It was my twelfth birthday, and what I really wanted was a new bicycle. But I knew my family couldn’t afford one.

A new bike was just a dream, so I wanted a nightstand (床头柜). I figured that at least I would have a safe place to keep my private things. So I asked my parents for a nightstand with lockable drawer (抽屉).

We went to the secondhand furniture store and found an old, dark brown nightstand. It didn’t look too cool, but at least it had drawers that I could keep locked. I decided that I would paint it to make it look better.

After we took it home, I was getting ready to paint it. When I pulled the drawers out, I felt something stuck (卡住) at the back of the bottom drawer. I reached in all the way to the back and was surprised to find a bag.

When opening the bag, I realized that there were some papers in it which were some kind of official-looking documents (文件). And beneath were a bunch of dollar bills! Talk about finding a treasure! And on my birthday!

I went ahead and read the papers, which turned out to be a will (遗嘱). Some old lady was leaving her savings to her son and grandchildren. The old lady must have died and nobody knew the money. Her family donated the nightstand to the secondhand furniture store and it was now in my hands.

I counted the money, over 1,000 dollars in total. I was going crazy. With this money I could buy the coolest bicycle. I could even buy bicycles for my younger brothers. Maybe I could also get my parents a car.

What a dilemma! I could keep it and get all kinds of things for myself and my family. Or I could give it all back. “Somebody helps me with this!” I begged. But I really didn’t need anyone else to give me the answer. I already knew right from wrong. I decided not to fail this test. It was a test of honor-my honor.

I called my family into my bedroom and showed them what I had found.

Several days later, the old lady’s son and his wife came to my house.

4 . Jobs that use both technical and creative thinking are among the fastest-growing and highest-paying ones, according to a new report from Burning Glass Technologies, a job market analytics (分析) company in Boston.

It studied millions of job postings to better understand the skills companies require. What they discovered was that many want workers with experience in such new abilities as big-data (数据) gathering and analytics, or design using digital technology.

Burning Glass came up with the term “hybrid jobs” to describe these kinds of positions, which require skills not normally found together. For example, these hybrid jobs might require people with skills in data science and advertising, or engineering and sales. “The jobs of the future don’t involve just one skill,” says Matt Sigelman, chief manager of Burning Glass.

The company expects general job growth of about 10% between 2018 and 2028, but the hybrid jobs by 21%. What’s more, hybrid jobs pay more than positions that call for a traditional set of skills. For example, a marketing manager mastering a database program gets paid 41% more than a traditional one, with an average yearly salary of $100, 000. Moreover, an engineer who improves her sales skills and becomes a consulting engineer for a software company can more than double her pay from $180, 000 to $400, 000.

While data shows that workers who fail to update their skills will be able to find fewer jobs, people in hybrid jobs are less likely to become out of date, with only 12% possibility of being replaced by machine, compared with 42% for general jobs, says Burning Glass. Hybrid jobs are mostly not beginner roles, so they mainly go to workers with years of experience and, most importantly, more training after leaving college. That means workers, bosses and educators will have to think about how to better prepare people for these roles.

5 . HANDSTITCHED WORLDS: THE CARTOGRAPHY OF QUILTS

Quilts (床罩) are a narrative art; with themes that are political, spiritual, communal, or commemorative, they are infused with history and memory, mapping out intimate stories and legacies through a handcrafted language of design. Handstitched Worlds: The Cartography of Quilts is an invitation to read quilts as maps, tracing the paths of individual histories that illuminate larger historic events and cultural trends.

Spanning the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, this insightful and engaging exhibition brings together 18 quilts from the collection of the American Folk Art Museum, New York, representing a range of materials, motifs, and techniques from traditional early-American quilts to more contemporary sculptural assemblages. The quilts in Handstitched Worlds show us how this too-often overlooked medium balances creativity with tradition, individuality with collective zeitgeist. Like a road map, these unique works offer a path to a deeper understanding of the American cultural fabric.

Number of Works:18 quilts

Organized by: American Folk Art Museum, New York

Approximate size:175-200 linear feet

Security: Moderate security

Participation Fee: Please inquire

Shipping: IA&A makes all arrangements; exhibitors pay outgoing shipping costs within the contiguous U.S.

Booking Period:12 weeks

Tour: June 2021—August2024

Contact: TravelingExhibitions@ArtsandArtists.org

Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI

June 12, 2021—August 29, 2021

Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma, WA

September 17, 2021—January 23, 2022

Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, UT

February 19, 2022—May 14, 2022

Fort Wayne Muesum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN

June 18, 2022—September 11, 2022

AVAILABLE

October 2022—January 2023

Dane G. Hansen Memorial Museum, Logan, KS

February 17,2023—May 14, 2023

AVAILABLE

June 2023—December 2023

Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, MS

January 30, 2024—April 21, 2024

AVAILABLE

May 2024—August 2024

All tour dates can be customized to meet your scheduling needs. Please contact Traveling Exhibitions @ Artsand Artists.org for more information.

8 . Some documents have been making the rounds lately — where people who work various positions in different industries share how much they’re paid.

Bravo! It’s about time we blew up that old belief that salaries have to stay secret. This is not just a matter of curiosity. Having information about salaries can help narrow the gender wage gap, which has barely changed for more than a decade. Recently released date from the US Census Bureau shows that, on average, women working full time still are paid only 82 cents for every dollar paid to a man. And the gap is even wider for many women of color: Black women make 62 cents, and Latinas just 54 cents. What’s more, the pay gap even extends into her retirement. Because she earned less and therefore paid less to the social security system, she receives less in social security benefits.

Having greater access to salary information is helping to speed things up. A new research report by the American Association of University Women shows that the wage gap tends to be smaller in job sectors where pay transparency (透明) is a must. For example, among federal government workers, there’s just a 13 percent pay difference between men and women, and in state government, the gap is about 17 percent. But in private, for-profit companies, where salaries are generally kept under wraps, the gender wage gap jumps to 29 percent.

Fortunately, salary information is increasingly available on some websites. Certain companies and many human resources departments are pushing ahead with this practice. Of course, it’s going to take more than salary transparency to equalize earnings between women and men. But sharing salaries can and must be part of the solution. The more information women have about how jobs are valued — and what different people earn — the better they will understand their value in the labor market and be able to push for the pay they deserve.

9 . On a dark night, 11-year-old Joe was playing hide-and-seek with his friends in the backyard when he thought he saw Magellan—a huge housecat. However, when the cat suddenly jumped on his head, Joe found it turned out a young cougar. He backed away from the animal, then turned and ran inside the house.

Cougar encounters like this one are becoming increasingly common in the U.S. Most people assume that’s because cougar populations are growing, or because the big cats are coming into closer contact with the expanding web of human suburbs. But Professor Robert Wielgus at Washington State University argues that poorly designed hunting policies might be causing an increase in cougar-human conflicts.

Wielgus’s research teams have been fitting the big cats with radio collars and monitoring their movements. They find that the cougar population is actually declining rapidly and almost no male cougars are over four years of age. And a study shows that the heavily hunted area has five times as many cougar complaints as the lightly hunted area—even though the density of cougars is about the same in both areas.

Wielgus suspects that hunting policies, which allow older males to be killed to keep cougar populations in check, were the culprit and teenage cougars in the heavily hunted area may be responsible for most of the trouble. To test his theory, he adds two more groups of cougars to the tracking program—one in a heavily hunted area and another in a comparable but lightly hunted area. He concludes that heavy hunting indeed almost wipes out older males and the population structure in the heavily hunted area shifts toward younger animals.

With these findings, Wielgus believes without adults to keep them under control, the disorderly teens are more likely to come into conflict with humans, farm animals and pets.

Wielgus’s ideas don’t sit well with everyone. “Hunting definitely does cause lots of teenage males to flow in, but I don’t yet see solid proof that they are more likely to cause trouble than older cats,” says the University of Montana’s Robinson. “In many cases, the new arrivals have been squeezed out of remote wilderness habitat and forced into areas where they are more likely to encounter humans. I think humans are primarily responsible for all the interaction you see. We’re moving into these areas where cougars and deer are,” according to Alldredge, a researcher at the Colorado Division of Wildlife.

We may not understand what makes 18-year-old males more likely than 48-year-old men to do dangerous things, Wielgus says, but we know that the world would be a different place, if teenagers were in charge.

“Bye, Mom; bye, Dad; don’t worry. We’ll take care of everything!’’ Carly waved from the front door of the shop as her parents drove off. They were headed for a well-deserved vacation from their candy store, and Carly had promised them she’d be able to run it by herself. Her parents didn’t quite agree, however, so they gave in to each other by having Carly Aunt Maggie come over and help. Her parents often called her aunt “uniquely creative’’, but it didn’t matter; Carly always had fun when her aunt was around.

Maggie blew into the store happily. “All right, Carly my love, what do we do first?” she smiled at her niece. Carly knew clearly the main job was to serve customers, so she could hardly wait to make her best candies. Seeing them on display, Aunt Maggie bit a bite of the chocolate mint-flavored candy. “It’s good, but… unoriginal,” commented her aunt. “We can do better.”

Before Carly could question what Maggie meant, the woman had gone to investigate the kitchen in the back. Shortly, she came back, hands full of items. “We need to add some of these to better that basic taste.” “Brussels sprouts? (芽甘蓝粉)’’ Carly looked at her aunt, surprised and puzzled. She couldn’t be serious! But she was. Carly’s eyes grew wide as she watched her aunt mix it together. “And some spicy sauce (辣酱汁)? That’s definitely an ice cream flavor. The cold will perfectly make candies less spicy!” Carly shook her head as Maggie continued her strange candy combinations: lemonade-flavored candy, barbeque-flavored candy...

Carly looked up as the bell over the front door rang, announcing some customers. Three boys came in and approached the counter. “Try something new!” insisted Maggie,   offering the first boy a piece of the Brussels sprout candy she had made, the second boy a spoon of hot sauce one... Puzzled, but too polite to argue, the boys left the store.

“There go our customers. Nobody will want to shop here!” Carly said to herself. The store was quiet. Carly sat behind the counter, not knowing what to wait.

With the sound of the bell again, the boys came back.

Carly had never seen the shop so busy!