One of the most successful singers of the twentieth century, Ella Fitzgerald has made several different styles of her own. She was born in Virginia but was brought up in an orphanage in Yonkers, New York. Chick Webb spotted her in an amateur competition when she was sixteen. He engaged her to sing with his band and when he died in 1939, she took over.

    Unlike Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald taught herself the sentimental music so popular in the 1930's — songs like “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”— and her recordings became best-sellers. During the 1940's she developed her own “scat singing” — a breathless, nonsense—syllable style—for songs like “Flying Home” and “Lady Be Good.”

    Ella Fitzgerald was the perfect musical partner for her friend, the trumpeter Louis Armstrong, matching him in warmth and artistry. “I just like music, period,” she said. “To me, it's a story. There's only one thing better than singing…. It's more singing.”

    If Confucius（孔子）were still alive today and could celebrate his September 28 birthday with a big cake, there would be a lot of candles. He'd need a fan or a strong wind to help him put them out.

    While many people in China will remember Confucius on his special day, few people in the United States will give him a passing thought. It's nothing personal.  Most Americans don't even remember the birthdays of their own national heroes.

    But this doesn't mean that Americans don't care about Confucius. In many ways he has become a bridge that foreigners must cross if they want to reach a deeper understanding of China.

In the past two decades, the Chinese studies programs have gained huge popularity in Western universities. More recently, the Chinese government has set up Confucius Institutes in more than 80 countries. These schools teach both Chinese language and culture. The main courses of Chinese culture usually included Chinese art, history and philosophy（哲学）. Some social scientists suggest that Westerners should take advantages of the ancient Chinese wisdom to make up for the drawbacks of Westerners philosophy.  Students in the United States, at the same time, are racing to learn Chinese.  So they will be ready for life in a world where China is an equal power with the United States.

    Businessmen who hope to make money in China are reading books about Confucius to understand their Chinese customers. 

    So the old thinker's ideas are still alive and well.

    Today China attracts the West more than ever, and it will need more teachers to introduce Confucius and Chinese culture to the West.

    As for the old thinker, he will not soon be forgotten by people in the West, even if his birthday is.

    Two men, Alan and Henry, both seriously ill, shared a hospital room. Alan was allowed to sit up in his bed and his bed was next to the room's only window. Henry had to spend all his time flat on his back.

    The men talked for hours, of their wives, families, their homes and their jobs. And every afternoon when Alan, in the bed next to the window, could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see. Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Lovers walked arm in arm among flowers. Trees and skyline could be seen in the distance. As he described all this, Henry, on the other side of the room, would close his eyes and imagine the scene.

    One warm afternoon Alan described a parade (游行) passing by. Although Henry could not hear the band, he could see it in his mind. Unexpectedly, an alien thought entered his head: why should he have all the pleasure of seeing everything while I never got to see anything? It doesn't seem fair. Henry felt ashamed at first. But as the days passed and he missed seeing more sights, his envy grew and soon let him down. He began to find himself unable to sleep. He should be by that window — and that thought now controlled his life.

    Late one night, as he lay staring at the ceiling, Alan began to cough. He was choking. Henry watched in the dim room as the struggling man tried hard to reach for the button to call for help. Listening from across the room, he never moved, never pushed his own button which would have brought the nurse running. In less than five minutes, the coughing and choking stopped, along with the sound of breathing. Now, there was only silence — deathly silence.

    As soon as it seemed appropriate, Henry asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone. Slowly, painfully, he struggled to take his first look. Finally, he would have the joy of seeing it all himself. He looked out, but faced a blank wall.

    We talk a lot in the U.S. about success. Success is the dream and the end point. And not by coincidence the idea that hard work leads to personal success is as American as apple pie.

    But the reality is that sometimes we fail. And sometimes things, through no fault of our own, don't go our way. We're faced with a life-changing diagnosis(诊断), the passing of a loved one or job loss. We don't, as a society, have as much to say here.

    I think uncertainty does us all harm. We'd feel better equipped to deal with uncertainty if we talked about it more. I had so fully bought into the belief that with enough effort, I could control what happened in my life. I actually caught myself thinking I could "work my way out" of my cancer. As it turns out, cancer doesn't really care about one's work.

    We might also make wiser decisions--this isn't just a feel-good exercise. For example, technology and medicine have progressed to the point that many patients are living longer than they would have even a decade ago. These are achievements worth celebrating. And yet I wonder if the focus on success is sometimes misguided here as well. If it is one reason why we tend to pursue expensive end-of-life treatments, they often accomplish little other than to make a patient's final days painful and frightening. The fact is that, when asked, many patients would rather focus on living meaningfully in their final days.

    My hope here is to make a case for thinking about meaning, in the same way we think about pursuing success. In that spirit, I've asked several people, each of whom has met misfortune, how they find meaning in their lives. The diversity in their responses reflects the fact that there are no right or wrong answers here. We each can find meaning in different things.

    Today, we are constantly bombarded with media reports about research on the right diet to follow to help us maintain a healthy lifestyle or lose weight—but it's hard to know which one to pick and, once chosen, it's harder still to stick to it. And now there's another choice to get our teeth into.

    A flexitarian(弹性素食者)diet involves eating plant—based foods and only occasionally eating meat and fish. This eating style allows you to supplement some ingredients that you wouldn't get in a stricter vegan(素食主义者)diet—another trend growing in popularity. And like veganism, flexitarianism isn't about eating carefully to help you lose a few pounds—it's something people choose for ethical reasons, to help the planet. And a study into the global food system and how it affects the climate, has found that eating mainly plant-based foods is one of three key steps towards a sustainable future for all by 2050.

    This research found that food waste will need to be halved and farming practices will also have to improve to achieve this. But without a single solution, a combined approach is needed. Dr Marco Springmann from the University of Oxford was one of the lead authors of the report. He told the BBC “We really found that a combination of measures would be needed to stay within environmental limits and those include changes towards healthier more plant—based diets.”

    But whereas vegans think it's wrong for animals to be killed for food, flexitarians believe eating meat once in a while is acceptable. And Dr Springmann agrees—as long as we “treat it as a luxury, it's probably OK but you shouldn't have more than one serving of red meat, which includes beef and pork, per week.” And here's another fact to digest: If we moved to this type of diet, the study found that greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture would be cut by more than half.