1 . As a kid growing up in a suburb of London. I loved to go looking for the perfect park bench. Some Sunday mornings, my dad could be persuaded to drive to new parks. We’d have a kick-around with a soccer ball, share a bag of Doritos and check out all the benches in the area, reading the words on them.

The good park bench leaves me in a state, somewhere between nostalgia (怀旧) and eager anticipation. Where once I was excited by the words carved on wood, I now find, as a 10-year-old, that I’m more appreciative of each bench’s quiet stoicism (坦然淡定), the way they are willing to wait out their turn in every weather, remaining available to all-comers. Like a good book or piece of music, a park bench allows for a sense of solitude (独处) and community at the same time, which is crucial to life in a great city.

Part of my obsession with park benches is as spaces where history settles. By planting seeds of curiosity, and making space for reflection, park benches become doors to the past. Maybe that’s the greatest power of the park bench: its capacity encourages the art of observation. A good bench catches us in our quietest, most vulnerable (脆弱的) moments, when we may be open to imagining new narratives and revisiting old ones. Our masks are taken off, hung from the bench’s wrought iron. On other nearby benches, babies are being burped. Glances exchanged. Sandwiches eaten. Newspapers read it .

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2 . Stuck inside his room at an assisted living center, Bob Coleman knew he could not go out in public with the epidemic (疫). But he was not cut off from outside: he shared his love for country music over the Internet. “Hello, everybody. It’s a bright day in Tennessee,” he said into his microphone. “This is Bob Coleman, coming to you from Room3325…”.  Then Coleman began to play the music he loves-hits from country music stars. The 88-year-old carefully chooses each song.

Coleman and several other retirees have turned into DJs (流行音乐播音员), for a new online radio hour known as “Radio Recliner.” A marketing company called Luckie came up with the idea of Radio Recliner. Listeners can send song requests in honor of family or friends. For example, listeners might hear a message like this: “Hey, Granny. This is your favorite granddaughter Amy. We just wanted to call in and say we love you.” The 60-minute show started with retirees in middle Tennessee. It has since expanded, with residents of assisted-living centers in other states taking part in the project. Many jumped at the chance to work as a DJ to ease the loneliness of social distancing rules.

Mitch Bennett serves as Luckie’s chief creative officer. He says the idea was to provide a sense of community to older people. “For this generation, radio was the original social media,” Bennett said, “Dedicating a song to someone you love and having them hear it along with everyone else is a special way of connecting.”

In Georgia, 80-year-old Ed Rosenblatt, who had made full preparations for his show, said an hour he spent playing songs on Radio Recliner resulted in a flood of text messages, emails and calls from family and friends, and many of the messages were from people he had not heard from for years.

4 . Eighteen-year-old David Aguilar from Andorra was born without a right forearm due to a rare genetic condition but that has never stopped him from doing anything he wanted to do including typing on a computer with his partial arm.

Like most kids, David was a LEGO fan and he loved building cars, boats, planes, and motorbikes. But David also knew that he looked different and wanted to do something about it. “As a child I was very nervous to be in front of other guys, because I was different, but that didn’t stop me believing in my dreams,” David said. “I wanted to... see myself in the mirror like I see other guys, with two hands.”

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David plans to create affordable prosthetics for people who need them, saying, “I would try to give them a prosthetic, even if it’s for free, to make them feel like a normal person.”

5 . We journalists live in a new age of storytelling, with many new multimedia tools. Many young people don’t even realize it’s new. For them, it’s just normal.

This hit home for me as I was sitting with my 2-year-old grandson on a sofa over the Spring Festival holiday. I had brought a children’s book to read. It had simple words and colorful pictures — a perfect match for his age.

Picture this: my grandson sitting on my lap as I hold the book in front so he can see the pictures. As I read, he reaches out and pokes (戳) the page with his finger.

What’s up with that? He just likes the pictures, I thought. Then I turned the page and continued. He poked the page even harder. I nearly dropped the book. I was confused: Is there something wrong with this kid?

Then I realized what was happening. He was actually a stranger to books. His father frequently amused the boy with a tablet computer which was loaded with colorful pictures that come alive when you poke them. He thought my storybook was like that.

Sorry, kid. This book is not part of your high-tech world. It’s an outdated, lifeless thing. An antique, like your grandfather. Well, I may be old, but I’m not hopelessly challenged, digitally speaking. I edit video and produce audio. I use mobile payment. I’ve even built websites.

There’s one notable gap in my new-media experience, however: I’ve spent little time in front of a camera, since I have a face made for radio. But that didn’t stop China Daily from asking me last week to share a personal story for a video project about the integration of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province.

Anyway, grandpa is now an internet star — two minutes of fame! I promise not to let it go to my head. But I will make sure my 2-year-old grandson sees it on his tablet.

6 . It isn’t easy to climb the Old Man of Hoy, one of the tallest in the United Kingdom. It is even more dangerous if you happen to be a blind climber, as Jesse Dufton is. The 34-year-old was born with a rare genetic disease (遗传病) that left him with less than 20 percent of his vision (视觉), which then kept dropping over the years. He chooses to climb, because it’s better than sitting at home feeling sorry for yourself, right? Climbing is not the most dangerous thing I do on an average day; crossing the road on the way to work is far more risky than Hoy.”

Dufton has been climbing mountains since childhood. As a skilled climber, his father would take him out at weekends. He was always physical then, always up for adventure. He played sports at school, though quickly grew frustrated (沮丧) with many of them. Badminton was a joke for someone like me, and even blind cricket — with a ball with a bell in it — annoyed me. “Instead he was attracted to climbing and skiing, and insists that climbing is one of the safer activities for a blind person to undertake. “True, you can’t see the handholds, or the footholds. You can’t see where the opportunities are, or where to place your hands and your gear (齿轮), so you just have to take it slowly. You search around until you can feel for something to hold onto, and then basically repeat the process over and over again. To keep calm in these situations helps.”

It was Jesse himself who made a documentary happen. He told the filmmaker Alistair Lee about his pastime, believing it might be worth capturing on film. I realized my story was quite unusual,” he says, adding that he felt almost duty-bound to share it. If somebody like me watches it, and they find it inspirational, then it wouldn’t be right for me to keep that from them, wouldn’t it?”

7 . On the outside, 12-year-old Luna seems like your average kid. It’s not until you get to know her that you learn that Luna is anything but average.

Bom with a heart defect (缺陷) called dextrocardia, Luna has had three open-heart operations and continues to pursue her interests in art and fashion. But when Luna was approached by athletic shoe company Saucony to design a shoe for sale across the country, it came as quite a surprise.

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“Rather than just a donation, we wanted to create an experience and a moment that would not only raise money, but also awareness to highlight all the amazing work that’s being done at BCH,” says Chris, Saucony’s vice president. “Specifically, we wanted to give some of the BCH kids an opportunity to share their story and their talents with the world.”

8 . Adults understand what it feels like to be flooded with objects. Why do we often assume that more is more when it comes to kids and their belongings? The good news is that I can help my own kids learn earlier than I did how to live more with less.

I found the pre-holidays a good time to encourage young children to donate less-used things, and it worked. Because of our efforts, our daughter Georgia did decide to donate a large bag of toys to a little girl whose mother was unable to pay for her holiday due to illness. She chose to sell a few larger objects that were less often used when we promised to put the money into her school fund (基金) (our kindergarten daughter is serious about becoming a doctor).

For weeks, I’ve been thinking of bigger, deeper questions: How do we make it a habit for them? And how do we train ourselves to help them live with, need, and use less? Yesterday, I sat with my son, Shepherd, determined to test my own theory on this. I decided to play with him with only one toy for as long as it would keep his interest. I expected that one toy would keep his attention for about five minutes, ten minutes, max. I chose a red rubber ball—simple, universally available. We passed it, he tried to put it in his mouth, he tried bouncing it, rolling it, sitting on it, throwing it. It was totally, completely enough for him. Before I knew it an hour had passed and it was time to move on to lunch.

We both became absorbed in the simplicity of playing together. He had my full attention and I had his. My little experiment to find joy in a single object worked for both of us.