There was once a guy who suffered from cancer, a cancer that can't be cured. One day he was sick of staying home and wanted to go out. He passed a CD store and looked through the front door for a second. He saw a beautiful girl about his age and he knew it was love at first sight. He opened the door and walked in, not looking at anything else but her. He walked closer and closer until he was finally at the front desk where she sat.

    She looked up and asked, “Can I help you?” She smiled and he thought it was the most beautiful smile he had ever seen before. He said, “UH…Yeah…Umm… I would like to buy a CD.” He picked one out and gave her money for it. “Would you like me to pack it for you?” she asked, smiling her cute smile again. He nodded and she went to the back. She came back with the packed CD and gave it to him.

     From then on, he went to that store every day and bought a CD. He took the CD home and put it in his closet. He was still too shy to ask her out. His mother found out about this and encouraged him. So the next day, he took all his courage and left his phone number on the desk before he ran out.

    Several weeks later the phone rang, and the mother picked it up. It was the girl!!! The mother started to cry and said, “You don't know? He passed away yesterday…” Later that day, the mother went into the boy's room and opened the closet. Inside were piles and piles of unopened CDs. She picked one up and opened it. Out fell a piece of paper, saying: “Do you want to go out with me? Love, Jocelyn.” The mother was deeply moved and opened another CD… Again, there was a piece of paper with the same words.

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    When her five daughters were young, Helene An always told them that there was strength in unity (团结). To show this, she held up one chopstick, representing oneperson. Then she easily broke it into two pieces. Next, she tied several chopsticks together, representing a family. She showed the girls it was hard to break the tied chopsticks. This lesson about family unity stayed with the daughters as they grew up.

    Helene An and her family own a large restaurant business in California. However, when Helene and her husband Danny left their home in Vietnam in 1975, they didn't have much money. They moved their family to San Francisco. There they joined Danny's mother, Diana, who owned a small Italian sandwich shop. Soon afterwards, Helene and Diana changed the sandwich shop into a small Vietnamese restaurant. The five daughters helped in the restaurant when they were young. However, Helene did not want her daughters to always work in the family business because she thought it was too hard.

    Eventually the girls all graduated from college and went away to work for themselves, but one by one, the daughters returned to work in the family business. They opened new restaurants in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Even though family members sometimes disagreed with each other, they worked together to make the business successful. Daughter Elisabeth explains, "Our mother taught us that to succeed we must have unity, and to have unity we must have peace. Without the strength of the family, there is no business."

    Their expanding business became a large corporation in 1996, with three generations of Ans working together. Now the Ans' corporation makes more than $20 million each year. Although they began with a small restaurant, they had big dreams, and they worked together. Now they are a big success.

    Graph can be a very useful tool for conveying information especially numbers， percentages, and other data . A graph gives the reader a picture to interpret. That can be a lot more pages and pages and pages explaining the data .

    Graphs can seem frightening, but reading a graph is a lot like reading a story. The graph has a title ,a main idea ,and supporting details.You can use your active reading skills to analyze and understand graphs just like any other text .

    Most graphs have a few basic parts: a caption or introduction paragraph, a title , a legend or key, and labeled axes. An active reader looks at each part of the graph before trying to interpret the data. Captions will usually tell you where the data came from (for example, a scientific study of 400 African elephants from 1980 to 2005). Captions usually summarize the author's main point as well. The title is very important. It tells you the main idea of the graph by stating what kind of information is being shown. A legend, also called a key ,is a guide to the symbols and colors used in the graph. Many graphs, including bar graphs and line graphs, have two axes that form a corner, Usually these axes are the left side and the bottom of the graph .Each axis will always have a label. The label tells you what each axis measures.

Bar Graphs

    A bar graph has two axes and uses bars to show amounts. In Graph 1 ,we see that the x-axis shows grades that students earned, and the y-axis shows bow many students earned each grade .You can see that 6 students earned an A because the bar for A stretches up to 6 on the vertical measurement. There is a lot of information we can get from a simple graph like this(See Graph 1).

Line Graphs

    A line graph looks similar to a bar graph ,but instead of Bars, it plots points and connects them with a line .It has the same parts as a bar graph – two labeled axes –and can be read the same way .To read a line graph, it's important to focus on the points of intersection rather than the line segments between the points, This type of graph is most commonly used to show how something changes over time.

    Here is a graph that charts how far a bird flies during the first Five days of its spring migration (See Graph 2).

    The unit of measurement for the x-axis is days. The unit of measurement for the y-axis is kilometers. Thus we can see that ,on the first day, the pipit flew 20 kilometers. The line segment goes up between Day 1 and Day 2,which means that the bird flew farther on Day 2.If the line segment angled dawn, as between Day 4 and Day 5,it would mean that the bird flew fewer  kilometers than the day before. This line graph is a quick, visual way to tell the reader about the bird's migration.

    Pie Graphs

    A typical pie graph looks like a circular pie. The circle is divided into sections, and each section represents a fraction of the data. The graph is commonly used to show percentages; the whole pie represents l00 percent, so each piece is a fraction of the whole.

    A pie graph might include a legend，or it might use icons or labels within each slice. This pie graph shows on month's expense, (See Graph 3 ).

    Food $ 25

    Movies $ 12

    Clothing $ 36

    Savings $ 20

    Books $ 7

Dear God,

    Now that I am no longer young. I have friends whose mothers have passed away. I have heard these sons and daughters say they never fully thanked their mothers until it was too late to tell them.

    I am blessed with the dear mother who is still alive. I appreciate her devotion more each day. My mother does not change, but I do. As I grow older and wiser, I realize what an extraordinary person she is. It's sad that I am unable to say these words in her presence, but they flow easily from my pen.

    How does a daughter begin to thank her mother for life itself? For the love, patience and just plain hard work that go into raising a child? For running after a toddler（学步儿童）, for understanding a moody teenager, and for tolerating a college student who knows everything? For wailing for the day when the daughter realizes what her mother really is?

    How does a grown woman thank a mother for continuing to be a mother? For being ready with advice when asked or remaining silent when it is needed? For not saying “I told you so.” when she could have voiced these words dozens of times? For being essentially herself－loving, thoughtful, patient and forgiving?

    I don't know how to thank her, dear God, except to bless her and live up to the example she has set. I pray that I will look as good in the eyes of my children as my mother looks in mine.

Early or Later Day Care

    Many young parents are confused about whether their children should have early day care, and there have always been different views on this subject.

    The British psychoanalyst John Bowlby believes that separation from parents during the sensitive "attachment" period from birth to three may scar a child's personality and lead to psychological problems in later life. Some people have drawn the conclusion from Bowlby's work that children should not be subjected to day care before three because of the parental separation it causes, and many people do believe this.

    According to Bowlby, a great deal of psychological harm can occur when young children are separated from their parents. If they are left without touch for a while, they will have a higher stress level. Parents' influence on their children's well-being may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is developing rapidly and when nearly all of her or his experiences are shaped by parents and the family environment.

    However, there are critics. Some anthropologists (人类学家) point out that the love affair between children and parents found in modern societies does not usually exist in traditional societies. There has been a long history of the fact that father and mother did not bring up their children alone. Plato, around 394 B.C., argued that a system of early child care would free women to participate in society. Results from Israeli and Dutch studies show that child-raising duties are more evenly distributed among a broader group of people.

    Besides, studies have reported that early day care has a neutral or slightly positive effect on children's development. They learn the benefits of being socially smart, understanding the concept of sharing and caring. They promote concentration skills, which is very important in their learning. There are games where children are taught basic language and mathematical skills through stories and everyday examples.

    Common sense tells us that early day care would not be so widespread if children had problems with it. But Bowlby's analysis raises the possibility that it has delayed effects. The possibility that such care might lead to more mental illness 15 or 20 years later can only be explored by the use of statistics. Whatever the long-term effects, parents sometimes find the immediate effects difficult to deal with. Children under three dislike leaving their parents and show unhappiness. At the age of three almost all children find it easy to go to the nursery. The matter, then, is far from being clearly known, though experience and available evidence indicate that early day care is reasonable for young children.

    In America, the number of people killed in car crashes in 2016 was above 40, 000 for the first time in a decade, data released on Wednesday shows.

    "Americans believe there is nothing we can do to stop crashes from happening, but that isn't true. We are behind the rest of the developed world in addressing highway fatalities(死亡). We just haven't been willing to do what needs to be done, "said Deborah A. P. Hersman, president of the National Safety Council.

    The National Safety Council data shows a 6 percent increase in deaths in 2018 when compared with 2015 and a 3 percent increase in the number of miles Americana drove in 2016.

    "Motor vehicle fatality numbers have been ringing the alarm for two years, "Hersman said." Unfortunately, we have been blind to the data and the killings on our roadways. If we fail to take action, the death tell will continue to rise. "

    "The trend is clear：After years of progress, highway deaths are heading in the wrong direction, "said Jonathan Adkins, a state safety official.

    The number of people killed reached a record low of 32, 675 in 2014, according to NHTSA statistics. That record followed a fairly steady downward track for the past six years that experts attributed it primarily to safety features that have been built into cars and trucks.

    Safety advances including increased seat-belt use, air bags, anti-lock braking, stability controls and electronic warnings and cameras.

    The bad economy and high gas prices also influenced the reduction in deaths. Now, with unemployment and gas prices both low, more people are driving for work and pleasure trips.

    "It's not just that Americans drive more miles when the economy improves; it's the kind of miles they drive,"said Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.