Recently, I learned firsthand why it's a bad idea to judge people prematurely (过早地).

    I'm a nursing supervisor, and my job is to evaluate workers' performances at the hospital.

    Kenny was a new employee. After weeks' probation (试用), I had to admit that he was clean, punctual and efficient.

    But he had this self-assured and energetic presence. He was a large man, both physically and socially — he was independent and strong. I worried that our hospital, which demanded teamwork, was not right for such a personality.

    We had a patient named Mary. At 94 years old, Mary was weak. She had outlived her husband and sisters.

    Mary had an obsessive (强迫性的) belief that someone had taken her purse. She searched for it all the time. Unless tied to her wheelchair, she would go through the door onto the street mindlessly searching and never giving up. She was often sitting in her wheelchair in the hallway, where she stopped everyone who came near.

    “Can you lend me a comb?” she would ask. “I've lost mine. It was in my red purse. Where is my purse?”

    Every day it was the same. We all knew Mary didn't have a purse, but we would answer: “Sure, if I see your purse I'll bring it back.”

    One afternoon, I saw Kenny walking down the hall with a grocery bag. He walked toward Mary in her wheelchair. He pulled out a red purse.

    Mary's old hands flew up to her face in a gesture of wonder and joy, and then flew out hungrily like a starved child taking bread. Mary grabbed the red purse. She held it for a moment, and then pressed it to her breast, rocking it like a baby.

    Kenny leaned over, unzipped the purse open and showed Mary a comb inside. Tears of joy poured down Mary's face.

    Instead of paying lip service like the rest of us, Kenny had made Mary's problem his problem. I had been wrong about Kenny.

    I had just moved to San Antonio, Texas. I worked for the tour bus service taking tourists on a short tour of the city's historic places and would end up at the Alamo.

    I was driving back from my last tour on a cool February day on my way back from the San Femando Catholic church with no one on my bus when I saw a man dressed in rags, thinking this person must be an actor or something walking around. I stopped and asked him, “Need a ride?” Without saying anything he just walked on broad and sat down in seat behind me.

    “Where are you heading?” I asked him. He looked up into the mirror at me and replied. “I've got to get to the fort(要塞)and report to Colonel(上校)Travis that the Mexicans are here!” I laughed to myself thinking that this man was a serious actor.

    “I'm guessing you mean the Alamo?” I said back to him. I looked up and saw he wasn't smiling nor laughing. All throughout the ride he was staring in amazement at all the towering skyscrapers and the buildings along the street.

    “I remember when this town was nothing more than a little trading village!” He finally said to me.

    “So what's your name?” I asked him.

    “Daniel Cloud, yours?”

    “David Zime.” I replied as I turned the corner of the street and laid eyes upon the Alamo.

    I pulled up to the sidewalk and opened the door. Cloud got out of his seat and came up to me.

    “Thanks for the ride.” He said extending his hand. I took his palm and it was freezing cold like he just stepped out of the freezer.

    “Not a problem, Mr. Cloud, and don't worry about the fee. It's on the house.” He nodded his head in gratitude like all us Texans do and walked away.

    It wasn't until then that I noticed that he was soaked(浸；泡)to the bone in dripping water and we had not a single drop of rain in a month or more. I just shook my head and closed the door behind him. When I turned around. Discovered amazingly how fast Cloud had gone away!

    A few days later I was reading a book about the Battle of the Alamo when I discovered the most shocking thing I had ever discovered. The names of the 183 defenders of the Alamo were listed on the roll of honor, including Daniel Cloud, who spotted the Mexicans before they took over the streets of San Antonio in February of 1836, and his post was on top of the San Femando Church where I had picked him up!

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    Next time you're planning to go out for a relaxing walk with your MP3 player, be sure to check the weather forecast first. Summer is the prime time for lightning strikes, a fact that Jason Bunch, a teen from Castle Rock, Colo, learned in a hard way. A couple of summers ago, he was mowing (割草) grass while listening to some Metallica on his iPod. Although there wasn't any rain falling on Bunch, he did hear distant thunder. Bunch was then struck by lightning, which seemed to travel through his music player, blowing out his eardrums and leaving him with burns where the device and its power lines were close to his body.

    Devices such as MP3 players don't attract lightning, says Dr. Mary Ann Cooper, an emergency room physician at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago. However, they may change the pathway that lightning's energy follows in the human body. Lightning that might have passed rather harmlessly over the skin may react differently to the metal of these devices and cause damage.

    Rather than leaving your tunes at home, your best bet is watching out for lightning before it hits. Though people have been injured while using MP3 players in storms, Cooper says, “The devices' main task is keeping you from paying attention to thunder and the sky.” If you're caught in a storm, seek shelter.

    ⒈TrueCar.com

    Top dealers compete for your business by offering lower prices. TrueCar spends a lot of money and resources on making sure the entire car renting experience is simple and straightforward. If you're in the market for a new car, give this site a try first.

TrueCar's network checks many of the prices in your area and gets you the best price for the car you're looking for.

    ⒉Carvoy.com

    It offers more control by allowing you to “build your car” and select your rental plan. The “build your car” option is one of the better options for those looking to add on features to their car. If you're looking for cars with options like a sunroof or navigation (导航), it's Carvoy that makes it very easy to get started with the process.

    ⒊CarsDirect.com

    They have a large collection of new and used cars, and also provide resources for car comparisons. In the business for many years, they are one of the first online car outlets. They have a staff that can usually help you if you give them a call. Their phone support is very good and they are mostly located in the United States.

    ⒋CarRent.com

    It delivers your rental car to the door, which is actually a huge selling point. Many people don't like to go to a dealership or even drive somewhere to pick up a car. Imagine renting a car and having it delivered right to your doorstep, no driving necessary!

    ⒌CostcoAuto.com

    It offers member-only savings, many car selections and an easy sign-up process. The deals through Costco are great and unique. Many times they have deals with General Motors cars like Chevrolet. There are a lot of deals to be done, but the one thing that Costco does not do is negotiate the price.

    People can't see you when you're speaking on the phone, but they can hear you. So, the way you speak is especially important. In fact, researchers have calculated that 80% of communication over the phone is through your tone of voice; and only 20% is from the words you use. Here are our top tips on how to speak over the phone.

    ①Facial Expressions

    Your facial expression can influence your voice. For example, if you smile, your voice will sound warm and friendly, just the opposite, if you have an angry look on your face, it can make you sound unpleasant.

    ②Volume

    If you speak too loudly, you could sound angry. And if you speak too softly, it'll be difficult to hear you. So, speak loudly enough to be heard clearly, but not so loud that you're shouting.

    ③Pace

    The pace of your voice is how quickly you speak. And this can show how you feel. For example, an angry person might speak faster than normal. Or a downhearted person might speak very slowly. Try speaking a little more slowly than normal. This will make you sound confident, and it'll make it easier for the other person to understand you.

    ④Gestures

    Gesturing can influence the tone of your voice. When you gesture, you bring more air into the lungs, which can make your voice sound warmer. Gestures are also useful to help you stress the right words or even find the words you need. The best thing about gesturing during a phone call is that no one can see what you're doing, so you can gesture as wildly as you like!

    ⑤Movement

    If you're feeling nervous, stand up and move around. It will reduce the nervousness in your body and help your voice to sound more confident.

    ⑥Pauses (停顿)

    Using pauses every now and then can help you to slow down. This will make you sound more confident and in control. Also, if you pause after giving some new information, it'll give the other person time to understand it. At the same time, listen to how the other person uses pauses. They could tell you something about the speaker's feeling. For example, when a speaker is really angry, he might use pauses and says, "I…am…so…angry…"

The hens look up at me from their nesting boxes. They seem slightly annoyed but unsurprised. A child runs up, pushes one of the chickens aside, and snatches two eggs. Around me, a half-dozen more children and adults collect eggs while a half-dozen others hand-feed dried mealworms to birds flocking around our ankles. I reach for an egg from an empty nest. There is something perfect about the way it fits warmly in the palm of my hand before I transfer it into a pretty wire basket provided to me by my hosts. 

The egg harvest is a brief, carefully designed agritourism experience offering an experience of the labor rather than just having a bite of food. Snatching a few eggs and uprooting a few vegetables on the farm tour donˈt constitute a full dayˈs work, but it is also a useful reminder that food doesnˈt just magically appear on restaurant plates and grocery store shelves. Of course, visitors can take those eggs home or bring them to the on-farm restaurant, Clay, where a chef will use them to prepare breakfast. 

A few centuries of industrialization, urbanization, and globalization have collected people into cities, but the attraction of the countryside has always remained. In the new urban-centered world, enterprising farmers have found plenty of opportunities to sell their rural lifestyle along with their crops. Italy promoted the modern model for combining agriculture and tourism in the wake of World War Ⅱ, when the national government encouraged rural populations to continue producing food rather than move to urban areas in search of more profitable jobs. 

Agritourism acts as an umbrella term for a wide variety of activities that take place on farms, including farmstays, where guests sleep on-site. For varying investments of time, energy, and money, anyone can engage in our farming system, giving consumers a peek behind the farm-to-table world.