【推荐1】Splendid straw-made miniatures (缩微模型) of classic ancient buildings decorate Xu Jian’s home. They range from the Yellow Crane Tower to Forbidden City’s turrets. They are all full of details and delicately crafted, tied and arranged by Xu’s hands from countless sorghum straws (高粱杆).

The craft involves carving grooves (沟槽) into the sorghum straws, before multiple straws are locked together through those identically sized grooves, Xu says, adding that the sorghum straw art requires a great deal of patience, especially for works depicting ancient architecture.

Under the influence of his father Xu Yanfeng, Xu Jian got his hands on sorghum straws in childhood. He still vividly remember show his father would follow a film featuring scenes of Tiananmen Square and then note down all the details before creating a delicate miniature of it for over three years. The work was then sent to Japan for exhibition and collected by a local museum. Ever since, many of his father’s works made their way to exhibitions at home and abroad.

Xu Jian became committed to the art after he reached 19, getting into the depth of the related techniques. “My father urged me to keep in mind traditional Chinese architectural skills and the history of traditional building protections, and to apply them to my own sorghum straw artworks,” he says. Through hands-on guidance from his father, Xu Jian’s skills became increasingly proficient. While inheriting the craftsmanship from his father, Xu Jian has produced his own creative works.

To date, Xu Jian’s works have been exhibited in over 40 provincial and national-level exhibitions, earning numerous gold awards. To promote the art, Xu Jian joined hands with the School of Civil Engineering, Hebei University of Science and Technology, in 2013, and founded a sorghum straw carving and tying base where the art has been integrated with architectural courses to enhance students’ thinking and practical skills.

【推荐3】An English mother, Liz Pinfield-Wells, has recycled more than 2,600 pounds (1,200 kg) of trash (垃圾) through a DIY recycling center in her garden shed (棚) in Dawley Shropshire. Pinfield-Wells established the recycling center after the birth of her third child when she discovered that her town’s roadside recycling program did not accept certain items.

The recycling center accepts 30 different categories of recyclable waste. Pin field-Wells encouraged the public to leave their mixed recycled items at the end of her driveway, and dozens of residents have since dropped off their trash in her shed. She has even accepted Pringles tubes, which have metal and plastic components and should not be placed in the roadside bin. “Setting up the recycling drop-off center, in my front garden has hopefully helped the community to recycle more. It can sometimes seem a little difficult knowing where to start but with every small step, it gets that little bit easier,” she said.

Every month, she sends the collected items in vacuum-packed (真空包装的) bags to TerraCycle, a firm that turns the waste into small plastic balls for use in other products, such as watering cans and benches. The weight of the trash is then changed into points for money, which can be paid out twice a year to a charity or sports organization of her choice.

In the last three years, Pinfield-Wells has raised more than £1,000, which she has donated to her 14-year-old daughter Zoe’s gymnastic group to buy new equipment. She has also donated money to another local charity to buy woodchips for their community garden.

Pinfield-Wells hopes that her recycling center will raise awareness about the importance of recycling and encourage others to take small steps to reduce their carbon footprint. She has created a Facebook group for here eco-center recycling shed, which now has over 1,000 members.

【推荐2】During the industrial age, when high school was key to the American dream, public-school systems covered the costs of earning a diploma. Today, however, ns college degrees have replaced high-school diplomas as the ticket into the middle class, families are forced to cover the costs of higher education and more. If the information-age economy demands a workforce with higher education, the US government needs to make the same deal with students and their families: Anyone willing to work hard and earn the degree should be able to attend college—for free.

With that basic bargain in mind, Michigan has lately joined Oregon, Rhode Island and Tennessee in experimenting with ways to make community college free. Under the terms of the Chicago Star Scholarship, a program that has already enrolled more than 6,000 students, if a student at a public high school in Michigan maintains a B average, the state will provide a free degree at a local community college. Then, through another program Chicago Star Plus, students who have scored 3.0 GPA are qualified to receive a tuition discount at 18 of the four-year colleges located in Michigan.

Chicago Star Scholarship and Chicago Star Plus are already changing young lives. Its high-school graduation rate grew from 56.9 percent in 2011 to 78.2 percent in 2022. And Chicago Star Plus’ college attending rate is 86 percent, well above the national average of 62.7 percent.

More than a century ago, America achieved an explosion of social mobility by creating a supportive public school system that runs to 12th grade. By adding community colleges to the nation’s public-school systems and educational requirements, we can strengthen the belief in the American dream again.