Apple Computers essays

Apple Computers essays One of the most innovative and exciting fields in our current society is the PC industry. In the last thirty years, the computer industry has developed at an astounding rate-nearly two out of three people over the age of 18 in the US either own or have access to a computer on a regular basis. This incredible invention, however, is the result of inauspicious beginnings and inept primary marketing by one of the most successful manufacturers of personal computers-Apple. Despite disastrous losses in the 80s and 90s to their main competitor, IBM, Apple recently re-vamped the entire company-focusing on marketing and product developmentand introduced the iMac in 1998-the most successful personal computer launch ever. Despite this success, the rapid rate of development within the computer industry indicates that Apple must analyze their previous marketing techniques in order to maintain the high level of success achieved in the late twentieth century. The PC was invented on April Fools Day in 1976. The two inventors, Steven Jobs and Stephan Wozniak, were working out of a garage and possessed very little knowledge of the importance of marketing in successful product production and distribution. They were primarily interested in their products-showing little concern for its markets. The introduction of IBM in 1981, however, was a strong wakeup call for the unprofessional company-forcing them into competition against strong and well-managed opponents. For several years after IBM launched its first PC, it dominated the market-focusing on a synergistic relationship with Microsoft. After hearing the dire predictions regarding the probability of Apple surviving IBM domination, Steven Jobs realized that professional marketing help was vital. John Scully, a professional in marketing, concluded that Apple desperately needed a keen update on its marketing-product strategies. The resulting solution consisted of diffe...

A Military History Timeline of the 1900s

A Military History Timeline of the 1900s This timeline chronicles the military history of the last hundred plus years and includes WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and dozens of other conflicts. 1900s September 7, 1901 - Boxer Rebellion ends in ChinaMay 31, 1902 - Second Boer War: Fighting ends with the Treaty of VereenigingFebruary 8, 1904 - Russo-Japanese War: Fighting begins when the Japanese attack the Russian fleet at Port ArthurJanuary 2, 1905 - Russo-Japanese War: Port Arthur SurrendersSeptember 5, 1905 - Russo-Japanese War: The Treaty of Portsmouth ends the conflict 1910s April 21-November 23, 1914 - Mexican Revolution: American forces land and occupy Vera CruzJuly 28, 1914 - World War I: The conflict begins when Austria-Hungary declares war on SerbiaAugust 23, 1914 - World War I: British forces join the fray at the Battle of MonsAugust 23-31, 1914 - World War I: The Germans win a stunning victory at the Battle of TannenbergAugust 28, 1914 - World War I: The Royal Navy wins the Battle of Heligoland Bight.October 19-November 22, 1914 - World War I: Allied forces hold at the First Battle of YpresNovember 1, 1914 - World War I: Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spees German East Asia Squadron wins the Battle of Coronel.November 9, 1914 - World War I: HMAS Sydney defeats SMS Emden at the Battle of CocosDecember 16, 1914 - World War I: German warships raid Scarborough, Hartlepool, and WhitbyDecember 25, 1914 - World War I: The Christmas Truce begins along parts of the Western FrontJanuary 24, 1915 - World War I: The Royal Navy wins the Battle of Dogger BankApril 22-May 25, 1915 - World War I: Allied and German forces fight the Second Battle of Ypres September 25-October 14 - World War I: British forces take heavy losses during the Battle of LoosDecember 23, 1916 - World War I: British Commonwealth forces win the Battle of Magdhaba in the Sinai DesertMarch 9, 1916 - Mexican Revolution: The forces of Pancho Villa raid across the border and burn Columbus, NMOctober 31-November 7, 1917 - World War I: General Sir Edmund Allenby wins the Third Battle of GazaApril 6, 1917 - World War I: The United States enters the warJune 7, 1917 - World War I: General John J. Pershing arrives in England to take command of US forces in EuropeOctober 24-November 19, 1917 - World War I: Italian troops are routed at the Battle of CaporettoNovember 7, 1917 - Russian Revolution: The Bolsheviks overthrow the Provisional Government, beginning the Russian Civil WarJanuary 8, 1918 - World War I: President Woodrow Wilson outlines his Fourteen Points to CongressJune 1-28, 1918 - World War I: US Marines win the Battle of Belleau WoodSeptember 19-October 1, 1918 - World War I: British forces crush the Ottomans at the Battle of Megiddo November 11, 1918 - World War I: An armistice is concluded ending World War I in a victory for the Allies.June 28, 1919 - World War I: The Treaty of Versailles officially ends the war. 1920s June 1923 - Russian Civil War: Fighting ends with the Red capture of Vladivostok and the collapse of the Provisional Priamur GovernmentApril 12, 1927 - Chinese Civil War: Fighting begins between the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party 1930s October 1934 - Chinese Civil War: The Long March retreat begins with Chinese Communists marching approx. 8,000 miles over 370 daysOctober 3, 1935 - Second Italo-Abyssinian War: The conflict begins when Italian troops invade EthiopiaMay 7, 1936 - Second Italo-Abyssinian War: Fighting ends with the capture of Addis Ababa and the Italian annexation of the countryJuly 17, 1936 - Spanish Civil War: The conflict begins following an attempted coup dà ©tat by Nationalist forcesApril 26, 1937 - Spanish Civil War: The Condor Legion bombs GuernicaSeptember 6-22, 1937 - Spanish Civil War: Republican forces are defeated at the Battle of El MazucoSeptember 29/30, 1938 - World War II: The Munich Agreement cedes the Sudetenland to Nazi GermanyApril 1, 1939 - Spanish Civil War: Nationalist forces crush the final Republican resistance ending the war.September 1, 1939 - World War II: Nazi Germany invades Poland beginning World War IINovember 30, 1939 - Winter War: Fighting between the Soviet Union and Finland begins when Russian troops cross the border following the faked shelling of Mainila December 13, 1939 - World War II: British and German naval forces fight the Battle of the River Plate 1940s February 16, 1940 - World War II: British and German forces violated Norwegian neutrality in the Altmark IncidentMarch 12, 1940 - Winter War: The Moscow Peace Treaty ends the war in the Soviets favorJune 22, 1940 - World War II: After a six-week campaign, Germany defeats France and forces the British to evacuate from DunkirkJuly 3, 1940 - World War II: The Royal Navy attacks Mers el KebirJuly 10-October 31, 1940 - World War II: The Royal Air Force wins the Battle of BritainSeptember 17, 1940 - World War II: Operation Sea Lion, the German invasion of Britain, is indefinitely postponedNovember 11/12, 1940 - World War II: In a daring nighttime raid, British aircraft strike the Italian fleet at the Battle of TarantoDecember 8, 1940 - World War II: British forces in Egypt launch Operation Compass which sweeps across the desert driving the Italians deep into LibyaMarch 11, 1941 - World War II: Pres. Franklin Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease ActMarch 27-29, 1941 - World War II: British naval forces defeat the Italians at the Battle of Cape Matapan April 6-30, 1941 - World War II: German forces win the Battle of GreeceMay 24, 1941 - World War II: HMS Hood is sunk at the Battle of the Denmark StraitMay 27, 1941 - World War II: Following aerial attacks from HMS Ark Royal and fire from British battleships, the German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North AtlanticJune 22, 1941 - World War II: German forces invade the Soviet Union opening the Eastern FrontSeptember 8, 1941-January 27, 1944 - World War II: German forces conduct the Siege of Leningrad but fail to capture the city.October 2, 1941-January 7, 1942 - World War II: The Soviets win the Battle of MoscowDecember 7, 1941 - World War II: Japanese aircraft attack the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor bringing the United States into the warDecember 8-23, 1941 - World War II: Japan wins the Battle of Wake IslandDecember 8-25, 1941 - World War II: The British are defeated at the Battle of Hong KongDecember 10, 1941 - World War II: HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse are sunk by J apanese aircraft January 7-April 9, 1942 - World War II: Allied forces conduct the  defense of BataanJanuary 31-February 15, 1942 - World War II: The Japanese win the  Battle of SingaporeFebruary 27, 1942 - World War II: The Allies are defeated at the  Battle of the Java SeaMarch 31-April 10 - World War II: Japanese forces conduct the  Indian Ocean RaidApril 18, 1942 - World War II: The planes of the  Doolittle Raid  bomb JapanMay 4-8, 1942 - World War II: US forces turn back the Japanese advance against Port Moresby at the  Battle of the Coral Sea. Fought entirely by aircraft, it was first naval battle in which the opposing ships never sighted each other.May 5-6, 1942 - World War II: US and Filipino forces surrender after the  Battle of CorregidorMay 26-June 21, 1942 - World War II:  General Erwin Rommel  wins the  Battle of GazalaJune 4-7, 1942 - World War II: The US Pacific Fleet defeats the Japanese at the  Battle of Midway, turning the tide in the PacificJuly 1-27, 1942 - World War II: Axis forces are halted at the  First Battle of El Alamein August 7, 1942 - World War II: Allied forces go on the offensive in the Pacific by  landing on GuadalcanalAugust 9, 1942 - World War II: Japanese naval forces win the  Battle of Savo IslandAugust 9-15, 1942 - World War II: The Royal Navy resupplies Malta during  Operation PedestalAugust 19, 1942 - World War II: The  Dieppe Raid  ends in disaster for Allied troopsAugust 24-25, 1942 - World War II: Allied and Japanese forces fight the  Battle of the Eastern SolomonsAugust 25-September 7, 1942 - World War II: Allied force on New Guinea win the  Battle of Milne BayAugust 30-September 5, 1942 - World War II: British forces halt  Field Marshal Erwin Rommel  at the  Battle of Alam HalfaOctober 10/11, 1942 - World War II: Allied naval units win the  Battle of Cape EsperanceOctober 23-November 4, 1942 - World War II: British forces under  Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery  begin the  Second Battle of El AlameinOctober 25-27, 1942 - World War II: American and Ja panese naval forces fight the  Battle of Santa Cruz November 8-10, 1942 - World War II: American forces land in North Africa as part of  Operation TorchNovember 12-15, 1942 - World War II: Allied forces win the  Naval Battle of GuadalcanalNovember 27, 1942 - World War II: The  French fleet is scuttled  at Toulon during Operation LilaNovember 30, 1942 - World War II: Japanese forces win the  Battle of TassafarongaJanuary 29-30, 1943 - World War II: Japanese aircraft win the  Battle of Rennell IslandFebruary 19-25, 1943 - World War II: American troops area defeated at the  Battle of Kasserine PassMarch 2-4, 1943 - World War II: Allied aircraft win the  Battle of the Bismarck SeaApril 18, 1943 - World War II:  Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto  is killed by Allied aircraft during  Operation VengeanceApril 19-May 16, 1943 - World War II: The Germans suppress the  Warsaw Ghetto Uprising  in PolandMay 17, 1943 - World War II: As part of  Operation Chastise  RAF bombers strike dams in GermanyJuly 9, 1943 - World War II: Allied forces begin  Operation Husky  and invade Sicily August 17, 1943 - World War II: American bombers conduct the massive  Schweinfurt-Regensburg RaidSeptember 3-9, 1943 - World War II: American and British forces  land in ItalySeptember 26, 1943 - World War II: Australian commandoes conduct  Operation Jaywick  in Singapore HarborNovember 2, 1943 - World War II: American forces win the Battle of Empress Augusta BayNovember 20-23, 1943 - World War II: American forces  invade TarawaDecember 26, 1943 - World War II: British naval forces win the  Battle of the North CapeJanuary 22, 1944 - World War II: Allied forces begin Operation Shingle and open the  Battle of AnzioJanuary 31-February 3, 1944 - World War II: US troops fight the  Battle of KwajaleinFebruary 17-18, 1944 - World War II:  Operation Hailstone  sees Allied aircraft attack the Japanese anchorage at TrukFebruary 17-May 18, 1944 - World War II: Allied forces fight and win the  Battle of Monte CassinoMarch 17-23, 1944 - World War II: Allied forces win the  Battle of EniwetokMarch 24/25, 1944 - World War II: Allied POWs begin the  Great Escape  from Stalag Luft III June 4, 1944 - World War II: Allied forces capture RomeJune 4, 1944 - World War II: Allied naval forces  capture  U-505June 6, 1944 - World War II: British airborne forces execute  Operation DeadstickJune 6, 1944 - World War II: The invasion of France begins with Allied troops  coming ashore in NormandyJune 15, 1944 - World War II: The Allied invasion of the Marianas begins with  landings on SaipanJune 19-20, 1944 - World War II: The US Navy wins the  Battle of the Philippine SeaJuly 21- August 10, 1944 - World War II: Allied troops  recapture GuamJuly 25-31, 1944 - World War II: Allied troops break out of Normandy during  Operation CobraAugust 15, 1944 - World War II: Allied troops land in southern France as part of  Operation DragoonAugust 25, 1944 - World War II: French forces liberate ParisSeptember 15-November 27, 1944 - World War II: Allied forces fight and win the  Battle of PeleliuSeptember 17, 1944 - World War II: American and British paratroopers land in Holland as part of  Operation Market-Garden October 23-26, 1944 - World War II: US naval forces defeat the Japanese at the  Battle of Leyte Gulf, opening the way for the invasion of the PhilippinesDecember 16, 1944 - World War II: German forces launch a massive offensive in the Ardennes, beginning the  Battle of the Bulge. It ends in a decisive Allied victory the following monthFebruary 9, 1945 - World War II:  HMS  Venturer  sinks  U-864  in the only known battle where one submerged submarine sank anotherFebruary 19, 1945 - World War II: US Marines land on  Iwo JimaMarch 8, 1945 - World War II: US forces secure the  Ludendorff Bridge  over the RhineMarch 24, 1945 - World War II: Allied forces airdrop over the Rhine during  Operation VarsityApril 1, 1945 - World War II: Allied forces  invade the island of OkinawaApril 7, 1945 - World War II: The battleship  Yamato  is sunk during  Operation Ten-GoApril 16-19, 1945 - World War II: Soviet forces win the  Battle of the Seelow HeightsApril 29-May 8, 1945: World War II:  Operations Manna Chowhound  deliver food to the starving population of the Netherlands May 2, 1945 - World War II:  Berlin falls  to Soviet forcesMay 7, 1945 - World War II: Nazi Germany surrenders to the Allies, ending the war in EuropeAugust 6, 1945 - World War II: The  B-29 Superfortress  Enola Gay  drops the  first atom bomb  on the city of HiroshimaSeptember 2, 1945 - World War II: The Japanese surrender aboard the battleship  USS  Missouri  ending the war in the PacificDecember 19, 1946 - First Indochina War: Fighting begins between French and Viet Minh forces around Hanoi​October 21, 1947 - Indo-Pakistani War of 1947: The war starts following the invasion of Kashmir by Pakistani troopsMay 14, 1948 - Arab-Israeli War: Following its declaration of independence, Israel is attacked by its Arab neighborsJune 24, 1948 - Cold War: Berlin Blockade begins leading to the  Berlin AirliftJuly 20, 1949 - Arab-Israeli War: Israel makes peace with Syria ending the war 1950s June 25, 1950 - Korean War: North Korean troops cross the 38th Parallel beginning the  Korean WarSeptember 15, 1950 - Korean War: United Nations troops under  General Douglas MacArthur  land at Inchon  and push the North Koreans back to the Yalu RiverNovember 1950 - Korean War: Chinese forces enter the conflict, driving UN forces back over the 38th Parallel.November 26-December 11, 1950 - Korean War: UN forces fight the Chinese at the  Battle of Chosin ReservoirMarch 14, 1951 - Korean War: Seoul is liberated by UN troopsJune 27, 1953 - Korean War: Fighting ends following the establishment of a cease-fire between UN and North Korean/Chinese forcesJuly 26, 1953 - Cuban Revolution: The revolution begins following an attack on the Moncada BarracksMay 7, 1954 - First Indochina War: The French fortress at  Dien Bien Phu  falls effectively ending the warNovember 1, 1954 - Algerian War: National Liberation Front guerrillas attack French targets across Algeria beginning the warO ctober 26, 1956 - Suez Crisis: Israeli troops drop into the Sinai, beginning the conquest of the peninsula 1960s April 15-19, 1961 - Cuban Revolution: The American-backed Bay of Pigs invasion failsJanuary 1959 -  Vietnam War: The North Vietnamese Central Committee issues a secret resolution calling for an armed struggle in South VietnamAugust 2, 1964 - Vietnam War: The  Gulf of Tonkin Incident  occurs when North Vietnamese gunboats attack American destroyersMarch 2, 1965 - Vietnam War: Operation Rolling Thunder begins as US aircraft start bombing North VietnamAugust 1965 - Indo-Pakistani War of 1965: The conflict begins when Pakistan launches Operation Gibraltar in Indian KashmirAugust 17-24, 1965 - Vietnam War: US forces begin offensive operations in Vietnam with Operation StarlightNovember 14-18, 1965 - Vietnam War: US troops fight the  Battle of Ia Drang  in VietnamJune 5-10, 1967 - Six-Day War: Israel attacks and defeats Egypt, Syria, and JordanNovember 3-22, 1967 - Vietnam War: American forces win the  Battle of Dak ToJanuary 21, 1968 - Vietnam War: North Vietnamese forces laun ch the Tet Offensive January 23, 1968 - Cold War: The  Pueblo  Incident  takes place when the North Koreans board and capture USS  Pueblo  in international watersApril 8, 1968 - Vietnam War:  US troops relieve the besieged Marines at Khe SanhMay 10-20, 1969 - Vietnam War: US troops fight the  Battle of Hamburger HillJuly 14-18, 1969 - Central America: El Salvador and Honduras fight the  Football War 1970s April 29, 1970 - Vietnam War: American and South Vietnamese forces begin attacking into CambodiaNovember 21, 1970 - Vietnam War: US Special Forces  raid the POW camp at Son TayDecember 3-16, 1971 - Indo-Pakistani War of 1971: The war begins when India intervenes in the Bangladesh Liberation WarMarch 30, 1972 - Vietnam War: The Peoples Army of North Vietnam begins the  Easter OffensiveJanuary 27, 1973 - Vietnam War: The Paris Peace Accords are signed ending US involvement in the conflictOctober 6-26, 1973 - Yom Kippur War: After initial losses, Israel defeats Egypt and SyriaApril 30, 1975 - Vietnam War: Following the  fall of Saigon, South Vietnam surrenders ending the warJuly 4, 1976 - International Terrorism:  Israeli commandoes land at Entebbe Airport  in Uganda and rescue the passengers of Air France Flight 139December 25, 1979 - Soviet-Afghan War: Soviet airborne forces enter Afghanistan beginning the conflict 1980s September 22, 1980 - Iran-Iraq War: Iraq invades Iran beginning a war that lasts eight yearsApril 2-June 14, 1982 - Falklands War: Following the Argentinean invasion of the Falklands, the islands are liberated by the BritishOctober 25-December 15, 1983 - Invasion of Grenada: After the deposition and execution of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, US forces invade and capture the island.April 15, 1986 - International Terrorism: American aircraft  bomb Libya  in retaliation for an attack on a West Berlin night clubDecember 20, 1989-January 31, 1990 - Invasion of Panama: US forces invade Panama to oust dictator Manuel Noriega 1990s August 2, 1990 -  Gulf War: Iraqi troops invade KuwaitJanuary 17, 1991 - Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm begins with American and coalition aircraft striking targets in Iraq and KuwaitFebruary 24, 1991 - Gulf War: Coalition ground forces advance into Kuwait and IraqFebruary 27, 1991 - Gulf War: Fighting ends as Kuwait is liberatedJune 25, 1991 - Former Yugoslavia: The first of the wars in the former Yugoslavia begins with the Ten-Day War in SloveniaMarch 24-June 10, 1999 - Kosovo War:  NATO aircraft bomb Yugoslav forces in Kosovo 2000s September 11, 2001 - War on Terror: Al Qaeda attacks the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in WashingtonOctober 7, 2001 - War on Terror: American and British aircraft begin bombing Taliban forces in AfghanistanDecember 12-17, 2001 - War on Terror: Coalition forces fight the  Battle of Tora BoraMarch 19, 2003 - Iraq War: US and British aircraft begin bombing Iraq as a prelude to the ground invasionMarch 24-April 4 - Iraq War: American forces fight the  Battle of NajafApril 9, 2003 - Iraq War: US forces occupy BaghdadDecember 13, 2003 - Iraq War: Saddam Hussein is captured by members of the US 4th Infantry Division and Task Force 121November 7-16, 2004 - Iraq War: Coalition forces fight the  Second Battle of Fallujah

General Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

General Management - Essay Example General Management General management is a specialized field of business management. The origin of this field can be traced back centuries ago when landowning entailed management of property and slaves. While technologies evolved, general management’s scope also became sophisticated and broad. Colley et al. define general management as a discipline that basically focuses on overseeing the modern corporation’s status based on the concept of â€Å"profit-and-loss† (P&L) (3). General Managers see to it that the company gains profit more than what the company is spending. In other words, general management involves various concepts and ideas in ensuring that a business survives and does not undergo bankruptcy. General management entails leadership skills because it allows managing employees- from managers to employees to projects and to customers. Hence, general management involves enhancing responsibility and communication abilities in order to deal with people. In big corporations, the chief executive officer is automatically the general manager, while subsequent divisions of the company may have their own general manager, usually using the title â€Å"business unit manager, division manager, managing partner,† among others (Colley et al. 4). General management tasks are basically involving sound and strong leadership abilities. These leadership skills entail identifying the company’s goals and objectives, achieving those goals, and being in-charge of the results of the set goals and objectives (â€Å"General Management† par. 2). As a Course High school graduates may find general management as a course interesting because aside from the acquisition of corporate knowledge and skills, the opportunities that await are, to some extent, realizations of one’s corporate dreams. Moreover, college graduates who want to pursue an MBA may want to specialize in General Management, as well. Topics that are usually covered in Ge neral Management include strategic management, organizational change and behavior, marketing strategies, approaches in problem-solving, theories in general management and accounting, and how to use communication strategies in leadership and conflict resolution. Conflict management is a vital concept in general management because it involves handling problems that arise within your management stint. Under General Management, there are answers to the causes of conflict in an organization, such as individual personality differences, communication problems, structure of the organization, organizational culture, among such things (Wall and Callister 518). I chose General Management as a major amidst the proliferation of management courses, because it means enhancing my leadership skills in order to guide people in achieving goals and objectives, aligned with mine. It gives me a general picture of the structure of an organization, the people involved in the business undertakings and their role, and handling organizational problems, failures, and lapses. It prepares me to be the best CEO in the future. The jobs that await General Management graduates include: Purchasing Manager Production Manager Marketing Manager Sales Manager Finance Manager Manufacturing Manager Chief

Film and Genre Movie Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Film and Genre - Movie Review Example This does not mean that there necessarily or fundamentally should be a huge amount of swashbuckling or gunfight scenes. A movie can well be an Action and Adventure genre movie if there is enough action or incidents happening around the main character. Another important aspect of an Action and Adventure genre movie is that it should have enough narrative formats that can be termed as simple. (Berkowitz, 189) Thus, the three movies selected for the essay falls easily between the lines of an Action and Adventure genre movie. In fact each of these selected movies occupies its unique positions. October Sky contains no physical action but the character of the movie is always on a move in the psychological context and is adventurous in nature which actually sets the essence of the movie. This movie falls in the line between a Drama and an Action and Adventure genre movie. Shaft on the other hand is a completely action packed film and could be positioned at the central position of the graph where October Sky occupies one end of the graph. The other end of the graph is 'Hero'. This movie falls in the line between an Action and Adventure genre movie and a Costume drama. But all these three movies are well bracketed within the genre Action and Adventure. The first movie in contention is October Sk... come rocket scientist.This is a movie about a teenager who observes the Sputnik, launched by the soviet space agency, racing across the sky and decided to indulge his life into rocket science. As Homer is over-showed by his older brother, a local football star, his ambition is curtained by the dust of the coal fields in the mining township of Coalwood where the ultimate destiny of every teenager is to work as a coal miner. The social structure of this locality deprives any thought process that tries to overcome the social brackets of the coal mines and Homer's father is no different. He is unable to 'think big' in the context of intellectual freedom and the procedure is just the extension of the local neighborhood, or in other words, the coal mines. As we have seen in the novel "Germinal" by Emil Zola, the local characters other than Homer tends to be engrossed by the day to day living and livelihood of the mines and are just unable to think beyond the parameters of their circumstances. (Kar, 254) In this scenario, Homer finds himself in a situation where he finds no alternative other than rockets to opt for a better living. He tries to influence other kids to help him build rockets. The two other teens who agreed to help him out in this matter appears to be no as foresighted as Homer and are generally reluctant with a tint of amusement included to it. But all is not that muted after all. As in our social life, Homer finds a supportive hand in his mother and his school teacher. This is another aspect of the movie that moves us so much and generates a sense of euphoria simply because a lone rider is never a lone rider in the real world and its societies. What ever and where ever and when ever there is a mission on its way it is the society's underlying aspect to

Place Essay Example for Free

Place Essay When we visited them, we ate in their simple kitchen built with bamboo floors. They came wearing traditional Filipino dresses. They looked so beautiful for me (in their old age and single blessedness), and the kitchen smelled like fresh flowers. The other kitchen I can remember is the kitchen of my grandmother in a far remote place, along the Pacific Ocean. My grandmothers kitchen is a big kitchen built of wood. Imagine how old houses looked. There was firewood, big cooking utensils, as if theyre always serving 100 people everyday. There were sacks of rice piled on top of the other. Chickens were roaming in the backyard, down the back kitchen door. I dont know why I can always remember kitchens, even when I go to other homes, in different places. I love that kitchen part of the house. Many people say The kitchen and the toilet are very important rooms in the house. They must be kept clean and orderly at all times. Now, I have my own kitchen where I raised my kids. And as theyre grown ups, I like to work and write here. When I read Afred Kazins The Kitchen, it delighted me by what Kazin saw in the life of her mother. He focused on the kitchen room as the largest room and the center of the house. It was in the kitchen where his mother worked all day long as home dressmaker and where they ate all meals. He writes: The kitchen gave a special character to our lives; my mothers character. All the memories of that kitchen were the memories of my mother. In his essay, Alfred Kazin remembers how her mother said, How sad it is! It grips me! though after a while, her mother has drawn him one single line of sentence, Alfred, see how beautiful! Article Source: http://EzineArticles. om/4722428 This sentence-combining exercise has been adapted from The Kitchen, an excerpt from Alfred Kazins memoir A Walker in the City (published in 1951 and reprinted by Harvest Books in 1969). In The Kitchen, Kazin recalls his childhood in Brownsville, a Brooklyn neighborhood which in the 1920s had a largely Jewish population. His focus is on the room in which his mother spent much of her time working on the sewing she took in to make extra money. To get a feel for Kazins descriptive style, begin by reading the opening paragraph of the selection, reprinted below. Next, reconstruct paragraph two by combining the sentences in each of the 13 sets that follow. Several of the setsthough not allrequire coordination of words, phrases, and clauses. If you run into any problems, you may find it helpful to review our Introduction to Sentence Combining. As with any sentence-combining exercise, feel free to combine sets (to create a longer sentence) or to make two or more sentences out of one set (to create shorter sentences). You may rearrange the sentences in any fashion that strikes you as appropriate and effective. Note that there are two unusually long sets in this exercise, #8 and #10. In the original paragraph, both sentences are structured as lists. If you favor shorter sentences, you may choose to separate the items in either (or both) of these lists. After completing the exercise, compare your paragraph with Kazins original on page two. But keep in mind that many combinations are possible. The Kitchen* In Brownsville tenements the kitchen is always the largest room and the center of the household. As a child I felt that we lived in a kitchen to which four other rooms were annexed. My mother, a home dressmaker, had her workshop in the kitchen. She told me once that she had begun dressmaking in Poland at thirteen; as far back as I can remember, she was always making dresses for the local women. She had an innate sense of design, a quick eye for all the subtleties in the latest fashions, even when she despised them, and great boldness. For three or four dollars she would study the fashion magazines with a customer, go with the customer to the remnants store on Belmont Avenue to pick out the material, argue the owner downall remnants stores, for some reason, were supposed to be shady, as if the owners dealt in stolen goodsand then for days would patiently fit and aste and sew and fit again. Our apartment was always full of women in their housedresses sitting around the kitchen table waiting for a fitting. My little bedroom next to the kitchen was the fitting room. The sewing machine, an old nut-brown Singer with golden scrolls painted along the black arm and engraved along the two tiers of little drawers massed with needles a nd thread on each side of the treadle, stood next to the window and the great coal-black stove which up to my last year in college was our main source of heat. By December the two outer bed-rooms were closed off, and used to chill bottles of milk and cream, cold borscht, and jellied calves feet. Paragraph Two: 1. The kitchen held our lives together. 2. My mother worked in it. She worked all day long. We ate almost all meals in it. We did not have the Passover seder in there. I did my homework at the kitchen table. I did my first writing there. I often had a bed made up for me in winter. The bed was on three kitchen chairs. The chairs were near the stove. 3. A mirror hung on the wall. The mirror hung just over the table. The mirror was long. The mirror was horizontal. The mirror sloped to a ships prow at each end. The mirror was lined in cherry wood. 4. It took the whole wall. It drew every object in the kitchen to itself. 5. The walls were a whitewash. The whitewash was fiercely stippled. My father often rewhitened it. He did this in slack seasons. He did this so often that the paint looked as if it had been squeezed and cracked into the walls. 6. There was an electric bulb. It was large. It hung down at the end of a chain. The chain had been hooked into the ceiling. The old gas ring and key still jutted out of the wall like antlers. 7. The sink was in the corner. The sink was next to the toilet. We washed at the sink. The tub was also in the corner. My mother did our clothes in the tub. 8. There were many things above the tub. These things were tacked to a shelf. Sugar and spice jars were ranged on the shelf. The jars were white. The jars were square. The jars had blue borders. The jars were ranged pleasantly. Calendars hung there. They were from the Public National Bank on Pitkin Avenue. They were from the Minsker Branch of the Workmans Circle. Receipts were there. The receipts were for the payment of insurance premiums. Household bills were there. The bills were on a spindle. Two little boxes were there. The boxes were engraved with Hebrew letters. 9. One of the boxes was for the poor. The other was to buy back the Land of Israel. 10. A little man would appear. The man had a beard. He appeared every spring. He appeared in our kitchen. He would salute with a Hebrew blessing. The blessing was hurried. He would empty the boxes. Sometimes he would do this with a sideways look of disdain. He would do this if the boxes were not full. He would bless us again hurriedly. He would bless us for remembering our Jewish brothers and sisters. Our brothers and sisters were less fortunate. He would take his departure until the next spring. He would try to persuade my mother to take still another box. He tried in vain. 11. We dropped coins in the boxes. Occasionally we remembered to do this. Usually we did this on the morning of mid-terms and final examinations. My mother thought it would bring me luck. 12. She was extremely superstitious. She was embarrassed about it. She counseled me to leave the house on my right foot. She did this on the morning of an examination. She always laughed at herself whenever she did this. 13. I know its silly, but what harm can it do? It may calm God down. Her smile seemed to say this. v John d. hazlett Repossessing the Past: Discontinuity and History In Alfred Kazins A Walker in the City Critics of Alfred Kazins A Walker in the City (1951)1 have almost always abstracted from it the story of a young man who feels excluded from the world outside his immediate ethnic neighborhood, and who eventually attempts to find, through writing, a means of entry into that world. It would be very easy to imagine from what these critics have said that the book was written in the same form as countless other autobiographies of adolescence and rites-of-passage. One thinks imme- diately, for instance, of a tradition stretching from Edmund Gosses Father and Son to Frank Conroys Stop-Time, as well as fictional auto- biographical works such as James Joyces Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. We are encouraged in this view by the publishers, Har- court, Brace World, who tell us on the cover that A Walker in the City is a book about an American walking into the world, learning on his skin what it is like. The American is Alfred Kazin as a young man. Even the most thorough of Kazins critics, John Paul Eakin, writes of A Walker that the young Kazins outward journey to America is the heart of the book. 2 One of the few reviewers who noticed those elements that distin- guish this memoir from others of its kind was the well known Ameri- can historian, Oscar Handlin. Unfortunately, Mr. Handlin also found the book unintelligible: If some system of inner logic holds these sec- tions together it is clear only to the author. It is not only that chronol- ogy is abandoned so there is never any certainty of the sequence of events; but a pervasive ambiguity of perspective leaves the reader often in doubt as to whether it was the walker who saw then, or the writer who sees now, or the writer recalling what the walker saw then. Epi- 326 biography Vol. 7, No. 4 sodic, without the appearance of form or order, there is a day-dreamy quality to the organization, as if it were a product of casual reminis- cence. 3 Handlins charge that the memoir lacks a system of inner logic is incorrect, but he does identify a number of qualities that dis- tinguish A Walker from other coming-of-age autobiographies. One option that is not apparently available to autobiographers, as it is to novelists, is the removal of the authors presence from the narra- tive. And yet autobiographers do manage to achieve something like this removal by recreating themselves as characters. That is, we can distinguish between the author as author and the author as character (an earlier self). In some autobiographies of childhood, where the nar- ration ends before the character develops into what we might imagine to be the autobiographers present self, the writer may never appear (as writer) in the narrative at all. The earlier selves in such autobio- graphies remain as characters. Where the autobiographer appears as both character and writer, however, the distinction is by no means always clear. If the autobiographer actually follows the progress of his earlier self to the narrative present, then the distinction disappears somewhere en route. One can, in fact, distinguish between types of autobiographies according to the strategies they employ to achieve this obliteration of distance between earlier self (as character) and present self (as writer). Kazin has complicated this aspect of his autobiography by recreat- ing two distinct earlier selves: his child self and an adult self, the titu- lar walker. It is this aspect of his memoir that sets it apart from other coming-of-age autobiographies. In none of the conventional works in this sub-genre is the present narrative I so conspicuous a figure (not only as a voice, but as an active character) as it is in Kazins book, and in none of them is the chronological reconstruction of the past so pur- posefully avoided. His memoir, unlike most autobiographies of adoles- cence, is just as much about the efforts of the adult walker to recapture his past self as it is about his earlier attempts to go beyond that self. By granting his present self equal status with the re-creation of his child- hood, he has produced a hybrid form. The central characteristic of that form is the parallel relationship between the quest of the young Kazin to achieve selfhood by identify- ing himself with an American place and a portion of its history, and the quest of the older Kazin to resolve some present unrest about who he is by recovering his younger self and the locale of his own past. The former quest is that story hich critics say the memoir is about, but the latter is located in the memoir on at least two levels. Like the Hazlett repossessing the past 327 childs quest, it is narrated, in that Kazin actually tells us of his return, as an adult, to Brownsville, but its significance is manifest only on an implicit level; we must infer why the quest was undertaken. 4 Kazin emphasizes the symmetry of these two quests by describing each of them in phrases that echo the other. In the first chapter of the memoir, the adult Kazin, walking through the streets of the Browns- ville neighborhood in which he grew up, describes what it means to him: Brownsville is that road which every other road in my life has had to cross (p. 8). By going back and walking once again those familiarly choked streets at dusk (p. 6), he is reviewing his own his- tory in an attempt to settle some old doubts about the relationship between his past and present selves. In similar language, Kazin describes at the very end of the memoir how the boys search for an American identity finally expressed itself in a fascination with Ameri- can history, and in particular with the dusk at the end of the nine- teenth century which was, he thought, that fork in the road where all American lives cross (p. 171). The parallels that we find in language are repeated in the means by which the young boy finds access to America and the adult finds access to his younger selfA—by walking and by immersing himself in the his- torical ambiance of an earlier period. I could never walk across Roe- blings bridge, he says of himself as a boy, or pass the hotel on Uni- versity Place named Albeit, in Ryders honor, or stop in front of the garbage cans at Fulton and Cranberry Streets in Brooklyn at the place where Whitman had himself printed Leaves of Grass, without thinking that I had at last opened the great trunk of forgotten time in New York in which I, too, I thought, would someday find the source of my unrest (p. 72). The young Kazin initially found his way out of Brownsville and into the America of the nineteenth century by walk- ing into an historical locale. It is again by walking, by going over the whole route (p. 8), that the adult Kazin sets out to rediscover his child self in the streets of Brownsville. One may detect, however, an ironic tension between these two quests. The childs search is the immigrant scions search for an Amer- ican identity. It is, in part, the psychological extension of the parents literal search for America, and, in part, the result of his parents ambivalence about their own place in the New World. The most sig- nificant frustration of the young Kazins life was over the apparently unbridgeable discontinuity between them and us, Gentiles and us, alrightniks and us. . . . The line . . . had been drawn for all time (p. 99). This discontinuity represented to him the impossibility of choos- 328 biography Vol. 7, No. 4 ing a way of being in the world. Eventually, it takes on larger meaning in the childs mind to include the distance between the immigrants past in Russia and the late nineteenth century America of Teddy Roosevelt, between poverty and making out all right, between, finally, a Brownsville identity and an American identity. In the childs quest, these petty distinctions I had so long made in loneliness (p. 173) are overcome through a vision of the Brooklyn Bridge that allowed him to see how he might span the discontinuities that left him outside all that (p. 72); and through the discovery of a model for himself as a solitary singer in the tradition of Blake, my Yeshua, my Beethoven, my Newman and a long line of nineteenth century Americans (p. 172). The final element of his victory over them and us, however, was the substitution of Americas history for his own Brownsville history and his familys vague East-European his- tory. His parents past, he said, bewildered him as a child: it made me long constantly to get at some past nearer my own New York life, my having to live with all those running wounds of a world I had never seen (p. 9). To resolve this longing, he says, I read as if books would fill my every gap, legitimize my strange quest for the American past, remedy my every flaw, let me in at last into the great world that was anything just out of Brownsville (p. 172). The adult walker, on the other hand, is searching for the child he once was and for the world in which he grew up; his intention is to re- create his old awareness of the adolescents gaps so that he might resolve them. By the time Kazin begins his retrogression to childhood, ten years have elapsed since his final departure from Brownsville (p. ) and (assuming that the narrative present is also the writers present) some twenty years have elapsed since the final scene of the book. Dur- ing that period, the writer has undergone a peculiar transformation. The adolescents strange quest for an American identity through the substitutio n of Americas past for his own has culminated outside the frame of A Walker in the writing of On Native Grounds,5 a book that is obsessively and authoritatively alive with American history. The young boy has grown up to become one of Americas established literary spokesmen; he has become one of them. In becoming the man, the child has not, however, closed the gaps; he has simply crossed over them to the other side. As a child, Kazin thought of himself as a solitary, standing outside of America (p. 172); as an adult autobiographer, he stands outside of his own past. The adults attempt to imagine his own history, there- fore, begins with the significant perception of his alienation from his Hazlett repossessing the past 329 wn child self and from the time and place in which that self lived. Brownsville is not a part of his present sense of himself, it must be given back (p. 6) to him; and going back reveals a disturbing dis- continuity. The return to Brownsville fills him with an an instant rage . . . mixed with dread and some unexpected tenderness (p. 5). He senses again, he says, the old foreboding that all of my life would be like this (p. 6) and I feel in Brownsville that I am walking in my sleep. I keep bumping awake at harsh intervals, then fall back into my trance again (p. 7). The extent of his alienation from his former self is attested to in the last of Kazins memoirs, New York Jew, where he writes that A Walker was not begun as an autobiography at all, but simply as an exploration of the city. Dissatisfied with the barren, smart, soulless6 quality of what he was writing, Kazin kept attempting to put more of himself into the book. Finally, he says, I saw that a few pages on The Old Neighborhood in the middle of the book, which I had dreamily tossed off in the midst of my struggles with the city as something alien to me, became the real book on growing up in New York that I had wanted to write without knowing I did. 7 There is, naturally, a good deal of irony in this, as well as some pathos, for although Kazin does not expressly acknowledge the rela- tionship between the two quests, it seems clear that the young boys search for an American identity entailed the denial of his own cultural past. Ultimately, this denial necessitated the writing of the book, for the adults search is for the self he lost in his effort to become an Amer- ican. The adults problem is not resolved within the narrative, how- ever, but by the narrative itself. It is the writer who establishes the con- nection between his earlier, lost self and his adult self. In doing this, he completes the bridge to America. The writer in this sense may be distinguished from the adult walker who is, like the young Kazin, merely a character, a former self, within the memoir. In formal terms, the two quests that comprise the narra- tive material of the memoir make up its fabula; the resolution of both quests is to be found only in the coexistence of these two selves in the narrative as narrative. The resolution, in other words, is accomplished by formal, literary means. It is enacted by the memoirs sujet. Given these two quests as the key to the memoirs form, the general structure of the book may be schematized as follows: Chapter I: The walker returns literally to his childhood neighbor- hood and imaginatively to childhood itself. Chapter II: The walker stops and the autobiographer (distinguished 330 biography Vol. 7, No. 4 here from the walker) contemplates the psychological/symbolic cen- ter of childhood, the kitchen. Chapter III: The walker literally returns to the scenes of his adoles- cence and imaginatively to adolescence. Chapter IV: The walker stops and the autobiographer (again, distin- guished from walker) contemplates the psychological/symbolic cen- ter of adolescence, the rites of passage. The use of this structure naturally gives rise to some difficulties of perspective. Mr. Handlins observation that there are at least three dif- ferent points of view: the walker who saw then, or the writer who sees now, or the writer recalling what the walker saw then was apt, even though he could not see that the complexity of perspectives fol- lowed a fairly careful pattern. An analysis of what those points of view are, and how they work together, must begin with the recognition that all earlier perspectives, both the walkers and the childs, are recreated in the writers voice, which mimics them in a very complex form of lit- erary ventriloquism. Given this, one may recognize that within the narrative the writer, the single informing point-of-view, speaks in three different voices: his own as writer, the voice of the adult walker, and the voice of the child. Each of these voices gives rise to variations in narrative technique. In chapters one and three, the writer uses a fictive device to create the illusion that no recollection of the adult walkers perspective is neces- sary in the act of transferring his walking thoughts to the written word. The voice of the adult walker, an earlier self who made the trip, is identified with that of the writer by the frequent use of the present tense: The smell of damp out of the rotten hallways accompanies me all the way to Blake Avenue (p. 7). In these chapters, the walkers memories of childhood are emphasized as memories because his physi- cal presence and voice call attention to the context and the mechanics of remembering. Thus, from the moment the walker alights from the train at Rockaway Avenue in chapter one, the text is sprinkled with reminders that this is the story of the adult walker pursuing the past through cues from the present: Everything seems so small here now (p. 7), the place as I have it in my mind I never knew then (p. 11), they have built a housing project (p. 12), I miss all these ratty wooden tenements (p. 13). Similarly, in chapter three, after Kazin steps away from the more disembodied memory of his mothers kitchen: the whole block is now thick with second hand furniture stores I have to fight maple love seats bulging out of the doors (p. 78), I see the barbershop through the steam (p. 79). Hazlett repossessing the past 331 In both of these chapters, the writer/walkers imagination seizes upon and transforms the landmarks of an earlier period of his life. The literal journey back to Brownsville becomes a metaphorical journey backward in time so that the locale of the past becomes by degrees the past itself: Every time I go back to Brownsville it is as if I had never been away. It is over ten years since I left to live in the cityA— everything just out of Brownsville was always the city. Actually I did not go very far; it was enough that I could leave Brownsville. Yet as I walk those familiarly choked streets at dusk and see the old women sit- ting in front of the tenements, past and present become each others faces; I am back where I began (pp. 5-6). This is, in fact, what gives the book that quality of casual reminis- cence that Mr. Handlin found so unsatisfactory. Kazins technique in chapters one and three is much like that of a person rummaging through an attic full of memorabilia. Each street, each shop serves to spark a particular memory. There is, of course, a danger in this kind of writing. It teeters constantly on the brink of random sentimentalism. The walker always presents the past in a hypermediated form, never through the coolly objective (and hidden) eyes of the impartial self- historian that characterize most conventional autobiographies. This is particularly true when he indulges in nostalgia, as he does when the walker inspects that part of his neighborhood which has been rebuilt as a housing project. There he subjects us to a series of iterated fondnesses, each beginning with the nostalgic I miss (p. 3). But in spite of this flirtation with sentimentality, the walkers presence is not merely an occasion for self-indulgence. In the context of the whole memoir, it clearly serves instead to highlight the drama being played out between the quest of the child and the quest of the adult. As the walker nears the two significant centers of childhood and adolescence, in chapters two and four respectively, he underg oes a transformation. The mediatory presence of the walker disappears, leaving only the disembodied autobiographical voice of conventional memoirs. Unlike the first and third chapters, in which each memory was sparked by actual relics from the past, these chapters take place entirely in the autobiographers imagination. To mark this change, chapter two opens with the writers memory of a previous memory of his mothers kitchen which he compares with his present recollection of it: the last time I saw our kitchen this clearly was one afternoon in London at the end of the war, when I waited out the rain in the entrance to a music store. A radio was playing into the street, and standing there I heard a broadcast of the first Sabbath service from 332 biography Vol. , No. 4 Belsen Concentration Camp (p. 51). This is the voice, not of a rum- maging memory, but of pure disembodied memory. The vision of the kitchen is not sparked by another visit there. In fact, at the opening of chapter two we lose sight of the walker for the first time. The adult Kazins presence is signalled in chapters two and four, not by reference to his present surro undings, but by verb tense alone: It was from the El on its way to Coney Island that I caught my first full breath of the city in the open air (p. 37); although at times, he intrudes into the narrative by referring to his present feelings: I think now with a special joy of those long afternoons of mildew and quiet- ness in the school courtyard (p. 136). The adult walker, however, does not appear in these chapters at all. This transformation, from walker to disembodied memorial voice, draws the reader along the path followed by the adult quester: from the streets of the walkers Brownsville to the streets of the childs Brownsville. As the quester nears his goal, the present Brownsville fades from view. The narrative strategy of A Walker recreates the adults quest by revealing the increasing clarity and intensity of his perception of the childs world. The walkers mediatory presence, initially so conspicu- ous, deliquesces at crucial points so that memory becomes a direct act of identification between rememberer and remembered. The present tense of the walkers observations becomes the past tense of the walkers recollections which becomes the past tense of the writers memory which, finally, becomes the present tense of the childs world. The final identification of writer and child occurs in the two most intense moments of the memoir: at the end of The Kitchen (chapter two) and toward the end of Summer: The Way to Highland Park (chapter four). The first instance follows immediately upon the writers recollec- tion of the power of literature to bridge the gaps between himself and another world. He recalls the child reading an Alexander Kuprin story which takes place in the Crimea. In the story, an old man and a boy are wandering up a road. The old man says, Hoo! hoo! my son! how it is hot! (p. 73). Kazin recalls how completely he, as a young boy, had identified with them: when they stopped to eat by a cold spring, I could taste that bread, that salt, those tomatoes, that icy spring (p. 73). In the next and final paragraph of the chapter, the writer slips into the present tense: Now the light begins to die. Twilight is also the minds grazing time. Twilight is the bottom of that arc down which we have fallen the whole Hazlett repossessing the past 333 long day, but where I now sit at our cousins window in some strange silence of attention, watching the pigeons go round and round to the leafy smell of soupgreens from the stove. In the cool ofthat first evening hour, as I sit at the table waiting for supper and my father and the New York World, everything is so rich to overflowing, I hardly know where to begin, (p. 73) The place and the vision in this curious passage are the childs, but the voice is clearly the adults. Just as the child once tasted the bread, salt and tomatoes of his literary heroes, so now the adult writer achieves an intense identification with his own literary creation: his child self. He sees with the childs eyes, smells with the childs nose, feels the childs expectant emotions, but renders all these perceptions with the adults iterary sophistication. The intensity of expectation which the writer attributes to the child is amplified by the intensity of the writers expectation that the forthcoming richness is as much his as it is the childs. The childs expectations are, ultimately, of that New York world which he discovers in the following chapter. The writers expectations are of a comple tion of identity which can be accom- plished only through the mediation of form. Twilight and the New York World have become formal touchstones in the literary recreation of his self. The second instance takes place toward the end of the memoir and like the first, it immediately precedes a significant passage through to a world beyond the kitchen. Like the first, it also is a recollection of his home, at twilight, in the summer. And to emphasize its signifi- cance as a literary act, the writer echoes the Kuprin passage here: The kitchen is quiet under the fatigue blown in from the parched streetsA—so quiet that in this strangely drawn-out light, the sun hot on our backs, we seem to be eating hand in hand. How hot it is still! How hot still! The silence and calm press on me with a painful joy. I cannot wait to get out into the streets tonight, I cannot wait. Each unnatural moment of silence says that something is going on outside. Something is about to happen, (p. 164) The pages which follow this merging of writer and child, and which end the book, complete the childs emerging vision of his bridge to America. In these pages; the writer employs a new method of recap- turing and re-entering the past. The walk to Highland Park is under- taken by the adolescent and is recalled by the adult in the past tense, but it is given immediacy by the frequent interjection of the adverbial pointers now and here: Ahead of me now the black web of the 334 biography Vol. 7, No. 4 Fulton Street El (p. 168). Everything ahead of me now was of a dif- ferent order . . . Every image I had of peace, of quiet shaded streets in some old small-town America . . . now came back to me . . . Here were the truly American streets; here was where they lived (p. 169). The effect is peculiar, but appropriate. By using the adverbial pointers, here and now, together with the adults past tense, Kazin is able to convey the eerie impression that he is, finally, both here, in the adults present, and there, in the childs past. The bridge between them is complete. The complexity of perspective and structure in Kazins memoir caused Mr. Handlin to observe that chronology is abandoned so there is never any certainty of the sequence of events. In most autobio- graphies, the inevitable discontinuities between present and past selves are overcome by the construction of a continuous, causally developed, and therefore meaningful, story. By purposefully avoid- ing such a reconstruction with its solid assumptions of the reality of the selfs history and the ability of language to convey that reality with- out serious mediatory consequences, Kazin refocuses our attention on the autobiographer/historianA—not the past as it was, but history as recreated by the imagination. Self-history in A Walker is not continu- ous and linear, but spatial; the past is not a time, but a place. For the youth, it was a place from which he wanted to escape. For the adult, it is a place to which he fears to return (the old foreboding that all my life would be like this) and to which he feels he must return in order to complete and renew himself. The childs world seems timeless; it is frozen in a tableau, like a wax museum, in which the adult can explore, in a curiously literal manner, his own past. That some of the figures are missing or that the present may actually have vandalized the arrangement of props, only intensifies its apparent isolation from adult, historical life. This difference between the timelessness of childhood, as we per- ceive it in the memoir, and the adults implied immersion in history may illuminate the nature of the quest upon which the autobiographer has embarked. We can see, for instance, that the motivation which lies behind the quest for identity is grounded upon assumptions about the nature of life in history. The discontinuity felt by both the child and the adult is not simply between a Brownsville identity and an Ameri- can identity, but between the Timelessness which childhood repre- sents and History. Burton Pike, writing from a pyschoanalytic perspective, has sug- gested that autobiographies of childhood in general reveal a fascination Hazlett repossessing the past 335 with states of timelessness: the device of dwelling on childhood may also serve two other functions: It may be a way of blocking the ticking of the clock toward death, of which the adult is acutely aware, and it may also represent a deep fascination with death itself, the ultimately timeless state. 9 The adults return to Brownsville becomes, in this view, a journey motivated not simply by a desire for completion of identity, but also by a desire to escape the exigencies of historical life- death, as Pike asserts, and, perhaps more obviously, guilt. The writing of A Walker, Kazin says in New York Jew, was a clutch at my old innocence and the boy I remembered . . . was a necessary fiction, he was so virtuous. 10 What is of particular interest in Kazins memoir, however, is the manifest content of the childs quest whic h offers a counterpoint to Pikes useful analysis. The fascination in A Walker, works both ways: the adult longs for the childs timeless world and the child longs for the adults sense of history. Moreover, as the adolescent stands outside of America, he longs not only to possess a history of his own, but to enter history. The child is never interested in the past for its own sake; he wishes to be one of the crowd, to be swept along in the irrevocable onward rush of political and social events. Entering history for him is the clearest and most satisfying form of belonging. Kazins memoir is not, therefore, reducible to a psychoanalytical model. Since he always handles the issue of life in history consciously, it is difficult to approach the relationship between the autobiographer and time as though the writer were himself unaware of the implica- tions of his subject matter. His escape from history through the recovery of childhood was, at least on one level, a very conscious rejec- tion of the autobiographical form dictated by Marxist historicism and chosen by many leftist writers during the 30s, the period of his own coming-of-age. Writers in this older generation felt that successful self re-creation, both autobiographical and actual, could be accomplished only by determining ones position vis A vis a cosmic historical force. 11 Kazins choice of autobiographical form was partly a response to the effect that this philosophy had had on him as a young man. In his sec- ond memoir, Starting Out in the Thirties, Kazin recalls, with disillu- sionment, the sense of exhilaration that accompanied his own histori- cism during the Great Depression: History was going our way, and in our need was the very life-blood of history . . . The unmistakable and surging march of history might yet pass through me. There seemed to be no division between my efforts at personal liberation and the appar- ent effort of humanity to deliver itself. 12 One might argue, of course, that as an autobiography of childhood, 336 biography Vol. 7, No. 4 A Walker does not deal with the historical world, and therefore can- not address the problems of historicism. But to do so would be to ignore the overwhelming importance which Kazin places upon the relationship between the individual and history in all of his writings, and in particular in his autobiographical work. By emphasizing the adults role in the reconstruction of the child, and by creating a paral- lel between the older mans reconstruction of his childhood and the childs reconstruction of the American past, Kazin locates the source of historical meaning, whether personal or collective, in the historian and undermines historicisms claim that the past possesses meaning independent of human creation. Kazin does not, however, advocate a view of identity divorced from collective history, nor does he value the personal over the collective past. More than most autobiographers of childhood, Kazin has the sensibilities of a public man, a writer very much in and of the world. As we descend with him into the vortex of his reconstructed past, the larger world that he is leaving is always present or implied. More- over, Kazins return to his lost innocence provides more than a mere escape from history because the childhood he reconstructs was full of a longing for history, as we have seen. The childs Whitmanesque dream that he could become an American by assimilating Americas past was born of a belief that the collective past might somehow deliver him from us and them, from the feeling that as isolated indi- viduals (outside of history) we are meaningless. By 1951, when he wrote A Walker, he had indeed been delivered by his dream out of iso- lation, but the post-War, post-Holocaust America in which he found himself was not the one which his history had promised. It is in this context that the return to childhood must be read. The young Kazin had dreamed that collective history would be the salvation of the self; the older Kazin, even while remaining committed to collective history, realized that history, far from providing our salvation, was the very thing from which we must be saved. The power of A Walker ulti- mately derives from the tension between this commitment to our col- lective fate and the belief that our only salvation from that fate lies in a consciousness of the past. The adult walkers reconstruction of his childhood may have begun as an effort of the historical self to connect with an apparently ahistorical self, but the ironic achievement of that effort was the discovery that the earlier self had, in fact, been firmly grounded in history, the history of first generation immigrant Jews. The peculiar intensity with which Kazin identifies his personal past with the collective past raises questions about the relationship of both Hazlett repossessing the past 337 o the larger question of life in history and makes A Walker an interest- ing example of the options available to contemporary American auto- biographers. A Walker rejects the historicism of the 30s and the forms of the self that such historicism produced, but nevertheless maintains the belief that the self is never fully realized until it has defined its rela- tionship to the issues of the times; that is, to historical issues. It is precisely this belief which distinguishes Kazins autobiogra phy from other coming-of-age memoirs. On the surface, it appears to appeal to a private and psychological explanation of the self, but finally it relies firmly upon the belief that only the determination of our relationship to collective experience can provide our private selves with worth. This belief provides the motivation for the two quests discussed in the first half of this essay. In a Commentary article published in 1979, Kazin wrote that the most lasting autobiographies tend to be case histories limited to the self as its own history to begin with, then the self as the history of a particular moment and crisis in human history . . 13 In its presenta- tion of the latter, A Walker reflects not only the struggle of a first-gen- eration immigrant son to become an American, but also the struggle of the modern imagination, which has lost faith in either a divine or a cosmic ordering of history, to recreate a meaningful past. The life of mere experience, Kazin says in that article, and especially of history as the suppo sedly total experience we ridiculously claim to know, can seem an inexplicable series of unrelated moments. In A Walker, the child and the adult are both motivated by the autobiographical belief that history still constitutes meaning and identity; both yearn for con- tinuity. But by focusing on the context in which the past is reclaimed, Kazin emphasizes the difficulties and limitations of his task and places it on the insecure basis which attends every human effort to create meaning. Such an approach to the relationship between history and the self demands finally that the walker be able to tread a tightrope between the reality of the past and the solipsism toward which a reliance on imagination and language tends. Burton Pike has stated that as the twentieth century began, belief in History as a sustaining external principle collapsed, and suggests that the term autobiography cannot accurately be said to apply to twentieth century forms of self-writing since it might best be regarded as a historical term, applicable only to a period roughly corre- sponding to the nineteenth century; that period when, in European thought, an integrity of personal identity corresponded to a belief in the integrity of cultural conventions. 14 By using as his examples 338 biography Vol. 7, No. 4 authors who had come to autobiography from the Modernist move- ment (he mentions Musil, Stein, Rilke, Mailer), Pike has certainly overestimated the impact of Modernism (which relativized and internalized time) on our basic conception of history. Even within the literary community (and particularly among those, like Kazin, who were raised in a leftist political tradition), there was widespread resis- tance to ideas of time that impinged upon the nineteenth century notions of history. The weakest point in Pikes argument is, in fact, his failure to acknowledge the strength of the Marxist legacy in twentieth century thought, and in particular the effect of historicism on modern autobiographies. Even Kazins A Walker, in spite of its rejection of ideological historicism and its attention to the subjectivity of the self- writer, retains a belief in history as fate. Perhaps the significance of Kazins book lies in its revelation of one mans response to the dilemma of his generation: their vision of the self, which was shaped and sustained by historicism, collapsed just when they were about to enter upon the stage of history. Confronted with the collapse of this sustaining external principle autobio- graphers committed to the idea of life in history were faced with the difficult task of defining anew how one might transcend the inexplic- able series of unrelated moments that constitute our daily experience. Kazins return to childhood in A Walker is one answer. Other autobio- graphers are still trying, with varying degrees of success, to find sub- stantial historical movements and directions with which to structure the past, give meaning to the present, and help predict the future. Even a cursory glance at contemporary autobiographical writing reveals that there are many ways to do this; most clearly it can be seen in the increasing numbers of autobiographies written by members of newly self-conscious groupsA—Blacks, women, gays, a generation. The belief held by each of these groups that their time has come is a form of historicism (frequently unconscious) that allows the individual autobiographer to transcend mere experience by identifying him/herself with the historical realization of the groups identity. They provide ample evidence that autobiographies, even at this late post- Modernist date, remain both a literary and a historical form. 15 University of Iowa NOTES 1. A Walker in the City (New York: Harcourt Brace ; World, 1951). AU subsequent references to this book will be given in the body of the text. Hazlett repossessing the past 339 2. John Paul Eakin, Kazins Bridge to America, South Atlantic Quarterly, 77 (Win- ter 1978), 43. This article provides an excellent summary and discussion of the coming-of-age aspect of the memoir. Readers interested in a thorough reading of the memoir are referred to Sherman Paul, Alfred Kazin, Repossessing and Renewing: Essays in The Green American Tradition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. , 1976), pp. 236-62. 3. Oscar Handlin, rev. f A Walker in the City, Saturday Review of Literature, 17 November 1951, p. 14. 4. One might add that most autobiographies are structured in this way: on the one hand, the explicit journey of the youthful I toward manhood, and, ulti- mately, toward a complete identification with the narrative I; on the other hand, the implicit journey of the adult, narrative I backward in time to find an earlier self, Kazins memoir is distinguished by the wa y in which it makes this second journey such an important and explicit aspect of the narrative. . (New York: Harvest, 1942). 6. New York Jew, (New York: Vintage, 1979), p. 313. 7. New York Jew, p. 320. 8. Kazins loss of his childhood is reflected indirectly in On Native Grounds, the monumental literary history that culminated his search for an American past. That work conspicuously omits any discussion of the contribution of Jews to American literature. Thus, Robert Towers remarks in Tales of Manhattan (New York Review of Books, May 18, 1978, p. 2): The great immigration of East European Jews passes unnoticed, as though it had never happened as though it had not deposited Alfred Kazins bewildered parents on the Lower East side. So powerful has been the subsequent impact of Jewish writing upon our consciousness that it seems incredible that Kazin should have found noth- ing to say about its early manifestations in a history so inclusive as On Native Grounds. 9. Time in Autobiograph y, Comparative Literature, 28 (Fall 1976), 335. 10. New York Jew, pp. 232 and 321 respectively. The return to childhood as renewal through reconnection with an earlier, innocent self is common to many auto- biographies and most eloquently expressed in William Wordsworths The Prel- ude: There are in our existence spots of time,/That with distinct pre-emi- nence retain/A renovating virtue, whence . . . our

Garry Winogrand Essay -- Essays Papers

Garry Winogrand Gary Winogrand’s photography career began when a friend introduced him to it in 1948 while taking painting classes at Columbia University. After Winogrand’s first exposure to the darkroom, he abandoned painting and â€Å"never looked back.† Winogrand became extremely emerged in photography and felt that nothing else in life mattered. He dropped out of college to pursue his passion. Earning an average of ninety cents per week, he had a difficult yet determined beginning. Winogrand did not concern himself with issues that were affecting society and therefore did not always appeal to the mass public. Winogrand’s long and successfully debatable career experienced many turns and obstacle that ultimately led him to become one of the most noted photographers of the late twentieth century. Winogrand discovered photography at a point in time when unconventional photos were just beginning to emerge. Although it was thought that photojournalism had offered the most opportunity, this new and unconventional direction of photography was preferred. Artists were now able to shoot what they desired not what they were told to shoot. This revolutionary form of photography was based on emotion and intuition as opposed to precision and description. Exploring real life became more of the focus, instead of calculated or planned out pictures. In the early fifties, Winogrand attempted to become a freelance photographer, but the money he was making was not sufficient enough to support his new wife and children. He was forced to spend most of his time working for magazines such as Colliers, Redbook, and Sports Illustrated. At this time Winogrand’s photo’s had no distinction from any other photojournalist, but he always felt different and waited for the chance to pr ove it. He once said, â€Å" The best stories were those that had no story line†¦on entertainers†¦or athletic contests, where the photographer could forget narrative and concentrate on movement, flesh, gesture, display, and human faces†(Szarkowski, p17). By the early sixties, Winogrand’s marriage was beginning to fail. He became frustrated with his wife Adrienne because she would not disregard her interest in becoming a dancer and go to work to support his desire to become a photographer. It was during time that Gary became extremely preoccupied with photographing women on the streets of N... ...ich kind of shoes, handbags, sunglasses, and hairstyles were most popular. The actions, gestures, and thoughts of these people both say and imply many things. The black man and white woman on the left seem to be engaged in a conversation. The white woman sitting next to her might be whispering about the fact that the other woman is talking to a black man, which could further imply that this action of conversing outside of one’s race was not commonly accepted. The older man on the right may not be interested in futuristic ideas, preferring more conservative items such as a newspaper. Although each figure is involved in something different, their actions seem to have a connection to one another. Winogrand shot a wide view of this scene, but still managed to capture an intimate portrayal of each person. There are numerous possible stories and questions about each person sitting on the bench. Winogrand makes the viewers ponder over each expression and interaction, having them wishing they were sitting on the bench, eavesdropping on the sub jects. Bibliography Szarkowski, John. Winogrand: Figments From The Real World. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1988.

Analysis of Adarsh Society Scam Essay

Chavan was the revenue minister between 2001-2003 and had dealt with files pertaining to the ownership of the land. He is alleged to have recommended 40 per cent allotment of flats to civilians in the society, which was meant for war widows and heroes of Kargil war. The exposure of the scam forced the Congress party to seek the resignation of then Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan . Maharashtra environment department had denied giving clearance to the society. The reports make it clear that neither MCZMA nor the state’s department of environment gave any clearance for the high-rise building, The state environment department has denied giving clearance to Adarsh housing society. The state environment department has denied giving clearance to Adarsh housing society. Adarsh Co-operative Housing Society building violated provisions of the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, 1991. No CRZ clearance or permission had been sought to construct the building. It concluded that th e no CRZ clearance had been sought for incorporating 2269 sqm of BEST land. This was a condition imposed on the housing society by the state’s department of revenue when additional land was allotted in August 2005. The Adarsh Society has also violated the floor space index permissible in the CRZ-II area of Mumbai. This is prescribed in the Development and Control Regulations of 1967. There are reports that there are other buildings too that have come up,† he accepted, adding that he will go after them after 2010 amendment to the CRZ regulations are passed by Parliament. The high-rise is built on 6,450 sq metres within the Colaba naval area and was cleared on the condition of housing war veterans but now has 104 members, including former service chiefs, senior serving Army officials, a former Environment Minister, legislators and state bureaucrats. Govt. is waiting for the official report from the various ministry, only then they take action against the gulty. MMRDA to revoke occupancy certificate till Ministry of Environment and Forest gives clearance. The prime piece of land in upmarket Colaba given to the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society belonged to the state government and not the Services, he said. The land belongs to the state government, based on the collector’s records. Revenue department granted land to the Society as per GR of 9. 7. 1999,† he said. Certain files were missing from the adarsh community housing society that bearing signatures of important officials, pertain to the decisions taken in the stages before the project was cleared by the government. Tiwari was urban development secretary for over eight years (2000 to 2009). During his tenure, the Adarsh society was given various clearances, including additional floor space index. Raj Bhavan sources confirmed on Tuesday evening that governor K Shankarnarayan received a formal request from the state government recommending him to make reference to the Supreme Court for removal of Tiwari. This will mean that Tiwari will not be able to challenge his removal in any court. Both Defence Minister AK Antony and Army Chief General VK Singh have promised strict action against any serving officer who is found to be guilty in the scam. MoD has also said that it will give prompt permission to CBI to question any serving officer and will have no objection if they are prosecuted. The controversial Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society (ACHS) had plans to undertake another residential project. It had even approached the Maharashtra government for allotment of a 7,500 sq m plot situated near the Spastic Society of India in Colaba   ACHS had proposed to develop the plot to build cheap houses for the ‘‘ weaker sections , defence personnel and other deserving classes’’ . Society was promoted by a few IAS officers; subsequently IPS officers, government servants, MLAs and MLCs joined in and the list went up to 130 members. The society applied for land at Wadala , and the government in principle showed willingness to allot 13,000 sq metres (over 3 acres) in September 2009. This plot was located close to the high tide line, where no construction activity is usually permissible. Arguing that there were at least two other buildings which had previously been permitted to be set up right next to the HTL, Adarsh promoters requested processing of their proposal and even urged the state government to modify the HTL to override CRZ concerns. he society requested the state government to redraw the high tide line (HTL) to clear the project from the ‘‘ CRZ point of view’’ . HTL is the line of intersection of the land with the water surface at the time of high tide. Restrictions are imposed on development activity within 500m of the HTL. Minimal construction activity is permitted in these parts. But since the Adarsh scam was unearthed, the names added to the file will be deleted or the allo tment of land to Indus may be delayed,’’ said sources. All of them got flats in the society in an expensive part of Mumbai at throwaway prices. While ownership of the land was still with the state, it was in the custody of Army for several years. Army had taken custody of the land ever since it was reclaimed because the state government was to give it to the Army in return for Army’s land in Santa Cruz firing range which was taken over by for expanding the Western Expressway. Now, as the auditors go through records, it is clear that the Army neither got the land, nor financial compensation from the state. The society was asked to change the bye-laws by the then Revenue Minister Ashok Chavan. That is on record. He called a meeting and called members of the society and asked them to change the bye-laws and 40 per cent of civilians should be allowed to be members of the society. There it created a lot of problems,† Deshmukh said. the defence ministry has asked to look into issues concerning the issue of a no objection certificate, relinquishment of the land in possession of the army and the extent to which commitments for the welfare of defence ersonnel were complied with, the official added. Among other things, the bureaucrats have been asked about the circumstances under which they became members of Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society and the source of funds for the luxurious flats in the 31-storeyed building, the official said. the authorities cancelled the building’s occupation certificate and snapped off its water and power supplies. Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (B MC) has decided to provide all necessary information regarding residential buildings and societies on its website. People can ascertain whether a particular shop or nursing home is licensed or not. RC THAKUR   chief promoter of Adarsh Society, was the military estate officer in Colaba division when he came to know about the prime plot and started getting files moved. His colleagues say that whenever Thakur came up against a hurdle, he would make the person a member of the society. What I think is to demolish that building because it is not following any norms passed by the government. Or we can hand over that building to the navy and army and let them decide what to do. Or we can give the flats to the kargil widows, because that land is for them only. Rest is depend on the government. If any such scams occur in mere future than public must raise their voice in order to protest them, it somehow effect our economy and spoil our society. Mostly the scams are done by the government personnel’s. and nowadays many people are trying to somehow get the government job. If we are not raising our voice now then in future we cant save our country. In India there are so many terriost who are spoiling our country and we are not bothered about them we just focus on the terriosm.

Explain the Operational Issues in Relation to the Use of Business Information

In this assignment I will be explaining the operational issues in relation to the use of business information. Businesses have to store and manage lots of information. All information systems have two fundamental issues of ensuring that, one is the organisation receive information it requires and the other is that appropriate members of staff receive the information. A number of policies and procedures have to be put in place concerning security of information, backups, health and safety, organisational policies, business continuance plans, costs and increasing sophistication.Security of information can be an operational issue. It is all about maintaining the integrity and availability of organisational information and knowledge. Managers need to have the right information available at the right time to make good decisions. The reliance on technology to store information increases which means the risk posed by system failure and malicious attack from viruses also increases. IT securi ty policy should take into account common risks to information the business relies upon. This policy should include secure login id for IT systems and controls that limit access to information.Backups are also an operational issue these are stores on separate hardware from the live versions of the information. Health and safety can be an operational issue. There are many regulations concerning health and safety. The Health & Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992 this is the minimum requirements for work stations and includes the extent to which employers must ensure that workstations meet the requirements laid down in this schedules, the equipment, the environment and the interface between the computer and operator.Another is the Management of Health & Safety At Work Regulations 1992 this is that every employer shall provide his employees with comprehensible and relevant information on the risks to their health and safety, the preventative and protective measures and th e identity of the persons nominated by him in accordance with regulation. Another possible operational issue is organisation policies. These relate to the use of business information that can help make sure decisions affecting staff are understandable and consistent, they meet legal requirements, they take full account of their mpact and they contribute to productive working relationships.Manual Handling Training policies help make sure staff have guidance to help them comply with legislation. Business continuance plans can be an operational issue. These are the steps to make sure a company can survive a worst case scenario ensuring essential backups are kept. The business must consider natural disasters for example fires or floods or accidents for example malicious attacks or human error.As a result of the plan employees may need to change the way they work for example instead of saving on the company hard drive they should save it to a USB or external hard drive. Costs to the busi ness can be an operational issue. Many aspects of information can cost money; businesses must consider costs v benefits when deciding what policies to adopt and measures to take and whether the benefits are going to be worth the cost of it.They must take into consideration the cost of development and the additional resources needed. Another possible operational issue is increasing sophistication. Increasing reliance on technology and increasing complexity of technology means employees need to be trained to use equipment and software required to do their job. Without training, staff might not record customer contact correctly or may miss out information making a new system less effective.

Model Learning Environment essays

Model Learning Environment essays Although resources are not the most important part of education, there are several components that help to develop an environment in which music flourishes. Like any other classroom, a music classroom should be equipped with basics such as a chalkboard and desks. The best chalkboards include sections that are lined with the lines of a musical staff. It is also desirable to have a room large enough to allow activities that include movement. It is important that the teacher has access to instruments to be used in teaching. It is standard teaching procedure that general music students learn to play the recorder in the fourth grade. In order to complete this lesson, the teacher must be able to equip each student with a quality recorder to use for the duration of the lesson. It is not favorable to share instruments because valuable time is wasted in changing mouthpieces and sanitizing the recorder. Orff methodology, a popular technique for teaching music to children, is based on the use of Orff instruments. These instruments are typically types of barred percussion instruments like the xylophone. This methodology is highly effective because it produces quick results, but the classroom must be equipped with the appropriate Orff instruments in order for the exercises to be successful. In recent years, technological advances have made it easier for young music students to create their own compositions using Orff methodology and computer notation software such as Encore. With the resources provided by a classroom computer, students are able to create a melody using a MIDI keyboard and the notation software will translate the melody into sheet music. An ideal learning environment includes all of these elements. The spacious classroom pictured has a variety of instruments including a full family of recorders (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass) as well as a variety of Orff instruments. The classroom comp...

Nontsikelelo Albertina Sisulu, South African Activist

Nontsikelelo Albertina Sisulu, South African Activist Albertina Sisulu (October 21, 1918–June 2, 2011) was a prominent leader in the African National Congress and the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa. The wife of the well-known activist Walter Sisulu, she provided much-needed leadership during the years when most of the ANCs high command was either in prison or in exile. Fast Facts: Albertina Sisulu Known For: South African anti-apartheid activistAlso Known As: Ma Sisulu, Nontsikelelo Thethiwe, Mother of the NationBorn: October 21, 1918 in Camama,  Cape Province, South AfricaParents: Bonilizwe and Monikazi ThethiweDied: June 2, 2011 in Linden, Johannesburg, South AfricaEducation:  Johannesburgs Non-European Hospital, Mariazell CollegeAwards and Honors:  Honorary doctoral degree from the University of JohannesburgSpouse: Walter SisuluChildren: Max, Mlungisi, Zwelakhe, Lindiwe, NonkululekoNotable Quote: Women are the people who are going to relieve us from all this oppression and depression. The rent  boycott  that is happening in  Soweto  now is alive because of the women. It is the women who are on the street committees educating the people to stand up and protect each other. Early Life Nontsikelelo Thethiwe was born in the village of Camama, Transkei, South Africa, on October 21, 1918, to Bonilizwe and Monica Thethiwe. Her father Bonilizwe arranged for the family to live in nearby Xolobe while he was working in the mines; he died when she was 11. She was given the European name of Albertina when she started at the local mission school. At home, she was known by the pet name Ntsiki. As the eldest daughter, Albertina was often required to look after her siblings. This resulted in her being held back for a couple of years at primary school, and initially cost her a scholarship for high school. After intervention by a local Catholic mission, she was eventually given a four-year scholarship to Mariazell College in the Eastern Cape (she had to work during the holidays to support herself since the scholarship only covered term time). Albertina converted to Catholicism while at college and decided that rather than get married, she would help support her family by getting a job. She was advised to pursue nursing (rather than her first choice of being a nun). In 1939 she was accepted as a trainee nurse at Johannesburg General, a non-European hospital, and began work there in January 1940. Life as a trainee nurse was difficult. Albertina was required to buy her own uniform out of a small wage and spent most of her time in the nurses hostel. She experienced the ingrained racism of the white-minority led country through the treatment of senior black nurses by more junior white nurses. She was also refused permission to return to Xolobe when her mother died in 1941. Meeting Walter Sisulu Two of Albertinas friends at the hospital were Barbie Sisulu and Evelyn Mase (Nelson Mandelas first wife-to-be). It was through them that she became acquainted with Walter Sisulu (Barbies brother) and began a career in politics. Walter took her to the inaugural conference of the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League (formed by Walter, Nelson Mandela, and Oliver Tambo), at which Albertina was the only female delegate. It was only after 1943 that the ANC formally accepted women as members. In 1944, Albertina Thethiwe qualified as a nurse and, on July 15, she married Walter Sisulu in Cofimvaba, Transkei (her uncle had refused them permission to get married in Johannesburg). They held a second ceremony on their return to Johannesburg at the Bantu Mens Social Club, with Nelson Mandela as best man and his wife Evelyn as a bridesmaid. The newlyweds moved into 7372, Orlando Soweto, a house that belonged to Walter Sisulus family. The following year, Albertina gave birth to their first son, Max Vuysile. Starting a Life in Politics Prior to 1945, Walter was a trade union official but he was fired for organizing a strike. In 1945, Walter gave up his attempts to develop an estate agency to devote his time to the ANC. It was left to Albertina to support the family on her earnings as a nurse. In 1948, the ANC Womens League was formed and Albertina Sisulu joined immediately. The following year, she worked hard to support Walters election as the first full-time ANC secretary-general. The Defiance Campaign in 1952 was a defining moment for the anti-Apartheid struggle, with the ANC working in collaboration with the South African Indian Congress and the South African Communist Party. Walter Sisulu was one of 20 people arrested under the Suppression of Communism Act. He was sentenced to nine months of hard labor and suspended for two years for his part in the campaign. The ANC Womens League also evolved during the defiance campaign, and on April 17, 1954, several women leaders founded the non-racial Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW). FEDSAW was to fight for liberation, as well as on issues of gender inequality within South Africa. In 1954, Albertina Sisulu obtained her midwife qualification and began working for Johannesburgs City Health Department. Unlike their white counterparts, black midwives had to travel on public transport and carry all their equipment in a suitcase. Boycotting Bantu Education Albertina, through the ANC Womens League and FEDSAW, was involved in the boycott of Bantu Education. The Sisulus withdrew their children from the local government-run school in 1955 and Albertina opened her home as an alternative school. The Apartheid government soon cracked down on such practice and, rather than return their children to the Bantu education system, the Sisulus sent them to a private school in Swaziland run by Seventh Day Adventists. On August 9, 1956, Albertina was involved in the womens anti-pass protest, helping the 20,000 prospective demonstrators avoid police stops. During the march, the women sang a freedom song: Wathint abafazi, Strijdom! In 1958, Albertina was jailed for taking part in a protest against the Sophiatown removals. She was one of around 2,000 protestors who spent three weeks in detention. Albertina was represented in court by Nelson Mandela; all of the protesters were eventually acquitted. Targeted by the Apartheid Regime Following the  Sharpeville Massacre  in 1960, Walter Sisulu,  Nelson  Mandela, and  several others formed  Umkonto we Sizwe  (MK, the Spear of the Nation), the military wing of the ANC. Over the next two years, Walter Sisulu was arrested six times (though only convicted once) and Albertina Sisulu was targeted by the Apartheid government for her membership of the ANC Womens League and FEDSAW. Walter Sisulu Is Arrested and Imprisoned In April 1963 Walter, who had been released on bail pending a  six-year  prison sentence, decided to go underground and join up with the MK. Unable to discover the whereabouts of her husband, the SA authorities arrested Albertina. She was the first woman in South Africa to be detained under the  General Law Amendment Act No. 37 of 1963. She was initially placed in solitary confinement for two months, and then under dusk-till-dawn house arrest and banned for the first time. During her time in solitary, Lilliesleaf Farm (Rivonia) was raided and Walter Sisulu was arrested. Walter was sentenced to life imprisonment for planning acts of sabotage and sent to Robben Island on June 12, 1964 (he was released in 1989). The Aftermath  of the Soweto Student Uprising In 1974, the banning order against Albertina Sisulu was renewed. The requirement for partial house arrest was removed, but Albertina still needed to apply for special permits to leave Orlando, the township in which she lived. In June 1976 Nkuli, Albertinas youngest child and  second daughter, was caught in the periphery of the  Soweto student uprising. Two days before, Albertinas eldest daughter Lindiwe had been taken into custody and held at  a detention  center at John  Voster  square (where  Steve Biko  would die the following year). Lindiwe was involved with the  Black Peoples Convention  and  Black Consciousness Movement  (BCM). The BCM had a more militant attitude toward South African whites than the ANC. Lindiwe was detained for almost a year, after which she left for Mozambique and Swaziland.​ In 1979, Albertinas banning order was again renewed, though this time for only two years. The Sisulu family continued to be targeted by the authorities. In 1980 Nkuli, who was by then studying at Fort Hare  University, was detained and beaten by the police. She returned to Johannesburg to live with Albertina rather continue her studies. At the end of the year, Albertinas son  Zwelakhe was placed under a banning order that effectively curtailed his career as a journalist because he was prohibited from any involvement in the media. Zwelakhe was president of the Writers Association of South Africa at that time. Since Zwelakhe and his wife lived in the same house as Albertina, their respective  bans  had the curious result that they were not allowed to be in the same room as each other or talk to each other about politics. When Albertinas banning order ended in 1981, it was not renewed. She had been banned for a total of 18 years, the longest  anyone  had been banned in South Africa at that point. Being released from the ban meant that she could now pursue her work with FEDSAW, speak at meetings, and even be quoted in newspapers. Opposing the Tricameral Parliament In the early  1980s,  Albertina campaigned against the introduction of the Tricameral Parliament, which gave limited rights to Indians and Coloureds. Albertina, who was once again under a banning order, was unable to attend a critical conference at which the Reverend Alan Boesak proposed a united front against the Apartheid government plans. She indicated her support through FEDSAW and the Womens League. In 1983, she was elected president of FEDSAW. Mother of the Nation In August 1983, she was arrested and charged under the  Suppression of Communism Act  for allegedly furthering the aims of the ANC. Eight months earlier she had, with others, attended the funeral of Rose Mbele and draped an ANC flag over the coffin. It was also alleged that she delivered a pro-ANC tribute to the FEDSAW and ANC Womens League stalwart at the funeral. Albertina was elected, in absentia, president of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and for the first time she was referred to in print as the Mother of the Nation. The UDF was an umbrella group of hundreds of organizations opposed to Apartheid, which united both black and white  activists  and provided a legal front for the ANC and other banned groups. Albertina was detained in Diepkloof prison until her trial in October 1983, during which she was defended by George Bizos. In February 1984, she was sentenced to four years, two years suspended. At the last minute, she was given the right to appeal and was released on bail. The appeal was finally granted in 1987 and the case was dismissed. Arrested for Treason In 1985,  PW Botha  imposed  a state  of emergency. Black youths were rioting in the townships, and the Apartheid government responded by flattening Crossroads township, near Cape Town. Albertina was arrested again, and she and 15 other leaders of the UDF were charged with treason and instigating revolution. Albertina was eventually released on bail, but the conditions of the bail meant she could no longer participate in FEDWAS, UDF, and ANC Womens League events. The treason trial began in October but collapsed when a key witness admitted he could have been mistaken. Charges were dropped against most of the accused, including Albertina, in December. In February 1988, the UDF was banned under further State of Emergency restrictions. Leading an Overseas Delegation In 1989 Albertina was asked as the patroness of the principal black opposition group in  South Africa (the wording of the official invitation) to meet with U.S. president George W Bush, former president Jimmy Carter, and UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Both countries had resisted economic action against South Africa. She was given a special dispensation to leave the country and provided with a passport. Albertina gave many interviews while overseas, detailing the severe conditions for blacks within South Africa and commenting on what she saw as the Wests responsibilities in maintaining sanctions against the Apartheid regime. Parliament and Retirement Walter Sisulu was released from prison in October 1989. The ANC was un-banned the following year, and the Sisulus worked hard to re-establish its position in South African politics. Walter was elected deputy president of the ANC and Albertina was elected deputy president of the ANC Womens League. Death Both Albertina and Walter became members of parliament under the new transitional government in 1994. They retired from parliament and politics in 1999. Walter died after a long period of illness in May 2003. Albertina Sisulu died peacefully on June 2, 2011, at her home in Linden, Johannesburg. Legacy Albertina Sisulu was a major figure in the anti-apartheid movement and a symbol of hope for thousands of South Africans. Sisulu holds a special place in the hearts of South Africans, in part because of the persecution she experienced and in part because of her unflinching dedication to the cause of a liberated nation. Sources Albertina Sisulus Legacy. Southafrica.co.za.â€Å"Albertina Nontsikelelo Sisulu.†Ã‚  South African History Online, 25 Oct. 2018.Shepherd, Melinda C. â€Å"Albertina Sisulu.†Ã‚  Encyclopà ¦dia Britannica, 17 Oct. 2018.