【推荐1】The notice was posted next to the guests' mailboxes in the apartment building I'd just moved into in Brooklyn, New York. “A Mitzvah for Mrs. Green,” it read. “ Sign up to drive Mrs. G in 3B home from her chemotherapy treatments twice a month.”

Since I wasn't a driver, I couldn't add my name, but the word mitzvah stayed in my thoughts after I went upstairs. It's a Hebrew word that means “to do a good deed” .

And according to my grandmother, it also had another meaning. This was the one she was always pointing out to me because she'd noticed how shy I was about letting people do things for me. Linda, it's a blessing to do a mitzvah for someone else, but sometimes it's a blessing to let another person do something for you.”

Grandma would be shaking her head at me right now. Several of my friends had offered to help me settle in after the moving men left, but I'd said I could manage. Letting them help would have interfered with my image of myself as a capable and independent woman of 21.

Snowflakes had been falling past my window for several hours when it came time to leave for class. I put on two sweaters, a coat, a wool hat and boots, making for the bus stop. In this December storm it was a hard journey. As I tied around my neck the blue scarf that Grandma had knitted for me, I could almost hear her voice: “Why don't you see if you can find a lift? “

A thousand reasons came into my mind: I don’t know, my neighbors; I don't like to disturb others; I feel funny asking for favors. Pride would not let me knock on a door and say, "It's a 10-minute ride by car but a long wait for the bus, and it’s a 30-minute bus ride, so could you possibly give me a lift to school ?

I labored to the bus stop, reaching it just as a bus went by.

Three weeks later, on the night of my final exam, the snow was falling steadily. I made my way to the bus slop. For an hour, I stretched my neck, praying desperately that a bus would come. Then I gave up. The wind at my back pushed me toward home, and I prayed, "Dear God, how can I get to school? What should I do?

As I pulled Grandma's scarf more tightly around my neck, again I seemed to hear that whisper:       Ask someone for a lift! It could be a mitzvah.

That idea had never really made sense to me. And even if I wanted to ask someone for a good deed, which I did not, there wasn't a soul on the street.

But as I pashed the door of my apartment building open, I found myself face to face with a woman at the mailbox. She was wearing a brown coal and had a set of keys in her hand. Obviously she had a car, and just as obviously, she was going out. In that split second, desperation overcame pride, I blurted, “Could you possibly give me a       lift? I hurriedly explained,   “ I never ask anybody for a lift, but...”

An odd look crossed the woman's face, and I added, "Oh! I live in 4R. I moved in recently. ”

“I know, she said. “I’ve seen you through the window.” Then, without hesitation, “Of course, I’ll give you a lift. Let me get my car key.”

“Your car key?” I repeated. “ Isn't that it in your hand?”

But when she came back, she spoke so warmly that I stopped feeling uncomfortable. “You know the way better than I,” she said. "Why don't you drive?”

“ I can’t,” I said. Now I felt uneasy again.

She just laughed and patted me on the hand, saying, “It’s not so important,” and then I laughed, too.

“ You remind me of my grandmother,” I said.

At that, a slight smile crossed her lips. “Just call me Grandma Alice. My grandchildren do.”

When she dropped me off, I thanked her again and again and stood there waving as she drove away. My final exam was a piece of cake compared with the difficult experience I'd gone through to get to it, and asking Grandma Alice for help had relaxed me so that after class I was able to ask easily, “ Is anyone going my way? ” It turned out that while I'd been waiting for a bus every night, three fellow students passed my apartment house. "Why didn't you say something before?" they chorused.

Back home as I walked up the stairs. I passed Grandma Alice leaving her neighbor’s apartment. “ Good night, Mrs. Green. See you tomorrow,” the neighbor was saying.

Mrs. Green, the woman with cancer. “Grandma Alice “ was Mrs. Green.

I stood on the stairs, my hand covering my mouth: I had asked a person struggling with cancer to go out in a snowstorm to give me a lift to school. “Oh, Mrs. Green, I stammered, “ I didn't realize who you were. Please forgive me.”

I forced my legs to move me up the stairs. In my apartment, I stood still, not taking my coat off. How could I have been so insensitive? In a few seconds, someone tapped on my door. Mrs. Green stood there.

“May I tell you something?" she asked. I nodded slowly, motioning her toward a chair, sinking down onto my couch. “I used to be so strong.” she said. She was crying. “I used to be able to do things for other people . Now everybody keeps doing things for me, giving me things, cooking my meals and taking me to places where I want to go. It's not that I don't appreciate it, but I don't have chances. Tonight before I went out to get my mail, I prayed to God to let me feel like part of the human race again. Then you came along ...”

【推荐2】It's nice to have people of like mind around. Agreeable people boost your confidence and allow you to relax and feel comfortable. Unfortunately, that comfort can hinder the very learning that can expand your company and your career.

It's nice to have people agree, but you need conflicting perspectives to dig out the truth. If everyone around you has similar views, your work will suffer from confirmation bias (偏颇).

Take a look at your own network. Do your contacts share your point of view on most subjects? If yes, it's time to shake things up. As a leader, it can be challenging to create an environment in which people will freely disagree and argue, but as the saying goes: From confrontation(冲突) comes brilliance.

It's not easy for most people to actively seek conflict. Many spend their lives trying to avoid arguments. There's no need to go out and find people you hate, but you need to do some self-assessment to determine where you have become stale(疲沓的) in your thinking. You may need to start by encouraging your current network to help you identify your blind spots.

Passionate, energetic debate does not require anger and hard feelings to be effective. But it does require moral strength. Once you have worthy opponents, set some ground rules so everyone understands responsibilities and boundaries. The objective of this debating game is not to win but to get to the truth that will allow you to move faster, farther, and better.

Fierce debating can hurt feelings, particularly when strong personalities are involved. Make sure you check in with your opponents so that they are not carrying the emotion of the battles beyond the battlefield. Break the tension with smiles and humor to reinforce the idea that this is friendly discourse and that all are working toward a common goal.

Reward all those involved in the debate sufficiently when the goals are reached. Let your sparring partners (拳击陪练) know how much you appreciate their contribution. The more they feel appreciated, the more they'll be willing to get into the ring next time.

【推荐3】Parenting is not an easy job. How a child is raised shape the kind of person they become in future.

Even the basic needs for a child can be a great challenge for parents.

You must have heard about the many sleepless nights a parent has to get over when their baby wakes up in the middle of the night crying for food; or the many times a toddler just want to be held in the arms instead of walking in the street even though the parent is already exhausted (筋疲力尽) after a whole day out playing with the child etc.

Children depend on their parents for pretty much everything from basic survival needs to care and guidance. They need attention and parents simply can’t ignore the attention their children need.

Aside from the basic survival needs such as feeding and accommodation; responsible parents should realize the children’s development.

To teach children the right attitudes and values, parents have to be good role models.

Children tend to learn about morality from their family, so parents are responsible for being a role model and demonstrate the appropriate values to children. If a parent wants to teach their child about the importance of being honest, they should demonstrate honesty in front of them.

Parenting is always about striking a balance.

Children are not like machines; there isn’t a standard way to input data that automagically leads to desirable ‘outcomes’. Parents have to learn how to properly nurture (培养) their children by striking a balance about discipline and freedom; and very often, they have to learn on the go by observation and accumulating experiences.

A good parent is able to be strict about certain boundaries while at the same time allowing their child plenty of freedom to explore and learn on their own. Setting boundaries which the child must stay within teaches them to respect others and to control themselves; on the other hand, giving a child enough room to develop themselves shows that the parent respects and trusts them.

Parents have to make sacrifices in life, especially their pleasures.

This is particularly true for a new parent. Besides all the necessities, they have to change the way they live and make sacrifices to a certain extent. A good parent has to be willing to give up a lot of good nights’ sleep, the times to hang out with friends and the quiet ‘me time’ to just rest and do nothing.

However, going through the hardship of raising a child can also be an invaluable opportunity for the couple to understand themselves and each other better.

【推荐1】For art, the year 2115 will be one full of events. In May of that year in Berlin, the philosopher-artist Jonathon Keats' "century cameras'' — cameras with a 100-year-long exposure（曝光）time — will be brought back from hiding places around the city to have their results developed and exhibited Six months after that, the Future Library in Oslo, Norway, will open its doors for the first time, presenting 100 books printed on the wood of trees planted in the distant past of 2015.

As Katie Paterson, the creator of the Future Library, puts it: **Future Library is an artwork for future generations/' These projects, more than a century in the making, are part of a new wave of "slow art'' intended to push viewers and participants to think beyond their own lifetimes. They aim to challenge today's short-term thinking and the brief attention spans of modern consumers, forcing people into considering works more deliberately. In their way, too, they are fighting against modern culture — not just regarding money, but also the way in which artistic worth is measured by attention.

In a similar fashion, every April on Slow Art Day, visitors are encouraged to stare at five works of art for 10 minutes at a time — a tough task for the average museum visitor, who typically spends less than 30 seconds on each piece of art.

Like the Future Library, the century cameras are very much a project for cities, since it's in cities that time runs fastest and the pace of life is fastest. "Since I started living in a city, I've somehow been quite disconnected/' Anne Beate Hovind, the Future Library project manager, who described how working on the library drew her back to the pace of life she knew when she was growing up on a farm in her youth, told the Atlantic magazine.

【推荐2】Grant Wood’s American Gothic is a painting that’s puzzled generations who’ve stopped to wonder at the real meaning behind it. We all know it: a serious-looking couple in front of their gothic-arched wooden house—in a style called Carpenter’s Gothic, for which the painting is named.

It was painted in 1930, when US artists were inspired to paint realist scenes of rural America during the Depression in a style that became known as Regionalism.

The couple are identified either as a farmer and his wife, or as a daughter with her unsmiling and over-protective father. Wood’s sister, Nan, who posed for the picture, always insisted the two were father and daughter, perhaps finding the age gap too improper. The relationship has always remained interestingly conflicting.

Unlike her elder companion’s fixed stare, the woman glances off to the side. Her expression is actually difficult to determine. She looks sorrowful, or perhaps uncomfortable, though her straitlaced primness (拘谨保守的古板) is weakened by an escaping coil of hair at the back of her neck. As if holding guard against those anticipated intruders (侵入者)—probably, protecting his daughter-wife’s virtue, though she doesn’t seem particularly happy about it—the man holds a pitchfork in a soldier-like fashion. And that is what lends the work its uneasy (不协调的) comedy. Everything about it is an artful set-up.

First of all, Nan never actually posed with the man in the picture, nor are they in any way related. Wood had spotted the house during a drive to the town of Eldon in Iowa. It immediately gave him an idea. “That idea was to find two people who, by their straitlaced characters, would be suitable for such a home,” he later explained. The couple were actually painted separately, and neither sitter was painted in front of the house. The farmer, as you might have already guessed, isn’t actually a farmer, but a certain Dr Bryon McKeeby, a wealthy dentist from Cedar Rapids, where Wood lived with his mother and sister. The couple’s clothing too has been carefully handpicked by the artist.

In addition, both their faces, Nan’s in particular, have been thinned and lengthened, as has the famous gothic window and roof. And, if you look carefully, you might even detect something funereal about the scene, beyond the tombstone features of the couple. It’s suggested by the woman’s primly buttoned black dress, and in the man’s smart black overcoat.

Some thought the work mercilessly laughed at the lifestyle in the Midwest. Meanwhile, some critics praised the painting as a cutting small-town satire (讽刺). Still others saw the painting as honoring the Midwest and its strong values.

Regarding the painting’s comic tone, Wood himself gave contradictory accounts. “There is satire in it,” he once said, “but only as there is satire in any realistic statement.” Perhaps it is this ambiguity that has made the painting the most symbolic in US history.

【推荐3】Edgar Degas, J. M. W. Turner and other painters captured centuries of atmospheric records as they decorated canvases with sunset scenes.

Greek Scientists worked with an artist to confirm that the ratio of red to green in sunset painting, both old and new, increased when particles filled the air, such as after major volcanic eruption（火山喷发）or dust storms. The atmosphere physicists also found a gradual shift in artistic sunset hues over centuries, possibly due to ever-increasing air pollution during the Industrial Revolution.

An earlier study, led by atmospheric physicist Christos Zerefos of the Academy of Athens in Greece, discovered that the amount of red relative to green in sunset descriptions increased after eruptions, including Tambora, Indonesia in 1815, Coseguina, Nicaragua in 1835 and Krakatau, Indonesia in 1883.

Zerefos’ team analyzed 554 paintings created between 1550 and 1990. For up to three years after eruptions, sunsets reddened as sunlight bounced off dust and gas from the volcanoes. The latest study, also by Zerefos, used improved scanning and analysis techniques to confirm the earlier results.

A modern painter, Panayiotis Tetsis, unknowingly repeated the artistic atmospheric observations of classical masters. In the artists’ description of sunsets light over the Greek island of Hydra, the color ratio shifted towards red in paintings done both before（June 19,2010）and after（June 20,2010）a dust cloud from Sahara Desert filtered the sunset’s light.

Zerefos’ team connected the timing of classical paintings’ red shift to other records of the atmosphere trapped in ice cores from Greenland, in the recent study published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The ice cores recorded spikes（尖刺）in sulfur-containing chemicals likely from volcanoes. These spikes corresponded in time to artists’ increasingly dark red sunsets.

The comparison of ice and art also revealed a slow shift in the coloring of the sunset. As the factories of Europe roared into production in the 19th and early 20th century, painting described a steady increase in the red to green ratio. The ice cores recorded a steady rise in airborne particles from industrial pollution during the same time.