Recently, a painting of actress Elizabeth Taylor, which was drawn by American artist and filmmaker Andy Warhol, sold for US $63 million. Another simple black-and-white image of a Coca-Cola bottle sold for US $35 million. But the all-time record for a Warhol painting is $100 million for a piece titled “Eight Elvises”. What's amazing is not that the pieces sold for so much, but the fact that they are not what you would call traditional art. They are “pop art”, art based on simple images of things and people from advertising, movies, music and day-to-day life.

    Born in the 1920s, Warhol grew up mostly separated from other children due to (由于) health problems. He spent a lot of his time alone drawing and then went on to study art in college. He began his career as a commercial (商业的) artist, creating pictures for magazine articles and newspaper ads. That inspired him to experiment with pop art and he hosted America's first pop art exhibition in the 1960s. The show met with a lot of discussion with some people saying that what he was doing was not art.

    Warhol followed his first works with a series we are all familiar with — paintings of Coca-Cola bottles, Brillo soap pad boxes, and portraits (肖像) of famous people. Soon after, Warhol stopped creating his own artwork. Instead, he had assistants and other artists create them at his studio called “The Factory”. Warhol wanted to show the world that art doesn't have to be complex or original; it can be created by anyone using ordinary things.

    Today, Warhol's work is unmistakable in its uniqueness. No matter how you may feel about his work, one thing cannot be argued. He introduced the world to a whole new art form, inspiring future generations of artists, and eventually becoming one of the most famous and successful pop art artists in the world.

    Soft winds blew throughout the Windy City today. We welcomed the winds, as it was another hot day in Chicago. The wind blew, bringing us some coolness and making the weather not that hot. But it was a beautiful summer day with a blue sky.

    Chicago is a great city for eating, and we have enjoyed tasting the different foods. Last night, we tried one of the city's most famous foods: deep-dish pizza. Chicago claims credit for the rich and cheesy thick-crust pizza, covered with a sweet tomato sauce. We topped it with olives and green peppers.

    We were touring the city, mainly looking for delicious local foods. Today, we enjoyed a Polish specialty at lunch: Pierogis, an Eastern European dumpling-like dish, filled with foods like potatoes, cheese, mushrooms, cabbage and meat. Polish immigrants started settling in Chicago in the 1850s, and the city has one of the largest Polish communities in the U.S.

    We took a break from exploring the city to talk with some of you! Ashley and Caty logged onto the Internet for an on-the-road version of TALK2US. We spoke to an English teacher in Tokyo, Japan, and a graduate student in India.

    Meanwhile, Adam searched for some locations around the city to shoot some video. He chose a spectacular spot: Navy Pier, Chicago's most-visited attraction. The winds from Lake Michigan keep visitors cool, and the view of the Chicago skyline never fails to impress. In fact, the view made all of us head over heels!

    Our time in Chicago has come to an end. Tomorrow, the true journey begins, as we pass through Illinois and into Missouri via Route 66. Springfield, the home of Abe Lincoln, and St. Louis, the "gateway to the West," wait for us.

    My husband and I are saving thousands of dollars every year by growing our own vegetables in our backyard. We learn something new every year and this website has been made to share tips with other people that would like to grow some of their own food.

    It's true that if you are starting from fresh, it will cost a little bit of money to get started. However, once everything is set up, the cost is very small and the rewards are huge. The size of your family and how many vegetables you eat determine exactly how much money you can save every year. We do a lot of juicing, so we are saving thousands of dollars by growing some carefully selected greens.

    There is an amazing sense of accomplishment when you grow your own vegetables. Vegetables out of your vegetable garden don't get any fresher, tastier or more satisfying. The whole family can get involved in this hobby and kids will learn where food comes from and appreciate nature even more.

    Our approach to vegetable gardening is completely different from the normal one. We are doing it in the lazy way with zero digging and fertilizing(施肥). The way we grow our vegetables is to emulate natural ecosystems. No rows of carrots can be found in our garden beds. Rain forests seem to do just fine without human interference(干预) or having plants sown in rows, so we have applied the same principle to our vegetable garden and we care producing more vegetables than ever.

    By copying nature we spend little time working in the vegetable garden but get a much better crop than previous years when we followed the rules. What can I say? We're such rebels.(叛逆者）

    Trends come and go but style is eternal. So what is the latest fashion trend that defines this season? Let's take a look at the fashion trend in 2016 and be the first ones to embrace the latest trend.

    Head—It seems like everyone will be wearing a bucket hat this season. Bucket hat might sound a bit old-fashioned for some people, but the 90s trend is in season again! Spring and summer are always the seasons for casual clothes, so pairing the bucket hat with casual shorts or skirts would be your outfit to go in this spring and summer in 2016.

    Bottom—Summer is the season when everyone gets ready for the humid weather. The current season trend is making everyone have a more comfortable summer because wide-leg bottoms is in trend again. Perhaps not everyone likes wide-leg bottoms because this could possibly make people look shorter, choosing a high-waist wide-leg bottom and matching it with crop top will definitely make you look taller and trendy in 2016.

    Dress—Be prepared for embracing the feminine details this season. Ruffles(荷叶边) around the sleeve or ruffles all-over the dress will be everyone's favorite in 2016. All these little details will transform your look in season. Simple colors like pink and black are designer's favorites in this season too.

    Shoes—Many people thought wedges are also the shoes to go in spring and summer time, but in 2016, very flat flats are in trend again. Shoe designers are trying to have more combinations flats or low-heels with less of gender identity.

    Accessories—No outfit goes perfect without accessories. Adding statement accessories to your simple and natural outlook this summer is your day-to-night outfit. These jewels are doing to make you feel completed in day time and sparkled at night.

     “Sugar, alcohol and tobacco,” economist Adam Smith once wrote, “are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which have become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are, therefore, extremely popular subjects of taxation.”

    Two and a half centuries on, most countries impose (征税) sort of tax on alcohol and tobacco. With obesity levels putting increasing pressure on public health systems, governments around the world have begun to toy with the idea of taxing sugar as well.

    Whether such taxes work is a matter of debate. A preliminary review of Mexico's taxation found a fall in purchases of taxed drinks as well as a rise in sales of untaxed and healthier drinks. By contrast, a Danish tax on foods high in fats was abandoned a year after its introduction, during claims that consumers were avoiding it by crossing the border to Germany to satisfy their desire for cheaper, fattier foods.

    The food industry has, in general, been firmly opposed to such direct government action. Nonetheless, the renewed focus on waistlines means that industry groups are under pressure to demonstrate their products are healthy as well as tasty.

    Over the past three decades, the industry has made some efforts to improve the quality of its offerings. For example, some drink manufactures have cut the amount of sugar in their beverages (饮料).

    Many of the reductions over the past 30 years have been achieved either by reducing the amount of sugar, salt or fat in a product, or by finding an alternative ingredient. More recently, however, some companies have been investing money in a more ambitious undertaking: learning how to adjust the fundamental make-up of the food they sell. For example, having salt on the outside, but none on the inside, reduces the salt content without changing the taste.

    While reformulating (再制定) recipes is one way to improve public health, it should be part of a multisided (多边的) approach. The key is to remember that there is not just one solution. To deal with obesity, a mixture of approaches, which include reformulation, taxation and adjusting portion sizes, will be needed. There is no silver bullet.

    In colleges around the country, most students are also workers.

    The reality of college can be pretty different from the images presented in movies and television. Instead of the students who wake up late, party all the time, and study only before exams, many colleges are full of students with pressing schedules of not just classes and activities, but real jobs, too.

    This isn't a temporary phenomenon. The share of working students has been on the rise since the 1970s, and one-fifth of students work year round. About one-quarter of those who work while attending school have both a full-course load and a full-time job. The arrangement can help pay for tuition (学费) and living costs, obviously. And there's value in it beyond the direct cause: such jobs can also be critical for developing important professional and social skills that make it easier to land a job after graduation. With many employers looking for students with already-developed skill sets, on-the-job training while in college can be the best way to ensure a job later on.

    But it's not all upside. Even full-time work may not completely cover the cost of tuition and living expenses. The study notes that if a student worked a full-time job at the federal minimum wage, they would earn just over $15, 000 each year, certainly not enough to pay for tuition, room, and board at many colleges without some serious financial aid. That means that though they're sacrificing time away from the classroom, many working students will still graduate with at least some debt. And working full time can reduce the chance that students will graduate at all, by cutting into the time available for studying and attending classes.

    There is little reward for attending but not finishing college. Students who wind up leaving school because of difficulty in managing work and class are likely to find themselves stuck in some of the same jobs they might have gotten if they hadn't gone at all. The difficulty of working too much while in school can create a cycle that pushes students further into debt without receiving any of the financial or career benefits.