Put your car keys away and forget about your travel pass — it's time to do a bit of walking.

    National Walking Month is organized every May by Living Streets, an organization that campaigns for the rights and the needs of pedestrians — indeed, the organization was previously known as the Pedestrians' Association. The association's aim is to make streets safe, attractive and enjoyable spaces for people to live, work, shop and play. By putting people (rather than vehicles) first, Living Streets wants to create streets and spaces where people feel happier, healthier and more sociable.

    The annual campaign gives participants a great opportunity to experience the many virtues（优点）of walking. These include the physical health benefits of becoming fitter; the environmental advantages of not using vehicles（车辆）; the joy of local discoveries seeing more of your local area on foot; the enjoyment of walking with other people, whether family, friends or work colleagues and finally the stress relief that comes from walking—walking can clear your head.

    Walk to School Week, 19 to 24 May, is part of the month's activities and its aim is to encourage parents to send children to school on foot, rather than take them in the car or let them use public transport. The movement was started in 1995 with only five participating schools and now two decades later, more than one million children take part.

    Similarly, there is Walk to Work Week, 12 to 16 May, where grown-ups are encouraged to walk. In the morning, getting off the bus a stop early or parking a few streets away is a good way to add more steps to the daily total. And during the working day, rather than having lunch at the desks or in the canteen, take a walk and get some fresh air. Walk home with your workmates and chat away about everything under the sun but work!

    When I was younger, I thought that boys and grown men should not cry. The tears were signs of being weak and a sissy(胆小鬼), which a man is not supposed to be. This was even strengthened in my young mind when the song, Boys Don't Cry, came out in the early 1980s.

    But just this June, I discovered that courage is not all about trying to keep all the pain inside in check. Courage is not all about trying to hide the tears. It is the opposite — the tears strengthen the heart's courage. And I saw this in my father. That day my father cried.

    My 18-year-old sister eloped (私奔) and from it I saw how weak my father's heart was. My sister and I were used to seeing him as an iron-willed figure and authoritarian father.

    For three days after my sister eloped, he would not talk. He would just sit quietly outside our house in the dark. On the fourth night, I sat beside him and asked him to tell me what he felt about everything.

    It has been years since I have laid my hand on my father's shoulder as we have drifted apart (疏远) farther and farther while I was growing up. That night，though, I sensed my father trying to control his pain and I wanted him to be able to let it out. We have all cried over what happened except him. All of us except him.

    The simple touch and my words, "Dad, it is not your fault.", broke my father's dam.

    In the darkness, he began to cry. I felt his shoulders shaking as he whispered, "Where did

    I go wrong? All I ever wanted was for my children to grow up right. Why couldn't your sister wait?"

    I understood then why he preferred to be in the dark. By being there, he hoped to spare his family of a father's pain. His tears, though we did not see them before that night, were there all the same. I saw his courage, that night when my father cried with my hand on his shoulder, and understood his pain.

    Samuel Osmond is a 19-year-old law student from Cornwall, England. He never studied the piano. However, he can play very difficult musical pieces by musicians such as Chopin and Beethoven just a few minutes after he hears them. He learns a piece of music by listening to it in parts. Then he thinks about the notes(音符) in his head. Two years ago, he played his first piece Moonlight Sonata（奏鸣曲）by Beethoven. He surprised everyone around him.

    Amazed that he remembered this long and difficult piece of music and played it perfectly, his teachers say Samuel is unbelievable. They say his ability is very rare, but Samuel doesn't even realize that what he can do is special. Samuel wanted to become a lawyer as it was the wish of his parents, but music teachers told him he should study music instead. Now, he studies law and music.

Samuel can't understand why everyone is so surprised. "I grew up with music. My mother played the piano and my father played the guitar. About two years ago, I suddenly decided to start playing the piano, without being able to read music and without having any lessons. It comes easily to me —I hear the notes and can bear them in mind—each and every note," says Samuel.

Recently, Samuel performed a piece during a special event at his college. The piece had more than a thousand notes. The audience was impressed by his amazing performance. He is now learning a piece that is so difficult that many professional(专业的) pianists can't play it. Samuel says confidently, "It's all about super memory—I guess I have that gift."

    However, Samuel's ability to remember things doesn't stop with music. His family says that even when he was a young boy, Samuel heard someone read a story, and then he could retell the story word for word.

    Samuel is still only a teenager. He doesn't know what he wants to do in the future. For now, he is just happy to play beautiful music and continue his studies.

The Domestication （驯化）of Cats

    For centuries, the common view of how domestication had occurred was that prehistoric people, realizing how useful it would be to have animals kept for food, began catching wild animals and breeding （繁殖）them. Over time, by allowing only animals with "tame"（驯养）characteristics to produce their babies, human beings created animals that were less wild and more dependent upon people. Eventually this process led to the domestic farm animals and pets that we know today, having lost their ancient survival skills and natural abilities.

    Recent research suggests that this view of domestication is incomplete. Prehistoric human beings did catch and breed useful wild animals, but specialists in animal behavior now think that domestication was not simply something people did to animals—the animals played an active part in the process. Wolves and wild horses, for example, may have taken the first steps in their own domestication by hanging around human settlements, feeding on people's crops and getting used to human activity. The animals which were not too nervous or fearful to live near people produced their babies that also tolerated humans, making it easier for people to catch and breed them.

    In this version, people succeededin domesticating only animals that had already adapted easily to life around humans. Domestication required an animal that was willing to become domestic. The process was more like a dance with partners than a victory of humans over animals.

    At first glance, the laming of cats seems to fit nicely into this new story of domestication. A traditional theory says that after prehistoric people in Egypt invented agriculture and started farming, rats and mice gathered to feast on their stored grain. Wildcats, in tum, gathered at the same places to hunt and eat the rats and mice. Over time, cats got used to people and people got used to cats. Some studies of wildcats, however, seem to call this theory into question. Wildcats don't share hunting and feeding areas, and they don't live close to people. Experts do not know whether wildcats were partners in their own domestication. They do know that long after people had acquired domestic dogs, sheep and horses, they somehow acquired domestic cats. Gradually they produced animals with increasingly tame qualities.

    In 2007, the editors of the Oxford Junior English Dictionary, convinced that their reference work “needed to reflect the consensus experience of modern-day childhood.”banned a group of old terms used less today describing the natural world. They inserted newer and supposedly more useful words describing the digital fields that young people in habit today.

    Thus they say goodbye to “acorn”, but say hello to “attachment”. “Beech” and “bluebell” come out of the dictionary. While “blog” and “broadband” come into it. And they say farewell to “catkin” and “cowslip” because here come “celebrity” and “chat room”.

    It's possible, of course, that those Oxford editors had a good reason for their vocabular cleansing. Perhaps they had read the Cambridge University study revealing that most young children can identify Pokémon(神奇宝贝)species far more easily than they can name real-life sparrows.

    But is this simply another fight in the language war, an ongoing battle between people? Some people argue that a dictionary should model how language works best, while some people insist that it should capture how language works now.

In Britain, some citizens felt justified in fighting back against the decision of the Oxford editors. The protest of the thinning of the word herd almost immediately attracted more than200, 000 signatures.

    Susie Dent, author of Modern Tribes：The Secret Languages of Britain, is doing everything in her power to guarantee “the old markers of time”. “Fortnight”(fourteen nights, or two weeks)is among her cherished favorites.

    Thanks to them, I can now show off my knowledge that a “snollygoster” is a “shrewd person, especially a politician”.

    I first began experiencing anxiety and depression at the age of 14, after being bullied (欺凌) at school for years. While at first anxiety and depression would come and go, it eventually became a constant part of my life.

    I was so eager to find the solution to overcoming my anxiety and depression that I tried everything from when I was in college to graduate school: mood-changing medication, special teas, yoga, anything I read about in books, and advice given by doctors. Despite this, I still felt I hadn't even come close to managing the problem.

    But one afternoon, my eyes fell upon an article in a magazine I was reading that talked about how dogs were able to help people with anxiety and depression. The very next day, I decided to get a dog—a corgi. When I brought my little corgi, Buddy, home. I didn't realize how much he would change my life. It didn't happen right away, however.

    Once the “puppy excitement” went away, my anxiety and depression came back as usual. One morning, I woke up with those familiar feeling again. I didn't want to get out of bed. I turned to pull the covers back over my head and give up. That's when I saw Buddy.

    Buddy started jumping all over me, licking my face, letting me know that it was time to go outside. It was as if he were saying, “There's no time to be sad; the world is amazing!” And for the first time in my life, my life was changing. I really was a new person. This was my new beginning.

    It's been more than a year since that day, and I've never spent another morning unable to get out of bed. I've not cried myself to sleep or spent my days stuck with fear and regret. Sure, I still have days when I feel sad or anxious. But with Buddy, my best friend, by my side, I've finally learned how to manage these feelings and emotions.