Philip is a 55-year-old blind man. He can smell a rose (玫瑰), but he cannot tell if it is red, white or blue. It does not matter to him; he enjoys the beauty of the smell itself.

But his life is not a bed of roses. It is difficult for him to travel. He cannot drive, but he can travel by bus. At home he cannot just look out of window to see what the weather is like. He cannot look at the clock on the wall to see what time it is. He uses a special radio for that.

He is a musician. He plays the saxophone (萨克斯管), but not in a band (乐队). Four times a week, he sits down on the sidewalk and plays. He puts an upside-down (倒放的) hat in front of him with a little money in it.

“The money keeps the hat from blowing away,” he says. “It also lets people know where to put their money. I’ll make anywhere from $10 to $30. One evening I made almost $100. Another evening, someone took all money. I guess he needed it more than I did.”

【推荐2】Decide to Do Well

Everybody makes decisions in daily life. They can be as important as what you will do in the future or as simple as what you will eat for breakfast. Any decision could be the turning point of your life.

I made an important decision when I was in Grade 9.

Before I made that decision I was one of the boys who tried too hard to act as an adult. I didn’t know that only kids want to show themselves as adults.

I didn’t listen to my parents and teachers, and my grades became poor. Then came the high school entrance exam.

At the turning point of my life, my mom wanted to have conversation with me. I wanted to turn it down but when I looked at her eyes. I felt I couldn’t refuse. Instead of asking me to study hard, to my surprise, Mom just asked what I wanted to do in the future. Without thinking too much, I just said I would like to study hard.

Mom smiled and asked again: “I asked: what do you want to do?”

I never seriously thought about the question. So I kept silent.

“Whether you want to go on studying or enter society,” she went on, “it is your own decision. Your life ought to be decided by you, not by anyone else, including me.” After saying that, she had tears in her eyes.

For the first time in my life I was asked to make my own decision. I sat in my chair and thought about myself, my life and what kind of person I wanted to become.

It took me what seemed to be ages to make the biggest decision so far in my life-I wanted to be a man who makes a difference to the world. To achieve that, I needed to study hard.

The path to my future became clear to me. I didn’t act rebelliously(叛逆地) any more. With passion(激情) in my heart, I studied hard.

Now, I’m 17. I’m in one of the best schools in my city, and in one of the best classes at the school and I am one of the best students in the class.

Thanks to that decision. I have become what I am today.

It was a cold November morning several years ago. My alarm clock had just gone off, but I was having trouble getting out of bed. My dad had died a few weeks before. I felt weighed down by sadness and depression.

Tough and strong, my dad had worked so hard all of his life to support us. He had a temper and would sometimes shout at my brothers and me, but I always knew that he loved me. Still, he had been raised in a traditional way and raised us that way too. I couldn’t remember, for example, ever being hugged(拥抱) by him.

But at last, my mom and grandma passed away. My dad moved into grandma’s home right up the road from where I lived. I was so happy to have him close by. I would often visit him and just talk with him about life. But we still seldom touched and never hugged. Finally his own health began to quickly fail and in a few months he left us. It was a cold morning when we had his service, but I was too cold and numb (麻木的) inside myself to feel it. I couldn’t remember when we’d had our last hug.

I sighed (叹气) and got out of my bed. I turned on the lights and walked into the hallway. I saw my son JJ walking down the hall to meet me. Suddenly, he opened his arms and gave me a heart-felt hug. And just as he did, I heard my dad’s voice deep inside of me say, “Joey, this hug is from me!” I cried and smiled at the same time. In that moment, in the place where heart, mind, and spirit all met, I felt loved. I felt loved by my dad. I felt loved by life.

【推荐3】Have you checked the oil in the car? My father used to say to me. “Hello, hope you are well.” Sometimes our phone calls would begin with a question about the oil and end with a question about the oil, with not a lot in between.

Fathers have a lot of love to give, but it’s often supplied through the medium (方法) of practical advice. In my experience: It’s mostly about my car.

“How’s the car running?” “Did you get it serviced?” “How did you get that scrape (刮痕) on the side?”

Why can’t we fathers just say “I love you” or “It’s great to see you”? The point is: That’s exactly what we are saying. You just have to translate from the language that is Fatherlish.

The words “You made my life better from the moment you were born” may be hardly heard, but the key is there in the more common “I’ll hold the ladder while you get the leaves out of the gutter (排水沟).”

When I was 17, I went on my first road trip — a friend and I in that old car. My father stood on the corner early on a cold morning to say goodbye to us.

“Highways are dangerous,” he said, “so don’t try to catch up with anything faster than a horse. And take a break every two hours. And every time you stop for gas, you really should check the oil.”

At the time we thought his speech was pretty humorous and would chant “car and horse, car and horse” every time I drove faster and passed other speeding cars.

Dad’s long gone now. But after all these years, I realize that had I owned a copy of the Fatherlish-to-English dictionary. I’d have understood that the speech my friend and I so casually mocked (嘲笑) was simply Dad’s attempt at affection.

【推荐1】Li Chunlin, a farmer, used to live in a poor village in the north of Shaanxi. In the 1980s, he went to Shenzhen to make a living with his wife.

Years later, they became rich and returned to their hometown. To their surprise, the land around the village was covered with sand. That made them feel sad. After thinking carefully, Li and his wife made up their minds to fight against the sands.

They bought thousands of young trees and planted them around the village. However, only a few survived（存活）, because the trees were not regularly watered. But how to get water was a big problem. They dug a well（井）but it became dry soon. Then they asked a drilling team to dig a deep well. Clear water appeared, but their money was used up. They couldn’t afford to buy young trees. They went to several banks for help but got nothing. Finally they turned to a friend who was also from the village. The friend had a big business. Learning what they were doing, their friend was moved and decided to do something for their village too. So he offered the money they needed.

With the money, they bought trees and had them planted. They looked after the trees as if they were their own children. After some time, green leaves came out. When the villagers saw the changes: some started to join Li and his wife in the fight. Then more joined. Years went by. And now larger areas around the village are covered with green trees.

【推荐2】Once there was a man named Clarke. He lived alone and owned a small shop in town. He was very kind-hearted and was always ready to help people in trouble. He often gave away what he had to the poor, so, as a result, he was quite poor himself.

In order to help the poor, he learned medicine by himself and tried to help treat the sick people. So the thankful people called him Doctor Clarke even though he wasn’t a real doctor at all.

One day a poor woman asked Doctor Clarke to go and see her husband, who was very ill and felt terribly weak. Doctor Clarke went there and found the family was very poor. The husband couldn’t find a job for a long time and the wife could hardly make any money, either. Doctor Clarke looked him over carefully and to his surprise, the husband was not ill. Instead, he was hungry because there was no food in the house.

“Come over to my house this evening and I will give you some medicine for your husband.” Doctor Clarke said to the woman.

When the woman arrived at the doctor’s house in the evening, Clarke gave her a paper bag with something inside and said, “Here is the medicine and it will be good for your husband. Don’t open it until you get home.” “What are the instructions for taking it?” the woman asked. “You will find them inside the bag.” answered Clarke.

After the woman got home, she opened the paper bag and found there was some money in it!

【推荐3】LONDON(Reuters)—British milkman Steve Leech, who saved several shops and flats by putting out a fire with 320 pints of milk, was celebrating Thursday after winning a national bravery award.

【推荐2】There was a lovely vegetable patch(菜园). A large tree grew there. Both the patch and the tree gave the place a wonderful look, and they were the pride of the gardener. But no one knows that the vegetables and the tree couldn’t stand each other. The vegetables hated the tree’s shadow(阴影), because it left them only just enough light to live. The tree, on the other hand, hated the vegetables because they drank nearly all the water, leaving him just enough to live.

The situation became so serious that the vegetables decided to use up all the water in the ground so that the tree would die. The tree answered back by not protecting the vegetables from the hot sun, so they began to dry up. Soon the vegetables were really weak, and the tree was drying up.

The gardener wondered why and stopped watering them. When he did that, both the tree and the vegetables realized that it was better to help each other. They learned how to live in harmony with those around them. So they decided to work together, using both the shade and the water to grow well. After seeing how well they were doing, the gardener gave the best care to the vegetable patch(施肥) it better than any other patch for miles around.

Ben is twelve years old. He is a very smart boy, but he’s also very lazy. He doesn’t like doing his homework. He says it is boring. He would like to watch TV or surf the Internet. His teachers can always find mistakes in his homework, and everyone says he never does his homework carefully.

One day, his language teacher was very surprised when he read Ben’s article. It was about what he did during the winter holiday. It was not long, but there weren’t any mistakes in the article, and that was very unusual (不寻常的). Ben’s teacher was really happy. But later he wondered how Ben did that.

He called Ben to his office and asked him if he wrote his article by himself. Ben replied that nobody helped him that time. His teacher was curious (好奇的) and wanted to know who usually helped him with his homework. When he asked Ben, he replied that his older sister usually did that. “But she wasn’t able to do it last night, because she was in the hospital. A friend of hers had an accident and she spent the whole night with her,” he said.