【推荐3】My 10-year-old Donna said, “Mom, I made a new friend at school today. Can she come over tomorrow?” Donna was a shy girl and I wanted her to make some friends to bring her out of her shell.

“Sure, honey, that sounds great,” I said, thinking back to my own best friend, Lillian. We lived across the street from each other in Washington Heights, New York. We met at the age of 10, too. Like my daughter, I was shy, but Lillian drew me out. She was one of the friendliest people in school, with shiny black hair and a mile-wide smile.

In senior high school, Lillian went on a trip to Florida. This was the first time we had to be away from each other for a few days. “I’ll be back soon,” she told me. But three days later, Lillian’s sister told me that she had fallen into a river and hadn’t come out any more. Soon, my family moved to New Jersey. Whenever I thought of her, tears came into my eyes.

The next day Donna brought her new friend home. “Hi, Mrs Loggia,” the little girl said. Her hair was so shiny and black and she shot me a big smile. “My name is Laura.”

My daughter’s new friend was so much like Lillian. I was still puzzled (迷惑) when Laura’s mom came to pick her up later that afternoon. I opened the door to let her in. “Judy!” she cried. “It’s me, Lillian’s sister, from Washington Heights.” Yes, my daughter’s friend looked familiar. She was Lillian’s niece (侄女).

【推荐1】Veena’s teacher had told her to collect the notebooks in the classroom and bring them to the office. Veena collected the homework notebooks and rushed into the office without knocking on the door. The teacher said, “Veena, you have no manners; you have entered the office without knocking on the door.” Veena was a top student but was too proud of herself.   Without saying sorry, she came out of the office.

In the evening, she complained to her father about what happened to her. Veena’s father decided to teach her what good manners mean. He asked her to go with him.

Before leaving, he told Veena’s mother where he was going and asked whether she wanted something from the market. After coming out of the house, Veena’s father softly closed the door behind him. Then both of them went to the reservation(预订) office.   Veena’s father was to collect the ticket that he had reserved. He stopped in front of the door of the office and asked if he could come inside. Before entering the office, he wiped his feet on the mat. Then he politely asked the clerk, “Can I have my ticket, please?” The clerk smiled and gave him the ticket at once.

After taking the ticket, Veena’s father thanked the clerk and then they went to the market.   It was very crowded there. Her father waited for his turn to buy vegetables. When an old man came, he allowed him to pick up the vegetables first. After taking the vegetables, they came to a bus stop. They took their place in the queue.

On the bus they each got a seat. But when an old woman got on, the father gave her his seat. After entering the house, her father talked nicely to her mother. Then they sat down to have dinner.

After that, Veena understood what good manners mean.

【推荐2】An 80-year-old man was sitting on the sofa in his house chatting with his 45-year-old son. Suddenly a crow (乌鸦) landed on their window edge.

The father asked his son, “What is that?”

The son replied, “That is a crow.”

After a few minutes, the father asked his son for the second time, “What is this?”

The son said, “Father, I told you just now. It’s a crow.”

After a little while, the father asked his son the same question for the third time, “What is this?”

This time, the son said to his father in a low and cold tone, “It’s a crow, a crow, a crow.”

After a moment, the father yet again asked his son for the fourth time, “What is this?”

This time the son shouted at his father, “Why do you keep asking me the same question again and again? I have told you already, ‘IT IS A CROW.’ Are you unable to understand this?”

A minute later the father went to his room and came back with a diary, which he had kept since his son was born. On opening a page, he asked his son to read that page.

“Today my little son aged three was sitting with me on the sofa when a crow suddenly landed on the window edge. My son asked me 23 times what it was, and I replied him 23 times that it was a crow. I hugged him lovingly each time he asked me the same question. I didn’t feel angry at all, but instead felt affection for my son”.

If your parents reach old age, do not look at them as a burden, but speak to them gently, and be kind to them. From today say this aloud, “I want to see my parents happy forever. They have cared for me ever since I was a little child. They have always showered me with love. I will respect and take care of my old parents in the best way no matter how they behave.”

【推荐3】My grandfather was a rigid (刻板的) perfectionist. Everything had to be orderly, precise and punctual. I was frightened of him until the day he died. Growing up, my mother desperately wanted to please him. She probably thought he might leave if she didn’t.

In fact, I now think the fear of being left alone, abandoned, was a current throughout much of her life. A few years into my father suffering from Alzheimer’s, my mother’s voice on the phone sounded so upset that I had to tell her, “Just be with yourself for a little while. Be calm and everything can be better.”

“No, I can’t do that. I don’t want to do that,” she said suddenly, closing the door on the subject. A while after my father died, she told me that she kept the television on all the time because it made her feel less lonely. “It makes the house seem to have more people living in it,” she said. I had given in to my annoyance and either turned the volume down or turned it off. But after she told me that it filled in some of the loneliness, I never reached for the remote control again.

We have had a long journey together, she and I. Over a half-century of memories, now that the journey has ended, I have a choice which ones to study and which ones to turn over in my hands and dust off (抹去).

I choose to look at the ones that ache with a sweet truth not told often enough. There was love between us. It was just hard to find sometimes. I choose to remember her face on that winter day in Manhattan, when I came to her with a broken heart. I choose to remember walking on the shore with her in summers when we rented a beach house. Somehow the sea always changed us. I choose to remember how she looked on my wedding day when she handed me a bracelet (手镯) that had belonged to my grandmother. “Something old,” she said.

【推荐1】In 1971 a young man who grew up very poor was traveling across the country, trying to make a new start for himself. Along the way he had completely run out of money and was forced to spend the night in his car. This continued until one morning, after a week of sleeping in his car, he walked nervously into a restaurant and ordered a big breakfast.

After eating his first good meal in weeks, he found himself lying to the waiter, telling him he had lost his wallet. The waiter, who was also the owner, walked behind the chair where the young had been sitting. He bent down, and came up with a $20 bill that looked as if it had fallen on the floor and said, “Son, you must have dropped this.” the owner said. The young man couldn’t believe his luck! He quickly paid for the breakfast, left a tip, bought gas with the change, and headed West.

On the way out of town, he began to understand what that fellow did. Maybe nobody dropped the money at all. “Maybe that fellow just knew I was in trouble and he helped me in a way that didn’t embarrass(使困窘)me. So I just made a promise to help other people if I can.”

Later, he worked very hard and became a rich man. Now, he lives near Kansas City. Each year he gives away thousands of dollars. He is known as the “Secret Santa” because at Christmas time each year, he personally hands money out to those on the street and at restaurants. Last year he gave more than $50,000 away in Kansas City.

【推荐2】Queen Victoria was monarch of Great Britain from 1837 until her death in 1901. This period is often called the Victorian Age.

Queen Victoria was a stern and serious woman. One reason she was so serious was that she had suffered a great loss. When she was twenty years old, she married a German prince named Albert. Victoria and Albert were deeply in love, and their marriage was extremely happy. In 1861, after they had been married for twenty one years, Albert died, leaving Queen Victoria heart broken. For the rest of her life, the lonely Victoria mourned his loss. It was customary in those days for a widow to dress in black for a short time after the death of her husband. But Queen Victoria dressed in black for forty years. And for forty years, as another sign of her grief, she wrote her letters on white paper edged in black.

Even before Prince Albert died, Queen Victoria was known as a very serious woman. She had a strong sense of duty and worked very hard at all her tasks. In her diary she wrote, “I love to be employed; I hate to be idle.” She never forgot that she was Britain’s queen and always acted with great dignity(尊严). Victoria had high ideals and moral standards (道德标准) that sometimes made her seem stuffy(古板的).

She was also very sure of herself. She always thought that she was right, and expected everyone to agree with her.

【推荐3】NASA's Jet Propulsion(喷气推进) Laboratory (JPL) attracted Marlyse Reeves from an early age. Growing up in Pasadena, California, in JPL's backyard, Reeves developed a love for everything related to outer space, and the lab was a regular destination for school field trips. Even as a child, Reeves, now as an MIT senior, knew she wanted to work in the space industry. Her love of space was cultivated at home, too. At MIT, Reeves quickly found her place in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (航空航天系).

As a junior, Reeves was selected to participate in the Gordon­MIT Engineering Leadership Program. The program focuses on leadership for engineers—people who may have high technical IQs but who may be not good at expressing themselves. Reeves holds the point that in industry, people have to communicate with other engineers—to explain their ideas and fit into the organizational structure.

In the second year of the program, students become coaches for the new students, which means a team coach observes, and instructs the younger group. So Reeves thinks it's really the second­year students who are guiding the first­year students into how they can improve as leaders.

Reeves has been with Women in Aerospace Engineering (WAE) since its beginning in her sophomore year. The group builds a community for women in all aspects of aeronautics. Last month, Reeves helped organize the first WAE Day, an event for 18 high school girls in the Boston area to come to MIT to learn about aerospace engineering. Reeves says events like these are especially important for exposing young women to the possibilities of the field.

Just as she says, “Being a person who has gone into the aerospace industry and has seen the lack of women, there are often times when I am the only female in the room. I think it's important for young women and girls to have role models, and just see that there are women doing it. I have met a lot of strong female role models for myself in industry... A lot of our events are open to men as well. We want to build a community of people who support women in aerospace.”

【推荐1】In 2019, Tan Zhouhai was a villager in Hunan Province , shooting short videos of his everyday life and uploading(上传) them to the Internet to attract potential customers for farm products.

Tan was used to his videos receiving dozens, sometimes a few hundred, likes from his audience on Chinese social media such as Douyin. That changed when he uploaded a video of his 83-year-old grandfather who was dancing along to a popular song called Little Apple gained 10,000 likes.

Inspired by this unexpected success, Tan asked his grandfather to perform often so that we could see the 30-year-old cooking for the elderly man, who has lost all his teeth, wearing a pair of round sunglasses for added comic effect. The account now has 1.6 million fans and has received at least 3 million likes.

"Before my grandfather joined me, my account（账户） was just an ordinary one about food and was unnoticed on the internet," Tan told the South China Morning Post. "After my grandfather joined, many of my fans have said they were touched. They said they liked my grandfather and think he is so cute."

The country's top two short video apps Douyin and Kuaishou each have more than 400 million monthly active users. More than 70 percent are younger than 35. Tan's grandfather is just one of a number of elderly people.

One online favourites include a 79-year-old woman known as Granny Wang Who Only Wears High-heeled Shoes and Yaoyang's Grandfather, an 80-year-old man who shares humorous stories of his everyday life in the dialect of northeastern China. They have 16 million and 13 million subscribers（订阅）, respectively.

Chen Duan, a data economy expert from Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, said developments in technology had made it easier for elderly people to use digital tools, leading to more of them becoming fans and bloggers of short videos.

"Not every old person can be popular on the internet. It depends on their media sense, their feel in front of the camera and their acting skills," Chen said.

【推荐2】The Dragon Boat Festival is the holiday the honours the tragic death of Qu Yuan, who died in 278 BC. In the Warring States period, Qu Yuan was a poet and statesman. He was the number one advisor of the Chu State. But people were jealous of his position and said lots of bad words behind his back. The king wouldn't take his advice in the end and was captured by the enemy of the neighbouring kingdom and finally died there. However, the new king continued to enjoy the luxury life and didn't like Qu Yuan, either. He ordered Qu Yuan to leave his homeland. Later, when Qu Yuan heard the news that Qin had defeated the Chu State, he was very sad and threw himself into the Miluo River at last.

The legend goes that many people tried to rescue their honoured statesman by chasing him down the river, beating drums to scare away the fish and throwing rice dumplings into the river so that the fish would not eat his body. The dragon boat race is one of the customs, which symbolises citizens of the Chu State who raced down the river to save Qu Yuan then.

Also,there are many other customs like eating rice dumplings(zongzi), hanging icons of Zhong Kui (amythic guardian figure), hanging mugworts (艾草)and calamus   (菖蒲) and wearing perfumed medicine bags.

All of these customs were regarded by the ancient people as an effective way of preventing diseases and evils, promoting good health and well-being.

The Dragon Boat Festival is a public holiday observed widely in China, And now this festival has gone global. The international dragon boat races are held all over Asia and the United States. In the US,they can be found in Boston, New York, etc.

【推荐3】Here is your best chance to travel around the UK in 2019: More than 200 B&Bs （bed & breakfast） across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are selected to offer you amazing services for your stay at their lowest prices! Don't miss it.Just collect the vouchers （活动券）in our B&B Daily printed from 01/04/2019 to 07/04/2019 and book the stays for your travel following the terms and conditions below:

• The offer includes a room for the night and a breakfast the next morning.

• The offer is of two kinds: £20 per room, valid during stay period of 02/04/2019— 31/05/2019 and then again 01/09/2019 - 31/10/2019; £35 per room, per night, valid during stay period of 01/06/2019—31/08/2019.

• The offer is valid for a basic twin or double room only.

• The stay must be booked directly with the chosen B&Bs before 28/04/2019.

• Each voucher can only be used by the holder to book one room for one night.

• If voucher holders book either the £20 or £35 per room per night, any additional services such as lunch, evening meal or activities may require an extra charge.But these are not required in order to take up the offer.Please check directly with your chosen B&Bs to see what extra services are available.

• Vouchers must be presented on arrival.If no vouchers are presented, the B&Bs may reserve the right to charge at full price for every night of stay.

• Vouchers may not be used together with any other offer.

• The voucher holders must pay for the stay in full at the time of booking.Additional £10 may be paid to confirm the booking and will be returned on arrival.

• The B&Bs reserve the right to refuse voucher holders' bookings for people under the age of 18.