You’ll Often Walk Alone

There has been a quiet pandemic (流行病) developing while most people’s attention has been on Covid-19. The lockdown has worsened a problem that has been     1     in many developed nations for decades: loneliness.

Part of the problem     2     from contemporary employment. Globally, two in five office workers feel lonely at work. This rises to three in five in Britain. Gig-economy (零工经济) jobs can leave people with     3     incomes and without the companionship of colleagues. The pandemic has made it more difficult to make, and maintain, friendships, particularly for new employees. Even before the crisis, the hope that     4     offices would encourage greater camaraderie (友情) proved to be false. Many people find the chatter     5     and withdraw with noise-canceling headphones. They then email colleagues who are sitting only a few desks away.

Perhaps loneliness relates to human history. Mass urbanization is a relatively recent development; if the history of human existence was     6     into a single day, the Industrial Revolution did not occur until almost midnight. For much of that time, humans lived in small groups of hunter-gatherers; cities may just overwhelm the senses. Ms. Hertz points her finger at a recent development: social media. The internet has led too much cyber-bullying (although it has also been a source of companionship during the lockdown). And people     7     to their smart phones spend less time interacting socially.

Some changes in behavior are owing to     8     choice. Before the pandemic no one was stopping people going to church or taking part in sports. They     9     preferred to do other things. Indeed, one reason for the decline in communal activities is that men choose to be with their families rather than     10     to the bar; American fathers spend three times as much time with their children as they did in the 1960s. That is surely a welcome development. So recreating a communal society may be difficult.

2 . Most of the world’s crops depend on honeybees and wild bees for pollination (授粉), so decline in both managed and wild bee populations raises concerns about food security, the study notes in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological sciences.

“We found that many crops are pollination-limited, meaning crop production would be higher if crop flowers received more pollination. We also found that honeybees and wild bees provided similar amounts of pollination in general,” said senior author Rachael Winfree, a professor at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. “Managing habitat for native bee species and stocking more honeybees would raise pollination levels and could increase crop production.

Pollination by wild and managed insects is important for most crops, including those providing basic micronutrients, and is important for food security, the study notes. In the US, the production of crops that depend on pollinators generates more than $50 billion a year. According to recent evidence, European honeybees and some native wild bee spices are in decline.

At 131 farms across the United States and in British Columbia, Canada, scientists collected data on insect pollination of crop of flowers and yields (产量) for apples, highbush blueberries, sweet cherries, tart cherries, almonds, watermelon and pumpkin. Of those, apples, sweet cherries, tart cherries and blueberries showed evidence of being limited by pollination, showing that yields are currently lower than they would be with full pollination. Wild bees and honeybees provided similar amounts of pollination for most crops.

The annual production value of wild pollinations for all seven crops was an estimated $1.5 billion — plus in the US. The value of wild bee pollination for all pollinator-dependent crops would be much greater.

“Our findings showed that the decline of pollinators could translate directly into decreased yields for most of the crops studied,” the study says. The findings suggest that adopting practices that protect wild bees, such as increasing wildflowers and using managed pollinators other than honeybees, is likely to raise yields. Increasing investment in honeybee colonies (群落) is another possible choice.

3 . Nearly half of all employees are close to “breaking point” at work due to increased stress levels. A survey of 2,000 professionals found the average working adult feels stressed for almost a third of their working day.

The mounting pressure faced in their job also contributes to five hours of lost sleep per employee every week. Checking work emails after hours, last-minute deadlines, having to do a speech or presentation and an overly demanding manager were named as some of the biggest causes of workplace stress.

It also revealed that in the average week, employees will complain about their boss for 31 minutes and their job in general for another two hours and 45 minutes. Richard Jenkins, psychologist and spokesman for well-being charity CABA, said: “Everyone will experience pressure day-to-day.”

“A level of pressure can actually make us work better, however too much pressure that rises to an unmanageable level leads to stress. The working public needs to know how to manage their pressure to avoid reaching boiling point. Some people cope by blowing off steam through physical activity like the gym or going for a run while for some, things like breathing exercises can help. Everyone will have a strategy that they find works better to help them release the pressure. Unfortunately, in many cases we don’t introduce these decompressing (减压) moments in our lives which can help release the pressure and reduce stress. Finding ways to manage your stress is essential, it is also worth addressing the root causes of your stress to try to manage the source rather than just treat the symptoms.”

The study also found seven in 10 adults have vented about their workplace to a colleague, partner, family member or friend. 46 percent of those who have felt stressed at work didn’t end up doing anything about it, hoping the problem would go away on its own. Of those who do take action, 38 percent have told their manager about it, while 51 percent have gone for a walk to cool down.

4 . If you love reading, you’re living in the right century. The web offers you more copies than anyone could read in a lifetime, including hundreds of newspapers and magazines. It provides you access to whole libraries of rare books at Gutenberg.Org and Google Books. And since you live in the age of e-books, you can buy new books at less than half the price of hardcovers. Some websites even provide free e-books for you to download, E-books let you carry your library in a little notebook, and buy new books online anywhere at any time.

But if you love books themselves, you may have chosen the wrong century to live in. The real bookstore is disappearing from America. Borders Books, the national chain with 642 stores, will close about 200 stores this year and fire 6000 workers. This will mean little to the people who like reading e-books. But it will mean a great deal to devoted book-lovers. For them, the online bookstore can never replace the pleasure of walking along bookshelves.

Bookstore appeared in the 18th century, when printers began turning out books in large numbers to creat a reading public. One of America’s earliest booksellers, Leary’s Book Store in Philadelphia was a happy hunting ground for booklovers between 1850 and 1969. As Pete Martin described it in House of a Million Books, Leary was the opposite of the modern chain bookstores. It was old, dark and dirty. Though Leary’s was closed in 1968, it is fondly remembered by former customers. Will anyone remember the website Amazon.com that sells books so warmly 40 years after it closes?

The US national farm-to-school movement     1    (grow) so fast recently that it is challenging traditional notions (概念) of city planning, and a preschool in the state of Georgia is at ground zero in the conflict.

The Little Ones Learning Center in the city of Forest Park has a nationally     2    (recognize) garden-based education program.

The primary goal was to influence food     3     (prefer) of children and their parents, but the preschool also wanted to give residents in the surrounding neighborhood access     4     eat many fruits and vegetables. In2018, Little Ones started farm stand to sell produce to parents and neighbors. The produce grown in the school’s garden     5     (bring) in from nearby farms.

    6     in August 2019, City Hall shut the program down.     7    turns out that Little Ones is in a residential area and is not zoned for farm stands.

Little Ones owner Wande Okunoren-Meadows believes the law needs     8     (change). She went to a city council meeting in early September last year to say so. The city refused to change it.

She isn’t worried just about her school. She wants a law     9     allows other preschools to follow her lead and expose     10    (many) residents to the taste of organic kale, sweet peas and watermelon.

6 . It’s common that everyone wants to be happy. Everything we think, say, and do is connected with our innermost(内心深处的) desires to achieve happiness.    1    

So how is it that some people seem to be happy all the time?

They smile.

Happy people smile, even when they don’t have much to smile about.The important part about smiling is that the change in physiology actually causes a change in psychology.

They create value.

Happy people often focus on the long term.    2    They always try to provide more value in their work than what others have paid for it.

They eat healthy.

    3    Rather than fill their stomachs with processed and fast foods, they choose things made from natural and organic materials.

    4    

It’s hard to be happy when you spend most of your day worrying about the past or living in fear of the future.Happy people are present in the here and now.

They set goals.

Happy people also tend to set goals for the future.The goals give them an intended direction of travel. They’re buried in their hopes and aspirations of whatever they’re trying to achieve in life.

They think positive.

When thinking positive, and looking past problems and negativity, not only do we feel better mentally, but our minds are better able to process the here­to­now.    5    

Stick to the advice above for two or three months, and maybe you’ll find some amazing changes on yourself.