A Lost Friend
In a shimmer of green and silver, the dragonfly hovers a moment beside Pam’s head, almost indiscernible from the darkness but for the orange light from the campfire reflecting on its iridescent wings. The dragonfly disappears from view behind the campfire, and I hear a faint popping noise.
A moment later, the Pam I know is no longer. In place of the smiling, laughing, charismatic girl with perfect posture, I see a stranger. She has folded into herself, nuzzling her nose between her knees and covering her face with her hands, elbows tucked in at her sides. Her sparkling eyes are closed, and her back heaves with each breath. I can almost hear the air rushing in and out of her nose as she tries to calm herself.
It is my seventeenth birthday, and a bunch of my guy and girl friends have come over to celebrate and camp out in the field near my house. But even though people are milling about and the Backstreet Boys’ first album is blaring from the old portable boombox as a reminder of our seventh grade year, my attention is focused on Pam. “Why is she acting this way?” I wonder. “I know she’s compassionate, but this is a little extreme.” Circling the fire, I sit beside her and put my arm around her shoulder. What happened to the Pam I once knew?
Pam grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the door of the eighth grade building at our private school in Maine. We skipped outside and down the steps to the small yard in front of the thin, three-story structure. Snow was falling gently, the first flakes of the season. Pam looked at me and grinned, eyes wide and shining. Without a word, she spread her arms, closed her eyes, turned her face to the sky, and began to spin. Her feet moved in tiny, circular steps, and he...
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...ologetic smile, and walks over to the driveway, where she leans against the side of a car and waits for her mom. She waits there, alone, her back to us, and when her mother drives in, I walk to the car to say goodbye again.
The glass is cold against my hand as I press it to the window. Pam sits inside the car, staring straight ahead. She hesitates, lifts her hand, and without turning to look at me, she carefully places it on her side of the window. If it weren’t for the glass, we would be touching, her hand directly on mine.
I haven’t spoken to Pam since that night. I haven’t even tried. I have thought about calling her, but I don’t know what I would say. I still don’t know what happened to her two years ago, what changed her so dramatically, and I think maybe I’m afraid to find out. The glass that separated us that night is the silence that separates us now.
While Snow Falling on Cedars has a well-rounded cast of characters, demands strong emotional reactions, and radiates the importance of racial equality and fairness, it is not these elements alone that make this tale stand far out from other similar stories. It is through Guterson’s powerful and detailed imagery and settings that this story really comes to life. The words, the way he uses them to create amazing scenes and scenarios in this story, makes visualizing them an effortless and enjoyable task. Streets are given names and surroundings, buildings are given color and history, fields and trees are given height and depth, objects are given textures and smells, and even the weather is given a purpose in the...
The financial crisis of 2007–2008 is considered by many economists the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This crisis resulted in the threat of total collapse of large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments, and downturns in stock markets around the world. The crisis led to a series of events including: the 2008–2012 global recessions and the European sovereign-debt crisis. The reasons of this financial crisis are argued by economists. The performance of the Federal Reserve becomes a focal point in this argument.
The Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis of 2008 has been the largest financial crisis to take place since the end of the Great Depression. It was the actions of individuals and companies that caused this crisis. For although it could have been adverted, too much money was being made by too many people in place of authority to think deeply on the situation. As such, by the time actions were taken to attempt to rectify the situation, it was already too late. Trillions of dollar of tax payers’ money was spent trying to repair the situation that was caused by the breakdown of ethics and accountability in the private sector. And despite the government’s actions to attempt to contain the crisis, hundreds of thousands lives were negatively affected before, during, and after this crisis.
The 2008 financial crisis led to a sharp increase in mortgage foreclosures primarily subprime leading to a collapse in several mortgage lenders. Recurrent foreclosures and the harms of subprime mortgages were caused by loose lending practices, housing bubble, low interest rates and extreme risk taking (Zandi, 2008). Additionally, expert analysis on the 2008 financial crisis assert that the cause was also due to erroneous monetary policy moves and poor housing policies. The federal government encouraged the expansion of risky mortgages to under-qualified borrowers. Congress pushed for the support of affordable housing through extended procurement of non-prime loans for applicants with low income (Zandi, 2008). The cutting down of interest rates to low levels to supplement for technology bubble of early twentieth century and the effects of Sept 11, a housing bubble was created. This move facilitated individuals with poor credit to obtain mortgages in high percentage when lenders created non-conventional mortgages by offering mortgages with extensive amortization periods, loans with interest and payment alternatives such as ARMs (Angelides et al, 2011). Ultimately, interest rates rose again and many subprime borrowers stopped paying for their mortgages when their interest rate were reset to higher monthly payments. This paper will discuss the impact of the financial crisis as a result of subprime mortgages.
A report compiled by the U.S Financial Crises Inquiry Commission shows that the infamous global crises could have been avoided. It pointed out that failure in different financial institutions including the Federal Reserve accelerated the crises. Lehman brothers; one of the three largest investments banks in the United States has been cited in the financial crises in 2007. The bank went bankrupt and it had to be sold in September 2008 (Currie, 2010). The other two banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs had to become commercial banks where more regulation was done. The collapse of large and significant financial institutions like the Lehman Brothers propagated the economic crises. Investors withdrew over $150 billion from the money funds in the USA in two days after the collapse of the Lehman Brothers. This caused the money markets to get unstable thereby nee...
In the first part, “the foundation” is explained and details about the five main dominating banks. The rating agencies are discussed as well as they do not have a reliable rating system for financial institutions. The second part is about the “mortgage boom” in US and how it leaded toward the debt burden and how money is created out of thin air. The third part is about “the crisis” which was warned by advisers
The "subprime crises" was one of the most significant financial events since the Great Depression and definitely left a mark upon the country as we remain upon a steady path towards recovering fully. The financial crisis of 2008, became a defining moment within the infrastructure of the US financial system and its need for restructuring. One of the main moments that alerted the global economy of our declining state was the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on Sunday, September 14, 2008 and after this the economy began spreading as companies and individuals were struggling to find a way around this crisis. (Murphy, 2008) The US banking sector was first hit with a crisis amongst liquidity and declining world stock markets as well. The subprime mortgage crisis was characterized by a decrease within the housing market due to excessive individuals and corporate debt along with risky lending and borrowing practices. Over time, the market apparently began displaying more weaknesses as the global financial system was being affected. With this being said, this brings into question about who is actually to assume blame for this financial fiasco. It is extremely hard to just assign blame to one individual party as there were many different factors at work here. This paper will analyze how the stakeholders created a financial disaster and did nothing to prevent it as the credit rating agencies created an amount of turmoil due to their unethical decisions and costly mistakes.
My time spent learning how to drive started at age 12 leading up to getting my license when I turned 16, driving has taught me many valuable lessons. To this day I am still learning lessons, every time my foot touches the accelerator. One of the greater lessons it’s has taught me is to have trust in my self.
As I walked out of the courthouse and down the ramp, I looked at my mom in disappointment and embarrassment. Never wanting to return to that dreadful place, I slowly drug my feet back to the car. I wanted to curl up in a little ball and I didn't want anyone else to know what I had done. Gaining my composure, I finally got into the car. I didn't even want to hear what my mom had to say. My face was beat red and I was trying to hide my face in the palms of my hands because I knew what was about to come; she was going to start asking me questions, all of the questions I had been asking myself. Sure enough, after a short period of being in the car, the questions began.
I distinctly remember the day I first went driving. It was a cold and wet day and I was supposed to have my first driving lesson. My mother had told me that for the first lesson we would sit in the car the whole time, my teacher would tell me how the car worked, and we would maybe practice pulling in and out of the driveway. Once my teacher, Mr. Leeds, arrived I quickly realized that my morning was going to be much more difficult than I had expected. As I approached the car I grew increasingly more scared and nervous, not just because I would be driving, but because I noticed another teenager around my age in the back seat. Mr. Leeds explained that the way his program worked was that each kid he
The recent Global Financial Crisis (GFC) initially began with the collapse of credits and financial markets, which caused by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US in 2007. The sub-prime mortgages were given to high-risk lenders (with bad credit history) who were in danger of defaulting, which eventually caused a global credit crunch, where the banks were unwilling to lend to each other. In October 2008, the collapse of the major financial institutions and the crash of stock markets marked the peak of this global economic slowdown (Euromonitor International, 2008).
When I was six years old, I hated car rides. To a six year old, a car ride was the epitome of boredom. There was nothing to do on a car ride except sit there for hours watching the trees. I would get carsick every single time I was in my mom’s Volvo. If I wasn’t sick or bored, I was waiting painfully in the backseat for the next exit ramp so my mom could turn off the road for a bathroom break. My mom would have to bribe me with candy or some other special treat just to get me in a car everyday. Some six year olds were afraid of monsters and doctor’s visits; I was afraid of the car. About ten years later something happened, a change. When I finally got my driver’s license at age sixteen, I was no longer afraid of the once dreaded car ride.
I awoke to the sun piercing through the screen of my tent while stretching my arms out wide to nudge my friend Alicia to wake up. “Finally!” I said to Alicia, the countdown is over. As I unzip the screen door and we climb out of our tent, I’m embraced with the aroma of campfire burritos that Alicia’s mom Nancy was preparing for us on her gargantuan skillet. While we wait for our breakfast to be finished, me and Alicia, as we do every morning, head to the front convenient store for our morning french vanilla cappuccino. On our walk back to the campsite we always take a short stroll along the lake shore to admire the incandescent sun as it shines over the gleaming dark blue water. This has become a tradition that we do every morning together
Ah, I remember how she used to be with me all the time. A day did not go by without me going over to play. I remember how we used to play for hours and hours. We played whatever came to mind; it didn’t matter as long as we were together. We were happy.
But what exactly is an mp3. Well an mp3 is a compression form (like .zip). The name mp3 stands for Mpeg 1 Audio Layer 3 and its compression algorithm is based on a very complicated model (“MP3 Info”). This model was developed based on the fact that the human ear cannot hear all audio frequencies. Every hearing range for humans is between 20 Hz to 20Khz, and the human ear is most sensitive between 2 to 4 kHz. So, what this mp3 model tried to do was eliminate the frequencies, which the human ear is unable to hear, keeping all the hearing frequencies so everyone will get the hearing experience intact.