1 . Many years ago, I bought a house in the Garfagnana, where we still go every summer. The first time we ______ there, we heard the chug chug-chug of a motorbike ______ its way down the hill toward us. It was ______ called Mario, coming to ______ us a box containing some tomatoes and a bottle of wine. It was a very nice ______ for him to make. But when we looked at the tomatoes, we were ______ because they were so misshapen: not at all like the nice, round, ______ things you get in a supermarket. And the wine was cloudy, in a funny old bottle with no label (标签) on it. These can’t be any ______, we thought. But we were ______ his kindness, so we ______ them.

What we discovered is that it’s ______ to judge what you eat only by its ______. Those tomatoes had ______ that reminded me of the ones my uncle used to grow when I was a child. Nowadays supermarket tomatoes ______ perfect but taste of water. Nobody’s going to have a ______ memory of those. It’s a surprise they haven’t managed to grow square ones so that they can ______ them easily. Mario’s wine may have been cloudy and come out of an old bottle, but it was ______.

It’s good to eat things at the correct time, when they’re ______, and as close as possible to where they were ______. What Mario had ______ us was the taste of the Garfagnana.

2 . On Oct. 11, hundreds of runners competed in a cross-country race in Minnesota. Melanie Bailey should have _________ the course earlier than she did. Her _________ came because she was carrying a _________ across the finish line.

As reported by a local newspaper, Bailey was more than two-thirds of the way through her _________ when a runner in front of her began crying in pain. She _________ to help her fellow runner, Danielle Lenoue. Bailey took her arm to see if she could walk forward with _________. She couldn’t. Bailey then _________ to let Lenoue climb onto her back and carried her all the way to the finish line, then another 300 feet to where Lenoue could get _________ attention.

Once there, Lenoue was _________ and later taken to a hospital, where she learned that she had serious injuries in one of her knees. She would have struggled with extreme __________ to make it to that aid checkpoint without Bailey’s help.

As for Bailey, she is more __________ about why her act is considered a big __________. “She was just crying. I couldn’t __________ her,” Bailey told the reporter. “I feel like I was just doing the right thing.”

Although the two young women were strangers before the __________, they’ve since become friends. Neither won the race, but the __________ of human kindness won the day.

3 . In April last year, I saw a post on the PNP (Pilots N Paws) website from a family in Topeka. They had to move to Virginia but they were on a very tight _______. They could not afford to pay for _______ for their dog, Tiffy, and _______ wanted to take her with them.

It just _______ that I was planning another PNP flight with another pilot, Karen, who _______ to take Tiffy from Kansas City to Virginia. What I was to do was fly to Topeka to _______ Tiffy.

When I met Tiffy’s owners, they seemed very _______. George, the husband, was trying to be calm, but I could tell this was _______ for him, having to leave his dog to a _______ and trust that everything would __________.

After some goodbyes, I asked George and his wife to help me __________ Tiffy into the plane. I promised to take care of Tiffy and __________ them as soon as we got to Kansas City.

The flight was __________, and Tiffy was a great passenger. The next day, she __________ with Karen and made it back to George in Virginia within a few days. He was so __________ and sent me a nice e-mail with pictures. It felt great to know that I had helped bring this family together again.

4 . Like many young people, Jessica wants to travel the globe. Unlike most of them, this 25-year-old is doing it _______ . She and her husband have spent the last two years traveling the world, stopping everywhere from Paris to Singapore. It might sound like one long, expensive _______ , but the couple has an unusual way to make their travel _______ .

They’re part of a new form of the _______ economy: an online group of house sitters. Throughout their no-cost stays in _______ homes, they feed pets and water plants in the homeowner’s _______ .

It’s not all sightseeing. The two travelers carefully _______ their trips, scheduling their days around the pets that are sometimes difficult to _______ . But house sitting also offers a level of _______ they can’t find in a hotel. “It’s like ________ at a friend’s house,” Jessica says.

The couple has a high ________ rate in getting accepted as house sitters and they always go beyond the homeowner’s ________ . For Jessica, that means ________ plenty of pictures of happy pets, keeping the house ________ and leaving a nice small gift before heading to the next house. “You want to make the homeowner feel that they made the right ________ ,” she says.

5 . My mother is 92. Unless I have to be out of town, each week I take my mother to do her _______ and visit the doctor, providing _______ and transportation. During the week, however, she likes to go to a nearby store to _______ some small things she needs.

Last week she walked up to the store, but when she went to pay for her groceries, she was _______ about three dollars. The only _______ to pay for the groceries was to take off the _______ she could do without: a bottle of rubbing alcohol (医用酒精) and a bar of soap. By taking off these, she was able to _______ the new total to the amount of cash she had with her.

At this store, people _______ and then go off to the side to _______ their own groceries. My mother was putting her groceries into shopping bags when a ________ came up to her and said, “Here are the things that you ________ .” handing her the rubbing alcohol and the ________ . My mother, who is never speechless, was speechless. She ________ for the woman’s name and address so that she could ________ her. The woman told her it was her ________ .

My mother was so ________ by her gesture that she decided to go back to the store and give the cashier (收银员) a five-dollar bill to keep on hand ________ the same happened to someone else if they didn’t have enough ________ for all of their groceries.

So, whoever you are, thank you for the random act of ________ that not only helped my mother out, but ________ too.

6 . My life as a tax-paying employed person began in middle school, when, for three whole days, I worked in a baking factory.

My best friend Betsy’s father was a manager at Hough Bakeries, which, at Easter time, _________ little bunny (兔子) cakes for all its _________throughout Cleveland. It happened that the plant downtown needed eight kids for _________ help during our spring break, for which I had no_________ beyond listening to my favorite records. I’d _________ minimum wage. I’d see how a factory_________. My parents thought all of this was a grand idea and called Betsy’s dad with their _________.

Our_________in the factory were simple: Place cakes on a moving belt. Attach icing (糖霜) ears. Apply icing eyes and nose._________ bunny from the belt. This was ____________ than it sounds.____________ a bit and the cakes pile up. As I told my parents at dinner that first night, it was all a little more high-pressure than I’d   ____________ .

Dad __________. The son of a grocer, he’d spent the summers of his childhood____________ food in Benardsville, New Jersey. This was the sort of work that made you____________ the dollars you earned and respect those who did the work, he told me.