【推荐1】When my daughter Sara was in the fifth grade, she came to me with a problem．“Marcy hates me！”she cried．“Because Kathy is my friend, too She wants me to be her friend and nobody else’s．You talk to Marcy． You tell her that I want to be her friend but I can have other friends, too！”

Oh！I looked at her for a few moments, wondering how I got into this mess, when suddenly an idea came to me．

Picking up two baskets from the living room, I explained, “When everyone is born, he or she has a little basket．This little one here is yours．The big one is mine．As you grow, so does the basket．You can see your little basket is inside mine because when you were born, there were too many things you couldn’t do for yourself．I did everything you couldn’t do on your own．”

She nodded．

“Well, as you grew older and began to do some things on your own, I began placing a few more things in your basket．When you learned to tie your shoes, that went in your basket．”

She said softly, “I can tie my own shoes．”

“Right．As you grow older, there will be more and more things you must do on your own．”As I spoke, I gradually took her basket out of mine and handed it to her．“You will finally carry your own basket with things only you can do．”

She looked up at me and said, “I understand．There are some things that I have to do for myself because they are in my basket．”

【推荐3】When my dad was first diagnosed(诊断)with cancer and had radiation, I pushed my folks to start eating more fresh produce and preferably organics. My mom really improved her cooking from the roasted slice of pork and frozen-veggies dinners that I had fallen in love with. Dad said he had never eaten so well.

“People never change,” my dad often said but he became skilled in overall treatments and began to take well-informed control of his own course of action. I wasn’t thinking too much of his changes, but he had survived cancer for over 10 years, constantly learning, doing a bit of travel, and always looking pleasant and smiling.

My dad and I decorated a farmhouse in 2012, and I started taking care of the orchard(果园), and the garden, and learning to care for some chickens. Bringing farm-fresh food to my folks was a way I could contribute to dad’s health as well as his enjoyment of life.

The idea for this business came from what we learned about the role of food in health. My dad’s doctor told him that eating fresh produce could help resist cancer. Dad helped me set up the farm and worked till just a few days before he passed. But all of what I do here is based on experience, research, and strong values.

The goals of this farm developed as we learned, and here we have it: Produce with a purpose—fresh produce grown for disease-fighting and preventive health value, delivered with easy but delicious recipes as well as support, encouragement, overall thinking and even a bit of humor.

【推荐2】There were already signs that Michael Jordan was very talented as a young boy. Harvest Smith, a good friend, played basketball with him every day then, and thought he was the best player on their ninth-grade team.

The summer after ninth grade, Jordan and Smith both went to the Pop Herring’s basketball camp to run for the high school team. All the other students looked much stronger than Jordan, because they were two or three years older than him. To Smith, it was quite clear that Jordan was better than him. But on that day the results were announced. Smith’s name was on the list. Jordan’s was not.

It was the worst day of Jordan’s young life. He kept reading the list, hoping that he had missed it, or that there was something wrong with the list. That day he went home and cried. “We knew Jordan was good,” Fred Lynch, a coach said later, “but we thought the jayvee (学校运动队第二队) was much better for him.” Jordan became the best player on the jayvee that year. There were matches in which he could get forty scores. He was so good that the jayvee matches became quite popular.

Smith found that Jordan had been very competitive before he was cut, and after that he seemed even more competitive than ever. His coaches found it, too. “One day, the jayvee had a match. When I came into the gym, the match was just ending up. Their scores fell behind a lot. All the other nine players had given up, but one kid still played very hard. It was Jordan, and I quickly learned he was always like that.”

Some time later, Laney High School had a very good basketball team, and its rising star was Michael Jordan.