Hollifield Family Reunion Essay Example for Free

Hollifield Family Reunion Essay Every year around the last week of July my father’s family all meets for a two day reunion in the small town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Hollifield’s have resided in the area for over 100 years! There are many streets named after us and if you’re walking around town some people even notice you’re a Hollifield just by looking at you. Although it is only two days long, the reunion is something I cherish deep in my heart, for it’s the only time I get to see my father’s family. One night in 1974, my grandpa and a few other family members were sitting around reminiscing about their childhood. They were laughing at all the memories and good times they’ve had and all the trouble they got into. My grandpa was telling everyone he had been thinking of a way that everyone could make some time to all come together for a couple days once every year. His uncle told him that they should start a family reunion. So starting in July of 1974 the annual Hollifield reunion began. Everyone gets to the hotel Friday night and gets settled in and reacquainted a lot of hugging, kissing, laughing, and eating. My sister and I get our own hotel room so most of our cousins bring sleeping bags and stay both nights in our room. We talk about what we’ve all done that year, who’s dating who, what kind of cars we’ve bought; we pretty much talk each other’s ears off. The next morning we all get up and find somewhere to eat and walk around town. Downtown Spruce Pine is absolutely beautiful. There are flowers and pine trees growing everywhere, and you can smell all the bakeries and barbeque pits. There are little stores with antiques and instruments, florists, wedding dress shops, and candy stores. It could go from 90 degrees with the sun shining to a humid rain in a matter of minutes. When it rains you can smell it a hundred times better than in California. After we walk through town we get to a huge, long wooden bridge. It’s been there for years and underneath it flows a beautiful creek and a park filled with laughing children frolicking in the sunlight. We normally go to the park and mess  around on everything then make our way to the creek. You have to go down a steep hill made of dirt and freckled with little patches of bright green grass. The boys catch crawdads and crayfish while us girls dip our feet in the clear chilly water and wait for the train to pass. The train is large and used to transport coal and freight. Personally, the train is one of my favorite parts of Spruce Pine. It’s loud yet still soothing and controlled. After a few hours the rest of the family begins to show up at the park with fresh, good old-fashioned southern food. They unload the cars of barbeque, slaw, potatoes, mac and cheese, collard greens, green beans, pasta salads, and more desert than any amount of people should ever consume. Following our meal is the baseball game. The whole family plays and we get chosen randomly for two teams. In the end my grandpa tells us that everyone won and an MVP is chosen from each team who receives a golden trophy of a boy or girl with a tiny body and huge head, holding a baseball bat. We all clean up then head back to the hotel to get swimsuits and drive over to the pool. A few hours into swimming we decide to go to the hotel and shower then all the kids find a place to eat supper. Upon leaving the restaurant someone informs us that the annual hide-n-seek game has begun. We take off running towards the hotel to find a hiding place while the person chosen as â€Å"it† stays and counts for 5 minutes. The game involves a lot of pushing, shoving, screaming, laughing, and those little chills you get when you’ve found a place and you know that any second you could be found. After the game we all head back to my sister and I’s room and hang out. We stay up all night talking about everything that happened, who did the most embarrassing thing, which was the funniest, and other things we had encountered that day. As the night goes by we start to notice our time is almost up. Most of my cousins live in NC so they see each other all the time, but as the hours pass my sister and I notice that our time in NC is almost over; that we’ll have to wait yet another slow, California year before we get back to the peaceful happiness of NC. Around 9 in the morning our cousin’s head back to their rooms to get ready for our last meal together. For breakfast Sunday morning the whole family fills the back room of The Western Sizzler. Western Sizzler may be the best place to get breakfast ever. It’s is 3 large buffet tables covered in bacon, sausage, ham, eggs,  fruit, veggies, pancakes, waffles, biscuits and gravy, yogurt, granola, hash browns, country potatoes, varieties of juices, milks, sodas. And at the end there is a huge dessert bar. We eat and talk and talk and eat. And eat some more†¦ and then a little bit more. We catch up with some of the older members of the family and tell them what we did all weekend. My aunt Vicki walks around and takes millions of pictures with her big nice camera that has a flash that could blind the whole family at the same time. When everyone has finished my grandpa stands up and talks about all the great things that have gone on during the weekend, all the graduates and birthdays, all the births and deaths. We end the reunion by hugging and some crying (I won’t lie; Ià ¢â‚¬â„¢m one of the criers). If my family had never got the idea to have a reunion, I don’t know when I would ever see them. The reunion brings us together in a quick two day span filled with great food, laughter, and all around happiness. It seems like when we’re all together nothing can go wrong. My cousins and I have vowed that when our time comes, we will carry on the tradition of the Hollifield Family Reunion until the day we die.

Post-Colonialism: Trying To Regain Ethnic Individuality :: essays research papers fc

Indeed, the stranger has unusual customs. The white man held the paper like a sacred thing. His hands shook, and we mistrusted him... For how many moons will the stranger be among us? (Vera 43) The stranger still lives among the people of Zimbabwe, though the colonial political authority has left. Yet I wonder if the town elder speaking in the above passage from Yvonne Vera's Nehanda would recognize current Zimbabwean authorities as strangers or countrymen. Could he relate to today's government officials and understand the languages which they speak? Would he feel at home in an African country with borders defined by European imperial powers without regard to the various ethnic nations involved? Post-colonial theory attempts to explain problems such as these, yet it does so almost exclusively in the languages of the European colonial powers. Europeans even created the word Africa. "To name the world is to 'understand' it, to know it and to have control over it" (Ashcroft 283). Because knowledge is power, and words, whether written or spoken, are the medium of exchange, using words incurs responsibility. One must use special care with broadly defined words and terms, such as post-colonial. Post-colonial literature describes a wide array of experiences set in the contexts of heterogeneous societies which themselves represent many different ethnic groups. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin define post-colonial theory as discussion of "migration, slavery, suppression, resistance, representation, difference, race, gender, place, and responses to the influential master discourses of imperial Europe... and the fundamental experiences of speaking and writing by which all these come into being" (Ashcroft 2). The wide-ranging nature of the term post-colonial threatens to weaken its usefulness by "diffusion... so extreme that it is used to refer to not only vastly different but even opposed activities" (Ashcroft 2). Post-colonialism encompasses many of the issues encountered in the work we have discussed thus far in the semester. Yet because vague and generalized theories have limits and tend to oversimplify, clouding over real problems, one must handle the term with care. Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin suggest that we should restrict the term post-colonial to signify after colonialism. "All post-colonial societies are still subject in one way or another to overt or subtle forms of neo-colonial domination, and independence has not solved the problem" (Ashcroft 2). After colonialism, new elites, often in the form of dictators, frequently rose and still rise to power in post-colonial countries.

Travelling Abroad Is a Waste of Money

TRAVELLING ABROAD IS A WASTE OF MONEY I strongly disagree that travelling abroad is a waste of money because we can learn history of civilizations, we can learn cultures of different peoples and we can witness the greatness of Allah. Firstly, in Surah Al- Ankabut: 20, Allah says : â€Å" Travel the earth then see how He makes the first creation, then Allah creates the latter creations†¦ † What this verse indicates is the disappearance of one nation to give place to another. For instance, the nation of the Pharaohs has been replaced by modern Egypt.Other nations which have disappeared include the people of Ad and Thamud in the Middle-East. Through travelling we can learn the history and witness the remains of these civilizations. Secondly, we can learn the cultures of different peoples around the world. In Surah Ruum: 22, Allah says : â€Å" And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your tongues and colours.. †. Hence, if we travel from China across to Europe, we will see peoples of different looks, colours, sizes, cultures, languages, and ways of living.They include Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Persians, Arabs, and Europeans. All look different from one another, speak different languages, and practise different cultures. Finally, in Surah Ibrahim : 32, Allah says : â€Å" Allah†¦ made ships subservient to you to run their course in the sea by His command ,and He has made the rivers subservient to you. † This verse tells us that Allah provides the facilities for mankind to travel( by sea or river ). In so doing one can appreciate the creations and greatness of Allah.For instance, sailing in the seas will give us the opportunity to see sharks, beautiful islands, and the huge waves. Sailing in the rivers will give us the opportunity to see the numerous floras and faunas, rapids, and waterfalls. Although travelling abroad does cost a lot of money, inconvenience and sometimes have to face some di fficulty, in my opinion, travelling abroad is not a waste of money because of the benefits we can get from it. [336 words]

DISCUSS THE WAYS IN WHICH IAGO CONTROLS AND MANIPULATES...

DISCUSS THE WAYS IN WHICH IAGO CONTROLS AND MANIPULATES TWO OTHER CHARACTERS IN ‘OTHELLO’ Iago controls and manipulates many characters in ‘Othello’ including Roderigo, Brabantio, Cassio, Emilia, Desdemona, and even Othello himself. I will only be looking at Cassio and Othello because the fate of Iago’s plans rest in their actions, therefore he controls and manipulates them more than any of the other characters like Roderigo who is also manipulated by Iago for a lot of the play but I found the relationship between Othello, Cassio, and Iago more interesting because they are both his superiors so Iago has to be more careful with how he manipulates them. When Iago speaks to Roderigo he can tell him a lot that may or may†¦show more content†¦Othello’s lieutenant, Cassio is a young and inexperienced soldier (we are told this in the beginning of the play when Cassio is first spoken of), whose high position is much resented by Iago. Truly devoted to Othello, Cassio is extremely ashamed after being implicated in a drunken brawl on Cyprus and lo sing his place as lieutenant. Iago uses Cassio’s youth, good looks, and friendship with Desdemona to play on Othello’s insecurities about Desdemona’s fidelity. Iago controls Cassio for most of the play. It is important for Iago to control Cassio in the way that he does because it allows Iago to get exactly what he wants. Iago uses Cassio’s faults to manipulate him, like Cassio’s looks and his flirtatious personality to Cassio’s own disadvantage because Iago gets Othello to think that Desdemona is having an affair with him. It all starts when he persuades Cassio to join in with the festive drinking even though Cassio has a weak alcohol tolerance level ‘I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking’ this shows that Iago can still persuade Cassio to drink a lot of alcohol even though he knows that he cannot take it. Iago implies that he and Cassio have the same friends which makes Cassio think that they are best friends; he does this by calling the other men â€Å"our† friends which implies that they too would be friends. Iago also tells Cassio that he will drink for Cassio which makes Cas sio think