vote of the town council since early June, when Dale Gilbertson scandalized the local political elite by showing them a video of three traveling strippers who billed themselves as the Anal University Trio, performing a synchronized cucumber routine on the tiny stage (FLPD cameraman: Officer Tom Lund, let's give him a hand), but the Nelson's residents still have only to go next door to get a beer; it's convenient. You pay by the week at the Nelson. You can keep a hot plate in your room, but only by permission and after the cord has been inspected. You can die on a fixed income at the Nelson, and the last sound you hear could well be the creaking of bedsprings over your head as some other helpless old loser jacks off. Let us rise up the first flight, past the old canvas firehose in its glass box. Turn right at the second-floor landing (past the pay phone with its yellowing OUT OF ORDER sign) and continue to rise. When we reach the third floor, the smell of river fog is joined by the smell of chicken soup warming on someone's hot plate (the cord duly approved either by Morty Fine or George Smith, the day manager). The smell is coming from 307. If we slip through the keyhole (there have never been keycards at the Nelson and never will be), we'll be in the presence of Andrew Railsback, seventy, balding, scrawny, good-humored. He once sold vacuum cleaners for Electrolux and appliances for Sylvania, but those days are behind him now. These are his golden years. A candidate for Maxton's, we might think, but Andy Railsback knows that place, and places like it. Not for him, thanks. He's sociable enough, but he doesn't want people telling him when to go to bed, when to get up, and when he can have a little nip of Early Times. He has friends in Maxton's, visits them often, and has from time to time met the sparkling, shallow, predatory eye of our pal Chipper. He has thought on more than one such occasion that Mr. Maxton looks like the sort of fellow who would happily turn the corpses of his graduates into soap if he thought he could turn a buck on it. No, for Andy Railsback, the third floor of the Nelson Hotel is good enough. He has his hot plate; he has his bottle of hooch; he's got four packs of Bicycles and plays big-picture solitaire on nights when the sandman loses his way. This evening he has made three Lipton Cup-A-Soups, thinking he'll invite Irving Throneberry in for a bowl and a chat. Maybe afterward they'll go next door to Lucky's and grab a beer. He checks the soup, sees it has attained a nice simmer, sniffs the fragrant steam, and nods. He also has saltines, which go well with soup. He leaves the room to make his way upstairs and knock on Irv's door, but what he sees in the hallway stops him cold. It's an old man in a shapeless blue robe, walking away from him with suspicious quickness. Beneath the hem of the robe, the stranger's legs are as white as a carp's belly and marked with blue snarls of varicose veins. On his left foot is a fuzzy black-and-yellow slipper. His right foot is bare. Although our new friend can't tell for sure not with the guy's back to him he doesn't look like anyone Andy knows. Also, he's trying doorknobs as he wends his way along the main third-floor hall. He gives each one a single hard, quick shake. Like a turnkey. Or a thief. A fucking thief. Yeah. Although the man is obviously old older than Andy, it looks like and dressed as if for bed, the idea of thievery resonates in Andy's mind with queer certainty. Even the one bare foot, arguing that the fellow probably didn't come in off the street, has no power over this strong intuition. Andy opens his mouth to call out something like Can I help you? or Looking for someone? and then changes his mind. He just has this feeling about the guy. It has to do with the fleet way the stranger scurries along as he tries the knobs, but that's not all of it. Not all of it by any means. It's a feeling of darkness and danger. There are pockets in the geezer's robe, Andy can see them, and there might be a weapon in one of them. Thieves don't always have weapons, but . . . The old guy turns the corner and is gone. Andy stands where he is, considering. If he had a phone in his room, he might call downstairs and alert Morty Fine, but he doesn't. So, what to do? After a brief interior debate, he tiptoes down the hall to the corner and peeps around. Here is a cul-de-sac with three doors: 312, 313, and, at the very end, 314, the only room in that little appendix which is currently occupied. The man in 314 has been there since the spring, but almost all Andy knows about him is his name: George Potter. Andy has asked both Irv and Hoover Dalrymple about Potter, but Hoover doesn't know jack-shit and Irv has learned only a little more. â€Å"You must,† Andy objected this conversation took place in late May or early June, around the time the Buckhead Lounge downstairs went dark. â€Å"I seen you in Lucky's with him, havin' a beer.† Irv had lifted one bushy eyebrow in that cynical way of his. â€Å"Seen me havin' a beer with him. What are you?† he'd rasped. â€Å"My fuckin' wife?† â€Å"I'm just saying. You drink a beer with a man, you have a little conversation â€Å" â€Å"Usually, maybe. Not with him. I sat down, bought a pitcher, and mostly got the dubious pleasure of listenin' to myself think. I say, ‘What do you think about the Brewers this year?' and he says, ‘They'll suck, same as last year. I can get the Cubs at night on my rah-dio ‘ â€Å" â€Å"That the way he said it? Rah-dio?† â€Å"Well, it ain't the way I say it, is it? You ever heard me say rah-dio? I say radio, same as any normal person. You want to hear this or not?† â€Å"Don't sound like there's much to hear.† â€Å"You got that right, buddy. He says, ‘I can get the Cubs at night on my rah-dio, and that's enough for me. I always went to Wrigley with my dad when I was a kid.' So I found out he was from Chi, but otherwise, bupkes.† The first thought to pop into Andy's mind upon glimpsing the fucking thief in the third-floor corridor had been Potter, but Mr. George I-Keep-to-Myself Potter is a tall drink of water, maybe six-four, still with a pretty good head of salt-and-pepper hair. Mr. One-Slipper was shorter than that, hunched over like a toad. (A poison toad, at that is the thought that immediately rises in Andy's mind.) He's in there, Andy thinks. Fucking thief's in Potter's room, maybe going through Potter's drawers, looking for a little stash. Fifty or sixty rolled up in the toe of a sock, like I used to do. Or stealing Potter's radio. His fucking rah-dio. Well, and what was that to him? You passed Potter in the hallway, gave him a civil good morning or good afternoon, and what you got back was an uncivil grunt. Bupkes, in other words. You saw him in Lucky's, he was drinking alone, far side of the jukebox. Andy guessed you could sit down with him and he'd split a pitcher with you Irv's little tte-? ¤-tte with the man proved that much but what good was that without a little chin-jaw to go along with it? Why should he, Andrew Railsback, risk the wrath of some poison toad in a bathrobe for the sake of an old grump who wouldn't give you a yes, no, or maybe? Well . . . Because this is his home, cheesy as it might be, that's why. Because when you saw some crazy old one-slipper fuck in search of loose cash or the easily lifted rah-dio, you didn't just turn your back and shuffle away. Because the bad feeling he got from the scurrying old elf (the bad vibe, his grandchildren would have said) was probably nothing but a case of the chickenshits. Because Suddenly Andy Railsback has an intuition that, while not a direct hit, is at least adjacent to the truth. Suppose it is a guy from off the street? Suppose it's one of the old guys from Maxton Elder Care? It's not that far away, and he knows for a fact that from time to time an old feller (or old gal) will get mixed up in his (or her) head and wander off the reservation. Under ordinary circumstances that person would be spotted and hauled back long before getting this far downtown kind of hard to miss on the street in an institutional robe and single slipper but this evening the fog has come in and the streets are all but deserted. Look at you, Andy berates himself. Scared half to death of a feller that's probably got ten years on you and peanut butter for brains. Wandered in here past the empty desk not a chance in the goddamn world Fine's out front; he'll be in back reading a magazine or a stroke book and now he's looking for his room back at Maxton's, trying every knob on the goddamn corridor, no more idea of where he is than a squirrel on a freeway ramp. Potter's probably having a beer next door (this, at least, turns out to be true) and left his door unlocked (this, we may be assured, is not). And although he's still frightened, Andy comes all the way around the corner and walks slowly toward the open door. His heart is beating fast, because half his mind is still convinced the old man is maybe dangerous. There was, after all, that bad feeling he got just from looking at the stranger's back But he goes. God help him, he does. â€Å"Mister?† he calls when he reaches the open door. â€Å"Hey, mister, I think you got the wrong room. That's Mr. Potter's room. Don't you â€Å" He stops. No sense talking, because the room is empty. How is that possible? Andy steps back and tries the knobs of 312 and 313. Both locked up tight, as he knew they would be. With that ascertained, he steps into George Potter's room and has a good look around curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought him back. Potter's digs are a little larger than his, but otherwise not much different: it's a box with a high ceiling (they made places a man could stand up in back in the old days, you had to say that much for them). The single bed is sagging in the middle but neatly made. On the night table is a bottle of pills (these turn out to be an anti-depressant called Zoloft) and a single framed picture of a woman. Andy thinks she took a pretty good whopping with the ugly stick, but Potter must see her differently. He has, after all, put the picture in a place where it's the first thing he looks at in the morning and the last thing he sees at night. â€Å"Potter?† Andy asks. â€Å"Anyone? Hello?† He is suddenly overcome with a sense of someone standing behind him and whirls around, lips drawn back from his dentures in a grinning snarl that is half a cringe. One hand comes up to shield his face from the blow he is suddenly certain will fall . . . only there's no one there. Is he lurking behind the corner at the end of this short addendum to the main corridor? No. Andy saw the stranger go scurrying around that corner. No way he could have gotten behind him again . . . unless he crawled along the ceiling like some kind of fly . . . Andy looks up there, knowing he's being absurd, giving in to the whim-whams big time, but there's no one here to see him, so what the hey? And nothing for him to see overhead, either. Just an ordinary tin ceiling, now yellowed by age and decades of cigar and cigarette smoke. The radio oh, excuse me all to hell, rah-dio is sitting on the win-dowsill, unmolested. Damn fine one, too, a Bose, the kind Paul Harvey always talks about on his noon show. Beyond it, on the other side of the dirty glass, is the fire escape. Ah-hah! Andy thinks, and hurries across to the window. One look at the turned thumb lock and his triumphant expression fades. He peers out just the same, and sees a short stretch of wet black iron descending into the fog. No blue robe, no scaly bald pate. Of course not. The knob shaker didn't go out that way unless he had some magic trick to move the window's inside thumb lock back into place once he was on the fire escape landing. Andy turns, stands where he is a moment, thinking, then drops to his knees and looks under the bed. What he sees is an old tin ashtray with an unopened pack of Pall Malls and a Kingsland Old-Time Lager disposable lighter in it. Nothing else except dust kittens. He puts his hand on the coverlet preparatory to standing up, and his eyes fix on the closet door. It's standing ajar. â€Å"There,† Andy breathes, almost too low for his own ears to hear. He gets up and crosses to the closet door. The fog may or may not come in on little cat feet, as Carl Sandburg said, but that is certainly how Andy Railsback moves across George Potter's room. His heart is beating hard again, hard enough to start the prominent vein in the center of his forehead pulsing. The man he saw is in the closet. Logic demands it. Intuition screams it. And if the doorknob shaker's just a confused old soul who wandered into the Nelson Hotel out of the fog, why hasn't he spoken to Andy? Why has he concealed himself ? Because he may be old but he's not confused, that's why. No more confused than Andy is himself. The doorknob shaker's a fucking thief, and he's in the closet. He's maybe holding a knife that he has taken from the pocket of his tatty old robe. Maybe a coat hanger that he's unwound and turned into a weapon. Maybe he's just standing there in the dark, eyes wide, fingers hooked into claws. Andy no longer cares. You can scare him, you bet he's a retired salesman, not Superman but if you load enough tension on top of fright you turn it into anger, same as enough pressure turns coal into a diamond. And right now Andy is more pissed off than scared. He closes his fingers around the cool glass knob of the closet door. He squeezes down on it. He takes one breath . . . a second . . . steeling himself, getting ready . . . psyching himself up, the grandkids would say . . . one more breath, just for good luck, and . . . With a low, stressful sound half growl and half howl Andy yanks the closet door wide, setting off a chatter of hangers. He crouches, hands up in fists, looking like some ancient sparring partner from the Gym Time Forgot. â€Å"Come outta there, you fucking â€Å" No one there. Four shirts, one jacket, two ties, and three pairs of pants hanging like dead skin. A battered old suitcase that looks as if it has been kicked through every Greyhound Bus terminal in North America. Nothing else. Not a goddamn th But there is. There's something on the floor beneath the shirts. Several somethings. Almost half a dozen somethings. At first Andy Rails-back either doesn't understand what he's seeing or doesn't want to understand. Then it gets through to him, imprints itself on his mind and memory like a hoofprint, and he tries to scream. He can't. He tries again and nothing comes out but a rusty wheeze from lungs that feel no larger than old prune skins. He tries to turn around and can't do that, either. He is sure George Potter is coming, and if Potter finds him here, Andy's life will end. He has seen something George Potter can never allow him to talk about. But he can't turn. Can't scream. Can't take his eyes from the secret in George Potter's closet. Can't move. Because of the fog, nearly full dark has arrived in French Landing unnaturally early; it's barely six-thirty. The blurry yellow lights of Maxton Elder Care look like the lights of a cruise ship lying becalmed at sea. In Daisy wing, home of the wonderful Alice Weathers and the far less wonderful Charles Burnside, Pete Wexler and Butch Yerxa have both gone home for the day. A broad-shouldered, peroxide blonde named Vera Hutchinson is now on the desk. In front of her is a book entitled E-Z Minute Crosswords. She is currently puzzling over 6 Across: Garfield, for example. Six letters, first is F, third is L, sixth is E. She hates these tricky ones. There's the swoosh of a bathroom door opening. She looks up and sees Charles Burnside come shuffling out of the men's in his blue robe and a pair of yellow-and-black striped slippers that look like great fuzzy bumblebees. She recognizes them at once. â€Å"Charlie?† she asks, putting her pencil in her crossword book and closing it. Charlie just goes shuffling along, jaw hanging down, a long runner of drool also hanging down. But he has an unpleasant half grin on his face that Vera doesn't care for. This one may have lost most of his marbles, but the few left in his head are mean marbles. Sometimes she knows that Charlie Burnside genuinely doesn't hear her when she speaks (or doesn't understand her), but she's positive that sometimes he just pretends not to understand. She has an idea this is one of the latter times. â€Å"Charlie, what are you doing wearing Elmer's bee slippers? You know his great-granddaughter gave those to him.† The old man Burny to us, Charlie to Vera just goes shuffling along, in a direction that will eventually take him back to D18. Assuming he stays on course, that is. â€Å"Charlie, stop.† Charlie stops. He stands at the head of Daisy's corridor like a machine that has been turned off. His jaw hangs. The string of drool snaps, and all at once there's a little wet spot on the linoleum beside one of those absurd but amusing slippers. Vera gets up, goes to him, kneels down before him. If she knew what we know, she'd probably be a lot less willing to put her defenseless white neck within reach of those hanging hands, which are twisted by arthritis but still powerful. But of course she does not. She grasps the left bee slipper. â€Å"Lift,† she says. Charles Burnside lifts his right foot. â€Å"Oh, quit being such a turkey,† she says. â€Å"Other one.† Burny lifts his left foot a little, just enough for her to get the slipper off. â€Å"Now the right one.† Unseen by Vera, who is looking at his feet, Burny pulls his penis from the fly of his loose pajama pants and pretends to piss on Vera's bowed head. His grin widens. At the same time, he lifts his right foot and she removes the other slipper. When she looks back up, Burny's wrinkled old tool is back where it belongs. He considered baptizing her, he really did, but he has created almost enough mischief for one evening. One more little chore and he'll be off to the land of dreamy dreams. He's an old monster now. He needs his rest. â€Å"All right,† Vera says. â€Å"Want to tell me why one of these is dirtier than the other?† No answer. She hasn't really expected one. â€Å"Okay, beautiful. Back to your room or down to the common room, if you want. There's microwave popcorn and Jell-O pops tonight, I think. They're showing The Sound of Music. I'll see that these slippers get back to where they belong, and you taking them will be our little secret. Take them again and I'll have to report you, though. Capisce?† Burny just stands there, vacant . . . but with that nasty little grin lifting his wrinkled old chops. And that light in his eyes. He capisces, all right. â€Å"Go on,† Vera says. â€Å"And you better not have dropped a load on the floor in there, you old buzzard.† Again she expects no reply, but this time she gets one. Burny's voice is low but perfectly clear. â€Å"Keep a civil tongue, you fat bitch, or I'll eat it right out of your head.† She recoils as if slapped. Burny stands there with his hands dangling and that little grin on his face. â€Å"Get out of here,† she says. â€Å"Or I really will report you.† And a great lot of good that would do. Charlie is one of Maxton's cash cows, and Vera knows it. Charlie recommences his slow walk (Pete Wexler has dubbed this particular gait the Old Fucks' Shuffle), now in his bare feet. Then he turns back. The bleary lamps of his eyes regard her. â€Å"The word you're looking for is feline. Garfield's a feline. Got it? Stupid cow.† With that he continues his trip down the corridor. Vera stands where she is, looking at him with her own jaw hanging. She has forgotten all about her crossword puzzle. In his room, Burny lies down on his bed and slips his hands into the small of his back. From there down he aches like a bugger. Later he will buzz for the fat old bitch, get her to bring him an ibuprofen. For now, though, he has to stay sharp. One more little trick still to do. â€Å"Found you, Potter,† he murmurs. â€Å"Good . . . old . . . Potsie.† Burny hadn't been shaking doorknobs at all (not that Andy Railsback will ever know this). He had been feeling for the fellow who diddled him out of a sweet little Chicago housing deal back in the late seventies. South Side, home of the White Sox. Blacktown, in other words. Lots of federal money in that one, and several bushels of Illinois dough as well. Enough skim available to last for years, more angles than on a baseball field, but George â€Å"Go Fuck Your Mother† Potter had gotten there first, cash had changed hands beneath the proverbial table, and Charles Burn-side (or perhaps then he'd still been Carl Bierstone; it's hard to remember) had been out in the cold. But Burny has kept track of the thief for lo these many years. (Well, not Burny himself, actually, but as we must by now have realized, this is a man with powerful friends.) Old Potsie what his friends called him in the days when he still had a few declared bankruptcy in La Riviere back in the nineties, and lost most of what he still had hidden away during the Great Dot-Com Wreck of Double Aught. But that's not good enough for Burny. Potsie requires further punishment, and the coincidence of that particular fuckhead washing up in this particular fuckhole of a town is just too good to pass up. Burny's principal motive a brainless desire to keep stirring the pot, to make sure bad goes to worse hasn't changed, but this will serve that purpose, too. So he traveled to the Nelson, doing so in a way Jack understands and Judy Marshall has intuited, homing in on Potsie's room like some ancient bat. And when he sensed Andy Railsback behind him, he was of course delighted. Railsback will save him having to make another anonymous call, and Burny is, in truth, getting tired of doing all their work for them. Now, back in his room, all comfy-cozy (except for the arthritis, that is), he turns his mind away from George Potter, and begins to Summon. Looking up into the dark, Charles Burnside's eyes begin to glow in a distinctly unsettling way. â€Å"Gorg,† he says. â€Å"Gorg t'eelee. Dinnit a abbalah. Samman Tansy. Samman a montah a Irma. Dinnit a abbalah, Gorg. Dinnit a Ram Abbalah.† Gorg. Gorg, come. Serve the abbalah. Find Tansy. Find the mother of Irma. Serve the abbalah, Gorg. Serve the Crimson King. Burny's eyes slip closed. He goes to sleep with a smile on his face. And beneath their wrinkled lids, his eyes continue to glow like hooded lamps. Morty Fine, the night manager of the Nelson Hotel, is half-asleep over his magazine when Andy Railsback comes bursting in, startling him so badly that Morty almost tumbles out of his chair. His magazine falls to the floor with a flat slap. â€Å"Jesus Christ, Andy, you almost gave me a heart attack!† Morty cries. â€Å"You ever hear of knocking, or at least clearing your goddam throat?† Andy takes no notice, and Morty realizes the old fella is as white as a sheet. Maybe he's the one having the heart attack. It wouldn't be the first time one occurred in the Nelson. â€Å"You gotta call the police,† Andy says. â€Å"They're horrible. Dear Jesus, Morty, they're the most horrible pictures I ever saw . . . Polaroids . . . and oh man, I thought he was going to come back in . . . come back in any second . . . but at first I was just froze, and I . . . I . . .† â€Å"Slow down,† Morty says, concerned. â€Å"What are you talking about?† Andy takes a deep breath and makes a visible effort to get himself under control. â€Å"Have you seen Potter?† he asks. â€Å"The guy in 314?† â€Å"Nope,† Morty says, â€Å"but most nights he's in Lucky's around this time, having a few beers and maybe a hamburger. Although why anybody would eat anything in that place, I don't know.† Then, perhaps associating one ptomaine palace with another: â€Å"Hey, have you heard what the cops found out at Ed's Eats? Trevor Gordon was by and he said â€Å" â€Å"Never mind.† Andy sits in the chair on the other side of the desk and stares at Morty with wet, terrified eyes. â€Å"Call the police. Do it right now. Tell them that the Fisherman is a man named George Potter, and he lives on the third floor of the Nelson Hotel.† Andy's face tightens in a hard grimace, then relaxes again. â€Å"Right down the hall from yours truly.† â€Å"Potter? You're dreaming, Andy. That guy's nothing but a retired builder. Wouldn't hurt a fly.† â€Å"I don't know about flies, but he hurt the hell out of some little kids. I seen the Polaroids he took of them. They're in his closet. They're the worst things you ever saw.† Then Andy does something that amazes Morty and convinces him that this isn't a joke, and probably not just a mistake, either: Andy Railsback begins to cry. Tansy Freneau, a.k.a. Irma Freneau's grieving mother, is not actually grieving yet. She knows she should be, but grief has been deferred. Right now she feels as if she is floating in a cloud of warm bright wool. The doctor (Pat Skarda's associate, Norma Whitestone) gave her five milligrams of lorazepam four or five hours ago, but that's only the start. The Holiday Trailer Park, where Tansy and Irma have lived since Cubby Freneau took off for Green Bay in ninety-eight, is handy to the Sand Bar, and she has a part-time â€Å"thing† going with Lester Moon, one of the bartenders. The Thunder Five has dubbed Lester Moon â€Å"Stinky Cheese† for some reason, but Tansy unfailingly calls him Lester, which he appreciates almost as much as the occasional boozy grapple in Tansy's bedroom or out back of the Bar, where there's a mattress (and a black light) in the storeroom. Around five this evening, Lester ran over with a quart of coffee brandy and four hundred milligrams of OxyCon tin, all considerately crushed and ready for snorting. Tansy has done half a dozen lines already, and she is cruising. Looking over old pictures of Irma and just . . . you know . . . cruising. What a pretty baby she was, Tansy thinks, unaware that not far away, a horrified hotel clerk is looking at a very different picture of her pretty baby, a nightmare Polaroid he will never be able to forget. It is a picture Tansy herself will never have to look at, suggesting that perhaps there is a God in heaven. She turns a page (GOLDEN MEMORIES has been stamped on the front of her scrapbook), and here are Tansy and Irma at the Mississippi Electrix company picnic, back when Irma was four and Mississippi Electrix was still a year away from bankruptcy and everything was more or less all right. In the photo, Irma is wading with a bunch of other tykes, her laughing face smeared with chocolate ice cream. Looking fixedly at this snapshot, Tansy reaches for her glass of coffee brandy and takes a small sip. And suddenly, from nowhere (or the place from which all our more ominous and unconnected thoughts float out into the light of our regard), she finds herself remembering that stupid Edgar Allan Poe poem they had to memorize in the ninth grade. She hasn't thought of it in years and has no reason to now, but the words of the opening stanza rise effortlessly and perfectly in her mind. Looking at Irma, she recites them aloud in a toneless, pauseless voice that no doubt would have caused Mrs. Normandie to clutch her stringy white hair and groan. Tansy's recitation doesn't affect us that way; instead it gives us a deep and abiding chill. It is like listening to a poetry reading given by a corpse. â€Å"Once upon a mih'nigh' dreary while I ponnered weak ‘n' weary over many a quaint ‘n' curris volume of forgotten lore while I nodded nearly nappin' sun'ly there came a tappin' as of someone gen'ly rappin' rappin' at my chamber door â€Å" At this precise moment there comes a soft rapping at the cheap fiber-board door of Tansy Freneau's Airstream. She looks up, eyes floating, lips pursed and glossed with coffee brandy. â€Å"Les'ser? Is that you?† It might be, she supposes. Not the TV people, at least she hopes not. She wouldn't talk to the TV people, sent them packing. She knows, in some deep and sadly cunning part of her mind, that they would lull her and comfort her only to make her look stupid in the glare of their lights, the way that the people on the Jerry Springer Show always end up looking stupid. No answer . . . and then it comes again. Tap. Tap-tap. â€Å"‘Tis some visitor,† she says, getting up. It's like getting up in a dream. â€Å"‘Tis some visitor, I murmured, tappin' at my chamber door, only this ‘n' nothin' more.† Tap. Tap-tap. Not like curled knuckles. It's a thinner sound than that. A sound like a single fingernail. Or a beak. She crosses the room in her haze of drugs and brandy, bare feet whispering on carpet that was once nubbly and is now balding: the ex-mother. She opens the door onto this foggy summer evening and sees nothing, because she's looking too high. Then something on the welcome mat rustles. Something, some black thing, is looking up at her with bright, inquiring eyes. It's a raven, omigod it's Poe's raven, come to pay her a visit. â€Å"Jesus, I'm trippin',† Tansy says, and runs her hands through her thin hair. â€Å"Jesus!† repeats the crow on the welcome mat. And then, chipper as a chickadee: â€Å"Gorg!† If asked, Tansy would have said she was too stoned to be frightened, but this is apparently not so, because she gives out a disconcerted little cry and takes a step backward. The crow hops briskly across the doorsill and strides onto the faded purple carpet, still looking up at her with its bright eyes. Its feathers glisten with condensed drops of mist. It bops on past her, then pauses to preen and fluff. It looks around as if to ask, How'm I doin', sweetheart? â€Å"Go away,† Tansy says. â€Å"I don't know what the fuck you are, or if you're here at all, but â€Å" â€Å"Gorg!† the crow insists, then spreads its wings and fleets across the trailer's living room, a charred fleck burnt off the back of the night. Tansy screams and cringes, instinctively shielding her face, but Gorg doesn't come near her. It alights on the table beside her bottle, there not being any bust of Pallas handy. Tansy thinks: It got disoriented in the fog, that's all. It could even be rabid, or have that Key Lime disease, whatever you call it. I ought to go in the kitchen and get the broom. Shoo it out before it shits around . . . But the kitchen is too far. In her current state, the kitchen seems hundreds of miles away, somewhere in the vicinity of Colorado Springs. And there's probably no crow here at all. Thinking of that goddamn poem has caused her to hallucinate, that's all . . . that, and losing her daughter. For the first time the pain gets through the haze, and Tansy winces from its cruel and wiry heat. She remembers the little hands that sometimes pressed so tidily against the sides of her neck. The cries in the night, summoning her from sleep. The smell of her, fresh from the bath. â€Å"Her name was Irma!† she suddenly shouts at the figment standing so boldly beside the brandy bottle. â€Å"Irma, not fucking Lenore, what kind of stupid name is Lenore? Let's hear you say Irma!† â€Å"Irma!† the visitor croaks obediently, stunning her to silence. And its eyes. Ah! Its glittering eyes draw her, like the eyes of the Ancient Mariner in that other poem she was supposed to learn but never did. â€Å"Irma-Irma-Irma-Irma â€Å" â€Å"Stop it!† She doesn't want to hear it after all. She was wrong. Her daughter's name out of that alien throat is foul, insupportable. She wants to put her hands over her ears and can't. They're too heavy. Her hands have joined the stove and the refrigerator (miserable half-busted thing) in Colorado Springs. All she can do is look into those glittering black eyes. It preens for her, ruffling its ebony sateen feathers. They make a loathsome little scuttering noise all up and down its back and she thinks, â€Å"Prophet!† said I, â€Å"thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil!† Certainty fills her heart like cold water. â€Å"What do you know?† she asks. â€Å"Why did you come?† â€Å"Know!† croaks the Crow Gorg, nodding its beak briskly up and down. â€Å"Come!† And does it wink? Good God, does it wink at her? â€Å"Who killed her?† Tansy Freneau whispers. â€Å"Who killed my pretty baby?† The crow's eyes fix her, turn her into a bug on a pin. Slowly, feeling more in a dream than ever (but this is happening, on some level she understands that perfectly), she crosses to the table. Still the crow watches her, still the crow draws her on. Night's Plutonian shore, she thinks. Night's Plutonian fuckin' shore. â€Å"Who? Tell me what you know!† The crow looks up at her with its bright black eyes. Its beak opens and closes, revealing a wet red interior in tiny peeks. â€Å"Tansy!† it croaks. â€Å"Come!† The strength runs out of her legs, and she drops to her knees, biting her tongue and making it bleed. Crimson drops splatter her U of W sweatshirt. Now her face is on a level with the bird's face. She can see one of its wings brushing up and down, sensuously, on the glass side of the coffee-brandy bottle. The smell of Gorg is dust and heaped dead flies and ancient urns of buried spice. Its eyes are shining black portholes looking into some other world. Hell, perhaps. Or Sheol. â€Å"Who?† she whispers. Gorg stretches its black and rustling neck until its black beak is actually in the cup of her ear. It begins to whisper, and eventually Tansy Freneau begins to nod. The light of sanity has left her eyes. And when will it return? Oh, I think we all know the answer to that one. Can you say â€Å"Nevermore†?

Make an Ethical Referral

UNIT 2 (COVER SHEET 3) MAKING AN ETHICAL REFERRAL 2. 1 Quite often, a counsellor’s role is to assess and refer clients on to more appropriate help. Sometimes a client needs specialist counselling or a different approach and it is up to the counsellor to make this transition as smooth as possible for the client and to manage the process as sensitively as possible. The counsellor needs to take responsibility for making all arrangements but the client should also be empowered. SOURCES FOR REFERRALIts good practice for a counsellor to keep an up to date file of local and national agencies. A network of personal links is also important as it can help to instil a more human/caring element within a potentially anxiety provoking situation. PROCEDURE: The procedure for referrals differs from agency to agency but possible ways of managing this are: * Contact the agency concerned and find out about referral and appointment procedures. Be clear in your own mind, possibly after conferring with the help-seeker, what information you will pass to the agency in any discussion that arises during a telephone call. Contact the agency by telephone whilst the help-seeker is with you so that you can hand over to him to make the appointment after you have made the initial enquiry. * Write a referral letter to the agency. You could send a copy to the client so that he knows the letter has been sent to the agency. You might consider drafting the referral letter with the client so that he/she agrees the content Whatever the process of referral it is a time of contemplation and reflection for all involved.Confidentiality, boundary issues, supervision and adherence to laws/codes of practice need to be taken into account. 2. 3 When you suggest referral the help-seeker needs to understand that this is not a rejection. Many help-seekers have been passed from pillar to post and despair of genuine help being available, so they may feel cynical and/or rejected. It’s also possible t hat, having shown considerable courage to get this far, they feel daunted by approaching someone else and starting all over again.It is important to explain the reason why the referral is necessary and assure the client that their personal information will be help in confidence. The client also needs to be assured that the referral agency are the best placed to further their progress and ultimately that the referral is valid and necessary. 2. 4 When you engage with a client for a number of sessions you have a choice between an immediate (date/time defined) ending and a phased ending. A phased ending can take different forms: * A planned ‘weaning off’ (longer intervals between sessions) * An open door policy Endings with a follow up some weeks/months later Difficulties that clients may have with endings are: * Client is emotionally upset * Client is reluctant to end the sessions * If the ending is abrupt or unexpected * Client breaks the contract and sessions are ended W ithin the endings process you need to draw upon what you know about his/her attitude and experience of endings. For many people it’s a relatively small issue – if they are fairly self-supporting and motivated they probably move on with little regret.For others it’s a much bigger event. A Counsellor needs to ensure to flag that the end is drawing close and to give an opportunity for the client to comment on how he feels about the end. The longer the contact you’ve had, the more time you want to allow for this discussion and the earlier it needs to happen. Although you need to make the time limit clear in the initial contract, both counsellor and client are sure to have feelings about the ending of even short-term work.The extent of feelings probably relate to the intensity of the work and the investment in it by each party. Preparation for the ending should include: * Recognition of where the client is now (positive and negative) * A decision about the rea son for the ending (planned or immediate) * Goodbyes 2. 5 Supervision is an important part of the referral process and should be used to facilitate and explore how the process should be managed, how the client will react and how the counsellor will feel about the ending.I think as a counsellor you should have a prior understanding of how you feel the client will/is reacting to the ending of the helping relationship and the supervisor can draw upon his/her experience as to how the process should be best managed. I think as a counsellor, particularly when the ending has been abrupt or ‘premature’ may experience feelings of inadequacy or failure for not helping the client to overcome their presenting issues. I think a supervisor will be able to empathise and advise on the situation and how to frame it within your mind.The supervisor will advise how to end the relationship in a systematic way as positive as possible. 2. 6 Reasons for referral may be: Because the counsellor: * Has a personality clash with the client * Is out of their depth in terms of professional limits * Lacks experience to help the client further * There are boundary issues with knowing the client/friends of client on a personal basis * The clients issue is triggering issues within the counsellor * There is a clash of beliefs/values/culture that cannot be overlooked in terms of empathy Because the agency: Has time limits/limited sessions * Has a policy complication relating to clients issues * Does not deal with certain areas of counselling Because the client: * Needs/wants a different type of counsellor or other type of care * Has issues around availability/accessibility * Needs/wants a different package of care 2. 7 The BACP guidance relating to ethical referrals are that: * All referrals should be discussed with the client in advance and the client's consent obtained both to making the referral and also to disclosing information to accompany the referral.The referral should benef it the client, all confidential information should be protected during referral and the service/counsellor must be capable. * Prior to accepting a referral a practitioner should ensure that the referral is appropriate, will benefit the client and that the client is consenting. If the referrer is ultimately responsible for the client then they can receive update reports providing the client is consenting

Development, an Impetus to Urbanization Essay

New ways of thinking about government, science, economics, and religion had brought many changes to America by the eighteenth century. Concern for individual freedoms became so strong that it led to revolution in many lands. In Britain’s American colonies, revolution brought the establishment of a new nation, the United States. In the spring of 1775 few Americans, angry as they were, favored separation from Britain. Support for independence grew over the next six months as fighting continued and the colonists debated the issue. The Americans had declared their independence but still had to win it. They had capable leaders and were strengthened by their dedication to the cause of liberty. The Americans emerged victorious from the Revolutionary War and adopted a plan of government that became a model for other nations (Hinkle, 1994). Since then, modernization and urbanization became the twin paradigms of â€Å"pop culture† from that point on in America. For approximately two hundred years, people in the United States have been wandering towards the fringes in the hunt for reasonably priced domestic shelter, rural community conviviality, and well-preserved and intact nature only to learn that their verdant new neighborhoods are a component of the emergent metropolitan stretch. Modernization describes the process by which a society moves from traditional or pre-industrial social and economic arrangements to those characteristics of industrial societies. Implicit in the notion of modernization is the assumption that there is basically one predominant course of development, namely industrialization and urbanization which were followed by America (Todaro, 1981). This capitalistic and industrially advanced commerce became the impetus of urbanization in America. The relocation of the new technologies furnished the United States its first manufacturing plants, large-scale mills that incorporated spinning and knitting technology in a single factory. As workers drifted into the metropolis in the hunt for employment in the factories, the factory scheme was mainly accountable for the materialization of the urbanized city (Harris and Todaro, 1970). The development of dramatic socioeconomic modifications brought about when wide-ranging automation of assembly systems led to a swing from domestic hand manufacturing to across-the-board factory manufacture. The Industrial Revolution has transformed the visage of nations, creating metropolitan centers involving substantial urban services (Brody, 1989). Viewed in this manner, modernization entails a pattern of convergence as societies become increasingly and inevitably urban, industry comes to overshadow agriculture, the division of capitalistic labor becomes more specialized, colonialism gained a new meaning, and the size and density of the population increase with immigrants coming in from every point in the world (Cohen, 2004). Initially, inhabitants have sought commune, dwelling, and conserved environment in suburbia. People have continuously hankered after sighting their conurbations as human constructions built as one piece. Developers have taken pleasure in a range of imaginings, aiming for revenues from economies of scale and enlarged suburban crowdedness, while swaying opinion on municipal and federal administration to diminish the peril of real estate conjecture (Loomis and Beegle, 1950). Enclosing all environmental hullabaloos in addition to the intricacies of social stratum, ethnicity, and sexual category, several speculate how we mull over the communes Americans construct and make their homes in (Newman, 2006). It is apparent that population size and composition have a great composition have a great many ramifications for all phases of social life. The distribution of a population in space also assumes critical significance. The â€Å"where† may be an area as large as a continent or as small as a city block. Between these extremes are world regions, nations, national regions, states, cities and rural areas. Changes in the number and proportion of people living in various areas are the cumulative effect of differences in fertility, mortality, and net migration (Walls, 2004). One of the most significant developments in human history has been the development of cities. Although many of us take cities for granted, they are one of the most striking features of our modern era. A city is a relatively dense and permanent concentration of people who secure their livelihood chiefly through non-agricultural activities. The influence of the urban mode of life extends far beyond the immediate confines of a city’s boundaries. Many of the characteristics of modern societies, including problems, derive from an urban existence (Cohen, 2004). Urbanization has proceeded quite rapidly during the past two centuries. In 1800 there were fewer than fifty cities in the world with 100,000 or more population. And by 1900, only one in twenty earthlings lived in a city with a population of at least 100,000. Today. One in five people lives in a center with at least 100,000 people (Montgomery, et al. , 2004). Several of the spatial standards and social prospects of the 1800s and early 1900s hang about up till now, layers entwined in protocols, recollection, and experience, in addition to the metaphors of popular culture and the proclamations of draftsmen and urban developers. In the first part of the 1800s, inhabitants, pattern book authors, and engineers created long-term principles of quixotic houses established in picturesque landscape peopled by elite, private neighborhoods (Loomis and Beegle, 1950). Prevalent since the 1840s, the philosophy of female domesticity was married to a trend of mannish home occupancy, stretched out to subsume plebeian males three decades later. Communitarian activities started to have some bearing on draftsmen, landscapers, and engineers, a class of reformers on the up understood they may possibly fashion a transformative societal construction at the outer reaches of the metropolis (Kivisto, 2001). Picturesque enclaves began round about 1850. All over this time, the American suburban abode had turned out to be a private utopia, taking the place of the archetypal town which had taken on a range of Americans’ hopes a thousand years earlier (Satterthwaite, 2005). Nevertheless, it is time to revamp every layer in the discrete metropolitan terrain, and contemplate how to take in hand each variety, keeping in mind that property holder subsidies, developer subventions, and metropolitan services have been dispersed disproportionately over the decades and certain greater impartiality is looked-for. The long-standing enclaves may necessitate conservation, but aid should be rendered in exchange for communal access and construal of their privileged parks and natural terrains (Harris and Fabricius, 1996). New-fangled proposals for picturesque enclaves, such as Llewellyn Park, New Jersey, laid emphasis to communal open area and advanced joint public life (Satterthwaite, 2005). One communitarian community in Mount Vernon, New York, exerted a pull on roughly three-hundred families by putting forward fortification against the biased power and weight of capital; others urbanized model settlements to advance women’s repute through collective services and industrial sustenance (Alexander, et al. , 2004). Most early urban communities were city-states, and many modern nations have evolved from them. Even where the nation became large in both size and land area, the city has remained the focus for political and economic activities, and the core and magnet of much social life. To people of other nations, the city often represents the nation, and this tradition survives in the modern use of a city, such as Washington, London, and Moscow, as a synonym for a nation (Beauchemin and Bocquier, 2004). Industrial-urban centers typically been geographically scattered, and although dominating their hinterlands, have had only tenuous economic and social relations with them. More recently, metropolitan cities have emerged. This phase in urban development does not represent a sharp break with the industrial-urban tradition, but rather a widening and deepening of urban influences in every area of social life. Increasingly cities have become woven into an integrated network (Cohen, 2004). The technological base for the metropolitan phase of urbanism is found in the tremendous increase in the application of science to industry, the widespread use of electric power (freeing industry from the limitations associated with steam and belt-and-pulley modes of power), and the advent of modern forms of transportation (the automobile and rapid transit systems have released cities from the limitations associated with foot and hoof travel, which had more or less restricted growth to a radius of 3 miles from the center) (Todaro, 1981). Steam and belt-and-pulley power techniques had produced great congestion in urban areas by the beginning of the twentieth century. But a number of factors have increasingly come to the foreground and bucked earlier centripetal pressures, including rising city taxes, increased land values, traffic and transportation problems, and decaying and obsolescent inner zones. These and other forces have accelerated the centrifugal movement made technologically possible by electric power, rapid transit, the automobile, and the telephone (Harris, 1988). The result has been the development of satellite and suburban areas, broad, ballooning urban lands linked by beltways that constitute cities in their own right. In population, jobs, investment, construction, and chopping facilities, they rival the old inner cities. They are the sites of industrial plants, corporate offices and office towers, fine stores, independent newspapers, theaters, restaurants, superhotels, and big-league stadiums (Montgomery, et al. , 2004). A good deal of the sociological enterprise is directed toward identifying recurrent and stable patterns in people’s social interactions and relationships. In like fashion, sociologists are interested in understanding how people order their relationship and conduct their activities in space. They provide a number of models that attempt to capture the ecological patterns and structures of city growth (Newman, 2006). In the period between World Wars I and II, sociologists at the University of Chicago viewed Chicago as a social laboratory and subjected it to intensive study. The concentric circle model enjoyed a prominent place in much of this work. The Chicago group held that the modern city assumes a pattern of concentric circles, each with distinctive characteristics. At the center of the city, the central business district, are retail stores, financial institutions, hotels, theaters, and businesses that cater to the needs of downtown shoppers. Surrounding the central business district is an area of residential deterioration caused by the encroachment of business and industry, the zone in transition (Loomis and Beegle, 1950). In earlier days, thee neighborhoods had contained the pretentious homes of wealthy and prominent citizens. In later years they became slum areas and havens for marginal business establishments (pawnshops, secondhand stores, and modest taverns and restaurants). The zone in transition shades into the zone of workingmen’s homes that contain two-flats, old single dwellings, and inexpensive apartments inhabited largely by blue-collar workers. Beyond the zone occupied by the working class are residential zones composed primarily of small business proprietors, professional people, and managerial personnel. Finally, out beyond the area containing the more affluent neighborhoods is a ring of encircling small cities, towns, and hamlets, the commuters’ zone (Harris and Fabricius, 1996). The Chicago group viewed these zones as ideal types, since in practice no city conforms entirely to the scheme. For instance, Chicago borders on Lake Michigan, so that a concentric semicircular rather than a circular arrangement holds. Moreover, critics point out that the approach is less descriptive of today’s cities than cities at the turn of the twentieth century. And apparently some cities such as New Haven have never approximated the concentric circle patterns. Likewise, cities in Latin America, Asia, and Africa exhibit less specialization in land use than do those in the United States (Montgomery, et al. , 2004). Homer Hoyt has portrayed large cities as made up of a number of sectors rather than concentric circles, the sector model. Low-rent districts often assume a wedge shape and extend from the center of the city to its periphery. In contrast, as a city grows, high-rent areas move outward, although remaining in the same sector. Districts within a sector that are abandoned by upper-income groups become obsolete and deteriorate (Satterthwaite, 2005). Thus, rather than forming a concentric zone around the periphery of the city, Hoyt contends that the high-rent areas typically locate on the outer edge of a few sectors. Furthermore, industrial areas evolve along river valleys, watercourses, and railroad lines, rather than forming a concentric circle around the central business district. But like the concentric circle model, the sector model does not fit a good many urban communities, including Boston (Loomis and Beegle, 1950). Another model, the multiple nuclei model, depicts the city as having not one center, but several. Each center specializes in some activity and gives its distinctive cast to the surrounding area. For example, the downtown business district has as its focus commercial and financial activities. Other centers include the bright lights (theater and recreation) area, automobile row, a government center, a whole-sailing center, a heavy manufacturing district, and a medical complex. Multiple centers evolve for a number of reasons (Loomis and Beegle, 1950). First, certain activities require specialized facilities, for instance, the retail district needs to be accessible to all parts of the city; the port district requires suitable waterfront; and a manufacturing district dictates that a large block of land be available near water or rail connections. Second, similar activities often benefit from being clustered together. For instance, a retail district profits by drawing customers for a variety of shops. Third, dissimilar activities are often antagonistic to one another. For example, affluent residential development tends to be incompatible with industrial development (Dentler, 2002). And finally, some activities cannot afford high-rent areas and hence locate in low-rent districts; for instance, bulk wholesaling and storage. The multiple nuclei model is less helpful in discovering universal spatial patterns in all cities than in describing the unique patterns peculiar to particular communities (Todaro, 1981). Structure-function approaches help us to partition social life into discrete structures, including statuses and neighborhoods. They allow us to place a handle on the fluid quality of life so that we may grasp, describe, and analyze it, making it understandable and intelligible. But as many conflict and symbolic interactionist theorists emphasize, the dichotomy between structure and process gives birth to problems that are frequently unnecessary. For one thing, the dichotomy produces difficulty in handling change. Indeed, the word change itself is saturated with certain non-process connotations, implying a shift from one static and relatively stable to another (Loomis and Beegle, 1950). Most of the some of the United States are not necessarily one hundred per cent Americans. This is the result of the continuous social change that has taken place in the metropolitan cities over the past decades. Some cities have especially undergone a vivid transition from rural community to a modern suburb. Language, culture, religion, and ethnic heritage reinforce people’s sense of belonging. These are the bonds out of which will be created new communities. Some people insist that the forces that are making the world into a single economy have separated people from longstanding identities and have, at the same time, weakened nation-state (Davies, 2005). The everyday life of the rural people is uncomplicated and less complex than that of the urban inhabitants, and the rural resident are inclined to keep more of the speech patterns and traditions of their characteristic racial backgrounds (Cohen, 2004). A foremost setback in living in a highly developed city is the high cost of living, owing largely to the continent’s empowered economy (Dentler, 2002). Once, most part of the continent had heavily relied on imports. Transportation expenses were incorporated in the prices of the majority of consumer merchandise. As the residents number rise, housing grows more and more hard to obtain, and it is excessively high-priced when proportionate to housing costs in several of the mainland states. Building materials, nearly all of which are brought in from outside the country, are costly. Residential settlement is limited and expensive, given that much of the land is in possession of corporations and trusts (Harris and Todaro, 1970). Pains have been taken through legislation to correct this state of affairs. Thoroughly-designed housing situated in communities, in which the single-family home yield to high-rise, high-density houses and townhouses and apartment complexes, has become one solution to the lack and cost related to urban housing (Hayden, 2004). Urban settlement some time ago comprised more or less completely of single-family quarters, individual business buildings and stores, small bazaars, and three- or four-story inns. With the upsurge of inhabitants and vacationers since the early part of the 20th century, on the other hand, American states have built increasingly high-rise apartment building houses, hotels, and commercial establishments, with the conventional individual shopkeepers becoming wrapped up into the sets of buildings of shopping centers and supermarkets (Loomis and Beegle, 1950). Urban cities are where the majority of Americans reside at the present. It is the governing American edifying landscape, amalgamating esteemed natural and manufactured ecosystems, lots and single domestic houses. Urban cities are where a massive space of profit-making and residential landed property are bankrolled and erected. It is the locality of most of the charitable toil of fostering and parenting, mirroring both societal and ecological customs. Lastly, urbanized cities are where the large American body of voters live today (Alexander, et al. , 2004). References Alexander, Jeffrey C. , Gary T. Marx, and Christine L. Williams. (2004). Self, Social Structure, and Beliefs: Explorations in Sociology. University of California Press. Beauchemin, Cris and Philippe Bocquier, 2004, â€Å"Migration and Urbanization in Francophone West. Brody, David, 1989, â€Å"Labor History, Industrial Relations, and the Crisis of American Labor. † Industrial & Labor Relations Review. Cohen, Barney, 2004, â€Å"Urban Growth In Developing Countries: A Review Of Current Trends And A Caution Regarding Existing Forecasts†, World Development, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 23-51. Davies, Adam, 2005, â€Å"Migration, Development And Poverty. Towards And New Framework Of Impact Assessment†, Unpublished Dissertation, MSc Development Administration and Planning, Development Planning Unit, UCL, London. Dentler, Robert A. , 2002, Practicing Sociology: Selected Fields. Praeger. Harris, John R. and Michael P. Todaro, 1970, â€Å"Migration, Unemployment And Development: A Two-Sector Analysis†, The American Economic Review, Vol. 60, No. 1, pp. 126-142. Harris, Nigel, 1988, â€Å"Economic Development and Urbanization †, Habitat International, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 5-15. Harris, Nigel and Ida Fabricius (eds. ), 1996, Cities and Structural Adjustment, UCL Press, London. Hayden, Dolores, 2004, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000. Vintage Books. Hinkle, Gisela J. , 1994, The Development of Modern Sociology: Its Nature and Growth in the United States. Random House. Kivisto, Peter, 2001, Illuminating Social Life. California: Pine Forge Press. Loomis, Charles P. , and J. Allan Beegle, 1950, Urban Social Systems: A Textbook in Urban Sociology and Anthropology. Prentice Hall. Montgomery, Mark R. et al. , 2004, Cities Transformed. Demographic Change and its Implications in the Developing World, Earthscan, London. Newman, Peter, 2006, â€Å"The Environmental Impact Of Cities†, Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 275-295. Satterthwaite, David, 2005, â€Å"The Scale Of Urban Change Worldwide 1950-2000 And Its Underpinnings†, Human Settlements Discussion Paper Series Urban Change No. 1, IIED, London. Todaro, M. , 1981, â€Å"Rural To Urban Migration: Theory And Policy†, in Todaro, M. , Economics for a Developing World, Macmillan, London. Walls, Michael, 2004, â€Å"Facts And Figures On Rural And Urban Change†, Report to DFID, Development Planning Unit, UCL.

Investment in Nike Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 4

Investment in Nike - Essay Example The dividends discount model makes a comparison between future forecasted dividends with the firm’s current share price and then applies the firm’s growth rate to get the total figure. Many experts believe that the dividend discount model (DDM) greatly benefits investors because it makes investors think about the different market scenarios depending on how the stock is performing. Furthermore, the dividend discount model relies upon a lot of speculation in attempting to predict future dividends. This implies that the outcomes of this model are based around generalizations that are made. It is usually hard to determine the correct growth rate because a company most likely has a wide range of growth rates over a long period of time due to the fluctuating economy. It is for this reason alone that analysts do not tend to make projections based on past growth rates. Above all, there are no direct adjustments for risk with the dividends discount model. The earnings capitalization model (ECM) is basic and easy enough to understand by practically anyone because it determines the value of a business by looking at the current benefit of realizing cash flow in the short-term, rather than in the long-term. However, this model does not accurately estimate equity costs for firms that are expanding, so it is predominantly used only for firms that are experiencing zero growth. The Discounted Cash Flow Analysis in Exhibit 2 demonstrated that, at a discount rate of 12 percent, Nike’s current share price was overvalued at $42.09. But a sensitivity analysis disclosed that Nike was undervalued at discount rates lower than 11.2 percent. We came up with an appropriate discount rate—Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC). This formula showed that the discount rate was less than 11.2 percent at around 10.59 percent.  

Moral & Cultural Relativism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Moral & Cultural Relativism - Essay Example One person may hold the opinion that strawberry flavor is sweeter than a Vanilla flavor. According to that person, no reasoning can be applied to decide whether his opinion concerning the taste is right or wrong. In this case, the opinions concerning ice cream tastes are relative. In the context of mathematics, when one presents a calculation like 3+3=5, we term the situation as wrong. We do not say that the calculations depend on the taste and perception of the person doing it but we say that the person is wrong. In this case, there are clearly defined standards that differentiate right from wrong. This mathematical example amounts to a context of absolutism. When extended to the contexts of morality, these contexts lead to the aspects of moral relativism and moral absolutism (Rauchut 349). Moral Relativism vs. Moral Absolutism Moral relativism advocates that there are no universal or defined moral standards governing social situations within any given social setting. Moral relativi sts advocate that there are no moral codes of conducts which apply universally at all times. With respect to this assertion, no one can say that someone is wrong or right because such a claim would amount to judging people based on some standards, which is contrary to the ideas of moral relativism. ... In the context of morality, absolutism asserts that moral codes of conduct are relevant at all times, regardless of the situation surrounding the same moral codes. However, moral absolutism allows for flexibility when evaluating morally violated contexts. Absolutists usually allow for the reasoning on the code of conduct with respect to the situation under consideration. For example, according to moral absolutism, the act of killing is wrong. However, the situation surrounding the action might justify the action as appropriate, but not as right. Therefore, moral absolutism acknowledges the existence of universal moral principles everywhere in the world (Rauchut 361). Arguments for Moral Absolutism In the context of morality, I will stand for the aspect of moral absolutism, and stand against moral relativism. In moral absolutism, one can judge a situation as right or wrong, irrespective of the situation under consideration. In the context of social interactions within any given human population, there are situations which are guided by some set of moral principles. For example, stealing is wrong. It is natural to see a parent disciplining a child because the child has stolen from a neighbor. According to absolutism, the act of stealing is based on the unnecessary economic predicament caused by that action to the victim. Therefore, moral principles advocate that it is absolutely wrong to steal, irrespective of the situation. If moral relativism were applied in such a situation, it would argue that the parent should not judge the child as right or wrong by the act of stealing; hence the child would not have been punished. Therefore, moral absolutism helps in developing

Modern History of Japan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Modern History of Japan - Essay Example Inadvertently, by providing peace to the country, samurais had helped the farmers to bring in an agricultural revolution by making the farmers wealthy. In addition to that, a proto-industrial employment to the farmers during the lean season also made them richer. This was noticed by the samurais and they tried to increase the taxation on the farmers. The restoration that started as a farmer movement for over one year had the tacit support of the emperor and one of the Samurais. Soon, on the super natural grounds the rule of the Samurai in the rural areas was temporarily suspended. When the Samurai – farmer conflict rose, the farmers gathered in larger numbers resulting in violent attacks on Samurais. The emperor took the side of the farmers and some of the samurais lower down the rung also took the side of the Emperor. The Kyoto aristocrats also moved in to ensure that the restoration was least violent and was more in line with religious requirements. The samurais were thus re placed. And the Emperor with his aristocratic council became the decision makers for the country. The Japanese nationalism budded and grew to a great extent. With the industrial change from a largely agrarian economy, the wealth of the nation also multiplied tremendously. The overall GDP of the country grew to the level of any other western nation which made the country a major competition for the western powers. Meiji era also saw the rise of the Popular Rights Movement which was more a democracy movement but was crushed by the ruling oligarchy. The imperial army had grown in its power and capacity and can handle such minor uprisings with crushing cruelty.

Comics History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Comics History - Essay Example The book is mainly autobiographical, as it draws on the experiences of Spiegelman's father during the World War II, and his own story as a graphic artist. The main theme of the book is the Holocaust It narrates Spiegelman's father Vladek's traumatic experiences during and after the Holocaust., at the same time, showing the trauma which the son Artie is going through in the present time. Vladek, a Polish Jew, has survived the Holocaust in Auschwitz, but his experiences have not removed his own racist tendencies. His wife Anja, Artie's mother, commits suicide soon after they come to America., which leaves a deep scar on Artie's mind. Vladek marries Mala, whom he treats with the same insensitivity. Spiegelman uses allegory, portraying humans of different nationalities as different animals. In Maus, the Jews are depicted as mice, the Germans as cats, the Poles as pigs, the Americans as dogs. There are other animals like the reindeer, the bears depicting the Russians, frogs, the French and the English, fish. Maus takes its name from the German word for mouse. Mice, which are used to represent the Jews, are small, timid , harmless creatures the qualities which the Jews are supposed to possess. At the same time, they are dirty, disease carrying vermin according to the Nazis. Mice are also very resourceful, a characteristic of the Jews.

Sources Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Sources - Essay Example New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. McAllister-Spooner, S. M. (2009). Fulfilling the dialogic promise: A ten-year reflective survey on dialogic Internet principles. Public Relations Review, 320-322. This article begins with a discussion of the framework of dialogic communication using the world-wide-web provided by Kent and Taylor. The literature suggests that various studies have been conducted in order to analyze the use of dialogic communication in various websites. It goes on to state that even non-profit firms have applied this concept to their websites. However, the author critiques this by stating that dialogic tools were indeed very poorly applied in the development of these websites. The websites mentioned in this article provide only a basic level platform for interaction with users. They are user-friendly and useful in providing information but they fail to capitalize on the Internet’s ability to develop and sustain relationships between the corporation and the community. The research findings are also suggestive of the fact that forces pertaining to the corporation and its departments are inhibiting the utilization of the Internet’s interactive potential. The article relates to dialogic communication as it critiques the use of this concept by stating that its practical application is weak when it comes to the way some websites are designed. Thus, the use of web medium for reaching out to the public has not been capitalized on by corporations in a manner that would be engaging. The article concludes by offering recommendations in this regard by suggesting that face-to-face communication will remain an ideal platform for ensuring dialogic interaction. Also, dialogic communication is hampered by internal policies and inert forces such as organizational politics. Thus, developing effective public relations via the internet requires effective dialogic communication. Mifsud, M. L., & Johnson, S. D. (2000). Dialogic, dialectic, and rhetoric: Explor ing human dialogue across the discipline. Southern Communication Journal , 91-104. Newcomb, H. M. (1984). On the dialogic aspects of mass communication. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 34-50. Ryan, J., & Viete, R. (2009). Respectful interactions: learning with international students in the English-speaking academy. Teaching in Higher Education, 303-314. This paper describes the significance of dialogic or two-way human interactions in promoting English education to international students. It begins by stating that students who come from abroad to study in Australian educational institutions face cultural and linguistic issues which results in their getting disengaged from what is being taught in the classroom. The native-speaker phenomenon in English universities dissuades non-native speakers from effectively learning what is being taught. Owing to these cultural and linguistic differences, the method of teaching offered to such international students must be more interactiv e and engaging than that offered to native students. In this sense, the authors define the need for a more dialogic and engaging communication between the instructors and the international students. What is core to learning in Australian institutions is the diverse potential of learning that comes from a multi-cultural student body. Despite the accommodation of global aspects into the institutions’ curricula, foreign students repeatedly face deficiencies in their oral communication as well as the pressure to conform to the norms inherent in local bodies.

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The influence of mercantile economics on European Colonial Expansion 1500-1800 Essay Example for Free

The influence of mercantile economics on European Colonial Expansion 1500-1800 Essay 1.0  Ã‚  Ã‚   Introduction   The Rise of Europe between 1500 and 1850 was largely accounted for by the growth of European nations which shared their borders with the Atlantic and, in particular, by those that engaged in colonialism and transoceanic trade. Europe was the gateway to the Americas for the Asian traders, and vica-versa. The fact that the economic performance among Atlantic trading nations blossomed due to their access to the Atlantic, is explained by the fact that countries with relatively non-absolutist initial institutions experienced faster growth[1].   Because of this, urbanisation in Western Europe grew significantly faster than in Eastern Europe after 1500 and due in large part to the growth of Atlantic traders (read countries). The process of European growth between 1500 and 1850 was attributed to those countries which had access to the Atlantic, and trade through these Atlantic ports accounted for most of the differential growth of   Europe; Western Europe in relation to Eastern Europe. With trade playing an important part in the economic and social development of most of Europe between 1500 and 1800, Europe witnessed a major revolution- The Price Revolution, starting about the 1520s to the 1630s. This long period, about 120 years in all, saw Europe undergo sustained economic growth and expansion that was marked by: A sustained demographic upsurge, in which European population about doubled By much urbanisation, expanded in scale, by a conspicuous growth of industries By dramatic overseas commercial expansion and colonial exploitation in first Africa, then Asia, the Americas: north and south, with the Caribbean Sea as the focal point A marked monetary expansion, from vast new supplies of both gold and silver from Africa and the Americas (Mexico and Peru), which fuelled an already on-going inflation (begun with earlier monetary expansion) These metals were vitally necessary for Europeans to expand their trade with Asia in particular (Asia being vastly greater in size, population, and economic wealth than the still underdeveloped west European economy), but also the Baltic regions of northern Europe and Russia, as well, where population was markedly too sparse and/or too poor to demand that much in the way of European goods (beyond salt, herrings, beer, woollens)[2]. 2.0  Ã‚  Ã‚   Overview Prior to the 19th century, agriculture played an important role in the lives of the Europeans. There was discrimination between the rich and poor. The poor had to work in the land held by the rich to make a living. There was a long period during which the wage-land rent ratio declined, that implied that there was a rise in inequality. Farmland owners were far closer to the top of the income distribution than were landless workers. At some point in the 19th century this pattern reversed, and wages started to rise relative to land rents, implying a decline in inequality. This pattern soon changed and the traditional link between factor prices and factor endowments was broken some time in the 19th century[3]. It was evident that with trade beginning to grow due to their proximity to the Atlantic, the European nations could not hold back on development. There was also the question of what caused the structural break in wage-rent ratio behaviour? The all important finger pointed to industrial growth; industrial revolutionary forces led to the break in living standards behaviour. Though the exact date or period is elusive, many scholars date the first industrial revolution in Europe from 1760, while some cited this to be from 1780. There were others who disagreed with these views altogether, but everyone were unanimous in their conclusion that, these changes came about due to the technological advance accelerated in English industry about this time (Mokyr 1990; Crafts 1994; Temin 1997)[4]. With trade growing and industrialisation taking place, the two commodities that could be produced simultaneously were: Agricultural products using land and employing labour Manufactured goods using capital and labour Though there were two options to choose from for the poor strata of society of the 1600 and 1700 Europeans, the most appealing aspect for the workers to turn away from agriculture was the sense of freedom and better life. Industries attracted the workers more, and drew them out of agriculture and into the cities, raising wages, lowering rents, and inflating the ratio of wages to rents[5]. Europe is well placed and accessible to the Americas, Asia, and within the whole of Europe itself. This was a distinct advantage that Europe had to encourage the Europeans to bolster exports. This gave rise to industrialisation and pushed trade beyond their borders. Intercontinental trade rose and this influenced prices too. It could be reasoned that trade could have influenced price factors for several centuries before the structural break occurred. However, it turned out that the growth in European overseas trade was not due to global commodity market integration, as measured by a decline in intercontinental price gaps, but rather to shift in demand and supply in Europe, Asia and the Americas (O’Rourke and Williamson 2002a)[6]. It was only in the 19th century that large-scale intercontinental trade became possible in such basic commodities as grain, animal products, coal and manufactured intermediates[7]. 3.0  Ã‚  Ã‚   The Influence Although Europe witnessed some improvements in economic institutions in the late medieval and early modern period, as mentioned earlier, rapid economic development did not begin until the emergence of political institutions providing secure property rights to a broader segment of society and allowing free entry into profitable businesses (North and Thomas, 1973, and North and Weingast, 1989)[8]. Most European countries were under the power of the monarchy. With the rise of political institutions, the power of the monarchy was constrained along with their supporters. The political institutions began to show their strength to control the power of the monarchy, and prerogatives emerged when groups that favoured change, that is commercial interests outside the royal circle, became sufficiently powerful politically. Starting 1500, and more so from 1600 onwards, countries with non-absolutist institutions and easy access to the Atlantic, trade across the Atlantic rose, that enriched and strengthened commercial interests outside the royal circle, enabling them to demand and obtain the institutional changes necessary for economic growth. This was the beginning of the shift from monarchy rule to political rule in these parts. Although profits from Atlantic trade were relatively small in terms of GDP, they were still substantial, and much greater than what was witnessed earlier. By the end of the 17th century, the volume of trade across Atlantic was much larger than that of long-distance Mediterranean trade seen ever before. Those who stood to gain by these initiatives became very rich by 17th- and 18th-century standards in Europe, and were without doubt politically and socially very powerful. What was surprising was that these changes did not take place in countries with highly absolutist institutions, such as, Spain, Portugal, and to a large extent France. The monarchy was able to suppress any political arising and control the expansion of trade. They along with their allies were the main beneficiaries of the early profits from Atlantic trade and plunder; with groups favouring change in the political arena not becoming powerful enough to induce change[9]. The path to development and growth has not always remained the same. The dynamics of accumulation, the agents of expansion, and opposition have not always been the same. There has been a great difference in the various phases of the development of capitalism through this period. We note that different rules and regulations were employed by the European nations in their quest for expansion (Aglietta 1979; Lipietz 1987, 1988). The period 1500-1800 popularly called as the mercantilist phase, trade played a pivotal role in defining the way the European nations concentrated on global mercantile economics. Merchant capital began to ex ­pand on a global scale through state-chartered companies. As Colonial expansionism was the goal of most these European countries, commerce had a big hand in pushing this initiative. The countries in Western Europe accu ­mulated capital through com ­merce, colonial plunder, slave trade, and de-farming. The European traders reached far corners of the globe in their quest and they began to specialize in the production of consumer items such as sugar, coffee, spices, fabrics, salted fish, fur, and later wheat and timber. While the production of consumer items expanded in the colonies, giving way to their colonial expansion, the effects of these measures led to the downfall of other subsistence economies in Europe and the rest of the world. In the industrial phase (1800-1890), the engine of global expansion was the industrial capital of Western Europe. A particularly important feature of this phase of capitalist development was a change in the dominant eco ­nomic discourse from protectionism to free trade and competition. The vic ­tory of the manufacturing class over the landowners and mercantile bour ­geoisie in repealing restrictive trade practices, such as the corn laws in Britain (which meant lower costs of production), marked the victory of the free traders[10]. Note: â€Å"There is a tendency among mercantilist (Krasner 1985) and regulationist (Ag ­lietta 1979) scholars to overemphasize the national dimension by regarding the world economy as a system of interacting national social formations (Aglietta 1982: 6). Although the role of the nation-state in modern societies has been very important, treating nation states as actors having connections with each other and with other organizations in the international arena makes it difficult to deal with social relations that are not between or outside states, but simply crosscut state divisions (Giddens 1990: 67). As some of the twentieth-century nation-states are torn apart by ethnic and religious conflicts, and as new social identities organized around religion or re ­gionalism are emerging, insistence on the nation-state as the unit of analysis will sig ­nificantly limit in our understanding of the political and ideological dimensions of globalization†-Mustafa Koc. The title ‘Atlantic traders’ referred to Britain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, which were the nations most directly involved in trade and colonialism with the New World and Asia. These nations maintained a rigorous attitude towards trade and expansionism. These countries, because of their proximity to the Atlantic Ocean, traded far and wide, to Asia and Americas. They were very aggressive and wanted to expand their presence around the world and were involved in colonialism-and slavery-related activities as well as trade[11]. The Rise of Europe between 1500 and 1850 is largely due to the Rise of Atlantic Europe[12]. In order to study the influence of mercantile economics on European colonial expansion, Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson used three data series to measure economic development. The three data series were: Constructed estimates of urbanisation based on the urban population of Bairoch, Batou and Ch`evre (1988)[13], which was a comprehensive dataset with information on all 2,200 European cities which had, at some time between 800 and 1800, 5,000 or more inhabitants. This data was then divided by the population estimates of McEvedy and Jones (1978)[14] to calculate urban population growth. The second in this series was to use estimates of GDP per capita from Maddison (2001)[15]. To continue with the research, the estimates chosen were from 1500, 1600, 1700, 1820, and then more frequently. Finally, the third data used was the use of European city-level data from Bairoch, Batou and Ch`evre (1988), to investigate which urban centers were driving demographic and economic growth, and also to contrast the growth of Atlantic ports to other ports and to inland cities[16]. The research was conclusive in determining whether there was a significant growth pattern based on the period 1500 1800. There were significant positive estimates to imply that Atlantic traders started to grow in 1500-1600. The estimates confirmed the positive growth pattern in large effects from the interaction between the Atlantic traders from 1600. These effects become statistically significant after 1750; the effects are statistically significant starting 1700. An important revelation from this exercise was the explicit sign that showed that perhaps the only countries with high growth potential, or those that were going to grow, engaged in substantial Atlantic trade and colonial activity. Belgium, Ireland, Denmark, Germany and Norway, despite having access to the Atlantic, either directly or via the North Sea, are stark representation of countries that did not take a major part in long distance oceanic trade or expansionism[17]. This evidence established a significant relationship between the potential for Atlantic trade and post-1500 economic development, and suggests that the opportunities to trade through the Atlantic, and the associated profits from colonialism and slavery, played an important role in the Rise of Europe[18]. 4.0  Ã‚  Ã‚   Observation We see that the influence of Atlantic trade; the opening of the sea routes to the New World, namely, Africa and Asia, and the building of colonial empires contributed to the process of West European growth between 1500 and 1800 not only through its direct economic effects, but also indirectly by inducing fundamental institutional changes, with Britain and the Netherlands (Duchy of Burgundy) leading from the front. Through their rigorous initiatives in Atlantic trade, both Britain and the Netherlands altered the balance of political power by enriching and strengthening commercial interests outside their royal circles. Through this channel, they contributed to the emergence of political institutions protecting merchants against royal power. The tendency for institutional change to emerge became more evident in societies which already had checks on royal power than in countries with absolutist regimes and monarchy-controlled trade monopolies. Those countries with easy access to the Atlantic and without a strong absolutist monarchy, Atlantic trade provided substantial profits and political power for merchants outside the royal circle. This group could demand and obtain significant institutional reforms protecting their property rights. With their newly gained power and property rights, these merchants took advantage of the growth opportunities offered by Atlantic trade, invested more, traded more, and fueled the First Great Divergence.[19]. Another point of contention in the theory of European colonial expansion was the search for precious metals and gun powder trade. Folasade Ifamose of the University of Abuja contents that, the whole region between the Volta and Niger area was acutely convulsed and destabilised by the direct involvement in the gun and gun powder trade across the Atlantic between 1500 and 1800 by the British, Dutch and Portuguese traders. The desire to capture cities with precious metals as well as those with direct access to the Atlantic coasts directly affected and influenced many of the Atlantic access nation kings to participate actively in the trans-Atlantic trade. The ultimate desire of the traditional rulers was to acquire, among other things, firearms from the triangular trade through the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British[20]. 1590-1621 saw the Dutch swarm out all over the European, Atlantic and Asian seas and established new overseas markets. The Dutch state supported their traders in overseas trading operations and in a decisive movement accelerated the production of more ships to enhance trade and changing market opportunities. Moreover, the build-up of a reorganised army and navy in the Dutch Republic stimulated the growth of a new infrastructure of arms trade and arms production, which provided an important condition for the expansion of Dutch interests overseas[21]. The Sea is the only Empire which naturally belongs to us, conquest is not in our interest, wrote the Englishman Andrew Fletcher in 1698[22]. Few of the great ancient empires relied so much on sea power; Europe used the one resource that gave it an advantage, namely its skill in shipbuilding and navigation, to create something quite unprecedented, seaborne empires[23]. When trading possibilities proved disappointing or local populations proved hostile, Europeans turned to conquest (expansionism), along with forced extraction of resources. Next was the importation of European herds and crops, altering forever the ecological balance of these places. The production of sugar using slave labour, already perfected on Mediterranean isles, was first transferred to the near Atlantic islands and then to the Caribbean. And islands were to remain the preferred destinations for plantation economies for centuries. When one thinks about the expansion of Europe we often conflate an oceanic presence or a bounded presence on an island or a littoral, with continental territorial control, wrote Elizabeth Mancke[24]. 5.0  Ã‚  Ã‚   Conclusion During the period 1500-1800, the world saw the expansion of trade beyond the borders of most Western European nations. Countries like Britain, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal, and France began to explore the other side of the world through the sea. The Atlantic was a convenient way for these European traders to reach beyond boundaries. Their expertise in ship-building helped them establish trading ports in Africa and Asia. However, when the local population of the African and Asian countries began to revolt, the European traders with the help of their respective rulers began to exploit and embark on a conquest policy. This way, some of the Western European nations, including Britain, Portugal and the Netherlands began to show their ascendancy in forging expansionism roles. It was from its mastery of the seas, not land, that Europe experienced its first great economic boom. The wealth accumulated through its archipelagic empires of access found its way back to Europe, partly to be invested in land, partly to capitalise new industrial enterprises that would ultimately overturn the old order of things. By the late eighteenth century the boundary between land and sea became more definite and during the nineteenth century new nation states concentrated their energies on their own interiors. The European plunderers forced many Asian and African peasants to bonded labour and took back with them all possible resources available (John R. Gillis, 2003). 6.0  Ã‚  Ã‚   Bibliography â€Å"Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson†, The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth, [electronic bulletin board] May 4, 2004, [cited 27 February 2007] available at econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/download_pdf.php?id=1181 â€Å"O’Rourke Kevin H and Williamson Jeffrey G†, From Malthus to Ohlin: Trade, Growth and Distribution since 1500, [electronic bulletin board] April 2003, [cited 27 February 2007] available at www.tcd.ie/Economics/TEP/2002_papers/TEPNo5KO22.pdf â€Å"O’Rourke Kevin H and Williamson Jeffrey G†, After Columbus: Explaining the Global Trade Boom 1500-1800, [electronic bulletin board] February 2001, [cited 27 February 2007] available at www.tcd.ie/Economics/TEP/2001_papers/TEPNo6KO21.pdf â€Å"Prof. Munro John†, ECONOMICS 303Y1, The Economic History of Modern Europe to1914, [electronic bulletin board] September 2001, [cited 27 February 2007] available at eh.net/coursesyllabi/syllabi/munro/01dutcom.pdf â€Å"Engerman Stanley L†, The big picture: how (and when and why) the West grew rich, Policy Research, Vol. 23, 1994, 547-559, [electronic bulletin board] 1994, [cited 28 February 2007] available at www.compilerpress.atfreeweb.com/Anno%20Engerman%20The%20big%20picture%20Research%20Policy%201994.htm â€Å"Koc Mustafa†, Globalization as a Discourse, [electronic bulletin board] [cited 2 March 2007] available at www.mrs.umn.edu//chollett/anth%203204/Course%20Readings/Globalization%20as%20a%20Discourse.rtf Acemoglu Daron, Johnson Simon and Robinson James, The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change and Economic Growth, [electronic bulletin board] p.6, September 10, 2003,[cited 3 March 2007] available at http://web.mit.edu/sjohnson/OldFiles/www/attach/Rise20%20of%20Europe%20final%20revision.pdf Harvard University, 1999 WP Abstracts, [electronic bulletin board] December 9, 1999 [cited 3 March 2007] available at www.fas.harvard.edu/~atlantic/abst99.html Gillis R. John, Islands in the Making of an Atlantic Oceania, 1400-1800, [electronic bulletin board] 2003 [cited 4 March 2007] available at www.historycooperative.org/proceedings/seascapes/gillis.html [1] Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson, Abstract, p.2, The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth [2] John Munro, The Dutch and the Macro-Economic Trends of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, p.2, The Economic History of Modern Europe to1914 [3] Kevin H. O’Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, 2003, Introduction, From Malthus to Ohlin: Trade, Growth and Distribution since 1500, p.2-3 [4] N.F.R. Crafts, The Industrial Revolution in R Floud and D. McCloskey, The Economic History of Britain Since 1700, Vol.1, Cambridge University Press J Mokyr, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress, Oxford University Press Temin, Two Views of the British Industrial Revolution, Journal of Economic History, 57 (March) 63-82 [5] Kevin H. O’Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, 2003, Introduction, From Malthus to Ohlin: Trade, Growth and Distribution since 1500, p.3 [6] K. H.O’ Rourke and J. G. Williamson, After Columbus: Explaining the Global Trade Boom 1500-1800, Journal of Economic History 62 (March), 1-31 [7] Kevin H. O’Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, 2003, Introduction, From Malthus to Ohlin: Trade, Growth and Distribution since 1500, p.2-3 [8] Douglass C. North and Robert P. Thomas, The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, Cambridge University Press Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast, Constitutions and Commitments: Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth Century England, Journal of Economic History, 49, 803-832 [9] Kevin H. O’Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, 2003, Introduction, From Malthus to Ohlin: Trade, Growth and Distribution since 1500 [10] Mustafa Koc, Phases of Global Expansion, p.266, 13 Globalization as a Discourse [11] Atlantic trade opportunities became available only during the late 15th century, thanks to the discovery of the New World and the passage to Asia around the Cape of Good Hope. This resulted due to a series of innovations in ship technology, pioneered by the Portuguese that changed rigging and hull design of ships and developed the knowledge of oceanic navigation. [12] Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson, The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change and Economic Growth, p.6, 2003 [13] La Population des villes europ ´eenees de 800 `a 1850: Banque de donn ´ees et analyse sommaire des r ´esultats, Centre d’histoire  ´economique Internationale de l’Uni. de Gen`eve, Libraire Droz, Geneva [14] McEvedy, Colin and Richard Jones (1978) Atlas of World Population History, Facts on File, New York [15] Maddison, Angus (2001) The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective, Development Centre of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, Paris [16] Atlantic Trade and the Rise of Europe, Data, p.7 [17] Ch.1.2, Economic Growth in Europe, p.10, Atlantic Trade and the Rise of Europe [18] Ch.1.5 Interpretation, p.15, Atlantic Trade and the Rise of Europe [19] The establishment of political institutions limiting the power of the monarchy must have created positive spillovers on the rest of the economy of the rest of the non-Atlantic British cities, especially on the industrial capitalists, Ch.2.1, The Argument, p.17, [20] Folasade Ifamose, The Indigenous Aristocracy, the Atlantic trade, and the Gunpowder Economy, University of Abuja, Nigeria, www.fas.harvard.edu-1999 WP Abstract [21] Michiel de Jong, The Role of the State in the Expansion of the Dutch Overseas Trade Networks, 1590-1630, Universite it Leiden, The Netherlands, www.fas.harvard.edu-1999 WP Abstract [22] Quoted in Anthony Pagden, Peoples and Empires: Europeans and the Rest of the World from Antiquity to the Present (London: Weidenfeld and Nicoloson, 2001), p. 94. [23] C.R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600-1800 (London: Penguin, 1973) [24] Elizabeth Mancke, Early Modern Expansion and the Politicization of Oceanic Space,†Ã‚   The Geographical Review, 89, nr. 2 (April 1999), p. 227