Several safari camps operate as the base for this adventure, providing unique rides twice a day to explore deep into the delta. The camps have excellent horses, professional guides and lots of support workers. They have a reputation for providing a great riding experience.

              The morning ride, when the guides take you to beautiful, shallow lakes full of water lilies, tends to be more active. It is unlike any other riding experience. With rainbows forming in the splashing water around you and the sound of huge drops of water bouncing off your body and face. It is truly exciting. You are very likely to come across large wild animals, too. On horseback it is possible to get quite close to elephants, giraffes and many other animals. The sense of excitement and tension levels rise suddenly though, as does your heart rate, as you move closer to them.

              In the evening, rides are usually at a more relaxed and unhurried pace. With golden light streaming across the grassy delta and the animals coming out to eat and drink. Sedate though they are, rides at this time of day are still very impressive. As the sun's rays pass through the dust kicked up by the horses, the romance of Africa comes to life.

              Back at the camp you can kick off your boots and enjoy excellent food and wine. Looking back on your day, you will find it hard to deny that a horseback Safari is as close as you will ever come to answering the call of the wild.

    He's an old cobbler（修鞋匠）with a shop in the Marais,a historic area in Paris.When I took him my shoes,he at first told me: “I haven't time.Take them to the other fellow on the main street ; he'll fix them for you right away.”

    But I'd had my eye on his shop for a long time.Just looking at his bench loaded with tools and pieces of leather,I knew he was a skilled craftsman（手艺人）.“No,” I replied,“the other fellow can't do it well.”

     “The other fellow” was one of those shopkeepers who fix shoes and make keys “while-U-wait”-without knowing much about mending shoes or making keys.They work carelessly,and when they have finished sewing back a sandal strap（鞋带）you might as well just throw away the pair.

    The man saw I wouldn't give in,and he smiled.He wiped his hands on his blue apron（围裙）,looked at my shoes, had me write my name on one shoe with a piece of chalk and said,“Come back in a week.”

    I was about to leave when he took a pair of soft leather boots off a shelf.

     “See what I can do?” he said with pride.“Only three of us in Paris can do this kind of work…”

    When I got back out into the street,the world seemed brand-new to me.He was something out of an ancient legend,this old craftsman with his way of speaking familiarly,his very strange,dusty felt hat,his funny accent from who-knows-where and,above all,his pride in his craft.

    There are times when nothing is important but the bottom line,when you can do things any old way as long as it “pays”,when,in short,people look on work as a path to ever-increasing consumption（消费）rather than a way to realize their own abilities.In such a period it is a rare comfort to find a cobbler who gets his greatest satisfaction from pride in a job well done.

    All too often, a choice that seems sustainable(可持续的)turns out on closer examination to be problematic. Probably the best example is the rush to produce ethanol(乙醇) for fuel from corn. Corn is a renewable resource —you can harvest it and grow more, almost limitlessly. So replacing gas with corn ethanol seems like a great idea. 

    One might get a bit more energy out of the ethanol than that used to make it, which could still make ethanol more sustainable than gas generally, but that's not the end of the problem. Using corn to make ethanol means less corn is left to feed animals and people, which drives up the cost of food. That result leads to turning the fallow land –including, in some cases, rain forest in places such as Brazil—into farmland, which in turn gives off lots of carbon dioxide (CO) into the air. Finally, over many years, the energy benefit from burning ethanol would make up for the forest loss. But by then, climate change would have progressed so far that it might not help.

    You cannot really declare any practice “sustainable” until you have done a complete life-cycle analysis of its environmental(环境的) costs. Even then, technology and public keep developing, and that development can lead to unforeseen and undesired results. The admirable goal of living sustainably requires plenty of thought on an ongoing basis.

    My students entered the art room with their usual eagerness to see what they would be learning in today's class. Little did they know they were going to be students for a new teaching method that is spreading the nation.

    I often use videos as previews and supplements (补充) to our art lessons providing students with a variety of artists showing their skills in real-life situations outside the classroom. Finding a new painting technique called glue batik(胶水蜡染),  I thought of something new I hadn't tried before!  How awesome would it be to learn a new technique together with artists? The lesson was planned, presented to the students without any introduction or set objectives. I also asked the students to watch and pause the video as often as they needed to.

    They watched as the artist explained and showed her skills, taking notes on her steps and results. After the video, they shared what they felt the artist's objectives were, her end result using art vocabulary as well as the steps they would need to know to present their own examples. Then they began creating their works using the glue batik technique.

    Surfing the Internet a couple of weeks later, I found that the teaching method I used sounded very familiar to a new movement in education called flipped teaching, which was developed by Jonathan Bergmann. He asked his students to watch video lectures at home and do exercises (homework) in class under supervision (监督). He found that grades went up and he also found time for other types of activities, which Bergmann states are more important than the videos.

    Back to my art class, the students were learning to get ideas, make predictions, and explain reasoning to their classmates. Together they compared, asked questions and made discoveries as they presented the technique.

    Just ask any new parent: Adding a baby to a household can also add stress to a career. Now, a new study backs that up with some astonishing numbers: After science, technology, engineering, and mathematics(STEM)professionals become parents, 43%of women and 23% of men switch fields, transition(转变)to part-time work, or leave the workforce entirely.

    Many researchers and parents already knew that STEM can be unwelcoming to parents, particularly mothers. But" the considerable departure was astonishing, "says Erin Cech, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and lead author of the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. For both genders, "the proportions were higher than we expected."

    The surprisingly high reduction rate for men also highlights that" parenthood in STEM is not just a mothers' issue; it's a worker issue, "Cech says. She hopes that the findings" might motivate changes, "such as more paid parental leave from both government and employers and policies that better support flexible work time without a tight routine. "We are not suggesting that people who want families should avoid STEM; that's not the solution," she emphasizes.

    By 2018, 78% of new fathers were still working in STEM, the vast majority full time. For new mothers, 68% were still in STEM, but only 57% worked full time. For professionals without children, on the other hand, 84% of men and 76% of women were predicted to still be working in STEM full time in 2018. For the new parents across all fields, 16% of women were working part-time and 15% had left the workforce, as compared with just 2% and 3%, respectively, for men. These sharp differences make clear that, even though the reduction rate for fathers is higher than expected, mothers still face particular career challenges.

    Forget Cyclists, Pedestrians are Real Danger

    We are having a debate about this topic. Here are some letters from our readers.

    ■ Yes, many cyclists behave dangerously. Many drivers are disrespectful of cyclists. But pedestrians are probably the worse offenders.

    People of all ages happily walk along the pavement with eyes and hands glued to the mobile phone, quite unaware of what is going on around them. They may even do the same thing while crossing a road at a pedestrian crossing or elsewhere. The rest of us have to evade (避让) them or just stand still to wait for the unavoidable collision.

    The real problem is that some pedestrians seem to be, at least for the moment, in worlds of their own that are, to them, much more important than the welfare of others.

—Michael Horan

    ■ I loved the letter from Bob Brooks about cyclists (Viewpoints, May 29). I am afraid they seem to think they own the roads.

    I was walking across Altrincharn Road one morning when a cyclist went round me and on being asked what he was doing he shouted at me.

    The government built a cycle lane on the road but it is hardly used.

    The police do nothing. What a laugh they are!

    The cyclists should all have to be made to use the cycle lanes and wear helmets, fluorescent (发荧光的)jacket and tights at night and in the morning. They should pay some sort of tax and be fined for not wearing them.

—Carol Harvey

    ■ Cyclists jump on and off pavements (which are meant for pedestrians), ride at speed along the pavements, and think they have a special right to go through traffic lights when they are on red.

    I was almost knocked down recently by a cyclist riding on the pavement when there was a cycle lane right next to him.

    Other road users, including horse riders, manage to obey the rules so why not cyclists?

    It's about time they had to be registered and insured, so when they do hit a pedestrian or a vehicle, or cause an accident, at least they can be traced and there might be an opportunity to claim.

—JML

    Write to Viewpoints of the newspaper.