SPECIAL EVENTS THIS WEEKEND

Captain Goodfellow

    Do your children enjoy interesting stories, funny games, and exciting dances? Captain Goodfellow will be ready to teach all these things to children of all ages at the City Theatres on Saturday morning at 10:00 . Free.

    Walking Tour of the Town

    Forget your worries on Saturday morning. Take a beautiful walk and learn about local history. Meet at the front entrance of City Hall at 9:30. Wear comfortable shoes!

    Films at the Museum

    Two European films will be shown on Saturday afternoon at the Museum Theatre. See Broken Window at 1:30. The workers will be at 3:45. For further information, call 4987898.

    International Picnic

    Are you tired of eating the same kind of food every day? Come to Central Park on Saturday and enjoy food from all over the world. Delicious and not expensive. Noon to 5:00 p.m.

    Take me out to the Ballgame

    It's October, and tonight is your last chance to see the Redbirds this year. Get your tickets at the gate. It might be cold. Don't forget sweaters and jackets.

    Do you want to hear “The Zoo”?

    “The Zoo”, a popular rock group from Australia, will give their first US concert this year tomorrow night at 8 Rose Hall, City College.

    Many of us are so busy with work, school and home life, which often cause there is no time left to do something that you enjoy. What follows are some ways to carve out that essential time you need to slow down, enjoy life and relax yourself.

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Try to save certain weeknights just for you. If others ask you to do things those nights, just tell them you have plans. Use the time for gardening, reading, exercise, thinking or the ultimate luxury of doing nothing!

    Monthly Treat. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} It could be on your lunch break, a weekend or it could be leaving work early. Maybe you get a spa treatment, go to see a movie, a haircut, play golf or whatever treat you're always thinking about but rarely get to. Schedule it in and it will happen!

    Buy Tickets in Advance. Sports, theatre, concerts or any other event you would enjoy. Schedule the plans with a friend later. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Huh? Yes, many of us stay at work late on a regular basis. If this is you, make it a point to leave work exactly on time at least once a week, if not more. And then enjoy that time! Leave work at work.

    Join a Group. Here are some ideas of groups that can allow you some time away from work and home: singing group, gardening group, astronomy society, book club, biking clubs, ski club, etc. What are you interested in? Strike while the iron is hot. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} If you can't find a club, consider starting one yourself!

A. Leave Work on Time.

B. Evenings with Yourself.

C. Having the tickets already in hand will force you to make it happen!

D. Listen to your favorite music!

E. Look up a club in your area today and join!

F. Take an Adult Education Class.

G. Schedule a treat for yourself once a month.

    Will there be a time in our lives when cars don't crash? When we can just sit back and relax and our cars will drive themselves. Auto technology experts say “yes”. And they say that some of those advances may happen quicker than you might think.

    They will require the users to input the name of the destination or the complete address of the location that they want to go and the cars' artificial intelligence takes them there automatically without a driver. They will run on solar power in the daytime and ethanol fuel (乙醇燃料) at night. Toyota, BMW and Honda will completely control the trade of driverless car business together and will have the cheapest driverless cars. Fossil fuels will be completely incompatible (不相配的) with these cars.

    Driverless cars will not require a driver's license of any grade to operate. Anyone with basic literacy and computer skills who are at least 16 years of age will be legally allowed to operate the vehicle with absolutely no limits.This would give the young users permission to operate the driverless cars on major highways as well as secondary roads without needing a separate classification. In addition to all this, drunken people will be able to use their own automobiles to return home because they are not “driving”, the vehicle.

    What's more, car insurance will become obsolete(淘汰的) because there will be no more automobile accidents after the year 2025. This is because the driverless car will have all safety methods in place by the car's artificial intelligence to prevent automobile accidents. Global positioning systems will become mandatory (强制的) in all newly-produced cars after 2010, and will be the most important part in the driverless car.

    When my son, Bob, was in the third grade, he saved all his pocket money for over three months to buy Christmas presents. The third Saturday in December, Bob said he had made his list and had twenty dollars in his pocket.

    I drove him to a nearby supermarket. Bob picked up a basket and went in while I waited and watched in the car. It took Bob over 45 minutes to choose his presents. Finally he came to the checkout counter and reached into his pocket for his money. It was not there! There was a hole in his pocket, but no money. Bob stood there holding his basket, tears falling down his face.

    Then a surprising thing happened. A woman came up to Bob and took him in her arms. "You would help me a lot if you let me pay for you," said the woman. "It would be the most wonderful gift you could give me. I only ask that one day you will pass it on. When you grow up, I would like you to find someone you can help. When you help others, I know you will feel as good about it as I do now."

    Bob took the money, dried his tears and ran back to the checkout counter as fast as he could. That year we all enjoyed our gifts almost as much as Bob enjoyed giving them to us.

    I would like to say "thank you" to that very kind woman, and tell her that four years later, Bob went from house to house collecting blankets and clothes for the homeless people in the fire. And I want to promise her that Bob will never forget to keep passing it on.

    Almost every night for more than 10 years, Kirk Alexander, 48, ordered a late dinner from his local restaurant Domino's Pizza. But for the past two weeks, he hasn't called for even once.

    “A few of my staff mentioned that we hadn't seen his order in a while. Then I found that it had been 12 days since he last ordered, which is not like him,” Domino's general manager Sarah Fuller said, feeling she could no longer ignore Kirk's recent absence.

    Sarah has known Kirk since 2009, when she started working at the Domino's Pizza as a deliver driver and often made the short trip to Kirk's home about six minutes away. She knew Kirk worked from home, and neighbors said he seldom left. She also knew that he had some health problems in the past. Something, Sarah worried, was wrong.

    Around 1 a.m. on May 8, Sarah sent delivery driver Sean Hamblen to visit Kirk's home. Sean arrived at Kirk's home and knocked on the front door several times. There was no answer. He later noticed that the lights and the TV in the home were on. When he called Kirk's phone, it went straight to voice mail.

    Sean drove back to the restaurant to tell Sarah and they decided to call 911. Soon, officers arrived at Kirk's home. So did Sarah and Sean. They heard a man calling for help from inside. Officers broke down the door and found Kirk on the floor in need of medical attention at once after suffering from a heart attack. One day later, they might have been too late.

    So is keeping an eye on regular customers part of Domino's business plan? Not really. “Kirk is part of our family here and we feel like we need to do something.” Sarah said.

    In the early decades of the United States, the agrarian(土地的) movement promoted the farmer as society's hero. In the minds of agrarian thinkers and writers, the farmer was a person on whose well-being the health of the new country depended. The period between the Revolution, which ended in 1783, and the Civil War, which ended in 1865, was the age of the farmer in the United States. Agrarian philosophers, represented most eloquently by Thomas Jefferson, celebrated farmers extravagantly for their supposed centrality in a good society, their political virtue, and their Superior morality. And virtually all policy makers, whether they subscribed to the tenets of the philosophy held by Jefferson or not, recognized agriculture as the key component of the American economy. Consequently, government at all levels worked to encourage farmers as a social group and agriculture as economic enterprise.

    Both the national and state governments developed transportation infrastructure, building canals, roads, bridges, and railroads, deepening harbors, and removing obstructions from navigable streams. The national government imported plant and animal varieties and launched exploring expeditions into prospective farmlands in the West. In addition, government trade policies facilitated the exporting of agricultural products.

    For their part, farmers seemed to meet the social expectations agrarian philosophers had for them, as their broader horizons and greater self-respect, both products of the Revolution, were reflected to some degree in their behavior. Farmers seemed to become more scientific, joining agricultural societies and reading the farm newspapers that sprang up throughout the country. They began using improved implements, tried new crops and pure animal breeds, and became more receptive to modern theories of soil improvement.

    They also responded to inducements by national and state governments. Farmers streamed to the West, filling frontier lands with stunning rapidity. But farmers responded less to the expectations of agrarians and government inducements than to growing market opportunities. European demand for food from the United States seemed insatiable. War, industrialization, and urbanization all kept demand high in Europe. United States cities and industries grew as well; even industries not directly related to farming thrived because of the market, money, and labor that agriculture provided.