One day when I was 12, my mother gave me an order: I was to walk to the public library, and borrow at least one book for the summer. This was one more weapon for her to defeat my strange problem—inability to read.

    In the library, I found my way into the “Children's Room.” I sat down on the floor and pulled a few books off the shelf at random. The cover of a book caught my eye. It presented a picture of a beagle. I had recently had a beagle, the first and only animal companion I ever had as a child. He was my secret sharer, but one morning, he was gone, given away to someone who had the space and the money to care for him. I never forgot my beagle.

    There on the book's cover was a beagle which looked identical (相同的) to my dog. I ran my fingers over the picture of the dog on the cover. My eyes ran across the title, Amos, the Beagle with a Plan. Unknowingly, I had read the title. Without opening the book, I borrowed it from the library for the summer.

    Under the shade of a bush, I started to read about Amos. I read very, very slowly with difficulty. Though pages were turned slowly, I got the main idea of the story about a dog who, like mine, had been separated from his family and who finally found his way back home. The dog was my dog, and I was the little boy in the book. At the end of the story, my mind continued the final scene of reunion, on and on, until my own lost dog and I were, in my mind, running together.

    My mother's call returned me to the real world. I suddenly realized something: I had read a book, and I had loved reading that book. Everyone knew I could not read. But I had read it. Books could be incredibly wonderful and I was going to read them.

    I never told my mother about my “miraculous” (奇迹般的) experience that summer, but she saw a slow but remarkable improvement in my classroom performance during the next year. And years later, she was proud that her son had read thousands of books, was awarded a PhD in literature, and authored his own books, articles, poetry and fiction. The power of the words was held.

    British chemist David Evans has become an overnight celebrity on Chinese social media. His chemistry experiments have attracted over 2 million followers in just a few months. Evans is a chemistry professor at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology. The 60-year-old always wears a white lab coat, a pair of safety goggles (护目镜), and smiles often. Some web users say he looks just like the “grandpa of KFC”.

    Evans has posted videos of various experiments. His most popular experiments have attracted millions of hits on video-sharing apps. Excited children's cheers and shouts can be heard in his videos. “I hope my experiments can arouse people's interest in science,” he says.

    Evans has been interested in China since childhood. In the early 1970s, before the reform and opening-up, he viewed it as a “country full of mysteries”. He first visited the Chinese mainland in 1987 to attend a chemistry conference in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. He quit his job in the United Kingdom and moved to Beijing in 1996. Many of his friends thought he was crazy. But Evans says they just saw China's challenges but not its potential.

    Since 2011, Evans has turned to the Internet to popularize science. He learned short-video apps are also popular in small cities and rural areas. And he realized this enables him to reach more students, who lack opportunities to perform fun experiments. But even a one-minute video requires a considerable amount of work. Still, he thinks it's worth it to fulfill his responsibility to popularize science.

    His experiments always fill schools' lecture halls with laughter. Some viewers call him “a Harry Potter-like magician”, but he disagrees. “A magician never tells the secrets behind his tricks, but a scientist always gives an explanation.” He sees himself as a teacher. He performs experiments to spread knowledge, inspire thinking, remove misunderstandings and show that science can create change. Evans says he looks forward to more “chemical reactions” with China.

    In 1888 an Egyptian farmer digging in the sand near the village of Istabl Antar uncovered a mass grave. The bodies weren't human. They were feline — ancient cats that had been mummified(木乃伊化的) and buried in holes in astonishing numbers. "Not one or two here and there", reported English Illustrated Magazine, "but dozens, hundreds, hundreds of thousands, a layer of them, a layer thicker than most coal joints, ten to twenty cats deep. " Some of the linen-wrapped cats still looked presentable, and a few even had golden faces. Village children peddled the best ones to tourists for change; the rest were sold as fertilizer. One ship transported about 180,000, weighing some 38, 000 pounds, to Liverpool to be spread on the fields of England.

    Those were the days of generously funded explorations—that dragged through acres of desert in their quest for royal tombs, and for splendid gold and painted masks to decorate the estates and museums of Europe and America. The many thousands of mummified animals that turned up at religious sites throughout Egypt were just things to be cleared away to get at the good stuff. Few people studied them, and their importance was generally unrecognized.

    In the century since then, archaeology has become less of a treasure hunt and more of a science. Archaeologists now realize that much of their sites' wealth lies in the majority of details about ordinary folks—what they did, what they thought, how they prayed. And animal mummies are a big part of that.

    "They're really displays of daily life," says Egyptologist Salima Ikram. After peering beneath bandages with x-rays and cataloguing her findings, she created a gallery for the collection — a bridge between people today and those of long ago. "You look at these mummified animals, and suddenly you say, Oh, King So-and-So had a pet. I have a pet. And instead of being at a distance of 5,000-plus years, the ancient Egyptians become clearer and closer to us."

    The pub is a great British invention. Here, experts pick their favourites for Sunday lunch, picturesque settings, craft beer, history and more.

    Free Trade Inn, Newcastle

    House favourites

    Fyne Ales Jarl, 3.8%

    Scream for Pizza food truck, every Wednesday, £5 (if pre-booked)

    Moors and oceans are great, but looking up the Tyne towards the city's bowed bridges from this pub in Ouseburn is another kind of delight. It is especially exciting at sunset, as the Instagrammers and amateur photographers of north-east England have discovered — city lights gleaming(闪烁) against Miami Vice skies.

    The Angel on the Bridge, Henley-on-Thames

    House favourites

    Brakspear Bitter, 3.4%

    Slow-roast belly pork, £13.50

    For those who prefer their views more landscaped than wild. The river is peaceful, the ducks entertaining, the air clean, and sunsets and mist keep the view varied all year round. The pub even has its own moorings for people with boats.

    Duke of Marlborough, Suffolk

    House favourites

    Adnams Dry Hopped Lager, 4.2%

    Braised beef cheek, £13.50

    Time has a habit of leaving its trace on village pubs and the Duke is no different. Originally built as a medieval hall house, it became an inn during the 17th century. With the help of what is obviously a very active community, the pub is a lively place attracting drinkers, foodies and families with kids. Help yourself to dog biscuits if you bring your best friend.

    The Bevy, Brighton

    House favourites

    Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter, 4%

    Sunday roast, £7.95

    In 2010, what was then the Bevendean pub was closed by the police due to a series of antisocial incidents. Four years later it reopened as the Bevy, after locals bought it and carried out essential works. The whole project is an example of how an urban pub in an unfashionable area can be saved.

About us

    Family, Career and Community Leaders of America ( FCCLA) is a non-profit national career and technical students organization for young men and women in Family and Consumer Sciences education in public and private school through grade 12. Since 1945，FCCLA has  been making a difference in their families, careers and communities by addressing important issues through Family and Consumer Science education.

    Mission (任务)

    To promote personal growth and leadership development through Family and Consumer Science education. Focusing on the various roles of family members, wage earners and community leaders, members develop skills for life through: character development, creative thinking, interpersonal communication, practical knowledge and career preparation.

Purposes

    To provide opportunities for personal development and preparation for adult life.

    To strengthen the function of family as a basic unit of society.

    To promote greater understanding between youth and adults.

    To provide opportunities for making decisions.

    To prepare for the various roles of men and women in today's society.

Membership

    FCCLA has a national membership of over 205, 000 young men and women in nearly 6, 500 chapters. There are 50 associations. Since its founding in 1945, it has involved more than 9，000, 000 youth.

     Financial (资金）and Cooperative Support

     FCCLA is supported primarily by student membership dues. Additional money comes from individuals and businesses. It is supported by the US Department of Education artd the America Association of Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS).

National Publications

    Teen Times, the official magazine of FCCLA, is published once every three months during the school year and sent to its members. The national staff also publishes a variety of other resource materials for members and adult leaders.

    I'm not so sure I like my friends any more. I used to like them — to be honest. We'd have lunch, talk on the phone or exchange e-mails, and they all seemed normal enough. But then came Facebook and I was introduced to a sad fact: many of my friends have dark sides that they had kept from me.

    Today my friends show off the more unpleasant aspects of their personalities via Facebook. No longer hidden, they're thrown in my face like TV commercials — unavoidable and endless advertisements for the worst of their personalities.

    Take Fred. If you were to have lunch with him, you'd find him warm, and down-to-earth. Read his Facebook and you realize he's an unbearable, food-obsessed bore. He'd pause to have a cup of coffee on his way to save a drowning man — and then write about it.

    Take Andy. You won't find a smarter CEO anywhere, but now he's a CEO without a company to lull. So he plays Mafia Wars on Facebook. He's doing well — level 731. Thanks to Facebook, I know he's playing about 18 hours a day. Andy, you've run four companies — and this is how you spend your downtime(业余时间)? What happened to golf? What happened to getting another job?

    Take Liz. She is positive that the H1N1 vaccine(甲流疫苗) will kill us all and that we should avoid it. And then comes Chris who likes to post at least 20 times a day on every website he can find, so I get to read his thoughts twice, once on Facebook and once on Twitter.

    In real life, I don't see these sides of people. Face to face, my friends show me their best. They're nice, smart people. But face to Facebook, my friends are like a blind date which goes horribly wrong.

    I'm left with a dilemma. Who is my real friend? Is it the Liz I have lunch with or the anti-vaccine lunatic(狂人)on Facebook? Is it the Fred I can grab a sandwich with or the Fred who weeps if he's at a party and the wine isn't up to his standards?