It's a gift more than 50 years in the making.
In 1972, Barbara Rieco 1 a heartfelt children's book. It was based on a true story—a little boy she had met while she was a teenager living in Appalachia briefly. It was Barbara's first encounter with poverty (贫困). She came from a middle-class family. She got to see another side of life that she'd heard of, but never seen. It 2 her and had a lasting influence on her life.
3 her best efforts, the manuscript (手稿) faced repeated refusal from publishers, leading her to eventually 4 her dreams of becoming a published author.
Little did she know that, many years later, her grandson would turn those dreams into reality. Chad Cooper, a design and production professional based in New York City, decided to give his grandmother the perfect Christmas gift—the 5 of her treasured book. Visiting her for the holidays, he 6 took her original manuscript, along with the illustrations she had an artist draw years ago, and turned them into a beautifully printed book.
On Christmas morning, as Barbara 7 the carefully wrapped gift, she was overcome with emotion. The moment, 8 by Chad, quickly became popular with viewers, and the video went viral online.
"This is probably the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me in my entire life," Barbara says in the video.
Chad's 9 act didn't just end with the surprise. He also included a(n) 10 to the book on Amazon, making it accessible to the public. The 11 was nothing short of a miracle (奇迹)—within days, Barbara's 12 book skyrocketed to the top of the bestseller list.
As the world 13 this unexpected Christmas miracle, Barbara Rieco's book, now 14 by a new generation of readers, continues to spread joy and inspiration, proving that sometimes the most extraordinary 15 are the ones we never knew we needed.
Four Best City Walks in the US
Wisdom Tree Hike in Los Angeles
This is probably the most popular city walk in LA—a journey to the only tree to survive the 2007 Barham fire. The Wisdom Tree is at the top of Burbank Peak, which gives you great views all over Los Angeles.
The walk: Head up Wonder View Drive from Lake Hollywood Drive, and you will reach a gate at the end of the paved area. After you pass through, you'll get to a wide-open area and the trail to the Wisdom Tree is to your right.
SoHo/TriBeCa Walking Tour in New York City
Heading down to SoHo and TriBeCa will give you the feeling of being in another city within NYC. The small side streets hide interesting buildings and unique shops, as well as historic spots.
The walk: Head south from the Broadway-Lafayette Street subway station, and get lost among the art galleries, with a first sweet stop at the Museum of Ice Cream. Next, explore the Prince Street shops, then head east to Greene Street. Here, you can find some of the finest examples of cast-iron architecture in the city.
The Boardwalk Trail in Austin
In Austin, you'll be charmed by art. The Boardwalk Trail aims to build a 7,250-foot walkway filled with works of art and fantastic views of the city. Don't miss the 36 bronze belts designed by artist Ken Little, with country music song lyrics written on each.
The walk: You can access the Boardwalk Trail from several points. The full trail is 10 miles long, where you can enjoy the peaceful waterside views and the skyline of Austin at sunset.
Art Walk in Denver
Denver is a great destination in itself, with lots of cultural attractions, live music and excellent restaurants. The city's Art District on Santa Fe (ADSF) has a delightful 2.7-mile path that leads you to art galleries and excellent food and drink stops.
The walk: From the charming Victorian house where you can admire the violins and guitars handcrafted by artists, make your way north to the Sunken Gardens, then the streets busy with art galleries and shops. Every first Friday of the month, the ADSF puts on an organized Art Walk on Santa Fe Drive. Art lovers have an opportunity to connect and share the experience of immersing (使沉浸) themselves in Denver's art scene.
The first time Terry attended a meeting of the Tahquamenon Sportsmen's Club, they made him vice president—and he wasn't even a member. By his second visit, the few members left in the dying organization had put him in charge of the whole thing.
The club began in the 1920s. Back then, hunting and fishing were pastimes in rural areas. The culture, however, is different now. When Terry took over the century-old club, it was on its last legs. Only a couple dozen members remained, and most were older than its new 68-year-old president. They were no longer doing the things they'd been known for. Worst of all, their famous fishing tackle party had been canceled twice, once just because they simply didn't have enough members to pull it off.
He wanted to push hard to keep the organization going, because it is one of the things that make up the heart and soul of Newberry. He had to look for new members. He needed to broaden the club's offerings to attract younger people. More than anything else, he had to make sure the tackle party for kids took place once again.
Little by little, Terry's efforts worked. People began asking about memberships. Some sent contributions. Others offered their time. A local company donated new siding for the clubhouse. Someone else said they would put a new roof on it. Someone came and mowed the lawn (草坪) when it got long in the summer. Others cleared the snow in the winter. All over town, people and businesses promised to help the club survive and succeed.
On the day of the annual Kids Tackle Party, hundreds of kids and their families appeared. Terry started the event with a speech. A local fishing expert gave tips on how to catch fish. Then, one at a time, each of the 245 kids was called by name, and every one of them got a fishing pole and a tackle box. It took more than three hours to get through everyone who showed up. It was a big event, one that came close to dying, but was finally back.
Terry fought to keep the club and party for kids, a longtime tradition in the Newberry community, going. Traditions are dying these days, but he was able to get people to hold onto this one.
In the 1970s, a gorilla (大猩猩) known as Koko became world-famous when scientists taught her to use human sign language to communicate with people. There were numerous attempts in the mid-1900s to teach human language to nonhumans, such as Koko. But what we should have been thinking about was their abilities to engage in complex communication on their own terms instead of trying to teach an animal to talk to us in human language.
Today scientists are trying to figure out how living things already share information using their particular methods. This new field of study is known as digital bioacoustics, and it involves using tools to understand the production of sounds and their effects on living things.
Scientists in this field are using sensors, which are devices that pick up and record information on physical or chemical conditions. Some are also using artificial intelligence (AI) technology, an approach that uses algorithms (算法). The same algorithms that we use in tools such as Google Translate to translate documents can also be used to find patterns in nonhuman communication.
Jeremy of Tel Aviv University studied nearly two dozen Egyptian fruit bats for two and a half months and recorded their vocalizations. His team adapted a voice-recognition program to study 15,000 of the sounds. The algorithm matched specific sounds with specific things the bats were doing. Using this program, the researchers were able to classify most of the bats' sounds. Jeremy and other researchers have found that bats have a much more complex language than we previously understood. Bats argue over food; they distinguish (区分) between genders when they communicate with one another and they have individual names, or "signature calls".
That's a great example of how AI is able to find these patterns from information gathered by sensors and microphones. AI reveals things that we can't hear with our human ears alone because most bat communication happens above our hearing range, and because bats speak much faster than we do, we have to slow it down to listen to it. So we cannot listen like a bat, but our computers can. And our computers can also speak back to the bat by producing specific patterns.
Digital bioacoustics is like an amazing hearing aid. It lets us listen to animals with both our digitally enhanced (增强的) ears and our imagination. This is slowly opening our minds not only to the wonderful sounds that nonhumans make, but to a fundamental set of questions about the so-called divide between humans and nonhumans, as well as our connection to other species. It's also opening up new ways to think about protecting living things and our relationship with the planet. It's pretty meaningful.
Most of us don't have any memories from the first three to four years of our lives. And when we do try to think back to our earliest memories, it's often unclear whether they are the real thing or just recollections based on photos or stories told to us by others. The phenomenon (现象), known as "childhood amnesia", has been puzzling psychologists for more than a century—and we still don't fully understand it.
At first glance, it may seem that the reason we don't remember being babies is that babies don't have a fully developed memory. But babies as young as six months can form both short-term memories that last for minutes and long-term memories that last weeks. In one study, six-month-olds who learned how to press a button to operate a toy train remembered how to perform this action for two to three weeks after they had last seen the toy. Preschoolers can remember events that go years back.
Of course, memory capabilities at these ages are not adult-like. In fact, developmental changes in basic memory processes have been put forward as an explanation for childhood amnesia. These basic processes involve several brain regions and include forming, maintaining and then later retrieving (检索) the memory. For example, the hippocampus, thought to be responsible for forming memories, continues developing until the age of seven. The typical boundary for the offset of childhood amnesia—three and a half years—changes with age. Children and teenagers have earlier memories than adults do. This suggests that the problem may be less with forming memories than with maintaining them.
But this does not seem to be the whole story; language also plays a role. From the ages of one to six, children progress from the one-word stage of speaking to becoming fluent in their native language(s), so there are major changes in their verbal (言语的) ability that overlap with the childhood amnesia period. This includes using the past tense, and memory-related words such as "remember" and "forget".
It's true to some extent that a child's ability to verbalize about an event at the time that it happened predicts how well they remember it months or years later. One lab group conducted this work by interviewing young children brought to accident and emergency departments for common childhood injuries. Those over 26 months, who could verbalize about the event at the time, recalled (回忆起) it up to five years later, while those under 26 months, who could not talk about it, recalled little or nothing.
Even if we can't clearly remember specific events from when we were very young, their accumulation, however, leaves lasting tracks that influence our behavior. The first few years of life are forgettable and yet powerful in shaping the adults that we become.
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Is it a tree? Is it a bear? If you're looking at a tree in the shape of a bear, it's a topiary. A topiary is a tree or bush that is trained into a shape. Topiaries are a kind of sculpture. Growing topiary garden takes both time and skill.
The first thing a topiary gardener does is make a drawing. The drawing shows the form the gardener would like a tree or bush to take. The gardener then chooses the bush for the topiary. It may be one that has just been planted or one that is already in place. Special bushes are used for topiaries. These bushes are yew, privet, or boxwood.
In June of the plant's first year, the gardener looks for new leaves. When the leaves grow, it is time to shape the bottom of the bush. The gardener shapes the bottom of the bush for about five years. The top is not trimmed during this time.
In the fifth year, the bush grows tall enough for shaping. That's when the gardener begins to shape the whole bush. Sometimes branches are bent (使弯曲) to form a shape. The gardener ties the branches in place.
Once a topiary has been started, it needs care all year. In summer it must be clipped many times to keep its shape. This cutting also helps the bush grow. In winter the bushes don't grow. The gardeners have to brush snow off the plants. Snow can hurt the flat parts of the plants.
Topiary gardening is a very old art. The Romans did it in the first century. In the sixteenth century, people in Europe liked topiaries too. The Dutch and French grew very pretty topiaries in their neat gardens. In the late 1600s, topiaries were also grown in America. Today, there is a topiary garden in Williamsburg, Virginia. It's much like a garden that grew there hundreds of years ago.
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