It was a hot, humid day, and my brother Walt and I had decided that the only way to survive it would be to go swimming in a deep swimming hole across Mr. Blickez's pasture(牧场) and through some woods.

    The only problem with our plan was that this pasture was guarded by a huge, mean Hereford bull. Mr. Blickez had told us that Elsie was them eanest bull in the township, maybe even the county, and we believed him. But the hotter it got, the more we thought there was something doubtful about his claim. For one thing, we remembered Mr. Blickez liked telling tall tales; for another, Elsie seemed like an odd name for a bull.

    Finally, I talked Mom into asking permission for us to walk through the pasture, but then another problem surfaced. Mom said she would talk to Mr. Blickez if we would take our cousin Joanie along with us. Joanie was almost two years older than me and a head taller. If her teasing ever got around my grade school, it would be all over for me. In fact, I still had a headache from a quarrel with her that morning. “I'm not going swimming with that dumb girl cousin.” I told my mom.

  “Either Joanie goes with, or you stay home alone,” Mom said inher serious tone. I gave in and we set out. On our way across the pasture, Walt yelled suddenly. Elsie had approached him quietly and was licking(舔) his back. Joanie and I dove under the wire fence, but while I was on the ground I looked up and saw that Elsie wasn't a big mean bull after all. She was going to keep licking my brother's back as long as he stood still.

    We had many good days growing up and visiting our secret swimming hole guarded by the so-called “big mean bull”. And as it turned out, fora girl cousin, Joanie hasn't been too bad. She's been one of my best friendsover the years.

Whenever the sun dropped and the blue sky came up, my father and I used to climb the mountain near my house. Walking together, my father and I used to have a lot of conversations through which I learned lessons from his experiences. He always told me, "You should have goals like climbing the mountain. " without the mountain-climbing that we both enjoyed, we couldn't have enough time to spend together because my father was very busy. I really got a lot from mountain-climbing. It gave me time to talk with my father and to be in deep thought as well as develop my patience.

Once we climbed a very high mountain. It was so challenging for me because I was only ten years old. During the first few hours of climbing, I enjoyed the flowers and trees, and the birds'singing, but as time passed, I got a pain in both of my legs. I wanted to quit climbing. In fact, I hated it at that mountain, but my father said to me, "You can always see a beautiful sky at the top of the mountain, but you can't see it before you reach the top. Only there at the top can you see all of the nice things, just like in life. "

    At that time, I was too young to understand his words. But later after that, I got new hope and confidence. I found myself standing at the top of the sky, which was as clear as crystal.

    I was in the middle of coding a web page when my wife emailed me these questions: Ever wonder what it would be like to have the face, the brains, the personality and the body? What it would be like to have everyone stop when you walk in a room? What it would be like to be able to get anything or anyone you want? I stopped for a moment and thought about it because my wife wouldn't email me this unless something had driven her to do so. I emailed her back with what I thought was a pretty good answer. Here is what I wrote her back.

    Yes, I had thought many times about what it would be like to be one of the beautiful people. To be able to take your breath away when I walked into a room, or to be the life of the party and have everyone fawning (奉承) over me as I wore only the finest clothes and sported the perfect body? But then I always came back to the realization that a lifestyle like that is so fragile. As you get older, your body changes; as you get older, the money changes. Your body never looks the same, the clothes become more and more expensive to maintain. And once you have crossed the line, suddenly you are out. The next fresh face comes in and you are quickly forgotten.

    All through growing up I was never an attractive person. I was overweight and picked on. But that didn't stop me from being a nice person — a good, clean, funny and helpful person. I was the person who you came to when you needed a friend after a breakup. I was the one you came to when you needed a joke to brighten up your day. And in the long run, I will be the one you remember, not the new face, or the fresh style.

    In closing, I would like to say that we, as a people, have developed into looking (or things that are bigger and better instead of what will last. I don't know about you, but I will remember the friend who helped me when I was down, more than the hot girl I just saw walking down the street.

    I wish I could teach the world some more jokes.

    Reading can be a social activity. Think of the people who belong to book groups. They choose books to read and then meet to discuss them. Now, the website BookCrossing.com turns the page on the traditional idea of a book group.

    Members go on the site and register the books they own and would like to share. BookCrossing provides an identification number to stick inside the book. Then the person leaves it in a public place, hoping that the book will have an adventure, traveling far and wide with each new reader who finds it.

    Bruce Pederson, the managing director of BookCrossing, says, “The two things that change your life are the people you meet and books you read. BookCrossing combines both.”

    Members leave books on park benches and buses, in train stations and coffee shops. Whoever finds their book will go to the site and record where they found it.

    People who find a book can also leave a journal entry describing what they thought of it. E-mails are then sent to the BookCrossing to keep them updated about where their books have been found. Bruce Pederson says the idea is for people not to be selfish by keeping a book to gather dust on a shelf at home.

    BookCrossing is part of a trend among people who want to get back to the “real” and not the virtual（虚拟）. The site now has more than one million members in more than one hundred thirty-five countries.

    The printing press has a long history. It was invented in Germany by Joannes Gutenberg around 1440, and brought to England by William Caxton in the 1470s.Yet the basic technology of printing remained the same up to the end of the 18th century, requiring two men to operate a wooden screw press by hand, producing about 200 impressions an hour. The 19th century was the period in which this process was mechanised, automated, and made many times faster.

    A key moment in the development of mass newspapers was the development of the steam-powered printing press, adopted by the times in 1814. The new presses were able to print per hour around five times the number produced by the machines. The editor, John Walter, had the machines fixed secretly at night, so that when his printers reported for duty the next morning the majority of them found that they were out of work. The Times went from a circulation of 5,000 a day in 1815 to around 50,000 in the middle of the century. This was not caused by the steam press, but neither could it have happened without it.

    Later developments improved this effect: the Applegath machine achieved 5,000 impressions per hour, and the Hoe press, an import from the United States, reached to 20,000 impressions per hour. Increase in the speed of papermaking in this period brought down the cost of printed materials both for the producer and the customer. In 1896, the Daily Mail was sold at the cost of only half a penny, and by 1900 it was selling nearly 1,000,000 copies a day.

    If print production was completely changed in those years, then so was its distribution. The appearance of the steam railway meant that for the first time newspapers could be distributed across the country on a daily basis.

    When my father married my mother in 1943, he gave my mother a 1937 crown coin and told her to keep it in the back of her purse and not to spend it. This would mean that she always felt that she was protected and would always have money if she really needed it.

    When I was married in 1970, my husband, who had heard this story, obtained a 1937 crown coin for me and I have always kept it in my wallet, and I have always had enough for my needs.

    A friend recently fell on hard times, partly through external (外部的) circumstances and partly through poor planning. Friends and I have loaned her money, paid her bills, given her food, and even tried to teach her budget techniques, but none of them has been a solution. She has just slipped deeper and deeper into financial trouble and depression.

    Last week she looked pale and unwell, very depressed and hopeless, very sad for a friend to see and I then thought about how the crown coin, a physical reminder of another's care and love had protected me, so I went to the bank for a $ 100 dollar-bill.

    I told my friend the story and asked her to keep the $ 100 in the back of her wallet. It turned out that she didn't have a wallet, so she put the money in a little pencil case where she kept her coins. She immediately felt better—"I feel rich, and thank you for being a good friend," she said, and we were both a bit teary.

    I went home and remembered a little wallet I had that I'd never used, and thought, "I'll give that to my friend." I opened it, and inside, found $ 100.