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.

C

    Languages have been coming and going for thousands of years, but in recent times there has been less coming and a lot more going. When the world was still populated by hunter-gatherers, small, tightly knit(联系) groups developed their own patterns of speech independent of each other. Some language experts believe that 10,000 years ago, when the world had just five to ten million people, they spoke perhaps 12,000 languages between them.   

    Soon afterwards, many of those people started settling down to become farmers, and their languages too became more settled and fewer in number. In recent centuries, trade, industrialisation, the development of the nation-state and the spread of universal compulsory education, especially globalisation and better communications in the past few decades, all have caused many languages to disappear, and dominant languages such as English, Spanish and Chinese are increasingly taking over.

    At present, the world has about 6,800 languages. The distribution of these languages is hugely uneven. The general rule is that mild zones have relatively few languages, often spoken by many people, while hot, wet zones have lots, often spoken by small numbers. Europe has only around 200 languages; the Americas about 1,000; Africa 2,400; and Asia and the Pacific perhaps 3,200, of which Papua New Guinea alone accounts for well over 800. The median number （中位数）of speakers is a mere 6,000, which means that half the world's languages are spoken by fewer people than that.

   Already well over 400 of the total of 6,800 languages are close to extinction (消亡), with only a few elderly speakers left. Pick, at random, Busuu in Cameroon (eight remaining speakers), Chiapaneco in Mexico (150), Lipan Apache in the United States (two or three) or Wadjigu in Australia (one, with a question-mark): none of these seems to have much chance of survival.

    More than a hundred years ago, two boys were fishing in a small river. They sat in a heavy-bottomed boat, each holding a long, bent pole in his hands and eagerly waiting for "a bite". When they wanted to move the boat from one place to another they had to push against a long pole into the bottom of the stream.

    "This is slow work, Robert," said the older of the boys. "Yes, Christopher, and it's hard work, too." answered Robert. "I think there's some better way of moving a boat."

    Christopher advised rowing it and Robert promised to make some paddles (桨). The next day Robert's aunt heard a great noise in her house. The two boys were there, busily working. "What are you making, Robert?" she asked. He told his plan. His aunt laughed and said, "Well done! I hope you'll succeed."

    After much work, they succeeded in making two paddle wheels. They were very rough, but strong and usable. They fixed each of these wheels to the end of an iron rod (长杆) which they passed through the boat from side to side. The rod was bent in the middle. When the work was finished, the old fishing boat looked rather strange, with a paddle wheel on each side. The boys lost no time in trying it. One of the boys could guide the boat while the other turned the paddle wheels.

    That night when Christopher went home, he told his father a wonderful story. "Robert Fulton planned the whole thing," he said, "and I helped him make the paddles and put them on the boat." When Robert Fulton became a man, he didn't forget his experiment with the old fishing boat. He kept on thinking and working, until at last he succeeded in making a boat with paddle wheels that could be run by steam. He's now honored as the inventor of the steamboat.

    After a morning hike in the Saneum HealingForest,46-year-old firefighter Kang Byoung-wook has tea made from the bark of an elm tree, practices yoga (瑜伽),and makes a picture with dried flowers. He is one of 40 firefighters taking part in a three-day program, the aim of which is to offer“forest healing" (森林治愈);the firefighters all have posttraumatic stress disorder (创伤后应激障碍).

    Saneum is one of three official healing forests in South Korea. Soon there will be 34 more. South Koreans-many of whom suffer from work stress, digital addiction, and great academic pressure have accepted the medicalization of nature with great enthusiasm.

    There is increasing evidence that being outside in a pleasant natural environment is good for us. But how many of us get to enjoy nature regularly? Fewer and fewer, it seems. According to Lisa Nisbet, a psychology professor at Canada s Trent University, evidence for the benefits of nature is pouring in at a time when we are most disconnected from it.

    "We don't think of being outdoors as a way to increase happiness," says Nisbet."We think other things will, like shopping or TV." But South Korea is starting to challenge this opinion.

    So what are some of the benefits of nature that Nisbet refers to? Being surrounded by nature has one obvious effect: It calms us and reduces our stress levels. This has been shown to lower blood pressure and heart rates.

Another experiment conducted by psychologist Stephen Kaplan found that people who took a 50-minute walk in a park had better attention and short-term memory than those who took a walk along a city street.

    Perhaps what's more surprising is that nature may also make us more creative. David Strayer, a psychologist at the University of Utah, showed as much with a group of participants, who performed 50 percent better on creative problem-solving tasks after three days of wilderness backpacking.

In fact, we may never know exactly what nature does to the brain. Something mysterious will always remain, and maybe that's as it should be.

    Summer vacation is coming soon. To enjoy a relaxing holiday, here we'd like to share with you some of the best rock and jazz festivals. Although many Ukrainian(乌克兰的) music festivals were cancelled because of the bad financial condition, plenty remain for music lovers.

    KrayinaMriy

    When and where: June 20－21, Kyiv, Pyrohovo folk museum

    Lineup (阵容): TNMK, Boombox, VopliVidoplyasova, Onuka

    KrayinaMriy is an annual(每年的) rock music festival that promotes modern music. Besides music, the festival will offer dances as well as literary and theatrical performances and also playing of a traditional music instrument.

    Alfa Fest

    When and where: June 26－28, Lviv

    So far all tickets have been booked, but a waiting list is available at www.alfajazzfest.com/buyticket. This yearly festival held in Lviv will be interesting for both experienced jazz lovers and jazz learners. The performers on the lineup come from Ukraine, Japan, Cuba and the U.S.

    Koktebel

    When and where: Aug.22－Sept.6,Zatoka village, Odesa Oblast

    Koktebel Jazz is the biggest outdoor jazz festival. The Cinematic Orchestra, ParovStelar, Nino Katamadze, Bonobo, Submotion Orchestra, Billy's Band were the GALA'S superstars in previous years. This year the list of festival's participants and tickets prices still remain unknown but the organizers revealed(透露) that apart from good jazz, the guests will be offered music lectures and movie screenings.

    Respublica

    When and where: Sept.4－7,KamyanetsPodilsky, Khmelnytska Oblast

    Folk music and street art festival Respublica will take place in Kamyanets, Podilsky, one of the most beautiful cities in the west. Kyiv Post staff writer NataliyaTrach can be reached at trach@kyivpost.com.Booking in advance can get a good discount.

    Throughout history scientists have risked their health and their lives in their search for the truth.

    Sir Isaac Newton, the seventeenth century scientist, was very smart, but that didn't stop him from doing some pretty stupid things. In his laboratory in Cambridge he often did the strangest experiments. Once, while testing how light passes through lenses (晶状体), he put a long needle into his eye, pushed it to the back, and then moved it around just to see what would happen. Luckily, nothing long-lasting did. On another occasion he stared at the sun for as long as he could bear, to discover what effect this would have on his sight. Again he escaped suffering permanent damage, though he had to spend some days in a darkened room before his eyes recovered.

    In the 1750s the Swedish chemist Karl Scheele was the first person to find a way to produce phosphorus (磷). He in fact discovered eight more chemical elements including chlorine (氯), though he didn't get any praise for them. He was a very clever scientist, but his one failing was a curious habit of tasting a little of every substance he worked with. This risky practice finally caught up with him, and in 1786 he was found dead in his laboratory surrounded by a large number of dangerous chemicals, any of which might have been responsible for his death.

    Eugene Shoemaker was a respected geologist. He spent a large part of his life studying craters (火山口) on the moon, and how they were formed, and later did research into the comets of the planet Jupiter. In 1997 he and his wife were in the Australian desert where they went every year to search for places where comets might have hit the earth. While driving in the Tanami desert, normally one of the emptiest places in the world, another vehicle crashed into them and Shoemaker was killed on the spot. Some of his ashes (骨灰) were sent to the moon aboard the Lunar Prospector spacecraft and left there — he is the only person who has had this honor.