So as I drive up on an early morning there's a lot of hustle and bustle for such a small town corner gas station. A sandy shade of tan with red trim. With the main part of the building mostly made of cinder blocks. A drab basic building nothing flashy it's been here for years. Yet it seems busy all the time. I've known this place for years it's always been a center of the small community. Probably about 20 or 30 vehicles in the parking lot (which seems like a lot for this small community). On one side of the station two double-sided gas pumps that service only four vehicles at a time. All with cars waiting to fuel up.
A lot of people are busy coming in and going out, getting their necessities they need to commence their day. Whether its fuel, snacks, drinks, coffee, breakfast sandwiches, or other knickknack necessities. As I get out of my truck the faint smell of diesel and gasoline fumes approach me. All different walks of life
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As I leave out the door I'm reminded again why I had to wear the jacket today. The nice warm temps inside change as soon as I get out the door. The cold frigid wind that seems to cut right through grabs my attention. As few older gentleman sit out on the bench with their cups of coffee smoking their cigarettes. They take the time to socialize with each other. I head back to my truck, and as I open the door and start to suddenly realize that this place is not just a convenient store, but it's also a social hub, it's an area of necessity for people to not only obtain their needs but also some of their wants and to be able to have the time to socialize. It's a community center of sorts. Yes I know it's a business, but it's a business that allows people to connect. Makes me wonder sometimes what the community would be like if this place wasn't even here, and everybody had to go to the next town over and be more antisocial with the big box
Over the years, the American department store has developed and evolved as not only a commercial business but also a cultural institution. While it has weathered many storms and changes since its inception and throughout history, its most predominant enemy has been a change in the lifestyle of the American people (Whitaker, 2013). As the customer’s needs and wants have shifted, department stores have struggled to keep up with demands. It has been argued that the decline of the department store has been ongoing for the last 50 years (Whitaker, 2013). This dissertation aims to understand how the department store has historically played a role in consumer culture and spending, and additionally, how this has evolved and changed in today’s retail market. Although department stores may not be able to take all the credit for inventing modern shopping, they certainly made its conventions and conveniences commonplace. They set a new standard for the way the consumer should expect to be treated, the type of services that should be provided, and the convenience that should attend the process of acquiring the necessities and niceties of life all in one place. They made shopping into a leisure pastime. This environment meant shopping was a means of freedom to look around, pick up objects with no obligations to buy. As one historian remarked, department stores: “encouraged a perception of the building as a public place, where consumption itself was almost incidental to the delights of a sheltered promenade in a densely crowded, middle-class urban space” (Whitaker, 2006). Although this perception and view of the department store has changed over the years, this paper aims to follow the trail of how and why that happened.
When we think of air pollution we think of the refineries in our cities and the exhaust coming from our cars mostly. In reality there are many more pollutants that we don't think about every day. The six most common air pollutants are; “Carbon monoxide, Nitrogen oxides, Sulphur oxides, Particulate matter, Volatile organic compounds, and Ground-level ozone (nitrogen oxide and Volatile organic compounds reaction)”(David Suzuki Foundation). The fact is people are dying from air pollution and we are doing nothing to make it better, in fact air pollution is getting worse.
For this research paper, I chose to discuss the Louisiana air quality and its effects on the community. I was raised here in Baker, Louisiana which is north of Baton Rouge. Growing up I noticed something very striking and odd. We are overly exposed to chemical plants and their outputs. Driving around Baton Rouge at night and seeing a distant flame I often wonder what it really was. I wonder how this was affecting the community. How was this affecting our health? Upon doing research, I discovered it is called upset emissions. Upset emissions are unplanned events which release VOCs into the air. The Bucket Brigade which is an anti-energy group refers to emissions as accidents. Every year they release an annual report which gives information on the State of Louisiana air quality. A group called Energize LA made a rebuttal against the report. They argued that the Bucket Brigade facts were inaccurate. The views of both will be explained in detail. For this research paper, there will be a discussion on the upset emission effects on communities and health. As well how it correlates to the previous class discussions on the Clean Air Act.
It is important to realize that Sammy’s 19-year old depiction of his surroundings might be skewed, but the story still maintains Updike’s basic use of this setting. Updike choses the dull setting of an A&P grocery store as a symbol, a microcosmic example of the societies tendency to conform. Also, the readers can easily relate to a grocery store. This A&P resides in a town where “the women generally put on shirt or shorts or something before they get out of their car into the street,” Sammy explains. Seeing a girl walking around wearing only a bikini in such a public place looks outrageous. “If you stand at our front doors you can see two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper store…” The town is a conventional one. Updike turns this familiar, mundane piece of American life, and makes it extraordinary.
Two men were working the front end, the cashier at register 3 was helping an older looking woman with a sun hat, Capri pants ,and far too much make up on, the other cashier was leaning on the bag rack behind him, enjoying a break in a slow day . Both of the clerks looked as if they were in their early twenties, definently townies, the townies hated summer vacationers. Townies never said a word to vacationers, and you could tell in their attitude; they all longed for Labor Day to roll around so everyone would go home, bringing peace to their little town again. My observations of the store and town politics were...
Postrel develops her support of national retailers throughout the essay, offering the opinion that it isn’t the stores that give places their character, but instead, aspects like the terrain, weather and culture that do (Postrel 347). While terrain, weather and culture can set apart regions, such as New England from The Deep South, and Southern California from the Midwest, it’s the community that gives each town their own special character. A community consists of the residents, their restaurants, hardware stores, pharmacies, ice cream parlors, farmers markets, and so on. These places, and the interactions that occur daily at each establishment, are the fabric that differentiate them, and create the breeding ground for diverse characteristics to flourish. While Postrel argues that wildly different business establishments across America in the past is a myth , it’s actually not necessarily that the products that varied from store to store, but more the aforementioned factors that truly set ...
Sammy is the cashier at the store, he has been for quite some time now, long enough where he has a memorized “the punches, 4, 9, GROC, TOT” ( 602 ) and has created a song for himself “"Hello (bing) there, you (gung) hap-py pee-pul (splat)"” ( 602 ). Showing his contempt for conformity and consumerism to the everyday life of the store Sammy joins the shoppers or as he calls them the “sheep” ( 600 ) of the store who can never be out of the spell of their daily routines. The location and the layout of the store is also tediously described by Sammy when he is describing the surroundings to the readers where he is located “between the checkouts and the Special bins” ( 599 ). He also does this when he describes the girls going up and down the isles of items “the cat-and-dog-food-breakfast-cereal-macaroni-rice-raisins-seasonings-spreads-spaghetti-soft-drinks-crackers-and-cookies aisle” ( 600 ). With all of these tedious descriptions of details of Sammy’s surrounding we slowly start to see him getting more and more frustrated and appalled at the conformity of the society that he lives in, and the difficulty of breaking the social formalities that he must deal with on a daily basis.
Pahl, Jon. (2003). The Mall as Sacred Space. In Behrens Laurence & Rosen Leonard (Eds.),
Gasoline fueled cars produce a number of pollutants. The most damaging pollutants that come from gasoline fueled cars are particulate matter. Particulate matter is a sequence of organic materials and inorganic substances. It includes ingredients such as lint and minerals. Nitrogen dioxide, produced when fuel is burned at high temperatures, can cause damage to the lungs and cause chest pains. One might ask, “Why are Americans still driving gasoline cars?” knowing the damage that they are subject to cause. I personally maintain that the government should push people to p...
In modern society, humans constantly pollute the environment by using cars, technology, food packaging, and a countless amount of other products. Despite understanding how causing mass amounts of pollution can harm, often there are minimal attempts to correct polluting behaviors, at least until it poses an immediate threat to humans. The idea that the environment is suffering due to our mass consumption through instances of climate change and pollution, is not nearly enough motivation to stop the use of things that may be harmful. In order to address pollution in any respect, there must be an immediate threat to the health and well-being of humanity. Rachel Carson highlights this idea in her
Relevance: Air pollution is something that everyone should be concern, especially if we’re advancing a lot in technology, especially in vehicles and the importance of our air or the environment.
PURPOSE: To persuade my audience that we must take action now to control air pollution
Immediately I acknowledge that things were differently, this was not your conventional hair salon. It was widely divergent from most places I’ve been to. People didn’t just get their hair cuts, this is where they mingle. I struggled to find a parking spot in a tiny lot just off the highway; minutes went by as I sat in my car waiting for a parking spot. It was 6 minutes later, that a black Cadillac, with nice wheels and tint, backed out and I was finally able to park. The barbershop is located in an area too small to be considered a strip mall-and apparently too small to handle all of its customers' vehicles. Once I found a parking spot, I was ready to begin my observation of the Starz barbershop.
Factories and transportation depend on huge amounts of fuel--billions of tons of coal and oil are consumed around the world every year. When these fuels burn they introduce smoke and other, less visible, by-products into the atmosphere.
If a person living in a city living in the city goes out for a walk, they will see that everything is perfect. The air is fresh and the beaches are clean and the sea waters look crystal clear. Even though everything looks right, problem still persists in other parts of the world. A lot of people’s thinking about the environment is confined to their surroundings and where they live, so they do not realize that the environment is in danger because of their actions. What should come into their concern first is that even though everything looks perfect, their community and surroundings are also polluted. In cities, the streets and the parks may be sparkling clean, there is no guarantee that the air is clean. In large cities, megapolises and metropolises, a major mode of transportation are cars. Car usage produces a lot of carbon dioxid...