My mom only had one eye. I hated her... she was such an embarrassment. My mom ran a small shop at a flea market. She collected little weeds and such to sell... anything for the money we needed she was such an embarrassment. There was this one day during elementary school.

I remember that it was field day, and my mom came. I was so embarrassed. How could she do this to me? I threw her a hateful look and ran out. The next day at school... "Your mom only has one eye?!" and they taunted me.

I wished that my mom would just disappear from this world so I said to my mom. "Why don't you just die?" My mom did not respond. I guess I felt a little bad, but at the same time, it felt good to think that I had said what I'd wanted to say all this time. Maybe it was because my mom hadn't punished me, but I didn't think that I had hurt her feelings very badly.

    That night... I woke up, and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. My mom was crying there, so quietly, as if she was afraid that she might wake me. I hated my mother who was crying out of her one eye. So I told myself that I would grow up and become successful, because I hated my one-eyed mom and our desperate poverty.

Then I studied really hard. I left my mother and came to Seoul and studied, and got accepted in the Seoul University with all the confidence I had. Then, I got married. I bought a house of my own. Then I had kids, too. Now I'm living happily as a successful man. I like it here because it's a place that doesn't remind me of my mom.

This happiness was getting bigger and bigger, when someone unexpected came to see me "What?! Who's this?!" It was my mother... Still wither one eye. It felt as if the whole sky was falling apart on me. My little girl ran away, scared of my mom's eye.

And I asked her, "Who are you? I don't know you!!" as if I tried to make that real. I screamed at her "How dare you come to my house and scare my daughter! Get out of here now!!" And to this, my mother quietly answered, "oh, I'm so sorry. I may have gotten the wrong address," and she disappeared. Thank goodness... she doesn't recognize me. I was quite relieved. I told myself that I wasn't going to care, or think about this for the rest of my life.

    Then a wave of relief came upon me... one day, a letter regarding a school reunion came to my house. I lied to my wife saying that I was going on a business trip. After the reunion, I went down to the old shack, that I used to call a house, just out of curiosity there, I found my mother fallen on the cold ground. She had a piece of paper in her hand. It was a letter to me.

She wrote:

My son, I think my life has been long enough now. For you... I'm sorry that I only have one eye, and I was an embarrassment for you. You see, when you were very little, you got into an accident, and lost your eye. As a mother, I couldn't stand watching you having to grow up with only one eye… so I gave you mine... I was so proud of my son that was seeing a whole new world for me, in my place, with that eye. I was never upset at you for anything you did. The couple times that you were angry with me I thought to myself, ‘it's because he loves me.' I miss you so much. I love you. You mean the world to me. So I gave you mine. With all my love to you! Your mom.

My World Shattered. I hated the person who only lived for me. I cried for My Mother, I didn't know of any way that will make up for my worst deeds...

    Each year, we are exposed to ten thousand ads on average. They try to sell us their products by using beautiful art, videos, images or slogans that are catchy. The most famous companies have highly popular logos that can be recognized by almost everybody. For those of you who have seen the movie Finding Forrester, there is that scene where Jamal walks up to some guy with a BMW and asks him what the car logo means. The man did not know the answer and since that day, whenever I see a famous company logo I try to find the meaning of it.

    Many think the horse on the Ferrari logo represents the horsepower of the cars they manufacture. The story behind it is far more interesting. During World War I, a pilot, Count Francesco Baracca, painted the horse on his airplane to bring him luck. He had it on his plane because it was the logo of his squadron（空军中队）. Baracca's mother then convinced Enzo Ferrari to put the logo on his racing cars in the early 1930's to bring good luck to the drivers. The logo then stayed the same ever since. The yellow on the background represents the birthplace of Enzo Ferrari.

    Starbucks started in 1971, in Seattle. The mermaid（美人鱼）represented on the logo is now known by any coffee drinker. It is a mythological sea creature with the look of a female, the only difference being that they have a tail of a fish. The reason why Starbucks incorporated one in their company logo is that it was believed that mermaids used to sing to sailors in order to make them walk away from their ship or to ground their ships. In the 1500s, spices, tea and coffee were popular merchandise to trade. So the mermaid in the logo of Starbucks is the one that "brings" coffee and tea to the stores.

    Some of the world's most famous musicians recently gathered in Paris and New Orleans to celebrate the first annual International Jazz Day. UNESCO( United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) recently set April 30 as a day to raise awareness of jazz music, its significance, and its potential as a unifying(联合) voice across cultures.

    Despite the celebrations, though, in the U.S. the jazz audience continues to shrink and grow older, and the music has failed to connect with younger generations.

    It's Jason Moran's job to help change that. As the Kennedy Center's artistic adviser for jazz, Moran hopes to widen the audience for jazz, make the music more accessible, and preserve its history and culture.

    ＂Jazz seems like it's not really a part of the American appetite,＂ Moran tells National Public Radio's reporter Neal Conan. ＂What I'm hoping to accomplish is that my generation and younger start to reconsider and understand that jazz is not black and write anymore. It's actually color, and it's actually digital.＂

    Moran says one of the problems with jazz today is that the entertainment aspect of the music has been lost. ＂The music can't be presented today the way it was in 1908 or 1958. It has to continue to move, because the way the world works is not the same,＂ says Moran.

    Last year, Moran worked on a project that arranged Fats Waller's music for a dance party, ＂just to kind of put it back in the mind that Waller is dance music as much as it is concert music,＂ says Moran. ＂For me, it's the recontextualization. In music, where does the emotion(情感) lie? Are we, as humans, gaining any insight(感悟) on how talk about ourselves and how something as abstract as a Charlie Parker record gets us into a dialogue about our emotions and our thoughts? Sometimes we lose sight that the music has a wider context,＂ says Moran, ＂so I want to continue those dialogues. Those are the things I want to foster.＂

    Animals, including insects, do not have a language like ours. They do not talk to each other in words and sentences. But if we watch them, we can see that they do have ways of communicating with each other.

    Can you see the rabbits' tail? When rabbits see this white tail moving up and down, they run too. The rabbit has reminded them of potential dangers without making a sound. It has given them a signal.

    Many other animals use this kind of language. When a cobra(眼镜蛇) is angry, it raises its hood(兜帽) and makes itself look fierce. This warns other animals. When a bee has found some food, it goes back to its home. It cannot tell the other bees where the food is by speaking to them, but it does a little dance in the air. This tells the bees where the food is.

    Some animals say things by making sound. A dog barks, for example, when a stranger comes near. A cat purrs(猫的呜呜声) when pleased. Some birds make several different sounds, each with its own meaning. Sometimes we human beings speak in the same way. We make sounds like “Oh” or “Ah!” when we are frightened or pleased or when we drop something on our toes.

    But we have something that no animals have a large number of words which have the meanings of things, actions, feelings or ideas. We are able to give each other all kinds of different information in words and sentences, which no other animals can do. No other animals have so wonderful a language as we have.

    The world we live in gets more mechanized every year. Some countries which were mainly agricultural a hundred years ago have now become industrial. New factories and towns have been built on good agricultural land. There are now fewer farms to serve a much greater population, so these farms must be more efficient in order to produce as much food as possible. There is no place in the modern agricultural world for the inefficient farmer. Unfortunately, many of the picturesque aspects of farming are disappearing in the search for efficiency. The more tractors are used, the fewer horses are needed. Everyone agrees that horses are far more pleasant to look at than tractors. But they are less efficient. Cows are usually milked by machinery nowadays, and even pigs are fed automatically. There is not much art or poetry on the modern farm, and the old traditional idea of a farm as a slow, peaceful, romantic place is totally wrong nowadays.

    The modern farmer has to be a mechanic, a scientist, an accountant and a gambler. The more mechanized farming becomes, the more expert the farmer has to be. He must understand what machinery is necessary for his kind of farm, and he must know how to use it efficiently. He must also understand the new technical advances in agriculture, and how to use chemical and synthetic products to improve his crops. The more workers a farmer employs, the more he must know about the problems of wages and taxes. As in any other industry, most modern farmers find it necessary to employ office staff to deal with these. But although he has more modern equipments and far more scientific aids than his grandfather had, the farmer is still dependent upon the weather. As he can never be sure what the weather will do, he must be prepared to take risks, and face the possibility of losing everything.

    You may think there are no differences between British and American people. After all, they speak the same language, don't they? If you ask a British or an American person, he will probably tell you that there are differences. And the differences are quite great.

    What do British people think American people are like? The British think American people are very strange. They make a lot of noise and they laugh too loudly. They are rich, and they only think about money. But the British do say that American people are kind, and friendly people. They're happy to help you if you are in trouble.

    What do Americans think of the British? Well, they think the British are cold and very unfriendly. They are not interested in success or in making lots of money. They think British is the best country in the world. They look down on other countries. But Americans say that the British are quite hard workers. They are brave and honest. And in time of trouble they face difficulties happily.

    You can see that these ideas can cause misunderstanding between the British and Americans. But when American and British people become friends, they usually find things are not as bad as they expected.