The cold, steel bars of the headboard pressed painfully into my back, and I could no longer feel my legs. Yet I sat motionless, his head heavy on my collarbone, afraid the slightest movement would disturb him. I softly kissed the thin wisps of hair on top of his head as I cradled his frail, emaciated body. Every day spent with him was precious; he would soon be gone. In those silent pre-dawn hours, the harsh lighting and sterile hospital smell faded away as my mind wandered unrestrained, exploring unknown areas and probing into ideas which challenged my Southern upbringing, and returned with new knowledge which was to forever change my life.
"Woo," as everyone knew him, loved God, family and the outdoors. He was always daring, climbing to the highest branches of any tree. When he was five years old, he grabbed the manes of our untamed horses to hoist himself onto their backs for wild, frenzied rides. At the age of nine he began a love affair which was to last his entire life—he earned to hunt.
His truck roaring into the driveway invariably disrupted the entire household. The children jockeyed for position as they ran to the door laughing and screaming. They knew he would have Tootsie Rolls and Hershey Kisses in his pockets. As soon as his tall, lanky frame filled the doorway, strawberry blonde ringlets bouncing past his shoulders, they wrapped their little arms around his legs, forcing him to drag them into the room with him. He was always willing to play their favorite games, no matter how tired he was. One wanted to wrestle; his long, tapered fingers would dance across the child's ribs eliciting delighted squeals. Another wanted to play "Chin Music." Woo's beard tickled as he blew "raspberries" on their cheeks and necks.
Many mornings at daybreak he stopped by for a cup of coffee and quiet conversation. He gestured animatedly when he talked; sparkling azure eyes belied the seriousness of any situation. Hung across his shoulder was the tattered, brown hunting pouch he refused to part with, his curls escaping the orange knit cap he always wore hunting. On those mornings he smelled of crisp, cold air and wild game.
The morphine cocktails he was given on demand had stilled his work-callused hands and dulled his eyes.
"Everyone is influenced by their childhood. The things I write about and illustrate come from a vast range of inputs, from the earliest impressions of a little child, others from things I saw yesterday and still others from completely out of the blue, though no doubt they owe their arrival to some stimulus, albeit unconscious. I have a great love of wildlife, inherited from my parents, which show through in my subject matter, though always with a view to the humorous—not as a reflective device but as a reflection of my own fairly happy nature.
Now that the summary is out there for all who did not get to read the story let’s make some connections to everyday life. In the story is it said by the author that, “All the while I hated myself for having wept before the needle went in, convinced that the nurse and my mother we...
Everyone at some time in their lives must come to the realization that they or others around them will not live forever. After they come to that moment of realization, they will either accept death when it comes and live life to the fullest or deny and live a more sheltered life. James Dickey shows this moment of realization in his poem “The Hospital Window” where a son who has just finished his terminally ill father starts to realize the frail thing called life is compared the great aspect of enjoying life. Dickey’s purpose for this poem is to the reader to realize that life is a feeble thing and one needs to have that revelation for one to truly be able to cherish life and others around oneself. Through Dickey’s use of similes, metaphors, and imagery he is able to fully convey his purpose for this poem and allow for his readers to have a new view of life from the hospital window.
The fall of mankind with Adam and Eve caused an imbalance in the relations between God and mankind. To achieve salvation, this inequity had ...
As I walked down the corridor I noticed a man lying in a hospital bed with only a television, two dressers, and a single window looking out at nothing cluttering his room. Depression overwhelmed me as I stared at the man laying on his bed, wearing a hospital gown stained by failed attempts to feed himself and watching a television that was not on. The fragments of an existence of a life once active and full of conviction and youth, now laid immovable in a state of unconsciousness. He was unaffected by my presence and remained in his stupor, despondently watching the blank screen. The solitude I felt by merely observing the occupants of the home forced me to recognize the mentality of our culture, out with the old and in with the new.
In the state I was in, if someone had come and told me I could go home quietly, that they would leave me my life whole, it would have left me cold: several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of being eternal. I clung to nothing, in a way I was calm. But it was a horrible calm -- because of my body; my body, I saw with its eyes, I heard with its ears, but it was no longer me; it sweated and trembled by itself and I didn't recognize it anymore.
The poem His stillness by Sharon Olds gave her a definite understanding of the man that she called “father.” Olds grew up in an abusive family home because her dad was always known as an alcoholic. Because of her dad’s habit, created hard living environments for her and she wished that her parents never got married. Whenever liquor was in her dad’s system, he was unemotional making life for Olds hard. She never described the things that he did to her. The visit to the doctor’s office made her opened up to her dad. She saw her dad as lovely and caring family man and she never imagine him being the man that he was at the doctor’s office. He did not overreacted when he heard news; instead he was calm and accepted the news. She felt tremendously sad for her dad and from there now she started noticing the man she never knew. Olds and her dad bond grew stronger at the doctor’s office. The man she had always known for his abusive behavior turned out the most caring man in the world.
...of brand equity in an organizational-buying context. Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 6(6), pp. 428-437.
In conclusion, the customer- based brand equity model is an important platform that may help in building a strong brand. It could assist a company in assessing its progress as well as providing a blueprint for marketing research activities. If properly planned and implemented, it could help the company in achieving its marketing strategies and in the realization of an increased profit margin (Grover & Vriens 2006, p. 147).
“The Hospital Window” by James Dickey is an emotional poem about a son’s struggle to cope with his father’s imminent demise. This poem incorporates figurative language as well as metaphors that create a story of emotion. It evokes such true emotion by drawing the reader into the fidelity of the relationship between a son and his father faced with the reality of death. Not only death in a physical sense, but also the journey one takes to reach that point and the transcendence of faith. Each element of the poem is a cliffhanger for the next line, resulting in a read that sparks the true creative power of the readers’ mind.
Companies use a collection of brand equities to represent their products in the market (Voolnes, 2012). Brand equity refers to the commercial value that is derived from the perception of consumers on any given brand name of particular products in the market as opposed to the product itself. Ataman (2003) notes that the effect to the consumer is in the brand name and not the product itself. Companies use logos, trademarks and a collection of other symbols to present this information to the customers. The use of these symbols is meant to try and capture the customer mindset so that they can be thinking about the company products at all times through the items they possess at home (Estes, Gibbert, Guest, & Mazursk, 2012). This can well be explained by use of the customer-based brand equity model that brings together the requirements for a publicly renowned brand in the market.
Assessment, in the context of education, was defined by Lambert, D (2000, pag 4) as the processs of gathering, recording and using information about pupils' responses to educational tasks. Despite some can consider that assessment is separated from the learning process, assessment is, in fact, an essential part of the learning proccess. Maguire, M. and Dillon, J. (2007, pag 213) pointed out that assessment is intrincately bound-up in the teaching-learning cycle.
3] Keller, K.L. (1993) Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. Journal of Marketing 57, 1–22.
Simon, C.J., & Sullivan, M. W. (1993). “The measurement and determinants of brand equity: A financial approach”. Marketing Science, 12(1), 28-52.
Brand equity is crucial as it implies that the brand itself is an important (financial) asset and can be calculated in financial terms (Barwise, 1993). This is particularly important in the luxury sector as from a behavioural viewpoint, brand equity can differentiate a company or product from other competitors, adding to their competitive advantages based on non-profit competition (Aaker, 2004). The model created by Aaker (1992) states that there are four categories of brand equity; Loyalty, Awareness, Perceived Quality and Associations. Luxury branding relies on a high level of perceived quality, loyalty and associations, although potentially less so for awareness, as it is thought that consumers choose luxury brands based on their exclusivity and as such the more the awareness that surrounds the brand, there is potential for it to become less valuable (Phau and Prendergast,