The paper was hidden in a brown bag. It was her late father’s bucket list, written on three pages torn from a notebook. Laura Carney looked down at it, then she glanced up at her husband. Without a word spoken, they both knew: “I needed to finish it,” says Carney, 46.
Her brother, David, was the first to spot it. He uncovered the treasure in 2016—13 years after their father, Michael Mick Carney, was tragically killed when he was 54 by a distracted driver.
The list, Carney says, was written in 1978, the year she was born. It had 60 tasks, five of which had already been checked off. One was marked “failed”. That left 54 items for Carney to complete. The tasks ranged from relatively simple tasks, like “grow a watermelon,” to more complicated ones like “correspond with a famous celebrity”. Several tasks were seemingly impossible. Still, Carney was not discouraged. For Carney, the bucket list was an unexpected opportunity to work through her pain and reconnect with her dad.
“The first couple ones that I did happened organically,” Carney says. She had already signed up for a marathon, which allowed her to check “run 10 miles straight” off the list.
Another item she completed early on was “talk with the president.” She learned that former President Jimmy Carter—who would have been president when Carney’s father wrote the list—taught Sunday school in Georgia. She and her husband flew there to meet him.
While Carney completed many of the bucket list tasks on her own—including a two-week trip to Europe— “it didn’t really feel like I was doing things alone, because I knew my dad was with me,” she says. “I feel like my relationship with him is very present.”
Carney’s brother and mother accompanied her for some activities, and her husband joined her for others. “After about the first year or two of doing this project, he would say to me that the person he had always seen in me was coming out,” Carney says. “I had all these layers of sadness and fear that I was leaving behind.”
注意:1. 续写词数应为150左右;
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
There was only one last task left on the list: “Have five songs recorded”.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________So she decided to write her own bucket list.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Celebrity giant panda He Ye, who
“When He Ye was born, her gender
Hearing the news, Chinese netizens expressed surprise and heatedly discussed the
In fact, it is not the first time a giant panda
3 . At 33, I did something brave, or some would say stupid. I
In 2012, I started a company to teach girls to code. We immediately see our girls’
Some people worry about our budget deficit (赤字), but I worry about our
A.ran for | B.lied to | C.voted against | D.traded with |
A.on | B.off | C.inside | D.behind |
A.classic | B.simple | C.different | D.complex |
A.risky | B.perfect | C.stupid | D.beautiful |
A.fear | B.effort | C.trouble | D.struggle |
A.code | B.answer | C.deficit | D.character |
A.random | B.blank | C.marked | D.broken |
A.used | B.saved | C.cracked | D.deleted |
A.mess | B.success | C.progress | D.difference |
A.honesty | B.bravery | C.generosity | D.determination |
A.face | B.avoid | C.admit | D.expect |
A.why | B.how | C.when | D.where |
A.doubt | B.danger | C.uncertainty | D.imperfection |
A.earn | B.risk | C.impact | D.enjoy |
A.inspired | B.accepted | C.tolerated | D.protected |
4 . Amy was a dear little girl, but she often tended to waste time in getting ready to do her tasks, instead of doing them at once as she ought to.
In the village in which she lived, Mr. Thornton kept a store where he sold fruit of all kinds, including berries in their season. One day he said to Amy, whose parents were quite poor, “Would you like to earn some money? ”
“Oh, yes,” replied she, “for I want some new shoes, and papa has no money to buy them with. ”
“Well, Amy,” said Mr. Thornton, “I noticed some fine, ripe blackberries in Mr. Green’s field today, and he said that anybody was welcome to them. I will pay you thirteen cents a quart (度量单位) for all you will pick for me”
Amy was delighted at the thought of earning some money; so she ran home to get a basket, intending to go immediately to pick the berries.
Then she thought she would like to know how much money she would get if she picked five quarts. With the help of her slate (书写板) and pencil, she found out that she would get sixty-five cents.
“But supposing I should pick a dozen quarts,” thought she, “how much should I earn then?” “Dear me!” she said, after figuring a while, “I should earn a dollar and fifty-six cents.”
Amy then found out what Mr. Thornton would pay her for fifty, a hundred, and two hundred quarts. It took her some time to do this, and then it was so near dinner time that she had to stay at home until afternoon.
As soon as dinner was over, she took her basket and hurried to the field. Some boys had been there before dinner, and all the ripe berries were picked. She could not find enough to fill a quart measure.
1. Why did Mr. Thornton invite Amy to pick berries?A.To help her buy new shoes. | B.To help her make some money. |
C.To help her get rid of bad habits. | D.To help her enter the fruit business. |
A.Calculate how much she earned. | B.Make use of her slate and pencil. |
C.Ask for permission from her parents. | D.Get a basket and pick berries quickly. |
A.Considerate and smart. | B.Reasonable and realistic. |
C.Idealistic and impractical. | D.Unselfish and independent. |
A.Lost Blackberries. | B.A Girl Picking Berries. |
C.How Much Amy Can Earn. | D.The Money Amy Didn’t Earn. |
5 . A great poem can be there for you — just like other works of art you hold dear.
But if you haven’t flexed (活动) your poetry muscle in a while, those feelings might be a little hard to get. Here are some tips to help you meaningfully connect to a poem.
Don’t approach poetry like it’s school
The way poetry is taught in school can be a barrier (障碍) to entry. “People are taught that the way to engage with a poem is by trying to understand it, master it and write an essay about it,” says Choi. “
Read it out loud
“Poetry was an oral art form before anything else,” says Choi. “And a lot of information can be gained from reading poems out loud.” As an exercise, try reading a poem aloud a few different ways: like you’re savoring every word and every syllable or like you’re explaining something really difficult to someone else.
Visualize the poem
A poem might offer visual imagery (意象) — or may not.
A.Would it be indoors or outdoors |
B.What ideas float around in your mind |
C.It can help you process sadness, anger or fear |
D.It may help further your understanding of the poem |
E.It is a cherished art form that appeals to our motions |
F.If not, go ahead and fill them in with your imagination |
G.That keeps us from developing personal relationships with poetry |
6 . Happiness is an idea that has been woven (编织) into the fabric of humanity, going back to ancient civilizations.
Although we’ve struggled with it for hundreds of years, the concept of happiness and how to attain it remains pretty complex. Some might see it as having a sense of general well-being. For others, it might be feeling a spark of pure joy. Yet others might find happiness chasing a dream and reaching it. It might be some combination of these — or something else entirely.
A challenging question is, what are the best ways to pursue happiness? Are we born with a stable, set level, or is it something we can develop, increase and strengthen? If it’s the latter, how can we successfully go about it?
Even though “the pursuit of Happiness” is built into the country’s founding, it seems that many Americans are just not that good at it. In the most recent World Happiness Report, America dropped to No. 23 (from No. 15 the previous year), marking the first time in the report’s 12-year history that the US was not in the top 20 happiest countries.
It’s not just Americans. As it turns out, humans as a species may not excel at happiness. This may surprise you, but happiness is not necessarily something that we are genetically primed to get. We have to really work at it.
“If anything, natural selection kind of doesn’t really care about our happiness that much. I mean, natural selection’s job is just to keep us alive and keep us around to reproduce. And I think it does that not by making us feel these moments of contentment but maybe just the opposite,” cognitive (认知的) scientist Dr. Laurie Santos said recently.
“It does that by building in a negativity bias (偏见). So we’re just a little bit worried that there could be a tiger around the corner. And we’re kind of constantly on the alert for that,” she said.
1. What do we learn about happiness from paragraph 2?A.It is hard to define. | B.It is difficult to attain. |
C.It is central to health. | D.It is a shared goal. |
A.To prove Americans are not good at pursuing happiness. |
B.To stress that life satisfaction is a general trend. |
C.To show the influence of social development. |
D.To reveal the truth of human unhappiness. |
A.Taught. | B.Prepared. | C.Intended. | D.Encouraged. |
A.It brings about fierce competition. | B.It strengthens our ability to feel joy. |
C.It increases our moments of contentment. | D.It ensures our survival through negative biases. |
1.亲近自然的重要性;
2.倡导大家亲近自然。
注意:
1.词数 100 左右;
2.可以适当增加细节,以使行文连贯。
参考词汇: 自然缺失症 nature-deficit disorder
Embrace the magic of Nature
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