Here are four of the best museums in the U. S. that should appeal to you.

Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.)

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a famous museum in the heart of Washington D.C., featuring a vast collection of American art from the colonial (殖民的) era to the present. The museum is known for its impressive collection of contemporary art, including paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, photographs, and folk art.

The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago)

Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Art are the highlights of the collection at The Art Institute of Chicago. The museum is famed for its expansive collection of American art and 20th-century furniture. If you are a Monet enthusiast, don’t forget to stroll (闲逛) through this museum to catch one of America’s largest collection of Monet paintings.

Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum—Boston

The Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum allows tourists not only to see where the tea was thrown into the harbor almost 250 years ago, but also to take on the role of someone who witnessed the historical event. The one-hour program allows visitors to enjoy the whole museum, as well as the gift shop and Abigail’s Tea Room & Terrace for light food and drinks.

National Museum of Natural History—Washington, D.C.

The National Museum of Natural History boasts an astonishing accumulation of more than 145 million different items. It’s also home to the famous Hope Diamond, as well as hundreds of different butterfly species. The museum is completely free, so go ahead and spend hours getting lost in all the historical objects.

When Joy Ryan set out to visit all 63 national parks with her grandson Brad, traveling during a global pandemic wasn’t on the to-do list. But seven years—and countless hours spent in the air and on the road—later, the 93-year-old grandma and her grandson have reached their final and most remote destination: the National Park of American Samoa.

In 2015, their journey began, when Brad discovered that his grandmother had never visited a mountain in person. He invited her on a road trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which is between North Carolina and Tennessee, and after that, the pair kept planning more trips.

The journey to the South Pacific wasn’t an easy one. The National Park of American Samoa is the only U.S. national park south of the equator, also making it the furthest from Ohio, where Joy resides. The adventurous pair touched down late Monday after nearly three days of travel with breaks in between.

“We took a two-day break in Oahu before boarding our final flight to Pago Pago, American Samoa, on Monday. Three flights and nearly seventeen flying hours were required before we touched down in American Samoa on Monday evening,” Brad said.

Visiting national park number 63 is a “bittersweet” milestone, Brad continued. It marks both the end of their mission and a historic achievement for Joy, who officially became the oldest person to visit all 63 national parks.

“Standing at the finish line in American Samoa affirms that seemingly impossible goals are in fact possible if you pursue them with passion and pure intention,” Brad said. “Grandma Joy has taught the world that you are never too old to show up and live the adventurous life of your dreams. It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be in the driver’s seat as Grandma Joy made history to become the oldest person to achieve this ambition.”

Asking for help is hard, but others want to help more than we often give them credit for, says Stanford social psychologist Xuan Zhao.

We shy away from asking for help because we don’t want to bother other people, assuming that our request will feel like an inconvenience to them. But oftentimes, the opposite is true: People want to make a difference in people’s lives and they feel good happy even when they are able to help others, said Zhao.

There are several common reasons why people struggle to ask for help. Some people may fear that asking for help would make them appear incompetent or weak. Some people are concerned about being rejected, which can be embarrassing and painful. Others may be concerned about burdening and inconveniencing others. These concerns may feel more relevant in some contexts than others, but they are all very relatable and very human.

When people are in need of help, they are often caught up in their own concerns and worries and do not fully recognize the prosocial motivations of those around them who are ready to help. This can introduce a persistent difference between how help-seekers and potential helpers consider the same helping event. The researchers consistently observed that help-seekers underestimated how willing strangers and even friends would be to help them and how positive helpers would feel afterward, and overestimated how inconvenienced helpers would feel.

We love stories about spontaneous (自发的) help, and that may explain why random acts of kindness are popular on social media. But in reality, the majority of help occurs only after a request has been made. It’s often not because people don’t want to help and must be pressed to do so. Quite the opposite, people want to help, but they can’t help if they don’t know someone is suffering or struggling. A direct request can remove those uncertainties and unlocks opportunities for positive social connections and emotional closeness.

When most people think of Amish communities, they picture old-fashioned environments free of modern technology. For the most part, that’s true, but there are a few surprising exceptions. Many Amish families use solar panels to meet their modest electricity needs.

According to Electric Rate, some Amish communities adopted solar as far back as the 90’s. In addition to wind turbines on churches and barns, Amish homes may also have solar panels on the roofs. These are connected to batteries that power electric lights, water pumps, and even the occasional washing machine, refrigerator, cash register, or e-bike. Amish communities don’t reject all technology for its own sake. Instead, they consider the impact each type of technology will have on their lifestyle and traditions.

Television doesn’t have a place in the simple Amish lifestyle, and connecting to the power grid to run multiple appliances (家用电器) would threaten the community’s independence and self-reliance. However, electric lights are another matter, according to Electric Rate. Amish families previously used kerosene (煤油) lamps to light their homes. These created major safety issues, like heightened fire risk and harmful smoke.

Solar panels and LED lights were the perfect solutions, Electric Rate says. They’re self-contained, so Amish communities don’t have to pay a monthly bill. They don’t even have to add wiring to the whole house. Just one or two panels are enough for a whole home since they don’t have many electric appliances. The lights themselves are reliable, efficient, long-lasting, affordable, and safe.

Even better, solar technology is getting cheaper all the time. Ongoing breakthroughs in solar panel design have made them easier to manufacture and more efficient to use, opening up this possibility for even more families. Solar panels are also gentle on the planet. Unlike burning kerosene, solar doesn’t produce air pollution that traps heat in our atmosphere. The more households, businesses, and governments adopt solar, the more we cool down the planet.