1 . The 2024 Peace Poetry Awards

The awards contest is to encourage people to explore peace and the human spirit. There are three age categories: Adult (19 & over), Youth (13-18), and Youth (12 & under). The yearly contest is open to people worldwide. Your poems must be unpublished, and in English.

Deadline

All entries must be submitted by July 1st. 2024.

Entry Fee

Adult (19 & over) — $15

Youth (13 - 18) — $5

Youth (12 & under) — no fee

Notes

1. You may submit up to three unpublished poems. At most 30 lines per poem.

2. Include name, address, email, telephone number, and age in the upper right-hand corner of each poem. For the Youth (12 & under) category, please also include your school’s name and your teacher’s name.

3. Title each poem.

4. Please keep copies of all entries as we will be unable to return them.

5. Email your entries to: cwarner@napf.org and Click here to pay your entry fee online; or send your entries and entry fee to Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 1622 Anacapa Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101.

Awards

Adult Winner — $1,000

Youth (13-18) Winner — $200

Youth (12 & under) Winner — $200

Winners will be announced by October 1st, 2024 on our website. Winners will be notified by email. Past years winning poems can be found here.

2 . If this time last year you had told me that an exercise bike would save me, I’d have_________you were wrong. I’d have protested that I’m not athletic at all. My coordination is lacking and my_________is like tortoise.

In Grade 7, my physical education teacher watched me, eyebrow_________, as I tried my best to follow the gymnastic training. “You’re doing pretty well in my class,” he said, “for someone with no_________for sports at all.”

In high school, I wasn’t_________for a single team. I was bookish and slow, and that_________of being better suited to quiet reading and leisurely walks_________with me for a long time.

I discovered jogging in my late 20s, and I enjoyed the feeling of quiet accomplishment—without the fear of_________teammates. I tried yoga and always prioritized_________pursuits over physical ones.

It was,__________, my gradually worsening mental condition that finally forced me to rethink about exercising. This winter, under pandemic, I found myself__________under the weight of exhaustion. I knew__________had to change. I needed an outlet to release the__________of months of online conferencing and on-and-off solo parenting at home. Jogging in the morning wasn’t enough to__________it.

I__________an exercise bike and hoped to have positive results. Since early March, I’ve hardly__________a day on my bike. I’m not the fastest, but I stick to it. I’m finally learning that movement isn’t__________about athleticism (运动才能). More than anything, it’s the feeling of accomplishment when you insist on something__________outside of your comfort zone.

Athletes find glory in sports. For the rest of us, the__________is more personal: better sleep, improved mood and boosted confidence. It was never about talent. That’s what I wish my physical education teacher had told me. If only he’d said, “You’re doing really well in my class. Look at your__________.”

3 . If you’re a runner who secretly hates running, here’s some good news: settling into a leisurely jog rather than an all-out run may actually be better for your health in the long term.

A team from Denmark followed over 5, 000 people taking part in the Copenhagen City Heart Study, and tracked whether they were non-joggers, or joggers who kept a slow, moderate (中等的), or fast pace. The participants’ health was tracked over the next 12 years, and so was their mortality (死亡率): 28 of the joggers and 128 of the non-joggers died.

The connection was this: Joggers of mild and moderate intensity had a lower risk of death than the fast joggers. In fact, the lowest mortality risk was that of the mild intensity joggers. The fast-paced joggers had about the same mortality rate as sedentary (久坐的) people. This suggests that there may be an upper limit to hard exercise, after which the benefits fall off.

“The U-shaped association between jogging and mortality suggests there may be an upper limit for exercise amount that is best for health benefits,” said study author Peter Schnohr. “Anything more is not just unnecessary; it may be harmful.” From the current study, jogging just three times per week, for less than 2.5 hours per week was associated with the lowest overall mortality risk.

There have been a lot of mixed messages about the “right” amount of exercise and what intensity is best. The World Health Organization has suggested that the current 150 minutes per week recommendations are strenuous for most people to tackle, and that expectations should be lowered, since, after all, anything is better than nothing. Everyone probably has a level of activity that feels best to him or her. But at least the growing consensus seems to be that more — if you’re pushing yourself very hard— is not necessarily better. And it may even be worse.

6 . British Cycling had recently hired Dave Brailsford as its new director. At the time, professional cyclists in Great Britain had ________ nearly one hundred years of mediocrity(平庸). In fact, their________   had been so poor that one of the top bike companies in Europe ________ to sell bikes to the team because they were afraid that it would hurt sales if other professionals saw the British people using their bikes.

What made Brailsford different from previous coaches was his________ of searching for a tiny improvement in everything they do. The whole principle came from the idea that if you________   everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, improve it by 1 percent and you will get a________ increase when you put them all together.

Brailsford and his coaches began by making small________. They redesigned the bike seats to make them more________. They asked riders to wear electrically heated over-shorts to ________ ideal muscle temperature while riding and used biofeedback sensors to ________how each athlete responded to a particular workout.

But they didn’t stop there.They________ to find 1 percent improvements in overlooked areas. They hired a(n)________ to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands to reduce the ________ of catching a cold. They even painted the ________ of the team truck white, which helped them ________little bits of dust that would normally slip by ________ but could affect the performance of the________tuned bikes.

As these and hundreds of other small improvements were ________, the results came faster than anyone could have ________. Just five years after Brailsford took over, they________ the road and track cycling events in all the important Games.