Staying-at-home proves to be effective in slowing the spread of the virus, but loneliness can be tough for many. Luckily, in the age of social media, we are never truly alone. And with the extra time spent indoors, artists are stepping up to help us all with the following clubs.

Drawing from Distance by Sarah Beth Morgan

Let’s shine some light during this trying time and encourage social distancing! I’m starting this tomorrow myself — but from what I offer, take whatever you please. No rules! Just have fun!

Stayathome Art Club by Carson Ellis

Hello! I’ll be posting art homework here every weekday morning when I can. They’ll be designed for kids and grownups alike. Here is your first homework: Draw a picture of yourself from the shoulders up. You can follow some useful examples. If you want to share or see other people’s self-picture, use these hashtags: #Stayathomeartclub# QACselfportrait

30-Day indoor Art by Danielle Krysa

One month of avoiding crowds? I’m in! I challenge you to use this time inside to make one piece every day from now until mid April. Please join me in playing around with some painting ideas that have been rolling around in my head but haven’t found their way onto paper yet. Stay at home, make art, save someone’s life.

DIY from Illustoria Magazine

We have been so inspired to see our community come together to provide easy art projects for families during this stay-at-home-time! DIY is actually a fantastic way to spark your imagination without breaking a sweat. A video every day will teach you how to DIY something.

In many countries of the world, people can confidently tell you the meaning of their town or city, but most people who live in Manchester, Oxford or Birmingham would not be able to explain what the name of their city means. The name of every British town and city, however, has a long history.

Two thousand years ago, most people living in Britain were Celts. Even the word “Britain" is Celtic (凯尔特语).Then the Romans arrived and built camps which became cities called “castra". This is why there are so many place names in England which end in "-chester" or “-caster" Manchester, for example.

The Romans never reached Wales or Scotland, and many place names there are Celtic. For example,Welsh place names that begin with “Llan" come from the Celtic word for "church".

After the Romans left Britain, it was attacked by the Anglo-Saxons who were from the area of Europe that is now Germany and Holland. The names of their villages often ended in “-ham" or “-ton". Some got their names from the leader of the village.So Birmingham for example, means "Beormund's village”

The Anglo-Saxons were farmers and the landscape was very important to them, so we have villages called Upton (village on a hill)——a good place to build a village and Moreton (“village by a lake”)where floods could make life hard. Place names that end in “-ford" (a place where you could cross a river) also describe the location of Anglo-Saxon villages.

Finally, in 1066 England became Norman—the Normans gave us the place name "grange", which means farm.

And how about London? Experts cannot agree. The Romans called the city Londinium, but they were not the first inhabitants (居民). People once believed that the United Kingdom’s capital city got its name from the castle of a King called Lud   but this is very unlikely. Our best guess today is that the name comes from a Celtic word meaning a fast-flowing river. Like a number of British place names, its history is lost in time.

Simply being quiet is a growing appeal. Lots of business have appeared to meet a rising demand for quiet time, from silent weekend getaways to silent dining, silent reading parties and even silent dating. Silence can mean different things to different people. We are usually silent only with those closest to us. So there is something almost radical(不同凡响的)about the recent trend towards enjoying silence with strangers.

Mariel started a regular silent reading party in Dundee just under a year ago. Readers bring their books and meet in a bar, where they read together in silence for an hour or sometimes two and then put their books away to chat and have a drink. “When the reading party starts, everything goes quiet,” says Mariel, “ It’s a little bit surreal (超现实的), especially in what is usually a noisy bar. However, there is something special about sharing the silence with others. It offers a chance to escape from reality; everyone is so busy with work and with technology being ever present. An event like this gives people the opportunity to escape these things for a while.”

Honi Ryan is an artist based in Berlin who began hosting silent dinner back in 2006. The rules of the dinner are: no talking, no using your voice, no reading or writing, trying to make as little noise as possible, not connecting with technology, and staying for at least two hours. So far she has taken her silent dinner project to Mexico, the US, Australia and China. “It’s evident that the age-old connections we make over food do not depend on the words around it. Silence creates the space for the people and places involved to fill with whatever is needed; it is quite different from our usual social behaviors.”

We all use different ways to remember ideas, facts and things we need to store. Remembering is an extremely important part of our learning experience. Information process, storage and recall encourage purposeful learning.

But the brain doesn’t store everything we want or need for future use. It makes choices and tends to remember information that forms a memorable pattern. Things you learned recently can be particularly difficult to remember because they haven’t taken root in your mind.

“Forgetting allows us to remember what is really important to our survival. We forget much of what we read, watch, and think directly every day.” writes John Medina in his book, Brain Rules.

How do you avoid losing 90%of what you’ve learned? An inspiring writer and speaker Zig Ziglar once said: “Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.”

Repetition has been a remembering skill for ages. When you hear or read something once，you don’t really learn it-at least not well enough to store the new information for long. The right kind of repetition can do wonders for your memory. People learn or remember better by repeating things or getting exposed to information many times. Others repeat particular steps or processes deliberately a number of times or even years to become better at certain skills.

Daniel Coyle explains in his book, The Little Book of Talent:“...closing the book and writing a summary, even short ones, forces you to figure out the key points, process and organize those ideas so they make sense, and write them on the page. When you pick it back up weeks later, reread all of your notes or highlights to strengthen the ideas even further.”

People learn by repeating things. Better learning is a repetition process. Every time we repetitively access something we already know, we increase the memory’s stored value.

A．The brain tends to store 90% of the things we learn.

B．The fresher the information is the easier to remember.

C．Thinking is more important than remembering in study.

D．The brain tends to choose and keep what it thinks important.

At an airport I overheard a father and a daughter in their last moments together. It had announced her plane's________ and standing near the door, he said to his daughter, “I love you. I wish you enough. She said. “Daddy, our life together has been ________ enough. Your love is all I ________ needed. I wish you enough, too? Daddy. They kissed good-bye and she left.

He walked over toward the window where I ________. I could see he wanted to cry. I tried not to ________ his privacy（隐私），but he welcomed me in by asking, “Did you ever say good-bye to someone you love, knowing it would be forever?, “Yes, I have,” I ________. Saying that brought________ memories I had of expressing my love and ________ for all my Dad had done for me. After thirty seconds of silence. “Forgive me for asking, but why is this a/an   forever good-bye?" I asked. “I am old and she lives much too far away. The _______ is that her next trip back will be for my funeral(葬礼), ” he said. “When you were saying good-bye I heard you say, "I wish you enough” May I ask what that means?" He began to ________.

“That's a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My ________used to say it to everyone. ” He paused for a moment and _______ as if trying to remember it in detail, he smiled even more. “When we said I wish you enough, we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with enough good things to support them," he continued and then turning toward me he shared the following as if he were reciting it from ________.

“I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude________. I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more. I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive. I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger . I wish you enough gain to ________your wanting. I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you have. I wish enough Hellos to get you through the final “ Good-bye.” He then began to sob and walked away.

Betty Ford was born in 1918 in Chicago. Her family moved to Michigan     36     she was young. Betty did everything     37    (careful)and enjoyed music best. After high school, she went to school     38    (learn)more about dancing. Later on, she met a famous     39    (dance), Martha Graham. She joined Graham's troupe(表演团)in New York. After five years, Betty moved back to Machigan     40    started a dancing group there. She taught dancing to children with disabilities. Betty met Gerald Ford in 1947. They got     41    (marry)the next year. Gerald chose to work for Congress(国会)after     42    (wed). Betty took care     43     their children. A short time     44    (late), Nixon gave up his position of the president. As a result, Gerald Ford     45    (elect)president and Betty became the First Lady.

I’m very honored to give you a speech on music.

Thank you!