One of the most successful singers of the twentieth century, Ella Fitzgerald has made several different styles of her own. She was born in Virginia but was brought up in an orphanage in Yonkers, New York. Chick Webb spotted her in an amateur competition when she was sixteen. He engaged her to sing with his band and when he died in 1939, she took over.

    Unlike Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald taught herself the sentimental music so popular in the 1930's — songs like “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”— and her recordings became best-sellers. During the 1940's she developed her own “scat singing” — a breathless, nonsense—syllable style—for songs like “Flying Home” and “Lady Be Good.”

    Ella Fitzgerald was the perfect musical partner for her friend, the trumpeter Louis Armstrong, matching him in warmth and artistry. “I just like music, period,” she said. “To me, it's a story. There's only one thing better than singing…. It's more singing.”

    I was never very neat, while my roommate Kate was extremely organized. Each of her objects had its place, but mine always hid somewhere. She even labeled(贴标签) everything. I always looked for everything. Over time, Kate got neater and I got messier. She would push my dirty clothing over, and I would lay my books on her tidy desk. We both got tired of each other.

    War broke out one evening. Kate came into the room. Soon, I heard her screaming. “Take your shoes away! Why under my bed!” Deafened, I saw my shoes flying at me. I jumped to my feet and started yelling. She yelled back louder.

    The room was filled with anger. We could not have stayed together for a single minute but for a phone call. Kate answered it. From her end of the conversation, I could tell right away her grandma was seriously ill. When she hung up, she quickly crawled(爬under her covers, sobbing. Obviously, that was something she should not go through alone. All of a sudden, a warm feeling of sympathy rose up in my heart.

    Slowly, I collected the pencils, took back the books, made my bed, cleaned the socks and swept the floor, even on her side. I got so into my work that I even didn't notice Kate had sat up. She was watching, her tears dried and her expression one of disbelief. Then, she reached out her hands to grasp mine. I looked up into her eyes. She smiled at me, “Thanks.”

    Kate and I stayed roommates for the rest of the year. We didn't always agree, but we learned the key to living together: giving in, cleaning up and holding on.

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    When other nine-year-old kids were playing games, she was working at a petrol station. When other teens were studying or going out, she fought to find a place to sleep on the street. But she beat these terrible setbacks（挫折） to win a highly competitive scholarship and gain entry （录入）into Harvard University. And her amazing story has inspired a movie, “Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story”.

    Liz Murray, a 22-year-old American girl, has been writing a real-life story of willpower and determination. Liz grew up with two drug-addicted parents. There was never enough food or warm clothes in the house. Liz was the only member of the family who had a job. Her mother had AIDS and died when Liz was just l5 years old. The effect of that loss became a turning point in her life. Connecting the environment in which she had grown up with how her mother had died. She decided to do something about it.

    Liz went back to school. She threw herself into her studies, never telling her teachers that she was homeless. At night, she lived on the streets. “What drove me to live on had something to do with understanding, and by understanding that there was a whole other way of being. I had only experienced a small part of the society,” she wrote in her book Breaking Night.

    She admitted that she used envy （妒忌）to drive herself on. She used the benefits that come easily to others, such as a safe living environment, to encourage herself that “next to nothing could hold me down”. She finished high school in just two years and won a full scholarship to study at Harvard University. But Liz decided to leave her top university a couple of months earlier this year in order to take care of her father, who has also developed AIDS. “I love my parents so much. They are drug addicts. But I never forget that they love me all the time. ”

    Liz wants moviegoers（常看电影的人） to come away with the idea that changing your life is “as simple as making a decision”.

    He wrote that the “human mind is capable of excitement without the application of unpleasant and violent stimulants (刺激物)”. And it appears that simply reading these words by William K Wordsworth proves his point.

    Researchers at the University of Liverpool found the writing of Shakespeare and Wordsworth and the like had a beneficial effect on the mind, making it active and excited by catching the reader's attention and leading to moments of self-reflection.

    Using scanners, they monitored the brain activity of volunteers as they read pieces of classical English literature both in their original form and in a modem translation. And according to the Sunday Telegraph, the experiment showed the more challenging writing and poetry set off far more electrical activity in the brain than the simple readings.

    The research also found poetry, in particular, increased activity in the right brain, an area concerned with “autobiographical memory”, which helped the readers to reflect on their own experiences in light of what they had read. The academics said this meant the classics were more useful than self-help books.

    The brain responses of 30 volunteers were monitored in the first part of the research as they read Shakespeare in its original and modern form. In one example, volunteers read a line from King Lear, “A father and a gracious aged man: him have you madded”, before reading the simpler, “A father and a gracious aged man: him you have enraged”. Shakespeare's use of the adjective “mad” as a verb caused a higher level of brain activity than the straightforward version.

    The next part of the research is looking at the extent to which poetry can affect psychology and provide benefit. Volunteers' brains were scanned while reading four lines by Wordsworth, and four “translated” lines were also provided. The result showed that the first version caused a greater degree of brain activity.

    “Poetry is not just a matter of style. It is a matter of deep versions of experience that add the emotional and biographical to the cognitive (认知的),” said Professor Davis, leader of the researchers.

    Are you so sure your mistakes are just mistakes? Or could they be building blocks to a success beyond any you imagined?

    When my friend Dorothy goes home to visit her family each Thanksgiving, her mother serves the traditional “mistake salad”. The dish was born many years ago, Dorothy explains, when mother was using a cookbook to make a salad. In the process, by mistake, mother included half the salad ingredients (原料) from a recipe (食谱) on the left side of the open cookbook, and half the ingredients from a different salad recipe on the opposite page. Everyone enjoyed the salad so much that she continued to serve it every year. So it was really not a mistake at all.

    Then there was the man named Alfred, who invented dynamite (炸药). When Alfred's brother died, the city newspaper mistook his brother for him, saying in the news that the dead's most famous act was the creation of bombs (炸弹). Surprised to consider that his name would forever be connected with destruction, Alfred wanted to leave a more positive impression on people. So he set a prize for people who made contributions to world peace. Now the Nobel Prize, set up by Alfred Nobel, is the most respected prize in the world.

    Everything is part of something bigger, and so are mistakes. In his brilliant book Illusions, Richard Bach explains that every problem comes to you with a gift. If you only fix your attention on what went wrong, you miss the gift. If you are willing to look deeper and ask for the bright, the problem will disappear. You are left only with the learning, and you go forward on your path.