One evening after dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Tisich called a family meeting. —We've had to make a difficult decision, Mr. Tisich announced. —You see, your mother has been offered a post as co-director of a television station in Chicago. Unfortunately, the station is not here. After thinking long and hard about it, we've concluded that the right decision is to move to Chicago.

    Marc looked shocked, while his sister Rachel breathlessly started asking when they'd be moving. —It's surprising, but exciting! she said. Marc simply said, —We can't go—I can't leave all my friends. I'd rather stay here and live with Tommy Lyons!

    The Tisichs hoped that by the time they moved in August, Marc would grow more used to the idea of leaving. However, he showed no signs of accepting the news, refusing to pack his belongings.

    When the morning of the move arrived, Marc was nowhere to be found. His parents called Tommy Lyon's house, but Mrs. Lyons said she hadn't seen Marc. Mrs. Tisich became increasingly concerned, while her husband felt angry with their son for behaving so irresponsibly.

    What they didn't know was that Marc had started walking over to Tommy's house, with a faint idea of hiding in Lyons's attic(阁楼) for a few days. But something happened on the way as Marc walked past all the familiar landscape of the neighborhood: the fence that he and his mother painted, the tree that he and his sister used to climb, and the park where he and his father often took evening walks together. How much would these mean without his family? Who make them special in the first place? Marc didn't take the time to answer that question but instead hurried back to his house, wondering if there were any moving cartons(纸板箱) the right size to hold his record collection.

    On August 16, 1977, Elvis Presley saved me.

    The previous afternoon, I played with my six-year-old peers in Heather Peters^' backyard. I was enjoying my cake, when Heather asked me where my sleeping bag was. Only then did I know this party was a sleepover. The word “sleep-over” to a six-year-old bed-wetter is like what “cancer” means to an adult. But what if I told them I was a bed-wetter? At least with cancer, people gather at your bedside instead of running from it.

    I thought of a way to escape. I would explain that I needed my mother's permission to spend the nights. But as I called my Mom, Heather stood beside me to listen. She granted permission! Then I would be sleeping in the same living room as the other girls. I didn't bring my own pajamas (睡衣)，so Mrs. Peters offered me Heather's pajamas.

    As the other girls drifted into their sweet dreams, I tried to stay awake. “Do I need to go again? I'll stay up to go one more time.. .”.Of course , I finally fell asleep.

    The next morning , I was the first to wake up. I was warm! I lay in panic for what seemed like hours before the other girls started to wake up. I did the only thing I could do — I pretended that the bed-wetting didn't happen. I got up, took off Heather's pajamas and changed into my clothes like the other girls.

    Mrs. Peters walked into the room, and before she could say anything, she stepped right onto the pile of my wet pajamas. My heart stopped as I watched her face burn red. “WHO DID THIS?” She screamed, with a look so frightening. Should I answer? And that was when it happened — Mr. Peters came in and grabbed his wife , "Elvis Presley died!”

    The news of the King's death overtook Mrs. Peters, and I ,was spared. I got home without the other girls knowing what had happened.

    Going green seems to be fad(时尚)for a lot of people these days.Whether that is good or bad，we can't really say, but for the two of us，going green is not a fad but a lifestyle．

    On April22nd，2011，We decided to go green every single day for an entire year．This meant doing 365 different green things，and it also meant challenging ourselves to go green beyond easy things．Rather than recycle and reduce our energy, we had to think of 365 different green  things to do and this was no easy task．

    With the idea of going green every single day for a year .Our Green Year started．My wife and I decided to educate people about how they could go green in their lives and hoped we could show people all the green things that could be done to help the environment．We wanted to push the message that every little bit helps．

    Over the course of our Green Year, we completely changed our lifestyle．We now shop at organic(有机的) stores．We consume less meat, choosing green food．We have greatly reduced our buying we don't need．We have away half of what we owned through websites．Our home is kept clean by vinegar and lemon juice, with no chemical cleaners. We make our own butter, enjoying the smell of home-made flesh bread .In our home office anyone caught doing something ungreen might be punished．

    Our minds have been changed by Our Green Year．We are grateful for the chance to have been able to go green and educate others .We believe that we do have the power to change things and help our planet．

Volunteer Opportunities

    Ring the bells

    The Salvation Army needs bell ringers for its annual Red Kettle Christmas Campaign. Two hour shifts begin on Nov.12 and run Mondays through Saturdays. Volunteers can contact Jim Evers at jimevers@usc.salvationarmy.org or at 764-0962, or sign up online at ringbels.org.

    Read to children

    Join the United Way and Child Care Aware in supporting the development and learning of young children. Volunteers are needed to spend 30 minutes a week reading to children and guiding related activities using literacy kits（识字工具包）provided by Childcare Aware of Eastern Kansas .A two-hour literacy training will be provided. To ensure continuity for the children in the program, we are asking that volunteers make a six-month commitment. Please contact Shelly at 865-5030, ext.301 or at volunteer@unitedwaydgco.org.

    Garden with a neighbor

    Douglas Country Housing Inc. is looking for volunteers to assist a senior man in need of help with an overgrown garden before winter arrives. One to two hours of your time will make a huge difference in someone's quality of life. No previous gardening experience is required. Please e-mail rsovista@ldcha.org or call 842-1533.

    Feed your friends

    Just food fights hunger in our community. Help Just Food kick off the holiday season by packing. Thanksgiving meal boxes for families in need. Every year Just Food provides Thanksgiving meals to families in Douglas Country that will otherwise go without. Your help is needed for distributing these meals in advance of Thanksgiving. Help is needed on the following days and times:

    9 a. m. –7 p. m. Monday, Nov. 21.

    9 a. m. –7 p. m. Tuesday, Nov. 22.

    The maximum number of volunteers is 15 at a time. To sign up, click here.

    By trying to tickle(挠痒痒) rats and recording how their nerve cells respond, Shimpei Ishiyama and his adviser are discovering a mystery that has puzzled thinkers since Aristotle expected that humans, given their thin skin and unique ability to laugh, were the only ticklish animals.

    It turns out that Aristotle was wrong. In their study published on Thursday, Ishiyama and his adviser Michael Brecht found that rats squeaked and jumped with pleasure when tickled on their backs and bellies. These signs of joy changed according to their moods. And for the first time, they discovered a special group of nerve cells. These nerve cells made this feeling so powerful that it causes an individual being tickled to lose control.

    To make sure that he had indeed found a place in the brain where tickling was processed, Ishiyama then stimulated that area with electrical currents. The rats began to jump like rabbits and sing like birds.

    “It's truly ground-breaking,” said Jeffrey Burgdorf, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University who reviewed the paper. “It takes the study of emotion to a new level.”

    Burgdorf has played a central role in our understanding of animal tickling. He was part of a team that first noticed, in the late 1990s, that rats made special noises when they were experiencing social pleasure. Others had already noted that rats repeatedly made short and high sounds during meals. But the lab where Burgdorf worked noticed that they emitted similar sounds while playing. And so one day, the senior scientist in the lab said, “Let's go and tickle some rats.” They quickly found that those cries of pleasure doubled.

    “The authors have been very adventurous,” said Daniel O'Connor, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies touch. To him, that finding was very surprising.

    “Why does the world literally feel different when you are stressed out?” he said. “This is the first step towards answering that question. It gives us a way to approach it with experimental rigor(严谨).”

    Arriving in Sydney on his own from India, my husband, Rashid, stayed in a hotel for a short time while looking for a house for me and our children.

    During the first week of his stay, he went out one day to do some shopping. He came back in the late afternoon to discover that his suitcase was gone. He was extremely worried as the suitcase had all his important papers, including his passport.

    He reported the case to the police and then sat there, lost and lonely in strange city, thinking of the terrible troubles of getting all the paperwork organized again from a distant country while trying to settle down in a new one.

    Late in the evening, the phone rang. It was a stranger. He was trying to pronounce my husband's name and was asking him a lot of questions. Then he said they had found a pile of papers in their trash can(垃圾桶)that had been left out on the footpath.

    My husband rushed to their home to find a kind family holding all his papers and documents. Their young daughter had gone to the trash can and found a pile of unfamiliar papers. Her parents had carefully sorted them out, although they had found mainly foreign addresses on most of the documents. At last they had seen a half-written letter in the pile in which my husband had given his new telephone number to a friend.

    That family not only restored the important documents to us that day but also restored our faith and trust in people. We still remember their kindness and often send a warm wish their way.