【推荐1】Although born seriously deaf, Troi Lee was surrounded by music. After getting a walkman for his 14th birthday, he wandered through his neighbourhood playing songs. “It was pure joy, ” he says. With his hearing aids, he could hear certain frequencies of his walkman through a magnetic wireless signal. “We need to change the myth that deaf people can’t enjoy music,” Lee says. “I don’t let my deafness affect me. I want to show the world that deaf people can play music as well as the hearing peers.”

With one in six people suffering from hearing loss in the UK and around one in 1,000 children born seriously deaf, having access to live music for deaf people is really a big challenge. Deaf fans believe that too little is being done to serve their needs. “I don’t go to live shows very often as they’re not that accessible, ” says deaf writer Rebecca Withey.

Troi Lee has taken matters into his own hands. In 2003, he founded Deaf Rave, a quarterly event designed for deaf club members. The inspiration came from his experiences at warehouse parties in the early 1990s. “It’s something I can’t quite describe, ” he says, “the lights shining in the place and the biggest sound systems I have ever seen or felt, shaking the entire warehouse. ” From that moment in 1991, he set out to convince the deaf community that joining the club was as much a part of their culture as the hearing people.

Deaf Rave celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, but Lee says there is still much to be done. Deaf people are twice as likely to suffer from depression as hearing people. There is still a huge shame attached to being a deaf music fan. “We are one of the most marginalized groups in society, owing to our isolation, unemployment and the daily frustrations of communication barriers. We organized Deaf Rave because we have the same feeling in our community. ”

【推荐2】When a Houston dad found out his eight-year-old son was being bullied, he didn’t get mad at the classmate who teased him. Instead, he talked with the so-called bully and realized that the boy was struggling, too.

Aubrey Fontenot’s son, Jordan, told him a boy named Tamarion was teasing him. Fontenot decided to sit down with his son and Tamarion to understand what was going on, and something unexpected happened.

Tamarion told Fontenot he was being teased at school, too. “I asked, ‘By who? You are big. You are huge. Who is teasing you?’” the father said. “He said, ‘Just all the other kids, man. They are making fun of me.’” Fontenot learned that Tamarion was getting teased for his clothes and shoes — his clothes and shoes were old and dirty. Fontenot then spoke to the boy’s mother. “She kind of confirmed it,” Fontenot said. “And she said, ‘That’s the kind of situation.’”

He felt sympathetic to the young boy and wanted to help. So he asked Tamarion’s mom if he could take her son to do some shopping.

Fontenot posted videos of their trip to the mall on social media and they went viral. Tamarion eventually smiled, and then the two were laughing and singing together on their shopping trip. Just as if he were taking his own son to do some shopping, Fontenot got Tamarion new clothes and shoes, and shared words of wisdom with him.

Then, the dad united the two boys. He said it was awkward at first — just a day earlier, they didn’t get along well at school. But the two classmates started playing sports games together and soon became friends. It was not just about the clothes and shoes. Tamarion gained a friend in Jordan, and a mentor in his dad. Fontenot said he was also bullied when he was a child, so he knew it was important to listen to Tamarion’s story. He chose kindness instead of anger and brought the two boys together. “I wouldn’t say that was the goal, but that was the reward,” Fontenot said.

【推荐1】Vincent van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in a small village in southern Holland. As a child, he was serious and sensitive. He loved to draw, and his work showed talent, but no one encouraged him to become an artist. Instead, his father thought he should take a job-something like a carpenter. As a young adult, he wandered from job to job with little success and very little money, becoming more depressed with each failure. In March 1880, however, just before his 27^th birthday, something changed inside van Gogh. He realized he was meant to be a painter, and he began to study art in Brussels, receiving money from his brother Theo, which helped him to live.

In 1886, van Gogh moved to Paris, hoping to learn more about color techniques being used by Impressionist (印象派的) artists there. Instead of grays and browns, his work began to use blue and red, and then yellow and orange. Soon he began to see life differently: Go slow. Stop thinking. Look around. You’ll see something beautiful if you open yourself. These were the principles that guide his art. With his innovative (创新的) use of colors, van Gogh wanted to show his viewers how to better appreciate a flower, the night sky, or a person’s face.

Today, people around the world immediately recognize Starry Nights and Sunflowers-both painted in bold, intense colors-as the work of Vincent van Gogh. Probably no other artist, at any time in any culture, has achieved such popularity. His Portrait of Dr. Gachet sold in 1990 reached more than $80 million, breaking the world record for art pieces. Many of his other works have also sold for millions. Of course, people are buying great art when they purchase his paintings. But they are also buying a piece of his story, which like his work, will live on forever.

【推荐3】Elena Yi dreamed of pursuing piano performance in college, never minding that her fingers could barely reach the length of an octave (八度音阶). Unable to fully play many works by Romantic-era composers including Beethoven and Brahms, she tried anyway— and in her determination to spend hours practicing a Chopin concerto, wound up injuring herself.

The efforts of Professor Carol Leone   from the   Southern Methodist University (SMU) are changing all that: twenty years ago, the school became the first major university in the U.S. to introduce smaller keyboards into its music program, leveling the playing field for Yi and other piano majors.

Yi, 21, tried one of the smaller keyboards, “I remember being really excited, because my hands could actually reach and play all the right notes,” she said.

For decades, few questioned the size of the traditional piano. For those with small hand spans (掌距), it’s difficult to properly play many works of Beethoven and Brahms. Those who attempt to play them either get used to skipping notes or risk injury with repeated play. Leone is familiar with such challenges. Born into a family of musicians, she favored classical music and pursued piano despite her small hand span, and earned a degree as a doctor in musical arts.

The idea of smaller keyboards first met resistance from some traditionalists. Leone also said that when she raised the issue with one Viennese professor, he told her there were already too many pianists anyway.

Though such resistance is fading, there are some very traditional people who think of piano as a competitive thing. Leone said, “This is art, not sport. It’s about making as much beautiful art as possible, and we should give everybody the opportunity to do that.”