Grandma celebrated her fifty-third birthday just weeks before grandpa died of cancer in 1965. Although his passing was very difficult for her, I think their shared struggle to make his life longer taught grandma that good health was not to be taken for granted, and she made up her mind to live her rest of her own life as fully and as long as she could. One day, when she announced to attend lessons at the Fred Astaire Dance Studio in Portland, Oregon, where she lived, we rolled-our eyes in embarrassment and helplessly wished she would just stay home and bake cookies as normal grandmothers did. Many years filled with countless dance lessons passed before we learned to appreciate the wonder of having a dancing grandma.

I suppose grandma's primary motivation for wanting to learn to dance was social. She had been a shy girl, always very tall and heavy, and had married into grandpa's quiet lifestyle before developing any elegance or confidence in her personal appearance. Dancing, on the other hand, filled her life with flash lights，wonderful parties, beautiful dresses, handsome young dance instructors, and the challenge of learning. Although the weekly dance lessons did not change her ample, two-hundred-pound figure, grandma surprised everyone with energetic performances on the dance floor, which soon gave her as much elegance and confidence as any Miss American competitor.

    Having taken weekly dance lessons for years, my grandma learned various dances easily and was soon participating in dancing matches all over the Northwest. When I was fourteen, grandma proudly invited me to watch her compete in one of these matches to be held in the grand ballroom of the Red Lion Inn. My attitude was still unenthusiastic at that point, but to make her happy, my mother and I attended the match. As if to prove me wrong, grandma made a wonderful showing in every event she entered. I thought she was truly the queen of the ball during the dance, and my thoughts were shared by the judges a short time later when she was awarded a gold cup for her outstanding performance.

    Reducing plastic waste isn't easy because the cheap material is found in almost every household item. Now, a delicious and nutritious solution has come up to help reduce our dependence on this environmental hazard.

    David Christian, the co-founder of Evoware, says the idea of creating the biodegradable (生物降解的) products came from concern at the country's high pollution rate. Indonesia is home to four of the world's worst polluted rivers. Since single-use packaging is a large contributor to the problem, Evoware decided to deal with that first.

    After investigating various materials, the company settled on seaweed. Unlike com, commonly used for biodegradable containers, seaweed does not require resources like water or large amounts of space. Since Indonesian farmers already harvest more seaweed than they can sell, it's easy for the company to find the material.

    Though they will not reveal their production process, Evoware says the seaweed packaging contains no chemicals and is safe to consume. The company has also invented single-use cups, which can break down 30 days after they're thrown away.

    While replacing plastic with the seaweed products may seem appealing to most of us, it is a hard-sell in Indonesia. According to Christian, “The awareness to reduce single-use plastic is still very low. This makes our bioplastic unnecessary.” Also a factor is the cost, which is higher than using plastic. Hopefully, Evoware will succeed in convincing Indonesians and people worldwide that switching to their products will be helpful to protecting our beautiful planet.

    One of my all time favorite holiday destinations is the Gold Coast. With its beautiful beaches, mountain hinterland and theme parks, the variety from one location to another is fantastic! And it's also important that it's like a playground for my children.

    The Gold Coast certainly offers something for every member of our family. We all love heading down to the beach for an early morning swim or surf. The beaches feature some of the softest golden sand and pumping waves, making them ideal for surfing. Safety is important especially when I'm out with the kids, and I feel better knowing that lifeguards are continually on patrol（巡逻）. The long coast also offer the perfect setting for a leisurely walk at sunset-a favorite activity of mine.

    Then, of course, there's the bargain-hunting in the city's center. For shopping goers there are amazing shopping centers boutiques and the usual chain stores. I always pick up loads of goodies at Pacific Fair.

    The Gold Coast is popular for its theme parks-Sea World, Wamer Bros Movie World and Dream World. The seal and dolphin presentations at Sea World keep both children and adults on the edge of their seats as the sea creatures go through a series of complicated jumps, flips and rolls. It's great entertainment and an educational window to the underwater world for the kids. Our kids also enjoy meeting the characters at Movie World and watching how real movies are made.

    Night-time is equally fun, as we usually set off to find the best local restaurants and cafes. The mix of cultures and influences has given the Gold Coast a wide variety of choices, including modem Australian, Italian, Asian and seafood, although sometimes nothing beats fish and chips!

    A visit to the Gold Coast in the Sunshine State is worthwhile and fun.

    A new collection of photos brings an unsuccessful Antarctic voyage back to life. Frank Hurley's pictures would be outstanding — undoubtedly first-rate photo-journalism — if they had been made last week. In fact, they were shot from 1914 through 1916, most of them after a disastrous ship wreck (海滩) by a cameraman who had no reasonable expectation of survival Many of the images were stored in an ice chest under freezing water, in the damaged wooden ship.

    The ship was the Endurance a small tight Norwegian-built three-master that was intended to take Sir Ermest Shackleton and a small crew of seamen and scientists, 27 men in all, to the southernmost shore of Antarctica's Weddell Sm. From that point Shackleton wanted to force a passage by dog sled across the continent. The journey was intended to achieve more than what Captain Robert Falcon Scott had done. Captain Scott had reached the South Pole early in 1912 but had died with his four companions on the march back.

    As writer Caroline Alexander makes clear in her forceful and well-researched story The Endurance、adventuring was then a thoroughly commercial effort Scott's last journey, completed as he lay in a tent dying of cold and hunger, caught the world's imagination, and a film made in his honor drew crowds Shackleton, a onetime British merchant-navy officer who had got to within 100 miles of the South Pole in 1908,started a business before his 1914 voyage to make money from movie and still photography. Frank Hurley，a confident and gifted Australian photographer who knew the Antarctic, was hired to make the images most of which have never before been published.

    My children are perfect. All four of them. Perfect and beautiful and clever. I bet yours are, too. Except, of course, they are not. In reality, my children and yours are likely to be reasonably average in terms of looks, behavior, intelligence and charm. That's why it is called average. Your belief in your child being special is more probably a biological thing than a fact.

    A loved one, particularly a loved child, is edited as we observe them. Other people's children are spoiled; ours are spirited. Theirs are naughty; ours are confident.

    This is all natural and even touching when not taken too far. However, it is one thing feeding this idea to ourselves but feeding it to our children may be a little less desirable. We have the idea that — unlike my parents' generation — we should build our children's self-respect as high as we can. Therefore, their random scribble (胡写乱画) is up there with Picasso, their C-minus is an unfortunate oversight on the part of the teacher, and the fact that no one wants to be friends with them is because they are particularly clever or sensitive.

    Children see through this kind of thing very quickly and ignore their parents' praises as a matter of course. As they grow up, they sense that the wider world judges them differently. This leads to a – hopefully gentle – cynicism (猜忌) about anything their parents tell them about their achievements. Perhaps that is OK — but I'm not sure if it is good for them to have the parental praise so overlooked.

    If parents were a little harsher sometimes, this could have two positive effects — first, when praise came, it would be more likely to be believed and, second, it would fit in rather more accurately with the picture of reality that the child is forming in their heads.

    A lot of pressure is put on children who are told they are beautiful, special and perfect. Because then, where is there to go? Only downwards. They become too much aware of their status in your eyes, and a danger must be that they fear failing you. To be over-praised by your parents is the counter side of being criticized all the time. Both can have negative consequences.

    It is important to give your children the freedom to be flawed (缺点) — to know that it's OK to be imperfect, and that, in fact, we often love people for their flaws — perfect people (whom we can only imagine, as they do not exist) are easy to respect, but hard to love.

    Now I am nearly 60, my main insight is that I am much less special than I once believed. This knowledge has actually been helpful in leading a more well-balanced life.

    I certainly wouldn't like to go back to attitudes that my parents, particularly my father, held, that to praise the child was to "spoil them" or make them bigheaded. However, the history of families is like the history of everything else — the story of overreactions. We praise our children to the skies, partly because we think it makes them feel good, but also because it makes us feel good. And perhaps it is more the latter than the former.

    Too much love can be as big a burden as a shortage of it. My advice is to limit your praise. Then every piece of praise will count, rather than being just ignored.

    Heard the Good News?

    Heavy TV headphones are now a thing of the past, thanks to Hearing Specialists who have developed new ultra-lightweight wireless rechargeable TV ear-buds, which enable the wearer to hear any TV show much more clearly. This unique speech clarification audio works for those with any level of hearing loss, and has been proven to outperform even the most advanced digital hearing aids for TV clarity.

    How is this Possible?

    Hearing specialist Don Hudson says the new TV Voice Pro Air ear-buds clarify TV dialogue automatically, based on the intelligence of over 100 hearing test results.

    Customers reported that traditional headphones were too heavy, only allowed them to view TV while sitting in one position, and made them feel cut off from their family and surroundings.

    "Our customers were wanting an ultra-lightweight TV listening experience, so that they could enjoy TV their way, sitting down, lying down or walking around, without discomfort."

    What's More?

    TV Voice Pro Air clarifies TV dialogue automatically. With just one click, the transmitter is guaranteed to connect to any TV, old or new, in under 2 minutes. The users can hear the TV at their preferred loudness of the sound from up to 35 feet from the TV, without affecting others in the room.

    As a special offer, Readers Digest readers can use Gift Voucher Code READERSDIGEST for $50 off the original retail price $299 and enjoy free shipping available only until December, 31st 2019. So reach us now by visiting www. TvVoicePro.com to order online or over the phone on 415 -277-2026.