The United States has always been a country of many cultures. Before Europeans came to North America, many groups of Native Americans lived here. Different Native American groups had different cultures. The first Europeans in the United States were from England and Holland, but immigrants came from all European countries. Many people also immigrated from Asia and Africa. Sadly, many Africans were brought to the United States as slaves. Many immigrants come from Latin America too. Today, the United States has people from more cultures than ever.

    In the 19th century, people spoke of the United States as a “melting pot.” People thought that all immigrates should forget their native cultures and languages and become English-speaking Americans. They felt that people should assimilate-join American culture. However, not everyone wanted to assimilate completely. Many people tried to keep parts of their cultures, such as foods, customs, and languages. However, their children often forgot their parents' or grandparents' language. But most Americans, even those whose families have been here a long time, can tell the countries their relatives came from. And of course, new immigrants take great pride in their curare and language.

    For all of these reasons, melting pot is no longer a good way to describe the United States. Instead, people now call the United States a “salad bowl.” They say salad bowl because in a salad, you can still see all of the individual parts (lettuce, tomato, and so on), but all the different parts mixed together and begin to take on the flavor of one another.

    Stress is an inevitable part of a busy and modern life. Time and time again, we see people feeling overwhelmed because of stress. But after years of being dosed up by doctors and seeking solutions on the self-help shelves, can most common complaints be cured through your next holiday? The festival doctor will see you now.

    Complaint

    Prescription（处方）

    Dosage(剂量)

    Guilty

    Restart yourself at the Wanderlust Festival

    A weekend at any Wanderlust Festival should restrain some of the shame you are feeling. Empty your mind with meditation (冥想) sessions in the mountains of America or adjust your feelings with a sound bath in Santiago, Chile.

    Sad

    A healthy dose of laughter at Just for Laughs in Montreal, Canada in July.

Have fun at the largest comedy festival, which attracts more than two million ha-ha hunters every summer. Apart from 250 comedy acts, there will be walkabout theater ,circus acts and lots of new comedy films to make you laugh to tears.

    Over- thinking

    Get nourishing food for your thought at the U.K.'s How the Light Gets In in May.

    Spend a week or so in the company of like-minded individuals and you will see you are not the only one over-thinking things. The world's largest philosophy festival, held in Hareous Wye, will have talks, debates and classes on culture, philosophy, politics, art and science.

    Heart-broken

    Find one of your favorite fish in the sea at Ireland's Matchmaking Festival in June.

    A week at Liverpool's Matchmaking Festival could be a choice as Ireland's mythical matchmakers have been pairing lovers together for centuries. Try to find Willie Dally, a fourth-generation matchmaker, for your best chance of everlasting love. Those who touch his lucky book are said to fall in love and marry within six months.

    Max Vernon Mathews has been called the father of computer music. He created electronic tools so that people could use computers as musical instruments. He had a huge influence on the development of electronic music and how it is written, recorded and played.

    In 1957, Max Mathews wrote the first computer program that enabled a computer to create sound and play it back. At the time, he was working as an engineer at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. His computer program was called Music. It enabled a large IBM computer to play a seventeen-second piece of music that he had written.

    The computer was so slow that it would have taken an hour to play the piece of music in seventeen seconds. For that reason, Mathews moved the work to a tape player, which could be sped up to play the music at a normal speed. He later said that the sound quality of the music notes was not great, but the technical importance of the music was huge.

    The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke visited Bell Laboratories in the 1960s. He heard a computer “sing” the song "Daisy Bell" on devices and programs developed by Max Mathews andother engineers. Clarke noted this technology in his book “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which was later made into a movie.

    Mathews continued creating other versions of the Music program. He became interested in how computers could help musicians outside recording studios.

    Max Mathews had a long and productive career. He worked with composers like John Cage and Edgard Varese. He helped create a center for research in computer music in Paris. And he taught at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in Stanford University in California.

    Mathews believed modern musicians were not making full use of the power of computer music. He said a violin always sounds like a violin, but with a computer, the way a violin sounds is unlimited. He said he did not want computer sounds to replace live music. But he said he hoped laptop computers would one day be considered serious instruments

    When 12 girls from San Fernando high school in California received a grant (助学金) to develop an invention to solve a real-world problem, they decided to create a solar-powered shelter. Now for over a year, the girls have been working after school and over the winter and spring breaks to complete their project. "They have this amazing drive that I've never seen before," said Violet Mardirosian, a math teacher at San Fernando High. "I thought at the beginning that maybe some of them would give up, saying 'I didn't expect this much work,' but they don't. They're just working hard and they're not giving up."

    Living in a low-income community (社区), the girls have seen the problem of homelessness first-hand, which is why they chose that population to create a product for. Many of them are also from immigrant families and hope the solar-powered shelter might help refugees (难民). Seventeen-year-old Maggie Mejia said that while she had no engineering experience, the girls figured out as a team how to create the prototype (雏形), using how-to videos and books that taught them how to code. But the most important lesson she's learned over the course of the project isn't technical. "I've learned a lot about helping others, helping the community and showing a better world to other people," she said.

    The girls have been invited to MIT to show their invention. Mardirosian says all the participating students have expressed interest in going into STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields and that students from lower grades are already expressing interest in being involved next year. She says, "Many of them didn't think about engineering before. They thought maybe they're not made out to be an engineer. But working together, now they realize they're all needed in this field. Everyone has found their importance in this picture."

    I attended a party one night. During the dinner a man told a humorous story based on the quotation: "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will."

    The storyteller mentioned that the quotation was from the Bible. I knew he was wrong. There couldn't be the slightest doubt about it. To get a feeling of importance and display my superiority, I appointed myself as an unwelcome committee member to correct him. He stuck to his guns. "What? From Shakespeare? Impossible! Absurd! That quotation was from the Bible." And he knew it.

    The storyteller was sitting on my right; and Frank Gammond, an old friend of mine, was seated on my left. Mr. Gammond had devoted years to the study of Shakespeare. So the storyteller and I agreed to submit the question to Mr. Gammond. Mr. Gammond listened, kicked me under the table, and then said, "Dale, you are wrong. The gentleman is right. It is from the Bible."

    On our way home that night, I said to Mr. Gammond, "Frank, you knew that quotation was from Shakespeare. "Yes, of course," he replied, "Hamlet, Act Five, Scene Two. But we were guests at a happy time, my dear Dale. Why argue with the storyteller? Why prove to him he is wrong? Why not let him save his face? Always avoid your sharp angle." I learned a lesson I'll never forget. I not only had made the storyteller uncomfortable, but also had put my friend in an embarrassing situation. How much better it would have been had I not become argumentative.

    Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of the contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he is absolutely right. You can't win an argument. You can't because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it

    When I was about 12 years old, my older brother, James, smuggled a BB gun into the house. Our parents had told us many times that we were not allowed to bring home guns or knives, even if they were just toys. Having any form of weaponry in our home was strictly forbidden.

    James brought me to his room. He opened his closet door and took out a shoebox that was buried beneath a heap of clothes. The BB gun was inside. I was immediately enamored by the shiny barrel.

    "Can I shoot it, Jamesie?" I asked, hopefully.

    "Noway,"James said, taking it from me and putting it back.

    One day, when no one was home, I went into James' closet and took it out. For some in explicable reason - I have no idea what I was thinking - I went to the front window of the second floor in our row house. I cracked the window open. I pointed the gun outside and shot. I quickly shut the window and peeked outside.

    In a matter of seconds, old Mr. Schlosberg came out of his grocery store. He looked back at his store window. He looked up the street. He looked down the street. Then he looked straight across to our house.

    Thankfully, Jamesie made it home before Mother or Father.

    As he stepped through the door, I could hear old Mr. Schlosberg call his name. "James, James," he called. "Come here, son."

    After several minutes, James ran back across the street and into the living room. I had retreated into the kitchen. "Alma!" he screamed. "Get out here! You cracked Mr. Schlosberg's window with my BB gun!"

    "Oh, please, Jamesie," I begged. "Don't let him tell Mother. She will whip my bottom real good!" Jamesie sighed. He wiped my tears and went back across the street to Mr. Schlosberg's. I don't know what James said to that man, but there was never a mention of the incident again.

    Years later, I found out Jamesie had used the money he got from his newspaper route to pay for Mr. Schlosberg's cracked window. He only got one cent for every paper he delivered. He managed to pay back the debt just before he went off to fight in World War II.

    Since that day, I have never touched a gun: a BB gun, a water gun, a real gun, or any other type.