【推荐1】Communities change in all sorts of ways over time. My few trips home over the years have given me an idea of the long-term influence on a community when population falls even while wealth rises.

I come from one of the beautiful seaside towns that dot the Jersey Shore just seventy-five miles south of New York City. When I was growing up thirty-five years ago, these were lively and busy communities filed year-round with resident(居民) and full of tourists all summer.

Today, I notice one big change since my childhood: no people. No children playing around, no traffic in the streets and no customers looking through the storefronts. The big beautiful Victorian homes that housed families with five or more children and grandparents mow sit quiet. The line of old bicycles in the drive has been replaced by a single luxury(豪华的) car from other states.

Few who grew up here can afford to live in their parents’ homes today. Over time, the beauty of the place along with its perfect location turned a middle-class, family-centered neighborhood into a collection of vacation homes for the rich. The town is too expensive for the “locals” but too far from the City for workers.

It is not bad-just different.

Unless of course you own a small business that was built to serve a large year-round population. Small hardware stores, clothes shops, gift shops and independent cafes have been replaced by law offices and businesses dealing with houses and land. The hospitality(招待) industry, which includes my parents’ business, is having a hard time as there just aren’t enough customers between September and June. The land is worth more than the business itself, waiting for condo(公寓) developers.

Rising land and house values in Oak Park make me think of my family’s experience on the Jersey Shore. A community is more than a place-it is the people who live there. Who will live in Oak Park in thirty years? Just wondering.

【推荐2】I’m Jeff Logan, president of Logan Luxury Theaters Corporation. I’m very sorry to tell you many cinemas are at risk of closing permanently (永久). That’s something we would hate to see happen.

Watching the newest box office movie and eating a big bucket of popcorn is an experience that many of us have enjoyed for a very long time. We all have fond memories of going to a theater of our first dates or the first movie we saw with our children. A movie theater is so important to the fabric of the local community. It’s a place where we all gather, no matter what our interests, and no matter what ages, young and old, rich and poor.

But how much longer will classic theaters remain open? Just like other industries, movie theaters have been hit hard by the pandemic (流行病) and are going dark. The entire industry is being controlled by the pandemic, because the studios don't want to release their new movies until all the theaters can be open. As we all know, the theaters can’t do well and can’t get back to full 7-day a week at full speed operation without new movies to play.

Recently, the Logan Luxury 5 Cinema in Mitchell reopened for the weekends. However, like many theaters, it is only operating at about 10 percent capacity. Since opening, several new safety measures have been put in place. Block off every other row. People are asked to leave three seats between them and the next group. Staff spray the theater with disinfectant (消毒剂) after every show. And sanitizer stations can be found throughout the theater.

Even so, some people still aren’t comfortable going to a movie theater yet. I fully understand that. Anyhow, I just hope we must do something else to help out our local theaters, like taking part in a new national proposal called “Save Your Cinema.”

【推荐2】Generally speaking, newly born babies are not beautiful. They are wrinkled (多皱的) or hairless, or they have an angry look on their face. They seem to say,"Get away! I hate everybody." But to a parent, that hairless, wrinkled, angry-faced baby is the most beautiful and perfect child in the world. When that proud father or mother asks you, "Well, what do you think…isn't she beautiful?" What are you going to say? Is this the time for the truth? Of course not!

You look that father in the eye and say, "Yes, she is! She is really a beauty. She's one in a million. She's going to be a movie star! I can tell! She's as beautiful as a picture."

In English, this is a white lie. White lies don't hurt people. They are not cruel or angry words. People use them to make a difficult thing a little easier. When people don't want to meet someone, or eat something new that they really don't like at a friend's house, they tell a white lie. They are trying to be kind. They feel that being polite is sometimes more important. A doctor tells white lie in order to make a patient feel that his health is not so worse and then the patient may become optimistic.

From what is said above,we may draw a conclusion that we should not treat white lies as obstacles in life, and that sometimes telling a lie should not be associated with the issue of being dishonest. Some white lies can encourage you to be better.

【推荐3】According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, 33 percent of coral reefs (珊瑚礁) are in danger. One of the victims is the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the world’s largest coral reef system.

A team of British and Australian scientists banded and came up with a solution to revive one of the world’s seven natural wonders. They used underwater loudspeakers to attract fishes to the dead coral reefs to help them restore. The groundbreaking process is known as “acoustic (声音的) enrichment”.

Loudspeakers are placed on patches of dead corals in the Great Barrier Reef. After careful observation, researchers discovered a favorable result-nearly twice as many fish arrived-and stayed, as compared to parts where there was no sound from speakers.

“Healthy coral reefs are remarkably noisy places-the crackle of snapping shrimp and the whoop of fish combine to form a biological soundscape. Young fish home in on these sounds when they’re looking for a place to settle.” said Professor Steve Simpson at the University of Exeter.

Reefs become quiet when they are decarded(退化), as the shrimps and fish disappear. “By using loudspeakers to restore this lost soundscape, we can attract young fish back again,” Simpson added. “Fish are crucial for coral reefs to function as healthy ecosystems…Boosting fish populations in this way could help kick-start natural recovery processes, counteracting(抵消) the damage we’re seeing on many coral reefs around the world.” he said.

Despite this groundbreaking discovery, we still have our work cut out for the preservation of coral reefs. The average water temperatures are rising, and problems such as overfishing and pollution are still among the pressing issues at hand. Also, further research is still needed to understand how loudspeakers influence the behavior of aquatic(水中)creatures fully.

Nevertheless, hope is still visible for the degraded coral reefs. The authors of the acoustic enrichment study remain to be optimistic in the power of music and sound to restore the reef’s abundant marine population.