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E.B. Whites Drafts of Once More to the Lake

E.B. White's Drafts of 'Once More to the Lake' At the start of every fall term, countless students are asked to write an essay on what must be the most uninspired composition topic of all time: How I Spent My Summer Vacation. Still, its remarkable what a good writer can do with such a seemingly dull subjectthough it may take a bit longer than usual to complete the assignment. In this case, the good writer was E.B. White, and the essay that took more than a quarter century to complete was Once More to the Lake. First Draft: Pamphlet on Belgrade Lake (1914) Back in 1914, shortly before his 15th birthday, Elwyn White responded to this familiar topic with uncommon enthusiasm. It was a subject the boy knew well and an experience that he fiercely enjoyed. Every August for the past decade, Whites father had taken the family to the same camp on Belgrade Lake in Maine. In a self-designed pamphlet, complete with sketches and photos, young Elwyn began his report clearly and conventionally This wonderful lake is five miles wide, and about ten miles long, with many coves, points and islands. It is one of a series of lakes, which are connected with each other by little streams. One of these streams is several miles long and deep enough so that it affords an opportunity for a fine all-day canoe trip. . . .The lake is large enough to make the conditions ideal for all kinds of small boats. The bathing also is a feature, for the days grow very warm at noon time and make a good swim feel fine. (reprinted in Scott Elledge, ​E.B. White: A Biography. Norton, 1984) Second Draft: Letter to Stanley Hart White (1936) In the summer of 1936, E. B. White, by then a popular writer for The New Yorker magazine, made a return visit to this childhood vacation spot. While there, he wrote a long letter to his brother Stanley, vividly describing the sights, sounds, and smells of the lake. Here are a few excerpts: The lake hangs clear and still at dawn, and the sound of a cowbell comes softly from a faraway woodlot. In the shallows along shore the pebbles and driftwood show clear and smooth on bottom, and black water bugs dart, spreading a wake and a shadow. A fish rises quickly in the lily pads with a little plop, and a broad ring widens to eternity. The water in the basin is icy before breakfast, and cuts sharply into your nose and ears and makes your face blue as you wash. But the boards of the dock are already hot in the sun, and there are doughnuts for breakfast and the smell is there, the faintly rancid smell that hangs around Maine kitchens. Sometimes there is little wind all day, and on still hot afternoons the sound of a motorboat comes drifting five miles from the other shore, and the droning lake becomes articulate, like a hot field. A crow calls, fearfully and far. If a night breeze springs up, you are aware of a restless noise along the shore, and for a few minutes before you fall asleep you hear the intimate talk between fresh-water waves and rocks that lie below bending birches. The insides of your camp are hung with pictures cut from magazines, and the camp smells of lumber and damp. Things dont change much. . . .(Letters of E.B. White, edited by Dorothy Lobrano Guth. Harper Row, 1976) Final Revision: Once More to the Lake (1941) White made the return journey in 1936 on his own, in part to commemorate his parents, both of whom had recently died. When he next made the trip to Belgrade Lake, in 1941, he took along his son Joel. White recorded that experience in what has become one of the best-known and most frequently anthologized essays of the past century, Once More to the Lake: We went fishing the first morning. I felt the same damp moss covering the worms in the bait can, and saw the dragonfly alight on the tip of my rod as it hovered a few inches from the surface of the water. It was the arrival of this fly that convinced me beyond any doubt that everything was as it always had been, that the years were a mirage and there had been no years. The small waves were the same, chucking the rowboat under the chin as we fished at anchor, and the boat was the same boat, the same color green and the ribs broken in the same places, and under the floor-boards the same fresh-water leavings and debristhe dead hellgrammite, the wisps of moss, the rusty discarded fishhook, the dried blood from yesterdays catch. We stared silently at the tips of our rods, at the dragonflies that came and went. I lowered the tip of mine into the water, pensively dislodging the fly, which darted two feet away, poised, darted two feet back, and came to rest again a little farther up the rod. There had been no years between the ducking of this dragonfly and the other onethe one that was part of memory. . . . (Harpers, 1941; reprinted in One Mans Meat. Tilbury House Publishers, 1997) Certain details from Whites 1936 letter reappear in his 1941 essay: damp moss, birch beer, the smell of lumber, the sound of outboard motors. In his letter, White insisted that things dont change much, and in his essay, we hear the refrain, There had been no years. But in both texts, we sense that the author was working hard to sustain an illusion. A joke may be deathless, the lake may be fade-proof, and summer may seem to be without end. Yet as White makes clear in the concluding image of Once More to the Lake, only the pattern of life is indelible: When the others went swimming my son said he was going in too. He pulled his dripping trunks from the line where they had hung all through the shower, and wrung them out. Languidly, and with no thought of going in, I watched him, his hard little body, skinny and bare, saw him wince slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy garment. As he buckled the swollen belt, suddenly my groin felt the chill of death. To spend almost 30 years composing an essay is exceptional. But then, you have to admit, so is Once More to the Lake. Postscript (1981) According to Scott Elledge in E.B. White: A Biography, on July 11, 1981, to celebrate his eighty-first birthday, White lashed a canoe to the top of his car and drove to the same Belgrade lake where, seventy years before, he had received a green old town canoe from his father, a gift for his eleventh birthday.

The impact of scraping of the retirement age on the management of HR Essay - 1

The impact of scraping of the retirement age on the management of HR in Organisations - Essay Example (Age UK, 2010). The decision on this ground shows growing need of service from the Britons to carry on working, only if they are fit and healthy and continue their work. This move of the government was welcomed by personnel groups but the business leaders notified in a form of warning that this measure might leave the employers blank with regards to their planning for future. This is because they would not know about the exact timing of retirement of their employees so that they can prepare the succession plan (Beckford & Peacock, 2010). The following literature review has been prepared to provide empirical evidence of the impact of such policy of the government to scrap the age of retirement. The evidence of this literature review has been collected from different articles and journals basically through secondary sources. According to Cadler (2010), scrapping or removal of the DRA will be one among the biggest alterations to employment law when it would come into being in the year of 2011. The author says that this reform will leave a number of unresolved problems for the employers. This is because the rules regarding this policy will be very unclear to all the employees along with the employers. At the same time, it will be unclear to all the stakeholders of the organisation (Cadler, 2010). Skirbekk (2004) stated that recognizing the profiles of age-productivity, is a significant factor of the economic world at present. The government recognised this factor and thus the issue gained importance. Government focuses on the demographic and economic factors of the country that are changing. Life expectancy is an important demographic indicator of the affect on economic growth of a country. This indicator influences the age structure of an economy. The government took the decision to scrap the retirement age because it is believed that individual productivity rises to its peak level at later stages of working life.

An analysis of the current and future use of internet technologies of Essay

An analysis of the current and future use of internet technologies of ''Hallmark Cards'' - Essay Example However, the suitability of such company driven technological initiatives will depend on how the effectiveness of the internet applications in meeting the set goals and objectives (Smith and Kidd 2000, p 45-50). The internet has basically changed commerce (Smith and Kidd 2000, p 45-50). The most basic forms of communication such as written and verbal communication between a business and its consumers and suppliers have been changing. Electronic communication, in the form of the internet, keeps on changing the commercial activity for consumers and businesses. E-commerce can therefore be defined as the sharing of product and service information, developing and improving human business relationships, while transacting business over the internet (Canzer 2006 p. 97-99). Hallmark was founded in 1910 and is currently the world’s most well-known producer of greeting cards. Hallmark creative artists produce several designs for greeting cards and other products each year. The greening cards and other products are produced in 38 dissimilar languages and are sold to more than 100 countries in the world (Regan 2009 p. 150-159). At hallmark, an advertising e-business model is based on earning revenues in exchange for the placement of advertisements on the firm’s website. Just like traditional media such as television, newspaper and radio, advertising in the internet involves advertisers’ support of distributed online entertainment or information likely to be accepted by consumers, who see advertising as the cost they have to incur to receive free content online. The internet provides Hallmark with the opportunity to create unique design and interaction with the targeted audience (Pierce 2005 p 18-23). The advertising model in the internet has necessitated the entry of small production studios and small entertainment artists who seek to get advertising revenues as well as to put up for sale their products online. There are no

Critical Management Studies Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Critical Management Studies - Coursework Example Modern life, to a considerable extent, is governed by managerial or economistic approach whereby, in the context of business in organizations, the efficient allocation of resources takes precedence over humanistic or ethical concerns. In this respect, many public services are increasingly facing new forms of managerialism, while many aspects of socio-cultural activities are also being subjected to the same business, management, and economic perspectives. Over the years, narrow interests such as financial institutions have traditionally dominated research in business, management, and economics leading to biased theory of practice (Barratt 2011, p.110), which CMS has been countering; CMS is now a valid and vital aspect of the Business school curriculum, and is even visible in professional bodies for practitioners in business, management, and organization studies. The pervasive scepticism regarding the essence of the mainstream management ideas and practices have spurred the need to expand the field of management through research, to espouse alternative innovative ways of understanding management (Alvesson and Willmott 2012, p.5), instead of relying on the ineffective status quo, thus the emergence of Critical Management Studies. Overall, CRS often seeks to bring to fore the subtle workings of power while identifying and reforming the daily workplace practices that enforce injustices both in firms and in the society. CMS views the prevailing conceptions and forms of management as well as organization as unjustified and unsustainable (Alcadipani & Hodgson 2009, p.130), with a keen focus on the social injustice as well as the environmental destructiveness of the wider socio-economic systems that managers and specific firms serve and reproduce (Foster & Wiebe 2010, p.271). In this respect, it is not really the failures of individual managers or the poor management of specific firms that informs and motivates CMS,

Regent Hotel: Case Study on Pricing and Weaknesses

Regent Hotel: Case Study on Pricing and Weaknesses The Regent Hotel Case Study 1. Pricing Strategy Review – Key Issues There are several key issues which must be considered when determining the pricing strategy for a hotel. The main variables that affect hotel room pricing in general will include transient demand at the location, for example during festivals, conferences or major tourist occasions, and also whether it is currently high, low, or ‘shoulder’ season. Weekly arrival or departure patterns can also affect occupancy: there may, for example be many spare rooms on a Thursday night, or even worse, excessive demand on one night of the week, due to overlap from arriving and departing guests, which means that rooms may end up being empty on the surrounding days. For example, if guests staying from Monday to Friday choose to also stay Friday night, it may make the rooms unsuitable for people who want to stay over the weekend, thus leaving a shortage of rooms on Saturdays. Equally, the ratio of guest rooms to meeting, or conference, rooms can dictate pricing strategy, as if the hotel has plenty of guest rooms, but little conference space, it may have to offer excessive discounts to attract conference guests, but in the opposing scenario, it may be able to charge a premium. In a similar vein, a hotel with a successful history of holding meetings or conferences, and thus a good reputation in corporate circles can also command a premium for business functions. The potential for incremental revenue from the restaurant and bar areas should also impact on pricing, both for the rooms and the facilities themselves. Should a hotel have a high proportion of guests using its additional facilities, then it can use these revenues to subsidise the cost of the rooms, thus enabling it to lower prices and thus attract more guests, who will ideally also use the facilities. However, should the facilities be of poor quality, or too expensive, then the price of the rooms m ay have to be raised to compensate for the shortfall. A final factor to consider is the potential for risk to the hotel, such as the likelihood of cancellations or damages, which can be mitigated to some extent by including cancellation and attrition clauses in the terms and conditions, provided these are made clear to guests at the time of booking. Pricing strategies at major brand hotels also tend to fluctuate more with the market, because of their size and power. Serlen (2004) reported that many of the major brands lowered rates dramatically during the recent period of difficulty for the industry, but these rates were unprofitable, and thus the hotels couldn’t maintain those rates and be profitable. As such, most hotels chose to keep rates more stable, sacrificing some revenue during that period, but meaning that they wont be the same pressure of profitability once demand has returned. However, a Datamonitor Company Profile (2005) of the market in which the Hyatt and other premium hotels, such as the Regent, operate; has shown that pricing power within the market is currently heavily influenced by the hotels’ capacities, and also the pricing decisions of competitors. The downturn in the travel industry has led to a competitive environment where supply currently outstrips demand. Therefore the market as whole, ra nging from low costs leisure up to the premium end in which the Regent operates, is currently dictated by the pricing strategies of competitors. Competitors’ actions generally within the current climate could cause supply growth to outstrip demand growth, which could be disastrous for the Regent, and thus attention should be paid to these considerations. Specifically for the Regent, the refurbishing of the conference rooms has enabled it to offer high quality corporate facilities, which should enable it to charge a premium for conferences, over and above what other hotels in the region can charge. However, the opening of the Edinburgh International Conference Centre could lead to problems for the hotel, as it appears of offer far superior facilities to that which the Regent, or indeed any hotel, could possibly offer. Therefore whilst the Regent can still hope to gain significant conference revenue, especially during high season when the EICC will be in great demand, it may not be able to rely on conference revenue as a key stream. However, given that delegates who use the EICC still need to be accommodated, the Regent could potentially attempt to negotiate with the Edinburgh Convention Bureau to become the hotel of choice for conferences using the Centre, and this would enable it to charge the desired premium. With regards to the additional facilities, such as the bar and restaurant, given that there is currently not a high proportion of guests using these facilities, it is difficult to justify using them in the pricing strategies of the rooms, as reducing the price of rooms to attract more guests will not necessarily greatly affect the revenue generated by the facilities. However, it is important to review the pricing strategy of the bar and restaurant, to ensure that these are not priced so high as to drive away guests, and possibly including some meals in the price of the room could be a good way to increase demand for the rooms and the additional facilities, whilst potentially also slightly increasing the price. Finally, it is important to determine whether the customer dissatisfaction is being caused by pricing at all, and also whether other hotels in the city are pursuing aggressive pricing strategies which are taking demand away from the Regent. If this is the case, then it may be necessary to accept some short term losses in order to fight back and prevent the Regent Hotel losing so much business that it has a stigma attached to it, and is unable to attract any guests back, however this is likely to be a drawn out and costly process. 2. Front Office Operation – Key Issues There are several other key issues concerning the hotel that it is vital to assess if the brand is going to be developed and revitalised in the eyes of the public. Using the SWOT analysis (Appendix One) Firstly, it is important to determine which of the first three identified weaknesses are causing the decline in customer satisfaction, and ensure that remedying this is given highest priority in the coming refurbishment. However, regardless of which of the identified weaknesses are most responsible for the sharp decline in customer satisfaction, it is vital that all weaknesses are addressed as part of the refurbishment and handover process in general. Firstly, the outdated financial and reporting systems need to be replaced with an integrated solution, which connects all the different departments, and facilitates the transfer of information between the various heads of the departments. This system should enable food and beverage staff to input orders directly into the cash registers in the bars and restaurants, and these orders should then be transferred directly onto the relevant customer’s bill, perhaps using the customer’s signature, or their room key, as proof of their identity and room number. A similar system should also be put in place for the mini bars, enabling housekeeping to update the charges on the mini bar bills as they replenish the bars every day. An improvement to the reporting system would also enable staff to check the usual and predicted levels of occupancy when taking group bookings, thus enabling them to charge the relevant amounts for each period. This would help avoid the potential for offering groups too great a discount during busy periods, and would also help let staff know to when offer larger discounts, such as during quiet periods. Equally, sales and financial data and targets for Front Office, Sales and Food and Beverage could be shared across the three departments, so that each department knows what other departments are doing, and also what all three departments are aiming for. This would enable each department to maximise its own contribution to the hotel’s revenue, without adversely affecting the performance of the other relevant departments, for example Sales would know not to offer a cheaper meal option to large groups if the Restaurant is likely to be very busy for that period. The question of modernising and replacing the linen appears to be the main reason for the refurbishment, and Andrew Brennan should have this well in hand. However, no mention has been made of plans to refit or expand the laundry facilities, which is a key consideration, as not only does it appear to be affecting guest satisfaction, but it is also resulting in insurance claims, which drive up costs, and thus put a drain on the hotel’s profits. The whole laundry operation should be reviewed, and its capacity should be increased so that, not only can it handle the demands placed on it by the normal running of the hotel, but also to ensure that it has sufficient spare capacity to complete all laundry requests to a high standard and on time. The threats arising from the slow tourist industry, and the loss of bookings from Milton Hotels could be problematic, however provided the customer satisfaction issues can be resolved, word of mouth, together with a successful refurbishment and re-launch of the hotel should be sufficient to attract customers back, and the number of bookings appear to be picking up, as can be seen from the trendline on the room occupancy graph in Appendix Two. However, the final main issue to be addressed is that of revenue maximisation. As can be seen from the financial analysis (Appendix Two), only in the highest season does the hotel come close to completely using all its rooms, and occupancy often drops below the 60% mark. Equally, even in the busy months of June, July and August, total revenue realised is less that half that if all the rooms were charged at their full rate. As such, it is vital to reassess the marketing and advertising used to attract people during high season, as not only should rooms be as fully occupied as possible, but they should also attract as high a price per room as possible, and currently this is not the case. References Serlen, B. (2004) Hotel Programs Grow. Business Travel News; Vol. 21, Issue 15, p. 1. Datamonitor Company Profiles (2005) Global Hyatt Corporation SWOT Analysis. Appendix One: SWOT Analysis Strengths Beautiful Victorian architecture Excellent location with fine views. Modern food and beverage areas Prestigious banqueting and conference areas. Weaknesses Outdated financial and reporting systems. High need for modernisation of rooms and replacement of linen. Inadequate laundry facilities. Lack of revenue maximisation across all departments. Opportunities Potential to house EICC guests. Growing importance of Edinburgh. Chance to completely refurbish and re-launch hotel. Threats Declining customer satisfaction. Slow tourist industry. Loss of bookings from Milton Hotels. Lack of customers using dining facilities. Appendix Two: Financial Analysis

Shindlers List :: essays research papers

Through out the movie Shindlers List many changes take place. These changes happen in both society and in certain people. During WWII the German Nazi regime enslaved the Jewish communities on Europe. They were used as slave labor or were executed if seen unfit. Even though these atrocities were taking place on a daily basis some people tried to help the Jewish community. Isaac Stern was a member of the Jewish community and he wanted to help his people out as much as possible. He was a great accountant but because of his heritage he wouldn’t be allowed any form of power in Germany. For this he needed Oscar Shindler. Shindler was a very influential person and was very friendly. Even in the beginning of the movie he was able to walk into a room of German officers and walk out best friends with all of them. He was just the kind of man Stern needed. He needed someone with connections in the German government. Shindler may have had all of the connections but he had no money to invest into his business ventures. He spoke to Stern and they agreed upon a deal. Stern and other wealthy Jews would provide the funding and Shindler would provide the connections in the military in order to keep Jews safe in Shindlers factories. In the beginning Stern and Shindlers opinions of each other were strictly business. Both knew what hey had to do and they got the job done. But as time went on both men became very good friends. Shindler offered a drink to Stern after the deal was completed, stern refused it. Stern was under the impression that Shindler was just another Nazi taking advantage of his people. Shindler though that Stern was just another Jew. They both had stereotypes on each other. As they worked more closely together for longer and longer it became apparent that they had great admiration for each other and they both new what a horrible thing the Germans were doing. Later on in the move when they believe they will be separated Stern finally takes that drink from Shindler. A â€Å"master image† from this movie is when the little boy hides in the stalls. It shows very well to what lengths a person would go to survive. When it came down to it everyone that was in his position would do the same in order to make it out alive.