Does talking help relieve stress?

Yes, talking does help to relieve stress. While it is one of a handful of measures typically prescribed to reduce levels of stress—others include meditation, immersion in pleasurable activities, and exercise—talking with others is a tried-and-true way to reduce the stresses that most people experience during various stages of life.
Stress is dangerous, especially prolonged stress. While it is a natural phenomenon experienced by almost all people at one point or another, prolonged periods of stress, such as a difficult period at one's job or a prolonged illness, can have serious physiological ramifications. Serious levels of stress (and anxiety) can weaken human immune systems and exacerbate preexisting medical conditions. It can also result in the deterioration of personal and professional relationships if left unmanaged. There is, after all, a reason that there are an estimated 34 psychologists for every 100,000 people in the United States, not including other forms of mental health treatment. (Data is from the American Psychological Association, which extrapolated from data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau.)
It is proven that engaging in a dialogue, especially with an individual trained to process patient information and to help construct approaches to resolve underlying difficulties and to manage stress, helps relieve the psychological burdens under which many individuals live. By divulging the problems, no matter how personal, to which an individual attributes his or her stress, the pressures from living with such information is reduced. Secrecy in-and-of-itself can be stressful. Unburdening oneself of personal information can greatly reduce stress.
Some careers have high levels of stress built into them; it is their nature. Policing high crime neighborhoods, fighting fires, operating aircraft, engaging in armed combat, and being responsible for the welfare or financial well-being of hundreds of people all involve high levels of stress. It literally comes with the job. In all of these examples, the availability of counseling is of paramount importance. Talking through one's problems can help relieve the psychological pressure that causes stress, whether the dialogue is with a professional, licensed therapist or with a close friend or family member. Holding painful information inside oneself is never healthy, and even the other forms of stress relief mentioned above do not address this kind of stress as well as talking with a trusted individual.
 
https://www.webmd.com/balance/guide/blissing-out-10-relaxation-techniques-reduce-stress-spot

What are all of the settings in the book Hoot?

The main setting in the novel Hoot is in Coconut Cove, Florida, a small town. The main character Roy often compares his new home in Florida to his old home in Montana. The specific settings referenced in Roy's town are his school, Trace Middle School, the construction site where the burrowing owls live, and Roy's home. Other locations include a nearby wooded area by a dump where Mullet Fingers lives in an ice cream truck and a golf course where Mullet Fingers hides. The construction site, where they plan to build the pancake house, is next to the golf course. This makes it convenient for Mullet Fingers to carry out acts of vandalism that are meant to save the burrowing owls by inconveniencing the construction workers and postponing construction plans.

Listing all of the settings is going to be a bit tough. There might be some really minor locations that a reader might consider a setting that other readers would not consider a setting location. For example, at one point in the book, Roy is riding in a school bus. I would like to focus on the main settings of the book.
The broad setting is Coconut Grove, Florida. The story then takes place within smaller, more specific locations within that city. Roy goes to school at Trace Middle School. His home is also a setting location throughout the book. A nearby forest is another location, and this is where Mullet Fingers lives. A fourth and final main location is the construction site where the new pancake house-style restaurant is being built.

What is the definition of ethical awareness in a work place? How do you recognize and identify ethical awareness? Focus on identifying the best practices associated with the recognition of ethical awareness. How important is it to have ethical awareness in the work place? Give some examples done after the recognition of ethical awareness.

Ethical awareness is the ability to identify moral or ethical issues and the inclination to do something about them.

In philosophy, "ethics" has three main branches. The first, based on Aristotle's work, focuses on virtues such as justice, generosity, and charity as beneficial to individuals and society at large. The second, popularized by Kant, is about duty: it holds that people are bound by rationality to respect others. The third branch revolves around the idea that people should be guided by a simple principle: what serves, or brings happiness to, the greatest number of people?



Let us talk about real-world application. Normative ethics are the norms or standards of conduct in a given place (the term "ethical awareness" is used in academic settings and in professional contexts, so this could be a school or an office.) An ethical dilemma occurs when two values clash, especially when it is not clear that one party is "right" or "wrong."

Ethical awareness is very important in the workplace because it allows people to focus on performing their jobs without the constant temptation of cutting corners or doing something "wrong" that would have a quick benefit, either to the individual or to the company he works for. To quote Michael C. Hyter, a senior partner and leadership and talent consultant at Korn Ferry in Washington, D.C., "[an ethical workplace culture] means an environment that makes it easy to do the right thing and makes it difficult to do the wrong thing." (See more from him in the article I attached from the Society for Human Resource Management.)

In the workplace, individual best practices for ethical awareness may include the following:



Identifying an ethical problem or conflict
Assessing how serious the issue is
Communicating this problem to others in the community (especially those who are trained to deal with them—usually an HR team)
Changing one's own perspective to see the issue from a different angle
Predicting how an ethical issue could affect others in the workplace


A company's best practices for ethical awareness may include the following:

Educating staff on the significance of ethics in the workplace
Establising a clear code of conduct that all employees are expected to follow
Training a special team (often this falls within HR, or Human Resources) to mediate or make decisions when ethical dilemmas occur
Anticipating ethical dilemmas
Remaining alert to ethical conflicts before they become larger problems
Examining an existing issue from a range of perspectives
Staying up-to-date on tools and resources that assist individuals and the company with making ethically sound choices
Considering the implications of the issue in the future of the workplace
Developing a system to report violations confidentially or anonymously
Offering performance reviews of ethical conduct
Implementing a system to discipline employees who violate the ethical code

Let us look at two real-life examples of best practices of ethical awareness in the workplace. You can see more detail on either of these in the article I have attached.


Example 1: A company invites a convicted felon (a former CFO for a healthcare company who spent 5 years in prison for fraud) to talk to employees about the lessons he has learned. Current employees who might be tempted to compromise ethically have a chance to consider the long-term consequences of a questionable decision.


Best practice: The company anticipates a problem and stays up-to-date on tools and resources (in this case, a live speaker) to prevent ethical dilemmas.


Example 2: A company replaces an online ethics training program with a more contemporary and appealing video that employees are more likely to actually pay attention to.
Best practice: Again, the company is staying up-to-date on teaching tools and resources. They are establishing a code of ethical conduct. They are educating their employees. They are laying out the consequences (the disciplinary actions that an employee will face if he breaks the code of ethics) and possibly preventing ethical issues from arising in the first place.
https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/0414-ethical-workplace-culture.aspx

Who arrests Sam? What is he accused of?

Sam is arrested by two cattle thieves who frame him for being a cattle thief. The cattle thieves proceed to present Sam to General Putnam.
The story My Brother Sam is Dead gives a different perspective on the American Revolution. The story is centered on the Meeker family and demonstrates the conflicts that emerged at the family level with regards to the war. Different family members supported different sides of the conflict, leaving families torn apart. In the Meeker family, Sam supported the rebels, while the rest of his family sided with the British. Tim, Sam’s younger brother, does not fully support any side.
Tim’s father dies on a prisoners’ ship after he is kidnapped. Sam is executed after he is falsely accused of stealing cows. The irony of Sam’s situation is that the cows stolen by the cattle thieves belonged to his brother and he was trying to recover them. However, he is overpowered by the thieves and framed for the theft. Despite efforts by his family to clear his name Sam is still executed.

In chapter 12 of My Brother Sam Is Dead, Sam has returned home from the war. He tells Tim about the great hardships endured by soldiers on the front line, including hunger. Sam confesses that, when hungry himself, he stole some cattle to survive. To make sure that his family doesn't suffer the same fate, he advises Tim to slaughter their cattle and freeze the meat over the winter. Tragically, Tim doesn't heed his brother's sage advice, with serious consequences.
One night, some thieves descend upon the farm and steal some of the family's cattle. Sam immediately heads out after them but is overpowered by the thieves and brought back to the farm tied up and unable to escape his fate. The cattle thieves turn Sam over to General Puttnam, who's declared that anyone found guilty of stealing cattle will hang. Sam is entirely innocent, but despite the best efforts of his family, the powers that be are not remotely interested in justice. They need a convenient scapegoat, and Sam perfectly fits the bill. Yet Sam earns our admiration by his remarkable stoicism and courage in the face of his impending death and the way he remains strong for his family.

In letter 7, what is the central theme? And what would be three main ideas supporting the theme?

The central theme of the seventh of Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet" is that to love another is, of necessity, a difficult and demanding undertaking, because it is the most important endeavor of our lives. He warns his young friend against being lured away by "what is easy and toward the easiest side of the easy," advising him to "trust in what is difficult," because everything in nature grows and becomes itself most spontaneously "at all costs and against all opposition."
As a source of difficulty, as almost a spiritual discipline, he recommends solitude. In solitude, he suggests, by first learning about themselves through contemplation and reflection, the young can best learn what it is to love another. As Rilke says, "what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent"?
Equally significant, in the pursuit of such a difficult, genuine love, is the idea of avoiding convention. "Whenever people act out of a prematurely fused, muddy communion, every action is conventional," Rilke writes. Questions of love, he says, cannot be resolved by public agreements; "they are questions, intimate questions from one human being to another, which . . . require a new, special, wholly personal answer."
The final idea animating this letter on the demanding nature of love is the importance of women being considered the equal of men, a development whose imminence he envisions: "This advance (at first very much against the will of the outdistanced men) will transform the love experience, which is now filled with error, will change it . . . into a relationship that is meant to be between one human being and another."

The central theme of Rilke's seventh letter is love. Kappus has asked Rilke to give him advice about romantic love. Rilke responds with a philosophical discourse about what love is.
Rilke makes the point that real love is difficult and that what most young people regard as love is mere physical attraction or self-interest. Second, Rilke states that love takes sacrifice, time, and pain, if it is not going to be shallow. Third, love also requires solitude. This may seem counter-intuitive, given that being in love usually means wanting to be with the beloved all the time. However, Rilke says solitude is a necessary ingredient because it teaches self knowledge and helps us to mature. He writes that love “consists in the mutual guarding, bordering and saluting of two solitudes.”
He also tries to redefine womanhood away from stereotyped notions of femininity. Instead, he recasts love as a relationship between two equals, the woman perceived as "something which makes us think of no complement or limitation."

One of the central themes in Rilke's seventh letter is the intrinsically intertwined nature of love and solitude.
First, Rilke tells his young poet friend that while it's normal to want to struggle against solitude and to not feel alone or lonely anymore, one should hang on to one's solitude and listen closely to what it can teach us about ourselves. Rilke writes, "it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it." 
Second, Rilke says that while love and solitude may seem to be opposites, they actually are not. Even though it might seem like being in love with someone is the opposite of solitude, the act of loving someone requires a lot of solitude. This is because loving someone is difficult and requires a lot of growth. Rilke writes, "learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is--solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves."
Third, Rilke says that if we understand that love and solitude are deeply connected because both require a lot of work and self-reflection, we can better understand love. He tells us that "if we nevertheless hold out and take this love upon us as burden and apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in all the light and frivolous play...then a little progress and alleviation will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us; that would be much." Thus, if we can approach love as though it requires the same amount of work that solitude does, we can better understand one another and ourselves, and perhaps spread this understanding and love to others.

What so "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes" and "Wee Willy Winkie" show us about British imperialism, and what is Kipling trying to say about it?

In "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes," an English colonial engineer working in India accidentally falls down a crater with his pony after chasing dogs while in a feverish state. He finds himself in a hellish environment surrounded by Indians who appear to be zombies and cannot escape. Thanks to his servant, Jukes is eventually able to make an escape and return to the land of the living.
Kipling's view of imperialism was a good deal more ambiguous than commonly thought. He was a staunch supporter of the British Empire but still remained sensitive to the plight of indigenous peoples, especially in India, the country of his birth. "Morrowbie Jukes" should be interpreted with that cultural background in mind. When he falls into the crater, Jukes sees a sight that few other colonialists ever see. He's introduced to a hideous half-world of darkness and suffering he never even knew existed.
The moral is that white European imperialists need to become more closely acquainted with the lives of their colonial subjects, more sensitive to their cultural needs. The village of the dead visited by Jukes provides the Anglo-Indian governing class with a frightening glimpse into how the other half lives. On the whole, it's likely that Kipling's intended audience missed the subtle meaning of the story and simply thought that it provided a salutary lesson in maintaining a clear racial and cultural distinction between themselves and the indigenous population.
The treatment of imperialism in "Wee Willy Winkie" is slightly different, but again could be taken in two ways. The little boy has a rather unflattering view of Indians, referring to them as "bad men." His world is somewhat narrow, and the people of the indigenous population are remote and strange to him. And, as he's still only a child, Winkie has no real understanding of imperialism and what it entails. His worldview is black and white; he sees Miss Allardyce as a damsel in distress threatened by a horde of dark and dangerous savages.
When confronted by Indians armed to the teeth Winkie acts defiantly. Although trying hard not to cry he plucks up the gumption to start making demands:

"I am the Colonel Sahib's son, and my order is that you go at once. You black men are frightening the Miss Sahib. One of you must run into cantonments and take the news that Miss Sahib has hurt herself, and that the Colonel's son is here with her."

After being subjected to a peal of mocking laughter, Wee Willie Winkie makes a more serious threat:

"And if you do carry us away, I tell you that all my regiment will come up in a day and kill you all without leaving one. Who will take my message to the Colonel Sahib?"

Although the confrontation is clearly meant to be humorous Winkie's threat carries a dark message. Even though he's just a small boy Winkie's still old enough to realize what will happen to the Indians if they carry out their threat and kidnap him and Miss Allardyce and hold them for ransom. Through the mouth of a child we're being introduced to the true face of imperialism, one of violent, brutal repression.
The lesson we're meant to draw from this is not as clear as that propounded in "Morrowbie Jukes." One could say that Kipling is using humor and the immature worldview of a small boy to comment upon the harsh side of the colonial life which he otherwise values highly. Or it might be said that Kipling is providing us with an example of the kind of British pluck and fighting spirit needed to face down the threat of native insurrection. Kipling was almost obsessed with the idea that the Empire needed a special breed of men to maintain and administer it properly. This was no job for amateurs. Perhaps he sees in the feisty little figure of Wee Willie Winkie someone who will one day take on such an onerous task.
 
 

In The Unfinished World: And Other Stories by Amber Sparks, what is the relationship between beauty and decay in three stories in the collection?

In The Janitor in Space, beauty is synonymous with a redemptive loneliness; it comes from rejecting the decay associated with "the accumulated debris of a lifetime in sin and sacrifice." The story follows a janitor who works on a space station; her daily work is mundane, and she thinks that the astronauts she cleans up after are sloppy and careless in their habits.
She remembers her past life with indifference. In her present circumstance, the weightlessness of space simulates a feeling of freedom. Up in space, she no longer has to contend with the shame of her criminal past. Although she has no friends, she is glad to be "free of the burden of people for the first time in her whole flat life." The janitor rejects death as a sort of redemption; to her, death is the "opposite of wisdom, (and) the opposite of mystery." Instead, loneliness (the only thing she owns) becomes a thing of beauty for her in her new life.
In The Lizzie Borden Jazz Babies, beauty is marred by a moral decay that results from misplaced priorities and flawed judgment. Accordingly, the mother and step-father in the story are concerned that grown men have begun to ogle the mother's teenage daughters. Because they find it difficult to accept the girls' burgeoning sexuality, the mother and step-father decide to curb the girls' extracurricular activities; they are no longer allowed to dance the sensual Lindy Hop. Instead, they must content themselves with ballet if they want to dance at all. The adults' flawed judgment and misplaced priorities lead them to shame the girls rather than to educate them about the pleasures and responsibilities that come with sexual awakening.
The girls rebel and decide to take revenge on their parents. They rename themselves the Lizzie Borden Jazz Babies. In 1892, Lizzie Borden stood trial for the axe-murders of her father and step-mother in Massachusetts; she was acquitted in 1893. Both Cat and Patty scheme to dispatch their parents in the same way. However, Cat eventually becomes infatuated with a young man and loses interest in carrying out the murders. Incensed, Patty schemes on her own, but it isn't the same without her twin. The story ends in a surrealistic dream, where Patty cuts down Cat's boyfriend with an axe. The ambiguous ending is stunning, reinforcing the idea that moral decay often corrupts beauty.
In For These Humans Who Cannot Fly, beauty can be derived from decay and death, if only from a matter of perspective. Accordingly, a widower remembers his dead wife by building death houses (Leichenhaus) for a living. In these houses, he has placed five hundred Temporary Resting Containers, where the deceased can rest until they are awakened from their "sleep." Although the widower knows that no one can come back from the dead, he still believes that "every death is a love story." Although its "the goodbye part," he believes that "the love is still there, wide as the world."
It is this love that sustains those who are left behind. From this perspective, the rituals of death are fraught with hope and beauty, not despair and grief. When his wife dies, the widower lays her in a Temporary Resting Container. He ties a piece of cord (connected to a bell) to one of her broken fingers. In the event she awakes, she will only have to move her finger and the bell will ring. Then, the doctors he has hired to be on call at all times will come to her aid. The widower sees the ritual of burying his wife as a comfort, a thing of beauty that encapsulates the love story of a lifetime.