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Comparison of Cross Country and Track and Field

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Published: May 14, 2021

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Essays on Cross Country

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Cross-Country

Cate kennedy, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Cate Kennedy's Cross-Country . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Cross-Country: Introduction

Cross-country: plot summary, cross-country: detailed summary & analysis, cross-country: themes, cross-country: quotes, cross-country: characters, cross-country: symbols, cross-country: theme wheel, brief biography of cate kennedy.

Historical Context of Cross-Country

Other books related to cross-country.

• Full Title: Cross-Country
• Where Written: Australia
• When Published: 2012
• Literary Period: Contemporary
• Genre: Short story
• Setting: Australia
• Climax: Rebecca realizes that she hasn’t been following her ex-partner’s running club results online; instead, the results belong to a child who shares her ex’s name.
• Antagonist: Grief
• Point of View:   First and Second Person

Extra Credit for Cross-Country

Far from Home. Cate Kennedy spent two years in Mexico during the 1990s, teaching literacy.

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Personal Essay: A Cross-Country Story

• from Garrett Baublitz
• Juniata High School
• 2636 days ago

Four years ago, I was looking for something to do when soccer took a break in the spring. This time of year always bored me because I was eager to be active in one way or another. The father of one of my friends saw an ad in the paper for a youth running club in Lewistown. He showed me because he knew I had always done well in Walker Elementary school’s “Track and Field Day.”

What began as a meager three days a week of carpooling to Mifflin County has developed into a lifestyle over these last four years. What pulled me in was the success I had my first year of track. I placed sixth at the National meet in the 1500 meter in the 11-12 age group, and I kind of grew obsessed with running after that. When you’re a distance runner in track, you pretty much have to run cross-country. Because soccer was also in the fall, I was faced with a choice; in the end I went with the sport I had more talent in, and I have run cross-country ever since.

During an average week, I run anywhere from 25 miles to 35 miles. This may seem like a lot to you, but it is less than average. Olympian Galen Rupp runs 150 miles a week! Although running seems like a simple process, it is very complicated to get in good running shape. You can’t just go outside and run until you're tired like many people think. The body is like a machine, and you must fine-tune each part to get optimum results. During a week, I do many different types of workouts. This is one week at random from my running log:

Monday : 4 mile tempo run in Juniata (tempo means about 90% effort) Tuesday : 7 mile long run at an easy pace in Lewistown  Wednesday : 3 easy miles on the treadmill  Thursday : 2x2 mile repeats on MCHS track with a 4 minute recovery in between them. The first one was 11:35, and the second one was 11:03. Friday : 3 easy miles on the treadmill to recover from Thursday.  Saturday : 3x800 repeats on track with 3 minute recovery: 2:14, 2:17, 2:17. 4x200 repeats averaging 30 seconds. Sunday : Day off (Sunday is normally my only day off during the week).

All of this added up to 29.5 miles. Some of these workouts were very long and slow, while others were short and quick. This contrast of speed and distance is the key to getting in running shape.    

This fall my coach, Jeff Miller, and I were not sure if I would be able to compete on a high school level due to my individuality with Juniata. As it turns out, it is rather easy to register as an independent runner; it actually comes with some perks. I can pick and choose what meets I want to participate in, ride to meets reclined comfortably in my own car, and even design my own uniform! 

Since my coach is from Mifflin County and has connections with their cross-country coach, I am able to practice with their team. I have made a lot of friends from Mifflin County because I run with them about three days a week. This cross-country season was a very successful and fun one. Here’s a  video  from one of my races this year. I am looking forward to running for the Juniata name again next year!

I like to run.

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• Cross Country
• personal essay

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“Cross Country Snow” by Hemingway Essay

Introduction, works cited page.

The story “Cross Country Snow” depicts themes of a male bound and male friendship typical for many Hemingway’s stories. The main character of the story, Nick, is at a loss about the prospect of his spouse’s pregnancy. Hemingway depicts many themes and motifs metaphorically giving readers a chance to interpret the meaning and significance of male friendship, love and human relations in general. Thesis The story Cross Country Snow vividly portrays a theme of male friendship and a strong bound confronted with Nick’s fear of fatherhood and possible changes in his life.

The story opens with the description of two friends, Nick and George, ski out. At the beginning of the story, Hemingway describes the icy winter beauty: he writes specifically and beautifully about the world and nature (Meyers 23). The evocative intimacy of place well-remembered marks this, and many other of Hemingway’s descriptions of that boyhood world.

“Nick Adams came up past George, big back and blond head still faintly snowy, then his skis started slipping at the edge and he swooped down, hissing in the crystalline powder snow and seeming to float up and down as he went up and down the billowing khuds” (Hemingway 45).

This description creates an atmosphere of solemnity and beauty. Hemingway depicts a rivalry between the characters and their desire to ‘do their best’. The hesitancy and repetition of phrases, the parallels of contrast, express and enforce the strong bound between George and Nick. Hemingway underlines that both men enjoy physical activity but do not want to talk much about it.

In contrast to a male bound and friendship, Hemingway depicts relations between Nick and Helen, and Helen’s pregnancy. “Though he is not yet ready to be a father, Nick shows that accepting responsibility for his actions will enable him to move forward. The opposition in the opening paragraph illustrates Nick’s conflict” (Edenfield 142). It is possible to say that Nick Adams striving rigorously to forget the vocational implications of his spouses’ pregnancy and instead dwell on skiing, metaphor for writing without such implications, with his friend George, Nick’s alter ego or the writer’s internalized private audience in writing: “George and Nick were happy.

They were fond of each other. They knew they had the run back home ahead of them” (Hemingway 47). The thought of his social obligation raised by his wife’s pregnancy constantly intrudes: in the ski lodge, “Nick noticed that [the waitress’s] apron covered swellingly her pregnancy” (Hemingway 47) Except as fantasy, this surrogate writer’s ideal scene of writing as pure play remains just that, a fiction of writing fiction free from public determinations.

Nick gives an affirmative answer to George’s question, “‘don’t you wish we could just bum together? Take our skis and go on the train to where there was good running…and not give a damn about school or anything’?” but then can’t promise George that they will ever “‘go skiing again’” together’ (Hemingway 48). The repetition of key words and phrases and the circularity of issues has a predictability.

As a part of the collection In Our Time, ‘ Cross Country Snow’ can be seen as an in-depth description of male friendship and male activities. This story explores male authority in ways that seriously question its nature and value. Physical activities and function as legitimating agents for men’s images of themselves. “The moment together over the wine and cake is important in revealing how close Nick and George have been.

The scene sets up what Nick is losing in taking on a family” (Edenfield 141). Similar to other stories, ‘Cross Country Snow’ depicts a difference between male and female relations. The themes of love and friendship inform readers in such subtle ways that they are easily overlooked even though they are the forces which motivate the characters’ behavior. In the case of George and Nick they form the basis of their relationship. Too often this relationship is laid waste by stereotypical thinking.

The main theme of male relations and friendship reflects inner feelings and the atmosphere of trust. The contract between male and female relations explains the responsibility towards a male friend and friendship. There is a mystery at the heart of such freedom and responsibility as there is a discontinuity between the main characters and the rest of the natural world. This discontinuity is evident in the new possibilities for narrative.

Hemingway writes: “They took down their skis from where they leaned against the wall of the inn. George was already started up the road, his skis on his shoulder. Now they would have run home together” (Hemingway 52). This scene shows that in spite of all troubles and problems faced by both men, they try to keep their friendship and support each other. Causes must now contend with reasons as the narrative possibilities for the human condition become multiple and diverse. Such an understanding of interpretation vitiates Nick’s insight that male friendship is the central instance of the human.

It is possible to say that Nick regards skiing as an escape from the world and its problems. George asks Nick: “Will you go back to the States? ’Nick answers: I guess so.’” (Hemingway 50), and adds that he does not want to go there. The relationship between Nick and George are based on personal intimacy, especially between vocational peers (Pfeiffer and Konig 97). In spite of the sparse details of plot, the subtle and dramatic dialogue “reveals a clear, sensitive portrait of two strong personalities of Nick and George. Hemingway uses few words in dialogues and shows as real men Nick and George speak in direct sentences, effectively translate the world and achieve their goals, and are therefore traditionally masculine. The impersonal tone of this narration is a highly personal glimpse into the narrator.

The language is simple enough, but in the word repetitions, in the pacing of the phrases, the contrast of the long and short sentences, the writer deliberately appeals to the senses, both to what is seen and how it sounds to the ear.

In sum, Cross Country Snow vividly portrays close relations between two men and the role and importance of male friendship. In this story, Hemingway recognizes subjectivity and creative potential of traditional gender-inked patterns, and uses imaginative power to define and shape what has always been defined as objective reality. Make friendship, and a strong bound between Nick and George, is confined with Helen’s pregnancy and Nick’s fears to become a father. The psychological configuration of the story, considered amid an array of contrapuntal image patterns, imparts a symbolic equivalence between the male friendship and the theme of fatherhood. Male friendship allows Nick to escape from problems and underline his ego and masculine wilderness.

Edenfield, C. O. Doomed Biologically: Sex and Entrapment in Ernest Hemingway’s “Cross-Country Snow”. The Hemingway Review 19 (1999), 141.

Hemingway, E. In Out Time. Scribner, 1996.

Meyers, J. Ernest Hemingway: The Critical Heritage . Routledge, 1997.

Pfeiffer, G., Konig, M. “The Bill Always Came”: Hemingway’s Use of the Epiphany in “Cross-Country Snow. The Hemingway Review 16 (1996), 97.

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IvyPanda. (2021, September 11). "Cross Country Snow" by Hemingway. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cross-country-snow-by-hemingway/

""Cross Country Snow" by Hemingway." IvyPanda , 11 Sept. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/cross-country-snow-by-hemingway/.

IvyPanda . (2021) '"Cross Country Snow" by Hemingway'. 11 September.

IvyPanda . 2021. ""Cross Country Snow" by Hemingway." September 11, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cross-country-snow-by-hemingway/.

1. IvyPanda . ""Cross Country Snow" by Hemingway." September 11, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cross-country-snow-by-hemingway/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . ""Cross Country Snow" by Hemingway." September 11, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cross-country-snow-by-hemingway/.

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Despite a fortified border, migrants will keep coming, analysts agree. Here's why.

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán

Border Patrol picks up a group of people seeking asylum from an aid camp near Sasabe, Arizona, on Wednesday, March 13, 2024. Justin Hamel/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

Border Patrol picks up a group of people seeking asylum from an aid camp near Sasabe, Arizona, on Wednesday, March 13, 2024.

The U.S. southern border is as fortified as ever and Texas is carrying out its own enforcement to stop people from crossing illegally, yet observers and analysts agree on this: migrants not only will continue to come, but their numbers will likely increase in the coming months.

The expected surge can be attributed not only to seasonal migration patterns, but an increase of people displaced by war, poverty, and climate factors in all continents.

And why do these analysts say this?

They keep a close eye on the Darién Gap in Panama and the borders between Central American countries, two key points to gauge the number of people venturing up north.

"In most countries (outward) migration has increased ... particularly in Venezuela, and that's not really reflected yet in the U.S. numbers," said Adam Isacson, an analyst of border and migration patterns at the Washington Office on Latin America, a nonpartisan research and advocacy organization based in Washington D.C.

Despite Mexico's cracking down on migrants, Isacson said people are still making their way up north, even if they need to pause for months at different points during their journey.

"There must be a huge number of people from Venezuela bottled up in Mexico right now," he said.

The Darién Gap serves as a good barometer for migration flows.

This 100-mile-long tropical jungle between Colombia and Panama has claimed the lives of hundreds of migrants, according to a report from the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

Yet the dangers at this jungle are not a deterrent, said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst with this organization. The majority of people migrating are from Venezuela.

"The reason why I referred to Venezuelans in particular is because they represent a key challenge for removals from Mexico and from the United States to Venezuela," Ruiz Soto said.

Mexico and the U.S. had been flying Venezuelan migrants back to the South American country . However, earlier this year, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro stopped accepting flights from the U.S. in response to economic sanctions imposed by the Biden administration.

Panama reported a 2% increase in crossings through the Darién Gap in February compared to the previous month.

Aerial view showing migrants walking through the jungle near Bajo Chiquito village, the first border control of the Darien Province in Panama, on September 22, 2023. LUIS ACOSTA/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Aerial view showing migrants walking through the jungle near Bajo Chiquito village, the first border control of the Darien Province in Panama, on September 22, 2023.

What the numbers show

Analysts are projecting the increase in the remaining months of the fiscal year, even though U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported a 2.2% decrease in encounters with migrants along the Southern border in March. An encounter is every time a migrant is picked up by immigration authorities.

These numbers are consistent with cyclical patterns of illegal crossings that dip in the winter months, followed by more migrants attempting to get to the U.S. as warm weather arrives, said Ruiz Soto.

In a statement, CBP Spokesperson Erin Waters said the agency remains vigilant to "continually shifting migration patterns" amid "historic global migration."

Waters said the agency has also been partnering with Mexico to curb the flow of people migrating to the U.S.

Mexico has commissioned its National Guard to patrol its borders with Guatemala and the U.S.

"CBP continues to work with our partners throughout the hemisphere, including the Government of Mexico, and around the world to disrupt the criminal networks who take advantage of and profit from vulnerable migrants," Waters said.

Where are migrants crossing the border?

For the last few months, more migrants are attempting to cross through Arizona instead of Texas, according to CBP.

In 2023, the El Paso and Del Rio sector in Texas saw more crossings than any other place across the 2,000-mile Southern border. But this year the Tucson sector in Arizona has seen a 167% increase in crossings, more than any other.

Tiffany Burrow, operations director at Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition, an assistance organization for newly border crossers in Del Rio, said she has seen the shift.

"It's empty," Burrow said, pointing to her organizations' office. "There are no migrants."

In March, she helped only three migrants after they were released by CBP pending their court date. In December, they helped 13,511 migrants.

Burrow said that's how migration works — it ebbs and flows.

"We have to be ready to adapt," Burrow said.

Texas Department of Safety Troopers patrol on the Rio Grande along the U.S.-Mexico border. Eric Gay/AP hide caption

Texas Department of Safety Troopers patrol on the Rio Grande along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Texas' role

Burrow and other immigrant advocates are closely observing Texas' ramping up of border enforcement.

In 2021 Gov. Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star initiative and deployed the Texas National Guard. Last year the state started lining up razor wire in sections of the Rio Grande.

Texas is also asking the courts to be allowed to implement a law passed last year by the Republican-controlled legislature, known as SB4, which requires local and state police to arrest migrants they suspect are in the country illegally.

It might be too early to know if all these efforts will have an impact on migration patterns, analysts said, considering that Texas saw the highest number of illegal crossings last year.

But, Mike Banks, special advisor on border matters to Abbott, said the state's efforts are fruitful.

Texas has spent over $11 billion in this initiative.

"The vast majority of the United States' southern border is in Texas, and because of Texas' efforts to secure the border, more migrants are moving west to illegally cross the border into other states," said Mike Banks in a statement to NPR.

Ruiz Soto, from the Migrant Policy Institute, said the impact of Texas' policies on arrivals "is likely to be minimal over the long term."

Carla Angulo-Pasel, an assistant professor who specializes in border studies and international migration at the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley, said that even with Texas' policies in place, migrants are likely to continue to cross.

"You can't claim, as much as I think Gov. Abbott wants to claim, that Operation Lone Star is going to somehow mean that you're going to see less numbers in Texas because that hasn't held true," Angulo-Pasel said. "We could also argue that things are going to progressively get more and more as the spring months progress."

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My Country Knows What Happens When You Do a Deal With Russia

By Paula Erizanu

Ms. Erizanu is a Moldovan journalist who focuses on politics and the arts in Eastern Europe. She wrote from Chisinau, Moldova.

More and more people, including Pope Francis , are asking Ukraine to drop its defense and sit at the negotiation table with Russia. Citing the stalemate on the battlefield and Russia’s superior resources, they urge Ukraine’s leadership to consider a deal. What exactly that would involve is largely left unsaid. But it would clearly involve freezing the conflict, resigning Ukraine’s occupied territory to Russia in exchange for an end to the fighting.

My country, Moldova, knows all about that kind of bargain. A small western neighbor of Ukraine, Moldova experienced Russia’s first post-Soviet war of aggression, which ended with a cease-fire agreement in 1992. Thirty-two years later, 1,500 Russian troops are still stationed on internationally recognized Moldovan territory, despite the Kremlin’s formal agreement to withdraw them in 1994 and then once again in 1999 . The case shows that Russia simply cannot be trusted.

But there’s a bigger problem for Ukraine than Russian untrustworthiness. It’s that freezing a conflict, without a full peace deal, simply does not work. For three decades, it has fractured Moldova, hindered national development and given Russia continued opportunities to meddle with Moldovan life. A frozen conflict, we should remember, is still a conflict. Anyone calling for Ukraine to settle for one should heed Moldova’s cautionary tale.

The ground for the Russian-Moldovan war was Transnistria , a strip of land in eastern Moldova with about 370,000 people. With support from Moscow — but no formal recognition — the territory declared independence from Moldova in 1990, setting off violence that escalated into conflict. Russian-backed separatists clashed with government security forces, and troops from both sides fought each other. Hundreds of people died. Russia stopped providing Moldova with gas, leaving people in cities to freeze in their apartments and cook their food outside on bonfires.

After four intense months of fighting, a cease-fire deal was signed in the summer of 1992 by President Boris Yeltsin of Russia and his Moldovan counterpart, Mircea Snegur. It established a security zone to be patrolled by so-called peacekeeping forces, effectively locking Moldova out of Transnistria. For 30 years, Transnistria has maintained a separate government, set of laws, flag and currency — all under Russian protection. Moldova has never recognized Transnistria’s independence, nor has any other member of the United Nations.

The self-proclaimed republic hasn’t fared well. It has become known for its arms and drug smuggling and a poor human rights record . Dissenters are persecuted and independent journalists are detained ; last summer an opposition leader was found shot dead at home. Most of the region’s economy is dominated by a single company, Sheriff, founded by a former K.G.B. agent.

Transnistria cleaves Moldova in two. On the right bank of the Dniester River, in democratic Moldova, there is a free press in Romanian, the official language of the country, along with Russian and other minority tongues. On the left bank, in autocratic Transnistria, the media is controlled by the authorities, who use it to transmit Russian propaganda.

Perhaps the starkest division is in education. Above Transnistrian schools, the Russian and Transnistrian — but not Moldovan — flags are mounted. There, as well as in the press, Romanian is written in Cyrillic rather than Latin script, just as it was in the Soviet Union. In history classes, pupils learn that ethnic Romanians on the right bank of the Dniester are fascists who want to kill them. With limited education and meager work opportunities, most young people leave the region after they graduate.

Some of them go to Chisinau, Moldova’s capital. But being in Russia’s sphere of influence has forestalled Moldova’s economic development. While Moldova used to export wines, fruits and vegetables to Russia, following the Soviet trade model, Moscow traded mainly gas and oil.

The Kremlin has always weaponized these commercial relations. In 2006 , Moscow placed an embargo on Moldovan produce after Moldova refused to accept a Russian-devised federalization plan. The Kremlin came up with new bans on imports in the run-up to Moldova signing an association agreement with the European Union in 2014 and again after Moldova became an E.U. candidate country in 2022 .

Similarly, Moscow has exploited Moldova’s reliance on it for energy. By signing contracts only at the last minute, reducing gas supplies ahead of winter and threatening to stop deliveries, Moscow exerts considerable control over the country. While Europe invests in good governance and infrastructure in Moldova, Russia has invested only in propaganda and agents of influence, fueling corruption, division and instability.

Russia has played on fears of renewed conflict since the 1990s. Since the invasion of Ukraine, those efforts have gone into overdrive . Rumors about Transnistria requesting Russian annexation and false reports of attacks in the region are common. Kremlin officials repeatedly threaten Moldova and claim it is a second Ukraine , adding to the anxiety people already feel living next door to a full-blown war.

This is a particularly bad year for Moldova to be under such pressure. In October, Moldovans will vote for their next president, as well as in a referendum on joining the European Union. With accession negotiations set to open this year, Moldova is looking to move closer to Europe. But Russia won’t let it go lightly.

For Moldovans, the war in Transnistria is a wound, constantly picked at in books and films. “Carbon,” released in 2022, is a good example. Set during the war in 1992, the film centers on a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan and his younger neighbor who wants to enroll in the Moldovan volunteer troops. On the way, they discover a carbonized body, which could be from either side of the conflict. They try, often comically, to find out its identity and provide it with a dignified burial.

Based on a true story and made by a crew with personal connections to Transnistria, the film broke national box office records. Mariana Starciuc, the scriptwriter, summed up the subtext. “Transnistria,” she said , “is the root for all of our problems for the past 30 years.”

Today her words ring truer than ever. It is because of the frozen conflict that Moldova is still under Russian influence, with its constant threats and endless jeopardy. Yet Moldovans fear escalation not because we haven’t sat down at negotiation tables with Russians but because we have, and the result was deeply damaging. Ukraine must not make the same mistake.

Paula Erizanu ( @paulaerizanu ) is a freelance journalist who has written for CNN, The Guardian and The London Review of Books.

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Central Bank Digital Currencies in the Middle East and Central Asia

Author/Editor:

Serpil Bouza ; Bashar Hlayhel ; Thomas Kroen ; Marcello Miccoli ; Borislava Mircheva ; Greta Polo ; Sahra Sakha ; Yang Yang

Publication Date:

April 26, 2024

Electronic Access:

Free Download . Use the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this PDF file

Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.

Against the backdrop of a rapidly digitalizing world, there is a growing interest in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) among central banks, including in the Middle East and Central Asia (ME&CA) region. This paper aims to support ME&CA policymakers in examining key questions when considering the adoption of a CBDC while underscoring the importance of country-specific analyses. This paper does not provide recommendations on CBDC issuance. Instead, it frames the discussion around the following key questions: What is a CBDC? What objectives do policymakers aim to achieve with the issuance of a CBDC? Which inefficiencies in payment systems can CBDCs address? What are the implications of CBDC issuance for financial stability and central bank operational risk? How can CBDC design help achieve policy objectives and mitigate these risks? The paper provides preliminary answers to these questions at the regional level. A survey of IMF teams and public statements from ME&CA policymakers confirm that promoting financial inclusion and making payment systems more efficient (domestic and cross-border) are the top priorities in the region. Payment services through CBDCs, if offered at a lower cost than existing alternatives, could spur competition in the payment market and help increase access to bank accounts, improve financial inclusion, and update legacy technology platforms. CBDCs may also help improve the efficiency of cross-border payment services, especially if designed to address frictions arising from a lack of payment system interoperability, complex processing of compliance checks, long transaction chains, and weak competition. At the same time, CBDCs could negatively impact bank profitability while introducing a substantial operational burden for central banks. However, the exact economic and financial impacts of CBDCs need further study and would depend on estimates of CBDC demand, which are uncertain and country- dependent. CBDC issuance and adoption is a long journey that policymakers should approach with care. Policymakers need to analyze carefully whether a CBDC serves their country’s objectives and whether the expected benefits outweigh the potential costs, in addition to risks for the financial system and operational risks for the central bank.

Departmental Paper No 2024/004

Central Bank digital currencies Commercial banks Digital financial services Financial inclusion Financial institutions Financial markets International organization Payment systems Political economy Technology

9798400263798/2616-5333

Please address any questions about this title to [email protected]