Not so long ago, most people didn't know who Shelly Ann FrancisPryce was going to become. She was just an average high school athlete. There was every indication that she was just another American teenager without much of a future. However, one person wants to change this. Stephen Francis observed then eighteen-year-old Shelly Ann as a track meet and was convinced that he had seen the beginnings of true greatness. Her time were not exactly impressive, but even so, he sensed there was something trying to get out, something the other coaches had overlooked when they had assessed her and found her lacking. He decided to offer Shelly Ann a place in his very strict training sessions. Their cooperation quickly produced results, and a few years later at Jamaica's Olympic trails in early 2008, Shelly-Ann, who at that time only ranked number 70 in the world, beat Jamaica's unchallenged queen of the sprint(短跑).
“Where did she come from?” asked an astonished sprinting world, before concluding that she must be one of those one-hit wonders that spring up from time to time, only to disappear again without signs. But Shelly-Ann was to prove that she was anything but a one-hit wonder. At the Beijing Olympics she swept away any doubts about her ability to perform consistently by becoming the first Jamaican woman ever to win the 100 meters Olympic gold. She did it again one year on at the World Championship in Berlin, becoming world champion with a time of 10.73— the fourth fastest time ever.
Shelly-Ann is a little woman with a big smile. She has a mental toughness that did not come about by chance. Her journey to becoming the fastest woman on earth has been anything but smooth and effortless. She grew up in one of Jamaica's toughest inner-city communities known as Waterhouse, where she lived in a one-room apartment, sleeping four in a bed with her motherand two brothers. Waterhouse, one of the poorest communities in Jamaica, is a really violent and overpopulated place. Several of Shelly-Ann's friends and family were caught up in the killings; one of her cousins was shot dead only a few streets away from where she lived. Sometimes her family didn't have enough to eat. She ran at the school championships barefooted because she couldn't afford shoes. Her mother Maxime, one of a family of fourteen, had been an athlete herself as a young girl but, like so many other girls in Waterhouse, had to stop after she had her first baby. Maxime's early entry into the adult world with its responsibilities gave her the determination to ensure that her kids wouldnot end up in Waterhouse's roundabout of poverty. One of the first things Maxime used to do with Shelly-Ann was taking her to the track, and she was ready to sacrifice everything.
It didn't take long for Shelly-Ann to realize that sports could be her way out of Waterhouse. On a summer evening in Beijing in2008, all those long, hard hours of work and commitment finally bore fruit. The barefoot kid who just a few years previously had been living in poverty, surrounded by criminals and violence, had written a new chapter in the history of sports.
But Shelly-Ann's victory was far greater than that. The night she won Olympic gold in Beijing, the routine murders in Waterhouse and the drug wars in the neighbouring streets stopped. The dark cloud above one of the world's toughest criminal neighbourhoods simply disappeared for a few days.“I have so much fire burning for my country,” Shellysaid. She plans to start a foundation for homeless children and wants to build acommunity centre in Waterhouse. She hopes to inspire the Jamaicans to lay down their weapons. She intends to fight to make it a woman's as well as a man's world.
As Muhammad Ali puts it, “Champions aren't made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them. A desire, a dream, a vision.” One of the things Shelly-Ann can be proud of is her understanding of this truth.
The kids in this village wear dirty, ragged clothes. They sleep beside cows and sheep in huts made of sticks and mud. They have no school. Yet they all can chant the English alphabet, and some can make words.
The key to their success : 20 tablet computers(平板电脑) dropped off in their Ethiopian village in February by a U.S. group called One Laptop Per Child.
The goal is to find out whether kids using today's new technology can teach themselves to read in places where no schools or teachers exist. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers analyzing the project data say they're already amazed. “What I think has already happened is that the kids have already learned more than they would have in one year of kindergarten,” said Matt Keller, who runs the Ethiopia program.
The fastest learner—and the first to turn on one of the tablets—is 8-year-old Kelbesa Negusse. The device's camera was disabled to save memory, yet within weeks Kelbesa had figured out its workings and made the camera work. He called himself a lion, a marker of accomplishment in Ethiopia.
With his tablet, Kelbasa rearranged the letters HSROE into one of the many English animal names he knows. Then he spelled words on his own. “Seven months ago he didn't know any English. That's unbelievable,” said Keller.
The project aims to get kids to a stage called “deep reading,” where they can read to learn. It won't be in Amharic, Ethiopia's first language, but in English, which is widely seen as the ticket to higher paying jobs.
Watching some children trying to catch butterflies one hot August afternoon, I was reminded of an incident in my own childhood．When I was a boy of 12 in South Carolina, something happened to me that cured me forever of wanting to put any wild creature in a cage.
We lived on the edge of a wood, and every evening at dusk the mockingbirds would come and rest in the trees and sing. There isn't a musical instrument made by man that can produce a more beautiful sound than the song of the mockingbird.
I decided that I would catch a young bird and keep it in a cage and in that way would have my own private musician.
I finally succeeded in catching one and put it in a cage. At first, in its fright at being captured, the bird fluttered about the cage, but eventually it settled down in its new home. I felt very pleased with myself and looked forward to some beautiful singing from my tiny musician.
I had left the cage out on our back porch, and on the second day of the bird's captivity my new pet's mother flew to the cage with food in her mouth. The baby bird ate everything she brought to it. I was pleased to see this. Certainly the mother knew better than I how to feed her baby.
The following morning when I went to see how my captive（被俘虏的） was doing, I discovered it on the floor of the cage, dead. I was shocked! What had happened! I had taken excellent care of my little bird, or so I thought.
Arthur Wayne, the famous ornithologist, happened to be visiting my father at the time, hearing me crying over the death of my bird, explained what had occurred. “A mother mockingbird, finding her young in a cage, will sometimes bring it poison berries. She thinks it better for her young to die than to live in captivity.”
Never since then have I caught any living creature and put it in a cage. All living creatures have a right to live free.
Men are spending more and more time in the kitchen encouraged by celebrity (名人) chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver, according to a report from Oxford University.
The effect of the celebrity role models, who have given cooking a more manly picture, has combined with a more general drive towards sexual equality and men now spend more than twice the amount of time preparing meals than they did in 1961.
According to the research by Prof. Jonatahn Gershuny, who runs the Centre for Time Research at Oxford, men now spend more than half an hour a day cooking, up from just 12 minutes a day in 1961.
Prof. Gershuny said, “The man in the kitchen is part of a much wider social trend. There has been 40 years of sexual equality, but there is another 40 years probably to come.”
Women, who a generation ago spent nearly two hours a day cooking, now spend just one hour and seven minutes—a great fall, but they still spend far more time in the kitchen than men.
Some experts have named these men in aprons as “Gastrosexuals (men using cooking skills to impress friends)”, who have been inspired to pick up a kitchen knife by the success of Ramsay, Oliver as well as other male celebrity chefs such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Marco Pierre White and Keith Floyd.
“I was married in 1974. When my father came to visit me a few weeks later, I was wearing an apron when I opened the door. He laughed,” said Prof. Gershuny. “That would never happen now.”
Two-thirds of adults say that they come together to share at least three times a week, even if it is not necessarily around a kitchen or dining room table. Prof. Gershuny pointed out that the family meal was now rarely eaten by all of its members around a table—with many “family meals” in fact taken on the sofa in the sitting room, and shared by family members. “The family meal has changed a lot, and few of us eat—as I did when I was a child—at least two meals a day together as a family. But it has survived in a different format.”
Is there anything more important than health？I don't think so. You can't be good at your studies or work when you are ill. If you have a headache，or a bad cough，if you run a high temperature and have a bad cold，I think you should go to the doctor. The doctor will examine your throat，feel your pulse，take your temperature，sound your heart and lungs. After that he will advise some treatment，or some medicine. The only thing you have to do is to follow his advice.
Speaking of doctor's advice, I can't help telling you a funny story. An old man came to see the doctor. The man was very ill. He told the doctor about his weakness，memory loss and serious problems with his heart and lungs. The doctor examined him and said there was no medicine for his disease. He told his patient to go to a quiet place for a month and have a good rest .He also advised him to eat a lot of meat，drink two glasses of red wine every day and take long walks. In other words，the doctor advised him to follow the rule：“Eat at pleasure，drink with measure and enjoy life as it is.”The doctor also said that if the man wanted to be well again，he shouldn't smoke more than one cigarette a day.
A month later the gentleman came into the doctor's office. He looked cheerful and happy. He thanked the doctor and said that he had never felt a healthier man.“But you know，doctor，”he said，“it's not easy to begin smoking at my age.”
Last week, my granddaughter started kindergarten, and I wished her every success. But part of me didn't. I actually wanted her to fail in some ways because I believe that failure can be good for our learning process. Success is proving that you can do something that you already know you can do, or doing something correctly the first time, which can often be a problematic (存在问题的) victory. First-time success is usually a fluke (侥幸). First-time failure, however, is supposed to be the natural order of things. Failure is how we learn.
In Africa they describe a good cook as “She who has broken many pots.” If you've spent enough time in the kitchen to have broken a lot of pots, probably you know a fair amount about cooking. I once had dinner with a group of cooks, and they spent time comparing knife wounds and burn scars. They knew how much credibility (可信) their failures gave them.
I earn my living by writing a daily newspaper column. Each week I know that one column I write is going to be the worst column. I try my best every day. I have learned to love that column. A successful column usually means that I am discussing my familiar topic, writing in a style I am used to or saying the same things as anyone else but in a better way.
My younger daughter is a trapeze artist (荡秋千演员). She spent three years practising a show, and she did it successfully for years. There was no reason for her to change it but she did anyway. She said she was no longer learning anything new and she was bored. And if she was bored, there was no point in subjecting (使……服从于) her body to all that stress. She risked failure and great public embarrassment in order to feed her soul.
My granddaughter is a perfectionist. She will feel her failures, and I will want to comfort her. But I will also, I hope, remind her of what she learned, and how she can do better next time. I hope I can tell her, though, that it's not the end of the world. Indeed, with luck, it is the beginning.
When I was a child, I had to go to church and obey many other rules, though these rules at times caused resentment (怨恨). Perhaps the most extreme parenting decision my parents made for my four brothers and sisters and me was to create a home environment without a television.
We hated this decision at that time, because there was seemingly no way to keep this embarrassing fact a secret at school. Naturally, simple pleasures like cartoons, football games, and movies became huge novelties (新奇事物). I would go over to friends' or relatives' houses for that access alone.
When I reached high school, my parents bought a television, though it had no cable. However, I did spend most of my childhood in a home without a television. In fact not having a television did contribute a great deal to my skills, and it also forced me to develop other valuable interests. We grew up in a small town, so my brothers and sisters and I spent time exploring streets, fields and woods. And of course I read and wrote and studied, which pushed me toward a career path.
So would I give a similar situation to my own children if I had them? I doubt it, at least not in the most extreme sense. I'm too much of a football fan, not to mention the TV serials (连续剧) like The Wire. But television or almost anything for that matter is unhealthy for kids. It can prevent them from living a full life. So maybe a reasonable answer is no cable or no video-game systems or simply setting the time limit, but I haven't exactly worked out how to confine it yet. Although some people are against my idea, we do need limits after all.
Grandparents Answer a Call
As a third generation native of Brownsville, Texas, Mildred Garza never planned to move away. Even when her daughter and son asked her to move to San Antonio to help their children, she politely refused. Only after a year of friendly discussion did Ms Garza finally say yes. That was four years ago. Today all three generations regard the move as a success, giving them a closer relationship than they would have had in separate cities.
No statistics show the number of grandparents like Garza who are moving closer to the children and grandchildren. Yet there is evidence suggesting that the trend（趋势）is growing. Even President Obama's mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, has agreed to leave Chicago and into the White House to help care for her granddaughters. According to a study grandparents com., 83 percent of the people said Mrs. Robinson's decision will influence the grandparents in the American family. Two-thirds believe more families will follow the example of Obama's family.
“In the 1960s, we were all a little wild and couldn't get away from home far enough or fast enough to prove we could do it on our own,” says Christine Crosby, publisher of Grand a magazine for grandparents. “We now realize how important family is and how important it is to be near them, especially when you're raising children.”
Moving is not for everyone. Almost every grandparent wants to be with his or her grandchildren and is willing to make sacrifices, but sometimes it is wiser to say no and visit frequently instead. Having your grandchildren far away is hard, especially knowing your adult child is struggling, but giving up the life you know may be harder.
D
Adults understand what it feels like to be flooded with objects. Why do we often assume that more is more when it comes to kids and their belongings? The good news is that I can help my own kids learn earlier than I did how to live more with less.
I found the pre-holidays a good time to encourage young children to donate less-used things, and it worked. Because of our efforts, our daughter Georgia did decide to donate a large bag of toys to a little girl whose mother was unable to pay for her holiday due to illness. She chose to sell a few larger objects that were less often used when we promised to put the money into her school fund(基金）(our kindergarten daughter is serious about becoming a doctor)
For weeks, I've been thinking of bigger, deeper questions: How do we make it a habit for them? And how do we train ourselves to help them live with, need, and use less? Yesterday, I sat with my son, Shepherd, determined to test my own theory on this. I decided to play with him with only one toy for as long as it would keep his interest. I expected that one toy would keep his attention for about five minutes, ten minutes, max. I chose a red rubber ball-simple, universally available. We passed it, he tried to put it in his mouth, he tried bouncing it, rolling it, sitting on it, throwing it. It was totally, completely enough for him. Before I knew it an hour had passed and it was time to move on to lunch.
We both became absorbed in the simplicity of playing together. He had my full attention and I had his. My little experiment to find joy in a single object worked for both of us.
It could have been any of us, but it happened to be me. I received a brief 18-months of undivided attention and love as the only child, before three more appeared. The second was a severe blow. No doubt, learning the need to share was important, but I had tasted the life of an only child.
Then came years of requests to look after the siblings（兄弟姐妹）, being urged that, You should be setting a better example, “Again and again the others got away with doing wrong but I didn't. We each played our roles; the second one who later skipped school to meet boys; the ever so attractive third, the boy who could do no wrong; and finally the surprise appearance of the fourth, seemed certain to be spoiled even now. So that left me: the reasonable, quiet one who got the grades, did the housework and became a chameleon（变色龙）—skilled at reading a situation and being what was needed.
Then eventually came the chance to be the first to leave and experience life on the outside, not defined（定义）as the eldest. The moment I had waited for. But now, many years later, being the eldest matters again. It's down to me; it seems, to take the lead in caring for our parents, AH the time I was made to learn about sharing; however, when it comes to responsibility, it no longer seems to apply. The others are too busy, too far away, or too unconcerned. So dutifully I travel many times across the country for hours to provide care and support. Requests to my siblings to help out more fall on deaf ears. To me, the dutiful first born, it feels like the right and only thing to do; to be there for our parents as they were for us. Sadly, that feeling isn't shared by the second, third or fourth.
This story starts with my two kids. We were hiking in the Oakland woods when my daughter noticed some plastic litter in a creek. She looked at me and said, "Daddy? That doesn't go there”.
When she said that, it reminded me of my summer camp. On the morning of that camping day, right before they'd let our anxious parents come through the gates, our camp director would say Quick! Everyone pick up five pieces of litter, "We got one hundred kids each picking up five pieces, and pretty soon, we got a much cleaner camp. So I thought, why not apply that crowdsourced cleanup model to the entire planet? And that was the inspiration for Literati. The goal is to create a litter-free world. Let me show you how it started. I took a picture of a cigarette using Instagram.
Then I took another photo, and another. And at the end of a few days, I had 50 photos on my hone and I had picked up each piece, and I realized that I was keeping a record of the positive impact I was having on the planet. That's 50 fewer things you might see, or you might step on, or some bird might eat. So I started telling people what I was doing, and they started participating. I realized that Litterati was more than just pretty pictures; we were becoming a community that was collecting data. Each photo tells a story. It tells us who picked up what, a geo-tag tells us where and a time stamp tells us when. Gradually, the community grew.
Litter —it's blending into the back ground of our lives. But what if we brought it to the fore front? What if we understood exactly what was on our streets, our sidewalks and our school yards?
How might we use that data to make a difference?
On Thursday night my two adult children took us out to dinner as our daughter lives in Bathurst and she will be there for Father's Day with her husband's side of the family. Two of our grandchildren were able to join us.
Having pre-celebrated my Father's Day and it being on our minds, my wife asked this question only this morning:
"Do you remember anything about your father?"
While this subject had come up before, however, the question had not been put so bluntly(直率的). I answered "No. My only memory is of the few photos outside." You see, my father died when I was only four years old.
Many people have lost their father early in life and it is easy to feel somewhat sorry for having to deal with such a situation, especially when the death has occurred when you are at an early age. On reflection, I think I do not remember anything because he passed away when he was a member of the Royal Australian Air Force. He was a Corporal(下士) doing land based duties, however, a medical condition took his life. It was 1942.
The 2nd World War was in full battle and Australia was being attacked. My Mum and I with my younger brother, were living with my grandparents and I can only imagine the emotional circumstances that existed in the household at that time. Probably not something that would leave a memory.
What I would like to say at this time, as the question is often asked, "What did you learn from your father?" The thing I learnt from his passing, at the age of 28, is a love of life. What I do remember is growing up wondering if I would live to his age, and after I did, thinking each year the bonus(津贴) of life I had been blessed with when compared to my father.
I have sometimes felt disappointment in not knowing my father but life has moved on. However, can I say to those who do have fathers, celebrate today with him and return him all the love and happiness he has given to you.
Do you often feel that you aren't taking in as much of the joy around you as you could? I recently caught myself feeling this way, and based on a suggestion by John Horton, coauthor (合著者) of The Inner Game of Stress, I put myself on a 30-day life-appreciation course.
The only assignment each day was to go outside and appreciate life.
So I started by taking in the beauty around me. During the first few days, I was able to appreciate my surroundings, although it was an intellectual appreciation, not an emotional one.
After the first week, it was more uncomfortable to lie in bed and think about things than it was to get up and see them for myself.
If you often wake up feeling anxious or depressed, or if you don't look forward to each day, then you need to try this course for yourself.
It's an inner workout that you can do anywhere. It may not change your life, but it will adjust your attitude, and that's pretty helpful in this crazy world.
I have always believed in ending the day on a positive note by writing a word or two in a gratitude journal and saying something sweet to my wife about the day we shared.
Now, I have a new morning habit. It hasn't changed my routine one bit, but it has changed the way I look at the world.
Creating a new habit isn't about perfection – it's about getting what you want by creating a change in your behavior and thinking.
So now, while I'm making my coffee in the morning, I'm also appreciating what I have.
It's quick, fulfilling, and a much better way to start my day than looking at my phone or computer.
And because of this, my attitude is better, as I've already begun my morning on a positive note rather than a problematic one.
The idea here is that if you can appreciate your life, it actually changes the way you feel about it.
Appreciation will give you more energy to live the way you would like to live.
As a means of improving our mood, it's highly underrated (被低估的). The easy task of appreciating what we have simply makes life better.
I stopped to watch my little girl busy playing in her room. In one hand was a plastic phone; in the other a toy. I listened as she was speaking to her make-believe little friend and I'll never forget the words she said, even though it was imagined.
She said, "Suzie's in the corner because she's not been very good. She didn't listen to a word I said or do the things she should." In the corner I saw her baby doll well dressed. It was obvious that she'd been put there to sit alone and think.
My daughter continued her "conversation", as I sat down on the floor. She said, "I'm all fed up and I just don't know what to do with her any more. She cries whenever I have to work and wants to play games too. She tries to help me with the dishes, but her arms just cannot reach... And she doesn't know how to fold towels. I don't have the time to teach. I have a lot of work to do and a big house to keep clean. I don't have the time to sit and play - don't you know what I mean?"
And that day I thought a lot about making some changes in my life, after listening to her innocent words cut me like a knife. I hadn't been paying enough attention to what I hold most dear. I'd been caught up in responsibilities that increased throughout the years.
But now my attitude has changed because in my heart I realize that I've seen the world in a different light through my little darling's eyes. So let the cobwebs (蜘蛛网) cut the corners and the dust bunny rabbit rule the floor. I'm not going to worry about keeping up with them any more.
I'm going to fill the house with memories of a child and her mother, for we have only one childhood and we will never get another.
Of course, she wasn't really my aunt and, out of fear, I never called her that to her face. I only referred to her as "My Aunt Fannie" because the name always made my father laugh quietly and gave my mother cause to look strictly at both of us—at me for being disrespectful of my elder and at my father for encouraging my bad behavior. I enjoyed both reactions, so I looked for every opportunity to work the name into as many conversations as possible.
As a young woman, my mother worked in the kitchen of a large Victorian farmhouse. During those years, my mother helped Aunt Fannie make the best blueberry jam ever tasted by anyone in Glenfield. She was wellknown for her jam and for never sharing the recipe with others. Even though my mother knew the recipe by heart, as long as Aunt Fannie was alive, she never made the jam without Aunt Fannie in the kitchen.
Each August, my mother would prepare me for Aunt Fannie's visit. One year, after I had helped with the jam process, Aunt Fannie gave me a coin and then made me promise that I would never spend it. "Hold onto this coin，" she said, "and someday you will be rich. I still have my very first coin, given to me by my grandmother." So, I kept the coin in a small box and waited to become rich.
I now have the blueberry jam recipe and the coin from Aunt Fannie. In people's eyes Aunt Fannie's success resulted from that secret recipe. But to me, it was just a common recipe. Neither have made me become a rich person, but I keep them as reminders to hold onto the valuable things in life. Money can make you feel rich for a while, but it is the relationships and the memories of time spent with friends and family that truly leave you wealthy. And that is a fortune that anyone can build.
That two bicycle salesmen were the first people to fly is as surprising today as it was over a century ago. In 1903, the Wright brothers flew above the crowd at a public exhibition in the United States. For a long period, the whole world was still in shock.
The Wrights' success is worth reviewing today because it challenges the 21st century's belief that, for young engineers, courses in arts and humanities are not as important as math and science. In fact, however, neither of the Wright brothers went to college or had any formal technical training.
To see what we can learn from the Wright brothers today, we must consider what made them different then. The Wright brothers grew up in a family where there was always encouragement on curiosity. The bookshelves in their home were filled with novels, poetry, and ancient history. The Wrights' parents had great curiosity for learning. They encouraged their children to read widely and find out the truth on their own. In their late 20s, the Wrights began reading books on the movement of bird wings, which led to their original air-control system.
The Wright brothers often compared themselves to artists because their invention had a lot to do with arts. For example, the art of flying was actually a complicated dance between man, machine and air, which required thousands of hours of practice to perfect. Technical skills and math were certainly necessary to build the machine, but much of the challenge lay in the art of flying in order to have beautiful lines during flight and landing.
If today's schools hope to have more extraordinary engineers, they should broaden the limited academic requirements and encourage students to be curious about different subjects as the Wright brothers did.
I'm leaving for camp for the next seven weeks. This means no more teens life until I get back. It also means I get a break from reality, my phone, my laptop, and all social media. It's important to my mind!
My first year at summer camp was when I was 9 years old turning 10. I was excited to be in a new environment. That one year changed me forever. This brings me to today. This will be my seventh summer. I text my friends that camp created a special community for me, one close to my heart. And it taught me how to bond with people. Luckily, I got to know a "big sister"—Jane, such a great role model and cheerleader, sweet, and honest, who is now a senior in college.
This year I'm more excited because I'll join in a tradition I experienced before. I'm finally going to be a "big sister". The letter says they feel my love for camp, its tradition, and my enthusiasm. All make up what it takes to be a great role model. It was when that I realized I have to do everything to make sure my "sisters" had the best summer at camp.
Every year when I tell people about the camp, I get either crazy eyes, a look of relief or a look of "what the heck?" Either way, I smile at the response(反应). They don't understand my connection with camp. Camp is my home away from home and my outlet from reality.
I'll be busy spending each day in nature, laughing until our stomachs hurt, becoming more present with myself, having no stress, letting go, pressing the reset button, and being in my best self. Summer nineteen is going to be amazing.
Several weeks ago, I pulled an old road map-out of the glove box and passed it to my children. They had never seen the province of Ontario laid out like that before. They stared at the map, asking about all the towns, parks, and other landmarks we'd visited, and I pointed them out on it.
Google Maps and GPS are modern wonders that have gotten me out of many contusing places, but paper maps still have a role to play in our lives. Most of us adults learned to read them out of necessity, but it's up to us to pass on that skill to children whose need may not be so obvious, but who still stand to benefit from it.
As Trevor Muir wrote in an article on this topic, "When kids learn how to create and use paper maps, they are doing more than just learning how to get around. They are actually developing fundamental skills that they will use for the rest of their lives. Map skills still belong in today's classroom."
As a child I had National Geographic maps taped to my bedroom walls. This aroused my curiosity and imagination about those places and thus made me eager to remember my geography and history lessons because they were tied to places I'd "seen". Even now as a mother of four, I've also spared time to travel to many of the countries whose maps I studied as a child.
Additionally, in this fast-changing world, unexpected events can rapidly influence one's usual way of life. When GPS satellites or Internet connections are affected, this old-fashioned skill can get you out of a mess without requiring a smartphone. Last but not least, paper maps arouse "big picture" thinking, showing kids that there's a much bigger world out there and helping to direct them within it.
So, now is a good time to pull out those dusty old maps and lay them on the kitchen table.
Thunderstorms often show up uninvited to Carnival（狂欢节）in Brazil. This year's attempt to influence the skies took place in San Pablo by a party's official sponsor, Skoal, a Brazilian beer brand. "The fun stops when it rains," says Pedro Ada my, Skoal's marketing director. So do beer sales.
An airplane painted with Skoal's logo sprayed (喷洒) water droplets into clouds to make rain fall before the clouds reached the city. According to its YouTube video that has been viewed 12 million times, it is a "mission worthy of science fiction".
Whether it's science or fiction is up for debate. The use of cloud-seeding to increase rainfall dates back to the 1940s. But the United States government stopped funding it in the 1980s due to a lack of "scientific proof of the effectiveness of intentional weather change", according to the National Research Council. A new paper based on experiments in Idaho found that seeding clouds with silver iodide increased snowfall on three occasions, but the authors say that more research is needed to find out if it can reliably promote precipitation (降水). Paulo Artaxo, a Brazilian physicist, says flatly that cloud-seeding is "useless".
Still, governments and firms in many countries use the technology. Sao Pablo's water company has signed million dollar contracts with ModClima to bring rain, most recently during a drought in 2014-15. Although cloud-seeding normally uses a chemical such as silver iodide to provide a surface around which water or ice droplets from, ModClima says it has invented an "experimental" method that uses water alone.
Carnival-goers cheered when the first two days were cloudy but dry. Many shared Skoal's video. But at around 5 pm on February 24th, the sky darkened and rain poured down. Celebrants at one block party left the Skoal stands and rushed to buy umbrellas and plastic rain capes.
North Americans value independence, and Europeans value togetherness. I never fully understood that stereotype until two months ago, when I left Canada for a 4-month period in a lab in France. On my first day, Pierre, a Ph.D. student, tapped me on my shoulder and asked: "Coffee?" I nodded and followed him to the common room, where other grad students were filing in. I sat there, cautiously sipping the bitter liquid and trying hard not to reveal my uncultured tastes, while lab chatter filled the air.
Coffee breaks are a ceremonial part of lab culture here. The chatter sometimes turns to serious scientific topics. But mostly, the meet-ups offer a chance to wind down, to share stories about life inside and outside the lab and to sympathize with people who understand what you're going through.
The lighthearted atmosphere and sense of community is a welcome contrast to my life in Canada, where I spent most of my workdays in isolation. I went into the lab each morning with set goals for my day. At lunch, I'd keep my eyes glued to my computer while I fed forkfuls of salad into my mouth, trying to power through my to-do list. For 9 months, I struggled to figure out why I couldn't exactly copy the results of another study. I didn't want to trouble my advisor too much. I was also hesitant to ask my labmates for help.
How much we were missing! Researchers need community because good ideas don't just come from reading literature and thinking deep thoughts. It's helpful to bounce ideas off others, and, to have a venue to share the day-to-day ups and downs of life.
Would coffee breaks have solved all my problems? Probably not. But I think sharing ideas with my peers would have helped solve my research dilemma. My time in France has taught me that it's important to create space for organic conversations about lab life. A scientist's life can feel isolating, but it's not necessarily so when you're connected to a supportive community.
