A new collection of photos brings an unsuccessful Antarctic voyage back to life.

Frank Hurley's pictures would be outstanding—undoubtedly first-rate photo journalism—if they had been made last week. In fact, they were shot from 1914 through 1916, most of them after a disastrous shipwreck(海难), by a cameraman who had no reasonable expectation of survival. Many of the images were stored in an ice chest, under freezing water, in the damaged wooden ship.

    The ship was the Endurance, a small, tight, Norwegian-built three-master that was intended to take Sir Ernest Shackleton and a small crew of seamen and scientists, 27 men in all, to the southernmost shore of Antarctica's Weddell Sea. From that point Shackleton wanted to force a passage by dog sled(雪橇) across the continent. The journey was intended to achieve more than what Captain Robert Falcon Scott had done. Captain Scott had reached the South Pole early in 1912 but had died with his four companions on the march back.

    As writer Caroline Alexander makes clear in her forceful and well-researched story The Endurance, adventuring was even then a thoroughly commercial effort. Scott's last journey, completed as he lay in a tent dying of cold and hunger, caught the world's imagination, and a film made in his honor drew crowds. Shackleton, a onetime British merchant-navy officer who had got to within 100 miles of the South Pole in 1908, started a business before his 1914 voyage to make money from movie and still photography. Frank Hurley, a confident and gifted Australian photographer who knew the Antarctic, was hired to make the images, most of which have never before been published.

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    The park bench was deserted as I sat down to read beneath the branches of an old willow tree, with good reason to frown, for the world was intent on dragging me down. At this time, a boy approached me. He stood right before me, and said with great excitement, “Look what I found!”

    In his hand was a flower, and what a pitiful sight, with its petals (花瓣) all worn. Wanting him to take his flower and go off to play, I faked a small smile and then turned to the other side.

    But instead of leaving, he sat next to my side and placed the flower to his nose and declared, “It really smells pretty and it's beautiful, too. That's why I picked it. Here, it's for you.”

    The flower before me was dying or dead. But I knew I must take it, or he might never leave. So I reached for the flower, and replied, “Just what I need.”

    But instead of placing the flower in my hand, he held it in mid-air. It was then that I noticed that the boy was blind.

    I heard my voice quiver (轻微颤抖), and at the same time my tears shone like the sun. As I thanked him for picking the very best one, he smiled and said, “You're welcome.” And then he ran off to play, unaware of the impact he'd had on me.

    I sat there and wondered how he managed to see a self-pitying woman beneath an old willow tree. Perhaps from his heart, he'd been blessed with true sight.

    Through the eyes of the blind boy, I could see the problem was not with the world; the problem was me. And for all of those times I had been blind. From now on I vowed to see beauty and appreciate every second that's mine. Then I held the flower up to my nose and breathed its fragrance and smiled as that young boy.

    We may be only three weeks into December, but artist Jonnie Hartman has been in the holiday spirit for months, designing and building the Grand America Holiday Window Stroll.

The goal with each window stroll is to create playful and uplifting displays (展示), according to Hartman. "I really try to do something lighthearted, something whimsical, that is, something everyone can connect with and maybe not see every day in the real world," Hartman said.

    She designs all of the window displays by hand, starting with pencil sketches, then illustrating the designs on her computer and sending parts of the drawings to be printed. From there, Hartman works with a team of five people to build the displays, creating, sewing and embellishing (润色) many elements by hand.

    However, a challenge Hartman has faced over the years as she has designed the displays is making sure all of the measurements are right for elements to fit inside the windows.

"When I was in college, I was an art major, and I thought, 'I don't need math. I will never use it. I'm an artist,' and guess what, it's the most important thing that I use, ''Hartman said. "If I don't get that right, then the windows don't fit, the pieces don't come together and it just doesn't work out."

    The holiday window stroll gives Hartman a unique opportunity to hear feedback from those who observe her creations, which is something she doesn't always get to experience with her other artworks. She said it's fun to hear people's reactions as they go through the holiday window stroll.

"It just makes me happy that I can kind of set the tone for people's holiday season and just maybe bring a smile to their face," Hartman said.

    In Europe, there is no escape for those who do not appreciate art and architecture(建筑). It is a heaven for people who want to feel like they have been transported to famous historical time periods from America. For me, Europe was a complete contrast from America. London and France had a more royal feel than New York, and Rome felt more ancient. I wasn't just on a different continent; it felt like I was in a different century.

    My parents and I visited London, Paris and Rome this summer in celebration of the end of my high school experience. It was supposed to be a break from a life as busy as a bee in New York, the constant stress, the crowded subway rides, and the weary body that had accompanied me for the last four years. It was an opportunity to appreciate Europe the way I couldn't do it just by reading history books.

    My favorite parts of London were the Tower of London and the Churchill War Rooms. As a site of past executions(刑场), the Tower of London displayed punishing devices from the 16^th and 17^th century and told stories of various members of the royal family who had ever been imprisoned in the tower, some even imprisoned by their own family members when they were seen as a threat to the crown. Besides that, I also got to see the royal family's crown jewels, amazingly beautiful.

    The Churchchill War Rooms, though very different from the Tower of London, were also spellbinding from a historic perspective. I am not a history fan, but I enjoy museums, and I took fancy in the Churchchill Museum inside the War Rooms that detailed the events of Churchchill's life and World War II. Everything I saw in it built up his life from his childhood to his last years, creating a three-dimensional Churchchill in my mind who was a person just like myself. He longed for more, he made mistakes, he experienced loneliness and sadness. But he had also done some remarkable things like uniting Britain during World War II.

    Our rewarding trip ended in Rome a couple of days later.

    A mother stared down at her son who was dying of terminal leukemia (白血病). Like any parent she wanted her son to grow up and realize all his dreams. She took her son's hand and asked, "Bopsy, did you ever think about what you wanted to be when you grew up?"

    "Mommy, I always wanted to be a fireman when I grew up."

    Mom smiled back and said, "Let's see if we can make your wish come true." Later that day she went to her local fire department in Phoenix, Arizona, where she met Fireman Bob. She explained her son's final wish and asked if it might be possible to give her six-year-old son a ride around the block on a fire engine. Fireman Bob said, "Look, we can do better than that. If you'll have your son ready at seven o'clock Wednesday morning, well make him an honorary fireman for the whole day, He can come down to the fire station; eat with us, go out on all the fire calls, the whole nine yards! And, if you'll give us his sizes, we'll get a real fire uniform made for him."

    Three days later Fireman Bob picked up Bopsy, dressed him in his fire uniform and escorted（护送）him from his hospital bed to the waiting hook and ladder truck. Bopsy got to sit up on the back of the truck and help steer it back to the fire station. He was in heaven.

    There were three fire calls in Phoenix that day and Bopsy got to go out on all three calls. He rode in the different fire engines and even the fire chief's car. Having his dream come true, with all the love and attention that was lavished（慷慨给予）upon him, Bopsy lived three months longer than any doctor thought possible.

    One night all of his vital signs began to drop and the head nurse began to call the family members to the hospital. Then she remembered the day Bopsy bad spent as a fireman, so she called the fire chief and asked if it would be possible to send a fireman in uniform to the hospital to be with Bopsy as he made his transition. The chief replied, "We can do better than that. We'll be there in five minutes. Will you please do me a favor? When you hear the sirens（警报器）screaming and see the lights flashing, will you announce over the PA system that it's just the fire department coming to see one of its finest members one more time? And will you open the window to his room? Thanks?"

    About five minutes later a hook and ladder truck arrived at the hospital, extended its ladder up to Bopsy's third floor open window and 14 firemen and two fire-women climbed up the ladder into Bopsy's room. With his mother's permission, they hugged him and held him and told him how much they loved him. With his dying breath, Bopsy looked up at the fire chief and said, "Chief, am I really a fireman now?"

    "Bopsy, you are," the chief said. With those words, Bopsy smiled and closed his eyes for the last time.

    That cold January night, I was growing sick of my life in San Francisco. There I was, walking home at one in the morning after a tiring practice at the theater. With opening night only a week away, I was still learning my lines. I was having trouble dealing with my part-time job at the bank and my acting at night at the same time. As I walked, I thought seriously about giving up both acting and San Francisco. City life had become too much for me.

    As I walked down empty streets under tall buildings, I felt very small and cold. I began running, both to keep warm and to keep away any possible robbers. Very few people were still out except a few sad-looking homeless people under blankets.

About a block from my apartment, I heard a sound behind me. I turned quickly, half expecting to see someone with a knife or a gun. The street was empty. All I saw was a shining streetlight. Still, the noise had made me nervous, so I started to run faster. Not until I reached my apartment building and unlocked the door did I realize what the noise had been. It had been my wallet falling to the sidewalk.

    Suddenly I wasn't cold or tired anymore. I ran out of the door and back to where I'd heard the noise. Although I searched the sidewalk anxiously for fifteen minutes, my wallet was nowhere to be found.

    Just as I was about to give up the search, I heard the garbage truck pull up to the sidewalk next to me. When a voice called from the inside, "Alisa Camacho？" I thought I was dreaming. How could this man know my name？ The door opened, and out jumped a small red-haired man with an amused look in his eyes. "Is this what you're looking for？" he asked, holding up a small square shape.

    It was nearly 3 a. m. by the time I got into bed. I wouldn't get much sleep that night, but I had got my wallet back. I also had got back some enjoyment of city life. I realized that the city couldn't be a bad place as long as people were willing to help each other.