【推荐2】A kind man, Keith Walker, who was 53 years old, kept his own pitbull called Bravo at the W-Underdogs center (an animal shelter) overnight and was on his way to pick him up when he saw the flames on December 18.

He didn't just rescue his own pet, but he made sure that all the animals were safe. He said, “I was nervous at first and really scared to go in there with all that smoke. I am not going to lie.” However, Keith suddenly remembered that his father once said humans had a duty to protect animals. So he said, " My dog is my best friend, and I wouldn't be here without him, so I knew I had to save all those other dogs."

Shelter founder Gracie Hamlin said that the shelter was left uninhabitable by the fire, which was electrical. But luckily, they were about to move into a new place, so there was still somewhere for the animals to live.

She said, "Keith is my guardian angel. Even the firefighters didn't know how to handle the animals. They called Animal Control, but Keith was already in the building pulling out the cats and dogs until they were all safe."

Keith, who has been homeless since he was 13, has now been regarded as a hero after saving the six dogs and ten cats. Well-wishers have raised almost $40,000 for him on GoFundMe, a fundraising platform.

In a separate fundraiser for the shelter itself to rebuild after the fire, Gracie said, “Keith worked tirelessly to bring our animals to safety. Although he refused all offers of help, we are determined to contact him again. He is a vital part of our community and he should be appropriately rewarded for his selfless efforts.”

【推荐3】Some Christmas traditions are pretty standard in mainstream（主流）American culture: put up the tree, string up the lights, visit grandma, and so on.

Then there’s the one my Colombian family does every year: the Novena de Aguinaldos. We pray（祈祷）for nine days without a stop, and this Novena counts down the nine days before Christmas. Most Americans have never heard of it, but in Colombia, it’s a big deal.

Like all good traditions, especially around the holidays, this tradition is about community and getting together with friends and family. My family immigrated（移民）from Colombia when I was just two months old. Every year, we gather with a group of Colombian friends for as many of the nine nights as we can.

There are three parts to the Novena de Aguinaldos. The first is the reading: each kid takes turns to read a book. Next comes the gozos, which means “The Joys”. That’s where the music comes in, and everyone gets an instrument, a maraca, a drum, a tin can—whatever you can use to make a sound. And then, the villancicos——Spanish Christmas carols（颂歌）come.

I’ve lived my whole life in the US. There’s not a lot of Colombian culture that we still hang onto. Why do we still carry on with the tradition of celebrating the Novenas, then?

When I asked my parents the other day, the answer was that immigrants didn’t belong anywhere—not where you were, nor where you were from. So my parents helped create a space where we did. Even if the Novenas were nothing like what we might have celebrated if we’d stayed in Colombia, the Novenas became the heart of our community.

But our Novenas are starting to feel a little more breakable. It’s getting harder and harder for everyone to get together each year. Last year, I was studying abroad in Italy and couldn’t make it to any gathering; my brother went off to college and had exams late into December; my sister just moved to a new city, and my parents have taken up jobs in different countries.

【推荐1】A potato farmer, Cliff Young took part in a Sydney to Melbourne ultramarathon (超级马拉松) race in1983. Coached by his mother who was 81 at the time, Cliff Young started the marathon with work shoes and work clothes.   

Competing against world-class marathon runners who were backed up by big sports companies and spent hundreds of hours preparing for the race, Cliff Young’s training method was just running after his sheep. He told the organizers he could run after his sheep for a few days and that he could surely compete with other runners.   

The ultramarathon generally took 5 days to compete and this potato farmer’s decision seemed suicidal. In fact, some tried to stop him from running the super-difficult race because they thought Cliff Young could die because of the heat and fatigue(疲劳). After all, he was 61 years old!

To cut the story short, Cliff Young managed to finish the race. While the young racers slept, he continued to race throughout the night. The young athletes left him far behind until the very last night where he finally led the marathon. Not only did Cliff Young, a 61-year-old potato farmer, survive the race, but he even managed to win the marathon and actually broke the race record by 9 hours! He even gave away his prize money to the rest of the runners after him.   

After the win, he continued to run in many ultramarathon races and even set standards in the world of endurance racing. His running style, named “The Young Shuffle” is a famous running technique used by many runners in the world today.   

Cliff Young showed that being old is not a problem, and being a champion doesn’t mean you need to have super-human strength, just super-human will!

【推荐1】Brigadier general William Orlando Darby, born in Fort Smith, Arkansas, is best known for his organization of the 1st Ranger Battalion during World War II.

Darby attended Belle Grove School through the sixth grade and then went to Fort Smith Senior High School. After his graduation in 1929, he received an appointment to West Point Military Academy, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science on June. 13,1933. Later Darby was chosen to organize and train military forces, and the 1st United States Army Ranger Battalion was set up on July 9,1942. They carried out a number of successful night attacks.

When Robinson E. Duff, assistant division commander of the l0th Mountain Division, was wounded, Darby volunteered to take the place of him and led the 10th Mountain Division during the advance on Lake Garda. On April 30,1945, he was in the process of outlining plans for the next day when an explosion near his location took place, and he was unfortunately hit dead. He received a promotion to brigadier general on May 15,1945, the only soldier to receive such a promotion after his death.

General Lucian K. Truscott said of Darby following his death. “Never have I seen a more heroic officer.” And General George S. Patton called Darby, “The bravest man I have ever known.”

Darby received many awards, including two Distinguished Service Crosses and the British Distinguished Service Order. Darby’s life is celebrated in many ways. Named after him was the USNS General William O. Darby, a U.S. Army troopship, which is now retired, as well as streets in many places. Cistera, Italy, has a Darby School, and in his hometown of Fort Smith, the sister city to Cistema, the senior high school he attended is now called the William O. Darby Junior High. Many army posts have training or airfields named after him.

Darby was originally buried in a military cemetery (墓地) outside Cisterna, Italy, but on March 11, 1949, his body was returned to Arkansas and buried at the Fort Smith National Cemetery, just few blocks from his boyhood home. In 2016, a statue of Darby was put up in Cisterna Park in Fort Smith.

【推荐3】It was May 1945 when what would become one of America’s most popular home-cooking techniques first entered the English dictionary. In her cookbook, How to Cook and Eat in Chinese, 55-year-old Chinese immigrant (移民) Chao Yang Buwei described a process common in her homeland, where cooks would cut meat and vegetables into small bites and tumble (翻滚) them rapidly together over heat. “The Chinese term for the technique, ch’ao, cannot be accurately translated into English,” Chao complained. For short, she decided, “We shall call it ‘stir-fry.’” The term soon made its way into the American language and has since taken on a life of its own.

Chao came to cooking unexpectedly. A doctor by profession, she gave up her medical career to move to the United States in 1921 after her husband, the famed linguist (语言学家) Chao Yuanren, was offered a job at Harvard. Bored at home and only able to speak a little English, she turned to cooking dishes that reminded her of China: soups with mushrooms and pork flavored with soy sauce.

She eventually agreed when a friend begged her to write a cookbook. Chao’s eldest daughter helped her translate recipes from Chinese to English, before her husband put the finishing touches on the language, often adding phrasing that even Chao recognized as awkward. This stylistic conflict resulted in a cookbook that Chao was “ashamed to have written,” as she declared in an author’s note.

The cookbook succeeded, going into multiple printings by the end of 1945, though critics largely overlooked the anger in Chao’s words. English-language Chinese cookbooks had been published as far back as 1911 in the United States, but Chao’s was the first that refused to westernize Chinese cooking. She may have given America a well-worn phrase, but she knew that some aspects of the immigrant experience resist translation. Chao’s contribution to American food culture should have been enough to make her into headlines, but the New York Times did not even honor her with an obituary (讣告) upon her death. How many other cooking pioneers like Chao, immigrants who didn’t silence their difference in order to gain broad approval, still await rediscovery?