【推荐1】In 2007, Bianca Valenti had an experience which nearly killed her. When she surfed (冲浪) at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, she met a wave as tall as a two-story house.

The wind was strong enough to block my vision. The moment I went under water, I was just getting knocked and spun (旋转) every which way. And then my feet touched the sand bottom there. When I swam to the surface, my lungs were burning painfully. I just thought to myself, “If there’s one more wave after this, I’m going to die.” Luckily there wasn’t another wave. That was when Valenti knew she had the drive and skill to surf big waves.

By 2014, Valenti surfed and won her first big waves contest (比赛) at Nelscott Reef in Oregon. There, she met fellow professionals Alms, Moller, and Kennelly. “One thing got me fired up at that point,” she said. “I wanted to have the opportunity to win more events, but there weren’t more events for women. That’s really annoying.” Luckily, Valenti, Alms, Moller, and Kennelly decided to stick together, support each other, and then fight together.

The four surfers formed Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing (CEWS) to fight for entrance at Mavericks—a contest set in the surfing location of the same name, north of Half Moon Bay. Mavericks was invitation-only and was open to only men when CEWS was formed. Now, through the organization’s hard work with the State of California, women are allowed to surf in the event.

When Valenti was young, there weren’t many women represented in surfing culture. “I think it’s important for young kids to have all kinds of role models. That way they know all the people who they see as superheroes are just normal people who have crazy dreams. And sometimes the dreams aren’t even that crazy. If you work hard and you stick together with your friends, you can do anything. You can move mountains.”

【推荐2】It was our last class before the summer break. I was finishing the first year of an MFA program. I was tired and puzzled. “Was I good enough to be in the program?” When the professor asked about our summer plans, I panicked. I didn’t want to appear idle (无所事事的). “Gardening,” I responded immediately. Actually, I knew nothing about plants! My professor nodded and said, “What a good idea, Mary! Emily Dickinson loved gardening.”

Emily Dickinson lived in the countryside, studying plants as a child. I was in my late twenties, living in the city without gardening experience.

A few days later, I bought a jalapeño seedling (青辣椒苗). At least I could say I’d tried gardening. I watered and changed the dirt for my little plant. I even talked to it. And over the summer, it grew bigger and bigger. I was proud. Maybe I didn’t have a black thumb after all.

I started the second year of my MFA, and then it was almost December and my jalapeño was suffering. It was brown in some places, and many of its leaves had fallen. Would my little guy make it? I prayed, “Please be okay,” as if its survival was closely linked to mine.

I worked hard in school. Spring came. My jalapeño plant came back to life. It grew bigger with new leaves. And then it flowered. I handed in my graduate paper, a book of poems, in May. “Your poems are strong,” my professor said.

A huge weight lifted. I’d done it! At that time, I found the flowers on my jalapeño plant were gone. I watched closer. A tiny green fruit pushed through where a flower had been. I smiled. I had succeeded in my MFA program, and my jalapeño plant had grown right beside me, and I successfully did things I hadn’t thought possible.

【推荐1】It was a chilly night in winter. A man came home from work late, tired to find his 5-year-old son waiting for him at the door.

"Daddy, how much money do you make each hour?" "If you must know, I make $20 each hour."

"Oh, "the little boy answered, with his head down. He thought for a moment, looked up and said, "Daddy, could you lend me $10?" The father was furious, "If you asked for the money to buy a toy or some other rubbish, then go straight to your room and think about why you are so selfish!"

The little boy went to his room with no words and shut the door. After a short while, the father calmed down, and started to think, "Maybe he really needs to buy something and he didn't really ask for money very often. "So he went to the little boy's room.

"Sorry! Maybe I was too hard on you just now." said the man, "Here's $10."

"Oh, thank you Daddy!" he said happily. Then the boy took out some coins. When the father found that the boy already had money, he got angry again.

"Why do you want more money since you already have some?" the father shouted angrily. "Because I didn't have enough, but now I do." The little boy replied, "Daddy, I have $20 now. Can I buy one hour of your time? Please come home early tomorrow. I would like to have dinner with you."

【推荐2】Brian Peterson had just moved to Santa Ana, California. Outside his apartment, a homeless man was often yelling on the street corner, sometimes keeping him awake at night. Peterson, 28, would pass the guy on his way to his job as a car designer, but they never spoke. What could they possibly have in common?

One day, Peterson was relaxing at home, reading the book Love Does, when his quiet was disturbed by the homeless man. Inspired by the book’s sympathetic message, Peterson made an unexpected decision: to go outside and introduce himself.

Peterson learned that the man’s name was Matt Faris. He’d moved to Southern California from Kentucky to pursue a career in music, but fell on hard times and ended up living on the street for more than a decade. Even though Peterson, a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, hadn’t picked up a paint brush in about eight years, he found himself asking if he could paint Faris’ portrait. Faris said yes. “I saw beauty on the face of a man who hadn’t shaved in probably a year, had overgrown finger-nails and probably hadn’t had a shower in close to a year. But his story, the life inside of him, inspired me.” Peterson recalled later.

Peterson’s connection with Faris led to Faces of Santa Ana: a nonprofit organization that befriends and paints portraits of unhoused community members. Using a black-and-white photo taken with his phone, Peterson selects colors based on the subject’s personality and life story, creating powerful portraits.

Peterson sells the 30-by-40-inch canvas — signed by both subject and artist — for a few thousand dollars. Faris used the portrait funds to record an album, fulfilling his musical dreams.

Peterson has discovered that the buyers tend to connect to the story of the person in the painting, finding similarities and often friendship with someone they might have otherwise overlooked. “People often tell me, ‘I was the one that would cross the street. But I see homeless people differently now.’” Peterson says.

【推荐3】A call came into Jimmy Gilles’s bar this past March. A newly married woman who had spent the afternoon at the dive beach bar in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina couldn’t find her wallet. She didn’t care about her ID, credit cards, or $150— but her wedding ring was inside it.

Gilles, 42, the boss of the bar, didn’t like the idea that there was a thief at his place. So he set out to find the wallet. He spent hours looking for the footage from 16 different cameras, watching the woman’s every step in the bar until she went to sit on a bench outside and left when her ride arrived. Within minutes, a young man in a hoodie approached the bench, put something in his pocket in a hurry, and walked off.

Gilles posted the picture on the bar’s Facebook and asked if anybody knew who the guy was. Within hours, 17-year-old Rivers Prather came and said he had taken the wallet and told Gilles he’d done it because he hadn’t eaten for two days. He said he saw the ring but thought it was fake, so he took the money, and threw the wallet off the public docks into the ocean. Then he bought a sandwich.

Gilles, unsure whether he should believe Prather, told the teen to meet him at the docks. There Prather revealed that he wasn’t getting along with his family and lived in the woods for weeks. Gilles looked at Prather—his small stature, his ruddy cheeks—and saw him for what he was: more of a kid than a thief.

But the police were already on the case, and because of the missing ring, Prather could be facing severe charges. Gilles wanted to help him somehow.

Gilles recruited two local divers to search the waters where Prather had thrown the wallet. A crowd gathered to watch the two divers search in the strong current. More than an hour passed, with no sign of the ring. Gilles grew worried. Each passing minute increased the chances that the police would arrest the young man.

And then a diver came out from the water with the wallet in his hand, and inside was the ring. Cheers erupted from the spectators. When Gilles called the wallet’s owner, she burst into tears. She promptly dropped the felony charges against Prather for stealing the ring.

But it wasn’t over for Gilles. He’d been troubled about Prather sleeping in the cold woods. He told the teen he could stay with his family until the boy got on his feet again. He also gave the kid a job at his bar. “Most people would give the footage to police, but the boss chose to help me,” Prather told CBS News. “I say thank you to him every day.”