A Selection of Muscgms and Attractions in Washington DC
The Tidal Basin
The basin, part of the West Potomac Park, is surrounded by a path that's perfect for walking, running or cycling. The memorials to Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King Junior are two highlights surrounding the lake. It is the location most associated with Washington's Cherry Blossom (樱花) Festival that takes place each spring.
National Museum of African American History and Culture
The museum opened in late 2016 after more than a decade of planning. It is dedicated to African American history and culture and is organized like a vertical timeline, starting with the Atlantic slave trade on the 1400s and moving up to the 21st century. Higher up are exhibitions on African American music, theatre and art. It's a powerful experience and also very popular: you'll have to apply for a timed ticket to enter.
The Newseum
Further along Pennsylvania Avenue is the Newseum, loved for the 800 newspaper front pages from around the world that are hung outside every morning. Inside, there are moving exhibits showing how important historical events have been reported, such as the September 11 attacks. Alongside newspaper pages from the day after the attacks, there's a video exhibit highlighting the work of journalists reporting on the Twin Towers falling. A must if you're interested in journalism.
National Gallery of Art
The art gallery is an impressive space: two buildings, linked' underground, and a sculpture garden next door. Inside the light-filed East Building there's modern art, including a roomful of Jackson Pollock's murals (壁), Andy Warhol's Green Marilyn and Roy Lichtenstein's Look Mickey.
The classical West Building tends to house older artwork: the European impressonists and Italian Renaissance art (from artists including Da Vinci and Raphael) are two highlights.
I know next to nothing about baseball. When in the right field during P. E. as a boy, I prayed the ball wouldn't come to me. It took a miracle（奇迹）for me to catch it. Yet I later became the father of two boys, Will and Tim（8 and5）, who were both interested in baseball. On Saturday mornings, I'd take Will out to the playground and play catch with him. Thanks to my weak arm, the ball dropped before he could catch it. After many misses one day, he said, "How am I ever going to make the major leagues?" "You got the wrong dad, kid," I thought. Baseball isn't my thing.
Still, I wanted to give my kids confidence on the field. There was an official Little League in our area, but it was super-competitive and primarily targeted older boys. What if we had something more low-key, something that welcomed boys and girls, and younger ones?
I shared the idea with some neighbors. "That would be great!" they said. Now who could organize such a thing? Not me. I tried to put the idea aside, but it wouldn't leave me. I finally decided that I must do something about it, So I called the city's recreation department, explaining that some families wanted to start a baseball league in our neighborhood. Were there any fields for that? They bounced me around. Finally, I spoke to the official in charge. I got butterflies in my stomach. What if he said no? "Yes, we have something for you," the man said, hearing my request. We got two fields for four hours every Sunday morning. Our league was founded. What a joy it was to sit on the benches, watching Will and Tim playing baseball! How grateful I was for other parents who did the coaching! And I became the most unlikely baseball commissioner（专员）ever.
Many years have passed. Now Will and Tim are new dads, and I can't wait to see what they'll have to do. I know better than anyone: Parenthood calls you to do the most unlikely things.
One by one, prejudices are disappearing in the West. People may hold private suspicions that other people's race or sex makes them inferior—but to say so openly is totally taboo(禁忌). One old prejudice remains undisturbed, though. Just ask a childless person.
They are not charged to special taxes, as they were in Soviet Russia; nor are they driven from their homes, as they still are in some poor countries. The childless nonetheless come in for a lot of criticism. Some point out that non-parents are failing to produce the future workers who will pay for their pensions. Childless politicians are charged with not having a proper stake in society. "He talks to us about the future, but he doesn't have children!" complained Jean-Marie Le Pen, co-founder of the National Front party, of Emmanuel Macron, who went on to win the French presidency. Similar attacks on Theresa May and Angela Merkel also failed but researchers find that many voters quietly agree.
If non-breeders are selfish, they have a strange way of showing it. They are more likely to set up charitable foundations than people with children, and much more likely to donate money to good causes. According to one American estimate, the mere fact of not having children raises the amount a person leaves to charity by a little over $10,000. The childless are thus a small but useful counterweight to the world's parents, who stop social stability by passing on their social and economic advantages to their children.
The charge that childless people fail to pull their weight in population is correct, but is less serious than it appears. Those who do not have children do put pressure on public pension systems. Governments have to do unpopular things like making pensions less generous, as Japan has done, or accepting more immigrants, as some Western countries have done. But to sustain public pensions in the long term, countries do not actually need more parents. What they need instead is more babies. It is possible to combine a high rate of childlessness with a high birth rate, provided people who become parents have more than one or two children. That was the pattern in many Western countries a century ago. Ireland, yet another country with a childless leader, still manages it today.
The childless also do everyone else a favor by creating wonderful works of art. British novelists have been especially likely to have no offspring: think of Hilary Mantel, P.G Wodehouse and the Bronte sisters. In September last year Britain put Jane Austen on its ten-pound note. That decision was controversial, though it was hard to see why. Few people have written as shrewdly about money or about families even though Austen did not marry, and had no children.
The rise of online shopping has had a profound impact on the retail industry. Consumers now have the convenience of browsing and purchasing products from the comfort of their homes. This shift has not only changed the way people shop but also forced traditional brick-and-mortar stores to adapt or risk going out of business.
However, online shopping is not without its challenges. One major concern is the issue of product quality. When purchasing items online, customers cannot physically inspect the goods before making a purchase, which can lead to disappointment upon receipt. Another problem is the delay in delivery. Despite the efforts of logistics companies to improve their services, there are still instances where packages arrive late or get lost in transit.
Who can imagine life today without an Automated Teller Machine（ATM）? They are available in considerable numbers throughout the world.
The first ATM was the brainchild of an enterprising Turkish-American inventor Luther George Simjian. When the idea of an automated banking machine struck him, he registered 20 patents before any bank agreed to give it a trial run. It is easy to assume that the inventor of such a popular machine was laughing all the way to the bank. Within six months of its operation in New York in 1939, the device was removed due to lack of customer acceptance.
It was not until 1967, nearly 30 years later, that Barclays Bank, in a careful launch, rolled out a self-service machine in London, England, which proved successful. The first cash machine relied on customers' use of prepaid tokens（代币）to get envelopes with a fixed amount of cash inside.
The banks' principle was seemingly customer service. But it would be foolish to minimize the many advantages that cash machines provided to the banks themselves. By the late 1970s, the highest fixed cost for the average large bank was its branches. The greatest variable cost and loss to profits were its staff. Ban k accounts swiftly recognized that self-service operations could reduce bank branch staff cost by70 percent.
Experts quickly determined that public acceptance of ATMs counted on convenience, simplicity, speed, security and trust. For maximum efficiency, ATMs had to be located near public transport or in a shopping mall, not at a branch. The busier and more crowded the location, obviously, the better. Now, roughly 75percent of all cash provided by banks to their customers comes from cash machines..
Public acceptance of deposits（存款）by machine was significantly slower than customers' usage of ATMs for withdrawals. In general, it seems that customers sometimes still prefer and trust an over-the-counter transaction（交易）for deposits.
A．Location, in particular, was a key factor.
B．His cash machine, however, didn't prove durable.
C．The device was relatively primitive, at least by today's standards.
D．However, cash machines posed some interesting, unanswered questions.
E．An interesting factor was the issue of bio-statistics for customer identification.
F．Devices originally dismissed by the public are now recognized as essential institutions.
G．Soon afterwards, many other banks became admittedly champions of the cash machine.
Have you ever heard of and seen Canadian geese? Do you know that they 1 fresh grass and seeds?
Canadian geese have a good 2 for their politeness. They always bow down to you whenever you walk by. However, I have recently found that they can sometimes be 3 to their peers, especially on occasions when they quarrel for food——yes, these 4 gentlemen do quarrel, just for something to eat
Yesterday I witnessed two Canadian Geese arguing 5 for a clump(草丛) of beautiful fresh grass. The clump was 6 right in the middle of them, while the two were shouting noisily, stretching their necks as long as they could to look aggressively at each other. It's 7 to witness the "impolite" side of Canadian geese. Hence, I couldn't help 8 my morning walk, standing still to watch these "gentlemen" quarreling. Interestingly, after a short while, a truck roared past their feast, disturbing their 9 conversation. The two geese were equally 10 by the massive "monster", thus giving up their conversation.
Would they start quarreling again? I stood still, 11 the ridiculous question and waited. Beyond my expectation, right after the truck's passing by, the two geese immediately lost their 12 for quarreling as if they had forgotten all about what had happened. Even the two turned around and left the 13 in opposite directions as if nothing had happened. They left only me there, imagining what might have happened without the 14 .
They got along harmoniously again. Sometimes it's not that bad to be 15 .
World Poetry Day takes place each year March 21 to promote the teaching of poetry, as well as the publishing, writing, and reading of this form of writing around the world.
It (declare) by UNESCO in 1999 in the hopes of supporting language diversity through poetic expression and increasing the opportunity for endangered languages (hear). World Poetry Day was about giving fresh drive and (recognize) to international, regional, and national poetry movements. It also focused on promoting a return to the oral (口头的) tradition of poetry recitals, as well as (strengthen) the association between poetry and other forms of expression, such as dance, music, and painting.
The day is celebrated (global). Government agencies, community groups and individuals get involved in promoting or participating in the day, which enables children to learn and enjoy (variety) of poetry. It is a time students are busy examining poets and learning about different types of poetry. Poets may be invited to read and share their work to audience at book stores and schools. Ceremonies are held to honor poets of (remark) achievements.
All in all, it's a day for poetry: ancient art form that still enriches our understanding of humanity today.
I was always afraid of water. This fear could not be explained, but I knew that the moment I stepped near any body of water, my legs would turn to jelly (果冻). I would imagine myself drowning in the water and thrashing around (乱扑腾) helplessly. That was why I had never gone into a swimming pool until swimming became a school requirement. My school wanted all pupils to pass a swimming test, and if they could not, then they would have to attend weekly swimming lessons in school, which made me tremble.
Thus, my parents signed me up for swimming lessons at the pool near my house. With great unwillingness, I attended those weekly lessons, and each one was great suffering for me. I was naturally clumsy, and my fear of water did not help at all. Every lesson, I would be spending my time thrashing about in the water, while my classmates would be swimming countless laps effortlessly and even turning over like dolphins in the water. How was I going to pass the test at this rate?
In my swimming class, there was an exceptionally athletic girl. Tall and muscular, her name was Kathy. She was the best swimmer in our class and always looked at me with disdain (鄙视), especially when I thrashed about hopelessly in the water.
Once, after a particularly long and hard swimming lesson, I spotted Kathy swimming gracefully in the pool. Gathering my courage, I asked gently, "Kathy, can you teach me to swim?" She stared at me coldly. It was as if I stood at the edge of an endless ocean of inadequacy, my fears appearing like dark storm clouds threatening to drown me. Yet, in that moment, a glimmer of hope flashed within me, a desperate longing for guidance and acceptance. Would Kathy's icy exterior (外表) melt under the warmth of empathy, or would I remain forever thrashing in the sea of my own fears?
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
To my surprise, she nodded after a few moments of silence.
……
"Congratulations!" Kathy said when she learnt I had passed the swimming test.
