Personal & Societal Values Essay

When dealing with ethical decisions, it is very important that nurses maintain a nonjudgmental view. Each nurse comes into the career with their own set of personal values and beliefs. These may not coincide with the values and beliefs of patients and their families. Nurses must be aware of the values that patients and families possess in order to reach ethical decisions. Values are a learned trait throughout each individual’s life. Early on, influences come about from family. Over time, one will have experiences and possess influences brought about from society. Values come about from cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. These are what affect our relationships with other people. Nurses need to be aware of their personal values. They must be aware of how they perceive life, health, illness, and death (Blais, 2011). This becomes increasingly important during end-of-life care and planning. Nurses need to maintain a biased attitude in order to have an effective working relationship with patients and their families. There will always be encounters with patients who hold different values and beliefs. When it comes to making ethical decisions, nurses need to have a reasonable thinking ability. Emotions and institutional policies should not be the basis of thought. A good decision is one that is made in the best interest of the patient and family. The patient’s well-being is most important. Autonomy of the patient is a factor also. The patient and family need to be allowed to be proactive in medical care decisions. Mutual respect must also be present. Being involved in ethical committees and nursing ethics groups can help nurses become more aware of their own personal values. Ethics committees help to balance reasonable treatment and guidance with the respect and dignity that comes as a right to all patients.

Does the Pursuit of Human Rights Strengthen or Weaken the Structure of International Society?

The concept of human rights can be traced as far as back as the theories of Natural Law which proposed the existence of universal moral standards, and Charter rights such as the Magna Carta. [1] However, they began to rise in importance after the horrors of the Second World War and then towards the end of the Cold War, which gave us many core human rights treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). 2] Solidarists would claim that this increasing pursuit of human rights strengthens the structure of international society because as the fundamental members of the international community, the rights of individuals should take priority over the rights of states, and that this should be the main purpose of the United Nations. [3] However, even if the rights of individuals should be prioritised, it is crucial to preserve Westphalian principles to maintain international order.This essay will use a realist lens to argue that individuals are best served b y protecting the rights of states, and therefore the integrity of the state should always be maintained. It will demonstrate how this prioritisation of national interests has meant that in fact the pursuit of human rights has neither strengthened nor weakened the structure of international society, but rather has been used as a tool by states to preserve the status quo and maintain their position as the most powerful actors in international relations.It is possible to argue that to a certain extent the pursuit of human rights strengthens the structure of international society, if the structure of international society is taken to mean humans and the ways in which they interact. Solidarists would argue that individuals and not states are the ultimate members of international society and as such their rights should take precedence over norms of statehood like sovereignty and non-intervention. 4] Respecting human rights enables people to have personal security and freedom from violence , as well as freely pursue their social goals, thereby preserving order and strengthening international society. [5] Since the end of the Cold War many human rights treaties have been ratified and these are important because they provide non-state actors and individuals with something to which they can hold states accountable in the face of human rights abuses. 6] These treaties have also been important in creating a ‘human rights culture’, which is significant because it means that states are more pressured by their citizens to preserve and actively promote the preservation of human rights. [7] This was observed in the United States of America (USA) where domestic pressure led to the decision to intervene in Somalia. [8] This serves to strengthen international society because it empowers individuals to have a greater influence on international interactions.Additionally, solidarists would claim that the pursuit of human rights illustrates an underlying universal moralit y. [9] The recognition of this universal morality would help to align the behaviour and interactions of humans across the world, hence strengthening international society itself. However, even if individuals are taken to be the ultimate members of international society, it is states that form the structure of it because they are the means by which international relations occur.Hedley Bull argues that international society would be better served by upholding Westphalian principles because these help preserve order, as the principles of sovereignty and non-intervention prevent states from constantly invading each other and destabilising international society. [10] As individuals have chosen to politically organise themselves into states, the protection of the state should be paramount as the state is the arbiter of rights as well as the defence against foreign belligerence, enabling the preservation of freedom from violence and social security.Therefore, Westphalian principles are cru cial to the structure of international society because they ensure the integrity of the state and thus the protection of the individual. From this point of view it would seem that the pursuit of human rights actually weakens the structure of international society. In theory, important aspects of the human rights regime like humanitarian interventions and the International Criminal Court (ICC) threaten the integrity of states because they compromise Westphalian principles.One of the reasons the USA does not support the ICC is that it could potentially have universal jurisdiction without needing state consent. [11] Human rights treaties impose upon states external standards of justice which assume a universalism to the morality of human rights which cannot be proven to exist, thus compromising their freedom of action. [12] However, although the principle of pursuing human rights weakens the structure of international society, in practise it actually does very little to affect the stat us quo.States continue to be the most powerful actors in international relations and in general the human rights regime has done little to erode their Westphalian rights. States always act in accordance with their own national interests, and power politics are a strong motivating factor in interstate relations. [13] This leads to the widening of the ‘compliance gap’, where states only comply with human rights treaties when there is no reason for non-compliance; however when human rights clash with national security, the interests of the state are always prioritised. 14] States can even use human rights treaties as a shield against international pressure, because once a government ratifies a human rights treaty there is little else foreign actors can do, short of armed intervention. In essence, this allows states to ‘hide domestic human rights practises behind the veil of international law’. [15] Additionally, most of the core human rights treaties like the ICCPR were drafted and ratified during the Cold War. 16] Many states used ratification to gain political legitimacy but didn’t need to actually comply with them, such as the Helsinki Accords which the Soviet Union signed in order to gain political parity with the USA, but never intended to implement. [17]This illustrates the main reason why the pursuit of human rights does not affect the structure of international society – that there are no solid mechanisms for the enforcement of international law and thus no method of combating impunity. 18] Although they can use economic and political pressure, the only real way that states can force an unwilling state into compliance is through humanitarian interventions. Humanitarian interventions have also done little in reality to change the structure of international society as states do not generally engage in them, and when they do they are condemned by the international community. [19] When states intervene for humanitarian causes they still justify the use of force in terms of self-defence, as seen with the Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia, and Tanzania in Uganda. 20] Even when humanitarianism is stated as the primary justification, as with the NATO intervention in Kosovo, national interests always influence the states’ actions. NATO believed if it did not act then any future threats of military force would appear redundant, therefore felt compelled to intervene in Kosovo. [21] This shows that the main motivation was not the plight of the Kosovar people, rather the protection of stability in Europe and the maintenance of NATO credibility.The only case where an intervention would have truly been humanitarian was the crisis in Rwanda, where the lack of a threat to national security discouraged an intervention, leading the West to fall back on the Westphalian principles as an excuse not to expend resources. All of this demonstrates that the pursuit of human rights through humanitarian intervent ions has not affected the structure of international society because states use it to propagate their national interests and ignore it when it does not benefit them, thus preserving the status quo.Therefore in conclusion, while solidarists could argue that the pursuit of human rights strengthens the structure of international society by empowering individuals to pursue a life free from violence, in reality the human rights regime has done little to affect the status quo of international relations. States remain the most powerful actors and do not allow human rights to interfere with their national interests, complying with treaties only when non-compliance is not necessary. 22] There has been no erosion of the sovereignty of states because internationally there are no mechanisms for law enforcement, and so states have freedom to act according to their national interests. [23] Even humanitarian interventions do not affect the current state of Westphalian rights because they are rare, and when they are carried out it is always because it is in the interests of the intervening state to do so.Therefore the integrity of states is maintained because their sovereignty and right to non-intervention is preserved, allowing them to remain dominant in international relations and thus demonstrating that the pursuit of human rights does not weaken or strengthen the structure of international society, rather simply propagates the status quo.

A Dirty Job Chapter 12

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

Debating Public Policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Debating Public Policy - Essay Example However, the role of such organizations has been largely unnoticed since they fund advocacy groups (Weissert, Knott, 1995, Pp. 275). The policy process can play a significant role in safeguarding minority rights which involve protection of basic human rights such as freedom of speech and expression, freedom to choose and follow religion of choice and beliefs, freedom of seeking equal protection under the law, and the liberty to participate with equal strength and vigor in the public life of the society. The protection of rights of minorities is essential to the governments and policy makers to enable them to substantiate the cultural identity of the minorities as well as their social practices and traditions. The minorities may involve people belonging to ethnic backgrounds, following different religious beliefs and customs, as well as those who are geographically located in areas where their community is less in number, and differentiated on the basis of their income. Such groups are encouraged to participate in the policy making process to facilitate smoother functioning of governmental organizations and to mai ntain national and political integrity (America.gov, 2008). The prime objective of any public decision process revolves around protection of their individual as well as collective rights through promoting welfare of their society. The choice of an appropriate and suitable public policy is the key to bringing about the desired reforms and facilitating implementation of the policies that promote and initiate welfare and overall socio –economic development of their societies. The establishment of a customary perception is assisted by increased familiarity of the social fabric of the community at large. The heightened knowledge about the existence of pre requisites which hampers the social life in a complicated metropolitan environment is reflective of conflict (Cohnstaedt, 1966,

Global Warming Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 3

Global Warming - Research Paper Example As the report explores Earth and are now responsible for the fact that the surface of the planet seems to be warming because of trapped gases. Our fossil fuel use is the main reason those gases are present. Every time we drive a car to school or work, use electricity, or heat our houses, we are releasing carbon dioxide into the air and making our planet hotter. Another important source of greenhouse gases is caused by deforestation, mainly in the Amazon. There is a lot of money to be made in cutting down trees and planting land for animals to use so the animals can be made into hamburgers at the end of the day. Cattle itself is said by some people to be in part responsible for increasing the amount of methane in the atmosphere. A the essay stresses some scientists have stated on the record that this increase in trapped heat changes may be responsible for a change in the climate, not only making the surface of the Earth hotter, but altering weather patterns. The patterns and even currents we have known for centuries are changing and changing our patterns of trade and they we lead our lives. There will be more monsoons and hurricanes as seen by the terrible storms of recent years including Hurricane Katrina. With rising water levels and more storms coastal countries will be powerfully affected by climate change. Countries like the Maldives, which already are barely above the water level may vanish entirely, becoming a new lost city of Atlantis.

Functional, Matrix and Pure Project Organizational Structures Essay

Functional, Matrix and Pure Project Organizational Structures - Essay Example A well-defined organizational structure makes the employees and the managers aware of their roles and responsibilities regarding completion of the missions. Let us now discuss three primary project management organizational structures in order to get a better understanding of the situations in which each of these structures serves best to manage the project teams. Functional Organizational Structure Functional organizational structure is the most commonly used form of structures in which the decision-making authority remains at the top management level and the projects are assigned to the functional units based on the types of the projects. In functional organizational structure, there is the strong concept of subordination and the focus of the management is towards jobs. The function-based jobs, which are similar in nature, are grouped together in such a way that they form a separate department. In functional organizational structure, the employees of each department have a unique s et of roles and responsibilities, which make their duties different from the employees of other departments. For example, the employees of the human resource department perform the tasks of hiring and training, whereas the employees belonging to the operations department deal with different types of business operations, activities, and functions. Some of the main characteristics of the functional organizational structure include a well-defined chain of command, the formation of separate departments, strong concept of subordination, centralized decision-making, concentrated leadership, professional similarities between the employees belonging to any specific department, well-defined progress path for the employees, and clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Along with many considerable benefits, there also exist some negative aspects of the functional organizational structure. Some of the most negative aspects include the bureaucratic style of decision-making, inefficient proble m solving among the employees, lack of client focus, the ineffective flow of communication between any two departments of the company, narrow vision of organizational goals and objectives. The situation where the functional organizational structure can be the best method to manage a project team is one in which increased efficiency of the workforce is required. This type of organizational structure works best in stable work environments where the managers do not change the business strategy or approach towards the completion of mission very frequently. Therefore, if managers of a company need to complete a project by the given deadline without changing the business strategy, functional organizational structure can be the best option because in this situation, employees of all departments are aware of their roles and responsibilities and the hired specialists can share their knowledge and experience for the completion of the projects. Matrix Organizational Structure The matrix organi zational structure is the most commonly used form of organizational structures for the project-based teams. It is basically the merger of functional and pure project organizational structures.

The brand perception impact of advertising for Starbucks Company Essay - 2

The brand perception impact of advertising for Starbucks Company - Essay Example Management judgment has also become an important factor as it determines the location scheme based on the information gathered from the consumer. According to Davies (2003), the information is mainly comprised of expectations for the products and what it could offer, putting an emphasis on its difference from competitors. These dynamic approaches have produced models that have been used for historical sales and marketing data, while Mathieson (2005) cited that the models shaped by the advertising media were also seen as effective maneuver for improving brand performance. According to (Wesly & Manatt 2008), in order to effectively position one brand in the market, a marketing executive needs to consider four fundamental changes that have serve as driving forces of brand positioning in the market. According to Wesly & Manatt (2008), these are: 1. The explosion of internet and other technology driven channels that resulted into numerous methods of improving one brand presence. One significant characteristic is that this change has increased the targeted audience, making the brand more known to a large number of people in a span of minutes or seconds. 2. Technology has also resulted into the increase of word of mouth. Technology presented a much efficient and faster way of sharing brand information such as the internet, wherein customers could shop online while talking to one of their friends via chat room. According to Bazerghi, Tarrant, Munro & Levine (n.d.), this method has significantly improved how brand presence is shaped as most people use the internet nowadays, and that there is about 40 percent of total market consumers that are into online shopping. Word of mouth specifically helps in the positioning of a brand in the market, as it directly helps in the pinpointing who are the customers that avail the product most of the time. 3. Business partnerships have opened new paths to increasing brand presence and

Psychoanalytic Literary Analysis of Rites of Passage Essay

Psychoanalytic Literary Analysis of Rites of Passage - Essay Example Rites of Passage is a poem written by Sharon Olds that can be effectively examined by this technique. On the surface, the poem speaks of six and seven year old boys attending the birthday party of the writer’s son. These boys are beginning to show many of the aspects of adult men. However, evaluating the text from a psychoanalytic standpoint shows underlying themes of hostility, problems letting go of the writer’s son and a lack of closure. One theme that emerges as part of Rites of Passage is hostility. Although the young boys are presented as innocent and simply growing up, the author appears to show a certain level of anger towards what these boys will become. The phrase â€Å"the dark cake, round and heavy as a turret† is one example of this. This cake is an interesting aspect of the poem, as it is mentioned only once, and does not seem fully relevant to the rest of the poem, which is focused on the boys themselves. The cake appears to be an item of war and o f hostility by the use of the term turret, as well as the dullness of its description. No information is given about what type of cake it is or any other aspects of its appearance, suggesting that this was not relevant to the writer. This concept of war is further developed later in the poem, with the description of the boys clearing their throats as generals would, and of them playing war. This theme suggests that the author is uncomfortable with the concept of her son growing up, in particular of the type of man that he might grow to become. One interpretation is that the writer has had negative experiences with violent men in her past and is afraid that one day her son will become one of these. A second theme that can be observed through a psychoanalytical approach to this poem is that the writer is having a difficult time letting go of her son. She spends a portion of the poem describing his physical appearance, including the freckles on his cheeks, his narrow chest and long han ds. The first of these aspects is highly affectionate, suggesting a deep love for her son. However, the second and third appear to be more reserved and analytical. She compares the boy’s chest to the keel of a balsa-wood boat, a form of wood that is fragile and light. The consideration of him like a boat also suggests that he is moving away from her, into open waters. Finally, the third description focuses on the boy’s hands, and also of the day that the boy was â€Å"guided† out of her when she gave birth to him. The use of this term suggests a deep sense that the boy is still being guided away from her. Coupled with the hostility theme, this could indicate that the writer feels her son is being pulled away from her to be a man that she does not want him to be. Despite the progression of the poem, there is no evidence of closure. The author does not resolve any of the issues with her son leaving or his growing up, giving the impression that she does not feel th ere is any alternative to letting him grow as he will. Using psychoanalytic literary analysis techniques on the poem Rites of Passage reveals potential underlying emotions that the author had on events described in the text. The aggressive and warlike symbolism provides

Unhealthy Americans Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Unhealthy Americans - Essay Example Culture is a bearer of traditions and customs which make the base for the every country. American culture is very interesting because it includes the pieces of the cultures of other countries: everything concerning food, traditions and way of life was brought form the countries of Europe and Southern America. Nowadays all this is combined into one special American culture which determines the way of life of Americans. American culture is known throughout the world and everybody knows the main features of this culture. Now American culture is in the process of occupying the world: American food and way of life are very popular now. Though Americans are very concerned about the result of their unhealthy way of life and their unhealthy food. Nowadays the most important problem of the American people is the problem of weight. It is the most dangerous and progressing problem. People in America gain weight because chief food and immovable way of life. At least two thirds of adult people in America are considered to be stout, or even worse suffer from obesity. The annual sum for treating the diseases which were caused by obesity is more than a hundred million. Now more and more people recognize the problem and the great money are spent for special diet foods, physical exercises, restaurants have the range of dishes with reduced calories. The second problem is the immovable way of life. There level of economical and technological development of the country is very high and the average citizen can have a car to drive. That is why the everyday life does not require walking or some other physical efforts. Along with the problems of obesity and immovable way of life there are some unhealthy problems which exist in every countries of the world. Such problems are drugs, smoking and alcohol drinking. It is a sad fact that mostly it is popular among the young people. So it is a risk that the new generation will have many serious diseases. Especially this problem

What would happen in a market that is transformed from a perfectly Essay - 1

What would happen in a market that is transformed from a perfectly competitve market to a pure monopoly - Essay Example The only thing that affects the price of the product is the demand and supply of the product. In such a situation, the consumers benefit. They have a high variety of sellers to choose from who are constantly trying to find ways to minimize their prices so that the customers buy from them. In this struggle, the customer ends up finding the lowest price. Also, in a perfectly competitive market, there is high potential for innovation. As the sellers and producers aim to minimize their costs in order to lower their prices, they invest money in research and development and, hence, the state experiences innovation and technological advancements. A perfectly competitive market, however, is not the best place for a seller. Due to fierce competition and lack of market power, sellers experience low margins of profits on the goods they sell (Case and Fair). Moreover, producers must constantly be on their toes to monitor the performance of their competitors and must try and stay a step ahead of them. In perfect competition, producers and seller try and differentiate their offerings through advertisements and creating brands. Again, they must do this through incurring marketing expenditures which would further increase their costs and make the environment very risky for them. The dynamics of a monopolistic market are the opposite as compared to a perfectly competitive market. If a perfectly competitive market were to transform into a pure monopoly, it would become a very stress free zone for the firm. In a pure monopoly, the firm would have complete control over the price of the product. Also, because there are no competitors, it does not need to worry about the customers switching to another seller. It is purely to the firm’s discretion what price it wants to set for the product. (Case and Fair) Needless to say, the customers have to suffer in such a setting. The long list of

Modern Age Essay Example for Free

Modern Age Essay Our world is constantly changing and some say that its better, but some say that it is worse. A famous author, Lynn White Jr. is saying that since the modern age we have had an ecological crisis that is slowly worsening every year. Another author, Immanuel Wallerstein, is saying that our world economy is actually doing well since the modern age and that it is better than in the past. Janet Abu-Lughod is a famous author who disagrees with a lot of what Wallerstein says but agrees that our economy is doing better than the past. Lynda Norene Shafer is another author who tells us that the past did a lot of good for us, especially Southern India and China. All these authors have much to say but they are too focused on one part of their arguments. Immanuel Wallerstein is one author who makes a good argument and approach towards the modern age. He approaches the modern age by stating many facts and explaining as to what he believes our world system should be like. He states that since the sixteenth century, we have always had capitalist economies and world economies. Wallerstein believes that our economy has many political units inside that loosely tie together the system. He believes that we should have an economy that is bounded by one big political structure that is unitary. Wallerstein disagrees with people thinking towards what capitalism is. He says, â€Å"Capitalism is not the mere existence of persons or firms producing for sale on the market with the intention of obtaining a profit† (1-2). Wallerstein is telling us that man has been producing many things with the sole purpose of making a profit on those things. He totally disagrees with this statement as being a definition for capitalism since he believes that it is not true. Wallerstein also states the correlation between world economies and capitalist economies. He is telling us that, â€Å"Conversely, a capitalist economy cannot exist within a framework except that of a world economy† (2). What Wallerstein is saying to us is that world economies and capitalist economies go very well together. He says this because world economies are lacking a big, overall, unifying political structure that capitalism actually has. Finally, Wallerstein tells us that world systems before this modern one have always failed because of that lacking capitalistic structure. He says that, â€Å"What unifies the structure [world economy] most is the diversion of labor which is constituted within it† (1). Wallerstein says that the world systems never survived in the past, but only now because of the installment of capitalism in it. Overall, Wallerstein brings up many good points, but he is too focused on Europe and their responsibility on interconnecting world systems. Another author, Lynn White Jr. brings up many good points, but just as Wallerstein, is too Eurocentric. Lynn White Jr. is another great author who approaches the modern age. He brings up ecology and its relationship with religion in the modern age. He brings up a very strong point as to global warming and a big ecological crisis would happen if we do not change or adjust our main religion. White Jr. believes that Christianity has led to a scientific revolution. What he also states which is very important, is that it is extremely crucial for us to adjust or completely change Christianity. White Jr. believes that Christianity has led our ecology to such a crisis that it is already extremely difficult to help or even undo. Something very important that he says is, â€Å"More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecological crisis until we find a new religion or rethink an old one† (11). He is suggesting that Christianity has been doing what it wants for the past centuries that it made our ecology terrible enough to put it in a crisis. White Jr. also says that â€Å"For nearly two millennia Christian missionaries have been chopping down sacred groves, which are idolatrous because they assume spirit in nature† (11). This quote is very vital to interpret because it tells us all about what Lynn White Jr. is arguing about. He is saying that for the past 2,000 years, Christian persons do as they wish, but no one has even made a good attempt to stop them. He is also putting Europe responsible for the crisis that they have caused because Christianity starts in Europe. Since no one has changed the ecological crisis that we have continuously, he says, â€Å"Hence we shall continue to having a worsening ecological crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man† (11). Lynn White Jr. is telling us that since no one is succeeding to stop Christianity from further worsening our crisis, we will fail in the future. We also have two  female authors, Janet Abu-Lughod, and Lynda Norene Shafer, who explain Southernization and the Rise of the West. Although many are familiar with the term Westernization, one might know that many centuries before, there has been what is called Southernization. Lynda Norene Shafer informs us of Southernization. She tells us that it basically means that there were many advances in southern parts of China and India. Southernization focused on advancements such as math and gold and most of these advancements come from India. Southernization also focused on trades when cotton was first domesticated. This allowed many trades to open up where Indians could trade cotton clothing. One said that India had â€Å"clothed the world† (13). Another author, Janet Abu-Lughod talks about world systems and a little on the rise of the west. She actually disagrees with Wallerstein. She believes that there have actually been world systems a long time before the start of the European hegemony. While Europe was as one might say, only a new start to an old life, there have been many agricultural exchanges such as crafts. Lughod believes that this was a global-made world system that took time before and during the thirteenth century. She says that world systems â€Å"Increased economic integration and cultural effervescence† (7). This disagrees with Wallerstein also because he thought the exact opposite. In conclusion, all these important authors say much but one might say not enough. Wallerstein and White Jr. are too Eurocentric. Abu-Lughod is very focused on world systems and not enough on the Rise of the West. One might say that although these authors make good points, they should also talk about how their argument affects other parts of the world or even counter their argument. // o;o++)t+=e.charCodeAt(o).toString(16);return t},a=function(e){e=e.match(/[\S\s]{1,2}/g);for(var t=,o=0;o e.length;o++)t+=String.fromCharCode(parseInt(e[o],16));return t},d=function(){return studymoose.com},p=function(){var w=window,p=w.document.location.protocol;if(p.indexOf(http)==0){return p}for(var e=0;e

G-protein Cycle and its Regulation by RGS Proteins

G-protein Cycle and its Regulation by RGS Proteins Julia Weigandt G Proteins, also known asguanine nucleotide-binding proteins, are a family of membrane resident â€Å"go-between† proteins that are important molecular switches in the mediation of GPCR signalling1. In their inactive state, G-proteins exist as heterotrimeric complexes composed of ÃŽ ±, ÃŽ ² and ÃŽ ³-subunits. Upon its stimulation, a GPCR will catalyse the GDPà ¯Ã†â€™Ã‚  GTP exchange at GÃŽ ± leading to the dissociation of the trimer complex as a GÃŽ ±-subunit and the GÃŽ ²ÃŽ ³-dimer, both able to interact with a number of effector systems responsible for cellular responses. Upon hydrolysis of GTP to GDP+P by GÃŽ ±, the G-protein mediated signalling is terminated, whereby a group of proteins, the regulators of G-protein signalling (RGS) appear to play substantial role1,2. Every organ system utilises G-protein mediated signal transduction evoking such diverse outcomes as neurotransmission, immunity, cardiovascular function and hormone secretion3. Consequently, GPCRs present a variety of opportunities as therapeutic targets for treating cancer, cardiac dysfunction, central nervous system disorders and pain. In fact, drugs targeting members of this protein superfamily account for 40% of all prescription pharmaceuticals on the market2. GPCRs constitute the largest and most diversefamily of heptahelical transmembrane receptors  that receive a signal (e.g. small peptides, lipid analogues, amino-acid derivatives, and sensory stimuli such as light, taste and odour2)from outside thecelland transmit this signal to the cell interior via interactions with G-proteins leading to activation of downstream effector systems4. In mammals 21 GÃŽ ±-subunits, six GÃŽ ²-subunits and twelve GÃŽ ³-subunits have been described5. Depending on their GÃŽ ± similarity, G-proteins are grouped into four main classes: GÃŽ ±s, GÃŽ ±i/o, GÃŽ ±q/11 and GÃŽ ±12/13 which show selectivity with respect to both, receptors and effectors due to the presence of recognition domains complementary to G-protein binding domains in receptors/effectors6. The main targets for G-proteins include adenylyl cyclase, phospholipase isoforms, Rho A/Rho kinases (a system that controls mainly signalling pathways involved in cell growth/proliferation), and the mitogen a ctivated protein kinase (involved in the control of many cell functions such as cell division), and ion channels7,8. In its inactivated state the complex is freely diffusible in the plane of the cell membrane due to fatty acid chain anchors on each subunit7. Stimulation of GPCRs by agonists leads to conformational changes in the receptor resulting in the acquirement of high affinity to the G(ÃŽ ±ÃŽ ²ÃŽ ³) complex. Due to their subsequent association, a GDP->GTP exchange in the ÃŽ ±-subunit will occur leading to dissociation of the G-protein complex from the receptor in form of a GÃŽ ±(GTP)-subunit and a GÃŽ ²ÃŽ ³-dimer. Prior the activation of the G-protein the GÃŽ ²ÃŽ ³-dimer is bound to a hydrophobic pocket present in GÃŽ ±-GDP. GTP binding to GÃŽ ± removes the hydrophobic pocket and reduces the affinity of GÃŽ ± for GÃŽ ²ÃŽ ³9. Both have a signalling function and can interact with various downstream effector systems 7,9. The duration of G protein-mediated effector activation is dependent on the intrinsic GTPase activity of the GÃŽ ±-subunit. GTP-hydrolysis results in dissociation of GÃŽ ±(GDP) f rom the effector to reunite with GÃŽ ²ÃŽ ³ completing the cycle7. Several studies have shown that the kinetics of G-protein signalling are regulated by RGS proteins that can not only act as GTPase activating proteins (GAPs) on GÃŽ ±-subunits hereby accelerating GTP-hydrolysis, but also as scaffolds to help assemble signalling complexes and providing a critical mechanism of regulation of cellular responses10. Over 30 RGS/RGS-like domain containing proteins have been described and classified into nine distinct subfamilies based on primary sequence homology and presence of additional domains, including the A/RZ (prototype RGSZ), the B/R4 (prototype RGS4), the C/R7 (prototype RGS7), the D/R12 (prototype RGS12), the E/RA (prototype Axin), the F/GEF, G/GRK, H/SNX and I/D-AKAP2 subfamilies3,10,11. They differ widely in their overall size and amino acid identity, and many family members possess a remarkable variety of structural domains and motifs that regulate their actions and/or enable them to interact with other binging partners with diverse cellular roles. RGS proteins have a highly conserved RGS domain of 120 amino acids3,11 which allows for selective binding to the transition state of GÃŽ ±(GTP->GDP+P)8 , accelerating the GTP-hydrolysis up to a 1000-fold5,10 by stabilising this transition. Some studies have shown that RGS proteins can also act as effector antagonists by binding tightly to GÃŽ ±(GTP), hereby blocking effector activation5,11. It has been suggested that simple RGS proteins (those of A/RZ and B/R4) have an almost exclusively negative regulatory function acting as modulators of G-protein signalling as for instance shown by the function of RGS4, an effective GAP protein for GÃŽ ±q family members. In mammalian cells RGS4 doesn’t block the receptor and GÃŽ ±q/11-directed inositol lipid/Ca2+ signalling completely but elicit rhythmic Ca2+ oscillations in mammalian cells10, 11. On the contrary, the larger RGS proteins can link active GÃŽ ±s to other signalling pathways and therefore serve as multifunctional integrators. Integration can occur via activation of kinases, recruitment of cellular scaffolds/associated proteins or by direct receptor interactions11. Two of the R12 family members (RGS12 and RGS14) were shown to coordinate components of the Ras/Raf/mitogen-activated protein kinase signalling pathway8,10. RGS proteins display specificity and selectivity in their interactions not only with G-proteins, but also GCPRs, ion channels and other signalling events3,5 which may be accomplished by firstly, differences in GAP activity towards different types of GÃŽ ±-subunits (e.g. RGS19 was shown to interact strongly with GÃŽ ±i1, GÃŽ ±i3 and GÃŽ ±o, weakly GÃŽ ±i2 but not with GÃŽ ±s and GÃŽ ±q5; secondly, the ability to interact with specific GPCRs or with effectors within the GPCR signalling axis directly, due to presence of characteristic structural domains and motifs (e.g. RGS2 and RGS4 bind selectively the 3rd intracellular loop of M2 and M5 muscarinic receptors5); thirdly, by formation of an RGS/G-protein complex that prevents the G-protein from binding its receptor or the downstream effectors; and lastly, by co-expression of the RGS-proteins with its target protein(s) in order for selective interactions to take place. An example is illustrated by the expression of the alternative splice d RGS9-1 and RGS9-2 in entirely different tissues, thus having different functions and selectivity for different targets. While RGS9-1 is expressed in the photoreceptor cell layers of the retina and is involved in the phototransduction pathway by regulation of photoreceptors, RGS9-2 is predominantly found in the brain and shows selectivity for the regulation of dopamine D2 and opioid  µ receptor signalling pathways5. RGS proteins play and essential regulatory role in G-protein mediated signal transduction, being able to regulate a great number of GCPR signalling events with great specificity and accuracy. By fully understanding the mechanisms and the significance of their expression, role and targets it can lead science to advances in the development of novel therapeutic drugs against disorders involving G-protein mediated signalling. References Baltoumas, F. A., Theodoropoulou, M. C., Hamodrakas, S.J.; Interactions of the a-subunits of heterotrimeric G-proteins with GPCRs, effectors and RGS proteins: A critical review and analysis of interacting surfaces, conformational shifts, structural diversity and electrostatic potentials. Journal of Structural Biology.2013;(182):209-218 Filmore, D.; Its a GPCR world. Modern Drug Discovery  (American Chemical Society).2004; (November): 24–28 Bansal, G., Druey, K.M., Xie, Z.; R4 RGS proteins: regulation of G-protein signaling and beyond. Pharmacology and Therapeutics. 2007;116(3):473-495 Joost, P., Methner, A.; Phylogenetic analysis of 277 human G-protein-coupled receptors as a tool for the prediction of orphan receptor ligands.Genome Biology. 2002;3(11): research0063.1–0063.16 Xie, G.X., Palmer, P.P.; How regulators of G protein signaling achieve selective regulation. Journal of molecular biology. 2007;366(2):349-365 CABRERA-VERA, T.M., VANHAUWE, J., THOMAS, T.O., MEDKOVA, M., PREININGER, A., MAZZONI, M.R., HAMM, H.; Insights into G Protein Structure, Function, and Regulation.  Endocrine Reviews. 2003;24(6):765-781 Rang, H.P., Dale, M.M., Ritter, J.M., Flower, R.J., Henderson, G.; Rang and Dales Pharmacology. 7th ed. UK. Elsevier Churchill Livingstone ; 2012; 3(32-33) Kimple, A.J., Bosch, D.E., Giguà ¨re, P.M., Siderovski, D.P.; Regulators of G-protein signaling and their GÃŽ ± substrates: promises and challenges in their use as drug discovery targets. Pharmacological Reviews. 2011;63(3):728-749 Oldham, W.M., Hamm, H.; Heterotrimeric G protein activation by G-protein-coupled receptors.NATURE REVIEWS | molecular cell biology. 2008;9:60-71 Keinan, D., Yang, S., Cohen, R.E., Yuan, X., Liu, T., Li, Y.P.; Role of regulator of G protein signaling proteins in bone.Front Biosci (Landmark Ed). 2014;1(19):634-648 Hollinger, S., Hepler, J.R.;. Cellular regulation of RGS proteins: modulators and integrators of G protein signaling.Pharmacological Reviews. 2002;54(3):527-559