【推荐2】Mary Verdi-Fletcher was born with spina bifida (脊柱裂), a disease that causes weakness in the legs and spine. Undiscouraged, she was not about to be told what she could or could not do. She believes that someone who is an artist is an artist from the day he or she is born. She dreamed of dancing and made up her mind to make her dream a reality. While still young, Verdi-Fletcher — dancing in her wheelchair — entered a dance competition with a friend. They won first prize. Later she won more competitions, refusing to listen to people who said to her “ You can’t dance if you’re in a wheelchair” or “ Dancing in a chair is not really dancing”.

However, Verdi-Fletcher was not pleased with personal success alone. She wanted to make dance available to others with disabilities. In 1980, she founded a dance company called Dancing Wheels Company. Based in Cleveland, Ohio, Dancing Wheels Company performs all over the world. In productions like “ The Snowman”, sit-down dancers perform with stand-up dancers. Modern lighting designs, attractive sets (布景), wonderful music, and festive costuming draw audience into fairy tales and other stories.

In one show, a young stand-up dancer named Devin played “The Brother Who Cannot See” while a young sit-down dancer named Jenny performed the role of “ The Sister Who Cannot Walk” . It was a lovely way to express a theme Verdi-Fletcher has represented all through her life: We all have disabilities. Some disabilities may be more noticeable, but hard work and devotion to our dreams can make the seemingly impossible become a reality.

【推荐3】“I’m going to fail!” My best friend cried. She and I had this conversation almost every day while we were in high school.

The truth was that my friend never failed in any subjects. I just think that she can’t accept failures because she lives her life as a perfectionist. What she fails to understand is that a lot of good can come from failures.

For example, failure can help build relationships. Once I was cooking dinner for a friend, I was tired, and several dishes I tried to make turned out bad. I grew more and more upset until my friend told me that I shouldn't worry. She cared more about our friendship than the dishes. That day, I learned that failure doesn't always make people dislike you. In fact, after she said those words to me, I grew closer to her.

Failure can make success evermore exciting. Every few years, there would be an important test in the PE class at our school. Students had to run a mile within eight minutes. I was never good at running, so I failed every time until the third year at school. Then I began working out regularly, and yet still failed that year. A few days later, however, the teacher gave me and some other students another chance to run and I got a pass finally! You can't imagine how excitedly I was after that. I felt the memory of the success was as sweet as honey, because I had to overcome failure to reach it.

Now it’s clear to see that failure can teach us good lessons. It's not an end, but it can be a beginning.

【推荐1】Beethoven was born over 250 years ago, yet his music is still played daily around the world. Beethoven wrote many famous pieces of music, but he’s probably best known for his nine symphonies (交响曲). Before Beethoven died in 1827, he began a 10th Symphony, but never finished. What he left behind were some notes about the piece and a few “sketches” (草图) — short bits of written music.

In 2019, a special team of musicians, computer scientists, and historians was formed. Their goal: to try to complete Beethoven’s 10th Symphony to celebrate his 250th birthday. The team wanted to come as close as possible to producing the symphony that Beethoven meant to write.

The team trained an AI to help with the symphony. They turned every piece of music that Beethoven ever wrote into a form the computer could understand. By feeding the program all of Beethoven’s music, the AI could look for the way Beethoven wrote. Other members of the team studied Beethoven’s notes and sketches, and attempted to find out what Beethoven was planning to do.

One early test told the team they were on the right track. They took a few minutes of music created by the AI based on Beethoven’s sketches, and played it for Beethoven experts, musicians, and reporters. No one could tell which parts had been written by Beethoven and which parts the AI made up. Finally, the AI connected the little musical bits into a symphony. It took the team over two years to complete Beethoven’s 10th Symphony-40 minutes’ music.

So Beethoven now has a 10th Symphony. And though Beethoven didn’t write it all, the team feels sure that the music is very much like what he might have written, if he’d had the chance.

【推荐3】Country music is one of the most popular kinds of music in the United States today because it is about simple but strong human feelings and events---love, sadness, good times, and bad times. It tells real-life stories and sounds the way people really talk. As life becomes more complicated (复 杂的), it is good to hear music about ordinary people.

Country music, sometimes called country-western, comes from two kinds of music. One is the traditional music of the people in the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States. The other is traditional cowboy music from the West. The singers usually play the guitars, and in the 1920s they started using electric guitars. At first, city people said country music was low class. It was popular mostly in the South. But during World WarⅡ, thousands of southerners went to the Northeast and Midwest to work in the factories. They took their music with them. Soldiers from the rest of the country went to army camps (军营)in the South. They learned country music. Slowly, it became popular all over the country.

Today country music is also popular everywhere in the United States and Canada---in small towns and in New York City, among black and white, and among educated and uneducated people. About 1,200 radio stations broadcast country music twenty-four hours a day. English stars sing it in British English, and people in other countries sing it in their own languages. The music that started with cowboys and southerners is now popular all over the world.

【推荐1】My mother is now 90. Thankfully, she is blessed with good health.

I still remember ten years ago when she turned 80, she surprised my brother and me with what she described as “independent birthday”.

One day she informed us she’d booked a seven-night trip to Turkey. Alone. Because she had never been. Of course, that was ridiculous. There was no way my brother and I could allow that. A weak, little old lady wandering the streets of Istanbul on her own, not speaking a word of Turkish, with no knowledge of the laws and customs of the land — it was out of the question!

She paid no attention to us. Off she went. When she returned, she told us it had been a wonderful success. As it turned out, she had barely spent any time alone, after hiring a taxi driver to show her around Istanbul for some days. He took her to all the sites — the markets, churches and restaurants. He introduced her to a blanket seller, “a lovely fellow,” and she bought some blankets. The seller took her address details and promised to ship them to Canada. They would be arriving in three or four weeks. My mother beamed (眉开眼笑) as she told this story. The blanket seller and my mother apparently built a friendship and she told him to drop by if he were ever in Canada.

To our great shock, her blankets did arrive some weeks later, along with a lovely note from the seller Mustafa. To our even greater surprise, the following year Mustafa himself arrived in Canada. He called our mother to inform her he was in Ottawa.

“I invited him over and he came by for a cup of tea. They drink a lot of tea in Turkey,” my mother told my horrified brother and me.

Her trip of independence seems to be thoughtfully based on a realization that life is to be lived. It reminded me of the line from the movie The Shawshank Redemption: “Get busy living or get busy dying.”

【推荐2】Thanksgiving Day was around the corner. When Mrs. Klein told her first graders to draw a picture of something for which they were thankful, she thought how these little children, who lived in a deteriorating (恶化的) neighborhood, actually had to be thankful for. She knew that most of the class would draw pictures of turkeys or of heavily loaded Thanksgiving tables. That was what they believed was expected of them.

What took aback Mrs. Klein was Douglas’s picture. Douglas was so lonely and likely to be found close in her shadow as the kids went outside for break. Douglas’s drawing was simply this: A hand, obviously, but whose hand?

The class was fascinated by his image. “I think it must be the hand of God that brings us food,” said one student.

“A farmer,” said another, “because they grow the turkeys.”

“It looks more like a policeman, and they protect us.”

“I think,” said Lavinia, who was always so serious, “that it is supposed to be all the hands that help us, but Douglas could only draw one of them.”

Mrs. Klein had almost forgotten Douglas in her pleasure at finding the class so responsive. When she had the others at work on another project, she bent over his desk and asked whose hand it was.

Douglas mumbled, “It’s yours, Teacher.”

Then Mrs. Klein recalled that she had taken Douglas by the hand from time to time; she often did that with the children. But that it should have meant so much to Douglas …

Perhaps, she reflected, this was her Thanksgiving, and everybody’s Thanksgiving—not the material things given to us, but the small ways that we give something to others.

【推荐3】I experienced the Naadam Festival in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region for the first time this year. The festival falls on the fourth day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar, usually lasting for three days. Naadam means “games” in Mongolian, and it is represented by three events: horse racing, wrestling, and archery, which are all so exciting to watch!

On the first day, I set off to the games early with my friend Burin. I saw a lot of people wearing fancy Mongolian robes. Some were feeding their horses, some were practising archery, and others were chatting or taking photographs. Burin told me that Mongolians travel every year from near and far to attend the festival, just as their ancestors had done for centuries.

After the opening ceremony and some amazing performances,the wrestling competition began. Mongolian wrestling is different from the wrestling in the Olympic Games. There are no rounds,and wrestlers are not separated by weight. The wrestler loses if any part of his body above his knee touches the ground. After singing some songs, the competitors danced onto the green field, waving their arms in the air as if they were eagles. I was quite moved by their show of strength and grace.

I absolutely enjoyed the archery, too, but the horse races were my favourite part. However, I was surprised to see that the riders were boys and girls! I heard it is because children are lighter and the horses can run faster and farther. At first, I was a little worried about the children’s safety, but Burin said, “Don’t worry. They’ve been riding horses all their lives. They’ll be just fine.” That was the moment I started to understand why people say “Horses are at the heart of Mongolian culture”. ...

I’m finally back home now, feeling really tired, but celebrating Naadam with my friend was totally worth it. He invited me back for the winter to stay in a traditional Mongolian tent and eat hot pot. I can’t wait!