Why Do We Need Environmental Engineering Topic LOVE CANAL TRAGEDY Case Study

Why Do We Need Environmental Engineering Topic LOVE CANAL TRAGEDY - Case Study Example This led to protests, intervention by the government and multiple lawsuits in pursuit of the compensation for the affected residents. Most of them moved, the infrastructure brought down and the Love Canal crossed for revitalization processes by the Environmental Protection Agency. William T Love is the impresario behind the famous Love Canal as indicated by his last name (Johnson 1). Significantly, the core purpose of the canal was to connect the separations of the Niagara River that had Niagara Falls parting them. Moreover, the canal’s construction would be in a way that residents of the Niagara area would also source electrical power from it; typically, this was a prevalent idea for environmental conservation and community development. Unfortunately, William’s plan faced multiple challenges during the 1892 economic downfall leading to the plan’s ultimate failure; however, this was after he had dug a large percentage of the proposed area. Nonetheless, there was not much that he could do leading to its sale in auction over 25yrs later. Shockingly, the Love Canal served the wrong purposes after its sale. Firstly, the purchasers used it as a chemical disposal site and later on, the United States Army joined the party by using it for warfare experiments that entailed chemical weapons. In the late 1940s, a company (Hooker Corporation) that dealt with chemicals and plastics acquired the Love Canal for the private practices (Phillips 313). Conversely, the company also concealed multiple tons of toxic surpluses in the Love Canal for a period of over 5 years filling it, after which they used land material to cover the chemicals. Niagara City bought the canal to counter its over-population problem from Hooker Corporation that was keen to caveat relative to previous dealings of the land. After purchasing the Love Canal, the city set up infrastructure in form of

Communication Style Case Study Essay Example for Free

Communication Style Case Study Essay Communication style is definitely very important in a work environment especial in the health care setting. Finding the right way to communicate with other staff members will keep an open communication channel with everyone. Which in return make other staff members feel respected and provide a much better work environment and the best quality of care for the patient. Now I will go over the scenarios from Checkpoint 8-4 and my own personal experience at work. Scenario number one, is about Robin, a psychiatric nurse that expressed aggressive communication. That led to Rashed to respond passive, by planning to be passive-aggressive with robin in the future when he would have an opportunity. Robin way of speaking to rashed in a firmed and raised voice, only made rashed feel hurt, angry and revengeful toward robin. The fact that rashed needed his job kept him quite but did not stop him from thinking of revenge towards the future with robin. This type of passive communication does not solve and problems are not solved. It might even become less cooperative during work. Rashed even stated that maybe he would not do anything unless he told to do so. Which in return can only mean that the nurse will end of doing more work unless he asked for help that he needs. Scenario number two, Pamela a school nurse was using nonassertive communication. When in doubt about anything communication is the best way to clear up anything. By taking matters into her own hands know she created double the work and in return increased her stress by retesting everyone. A nonassertive person when try to delegate end up doing more work. By not approaching Bridget regarding her concerns, she became a passive person and did not say anything due to the concern of displeasing others. Nonassertive behavior can also cause, anger, confusion and irritation to others. Nurses can sometime feel overworked because they are passive and accommodates others and in return have a poor functioning team. Scenario Number three, Rosa was a manager of the ambulatory care surgical center that was using assertive communication. Mabel one of the surgical technicians used aggressive communication with Rosa. Rosa was very forward about wanted to work together as a team to solve problems for the best quality care for the patient. Rosa used aggressive communication when she told Mabel that she was the granddaughter of the chairmen of the board  and would get her head served in a platter. Mabel expressive words only showed that she had anger, annoyed, stressed, angry and impatient. Knowing how to express your needs in a positive manner can help relate and resolve any problem that arises. Using assertive communication is a good way to be confident, addresses problem without belittling oneself and other staff members. Improving the way we express ourselves can have a positive effect and outcome at work with better harmony. My Scenario, took place around 8 years ago when I started working a unit called â€Å"1202†, surgical and nonsurgical unit. Six trauma beds and six nontrauma beds. We all worked pretty much in a team. Took report on all patients in order to know what was going on with every patient in case anyone needed help or anyone of us took a break or lunch break. We also rotated being charge nurse. And like always had to divide that patients according to severity and try to balance out the possible admits. Being in charge meant that we were in indirect way responsible for the patients and would be the last one to get the admit in case we had to jum p in and lend a helping hand. It was finally my turn to be in charge and of course that typical older nurse with more years always companied about having to many hard patients and need to trade off one of his patients and when it came to his admit asked if I could take it and he would take the next one. I found myself being nonassertive and took the admit in order to keep peace and not hear him nagging all night. To make the story short the following patient he took but was taken to the operating room, two patients got discharged and only left him with two stable patients. While I was still in charge, ended up with six patients and no discharges. And still responsible for overseeing everyone else’s job. At the end of the day I was tired, mad and overwhelmed. All this gave great experiences to be more assertive in a positive way, explain my rational for how I divided the assignment and offered as much help as needed in order to work as a team for the best patient care. Effective communication is very important not only for the staff members but also with the patient and family member in order to achieve a positive outcome for the patient and for a positive work environment with stress free workplace. Always keep in mind that no matter how much effective communication we might have we are bond to run into conflicts, it just the way we decide to delegate and resolve problems for a positive environment. Aggressive communication can only  bring more problems instead of solving them. Assertive communication is always the best way to go because we show confident, respect and ability to work in a stress free workplace. Reference Hansten, R., Jackson, M. (2009). Clinical delegation skills: A handbook for professional practice. Jones and Bartlett Learning, 4(4th), 279-292.

Misguided Love in The Glass Menagerie Essay -- Glass Menagerie essays

Misguided Love in The Glass Menagerie The Glass Menagerie, written by playwright Tennessee Williams, is the story of a family torn apart by heartbreak from the past and tragedy from the present. Williams' parallels this play to his true life experience with his own family, which makes The Glass Menagerie an even more tragic version of what happens to a family when love is lost and abandonment is reality. Providing for a family can be an overwhelming responsibility, for there are many pitfalls along the way, some families are able to cope, some are not, and The Glass Menagerie gives us insight into what truly happens to a family when faced with abandonment. The story begins in The Wingfield apartment in the rear of a building, which can only be entered by a fire escape. A picture hangs on the living room wall of Mr. Wingfield, who took flight from his family when the children were very small. As Tom, the son recounts, "Father was a telephone man who fell in love with long distances; he gave up his job with the telephone company and skipped the fantastic out of town." There are three main characters throughout this play. Amanda, the mother, is unable to forgive herself for the poor judgement of character she made as a young lady ultimately leaving a lonely, bitter and fearful future for herself and her children. She so dearly loves her children. Tom is a man with dreams of a future but is stifled into a world of disgust and guilt by his overbearing mother. He is a poet at heart, stuck in a job at a shoe factory trying to make ends meet, bearing the responsibility of his younger sister, and all the while dreaming of a life of his own. Although Amanda is quick to let Tom know how much she dearly hates him working at t... ...f this gesture accidentally knocks over the figurine and it too breaks. Laura makes an attempt to recover herself, and for a fleeting moment all seems well, until Jim announces he has another woman in his life, and awkwardly excuses himself; leaving Laura forever silenced before the broken glass. These two moments in time that portray the essence of this story; the darkness and despair, the shattering of human life, and the failure to mend. The Glass Menagerie is a gripping story, one that will leave many who view it with the feeling that Williams' was actually writing about their own lives. The power to overcome the feeling of hopelessness, betrayal, abandonment, and difference is within us all, but not all of us can escape from our past. Works Cited: Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. University of North Carolina at Pembroke. October 31, 1997.

“Exchanging Our Country Marks” by Michael Gomez Essay

In Exchanging Our Country Marks, Michael Gomez brings together various strands of the historical record in a stunning fusion that points the way to a definitive history of American Slavery. In this fusion of history, anthropology, and sociology, Gomez has made expert use of primary sources, including newspapers ads for runaway slaves in colonial America. Slave runaway accounts from newspapers are combined with personal diaries, church records, and former slave narratives to provide a firsthand account of the African and African-American experiences during the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. With this mastery of sources, Gomez challenges many of the prevailing assumptions about slavery– for example, that â€Å"the new condition of slavery superseded all others† (48)– and he advances intriguing new speculations about the development of a collective African-American identity. In Gomez’s words: â€Å"It is a study of their efforts to move from eth nicity to race as a basis for such an identity, a movement best understood when the impact of both internal and external forces upon social relations within this community is examined†(4). According to Gomez this identity emerged out of a mixture of African identities. Throughout his study Gomez illustrates how Africans transferred their unique culture and heritage to the New World. He uncovers the harshness of the Middle Passage, and describes how some enslaved Africans attempted suicide, some successfully. Africans did not embrace the institution of slavery, and many chose to run away. The millions of Africans brought to America would not have thought of themselves as African; they were Asante, Yoruba, or Igbo, their lives and characters defined by village or nation. Gomez devoted a chapter to Muslims that had a religious identity connecting them to Arabia and Palestine rather than their native land. The Muslims brought with them a different idea about themselves and their world. As Gomez noted, the societies of West Africa also had their own histories. These the societies changed during the four centuries of the slave trade operation. Slave traders arrived at a part icular point in their history. There arrival influenced their history; it did not create it. Gomez provides an understanding of what happened in West Africa before, during, and after the slave trade. Gomez opens his book with Denmark Vesey’s 1822 â€Å"experiment† in building a multi-ethnic community displaced Africans in Charleston, South Carolina. Vesey tried to replace ethnic diversity of African peoples with a united movement of Africans in America based on the Bible. â€Å"We must unite together as the Santo Domingo people did†, Vesey told his followers, who nonetheless still organized themselves by ethnicity, with an Igbo column and Gullah column (3). Vesey’s uprising failed, but not his experiment. The African peoples came to define themselves along racial, rather than ethnic lines, though they would continue to transmit stories of their own ethnic cultures to their children. Just as Europeans immigrants came out of specific historical and social contexts, the Africans had individual social, religious, and historical identities. Gomez encourages a re-examination of African-American history by suggesting how different communities of Africans resp onded and transferred their unique culture and heritage to the New World and also shows how particular African societies and cultures continue to shape our society. For example, the Kissi of Sierre Leone lived in rural villages, with out a strong governing state. They formed secret associations that acted as loose governing forces over their dispersed rural settlements. In their society women were autonomous, performing most of the society’s agricultural work. The Kissi came to America with no desire for political power. The Akan, on the other hand, had a highly organized political society. For centuries, they had dominated the gold and kola nut trades. After being conquered by the Asante in the eighteenth century the Akan succumbed to the slave trade, entering America not only experienced with centralized power but also politically insecure after the long-standing Asante threat. Members of the Kissi and Akan came to America with profoundly different outlooks on life. Gomez examines both the African communities from which these people came and the specific places in North America to which they were taken. The ethnicity of Africans brought to Virginia, to South Carolina, or to Louisiana shaped the African American communities on those areas much more than did the nature of their work or other factors. The Bambara and Malinke people from the Senegambia region who were transported to colonial South Carolina and  French Louisiana brought with them their technological skill in growing rice. The first slave ships to reach Louisiana, in 1719, brought both African slaves and African rice seeds. By the end of the century, however a greater proportion of African brought to Louisiana were Yoruba, Fon, or Ewe. These people Gomez argues, synthesized the complex Yoruba region into â€Å"hoodoo,† which Gomez neither romanticizes nor belittles. Besides ethnicity and race, Africans religion had a significant impact on African American culture and survived the psychological intrusion of American Christianity. Gomez is convincing in his accounts of Islam and Christianity. Islam, Gomez suggests, â€Å"may have influenced African -American culture in ways herefore unimagined† (82). Gomez’s goal is to find out how these different peoples and societies influenced their world. Muslims brought to America carried a feeling of cultural supremacy and a connection with the wider world- a mixed identity that separated them from other Africans. But this separation from other Africans, which amounted to a transcendence of ethnic category, allowed the Muslims to develop bonds of community with other Africans more easily than Africans who still identified with their own ethnic cultures. Gomez argues that Muslims were more apt to enter Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana than the Chesapeake, perhaps numbering in the thousands . Muslims, Gomez argues, also made significant efforts to practice and preserve their religion. Evidence for this claim includes praying beads found in slave cabins, the construction of churches facing east, and names found in runaway ads and slave registers. Gomez explains how the ring shout and the relationship of water baptism were important African elements that survived in the black church. For example the â€Å"shout was an indication of social rank and ancestral identification†(270), and â€Å"baptism was a means by which the community grew closer,† whether â€Å"salt water or county born†(273). Both were â€Å"important vehicles in both conversion and movement towards reconceptualization, resistance and defiance†(274). The ring shout was not simply a transitional tool for creating racial identity. For Igbo, the ring shout had a particular social purpose, that is, to preserve community identity. Gomez relates the tendency of Igbo slaves in America to commit  suicide with folklore about flying back to Africa, or disappearing. The ring ceremony in Aliica was a way to solidify community identity and to bring the living into communion with ancestors. The Igbo in America simply adapted it to their new setting. As the nineteenth century progressed blacks embraced Christianity but the â€Å"liturgy was Africanized†(279). Also, blacks preferred the Baptist denomination because it was decentralized and democratic. Just as some Africans would use the ring shout as a metaphysical return to the homeland and others as a means to forge a new community in America, Africans and African -Americans had different recollections of the slave trade that had caused their dislocation. Gomez analyzes two sets of traditions. In one set, Africans were tricked onto slave ships by Europeans offering them red cloth. But in another tale, King Buzzard, an African king, was condemned to travel alone through the world as a buzzard for betraying his own and other people into slavery. The significance of this tale for Gomez’s argument lies in its transformation of historical fact. When Africans enslaved other Africans, they did not view themselves as betraying their own people. They would have regarded the mselves as Aro or Asante or Wolof selling Igbo or Akan or Manlike. Folktales like the one about King Buzzard, created in America to explain the origins of African slaves, gave to these different people a common origin on the distant continent. The Africans’ change from the self-awareness of ethnicity to that of race emerged from a common servitude, white attitudes, and â€Å"an internal dialogue†(242). Association and location figured importantly as blacks in the Deep South, living in close proximity to one another, resisted creolization, in contrast to Upper South blacks, a minority in close proximity to a white majority. Conversion to Christianity, a slow process, was helped along by incorporating familiar African practices such as the ring shout, water baptism, and funeral rites. Conversion, however, separated converts form the unconverted. By 1830, when Gomez concludes his book, African-Americans were divided by rival visions, one a future partnership in North America, the other a past â€Å"as close to the bosom of Africa as they could get†(292). This book contains numerous firsthand accounts detailing the social transformation of African-American culture in the New World. Gomez’s argument is convincing; he succeeds in uncovering how ethnicity and race affected the African American community in the colonial and antebellum South. His work is carefully organized, with many landmarks for the reader. Exchanging Our Country Marks is well balanced and written; it is a significant contribution to the African experience in American.

Importance of Language

Every day and every hour we hear words, letters and phrases: these are the means of communication between me and another person. If we both speak the same language we can connect on another level, versus someone who speaks a completely different language than me. English, my primary language, has been part of me since the day I was born, but another language, Vietnamese, has been part of my grandpa’s life since the day he was born. It is fascinating to see my grandpa going through the drive-thru at a fast-food restaurant.When I was a kid, my grandpa used to take me to Arby’s all the time. He would take me in his beaten up green truck, and we would roll down the street to Arby’s. Every time, he would get the roast beef sandwich and I would get the curly fries. Man those were good. We would go through the drive-thru and when the person on the intercom asked my grandpa what he wanted, my grandpa would tell him â€Å"roo-bee-san-with† and â€Å"ca-ree-fryâ₠¬ . For some odd reason, it seemed that there was always a different person working every time we went, because the person on the intercom would never recognize old gramp’s English, even though we came there about a billion times.Eventually though, they would understand what my gramps was trying to say and we would have our delicious warm food. Time went past, and the world didn’t seem to change. Me being a grown adult and all, it was my turn to take my grandpa to Arby’s, but stubborn old gramps wouldn’t let me. I guess it has something to do with the Vietnamese culture, the younger person was always lower than his or her elder. Anyway, he would drive me down the street to Arby’s and same ole, same ole, he would take me through the drive-thru and say â€Å"roo-bee-san-with† and â€Å"ca-ree-fry†, and again, the person wouldn’t be able to understand him, but eventually they would, and me and my grandpa would have our scrumptiou s food.The funny thing is, another Vietnamese person could easily have a conversation with my grandpa in full-out English and they would understand each other completely. Which I still don’t get. Perhaps you have to be Vietnamese to understand Vietnamese accents, and British to understand British accents. Even though me and my  grandpa can speak English, it’s as though we speak entirely different languages. For example, I can easily tell if someone’s from Kentucky versus someone from the Bronx.English is the means of communication, but we communicate in different ways. Someone from Kentucky might call a sprite, a soda, someone from the Bronx, might call it pop. Accents are what separate me and my grandpa. To me, dialect defines where we came from, who we hang around and what languages we can speak. Where is exactly is he or she from? Anyone may answer this question for themselves, the only thing I consider to be obvious is their accent. Language serves the rol e of exchanging ideas through communication in a way for other people to understand it. Language helps identify personal identities through certain words or accents to reveal where a person is from, like New York, China, or Kentucky.Through one language, we can see the blend of diverting cultures. To me, that is one of the most important things of language. The means of not only spoken communication but communication on a deeper level, where words cannot express. Through this importance of language, I can connect with someone on a deeper level through their culture. Like listening to a hip-hop song, I can almost feel the intensity of how that rapper grew up in the projects dodging bullets from gang members. In the end, language is what brings us humans together, and also separates us as a whole.