“Let's have a journey. Why not fly out and meet me, Dad?” I say one day.

    My father had just retired after 27 years as a manager for IBM. His job filled his day, his thoughts, and his life. While he woke up and took a warm shower, I screamed under a freezing waterfall in Peru. While he tied a tie and put on the same Swiss watch, I rowed a boat across Lake of the Ozarks.

    My father sees me drifting aimlessly, nothing to show for my 33 years but a passport full of funny stamps. He wants me to settle down, but now I want him to find an adventure.

    He agrees to travel with me through the national parks. We meet four weeks later in Rapid City.

    “What's our first stop？” asks my father.

    “What time is it？”

    “Still don't have a watch？”

    Less than an hour away is Mount Rushmore. As he stares up at the four Presidents carved in granite(花岗岩), his mouth and eyes open slowly, like those of a little boy.

    “Unbelievable,” he says. “How was this done？”

    A film in the information center shows sculptor Gutzon Borglum devoted 14 years to the sculpture and then left the final touches to his son.

    We stare up and I ask myself, “Would I ever devote my life to anything？”

    No directions, no goals. I always used to hear those words in my father's voice. Now I hear them in my own.

    The next day we're at Yellowstone National Park, where we have a picnic.

    “Did you ever travel with your dad？” I ask.

    “Only once,” he says. “I never spoke much with my father. We loved each other — but never said it. Whatever he could give me, he gave.”

    That last sentence — it's probably the same thing I'd say about my father. And what I'd want my child to say about me.

    In Glacier National Park, my father says, “I've never seen water so blue.” I have, in several places of the world. I can keep traveling, I realize — and maybe a regular job won't be as dull as I feared.

    Weeks after our trip, I call my father.

    “The photos from the trip are wonderful,” he says. “We've got to take another trip like that sometime.”

I tell him I've decided to settle down, and I'm wearing a watch.

    Despite the general rule for quiet demanded by libraries, they've been the subject of some fairly significant noise__ Children's Laureate（儿童桂冠作家）,Chris Riddell, along with eight former Children's Laureates, has written an open letter to Justine Greening, the British Secretary of State for Education, demanding an investigation into school library service closures（关闭）.

    Why should parents or pupils be concerned whether or not school libraries close? Are they surely just mausoleums（陵墓）to the paper-bound past? Or are they rooms that are of little use to today's Internet-connected student population, who have access to a world of books and information through their digital devices?

    Quite simply, school libraries, as well as their librarians, are critical to our children's future.

    Research has proved this to be the case. The level of development of a school library is a highly accurate predictor of academic success, which means that parents should perhaps go so far as to compare the libraries of the schools they are considering, rather than look at league tables, when seeking the right schools for their children. Chris Riddell and his fellow former Laureates are absolutely right to emphasize the importance of librarians in introducing children to life-changing books and turning them into lifelong readers. Reading is a skill that needs to be developed.

    Librarians play the crucial role of introducing pupils to different genres or authors, as well as encouraging children of varying abilities to read—from the reluctant readers to those with higher than average reading ages.

    However, if libraries were to have a "job description", cultivating a love of reading and promoting literacy（误写能力）is just one of their essential roles. The other role is, to be at the very centre of learning, a resource, for students to use in acquiring knowledge. Ultimately, as students get older they need to become increasingly experienced readers for information, as well as, hopefully, for pleasure. They need to be able to find out and access, through reading and understanding, the answers to their questions themselves.

    Independent learning skills are very much in demand by pupils and parents, as well as universities and employers, because real education is about so much more than just academic success or grades on a piece of paper. As Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, pointed out," the simple truth is that we can't teach all that we would like them to know. "The emphasis therefore must now be on teaching children how to learn for themselves.

    Talking of libraries, we would always focus on the collection of books and the dissemination（传播）of knowledge to aid learning. Therefore surely, it makes sense that if libraries are given the right status and adequate resources, they will play a vital role in the development of these much-needed independent learning skills. This has never been more important than in today's information age, when everything we need to know is only a few clicks away.

Libraries and librarians should be central in helping pupils understand how to access data or knowledge for their studies or interests—regardless of whether this is from a book an online resource or a journal.

    It is equally important that libraries guide students on how to "read" the information that is available to them—a vitally important skill given that the Internet contains a large amount of mistakes and misinformation. But, of course, libraries can only offer this support and guidance if they are properly valued and resourced, which means that we need as many voices as possible to be "shouting" about the importance of libraries in the education of our children.

    Chris Riddell is encouraging children to ask their teachers where their school library is. Perhaps parents also need to be asking their current and prospective schools about the same question. Let's make the "noise" far louder—it needs to be uncomfortably deafening（震耳欲聋的）.

    I climbed Kilimanjaro with Lava Expeditions (探险队) during the rainy season.

    I flew to Nairobi in Kenya and spent several days there. At my hotel in Nairobi I met the rest of the group with whom I would spend the next week. We all travelled on the bus together for a 6-hour journey into Tanzania and then Arusha, a quiet town.

    After we arrived at our hotel in Arusha, we had dinner and a few drinks. Then we were introduced to more members including Taddeus Minja, the main guide, who was very experienced — climbing Kilimanjaro runs through the generations (代) of his family.

    The next day the Lava Expeditions members checked if we had the correct and enough clothing for our expedition on Kilimanjaro. Only one person needed to bring more clothes.

    After that we set off, walking in the rain through the beauty of the rainforest, all the way to the first camp. I was happy the next few days as the view was so wonderful and changed every day. I suffered a little during the trip and I felt so tired. But the members of Lava Expeditions provided me with lots of encouragement, which was one of the best memories. Finally we reached the top of Kilimanjaro in bright blue skies.

I felt excited about climbing Kilimanjaro and the feeling didn't change during my trip. Lava Expeditions looked after me so well that I was deeply thankful for their help.

    For years I wanted a flower garden. But then we had Matthew. And Marvin. And the twins, Alisa and Alan. And then Helen. I was too busy raising them to grow a garden.

Money was limited, as well as time. Often when my children were little, one of them would want something that cost too much, and I'd have to say, “Do you see a money tree outside? Money doesn't grow on trees, you know.”

Finally, all five got through high school and college and were off on their own. I started thinking again about having a garden. I wasn't sure, though, I mean, gardens do cost money.

Then, one spring morning, on Mother's Day, I was working in my kitchen. Suddenly, I realized that cars were tooting their horns as they drove by. I looked out of the window and there was a new tree, planted right in my yard. I thought it must be a weeping willow, because I saw things blowing around on all its branches.

    There was a money tree in my yard !It was true! There were dollar bills, one hundred of them, taped all over that tree. There was also a note attached: “IOU eight hours of digging time. Love. Marvin.”

    Marvin kept his promise, too. He dug up a nice ten-by-fifteen foot bed for me. And my other children bought me tools, ornaments, a trellis, a sunflower stepping stone and gardening books.

That was three years ago. My garden's now very pretty, just like I wanted. When I go out and weed or tend my flowers, I don't seem to miss my children as much as I once did. It feels like they are right there with me. I think about what my children did for me, and I get tears in my eyes every time.

I'm still not sure that money grows on trees. But I know love does!

    On plenty of drives with my mom through my childhood, she would suddenly pull over the car to examine a flower by the side of the road or rescue a beetle from tragedy while I, in my late teens and early twenties, sat impatiently in the car.

    Though Mother's Day follows Earth Day, for me, they have always been related to each other. My mom has been “green” since she became concerned about the environment. Part of this habit was born of thrift (节俭). Like her mother and her grandmother before her, mom saves glass jars, empty cheese containers and reuses her plastic bags.

    Mom creates a kind of harmonious relationship with wildlife in her yard. She knows to pick the apples on her trees a little early to avoid the bears and that if she leaves the bird feeders out at night, it is likely that they will be knocked down by a family of raccoons (浣熊). Spiders that make their way into the house and are caught in juice glasses will be set loose in the garden.

    I try to teach my children that looking out for the environment starts with being aware of the environment. On busy streets, we look for dandelions(蒲公英) to fly in the wind; we say hello to neighborhood cats and pick up plastic cups and paper bags. This teaching comes easily, I realize, because I was taught so well by example. Mom didn't need to lecture; she didn't need to beat a drum to change the world. She simply slowed down enough to enjoy living in it and with that joy came mercy and an instinct(直觉) for protection.

    I am slowing down and it isn't because of the weight of my nearly forty years on the planet, it is out of my concern for the planet itself. I've begun to save glass jars and reuse packing envelopes. I pause in my daily tasks to watch the squirrels race each other in the trees above my house.

    Last summer, in the company of my son and daughter, I planted tomatoes in my yard. With the heat of August around me, I ate the first while sitting on my low wall with dirt on my hands. Warm from the sun, it burst on my tongue with sweetness. I immediately wanted to share with my mom.

    The year of 2017 marked the 100th birthday of the honoring Chinese-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei.

    From museums to business headquarters, Pei had designed many notable buildings around the world throughout his long professional career. According to the organizers of ''Rethinking Pei: A Centenary Symposium (百年纪念座谈会)" held that year, Pei remained one of the most celebrated architects of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

    The Hong Kong Bank of China Tower is one of his most famous works in Asia. As the bank itself also celebrated its centenary in 2017, it's worth examining the building's historical and architectural background to gain a deeper understanding of the architect who changed Hong Kong's skyline forever.

    The Bank of China Tower (BOC Tower) was completed in 1989, a year which the "New York Times" called, the year of I.M. Pei." For it was in this same year that Pei also completed the glass pyramid of the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, the Creative Artist Agency Headquarters in Los Angeles, and other marvellous architectures all around the world.

    Pei was commissioned (委托)in 1982 by the Beijing-based Bank of China to design it shead quarters in Hong Kong, but construction did not start until 1985.

    There were many reasons for the delay. One of the biggest was the huge challenges posed by the location. The land parcel had been the address of a Victorian building which served as a prison during Japanese occupation of Hong Kong between 1941 and 1945. This terrible heritage might be one of the reasons why it was dismantled in 1982.

    For I.M. Pei, the challenge of the site was not its past, but its present: the relatively small land parcel was surrounded on three sides by elevated roadways serving high-speed heavy traffic, meaning there was no possible public pedestrian access. Then there was its awkward trapezoidal (梯形)shape and the fact that the site also had a deep north-south height difference.

    Another challenge was the unavoidable comparison of the BOC Tower to the neighboring Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Headquarters(HSBC), which was also under construction. A spectacular building generously funded, its architect Norman Foster was simply told to create "the best bank building in the world." At that time it was also the world's most expensive building, costing $668 million. The Bank of China Tower's budget was approximately one fifth of the budget allowed by HSBC.

    The Hong Kong government had promised HSBC that no tall buildings would ever be built in front of its headquarters. Besides, in between the site of the Bank of China and the harbor, there were already a few buildings over 70 meters tall blocking views.

    Recognizing that going tall was the only way to create a landmark at this site with his budget, Pei came up with an architectural tower design that was simple, expressive, innovative, and upon its completion, the tallest building outside of America and the fourth tallest in the world.

    After the Bank of China officially moved into the tower in 1991, noted architect and critic Peter Blake visited the building and declared it to be "probably the most innovative skyscraper structure built anywhere to date."

    Now 30 years after the building^'s construction, the Bank of China Tower continues to offer valuable lessons of architectural and structural creativity under the most demanding conditions. Most importantly, the tower has become one of the most important cultural icons for the city of Hong Kong.