Your next car could have two seats, three wheels—two in front and one in the back and a top speed of more than 100 miles per hour. Elio Motors plans to make such a tiny car named the Elio. Its two seats sit front and back instead of side by side. The driver is positioned in the center with the passenger directly behind.

    The starting price for the car is just $6,800. It has only one door, on the left side, which cuts a few hundred dollars off the manufacturing costs. Having three wheels also makes it cheaper. It has air conditioning, power windows and door locks and an AM/FM radio. More features can be ordered through Elio's long list of suppliers. Elio will also sell the cars directly through its own stores and not through franchised dealers (特约经销商).

    Paul Elio dreamed as a kid that he would one day own a car company called Elio Motors. In 2008, tired of high gas prices, he started working on a car that burns gas in a more effective way. Equally important to him was creating U.S. manufacturing jobs and making the car inexpensive enough to attract buyers who might otherwise be stuck in their old, unreliable (不可靠的)cars. “Whatever matters to you, this can move the needle on it,” he said.

    Already, more than 27,000 people have reserved (预订)one. Paul hopes to make 250,000 cars a year by 2016. So far, reservation holders are those who will use the Elio as a second car or third car for work. Finally, though, he believes the car will interest high school and college students as well as used-car drivers who want something newer and more reliable.

    This past Christmas season, I went to visit my parents. During the visit, I found the letters written by my parents to each other during the war in the attic (阁楼). The letters were piled high, dirty and had not been touched for decades. I asked mother and father if I could take the letters back to my home. They agreed.

    As I opened each letter, all of them beautiful with age, I discovered a new page in this private part of my parents' lives. My father served in the army. His letters were full of frontline (前线) descriptions, and they continued all the way through the battle. Each of my mother's letters was sealed (密封) with her lipstick kiss. Father wrote that he sealed his return letters by rekissing her lipstick kiss. How they had been missing each other! I finished reading six months of the letters and discovered there were at least eleven months missing. Maybe they were lost forever.

    Not long after our Christmas visit, Father became very ill and was in hospital. I went to the hospital to see him. As I sat by his bedside, he told me how much receiving those lipstick-kissed letters had meant to him when he had been so far from home.

    Later that evening, Mother and I revisited the attic in search of the lost letters. Finally we dug them out of Mother's old college trunk (皮箱). The next day was Valentine's Day, and we went to the hospital. At my father's bedside, I showed him an old envelope. His curiosity was aroused. When he carefully opened the letter, he recognized it and his eyes were filled with tears. He read the love messages that had been delivered years before to my mother in a quavery (颤抖的) voice. This Valentine's Day, we were lucky that we had everything.

    OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS

    Antlia Pneumatica

    In a new play by Anne Washburn, directed by Ken Rus Schmoll, a group of estranged friends gather at a Texas farm house to bury one of their peers. (Peter Jay Sharp, 416 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200. In previews.)

    Bright Star

    Steve Martin and Edie Brickell wrote this bluegrass-and-Americana musical, in which a magazine editor meets a soldier returning from the Second World War. Walter Bobbie directs. (Cort, 138 W. 48th St. 212-239-6200. In previews.)

    The Crucible

    Ivo van Hove directs Arthur Miller's classic drama about the Salem witch trials, starring Saoirse Ronan, Ben Whishaw, Ciaran Hinds, and Sophie Okonedo. (Walter Kerr, 219 W. 48th St. 212-239-6200. In previews.)

    Dry Powder

    John Krasinski, Claire Danes, and Hank Azaria star in Sarah Burgess's play, in which an executive at a private-equity firm (私人股本公司) tries to rebound from a P.R. disaster. Thomas Kail directs. (Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555. In previews. Opens Oct. 28, 2017)

    The Father

    Frank Langella stars in a play by the French writer Florian Zeller, translated by Christopher Hampton and directed by Doug Hughes for Manhattan Theatre Club, about an eighty-year-old man who is losing his grip on his own life story. (Samuel J. Friedman, 261 W. 47th St. 212-239-6200. Previews begin Oct. 28, 2017)

    10-year-old Mikaila Ulmer from Texas is building a lemonade（柠檬水）empire, hoping to save honey bees in the process.

    It all started when Mikaila was 4 years old and she was bitten by a bee twice in one week. This caused her to become very scared whenever bees were near. In order to help her manage this new fear, Mikaila's parents asked her to do some research on bees. She learned that bees are quite important for flowers, gardens and trees. She also learned that they are dying at a rapid rate. In the past year, honeybee farmers have reported losing nearly 42% of them. Many believe that this could be due to the overuse of pesticides（杀虫剂）.

    This is when she set her mind to create a product to help save bees. She started her company BeeSweet Lemonade. Her special lemonade recipe came from her great-grandmother's cookbook. She adds honey to it, instead of sugar. In order to call attention to the problems honeybees face, Mikaila sells lemonade almost every day at her lemonade stand. And she takes every opportunity to tell her customers about the problems that face honeybees.

    What began as a small activity is starting to grow. BeeSweet is projected to sell almost 140,000 bottles of lemonade this year. BeeSweet lemonade can be found on the shelves at select Whole Foods Markets as well as many restaurants and other locations near her home.

    Does Mikaila have any time to just be a kid? Sure! Every weekend Mikaila does something fun. She doesn't mind the hard work though. She says that she is happy watching people enjoy her lemonade. The more people enjoy it, the more they're learning about the bees.

    We all know cameras. But have you heard of Google's new camera? It is a small, smart device, called Clips. It comes with a case that has a clip (夹子), but it's not designed to be worn on your clothing. Most interestingly, it uses artificial intelligence to take photography out of your hands so it can capture moments on its own.

    This roughly 2-inch by 2-inch camera, with a three-hour battery life and Gorilla Glass for toughness, is intended for candid moments, like when a child does something cute that may happen too quickly for you to pull out your smart phone.

    Onboard the Clips device, it uses machine learning algorithms (计算程序) to help capture scenes. Those algorithms include face recognition. “Once it learns that there's a face you see frequently, it'll try to get nice photos of those faces,” said Juston Payne, the device's product manager. And they also want it to recognize facial expressions, which involved “training it to know what happiness looks like”. The Google team also trained it to recognize what not to shoot—like when a child's hand is over the lens, or if it is tossed in a dark purse.

    The only way to see the images is by connecting the camera with your phone, as it has no screen for viewing or editing.

    Did people think it was strange? Yes, Payne admitted. But they said they addressed that by making it obvious what it is. A green light on the front signals that the device is on. Besides, unlike a camera meant to monitor your home, it is not connected to the Internet.

    “This product is only possible because of the way that technology has advanced,” Payne said. It was only in the past year or so that they could squeeze the technology down into a device this size. Going forward, we're likely to get more assistance from the artificial intelligence packed into our apps and gadgets.

    Japanese researchers made a botanical announcement on Monday that quickly circled the world. They had developed a banana with an eatable peel (皮)—the Mongee banana.

    The technique used by scientists at D&T Farm is called "freeze thaw awakening". The process involves starling banana trees out in an environment that's nearly minus-80 degrees Fahrenheit, then moving the trees with their still-ripening bananas to a climate of around 80 degrees - an environment banana trees typically grow in the entire time. The extreme temperature change puts the banana's growth into a superfast-speed mode. In this case, the fruit ripens before the skin can catch up. The result is soft and thin skin that hasn't fully developed.

    The banana has been produced only in small amount so far, so customers face a steep bill to save themselves the bother of peeling their banana: it is currently priced at 648 yen ($6) a piece. There's also the question of whether a banana peel is actually worth eating and whether regular banana peels had, rather suddenly, become too big a problem for people who slip on them to bear anymore.

    And what about shipping? For most of the fruit's history, the peel has provided protection, allowing it to travel long distances from where it's grown to nearly every country on Earth. A softer banana would be a step back from regular banana varieties that travel thousands of miles.

    But the banana in the news is arguably good, particularly for a fruit that rarely receives its share of attention. Bananas are the most  consumed fruit in Japan, and also in the U.S. So even if eatable-peel bananas don't ensure plentiful bananas, or even necessarily nutritious bananas, they still look great on Instagram, which probably ensures them a future in Japan's famous luxury (奢侈) fruit markets.