Mrs. White lived in a town of England. Her husband died three years ago and one of her children worked in the capital and the other three lived in another town. Her husband didn't leave her much money and she had to live a simple (简朴) life. Sometimes her children went to see her during their holidays, but they stayed with her for only two or three days.

    One winter morning the old woman got up early. She was going to buy some food in a shop. And when she came out, she found there was much snow in the street. She had to sweep it away. And suddenly she found a dying dog at the comer of the house. She picked it up and took it into the house quickly. She put it near the fire and gave it some milk and bread. At first the poor dog ate nothing and that afternoon it drank some milk and three days later it was all right. Now the old woman found it was a beautiful dog. And she liked it very much and took it everywhere she went. A week later she went shopping with her dog. At a bus stop a young man was eating fish and chips. The little dog became very excited at the smell of the man's lunch and began jumping up at him.

    “Do you mind if I throw it a bit?'' asked the young man.

    “Not at all,” answered Mrs. White.

    Having heard this, he picked up the dog and threw it over the wall.

    In China, Major Cold (大寒) is the last solar term in winter and also the last solar term in the annual lunar(阴历的) calendar. In this period, snow, rain and icy cold weather have a big influence on people's lives.

    Here are several things you should know about Major Cold.

    Eating "dispelling cold cake" (吃"消寒糕")

    During Major Cold, people in Beijing have a habit of eating "dispelling cold cake", a kind of rice cake. Sticky rice, the cake's main ingredient, contains more sugar than rice, which can make people feel warm all over their bodies. In Chinese the word "rice cake" has the same pronunciation with the word "higher in a new year", which symbolizes good luck and continual promotion.

    Eating fried spring roll（吃春卷）

    In Anqing of Anhui province, people traditionally eat fried spring rolls during Major

    Cold. They use a round, cooked, thin pancake to wrap stuffing（馅料）in a thin roll. Then it is fried in a pan with oil until it turns yellow and floats to the top. The stuffing inside the spring roll contains meat or vegetables and the flavor can be salty or sweet.

    Drinking stewed soup

    People in Nanjing of Jiangsu province like to drink stewed soup during Major Cold, which can make people feel warm from head to foot. They always stew the aged hen soup with ginseng(人参), matrimony vine(枸杞) and black fungus(黑木耳).

    Doing winter sports

    There is a saying that goes, "Dripping water freezes during Minor and Major Cold." In various regions of China, Major Cold is the perfect time for winter sports such as skiing, ice skating and sledding.

    The boy sat on his chair, with his hand above the keyboard. He thought about what to write.

    He recalled that the competition deadline was merely a week away. But he still had not even started on his piece. He looked at the brochure again." WRITING COMPETITION!" the title read. His mom had encouraged him to enter the writing competition, and now he was taking it on as his personal task for the holidays.

    As the boy reflected on his previous writing efforts, he realized how hopeless his task of winning was. Every story he ever wrote was based on other stories. He had little imagination, and unfortunately, imagination was the key to writing.

    Suddenly, he had a brainwave. This time, he came up with an original and imaginative story.

    The words shot towards him like a storm of leaves. Words were coming easily, flowing through him, faster than he could type. He typed faster than he ever had before. He continued to type, amazed at how easy writing this story was. The boy could not stop writing. He looked at the word count and saw the number" 248" staring right back at him. He was not even halfway yet.

    Then he heard the call of his mother saying time for bed. He continued writing the piece, ignoring her. He had to make up for the time he had lost thinking about a topic to write.

    Finally, he finished. The word count now read"498".

    "Perfect," he thought," just under the word limit." He knew this was the story that would win.

    He went onto Google and searched for the competition. He found the page but there was no "Enter" button.

    Dr. John Wilkins was a natural philosopher who lived from 1614 until 1672. He was crazy about getting to the moon and meeting the people who surely lived there. Wilkins believed that anything as Earth-like as the moon must have been created by God for living beings, and he was determined to meet them — despite the fact that he was three centuries ahead of his time.

    In the 1600s, the scientific understanding of gravity and outer space was limited. Wilkins believed, like many 17th-century scientists, that there was no difference between the atmosphere of Earth and the conditions in space, and that Earth's pull was due to magnetism (磁力). It was only reasonable, then, that Wilkins believed a two-wheeled horse-drawn battle car with wings with enough speed could lift high enough off the ground to break free of Earth's magnetic pull and reach the moon.

    Then Wilkins moved on to more pressing issues with his remarkable ability to think of new ideas: How would travelers feed themselves during the journey? He theorized that the main cause of hunger was simply the act of working against gravity, so getting to the moon without being burdened by it would be able to be realized. There was some knowledge at that time about the fact that air gets thinner and colder the higher up you go, but he had a fix for that too, "moistened sponges (湿润的海绵) might help us against its thinness".

    By studying the way in which birds fly, which also happened to be part of the studies that led to planes and rockets centuries later, Wilkins put his theory to the test with the help of a colleague, Robert Hooke. Neither of the two ever recorded their attempts, but it's somewhat safe to say that it didn't work out. Hooke himself may have been the reason he gave up hope, in fact, since he was part of the team that discovered space was a place without oxygen.

    America is the world's largest food exporter. But the worst drought in half a century is hitting corn and wheat harvests. The drought across the central United States adds to concerns about world food supplies and prices in the coming years.

    Experts say by 2050, the world will have to produce at least sixty percent more food to feed a population growing bigger and bigger. China, a major food importer, is looking for producers around the world to guarantee future food supplies.

    China has invested in food production in Australia and New Zealand. A new source of supply is Ukraine. Ukraine was known as the breadbasket of Europe because of rich corn and wheat harvests a century ago.

    Galyna Kovtok is chief executive of Ukraine's largest agricultural business, ULF. She predicts that within a few months her company will be approved to export corn to China. That will make Ukraine the first country outside the Americas to do so.

    ULF will soon have almost two million tons of elevator storage capacity as it prepares for the Chinese market. Chinese money is financing the building of six grain elevators. But the company's equipment is largely American, including half-million-dollar John Deere combines to harvest wheat.

    ULF'S grain production per hectare (公顷) is now halfway between Ukrainian averages and the high yields of the American Midwest. But farming depends on the weather. Across the Black Sea region—in Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan--drought this year is pushing harvests down by fifteen to twenty percent.

    Traditionally, the Black Sea region is the main source of wheat for North Africa and the Middle East. But this year, on the supply side, Russia may have to stop exports. And, on the demand side, Africa and the Middle East are now competing with China.

    At the same time, a new report says large parts of Asia may face long periods of severe drought within ten years. It says northern China, India, Afghanistan, Mongolia and Pakistan will be especially hard hit. It says other parts of Asia are likely to face longer and wetter monsoon seasons (雨季) because of climate change.

At some point, something will have to be done about the stuffed toys（毛绒玩具）. I haven't counted them because, truthfully, I'm not prepared to know how many there are. Lately, our neighborhood's message boards are filled with posts about parents trying to make space, to clear out the things their kids no longer need. The tone of some of these posts can best be described as "emergency". "Help!" they sometimes begin. "I have to get this out of my house."

"The proliferation（激增）of children's toys is the outcome of a long, gradual cultural change," says Gary Cross, a professor at Pennsylvania State University. To understand how we got here—drowning（淹没于）in all those stuffed toys and bricks—it helps to look as far back as the late 19th century. "Parents were no longer passing their jobs on to the children," Cross says. "Instead, they connect across generations through the gifting process. From the early 20th century on, goods became the things that define relationships between family members, and the way of marking success as a family."

Then, how can parents deal with the proliferation of children's toys at home? Naeemah Ford Goldson, a professional organizer, is also a mom of two. In her own home, Goldson likes to include her kids in the work of sorting out their toys. They know that the items they don't need anymore will be given to people who can use them, to families who might not be as fortunate as theirs. "Doing so helps them build those habits of letting go," she says, "so then they don't become adults who are too dependent on material things instead of experiences, or people, and the memories we make with people."

Her idea made sense. She told her 5-year-old they should pick some to give to kids in their community who came from another country and had to leave their toys behind. She immediately took a pink bear from the pile.