USA TODAY 10Best's Readers Choice Awards are currently on hold. We asked our readers to vote for the top events across six categories: music, general food, specialty food, film, cultural and emerging industries (founded in the past five years). These are some of the winners:
Kutztown Folk Festival
The nine-day Kutztown Folk Festival is the nation's oldest continuously operated folk life festival, drawing visitors from around the globe. A celebration of Pennsylvania Dutch culture and heritage, the event includes America's largest quilt sale, 200 craftsmen and folk artists, local food and family friendly entertainment.
Water Lantern Festival
The Water Lantern Festival is all about connections. Magical nights in cities across the U.S. include food, live music and the beauty of thousands of lanterns decorated with letters of love, hope and dreams floating on the water.
Carnaval of Quebec
The Quebec Carnaval is a 10-day festival of winter, the world's largest, complete with night parades (庆祝游行), ice skating, snow sculptures and a towering ice palace. Other highlights include ice canoe racing, a sugar shack and iconic Caribou drinks.
San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade
San Francisco has celebrated its Chinese heritage during its annual Chinese New Year Festival & Parade since just after the Gold Rush. The parade ranks among the best in the world, with 100 units, fancy costumes, fireworks and a 268-foot Golden Dragon, which takes a team of 100 men and women to march through the streets. It has become one of the largest events of its kind in the world, drawing some three million spectators and television viewers.
The beloved children's author Tomie dePaola, who was born in Connecticut on September 15, 1934 and whose imaginative and warm-hearted works crossed generations and continents, died Monday at age 85. His death was announced, without details, on social media by his assistant, Bob Hechtel.
DePaola's works covered many areas of his imagination, from a magical tale centered on a kind and caring Calabrian grandmother — Strega Nona, which won the Caldecott Honor Award in 1976 — to retelling the inspiring Comanche story of The Legend of the Bluebonnet. In 2000, he won a Newbery Honor for his book 26 Fairmount Avenue, which described his early childhood. Quiet, published in 1980s, is one of his bestselling books. By dePaola's own count, he worked on some 270 books-the first in 1965, and the most recent published last year.
In 2011, he won a lifetime prize, the Children's Literature Legacy Award, which praised his "considerable and lasting contribution to literature for children." In all, nearly 25 million copies of his books have been sold around the world.
Along with his work as an author, dePaola taught art and theater at various colleges in California, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. For many years, he made his home in New London, N.H.
In 1998, dePaola told a radio reporter that he hoped to recognize children for all their natural abilities. "As a grown-up," he said, "I want to give children the credit for everything I can: their courage, their humor, their love, their intellectual abilities, their abilities to be fair, their abilities to be unfair. But I do wish that we grown-ups would give children lots of credit for these temporary kinds of qualities that they have."
For decades, Americans have been sorting their trash believing that most plastic could be recycled. But the truth is that the vast majority of all plastic produced can't be or won't be recycled. In 40 years, less than 10% of plastic has been recycled.
A news programme Frontline, by NPR and the PBS, found that oil and gas companies — the makers of plastic — have known that all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite. The plastics industry officials said the industry is providing money for new technology that they believe will get recycling plastic up to scale. The goal, they said, is to recycle 100% of the plastic they make in 5 years.
But the more plastic is recycled, the less money the industry will make by selling new plastic. And those profits have become increasingly important. Companies have told shareholders (股东) that profits from using oil and gas for transport are expected to decline in coming years with the increasing use of electric cars. The industry leaders expect oil and gas demands from the chemical industry will be much greater than the demand from the transport side in the coming decade. Plastic production overall is now expected to rise three times by 2050, and once again, the industry is spending money on advertisements and public relations to promote plastic recycling.
Plastic is now more common than it's ever been and harder to recycle. Gas prices remain at historic lows, making new plastic cheaper than recycled plastic. And the industry now produces many more different — and more complex — kinds of plastics that are more costly to sort and in many cases can't be recycled at all. Efforts to reduce plastic use are mounting nationwide, but any plan to slow the growth of plastic will face an industry with billions of dollars of future profits to lose.
Why is poverty so difficult to overcome? Why are poorer people less likely to spend money on their own learning and ability development, but more likely to be addicted to television and video games?
In the past, a poor person was normally considered to have bad virtue or have no ambition. The Nobel Prize winner Banerjee corrects such views and explains the truth behind the poor. Poor people tend to live with more worries in their lives, he said, so they need tools such as televisions, cell phones, junk food and video games to get rid of worries more than others. But learning something often takes a lot of time and money to get rewards, while the poor are often impatient due to economic (经济的) reasons, and their life in the meantime is getting more boring.
Banerjee's research has found that the poor often need to borrow short-term loans (贷款) Thus, the poor tend to take higher financial risks — they often have unstable incomes and are unable to get money to start a business from banks, so they rely more on these high-interest loans. And these small loans put a brake on their savings against risks.
How could the poor step into the middle class? Maybe starting a business is a way out. But for the extremely poor, it's impossible to get help from banks to start a business. In most cases, a more practical option is getting a job in government agencies because comparatively speaking, government jobs are very stable, which give the poor the opportunities to be hired for the long term, to increase the "bandwidth (带宽) " of their thinking, and thus making it possible for families to move from poverty to the middle class.
What's the role of government then? When the market can't solve a problem, the government will solve it. And the problem behind the poor is actually the failure of the market. The poor often lack the necessary information to make the right choices and they often carry too much responsibility for their survival to make the best choices. In this sense, Banerjee's research provides a new perspective for governments to understand poverty, so that policies can be tailored to reduce poverty and eventually remove it.
I dislike making school lunches. Each morning, I am in a hurry busy slicing cucumbers, washing berries, and filling water bottles, all the while feeling annoyed and even slightly angry. The lunches aren't particularly challenging to prepare. My daughters are content with the food in their lunch box. There's no good reason for my annoyance.
And then one morning a thought suddenly came into my mind — I am so lucky.
Within seconds, those four words bloomed throughout my awareness. I am so lucky to live in a home with electricity, running water, and a functional refrigerator. I am so lucky to live near a grocery store with a plentiful selection of fresh food and snacks and so lucky to have enough money to afford them. I am so lucky to have two daughters who are healthy enough to eat and digest the food I send with them.
I can't tell you where this sudden burst of gratitude came from, but I do know this: that small shift immediately made my morning lunch routine extremely easier. Rather than feeling impatient and annoyed, I felt calm and pleased. Rather than mentally complaining through the whole morning, I was able to appreciate my situation.
I am so grateful for peanut butter. Thank goodness for this magical source of protein that my daughters will actually eat. And jelly, sweet, sweet, jelly. I can't forget sliced bread — oh, the magic of sliced bread! Imagine if I had to cut those slices myself each morning.
Don't get me wrong — I still don't enjoy making lunches. It gives me just enough space from my bad temper to choose a different response to whatever is going on.
A. Even so, I can't stand it.
B. What a mess that would be!
C. My husband also likes my breakfast.
D. All I could think about was how fortunate I am.
E. I found the cure for my bad feelings that morning.
F. I am so lucky to have a job and to have so many good workmates.
G. But the process doesn't feel like such a struggle when I remember to be grateful.
Last week, my grandfather was explaining his favorite words, "Nothing is ever easy." Yesterday, I happened to 1 a bumblebee in the living room. I thought 2 the bee would take no more than five minutes. But an hour 3, the bee remained there. All that had 4 was that the living room was in a mess and that I felt 5 and had to lie on the sofa to take a breath. I did not expect to 6 an hour on such a tiny 7, but suddenly I understood what my grandfather meant.
It is not only 8 that we tend to underestimate (低估) — we have to bear other unexpected 9. We often imagine everything can work in our 10, but we seldom think of all the 11 things that could affect us. However, it is important to remember that your day or week or year might not 12 as planned, and that is completely 13. It is absolutely acceptable to feel challenged 14 at a task you thought was 15 because that is part of life.
If you can accept that nothing will ever be easy, then life might seem slightly more 16. In middle school, I thought high school might be easier since I could choose the 17 I wanted to take. In high school, I thought college might be easier because I could have a schedule best suited for myself. 18 each time, I was both wrong and 19. After accepting that school wouldn't (and shouldn't) be easy, I found myself with a more positive attitude and improved my 20.
Visiting a parent at work can open up all sorts of career (possibility). Here's one example of how it inspires their goals for the future.
My dad owns a few insurance agencies, so basically, I can go there on any day. Onway to one of his agencies, I would pretend I (make) important calls on the car phone and ignored my father. When I got there, I loved running through the halls. While at work, my favorite thing was to scan things. I've always known I wanted to work with something (challenge). Scanning felt like the only (create) thing to do at an insurance agency. People asked I was going to work at the office when I got out of college, and I thought the answer was a hard no. I went to graduate school (get) my Master's in Business and Art Direction. I moved to New York to work as an art director for a bit. Surprisingly, a few years later, I am back in Virginia where I (grow) up and have just launched my very own insurance platform with my wife, Jade and, of course, Dad's help. We offer business insurance to the self-employed. My dad is the (much) positive person I've ever met. He's always available and gives great advice.
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删除：把多余的词用斜线 (＼) 划掉。
修改：在错的词下画一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：
1．每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；
2．只允许修改10处，多者(从第11处起)不计分。
Last Saturday I cooked supper for my family. The whole morning, I was on the Net, studying what to make delicious food out. After lunch, I went to the market and bought some vegetables and pork. Back home, I began washed the pork and cut them into cubes. The pork should be cooked firstly because it would take a long time. When the pork is being boiled, I continued toprepare the other dishes. After two hour of hard work, three dishes and a big bowl soup were on the dinner table. Mom and Dad all congratulated me. They said it was the best supper they have ever had!
内容包括：
1）感谢关注；
2）助人经过；
3）你的感受。
注意：
1）词数100左右；
2）可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
