1 . At 6 feet, 7 inches, Will Allen was a natural at basketball. He received scholarship offers from more than a hundred colleges. He finally chose the University of Miami.

Going away to college meant leaving the family farm. He remembered how hard that life on the farm had been. Now that his life was full of possibilities, he swore he would never go back to farming.

After college, Allen began a pro-basketball career in Belgium, where, ironically (讽刺地), he rediscovered farming. He found the farmers there farmed the way his parents had back home, caring for the land without using chemicals and fertilizers.

Allen and his family moved back to the United States in 1977 after he retired from basketball. They settled in Milwaukee, where his wife’s family owned a farm. In 1993, Allen bought the last remaining farm in the city of Milwaukee, where he began his career as an urban farmer. Later he formed his own organization Growing Power, one of the world’s top urban agricultural organizations.

Allen also travelled across the United States, Africa, and Central Asia to help people grow food more efficiently in ways that fit in with their own culture. “Food is in short supply all over the world right now,” he says. “A lot of people are hungry. We need to grow food everywhere we can—in backyards and side yards, on rooftops, and even in buildings.”

He has spoken about urban agriculture around the world and is currently designing a vertical farm which is a new way to help feed more people in cities. “My main mission is to bring food into people’s lives and train people how to grow food. That continues to be important to me. ” said Allen. He said so, and he did so.

“Growing food is powerful,” Allen says. “It can change the world!”

6 . One of the sailors who sailed with Christopher Columbus on his second voyage to the New World was a man named Juan Ponce de Leon. This voyage changed his life.

He decided to stay when Columbus returned. Ponce was named governor of Puerto Rico (then called Boriquien) in 1508.

While there, he heard many stories of a magical water source. People called it the Fountain of Youth and said that drinking its water kept you young.

For the next few years, Ponce tried to find out where the Fountain of Youth was. He asked permission from Spain’s King Charles V to go in search of it. The king consented, as long as Ponce paid for the ships and crew himself.

The young explorer did so readily, and they set off. It was March 1513. They sailed for days but didn’t see the fountain. On March 27, he came within sight of the Florida coast. On April 2, he landed at what he named St. Augustine. This was the first Spanish settlement on the mainland of North America.

He had several adventures along the way. He did not, however, find the Fountain of Youth. He returned to Boriquien.

He continued to govern the island, and he continued to hear stories of the Fountain of Youth. Finally, in 1521, he set out again.

This time, he landed on the Florida coast again. While he and his men were building houses for a new settlement, they were attacked by native tribesmen (部落成员). Many of his men died, but Ponce escaped, although he was injured. He reached Cuba and entered a hospital, where he died of wounds from the attack in Florida. Juan Ponce de Leon never found the Fountain of Youth. Neither did anyone else, at least as far as we know.

8 . In 1963, at age 65, my grandfather decided to build a new house on his farm. In order to save money, he hired a bulldozer (推土机) to________the old house far out to the________and it sits there to this very day.

We moved in the farm two years after my father passed away. When my wife took one look at the ________house, she________tearing it down. I agreed, but thought it________to check it out first, in case something of value had been________.

I walked into the woods where the old house sat. Most of the windows were________, and the siding was falling off. I entered through an open window. Suddenly, a(n)________on the floor caught my eye. I opened it. It was dated September 1944, when my father was serving in the navy abroad, at the age of 18. It wasn’t hard to read between the________. Here was a(n)________ young man, a kid really, who left his home and fought battles somewhere in the South Pacific. At the________of the page, in underlined print, my father had passed on one last message. Tears________my eyes as I read those words he had so________stressed：“All is well here. Please don’t worry. I am doing fine.”

As I left the old house that day, I took one last________back at it over my shoulder. I don’t care what anyone thinks. I________∶That old house gets to stay there until it rots (腐烂) into the earth.