【推荐1】From feeding people to fixing up old cars, Eliot Middleton is driven to help those in need.

Middleton, who owns a restaurant in a small town, ________ a barbecue cook-off in 2020 and came in first place. But rather than happily ________ his prize money and heading home, he chose to donate half of his winnings back to the town to ________ a Thanksgiving food drive for those in need. Middleton and volunteers ________ 250 meals to families, but when they finished, Middleton noticed that many people didn’t make it in the line early enough for lack of ________. That’s when Middelton hit on an idea. He could fix up old cars and donate them to people who didn’t have the budgets to buy one.

【推荐2】A month after Hurricane Katrina, I returned home in New Orleans. There lay my house, reduced to waist-high ruins, smelly and dirty.

Before the trip, I’d had my car fixed. When the office employee of the garage was writing up the bill, she noticed my Louisiana license plate. “You from New Orleans?” she asked. I said I was, “No charge,” she said, and firmly shook her head when I reached for my wallet. The next day I went for a haircut, and the same thing happened.

As my wife was studying in Florida, we decided to move there and tried to find a rental house that we could afford while also paying off a mortgage (抵押贷款) on our ruined house. We looked at many places, but none was satisfactory. We’d begun to accept that we’d have to live in extremely reduced circumstances for a while, when I got a very curious e-mail from a James Kennedy in California. He’d read some pieces I’d written about our sufferings for Slate, the online magazine, and wanted to give us (“no conditions attached”) a new house across the lake from New Orleans.

It sounded too good to be true, but I replied, thanking him for his exceptional generosity, that we had no plans to go back. Then a poet at the University of Florida offered to let his house to me while he went to England on his one-year paid leave. The rent was rather reasonable. I mentioned the poet’s offer to James Kennedy, and the next day he sent a check covering our entire rent for eight months.

Throughout this painful experience, the kindness of strangers has done much to bring back my faith in humanity. It’s almost worth losing your worldly possessions to be reminded that people are really nice when given half a chance.

【推荐3】It was a busy morning and I had several things to do before it became too hot to be outside the house. As I was walking by the side of a busy road, I saw an old lady, maybe in her 80s standing dangerously close to the traffic. Although my mind was preoccupied (心事重重的), I thought to myself that I should warn her not to stand so close to the disordered traffic rushing by.

When I reached the place where the old lady was standing, I noticed that she was trying to get the attention of passers-by who of course were too busy to take note of her. She kept pointing to the middle of the road. When I tried to gently move her back further away from the busy road, she said that she was standing there because she had dropped her house key in the middle of the road and was unable to open her house without the key. I looked around and no one seemed to be interested in the two of us. I knew I was getting late but decided to help.

The traffic was busy on the road with people on their bikes and office goers in cars as well as school buses rushing with school children. It was the worst time of the day to cross a busy road without a traffic light. I asked the old lady to stay at a safe distance, took a deep breath, and I myself carefully stepped onto the road waving my hands madly almost expecting to be hit by an oncoming vehicle. At first one lane (车道) stopped and then I moved further on to the middle of the road continuing to wave my hand. Just then a school bus was approaching me and I bravely stepped in front of it to stop it.

The driver seemed so angry that he shouted at me.     1    

I carefully helped the old lady leave the crowded street.     2    

【推荐2】I never knew anyone who’d grown up in Jackson without being afraid of Mrs. Calloway our librarian. She ran Jackson’s Carnegie Library absolutely by herself. SILENCE in big black letters was on signs hung everywhere. If she thought you were dressed improperly, she sent you straight back home to change your clothes. I was willing;I would do anything to read.

My mother was not afraid of Mrs. Calloway. She wished me to have my own library card to check out books for myself, She took me in to introduce me. “Eudora is nine years old and has my permission to read any book she wants from the shelves, children or adults,” Mother said.

Mrs. Calloway made her own rules about books. You could not take back a book to the library on the same day you`d taken it out;it made no difference to her that you’d read every word in it and needed another to start. You could take out two books at a time and two only. So two by two, I read library books as fast as I could go, rushing them home in the basket of my bicycle. From the minute I reached our house, I started to read. I knew this was extreme happiness, knew it at the time.

My mother shared this feeling of mine. Now, I think of her as reading so much of the time while doing something else. I remember her reading a magazine while taking the part of the Wolf in a game of “Little Red Riding Hood” with my brother’s two daughters. She’d just look up at the right time, long enough to answer — in character — “The better to eat you with, my dear,” and go back to her place in the magazine article.

I opened the door and was welcomed as usual by Shredder. He ran towards me, jumped up and put a paw on my shoulder. “Okay, boy,” I said, rubbing his ears the way he liked. He moved his tail happily. I usually played with him all day. But with so many things on my schedule these days—meetings, dinners, many houses to clean—I didn’t have time. I told Shredder to lie down.” I have to get to work now,” I said. I headed downstairs to clean the bedroom. All of a sudden, pain shot through my head. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt—10 times worse. Things dropped out of my hands, and I fell to the ground. I knew someone who had died from a brain aneurysm (脑部动脉瘤).

I had to get help before it was too late. I should call 911, but the nearest phone was in the kitchen. I tried to stand up, but couldn’t. I knew I had to get upstairs. It felt like my head was going to explode. I managed to move to the kitchen. But later I couldn’t move anymore. I was helpless. Through the sharp pain, I looked up. Shredder stared back at me from the top step. Did he think I was playing?” Come here,” I whispered, trying to make my voice sound playful. He stared with doubt.” Come on. boy,” I said. Shredder ran down the steps and stood next to me. His tail stopped moving. “Help me, Shredder,” I said, holding his collar (颈圈) with my left hand. He climbed a step and then stopped. “Up!” I said. He looked back at me as if to say, “Is this right?” “Go,” I whispered. He started to drag me. My left arm went frozen. I had to look at Shredder’s collar to make sure I kept my hold.