I’d been waitressing for months, earning extra money for college. “Since it’s not too busy, go and see if Ray wants any more coffee,” my boss said to me as he pointed to an older man sitting in the corner.

Ray was holding the cup in his hand as he stared out of the window. He was a re gular lunch customer on Mondays and Fridays.

“Can I refill the cup for you, Ray?” I asked. He looked up with a peaceful smile and held his cup out toward me. “You know, I’ve been coming here for several years, and I have to say you have the nicest smile,” he whispered. “Can you sit for minutes... please?”

I sat down and he smiled,   “Your smile reminds me of my granddaughter, Sharon.” He took out a picture of her from his wall et and handed it to me. “She graduated from college last year.”

“What a nice-looking girl!” I said. “Does she live near you?”

Ray shook his head as he put the picture back in his wallet. “She moved to California last year. I miss her a lot. She and I used to have lunch together on Monday s and Fridays,”   he said. “She now wants me to move out there to be closer to her.”

“So, why don’t you?”

“I don’t know if I really want to move. I’ve been here all my life,” he answered.

I heard my boss calling me. “I guess that’s meant for me,” I said as I stood up.

We smiled at each other. “Ray……if my grandfather had been like you, I’d have asked him day and night to move closer to me, too.”   I patted his shoulder. “Don’t wait too long. Nice talking with you...”

For the next couple of weeks, Ray continued to come on Mondays and Fridays. But on that Monday of Thanksgiving week, he didn’t show up. Then one Wednesday afternoon, walking out to my car after work, I heard a voice call my name from across the parking lot.

It was Ray, hurrying to catch up to me.

“Have you made up your mind to move?” I asked.

6 . At first, the grains of rice that Ingo Potrykus held in his fingers did not seem at all _________, but inside, these grains were not white, as ordinary rice is, but a very pale yellow — thanks to beta-carotene (胡萝卜素), a building block for vitamin A.

For more than a decade Potrykus had _________ creating a golden rice that could improve the lives of millions of the poorest people in the world, strengthening their eyesight and their _________ disease.

_________ imagining golden rice was one thing and creating one quite another. Year after year, Potrykus and his colleagues ran into one _________ after another until success finally came in the spring of 1999.

At that point, he tackled an even greater challenge. The golden grains _________ pieces of DNA borrowed from bacteria and flowers. It was what some would call Frankenfood, a product of genetic engineering. As such, it _________ a web of hopes and fears.

The debate began the moment genetically engineered crops (GM crops) were first sold in the 1990s, and it has _________ ever since. First to start major protests against biotechnology were European environmentalists and consumer-advocacy groups. They were soon followed by their U.S. counterparts (相对应的人事物).

The hostility is _________. Most of the GM crops __________ so far have been developed to produce a plant that is not harmed by chemicals used to kill weeds (杂草) in the fields. These genetically engineered crops are often sold by the same large, multinational corporations that __________ the weed-killing chemicals that farmers spray on their fields. Consumers have become suspicious (怀疑的).

The benefits did seem small __________ golden rice was developed. It is the first strong example of a GM crop that may __________ not just the farmers who grow it but also the consumers who eat it. In this case, those include at least a million children who die every year because they are weakened by vitamin-A deficiency (缺乏) and an additional 350,000 who go blind.

Many people __________ poverty and hunger look at golden rice and see it as evidence that GM crops can be made to serve the greater public good. They see a critical role for GM crops in feeding the world’s ever-increasing population. As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put it, “Responsible biotechnology is not the enemy; __________ is.”

Pocket Parks in My Eyes