On the day the tornado hit, there was no indication that severe weather was on its way—the sky was blue and the sun bad been out. The first alert my husband,Jimmy,67,and I,65,got came around 9 p.m., from some scrolling text on the TV Jimmy was watching. He ran upstairs to find me in our third-floor bedroom, and we changed the channel from the presidential primary debate I had been watching to our local Pensacola, Florida, station.

    No sooner had we found coverage of the tornado than it was on top of us. It was the loudest thing I have ever heard. The bones of the house shook, and the power went out. The wind began to roar through the house, most likely through blown-out windows and the door to our garage. We had three flights of steps to navigate to get to the relative safety of the first floor, because the cupboard down there is underneath a brick staircase.

    I didn't know how or if we would make it down the steps. It felt as if there were no floor underneath me as the wind lifted me off my feet. I tried to move forward, but this intense pressure held me in place.

    As we reached the last flight of steps, our front door blew out. Pieces of glass that looked like crushed ice flew everywhere. Suddenly, a three-foot-long tree branch crashed into the door frame. It flew over our heads, missing us by inches. Had we been one step up, it would have hit us.

    By the time I reached the cupboard, the tornado had been over us for about a minute. Jimmy pushed me down to the cupboard floor, but he couldn't get inside himself because of the wind. I held Jimmy's arm and tried to bring Jimmy with it. My knees were full of glass, but at that moment, I felt no pain. If I had let go, Jimmy would have flown right out the back of the house and into the bay.

    All of a sudden, Jimmy lifted off his feet like people in tornadoes do in the movies. I thought he was gone. And then everything stopped. He landed on his feet. In those first quiet moments, I couldn't believe it was over, Jimmy said he'd go outside to check. "No,"I said. "Don't leave me. Don't leave me."

    Our neighbor says the storm lasted four minutes. In that time, four of the twelve town houses in our unit were completely destroyed. Of the houses left standing, ours suffered the most damage. Amazingly, none of us were severely injured.

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    Like many thickly populated urban neighborhoods, Lincoln Park also has rats. A lot of rats. “Every night when I walk down the sidewalk, I see rats, ” says 36-year-oId Kelly McGee, who has come to accept this aspect of city living. “It's an urban area; I don't know what else we can expect.”

McGee lives just down the block from the old Children's Memorial Hospital, which is about to be torn down as part of a massive redevelopment project. “Construction all over the city often disturbs rats that are living underground,” says Lincoln Park's City Council representative, Alderman Michele Smith. “Every developer has to do active rat reduction on site, ”Smith says. Already, there are poisonous and inviting food boxes all around the old hospital complex. But the developer of the hospital site still warned residents in a recent community meeting that when digging begins later this month, the rat problem could be awful.

Victoria Thomas, who lives a few miles north of Lincoln Park in Chicago's Lake View neighborhood, says she tried everything from underground fencing to poison traps to wipe out rats, but nothing worked until she got some cats. From the first day she got the cats, Thomas says the rats started to disappear.

“The cats will kill off a great deal of the initial population of the rats, ”says Paul Nickerson, who manages the Cats at Work program for Tree House Humane Society. “And through spreading their pheromones, a chemical produced by an animal, the cats will keep other rats from filling their absence.” Nickerson says that is what makes the cat program so successful in keeping rats away for the long term. ” The rats are far from stupid. They smell the cats' pheromones so they'll stay out of the cats' territory(领域).”

    After Smith highlighted the program in a recent newsletter, Nickerson and Tree House Humane Society have been getting lots of calls from people seeking their own cat colonies. That means a lot more wild cats that might otherwise be killed out of pity will be cared for while doing something that they love: hunting rats.

    Summer time is a great opportunity for kids to learn how to work and earn a little bit of spending money. If your child needs a summer job, here are a few options to consider:

Lemonade/Cookie Stand

Benefits

    Creates a concept of running a business: Your child will be his own boss, set his own price , and run the show. It's a great introduction to running his own business.

    Limited Start-Up Costs: The things used to make lemonade are cheap, so your child should be able to get back his investment with a handful of sales.

    What Kids Learn About Money: Your child will learn a very valuable lesson about pricing. The price of his lemonade will decide how much he can sell, if he will recover his investment and the amount of profit.

Yard Work

Benefits:

    Repeated Customers: If a homeowner needs help raking (耙地) this year, he'll probably want help again next year. Your child should be able to maintain a regular set of customers after one season.

    Safety: Yard work is generally safer than a lawn-mowing job. Without having to operate machines, your child will be much safer.

    What Kids Learn About Money: Because of the variability (变动) in pay, your child will need to learn how to negotiate(谈判) a fair price with homeowners if they ask.

Lifeguard

Benefits:

    Responsibility: Kids learn a lot about responsibility when lifeguarding. They are within rights to tell whether a certain activity is safe and are allowed to take action as they see fit.

    Exercise: Lifeguards need to be proficient at swimming and must exercise to stay in shape.

    What Kids Learn About Money: To be a lifeguard, one must be certified. Your child may have to pay for lifeguard training, although some employers provide it on-site.

Authors (作者)

    Alexandru Micu: Author

    ZME Science author profile | e-mail: alex@zmescience.com

    Main focus: technology, biology

    Curiosity (好奇心) is what drives Alex forward-his interest in learning more about the planet being matched only by his ability to discuss things with a light heart. Alex tries to make others more interested in special science and technology. He does things in his own way.

    Dragos Mitrica: Author

    ZME Science author profile | e-mail: dragos@zmescience.com

    Main focus: wheather

    Dragos loves nature, and does everything he can to understand it. This interest led him to many unexpected places in his life, and now, he mainly studies and understands how ancient (古代的) weather changed, and what this means for the future.

    Henry Conrad: Author

    ZME Science author profile | e-mail: henrykconrad@gmail.com

    Main focus: technology

    Henry Conrad is a game developer from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Whenever he's not working or reading the latest tech news, he enjoys writing about the latest inventions and technology, which benefits (有益) him a lot. It helps him find rich writing materials (材料).

    Mihai Andrei: Editor-in-chief

    ZME Science author profile | e-mail: andrei@zmescience.com

    Main focus: geophysics, environment

    Andrei has put a lot of sweat and tears into ZME Science ever since he was a student. He is always looking for the most interesting subjects, presenting them in a way that everybody can understand. He believes that education is the key towards a better future and he tries to persuade people to become better persons of the planet. His background is in Geology and Geophysics, but now, he focuses more on environmental studies.

    You probably know who Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is, but you may not have heard of Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell if you are not interested in foreign literature. Of the outstanding ladies listed below, who is your favorite?

    Jane Austen (16 December, 1775-18 July, 1817)

    Jane Austen, a famous English writer, was born at Steventon, Hampshire. She began writing early in life, although the prejudices (偏见) of her times forced her to have her books published anonymously (匿名).

    She wrote many books of romantic fiction about the gentry (贵族). Her works made her one of the great masters of the English novel. Only four of her novels were printed while she was alive. They were Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and (1816).

    Charlotte Bronte (21 April, 1816-31 March, 1855)

    She first published her works, including Jane Eyre, under the false name of Currer Bell. Her first novel, The Professor, was rejected by many publishers. It was not printed until 1857. She is famous for her novel Jane Eyre (1847), which was very popular when it was printed. Jane Eyre was a strong story of a plain, brave, clever woman struggling with her passions, reasons, and social condition.

    Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell (8 November, 1900-16 August, 1949)

    She was an American author and journalist, a lifelong resident and native of Atlanta, Georgia. One novel by Mitchell was published during her lifetime, the American Civil-War-Era novel, Gone with the wind, for which she won the National Book Award for Most Distinguished Novel of 1936 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937. In more recent years, a collection of Mitchell's girlhood writings and a novel she wrote as a teenager, Lost Laysen, have been published. A collection of articles written by Mitchell for The Atlanta Journal was republished in book form.

    Have you ever been to London? Here is some hotel information for you.