Over 40 years ago, a country music DJ convention (大会) was held every year in Nashville, Tennessee. Many country performers used to attend (参加) the convention to give their performances. Fans would go to Nashville hoping to see their favorite performers. In the end, so many fans began showing up in Nashville that a festival named Fan Fair was born.

    The first Fan Fair was held in April 1972, in Nashville for four days. Some of country music's biggest stars attended. There were about fifty thousand fans. The first Fan Fair was so successful that planning began almost immediately for 1973. The date was changed to June, when the weather would be better. Over one hundred thousand fans attended the second Fan Fair.

    Every year brought so many performers and fans to Fan Fair that, in 1982, it was moved to the Tennessee State Fairgrounds. Fan Fair stayed at the fairgrounds for another nineteen years.

    There was always the unexpected during the festival. In 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney attended. In 1992, more than six hundred reporters from Europe, Asia, and South America went to cover the appearance of a popular star, Billy Ray Cyrus, who had introduced a new country line dance. In 1996, Garth Brooks, who made a surprise appearance, signed autographs (签名) for 23 hours.

    In 2001, Fan Fair returned to downtown Nashville as the world's biggest country music festival. Now, over one hundred and twenty-five thousand country music fans go to Nashville every June. As you can imagine, those who want to attend Fan Fair must plan ahead. For example, they need to buy a ticket several months ahead of time. Of course, there's much more to prepare.

    As a boy, Charles Robert Darwin(达尔文) collected anything that caught his interest: insects, coins and interesting stones. He was not very clever, but Darwin was good at doing the things that interested him.

    His father was a doctor, so Darwin was sent to Edinburgh to study medicine, and was planned to follow a medical career. But Charles found the lectures boring. Then his father sent him to Cambridge University to study to be a priest. While at Cambridge, Darwin's interest in zoology and geography grew. Later he got a letter from Robert FitzRoy who was planning to make a voyage around the world on a ship, the Beagle. He wanted a naturalist to join the ship, and Darwin was recommended(推荐). That voyage was the start of Darwin's great life.

    As the Beagle sailed around the world, Darwin began to wonder how life had developed on earth. He began to observe everything. After he was home, he set to work, getting his collection in order. His first great work The Zoology of the Beagle was well received, but he was slow to make public his ideas on the origin of life.

    Later Darwin and Wallace, another naturalist who had the same opinions as Darwin, produced a paper together. Darwin's great book “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”(《物种起源》) appeared. It attracted a storm. People thought that Darwin was saying they were descended from monkeys. What a shameful idea! Although most scientists agreed that Darwin was right, the Church was still so strong that Darwin never received any honors for his work.

    Afterwards, he published another great work, The Descent of Man. His health grew worse, but he still worked. “When I have to give up observation, I shall die,” he said. He was still working on 17, April, 1882. He was dead two days later.

    In many businesses, computers have largely replaced paperwork, because they are fast, and do not make mistakes. And they are honest. Many banks say that their business is “untouched by human hands” and therefore safe. But they have no thought that the growing number of computer crimes (犯罪) show they can be used to steal.

    Computer criminals (罪犯) don't use guns. And even if they are caught, it is hard to punish them because there is often no proof. A computer cannot remember who used it. It simply does what it is told. The head teller(出纳主管) at a New York City bank used a computer to steal more than one and a half billion dollars in just four years. No one noticed this because he moved the money from one account (账户) to another. Each time a customer whose money he had stolen questioned the balance in his account, the teller said it was a computer mistake, then replaced the missing money from someone else's account. This man was caught at last.

    Some workers use the computer's power to punish their bosses they consider unfair. Recently, a large company fired its computer record assistant for reasons that were connected with her personal life rather than her job. She was given thirty days notice. In those thirty days, she stole all the company's computerized records.

    Most computer criminals have been common workers. Now police wonder if this is “the tip of iceberg”. As one official says, “I have the feeling that there is more crime out there than we are catching. What we are seeing now is all so poorly done. I wonder what the real experts are doing—the ones who really know a computer works.”

    At the end of last summer my parents' house in Tunstall went up in flames. Several months on, we're still trying to find out exactly what happened, but my parents John and Carole were out when more than half the house was burned to the ground. What was left behind needed to be pulled down and most of the things that were not actually destroyed were so smoke-damaged that they would have to be thrown away.

My parents were both teachers and not the kind of people to fill their house with expensive furniture, so most of their belongings were memories—--including photos and the tracksuit(运动服) that Dad was given when he carried the Olympic torch (火炬). But what really upset me was not the loss of these things.

    Dad had an album(唱片) for every occasion. Once his car got broken into and he was more upset that his cassettes had been nicked(划伤) than about all the rest of the damage. So when I was considering doing something to help after the fire, I immediately thought about his music. We couldn't get the old photos back, but we could replace his CDs and records. Then I started a little page about my dad on the blogging site Tumblr.

    Within a few days, news of what had happened spread by word of mouth, and I was getting messages from friends I hadn't spoken to for years. I also heard from Dad's mates and even from people neither of us had ever met. Soon packages arrived from all over the country. I expected 100CDs if we were lucky, but his new collection would now run into the thousands!

    On Christmas Day, all the records, tapes and CDs were packed into a beautiful box, which of course, was for my dad. A lot of them came from his previous students and he was touched to realize what an effect he had had on their lives. Eventually , he told me, “What could have been a bad Christmas has been a very good one.”

    I remember meeting him one evening with his pushcart. I had managed to sell all my papers and was coming home in the snow. It was that strange hour in downtown New York when the workers were pouring homeward in the twilight. I marched among thousands of tired men and women whom the factory whistles had unyoked. They flowed in rivers through the clothing factory districts, then down along the avenues to the East Side.

    I met my father near Cooper Union. I recognized him, a hunched, frozen figure in an old overcoat standing by a banana cart. He looked so lonely, the tears came to my eyes. Then he saw me, and his face lit with his sad, beautiful smile-Charlie Chaplin's smile.

    "Arch, it's Mikey," he said. "So you have sold your papers! Come and eat a banana."

    He offered me one. I refused it. I felt it crucial that my father sell his bananas, not give them away. He thought I was shy, and coaxed and joked with me, and made me eat the banana. It smelled of wet straw and snow.

    "You haven't sold many bananas today, pop, "I said anxiously.

    He shrugged his shoulders.

    "What can I do No one seems to want them."

    It was true. The work crowds pushed home morosely（愁眉苦脸的）over the pavements. The rusty sky darkened over New York buildings, the tall street lamps were lit, innumerable trucks, street cars and elevated trains clattered by. Nobody and nothing in the great city stopped for my father's bananas.

    "I ought to yell," said my father dolefully. "I ought to make a big noise like other peddlers, but it makes my throat sore. Anyway, I'm ashamed of yelling, it makes me feel like a fool. "

    I had eaten one of his bananas. My sick conscience told me that I ought to pay for it somehow. I must remain here and help my father.

    "I'll yell for you, pop," I volunteered.

    "Arch, no," he said," go home; you have worked enough today. Just tell momma I'll be late. "

    But I yelled and yelled. My father, standing by, spoke occasional words of praise, and said I was a wonderful yeller. Nobody else paid attention. The workers drifted past us wearily, endlessly; a defeated army wrapped in dreams of home. Elevated trains crashed; the Cooper Union clock burned above us; the sky grew black, the wind poured, the slush burned through our shoes. There were thousands of strange, silent figures pouring over the sidewalks in snow. None of them stopped to buy bananas. I yelled and yelled, nobody listened.

    My father tried to stop me at last." Nu," he said smiling to console me," that was wonderful yelling, Mikey. But it's plain we are unlucky today! Let's go home."

    I was frantic, and almost in tears. I insisted on keeping up my desperate yells. But at last my father persuaded me to leave with him.

    My favourite book is The Adventure of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Tom lives with his aunt Polly in a quiet street of St. Petersburg, Missouri. He's a lively and clever young boy, and he finds himself in many exciting adventures. He runs away with his two friends, Huck Finn and Joe, to an island in the middle of the Mississippi River for several days. With Huck he goes looking for treasure, with Becky he gets lost in a cave. And finally, they find a box of gold.

    My favourite scene in the book is when everyone thinks Tom is dead. He decides to go to his own funeral. He hides and watches for a time and then suddenly he appears. Everyone is astonished to see him but they're also pleased to see him alive.

    Tom is the hero of the story, but there are other important characters. Huck is an outsider and everyone is afraid of him. Becky is pretty with fair hair, Joe is Tom's best friend. And Injun Joe is the bad man of the story.

    The theme of the story is about children growing up. It describes how strangers are seen in small towns of America. Finally, it talks about freedom, social rules and how people are punished for bad behaviour.

    Why do I think The Adventure of Tom Sawyer is a great book? Mark Twain wrote the story in 1876, but it's still read and loved by people all over the world today. And although it's only a story, Twain wrote it in the everyday English of the southern states of America in the 19th century, so it sounds very real. Today it's thought to be one of the greatest books in American literature. Go on—read it! I know you'll enjoy it, too.