When I was in the fourth grade, I worked part-time as a paperboy. Mrs. Stanley was one of my customers. She'd watch me coming down her street, and by the time I'd biked up to her doorstep, there would be a cold drink waiting. I'd sit and drink while she talked.

    Mrs.Stanley talked mostly about her dead husband, "Mr. Stanley and I went shopping this morning." she'd say. The first time she said that, soda (汽水) went up my nose.

    I told my father how Mrs. Stanley talked as if Mr. Stanley were still alive. Dad said she was probably lonely, and that I ought to sit and listen and nod my head and smile, and maybe she'd work it out of her system. So that's what I did, and it turned out Dad was right. After a while she seemed content to leave her husband over at the cemetery (墓地).

    I finally quit delivering newspapers and didn't see Mrs. Stanley for several years. Then we crossed paths at a church fund-raiser(募捐活动). She was spooning mashed potatoes and looking happy. Four years before, she'd had to offer her paperboy a drink to have someone to talk with. Now she had friends. Her husband was gone, but life went on.

    I live in the city now, and my paperboy is a lady named Edna with three kids. She asks me how I'm doing. When I don't say "fine", she sticks around to hear my problems. She's lived in the city most of her life, but she knows about community. Community isn't so much a place as it is a state of mind. You find it whenever people ask how you're doing because they care, and not because they're getting paid to do so. Sometimes it's good to just smile, nod your head and listen.

    Many facts suggest that children are overweight (超重的) and the situation is getting worse, according to the doctors. I feel there are a number of reasons for this.

    Some people blame the fact that we are surrounded by shops selling unhealthy, fatty foods, such as fried chicken and ice cream, at low prices. This has turned out a whole generation of grown-ups who seldom cook a meal for themselves. If there were fewer of these restaurants, then probably children would buy less take-away food.

    There is another argument that blames parents for allowing their children to become overweight. I agree with this, because good eating habits begin early in life, long before children start to visit fast food shops. If children are given fried chicken and chocolate rather than healthy food, or are always allowed to choose what they eat, they will go for sweet and salty foods every time, and this will carry on throughout their lives.

    There is a third reason for this situation. Children these days take very little exercise. They do not walk to school. When they get home, they sit in front of the television or their computers and play computer games. Not only is this an unhealthy pastime (消遣), it also gives them time to eat more unhealthy food. What they need is to go outside and play active games or sports.

    The above are the main reasons for this problem, and therefore we have to encourage young people to be more active, as well as steering them away from fast food shops and bad eating habits.

    There is a popular saying in the English language: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Well, that is not true. Unkind words, name-calling or even the so-called “the silent treatment” can hurt children as much as being physically hit, sometimes even more so.

    A recent study of middle school children showed that verbal (言语的) abuse by other children can harm development in the brain. The study was a project of researchers at Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts. Researcher Martin Teicher and his team studied young adults, aged 18 to 25. These young men and women had not ever been treated in a cruel or violent way by their parents.  The researchers asked the young people to rate their childhood exposure to verbal abuse from both parents and other children. Then the researchers performed imaging tests on the brains of the subjects.

    The images showed that the people who reported suffering verbal abuse from peers in middle school had underdeveloped connections between the left and right side of the brain.  The two sides of the brain are connected by a large bundle of connecting fibers called the corpus callosum. This was the area that was underdeveloped.

    The middle school years are a time when these brain connections are developing. So, unkind, hurtful comments from children or adults during this period have the greatest effect. The researchers tested the mental and emotional condition of all the young people in the study.  The tests showed that this same group of people had higher levels of fear, depression, anger and drug abuse than others in the study.

    The researchers published their findings online on the AmericanJournalofPsychiatry's website.

    Parents cannot control what other people say to their children, but they can prepare their children.

    When I lived in Spain, some Spanish friends of mine The family you have chosen decided to visit England by car. Before they left, they asked me for advice about how to find accommodation. I suggested that they should stay at 'bed and breakfast' houses, because this kind of accommodation gives a foreign visitor a good chance to speak English with the family. My friends listened to my advice, but they came back with some funny stories.

"We didn't stay at bed and breakfast houses," they said, "because we found that most families were away on holiday."

I thought this was strange. Finally I understood what had happened. My friends spoke little English, and they thought 'VACANCIES' meant 'holidays', because the Spanish word for 'holidays" is 'vacancies'. So they did not go to house where the sign outside said 'VACANCIES', which in English means there are free rooms. Then my friends went to house where the sign said 'NO VACANCLES', because they thought this meant the people who owned the house were not away on holiday. But they found that these houses were all full. As a result, they stayed at hotels!

We laughed about this and about mistakes my friends made in reading other signs. In Spanish, the word 'DIVERSION' means fun. In English, it means that workmen are repairing the road, and that you must take a different road. When my friends saw the word 'DIVERSION' on a road sign, they thought they were going to have fun. Instead, the road ended in a large hole.

English people have problems too when they learn foreign languages. Once in Paris, when someone offered me some more coffee, I said "Thank you" in French. I meant that I would like some more. However, to my surprise the coffee pot was taken away! Later I found out that "Thank you" in French means "No, thank you."

    Reintroducing beavers (海狸) to Britain could help clean up rivers, prevent flooding and minimise soil loss, an expert has claimed.

    Professor Richard Brazier, a researcher at the University of Exeter, said unpublished results from a trial area in Devon showed muddy water entering an area where beavers were living was three times cleaner when it left. "Our trial has shown that the beavers are able to dam our streams in a way that keeps soil in the headwaters of our catchment (流域) so it doesn't block up rivers downstream and pollute our drinking and bathing waters. If we bring beavers back it's just one tool we need to solve Britain's crisis of soil loss and agricultural pollution of waterways, but it's a useful tool," he said.

    Prof Brazier's claims were disputed by the National Farmers' Union (NFU), which warned that the reintroduction of beavers to Scotland had led to fields and forests becoming damaged. Spokesman Mark Pope said: "The knowledge of the impacts beavers have had on farmland, riverbanks and flood defences in Scotland is concerning. We await the results of the Devon trial and will analyse the outcomes then."

    Prof Brazier, an expert in Earth Surface Processes, insisted the animals could even play a useful role in preventing flooding. He told BBC News: "The public is currently paying people to build leaky dams to keep storm waters in the uplands. The beavers can do it free of charge and even build their own homes."

    However, Professor Jane Rickson, a soil specialist from Cranfield University, Bedfordshire, joined the NFU in sounding a note of caution. She agreed that in some places in the UK there was evidence of worrying soil loss, and said new policies were urgently needed. Beavers may in fact reduce the river channel and remove vegetation, exposing banks to greater erosion (侵蚀) and increasing, rather than decreasing, the risk of flooding, she warned. And she said beaver dams should be "leaky" to avoid build-ups of large volumes of water.

    A famous doctor once received a little child who was badly ill. Thanks to his skill and care, his young patient got well and was soon able to get up and run about again.

    The child's mother was very much obliged to the doctor, and she called on him to thank him for what he had done for her child. "Doctor," she said, "you have saved my little son. I don't know how to thank you enough. I feel that money alone cannot repay you, so I have made this little purse with my own hands, as a sign of my gratitude. I hope you will accept it." The doctor stood up and said coldly, "Madam, a little present like that is very nice between friends, but a doctor needs to be paid properly for what he has done." The lady was so surprised and hurt so much that she could not reply for a moment. Then she said quietly, "Perhaps you will tell me how much your fee is?"

    "Fifty pounds", he answered.

    The lady opened the little purse and took out four fifty-pound bank notes. She handed one of them to the doctor, and put the other three back into the purse. She put the purse into her handbag and, saying good bye to the doctor, went out of the room.