【推荐1】Passing through the Atlanta airport one morning, I caught one of those trains that take travelers from the main terminal to their boarding gates. Free, and impersonal, the trains run back and forth all day long. Not many people consider them fun, but on this Saturday I heard laughter. At the front of the first car – looking out the window at the track that lay ahead – were a man and his son.

We had just stopped to let off passengers, and the doors were closing again. “Here we go! Hold on to me tight!” the father said. The boy, about five years old, made sounds of sheer delight.

As I got off, I remembered some thing I’d wanted to buy in the terminal. I was early for my flight, so I decided to go back.

I did – and just as I was about to reboard the train for my gate, I saw that the man and his son had returned too. I realized then that they hadn’t been heading for a flight, but had just been riding the shuttle.

“I want to ride some more!”

“More?” the father said, mock-exasperated(嗔怪模仿) but clearly pleased. “You’re not tired?”

“This is fun!” his son said.

There are parents who can afford to send their children to Europe or Disneyland, but the children turn out rotten. There are parents who live in million-dollar houses and give their children cars and swimming pools, yet something goes wrong. Rich and poor, black and white, so much goes wrong so often.

“Where are all these people going, Daddy?” the son asked.

“All over the world,” came the reply. The other people in the airport were leaving for distant destinations or arriving at the ends of their journeys. The father and son, though, were just riding this shuttle together, making it exciting, sharing each other’s company.

【推荐2】Four years ago, my sweet mom went to be with her Lord. She did it her way.

I got the call at work, and I headed home quickly. Mom and Dad lived on a small farm that they had owned since I was seven. I hated going there every weekend. There was nothing for a young girl to do but watch the one station on the old TV set, if the weather allowed reception.

My mom, on the other hand, loved the peace and quiet of the land. The place was rustic(乡村的), with no indoor plumbing or heat. We had a big wood stove in the kitchen that did its best to heat the little farmhouse, but it always seemed cold and too quiet to me.

In the evenings, my mom and I would sit for hours singing in the little kitchen. I sang the melody and Mom harmonized. Her favorite song was “Moon River” and we sang it over and over. Mom told me stories about how when I was a little girl, I could sing before I could talk.

As time passed, I had my own children and went to visit them every week or two. The kids loved the farm and the tractor rides with my dad. Me, well, I still hated the silence of the farm. While my mom loved to sit at her kitchen table and look out at her garden and flowers and retell all the old stories, I missed the hustle and bustle(喧闹)of my life at home. But I sat there listening quietly as she reminisced.( 叙旧)

Now, I sat back in the silence and the silence was deafening so I finally leaned over to turn on an old radio. Music always comforted me. My heart skipped a beat. “Moon River” was playing on the radio. I sat there stunned,with a tear running down my cheek, as I listened to every familiar note.

Then the radio announcer came on. “Here’s one we haven’t heard in a while,” and an unfamiliar song began. I began to cry harder as I heard the words sung over the airwaves.

【推荐3】Christmas was near a season that we took seriously in our house. But a week or so before the 25th, my father would give each of his children $ 20. This was the 1970s, and $ 20 was quite a bit of money.

But I saw it differently. My father trusted me to have the smart to spend money wisely. Even better, he gave me the means to get it. On a very basic level, my father was giving me a shopping spree (狂欢) every year. But he was also giving me charge over my own fun, trusting my ability to manage money and making me feel like a grown-up. He didn’t buy me Sherlock Holmes, but he gave me the means to walk into the bookstore and choose it for myself, so it felt like a gift from him.

My mother had a gift for giving me what I needed, usually right at the moment I needed it most. This was when I was 25, I failed at being an adult on my very first try. I had quitted my previous job but had no new one. But when my mother paid me a visit, I put on a good show, telling her I had started my own company.

My mother knew that I was trying hard and failing at that time. It wasn’t until after she left that I noticed at the foot of my bed an envelope thick with cash. She knew how desperately I needed it. She knew that had she just shown up with groceries, or offered to pay my rent, she would have made me feel much worse. The cold, hard cash meant she was helping me. And, funnily enough, the distance with which she gave the gift felt like she was giving me space to fix my life and preserve my dignity. My mother and father both did the same thing. One was giving me the means to take my own decisions, and the other was giving me a second chance when those decisions had cost me dearly.

【推荐1】Cooking with care

People are so busy these days that many have no time to cook.     1     . Actually most families love home cooking! The food tastes good and warm, and a family meal brings everyone together.

Another reason people enjoy home cooking is that it is often a way of showing love. A parent who bakes a bag of chocolate cookies isn't just satisfying a child's sweet tooth,     2    . The message says, "I care about you enough to spend several hours making cookies that you will eat up in 15minutes if I let you!"

There's also something about the smell of good cooking that appeals to all ages.     3    , it makes us feel safe and loved. Next time you smell a cake baking, stop for a moment and pay attention to your mood. Chances are that the good smell is making you feel happy.

Real estate agents know that good cooking smells are important.     4     , they sometimes advise people whose homes are for sale to bake cookies or bread. The good smells make the place "feel like home^,". These pleasant smells help convince potential buyers that the house would make a good home for their family, too!

Home-cooked meals can also benefit the environment. Home cooking gives us the opportunity to choose raw materials over processed meals, which cuts down on packing.     5    . You'll make an even bigger effect on the environment by reducing the amount of transportation required to get food to your plate.

【推荐2】Chicken is America’s most popular meat. Many people assume chicken follows a simple rule-of-thumb: Pink chicken turned white means “done.” It’s similar to how we cook other meats. But is this true? To study how cooks at home follow safety recommendations, researchers filmed 75 households in five European countries. From a random but nonrepresentative sample, they also conducted an online survey of nearly 4,000 households in the same countries that say they cook chicken.

Worried that chicken would dry out, most home cooks determined doneness by color and texture (口感) inside the meat, they found. Few bothered with thermometers (温度计), claiming they took too much time, were too complicated to use, didn’t fit in the chicken or weren’t necessary (although easy-to-use thermometers are inexpensive and widely available).

In additional lab experiments, the scientists injected raw chicken breast with bacteria (细菌), which cause millions of sicknesses, thousands of hospitalizations and hundreds of deaths each year in the United States. They cooked the breasts until they reached core temperatures ranging from 122 to 158 Fahrenheit, and they discovered something surprising. At 158 degrees, but not lower, bacteria inside the chickens’ cores was reduced to safe levels, and when cut open its flesh appeared dull and fibrous, not shiny like raw chicken. But meat began changing from pink to white far below this, and most color change occurred below 131 degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes, the chicken’s core would be safely cooked, but unsafe levels of bacteria still existed on surfaces that hadn’t touched the grill plate.

So what are you supposed to do?

Dr. Bruno Goussault, a scientist and chef, recommends buying and cooking breasts and legs separately. Bring the breast’s core to 165 degrees Fahrenheit, he said, and the leg to between 168.8 and 172.4 Fahrenheit. If you really want to safely measure temperature for a whole chicken, insert a pop-up thermometer into the thickest part of the leg before roasting it, Dr. Goussault suggests. By the time it pops, the breasts will have long cooked. They will likely be dry and far from his standards of culinary (烹饪的) perfection. But you’ll be sure to, as Dr. Goussault says in French, “dormir sur ses deux oreilles,” or, figuratively, “sleep peacefully.”

【推荐3】Born to an adventure-loving mom and a National Geographic’s photographer dad, Alison Teal was already exploring the world as a baby. The family traveled the globe staying not at five-star hotels but in a six-foot-wide tent. From cold mountaintops to hot jungles, they completely involved themselves in local nature and culture.

Between journeys, they would return home to a quiet and faraway part of the Big Island of Hawaii, where they built a solar-powered oceanfront rest center. The front yard was the ocean, and Alison’s friends were dolphins. She would dive into the water and release seaweed. A dolphin would catch it on its nose or fin and throw it to the next player. Over the years, the dolphins grew to trust Alison. They looked for her and came close to her in the water.

After graduating from university, she continued her world travels. Her adventurous childhood and life skills landed her a spot in the reality show Naked and Afraid, in which she and her partner had to live on an unwelcoming island for 21 days. Alison’s deep knowledge of how to live in a wilderness saved the pair, but what shocked her was the amount of trash washed upon the shore.

“After that, I couldn’t ignore our plastic problem. I shifted my focus and started to protect our greatest resource, the ocean,” says Alison. Swimming in familiar waters back home, she also found her dolphin friends were no longer tossing (抛) seaweed to each other, but plastic. “That was distressing,” she says.

Her book, Alison’s Adventures: Your Passport to the World, is fled with travel tales and environmental lessons. She also offers free adventure films to go along with each chapter on her YouTube and TikTok. Alison believes all of us can make changes to protect the Earth and, in turn, those we love. “Whether you’re a lawyer, a gardener, an artist, a teacher or a surfer, we can all help in our own ways,” she says.