【推荐1】When drama teacher Chelsie King asked students in her school to come up with a way for her husband to go around the block in his wheelchair with their newborn, they were up for the challenge.

Chelsie’s husband, Jeremy, underwent brain surgery three years ago, and since then it has been difficult for him to keep his balance. “He wanted to be able to safely hold his baby, but there’s just really not a ton of resources out there for disabled parents,” Chelsie said. She works at the Bullis School in Germantown, Maryland, and asked her colleague Matt Zigler, who teaches the “Making for Social Good” class, for assistance.

In this course, students learn and design products to help people. The 10 high school students were excited to come up with something that could attach to the wheelchair Jeremy uses. They spoke with the Kings about their needs, conducted research on infant（供婴儿使用白的）car seats and how they are installed, and then drafted 3D models of their designs. “I really feel the students took all my concerns to heart when creating the prototypes（原型）,” Jeremy said. Two projects were selected for the students to make—one that connected an infant car seat to Jeremy’s wheelchair and another that attaches an entire stroller（折叠婴儿车）to the wheelchair.

When they were done making the attachments, the students put the instructions online to help even more people. A few weeks later, the Kings went out with the car seat attachment, and found it worked perfectly. The students were excited to learn that their creation was a hit. “I feel fortunate to have been able to take a class that has allowed me to truly make a difference in someone’s life, ” said Zlotnitsky.

【推荐2】Two summers ago, Spencer Seabrooke stepped off the edge of a cliff and out into the air. He was held up by a narrow band of fabric, three centimetres wide. The slackline (扁带) went over a deep channel on the top of Stawamus Chief Mountain in Squamish, Canada. The plan was to walk across without safety equipment. The ground was 290 metres below Seabrook’s feet. A fall meant death. The walking distance of 64 metres would mark a world record in free solo slacklining.

“You’re standing on nothing,” Seabrooke said at the time. “Everything inside your body is telling you this is wrong.” Several steps into the crossing, Seabrooke looked down. He lowered his body to steady himself and reached with his hands to hold the slackline. He suddenly turned over but hung on. He righted himself, let out a few screams, and stood again. He had walked the same slackline-with assistance-many times before. Finally, he crossed in four minutes and made it.

Slacklining became known in the early 1980s, around the rock climbing scene at Yosemite National Park in California. Scott Balcom, in 1985, was the first to walk on a 17-metre highline on Lost Arrow Spire, the valley bottom some 880 metres below. Charles “Chongo” Tucker, who has been living in Yosemite for a long time, was there in slacklining’s earliest days. Later, in 1994, he was one of the next people to walk the Lost Arrow Spire highline. “As scared as I was, it was as cool as anything I’ve ever done in my life,” said Tucker.

Seabrooke grew up in Peterborough, Canada, in love with the outdoors. He saw a documentary in 2012 that was about Andy Lewis, a slackliner and free solo pioneer who performed at the Super Bowl. Seabrooke was attracted and devoted himself to the sport. Three years later, he walked his record free solo highline on the Stawamus Chief.

The attention Seabrooke won led to work, everything from commercials to paid appearances at slackline festivals from Poland to China. “When you step out into the air, there’s something so clean about it,” said Seabrooke. “Height makes it real.”

【推荐3】While looking for comfortable places to sleep in this winter, a black bear picked out a culvert (涵洞) near Wannaska, Minnesota. Unfortunately for the bear, this decision didn’t pan out.

In late February, the snow around him started melting, causing the culvert to flood and then freeze again. The poor fellow was trapped in snow and ice for three days before some kind humans noticed him and called authorities for help.

By the time experts arrived, people had already tried digging the bear out and giving him a variety of unhealthy (for bears) treats. Luckily, the bear wasn’t interested in the food as he was still in a mode in which he slept through the winter months.

A wildlife research biologist Andrew Tri arrived on the scene to assess the situation. “He tried to push himself out and kind of got trapped on some frozen water that had frozen and thawed (融化) frozen and thawed and he got stuck in place and tired,” the biologist explained.

The team first injected the bear with an anesthetic. Once he was asleep, it took five strong men to pull the bear, estimated to weigh between 375 and 400 pounds, out of the culvert. Andrew gave him a full check-up and determined he was in great physical shape, even though he was still a bit sleepy! After that, they put him in a cage and transported him to a wildlife reserve to finish out the winter.

In an online post, Andrew shared the story along with photos of the bear rescue. He summed up with a reminder to the public to never “bother” a bear, either in the wild or near its home. “If you’re ever concerned about a bear’s safety, by all means give us a call,” he advised. “But don’t try to move it or feed it! Doing so can result in a bad situation either for you or for the bear.”

【推荐1】Many people criticise today’s newspapers as sensationalist, satisfying the public’s abnormal curiosity. But journalism a century ago was just as notorious (臭名昭著)．Publishers at that time routinely competed with each other for wild stories that could draw in the most readers. Meanwhile, it was an ideal atmosphere for a courageous reporter like Nellie Bly to spring into fame.

Bly, whose name was Elizabeth Cochran, had to work to make her way in the world. Different from many women of the time, however, she refused to let the working world scare her away. Her first big opportunity as a reporter came in 1885 after she wrote an angry letter denouncing the Pittsburgh Dispatch for an article it had run criticising women forced to work outside the home. The interested and excited editor hired Bly for her “spirit”, and soon she was investigating the situations of female factory workers. Bly cared less about their jobs than their lives after work — their amusements, their motivations, their fears and ambitions. She produced an article totally different from what other reporters of the time were writing: personal, thoughtful, meaningful.

By 1887 Bly had a job with the New York World, one of the leader papers of the day. She quickly became famous for undercover stories about women in a mental hospital. Soon she had investigated life as a maid, a chorus girl, and even a street girl. In her best-known brave deeds, in 1890, Bly beat the famous “around the world in 80 days” trip Jules Verne had described in his novel. Travelling by steamship, train, even ricksha, Bly reported from each stop. A spellbound nation hung on every word. Only 25, Bly had become internationally famous.

【推荐1】Devon Gallagher, a college graduate from Philadelphia, wants the world to know exactly where she’s been during her worldwide vacation in a special way.

The traveler, who was born with a bone disease, had her right leg amputated (截肢) at the age of four. Although the amputation caused setbacks for Gallagher early on, she now sees it as inspiration for living her best life.

To spread that message, Gallagher has taken to social media, where she shares photos of her travels across the globe. Besides, she writes her location across her artificial leg before taking a picture.

Now she has been taking pictures across the Continent, which show her cycling over the canal in Amsterdam, relaxing on a wall overlooking the city of Barcelona, posing with a waffle (华夫饼) in Brussels, taking spectacular pictures in Athens and enjoying a river cruise in Budapest, with all the well-known locations written on her artificial leg.

“I get a new leg every two years and I can choose the design on it. One day I had a sudden thought to get a chalk-board,” Gallagher said. “My mum and grandmother weren’t too keen on the idea, but my friends thought it was great and told me to go for it, so I did.”

Gallagher said people often stare when she’s writing on her leg, but once she shares the photos, she receives only positive feedback. My leg hasn’t stopped me from doing anything I’ve wanted to do,” she said, “I don’t know if it’s my determination to prove to myself that I can do it. Bur regardless, I’ve been able to keep up with my peers and lead a pretty great life.”

Gallagher shows us that you should never let anything stand in the way of your dreams. And if life gives you an artificial leg, make art.

【推荐3】I was 11 years old when I asked my mom for piano lessons in 2010. We were in the economic crisis. She said a polite “no”.

That didn’t stop me. I searched the measurements of a keyboard, drew the keys on a piece of paper and stuck it on my desk. I would click notes on an online keyboard and “play” them back on my paper one—keeping the sound they made on the computer in my head. I spent six months playing without touching a real piano. Once my mom saw that I was serious, she borrowed money and bought me 10 lessons.

I still remember the first one. I was struck by how real the sound of the piano was. I sat my grade one after eight lessons. Once I started secondary school, we couldn’t afford lessons again. I passed grade three, and then grade five, practicing only on my piece of paper.

One evening, when I was about 13, my mom said she had a surprise for me; it was an electronic keyboard, bought with more borrowed money. It was the first time I’d played for her. She was in shock.

My school didn’t offer music A-level. I found the Purcell School for young musicians. But I had to pass a difficult test. Some of the questions involved an evaluation of the composer or when some piece was written. I felt overwhelmed. To my amazement, I was offered a place.

At the Purcell School. I spent two years working as hard as I could, performed to raise money and saved enough to buy my first piano.

When I left the Purcell School, I was awarded the senior piano prize and senior academic music prize. I am now at the Guildhall School in London. I feel proud—it’s been 10 years since I drew my paper piano, and I’m at one of the world’s leading music schools.

The irony is that I continue to do a lot of my practice away from the piano--what we call mental practice. The paper piano helped arouse my curiosity about how music works and the building blocks that form the pieces.