【推荐1】All short-haul flights out of Heathrow were cancelled while Eurostar passengers in London queued around the block. Gatwick Airport is shut and will not reopen until Tuesday. The government has apologized for spoiling so many people's Christmases and the Met Office (气象局) has warned of more snow and ice in parts of the UK overnight.

Heathrow airport officials said no more than a third of all flights would operate until Wednesday and warned passengers to expect delays and cancellations, possibly until Christmas Day. Overcrowding was so bad in some areas that passengers with flights scheduled to depart from terminals 1 or 3 on Monday were told not to travel to the airport. It was said the south runway would remain closed on Tuesday and advised people not to travel to the airport unless their airline had confirmed the booking.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said aviation was a “safety-first business”. And in a statement, Mr. Hammond said rules on night flights would be relaxed for the next four days to help deal with the backlog. This would mean allowing incoming flights to arrive through the night.

Elsewhere in Europe, airports in Frankfurt, Paris, Florence and Amsterdam were severely disrupted (混乱) in addition to disruption to road and rail travel. By Monday evening, problems on the motorways seemed to be easing but BBC Travel was reporting severe disruption on the M25 in Surrey and the M58 in Merseyside.

【推荐2】Wildfires, when allowed to burn in areas without human development, can contribute to the restoration of the surrounding watershed(集水区), renewal of the soil, and resetting the clock for the ecosystem.

Many forests cannot sustain themselves without natural wildfire, including pine barrens, lodgepole pine forests and many more. These forests require canopy fires, which primarily affect the upper layer of plants in a forest, to reproduce because the trees in the forest are adapted to only produce seeds following a major fire event. Hence, fires can be restorative for the forest, and without them many of these forest types would decline on the landscape. How is a fire restorative for the watershed? It restores in many ways including, but not limited to, improving water quality, offering habitat for insects that serve as food for fish, promoting the growth of fire adapted plants, etc... Not to mention renewal of the soil chemistry which is vital to the forest and the watershed.(My attitude is that of someone who has studied wildfire and streams since the disastrous 1988 Yellowstone wildfires.) The science backs up how natural wildfire can be favorable through research publication after publication.

It’s like “resetting the clock” on the ecosystem, allowing it to smoothly all over again for another 200 years. By the way, a canopy fire such as Yellowstone in 1988 also results in the reproduction of younger trees after fire which act to stop the spread and progress of a potentially destructive wildfire immediately. Without it, future wildfires are very likely to become bigger and bigger.

The bottom line is that we may need today’s natural wildfires on our forested landscape to prevent more serious fire events in the future. That lesson was learned in 1988 Yellowstone wildfires which was a year of disastrous large-scale fires despite more than 50 years of thorough and tight fire monitoring.

【推荐3】The sky turned orange and the hospitals were in chaos. Thousands of Iraqis came to emergency rooms complaining that they could not breathe. Some had to be put on respirators. Schools closed and airports cancelled flights. Life came to a stop amid a cloud of dust.

Such scenes have occurred almost weekly in Iraq since April. In decades past, two or three big sandstorms were expected every year. This spring, Iraq has already recorded at least eight. Sandstorms have always been a fact of life in the Middle East, and are now growing more frequently and intensely.

Scientists say dust storms are complex and poorly understood, but their main causes are natural. In 2015, some people blamed a fierce summer storm in the Levant on Syria’s civil war thinking that military vehicles travelling through fields kicked up enough dust to blanket the region. Researchers at Princeton University later cited a more ordinary mix of unusual heat and strong winds as its reason, not gunners.

Still, people plainly contribute to the problem. Demand for water is making a dry region even drier. A World Bank study in 2019 found that human actions, such as over-exploiting rivers and lakes, produce a quarter of the Middle East’s dust. Iran has drained wetlands for farming. Turkish dams on the Tigris and Euphrates mean drier riverbeds downstream. All of this means more dust needs to be swept up by the wind. The decrease of the region’s forests because of fires and cutting down trees means there is less vegetation to hold it back. Syria, for example, has lost an estimated 25% of its woodland and since 2001, most of it to summer fires. Climate change will make the problem worse.

For those who work outside, sandstorms make life unbearable. Sandstorms bring tiny particles that travel deep into the lungs. The World Bank estimates that air pollution causes 30,000 premature deaths a year in the Middle East — and rising.

Economic costs will mount, too. Workers stay at home. Crops are buried under dust. The UN puts the direct economic cost in the Middle East at $13 bn a year, with indirect costs many times bigger.

【推荐1】The e-mail request came in to Ekiben restaurant in Baltimore: baked fish topped with onion and cucumber vinegar. Brandon Jones who sent the e-mail didn’t actually want the food itself. He was writing on behalf of his mother, who loved the dish. Every time Jones’ mother visited Baltimore, the first place she wanted to go was Ekiben so she could order that one dish. He went on to explain that she was now in the final stages of lung cancer at her home in Vermont and that he was hoping to get the recipe to make it for her there.

Steve Chu, the restaurant’s owner, read the e-mail and quickly replied with an alternative suggestion. “Thanks for reaching out,” he wrote. “We’d like to meet you in Vermont and make it fresh for you.” A day after receiving Brandon’s e-mail, Chu loaded his truck with everything he needed and then headed for Vermont with his employees. As soon as Chu and his team pulled into the parking lot, they got to work. After neatly boxing everything up, they knocked on their customer’s door.

As soon as she opened the door, Jones’ mother recognized Chu and his coworkers. She couldn’t believe it and kept saying. “I don’t understand. You drove all the way up here to cook for me?”

As for Chu, he wouldn’t accept any money from the family. He said to Jones’ mother. “You’re an amazing, sweet lady and love the food. It was an honor to help make your wish come true.”

“My mom cried later about their generosity, and so did I,” Jones said. “I’ll carry that positive memory with me always.”

William Flaherty was diagnosed (诊断)with HLH when he was 3. It’s an often-fatal disease where the immune (免疫的)system attacks the body’s organs.

The doctor gave William 9.5 (on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 is you’re super healthy and 10 is you’re dead), which hit the family. There were days when they didn’t know if he would live through. In April of 2008, William got a bone-marrow (骨髓)transplant from his older brother Charles. The recover from it took long. He had a lot of aftereffects and even had 22 of his teeth pulled. At five, William skied for the first time. It helped a lot with low bone density (密度)and got him back in good shape.

One year later, William moved to Puerto Rico and fell in love with the island. When he brought up to represent Puerto Rico in Alpine skiing, his friends laughed. Puerto Rico doesn’t have snow. But William didn’t quit.

However, it was tough for William to balance his training with medical appointments and going to school. So he did a school program totally online. He went to a lot of camps and there were lots of early mornings like 4:00 AM alarm clock. But he has managed to maintain straight As since halfway through third grade and he plans to head to college to study aerospace engineering.

Even a cold can lay him up for two weeks, so William took extra pre-cautions over the last two years. While training, he wore an N95 mask the whole time and couldn’t ride the lift with anyone. After training, he came home directly, hid in his bedroom and stayed away from people.

In 2022, the 17-year-old boy has had more than 30 operations. Having prepared for 7 years he finally made it to the starting line at Beijing Olympics.

“Skiing is really helpful because it forces me to focus on one thing,” he said. “I really want to prove to all the other transplant survivors that they can do whatever they want in life.”

【推荐3】When I was young, I loved visiting the library near my home. I read anything there, from comic books to classic novels. I made up stories, but I never thought about writing one down. They were usually daydreams, or continuations of books I had read, or stories about characters on television.   

One day my son came to visit. He flipped (快速换台) the channels and stopped on a show. “This one’s cool,” he said. Being a good mother who considers good conversations with children important, I decided to watch the show.

I found “Highlander” in the listings, set the recorder, and watched an episode. The show raised questions about what the roles could and couldn’t do. So I visited CompuServe forums (论坛). I found one about the show and discovered the world of fan fiction (同人小说). Meanwhile, I discovered one author who caught my attention.

We got in touch via email, she connected me with some of her friends, and I did some beta reading for them. However, not being a writer didn’t mean I wasn’t a good reader. I definitely used all my English skills to polish their stories.

Then, one day, I decided to see what would happen if I tried to write a story. After I finished it, I posted it to one of the fan fiction forums. I got positive feedback (反馈), and like any good puppy, I kept trying to please them.

Eventually, I found another writing group called iVillage, and thought I’d try writing some original fiction, just to see if I could. I recalled an exercise, where people were supposed to write a “hook” in under 200 words. I sent mine in, and got lots of “Wow, what happens next?” comments. So, I kept writing. That was how I finished my first book.

I became a writer by mistake and I don’t think I’ll go back to needlepoint (刺绣).