【推荐1】A perfectly good cupboard just sat by the dustbin in the parking lot. Probably it was something they were getting rid of, I thought.

My family was in need of all the extra storage space we could find at this point. We were living on top of one another in the small house my husband, Martin, and I owned. However, our younger son had stopped his college courses and moved home. Hit hard by the bad economic situation, our elder son with his wife and my precious grandchild moved back home too while he looked for work. This cupboard wouldn’t solve all our problems, but at least the living room would look a little less chaotic (混乱的).

One of the nice things about the boys being back home was that their father and I never had to do the heavy lifting. “Wesley, meet me behind the cupboard,” I told our younger son over the phone. Once he arrived we got the cupboard loaded in my trunk（汽车后备箱). Then we opened the big box. Inside was a five-foot-tall dollhouse. Even the little furniture was broken: a sofa and a lamp in baby blue, the color of my own living room at home. “ We should take this too,” Wesley said. “Luke might play with it when he gets a little older.” What a thoughtful uncle Wesley was!

Late that same night, while everyone else was asleep, I went back to the living room to have a look again. A house just like the neat dollhouse I was starting at now: everything neat and clean and in its proper place. “ When I grow up, I’ll marry a prince and we’ll live in a nice house like that one,” I thought when I was a child. But now, every one of us under this roof was at loose ends. It would take more than a new cupboard to get things in order around here. I went to bed with the impression of that perfect dollhouse in my head.

The next evening I was getting everything ready for dinner. My daughter-in-law was setting the table. Wesley and I were in the kitchen, getting the food just right. The others were in the study, watching the game. Suddenly I felt so thankful. My two responsible sons, my kind-hearted daughter-in-law, my lovely grandchildren, and Martin, my prince, were all under one roof. Maybe our house was a bit crowded, but in every free inch of space was love. My dream had come true. I had the home I’d always wanted.

【推荐2】Sooner or later, many families will face the situation of moving. The experience can be very bad for kids, who may not be a part of the decision to move and may not understand it. You can take steps to make the entire process (过程) easier for everyone.

Many kids like to stay in familiar places. So as you consider a move, weigh the benefits (好处) of that change against the comfort that neighborhood, school, and social life give your kids. If your family has recently dealt with a big life change, such as death, you may want to put off a move to give your children time to accept the fact.

The decision to move may be out of your hands, perhaps because of a new job or money problems. Even if you’re not happy about the move, try to keep a positive (积极的) attitude to it. During the move, a parent’s attitude can greatly influence kids.

No matter what the results are, the most important way to prepare kids to move is to talk about it. Try to give your children as much information about the move as possible. You can ask kids to join in the planning such as house-hunting or the search for a new school. This can make the change feel less like it’s being forced on them. If you’re moving across town, try to take your children to visit the new house and the new neighborhood.

A move can have many problems, but good things also come from this kind of change. Your family might grow closer and you may learn more about each other by going through it together.

【推荐3】“Ordinary” was the worst word my mother could find for anything. I remember her taking me shopping and taking no notice of the shop assistants when they suggested that some dress or pair of shoes was very popular—“we’ve sold fifty already this week”. That was all she needed to hear.

“No”, she would say, “we’ve not interested in that. Haven’t you got something a little more unusual?” And then the assistant would bring out all the strange colors no one else would buy. And later she and I would argue because I wanted to be ordinary but my mother wanted to be unusual.

“I can’t stand that hairdo(发型).” she said, when I went to the hairdresser with my friend and came back with a boy haircut, “It is so terribly ordinary.” Not ugly, not unsuitable. But ordinary …

“Couldn’t you please wear something else?” I asked one day when she was dressing for Parents’ Day in tight-fitting bullfighter’s pants and a bright pink sweater.

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

“It’s just that I wish you’d wear something ordinary,” I said “something that people won’t laugh at.”

She looked at me angrily and then said, “Are you ashamed of your own mother? If you are, Isadora, I feel sorry for you. I really do.”

【推荐2】Sugar cane contains around 10% sugar, but that means it contains around 90%non-sugar —the material known as bagasse (甘蔗渣). World production of cane sugar was 185 million tonnes in 2017.

Most bagasse is burned. Often, it fuels local generators that power the mills, so it is not wasted. But Zhu Hongli, a mechanical engineer at Northeastern University, thinks it can be put to better use. A bit of bagasse makes an excellent and biodegradable replacement for the plastic used for disposable food containers like coffee cups.

Previous attempts tended not to survive contact with liquids. But she thought she could overcome that by mixing the sugar cane pulp (浆) with another biodegradable material. She knew from previous research that the main reason why past efforts fell to pieces when wet is that bagasse is composed of short fibres unable to keep the finished product resilient (有弹性的). She therefore sought to insert a suitably long-fibred substance.

Bamboo seemed to fit the bill. It grows quickly, degrades readily and has appropriately long fibres. And it worked. When the researchers added a small amount of bamboo pulp to bagasse, they found that the result had a strong interweaving of short and long fibres. As a bonus, they also discovered that the lignin(木质素) in the fibres, a thick and solid water-proof material, bound the fibres together.

To test their new material, Dr Zhu and her colleagues first poured hot oil onto it and found that, rather than entering the material, the oil was kept away by their invention. Also, a cup out of the stuff and filled with water heated almost to boiling point remained well in shape for over two hours. Though not as long as a plastic cup would last, it is long enough for all practical purposes. Moreover, the new material is twice as strong as the plastic used to make cups, and is definitely biodegradable.

Overall, Dr Zhu argues that bagasse is an obvious choice for making coffee cups, disposable plates and so on. Once used, these could be dumped in landfills with a clear conscience.

【推荐3】Death Valley is one of the most famous deserts in the United States, covering a wide area with its sand. Almost 20 percent of this area is well below sea level, and Badwater, a salt water pool, is about 280 feet below sea level and the lowest point in the United States.

Long ago the Indians called this place “Tomesha”— the land of fire. Death Valley’s present name dates back to 1849, when a group of miners coming from Nevada became lost in its unpleasantness and hugeness and their adventure turned out to be a sad story. Today Death Valley has been called a National Monument (遗迹) and is crossed by several well-marked roads where good services can be found easily. Luckily the change created by human settlement has scarcely (几乎没有) ruined the special beauty of this place.

Here nature created a lot of surprising sights, almost like the sights on the moon, ever-changing as the frequent (频繁的) wind moves the sand about, showing the most unusual colors. One of the most astonishing and changeable parts of Death Valley is the Devil’ s Golf Course, where it seems hard for one to tell reality from terrible dreams. Sand sculptures (沙雕) stand on a frightening ground as evening shadows move and lengthen.