Reading through “Winter in a Warehouse” Essay

â€Å"Winter in a Warehouse,† is about a group of warehouse women on their way to and from the washroom of the milling company. The washroom is in the office building which is a considerable distance from the women’s workplace, the warehouse. As it is winter, the trek from one building to the other becomes a tedious and an unwished-for errand. The atmosphere is cold and hostile as the people they come across with. The short journey evokes in the narrator’s mind several issues – gender, class and social status – between the warehouse women and the rest of the characters in the poem. In â€Å"Winter in a Warehouse,† Anne Spillard speaks about the condition of the lower- class working women in the latter-day industrial society. The poem started with the narrator’s voice fondly recalling the image of his grandfather, â€Å"Grandad ‘goes for a loo */Behind the old chimbly† (lines 1-2), from a long time ago. The tone here is friendly, the language is colloquial and the mood is gay. Grandad, being old, â€Å"Dragging his feet in carpet slippers† (3), is also probably retired from his work in the mill. The use of grandfather in the poem suggests time difference. The corrugated iron â€Å"Where the wind flaps rusty limbs/ Of corrugated iron† (7-8), denotes a time long gone by. It is probably 40 to 50 years ago since grandfather worked in that company when manufacturing firms employed mostly men in its workforce. Noting the narrator’s familiarity with the setting, it is likely that he or she is a third generation worker employed in the same mill or factory that his grandparent worked for. Grandfather finds the long walk to the office tiresome, â€Å"†¦ ‘It’s too far to trail/ ‘T ‘ the bloody office’ (4-5), so he simply decides to pee against the chimney by the bank. The narrator seems to perceive this as an unusual gesture, â€Å"And pees against the great black chimney† (9). The chimney, great and black, is a thing of significance and not to be trifled with. Grandfather’s peeing where he pleased perhaps constitutes defiance of the convention on peeing and of what the chimney signifies. On the other hand, the narrator’s voice registers a suspicion about grandad’s account, â€Å"Or so he tells us† (10). It implies that grandfather could be lying, that perhaps it is not that easy to break the company regulation as well as the convention. It is only at the 10th line, with the use of â€Å"us† that the narrator is revealed. They are women workers stationed in the warehouse gone for a walk to the office building within the company compound to wash their empty coffee cups and to pee. Upon arriving there, they see the millpond nearby, â€Å"Down to the office/ Where the mill manager used to sit† (12-13). The mill manager, like the grandfather, is a representation of an era gone by. In the early stage of industrialization, it was the manager, who was usually also the owner of the business, who conducted his businesses in an office with the help of a staff or two. He was also visible in the company premises. In more recent times, with further division of labor and the expansion of industrialization, the manager has normally taken to holding his office in an inner chamber within the office building. He is scarcely visible to the workers and as such, there is usually a layer of office staffs that deals with the rank and file or the ordinary workers of the company. It is these office girls that the warehouse women came across with when they went to the office premises to have use of the washroom. The office girls act and speak superior to the warehouse women. They address the women collectively, in a cold and impersonal manner. The washroom is in a state of disrepair, â€Å"Melted snow drips through the washroom ceiling† (18). The water at the mains must be turned on first before the women could flush the toilet. The male washroom, â€Å"†¦ it’s leaking. † (23). These little details describe the ambience of the washroom area – old, ill-kept and deteriorating. And yet, the office girls almost begrudge them for using it. â€Å"‘You warehouse people always arrive/ ‘Just when we’ve boiled the kettle/ ‘for elevenses,’ the office girls rebuke us. † (15-17). The warehouse women do not have a washroom in their workplace. In the period described in this poem, even answering the call of nature, presents a problem. Unlike men, women cannot urinate anywhere. Furthermore, in most manufacturing companies, peeing is only allowed during designated breaks. One girl even goes so far as to point to out to the women that the male washroom must not be used, â€Å"Don’t use the Gents, †¦Ã¢â‚¬  (21). Perhaps, the reminder is unnecessary, as the women have been coming there on the same errand for years and are aware of the fact. It is also not far to suppose that the Gents has not been working for decades. Thus, the part about the male toilet leaking is a take on the grandfather’s story. Perhaps, the male workers in the mill were not subjected to strict regulation on peeing only because the male toilet was leaking. Throughout the poem, the voice constantly changes: from the third person singular (lines 1-10), to first person plural (11-14), to second person plural (15-17), to third person plural(18), back to first person plural (19-20), to third person singular (21-23), and lastly, to third person plural (24-31), making it vibrant and giving the reader the feeling that the characters are performing before him. It also shows the individuality or lack of, the characters within the poem. Nina, one of the office girls, has a distinct voice and she has a name. In contrast, the warehouse women are only referred to as â€Å"us,† â€Å"we† and â€Å"warehouse women. † The warehouse women have only one voice: the voice of a group. The office girls have their voice as a group and their individual voices as persons apart. Despite the office being heated, perfumed and powdered, the narrator notices that â€Å"the office girls sit shivering† (24), a hint that their thinner clothing cause them discomfort during winter. On the other hand, the warehouse women have become indifferent to the coldness. Why? It is because winter is the all-year season inside the warehouse. What is not mentioned here but is implied is the suffering of the warehouse women doing hard, manual and routine labor, whose enclosed workplace is perhaps unheated, full of fumes and dust, and dark as one could imagine. Towards the end of the poem, the engaging voice at the beginning seems to have become somebody else, an alienated figure viewing a scene that he is not part of, But the warehouse women, Shapeless in heavy sweaters and wooly longjohns, Trudge back through the snow, No longer noticing this winter Which may last forever Inside the blankness of their warehouse. The poem begins on a cheerful note, in an informal way and in a youthful voice, with a fond recollection of one’s grandfather and his days. It ends on a cheerless, aged and serious tone about a group of women trudging their way back to the warehouse across the snow, oblivious of the season and what it might bring to them.

Bite Me: A Love Story Chapter 12

12.Alchemy The Chinese herb shop smelled like licorice and dried monkey butt. The Animals were piled into the narrow aisle between counters, trying to hide behind Troy Lee's grandmother and failing spectacularly. Behind a glass case, the shopkeeper looked older and more spooky than Grandma Lee, which none of them thought possible until now. It was like he'd been carved from an apple, then left on the windowsill to dry for a hundred years. The walls of the shop were lined, floor to ceiling, with little drawers of dark wood, each with a small bronze frame and a white card with Chinese characters written on it. The old man stood behind glass cases that held all manner of desiccated plant and animal bits, from whole sea horses and tiny birds, to shark parts and scorpion tails, to odd spiky bits that looked like they'd been flown in from another planet. â€Å"What's that?† Drew asked Troy Lee from under a veil of stringy blond hair. He pointed to a wrinkled black thing. Troy Lee said something in Cantonese to Grandma, who said something to the shopkeeper, who barked something back. â€Å"Bear penis,† said Troy Lee. â€Å"Should we score some?† asked Drew. â€Å"For what?† asked Troy. â€Å"An emergency,† said Drew. â€Å"Sure, okay,† said Troy Lee, then he said something to Grandma in Cantonese. There was an exchange with the shopkeeper, after which Troy said, â€Å"How much do you want? It's fifty bucks a gram.† â€Å"Whoa,† said Barry. â€Å"That's expensive.† â€Å"He says it's the best dried bear penis you can buy,† said Troy Lee. â€Å"Okay,† said Drew. â€Å"A gram.† Troy passed the order through Grandma to the shopkeeper. He snipped a tip off a bear penis, weighed it, and placed it on the pile of herbs in the sheet of paper he had laid on the counter for Drew. Grandma's paper was much larger, and the shopkeeper had been tottering around the shop for half an hour gathering the ingredients. At one point when the old man was up on the top of the ladder at the far back corner of the shop, the Animals had leapt the counter and laced their arms together as a human rescue net, which served only to scare the bejeezus out of the shopkeeper and set Grandma off in a tirade of Cantonese scolding, to which they all responded like dogs, paying her rapt attention and tilting their heads as if they actually had some idea of what the fuck she was talking about. Lately the Animals had been all about saving lives. Most of the time, guys their age would be fairly convinced of their immortality, or at least oblivious of their mortality, but since being murdered by a blue hooker turned vampire, then resurrected as vampires, then restored to living by Foo Dog's genetic alchemy, they had been feeling what they could only describe as Jesusy. â€Å"I'm feeling extra Jesusy,† said Jeff, the tall jock. â€Å"I always feel extra Jesusy,† said Clint, who always did. â€Å"Yeah, extra Jesusy, bitches! Let's go save some mother-fuckers!† Lash had shouted, which had sort of embarrassed everyone a little, since they had been sitting around a table in Starbucks at the time, discussing the attack of the cat cloud and the information they'd exchanged with the two homicide cops. â€Å"It's up to us,† Lash added softly, sort of slinking into his hoody and putting on his shades. Now they watched as the old shopkeeper folded up Grandma Lee's bundle of ingredients and tucked in the paper so it was as tight as a toothpick spliff, then flipped the package over and wrote some Chinese characters on the back with a carpenter's pencil. â€Å"What's it say?† Barry asked Troy Lee. â€Å"It says, ‘vampire cat remedy.'† â€Å"No shit?† â€Å"Yeah. Then there's a bunch of warnings about side effects.† An hour later they were sitting around the Lee kitchen table, waiting for the big twenty-quart soup pot on the stove to come to a boil. Grandma Lee rose from her chair and tottered over to the stove with her package of herbs. Troy Lee joined her, helped her unwrap the package, and held the paper away from the burner as she scooped handfuls of herbs and animal parts into the boiling water. Foul and magical fumes bubbled out of the kettle, like the flatulence of dragons on a demon-only diet. â€Å"This really going to work, Grandma?† Troy Lee asked in Cantonese. â€Å"Oh yeah. We used it when I was a girl in China and some vampire cats invaded the city.† â€Å"And they still have the recipe in a shop down on Stockton Street?† â€Å"It's a good recipe.† She scooped the last of the package into the water. â€Å"How do you use this stuff, anyway?† â€Å"With firecrackers.† â€Å"It's wet, how are you going to use firecrackers?† â€Å"I don't know how, I just like firecrackers.† The Animals covered their noses and started filing out of the kitchen. â€Å"That smells like fermented skunk ass,† said Jeff. Grandma said something in Cantonese, followed by â€Å"My bitches,† pronounced in frighteningly accentless English. â€Å"What? What'd she say?† asked Jeff. â€Å"She says, ‘That's how you know it's a good recipe, gents,'† said Troy Lee. THE EMPEROR A dark basement. A thousand sleeping vampire cats. One formerly human vampire. One huge, shaved vampire-cat hybrid. Five matches left. No way out. A half hour, maybe less, until sundown. The Emperor was not a man to use profanity, but after he assessed his situation and burned his fingers with his fourth to last match, he said, â€Å"Well, this blows.† There was no helping it, sometimes a man, even a brave and noble man, must speak the harsh truth, and his situation, did, indeed, blow. He'd tried everything he could think of to escape the basement, from building a stairway to the window with empty fifty-five-gallon drums, to screaming for help like a man on fire, but even on a platform of oil drums he couldn't find the leverage or the strength to move the Dumpster away from the window. He could hear Bummer and Lazarus whimpering outside in the alley. All the other windows had been bricked up, all the steel fire doors were bolted, and, of course, the elevators and cables were long gone from the shafts (which he'd discovered after an hour prying the doors open with a metal support bar he'd taken off one of the shelves where Tommy Flood lay curled up with the Chet-thing). A dusty spray of twilight filtered down the elevator shaft from somewhere above, and it was by this that the Emperor ascertained that there was no way to climb the shaft, and that now it was dangerously close to sundown, as the light had turned a dim orange color. He would fight, oh yes, he would not go down without a battle, but even the magnificently agile little swordsman had gone down to the attacking pounce of cats. What chance did he stand in the dark with only a metal bar? He'd already checked the empty oil drums for accelerants, hoping he might burn his enemies before they awakened, but he'd had no luck. The barrels had had dry goods or something solid in them, and even so, he wasn't sure how he'd avoid being suffocated by burning cat fumes. Then, in thinking about how he might escape the flames, it occurred to him how he might escape. He made his way back to the storeroom where Chet and Tommy lay, and lit one of his precious matches to get his bearings. Yes, there was still a bolt on the door, and in addition there were enough barrels and shelves to construct a barricade beyond that. The match went out and he felt his way across the room until he touched Tommy's back-cold flesh. He took his ex-friend under the armpits and dragged him off the shelf and across the room, bumping through the door-way as he went. He shoved the body to the side and cringed with the crunch it made, falling onto the immobile bodies of dead cats. Back through dark, feeling around until he found Chet's fur. He felt for what he thought were the front paws, then backed across the room again, the huge shaved vampire cat in tow. Chet was lighter than Tommy had been, but not by much, and the Emperor was winded. He couldn't afford to sit. The ray of light in the elevator shaft had gone deep red. He heard Bummer let out a ruff beyond the window. â€Å"Run, men, away! Go away from this place. I'll find you in the morning. Go!† He never raised his voice to the men, even when they were in peril, and he heard Lazarus whimper at his command, but then the sound of Bummer growling while being dragged away by the scruff of his neck. He would get the message after a block or so. The men were safe. He pulled the metal door shut, then yanked on it until he heard a click. Then spent the second to the last of his matches looking at the simple bolt, and taking a last look around the room, trying to memorize the layout of the barrels and shelves that he would have to move in the dark. As the match burned out, he heard stirring in the room outside. There was a rack of metal shelves to the right of the door. He grabbed them and overturned them in the doorway. Yes, the door opened out, but what could it hurt. The more he put between himself and the vampire cats, the better. He scooped up armloads of the clothing at his feet and tossed them over the shelves, then backed across the room, throwing everything he touched in front of him, as if he were tunneling out the other side. Finally, he crawled up in the heavy shelf where Tommy and Chet had been and crouched, facing the door. He felt for the handle of the kitchen knife that he'd tucked in his belt at the small of his back, drew it, and held it before him. There were distinct cat noises-yowls, hisses, and meows, coming from the room outside. They were awake, up, and moving. There was a tentative scratch at the door, then a whirr of scratching, like someone had turned a power sander on outside, then it stopped as quickly as it had started and all he could hear was his own breathing. No. There was movement. The slight rustle of cloth, then a low, trilling purr. And it was coming from inside the door, he was sure of it. The Emperor clamped the knife in his teeth and lit his last match. The room was as he thought it would be, a pile of debris and barrels, but swirling out from under shelving in front of the door was a layer of mist, moving across the floor toward him, undulating in tiny waves that approximated the sound of a purr.

Alpha Plantations and Major Crisis in 1999 Term Paper - 1

Alpha Plantations and Major Crisis in 1999 - Term Paper Example The oil palm company Alpha Plantations Sdn Bhd in Malaysia has two major divisions namely Oil Palm Estate and Palm Oil Mills. This company is owned by a British Company and aims to supply oil to the parent company’s detergent manufacturing business. The company employs local workers to meet the workforce needs. The mill carries out its operations in a shift based environment with three shifts employing 25 works per shift. Supervisors are appointed to watch over the work of each shift. Among the most senior members of the company is Mr. Ang. He is working in the company since 1965 and has achieved the designation of the senior production supervisor through constant efforts and struggles. Mr. Ang is supposedly experienced in dealing with almost every situation surrounded by the company’s premises. He deals with the workers, solves their normal issues, is responsible for the undisrupted operations of the business, involved in the coordination of shift planning, responsible for the preparation of daily production reports, sets short-term performance targets for the shifts and also helps in Human Resource Planning issues. He also acts as a ‘Gatekeeper’ which directs towards his important role as an assistant to the mill manager and every issue comes into his supervision before it reaches the mill manager. Owing to the multitasking and untiring efforts of Mr. Ang, the mill manager is quite satisfied and contented with the firm, methodical and almost militarily efficient way of running the business. The year 1999 acted as a devastating experience for Alpha mills. The basic reason behind the deteriorated financial performance was the cut off in the oil prices. The mill manager, Captain Chubb, could not find a better way to overcome the situation and restrain the regular losses. Captain Chubb was replaced by Mr. Ian Davison who was appointed as a new mill manager to Alpha mills.

Researching Communities Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Researching Communities - Essay Example According to the 2011 Office for National Statistics, Haringey’s population was 254,900 and 14,429 of that being Northumberland’s (5.6%). The population growth locally has been due to the increase in births and net gain from international migration; for instance Italy, Spain and Poland are the top three countries where people who have registered for national insurance over the three years 2010-2012 in Haringey have come from (totalling 11,128). Northumberland ward accounts for 32.8% of young people aged below 20 living in Haringey and yet they are significantly deprived of recreational facilities. Lack of recreation and employment is, therefore, reflected in high crime levels. Crime Plus ASB breakdown for Northumberland Park by the Metropolitan Police Service has statistics for the period April 2014 to March 2015; included 553 of Violent Crime, 556 of Anti-Social Behaviour and 220 Burglaries. The research is a community-based participatory research that seeks to study the particular problems facing Northumberland Park and its residents. The findings will be helpful in finding lasting solutions to the problems facing the region. It is largely investigative and seeks to justify some of the actions that will be contemplated in the regeneration programme for Northumberland Park Ward. It takes the form of a case study, being a study of the deprivation situation of Northumberland Park, and the views of the residents on the dimension the regeneration should take. Some of the research tools employed in this study include questionnaire-based interviews. The questionnaires are more suitable for the interviews in this study because it provides a clear insight into the deprivation state of Northumberland while at the same time making the local community an integral part of the study. The findings of this study are dependent on how much information can be extracted from the local residents. Questionnaire as a research tool will engage the local community is

Is liberal democracy the best government system Critically assess Essay

Is liberal democracy the best government system Critically assess - Essay Example Bell (2006) extrapolates that, theoretically, one system can be perceived to be better than the other but in an ideal setting, and this may be otherwise. Deutsch & Soffer (1987) argue that this is because it is subjective to describe or define something to be the best as it depends on the modalities employed in the evaluation. North Korea Republic can be used as a case study since some may perceive its tyrant military to be oppressive and as the worst system of governance which suppresses the private sector and infringes the fundamental rights of its citizens (Eagles, Johnston & Holoman, 2004). According to Deutsch & Soffer (1987), liberal democracy can be described as a form or type of governances where principles related to liberalism are upheld and valued. The main principle of liberalism is the provision of protection rights of persons. In addition, these principles are usually embedded in the laws of nations that practice this form of government. On the other hand, Eagles, Johnston & Holoman (2004) illuminate that the features of liberal democratic countries are the existence of elections that are deemed free, fair and competitive among different existing political parties; separations of power between the various facets of government; and the application of rules of law in daily activities. The rights of the civilians, and humans, as well as freedom are not only highly embraced and protected. Bell (2006) point out that countries that practice this form of government usually have a constitution that stipulates the way in which its citizens are governed. Chan (2004) ex plains that the constitution can either be in written form or unwritten form. There are various constitutional forms of liberal democracies. For instance, some countries practice the republican constitutional forms of governance such as the US while others practice the constitutional monarch such as the United Kingdom. Eagles,

The Paper Tiger Reasons for Legalizing Drugs Essay

The Paper Tiger Reasons for Legalizing Drugs - Essay Example Legalization arguments are paper tigers that, when confronted by reason, leave no doubt that drugs should not be legalized. Advocates will often point to our Constitution to justify the stand that all people should be free to ruin their life with a drug habit. Of course while no one but the most radical elements advocate legalization for children, assuming that it only applies to adults stretches the meaning of freedom to the point that it becomes unrecognizable. Adults are not simply individuals living in a vacuum, unaffected by and having no impact on the world around us. People have families, communities, cultures, and societies that they are a part of. A person's freedom of choice must be carefully balanced against societies obligation to protect all of its members. The myth that the abuser is the only victim of drug addiction simply does not apply to the parent who is neglecting their children because they are too high to understand the responsibilities of adequate parenting. Legalization advocates often link the ideal of freedom with ethics. They point to the inherent unfairness and hypocrisy of a government that condones alcohol use but condemns marijuana users to prison or probation. However, this argument merely draws attention away from the real issue. The controversy is not the safety and status of alcohol. The issue should remain focused on the legalization of drugs and not an issue of which drug is better or worse. Proponents likewise point to the unfairness in the application of the drug laws as a reason for legalization. They cite the disproportionate number of minorities and poor in prison for violating the drug statutes. Milton Friedman, a leading legalization advocate, asks, "Can any policy, however high-minded, be moral if it leads to widespread corruption, imprisons so many, has so racist an effect" (P14}. While his sympathy may be admirable, his reasoning is flawed. If police forces are using racism or a policy of corruption to enforce the law, then that is the issue that needs to be addressed. It is not t he drug law; it's the application that needs examined. If a preponderance of murderers on death row are minorities, and they probably are, no one would advocate legalizing murder, and we should not legalize drugs in a misguided effort to correct deficiencies in our enforcement efforts. Our current strategy of enforcement has resulted in a ballooning population of prison inmates, many who are there as either a direct or indirect result of drug addiction. Opponents of strict drug enforcement question whether we can afford the continued incarceration of drug offenders (Currie, P10). The real question is; can we afford not to Crimes resulting from drug use often fall into two categories; the property crime committed to get money to purchase drugs, and the crime committed during an altered state of mind and loss of rational behavior. Bennett tells us that if drugs were legalized, "drug use would soar" (P13). The crimes that result from the drug user's impaired judgment would increase proportionately. But would legalization reduce property crime Advocates would have us believe that the greater access to a legal supply

War on Terrorism Or The Defense of Modernism Essay

War on Terrorism Or The Defense of Modernism - Essay Example It is a war in defense of our way of life against enemies who oppose that way of life, and who oppose it from common cultural and religious motives. Whatever specific aims, hopes, and delusions the al-Qaeda hijackers may have had, they could not have succeeded, they could not have drawn so many recruits, raised so much money, and found support and sanctuary, unless their motivations appealed to a wide group of people. The war on terrorism is unlike the Cold War; the battle lines are not drawn in ideologically explicit terms. Had we asked in the 1950s, "Why do the communists hate us What are they after" the answers would have been clear: Their Marxist ideology of socialism, dictatorship, and world conquest calls for the elimination of our free capitalist system, and endorses the use of any means to achieve that end. It's all spelled out in The Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, and an endless stream of Communist Party propaganda. The motivations of the 9/11 hijackers in particular, and of al-Qaeda in general, are not as transparent. They are complex and at times contradictory, rooted as they are within a highly complex history that reflects as many conflicts within Islam as it does between Islam and the West. It is now commonly known that the September 11th terrorists were members of Bin Laden's worldwide al-Qaeda organization. This is an extensive network of terrorist groups such as Egypt's al-Jihad, which was responsible for the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981 and the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and among others. This organization represents the violent extreme of a fundamentalist movement that has been gaining ground among Muslims since the 1970s. While the goals of the movement are fairly clear, it should be noted that they reflect the opinions of a majority of Muslims about as much as David Koresh and his followers reflected the views of the average Christian. One goal is to drive the Western powers out of the Middle East, removing Western military, economic, and cultural presence from the region. Bin Laden's three immediate demands, repeated in virtually every statement, are 1. To stop American support for Israel. 2. Lift sanctions against Iraq. 3. Remove American troops from Saudi Arabia. A second goal is to unify the Islamic world and rally it in opposition to the West. "This war is fundamentally religious," bin Laden said last November, in one of his statements broadcast by al-Jazeera TV. "The people of the East are Muslims. They sympathized with Muslims against the people of the West, who are the crusaders. Under no circumstances should we forget this enmity between us and the infidels. For, the enmity is based on creed. Muslims must stand together. We must be loyal to the believers and those who believe that there is no God but Allah." (al-Jazeera, 2005) This is why troops in Saudi Arabia are such an important issue to bin Laden: they are stationed in the land of Islam's two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina. A third goal of the Islamists is to create a strict form of Islamic