At about 6 p.m. on Saturday, a forest fire broke out in a village in Mu Li, Liangshan. The local government acted quickly and 689 people were sent to put out the fire. Fire groups were fighting the fire on Sunday when a sudden change of wind direction caused “a huge fireball”. 27 firefighters and 3 locals lost their lives. Most of the firefighters were in their twenties and two of them were less than twenty, though several were older. Their death touched our hearts all over China. There is reason enough to regard them as heroes. President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and many other leaders cared for the heroes and expressed condolence to the heroes’ families and friends.
We should remember all the heroes and their spirit, bravery showed in fighting the fire. As the old saying goes: a nation is lost without its memories. Forest fires are common in spring, rules to prevent fires have come out in Liangshan. Many experts believe there are some reasons for forest fires. The first reason is weather change. Warmer and drier weather leads to dangerous fire conditions. Next, lightning is another reason. Dry grass and trees easily catch fire. Finally, hot winds add to the possibility of forest fires. The wind spreads a fire quickly. However, 90% of forest fires are caused by humans, according to a report. Forest fires can burn at over 9000C and reach heights of more than 50 meters. Forest fires can move at speeds of up to 23 kilometers an hour, burning everything—trees, brush, homes, even people... Experts remind people to be careful during the holiday of Qingming, known as Tomb Sweeping Day. Millions of people travel to their homes during the holiday, so the risks of fires in mountains are high.
In order to keep the heart-broken lesson in mind, we should stop fires from happening again.
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This incident happened over twenty years ago when I was in high school. There was a debate competition in my neighbouring school. My friend and I volunteered to participate in the debate. There were many topics to choose from and I choose to speak on AIDS.
Even though I had no idea what the competition would be like, I decided to go ahead and prepare for it and I used an article from a magazine as reference.
On the day of the event, I practiced my lines but was feeling nervous as there would be many listeners and the stage fear was chasing me already and truly it caught up with me. I reached the auditorium (礼堂), and it was large. The competition began, and I was getting sweaty palms. I was at a loss when the speaker before my turn unexpectedly had chosen the same topic as me and also referred to the same magazine and reproduced it line by line, leaving me in a daze (恍惚) on what to do next as I just had a couple of minutes with me.
Soon enough I was on the stage and I could gather courage and speak for only two minutes. I felt so bad. I had not only let my school down but also myself. I then decided to put in my best efforts and overcome my stage fear and prepare well for the next debate. Luckily I did not have to wait long as the next competition was organized by my school.
This time my topic was against castes (印度的种姓；等级制度) in indian society. I wrote the script with my own efforts and practiced for hours in front of the mirror even though I had learned the script by heart.
The day came and this time I was confident about myself, I just went about doing my job and lasted for five minutes. I had a very satisfied feeling coming from within. When the results were announced, I had come second in the event, I was so happy and all my efforts paid off.
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Robert, an 11-year-old boy, saw something special in a shop window that set his heart racing. But the price-five dollars-was too much for him. Five dollars would be almost a week's expense for his family, so Robert couldn't ask them for the money. However, Robert went inside the shop and asked if the shopkeeper could keep it for him. Luckily, the shopkeeper promised to help.
However, it was hard to find a part-time job for a primary school student like him. After thinking about it for two weeks, Robert decided to make money by collecting and selling plastic bottles. Every day Robert dropped his coins inside a rusty soda tin and hid it in a secret corner. During the summer vacation, Robert kept to his secret task and diligently searched for his secret treasures while other boys were playing. Although he was often exhausted and hungry, the thought of the object in the shop window inspired him. Sometimes his mother would ask him what he was doing, but he always told a white lie, saying he was playing.
After working for almost a whole year, he finally saved enough money. With all the money in his tin can, he said to the shopkeeper excitedly, "I've got enough money."
That day was Mother's Day. The moment he got his gift, he raced home and placed a small box in his mother's wrinkled hand.
It was a jewel box, in which was a heart-shaped necklace with a note "To my dear Mum". The mother picked it up, tears rolling down her face.
All her life she had no jewellery except her wedding ring. Speechless, she smiled and held her son into her arms.
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On November 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the world famous violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Lincoln Centre in New York City. If you have ever been to a Perlman's concert, you know that getting on stage is not easy for him. He got polio(小儿麻痹症) as a child, and has to walk with the aid of two crutches(拐杖) now.
That night Perlman walked slowly to his chair. Then he sat down and began to play. But, suddenly, one of the strings on his violin broke, You could hear it break—it broke with a loud noise. People thought to themselves, "He will have to get up to either find another violin or find another string for this one. " But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he played from where he had stopped. He played with such passion and such power. Of course, everyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. But that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. You could see him changing and recomposing the piece in his head
When he finished, there was a silence in the room. Then people rose and cheered. We were all on our feet, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done. He smiled and then he said in a quiet tone, "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can make with what you have left.”
His words have stayed in my mind ever since I heard them. That is also the way of life. Perhaps our task in this quickly changing world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.
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Arriving in Sydney on his own from India, my husband , Rashid, stayed in a hotel for a short time while looking for a house for me and our children as we would go there when he made everything settled.
During the first week of his stay, he went out one day to do some shopping. He almost got lost in those unfamiliar blocks. When he came back in the late afternoon, he discovered that his suitcase was gone. He was extremely worried as the suitcase had all his important papers, including his passport. For a while, he was overwhelmed with depression with no one to turn to.
He reported the case to the police and then sat there，lost and lonely in a strange city, thinking of the terrible troubles of getting all the paperwork organized again from a distant country while trying to settle down in a new one.
Late in the evening, the phone rang. It was a stranger. He was trying to pronounce my husband’s name and was asking him a lot of questions. Then he said they had found a pile of papers in their trash can（垃圾桶）that had been left out on the footpath.
My husband rushed to their home to find a kind family holding all his papers and documents. Their young daughter had gone to the trash can and found a pile of unfamiliar papers. Her parents had carefully sorted them out, although they had found mainly foreign addresses on most of the documents. At last they had seen a half-written letter in the pile in which my husband had given his new telephone number to a friend. My husband was so excited about the return of the suitcase. Meanwhile, the kindness of this family made him feel that this place could be a new start, a new home for a brand new life.
注意：
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Paragraph 1:
In order to thank this family,…
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Paragraph 2:
A few weeks later, my children and I arrived in Sydney.
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My neighbour’s children love playing hide-and-seek as all children do, but no one imagines that a game they played last week would be reported in the local newspaper.
One afternoon, they were playing in the vacant lot down by the corner. Young Paul, who is only five years old, found the perfect place to hide. His sister, Natalie, had shut her eyes and was counting to ten when Paul noticed the mail box at the corner and that the metal door was standing open. The mailman had just taken several bags of mail and had carried them to his truck which was standing a few feet away. Paul climbed into the mail box and pulled the door closed so hard that it locked. Soon realizing what he had done, he became frightened and started crying. At that time, Natalie was looking for him everywhere but could not find him. It was lucky that she happened to stand at the corner for a minute and heard her brother’s cries. She immediately ran to tell the mailman who hurried back from his truck to unlock the metal door. Paul was now free, but he had such a bad fright that he could not stop crying. The mailman, however, soon found a way of making him laugh again. He told him that the next time he wanted to hide in a mail box, he should remember to put a stamp on himself!
One day, a poor boy who was trying to pay his way through school by selling goods door to door found that he only had one dime left. He was hungry so he decided to beg for a meal at the next house.
However, he lost his nerve when a lovely young woman opened the door. Instead of a meal he asked for a drink of water. She thought he looked hungry so she brought him a large glass of milk. He drank it slowly, and then asked, “How much do I owe you?”
“You don’t owe me anything,’’ she replied. “Mother has taught me never to accept pay for a kindness.” He said, “Then I thank you from the bottom of my heart.” As Howard Kelly left that house, he not only felt stronger physically, but it also increased his faith in the human race. He was about to give up and quit before this point.
Years later the young woman became critically ill. The local doctors were baffled. They finally sent her to the big city, where specialists can be called in to study her rare disease. Dr. Howard Kelly, now famous, was called in for the consultation. When he heard the name of the town she came from, a strange light filled his eyes. Immediately, he rose and went down through the hospital hall into her room.
Dressed in his doctor’s gown he went in to see her. He recognized her at once. He went back to the consultation room and determined to do his best to save her life. From that day on, he gave special attention to her case.
After a long struggle, the battle was won. Dr. Kelly requested the business office to pass the final bill to him for approval. He looked at it and then wrote something on the side. The bill was sent to her room. She was afraid to open it because she was positive that it would take the rest of her life to pay it off. Finally she looked, and the note on the side of the bill caught her attention. She read these words “Paid in full with a glass of milk. (Signed) Dr. Howard Kelly” and tears of joy flooded her eyes. Love spread through human hearts and hands.
The Voice in the Box
When I was quite young, my family had one of the first telephones in our neighborhood. I remember well the polished the wooden case fastened to the wall on the lower stair landing. But my first personal experience with this genie-in-the-receiver came one day while my mother was visiting a neighbor. Amusing myself at the tool bench, I hurt my finger with a hammer. The pain was terrible, but there didn’t seem to be much use crying, because there was no one home to offer sympathy. I walked around the house, and finally arriving at the stairway. The telephone! Quickly I ran for the footstool and dragged it to the landing. Climbing up, I unhooked the receiver and held it to my ear. “Information Please,” I said into the mouthpiece just above my head.
A click or two, and a small, clear voice spoke into my ear, “Information.”
“I hurt my finger…” I cried into the phone. The tears came readily enough, now that I had an audience.
“Isn’t your mother home?” came the question.
“Nobody’s home but me.” I sobbed.
“Are you bleeding?”
“No,” I replied. “I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts.”
“Can you open your icebox?” she asked. I said I could. “Then break off a little piece of ice and hold it on your finger. That will stop the hurt. Be careful when you use the icepick(冰锥),” she said, “And don’t cry. You’ll be all right.”
After that, I called Information Please for everything. I asked her for help with my geography and she told me where Philadelphia was, and the Orinoco, the romantic river that I was going to explore when I grew up. She helped me with my arithmetic, and she told me that my pet chipmunk----I had caught him in the park just the day before----would eat fruit and nuts.
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Dr. Margaret McCollum, 65, a doctor, met her theatre actor husband named Oswald Laurence, a graduate from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in 1992 on a tour of Morocco(摩洛哥) after he had left acting and was working for a tour and cruise company. The pair, who lived in north London, stayed together until Laurence’s death in 2007. Dr. McCollum said she used to frequently travel via Embankment station and loved hearing her husband’s voice saying “Mind the gap”, even when he was alive.
Laurence’s voice was used on the northbound Northern Line but was phased out until only Embankment station used it. Dr. McCollum, said she often went to the station to hear her husband’s voice and was devastated when “he wasn’t there” in November.
So, Dr. McCollum decided to do something to get her late husband’s voice back. She wrote an application to Transport for London (TFL, 伦敦交通局) to request the bosses to restore the voice. After receiving her request and hearing what the voice meant to Dr. McCollum, the bosses of TFL arranged a CD of her husband’s recording for her, which would allow her to listen to her husband’s voice whenever she wanted. And they also decided to restore the voice warning to Embankment station.
London Underground director Nigel Holness said, “We were very touched by her story, so our staff tracked down the recording and not only have they produced a copy of the announcement on CD for her to keep, but have also attempted to restore the announcement at Embankment station.”
Now comes the good news! The 40-year-old “mind the gap” recording once heard across the Tube is now returning to one station so that the window of the announcer can hear his voice.
“I feel so proud of my husband, whose voice has served London Tubes for decades,” said Dr. McCollum, with tears in her eyes, when interviewed.
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On a damp, boring, stay-in-house kind of day, I was a 4-year-old artist armed with a new treasure: my own big box of crayons (蜡笔). Somehow, the usual paper wasn’t special enough for these 64 perfect, sweet-smelling sticks of vivid color. I looked around for a bigger canvas (画布). If only there were hidden walls. Walls like the ones in Mom and Dad’s closet.
Slipping quietly down the hall to the bedroom, I stood on tiptoe to reach the string for the closet light. Words and images filled my mind faster than my hands could make them.
A brilliant rainbow was seen on one wall, with a cheery golden sun peeking out from above. Below, a giant shade tree supported a swing for stick-figure children. Around them, flowers bloomed everywhere.
My masterpiece! All my very own magic! I look in the walls, the colors and the brightness. Joy swelled inside me. But as my creativity wound down, a thought popped up: I’ve got to show Mom! Suddenly I was still.
Mom called out, “Dinner’s ready.” After a short time, her footsteps approached, and then finally, the closet door opened. I stood nervously in the corner.
Mom breathed in sharply, then stood frozen. Only her eyes moved as she slowly looked over my masterpiece. She was quiet for a long, long time. I didn’t dare breathe.
Finally, she turned to me.
“I like it,” she said, “No, I love it! I feel I have a new closet!”
Now, 45 years later, my childhood artwork is still there. And in my own house, the closet walls are masterpieces, too, created by my own daughters when they were little girls.
Every time I open a closet door, I remember that, as big as that box of crayons and white walls seemed when I was little, my monther’s love was the biggest thing of all.
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