Navajo was the perfect choice for a secret language. It is very complex. One vowel (元音）can have up to ten different pronunciations, changing the meaning of any word. In the 1940s, Navajo was unwritten language. No one outside of the reservation could speak it or understand it.

    The Navajo Code team had to invent new words to describe military equipment. For example, they named ships after fish: lotso-whale (battleship), calo-shark (destroyer), beshloiron-fish (submarine). When a Code Talker received a message via radio, he heard a series of unrelated Navajo words. He would then translate the words into English and use the first letter of each English word to spell the message. The Navajo words tsah (needle), wol-la-chee (ant), ah-kh-di-glini (victor), and tsah-ah-dzoh (yucca) spelled NAVY.

    The Code Talker kept the code a secret. They memorized everything. There were no code books. As a result, no ordinary Navajo soldiers, if captured by the enemy, could understand the code. More than 3,600 Navajos served in World War II, but only 420 were Code Talkers with the US Marines. They coded and decoded battlefield messages better and faster than any machine. They could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds. Machines of the time required 30 minutes to perform the same job.

    Even after the war the code remained top secret. When they were asked about their role, Code Talkers just said: “I was a radioman.” War movies and histories came out without mentioning them. The code was never used again and was finally declassified in 1968. Only then did the secret came out.

    When we think of leadership, we often think of strength and power. But what are these really, and how do they operate?

    Leadership today is not about forcing others to do things. If this is even possible, it is short-term. If you order someone to do something against their will, they may do it because they feel they must, but the anger they feel will do more harm in the long-term. They will also experience fear.

    Fear causes the thinking brain to shut down, making the person unable to function at his or her best. If they connect you with this emotion of fear, they will become less functional around you, and you will have succeeded in not only shooting yourself in the foot, but possibly making a very good employee or partner unable to perform effectively. Fear has no place in leadership.

    The way we affect people in a lasting way is by our own character, and our understanding and use of emotion. We can order someone to do something, which may be part of the work day, or we can employ them at the emotional level, so they become fully devoted to the projects and provide some of their own motivation (积极性). Today's work place is all about relationships.

    Anyone works harder in a positive environment in which they're recognized and valued as a human being as well as a worker. Everyone produces just a bit more for someone they like Leaders understand the way things work. They know money is not the only most motivating factor in the work life of most people.

    The true strength of leadership is an inner strength that comes from the confidence of Emotional Intelligence—knowing your own emotions, and how to deal with them and those of others. Developing your emotional intelligence is the best thing you can do if you want to develop your relationships with people around you, which is the key to the leadership skills.

    Mirroring China's Past: Emperors and Their Bronzes

    Chinese bronzes (青铜) of the second and first millennia BC are some of the most distinctive achievements in the history of art. These vessels (容器) were made to carry sacrificial offerings, to use in burial or to honor noble families in public ceremonies. When they were found by emperors centuries later, these spiritually significant objects were seen as signs of heavenly messages about a ruler or a dynasty and became prized items in royal collections. This exhibition —the first to explore these ancient objects throughout Chinese history — presents a rare opportunity to experience a large number of these works together in the United States.

    Unlike Greek and Roman bronze sculptures of human and animal forms, most objects from Bronze Age China (about 2000 - 221 BC) were vessels for ceremonial use. Beginning with the Song dynasty (960 - 1279), emperors unearthed these symbolic works and began collecting them, considering them to be evidence of their own authority as rulers. In addition to impressive collections, the royal fascination with bronzes led to the creation of numerous reproductions and the comprehensive cataloguing of palace holdings. These catalogues are works of art themselves, featuring beautiful drawings and detailed descriptions of each object.

    From the 12th century onward, scholars and artists also engaged in collecting and understanding ancient bronzes. Unlike emperors, scholars regarded bronzes as material evidence of their efforts to recover and reconstruct the past, and they occasionally exchanged them as tokens (象征) of friendship. Today ancient bronzes still occupy a primary position in Chinese culture — as historical objects and as signifiers of an important cultural heritage that inspires new generations, as seen in the works of contemporary artists on view in this presentation.

    Mirroring China's Past brings together approximately 180 works from the An Institute of Chicago's strong holdings and from the Palace Museum in Beijing, the Shanghai Museum, and important museums and private collections in the United States. By providing viewers with a new understanding of ancient bronzes and their significance through time, the exhibition demonstrates China's fascinating history and its developing present.

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art
		1000 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10028 211-535-7710 www.metmuseum.org Entrances Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street Hours Open 7 days a week. Sunday-Thursday 10:00-17:30 Friday and Saturday 10:00-21:00 Closed Thanksgiving Day, December 25, January 1,and the first Monday in May.
Admission $25.00 recommended for adults, $12.00 recommended for students, includes the Main Building and The Cloisters(回廊）on the same day; free for children under 12 with an adult. Free with Admission All special exhibitions, as well as films, lectures, guided tours, concerts, gallery talks, and family/children's programs are free with admission. Ask about today's activities at the Great Hall Information Desk.
	The Cloisters Museum and Gardens     The Cloisters museum and gardens is a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of Europe in the Middle Ages. The extensive collection consists of masterworks in sculpture, colored glass, and precious objects from Europe dating from about the 9th to the 15th century.
Hours: Open 7 days a week. March-October10:00-17:15 November-February 10:00-16:45 Closed Thanksgiving Day, December 25, and January 1.

    Many years ago, my mother read from the book Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey to me. I remember as if it were yesterday, hearing her voice at my side on a cold wintry night. My mother's voice changed my world.

    Long before I could read on my own, she shared with me the strength and beauty of McCloskey's language a story of a little girl and her mother out in nature, co-existing with a mother bear and her own baby. The power of the story, of language and of my mother all came together. And it happened many times after that, over and over. The read aloud made me a reader.

    Years later, I was reading aloud a picture book to a small child in a classroom. His life, so far, had not been easy. His childhood was troubled by poverty and loneliness. In that moment, in the joy of the read aloud, he had an idea that started something big.

    What he said was this: "Mrs. Allyn, let's make sure everyone knows how good this feels. Let's have a holiday for the read aloud" Therefore, my organization, LitWorld, created a grassroots movement World Read Aloud Day in 2010 to honor this young boy's wish for everyone to be able to have a read aloud every day.

    Since the day he shared that good idea with us, World Read Aloud Day has become a worldwide event reaching over one million people in more than 65 countries around the world. This year we are over 600 cities strong, a number that is growing every day.

    Children who grow up as readers become engaged citizens of the global world, and every child deserves the right to read. When I say that reading aloud will change the world, I know it sounds simple. But one of the many great things about giving kids access to the power of stories and sharing them together is that it is simple. It is also cheap and easily done. And the impact is huge.

    In a recent series of experiments at the University of California, researchers studied toddlers' thinking about winners and losers, bullies (欺凌) and victims.

    In the first experiment, toddlers (学步儿童) watched a scene in which two puppets (木偶) had conflicting goals: One was crossing a stage from right to left, and the other from left to right. The puppets met in the middle and stopped. Eventually one puppet bowed down and moved aside, letting the other one pass by. Then researchers asked the toddlers which puppet they liked. The result: 20 out of 23 toddlers picked the higher-status puppet — the one that did not bow or move aside. It seems that individuals can gain status for being dominant (占优势的) and toddlers like winners better than losers.

    But then researchers had another question: Do toddlers like winners no matter how they win? So, researchers did another experiment very similar to the one described above. But this time, the conflict ended because one puppet knocked the other down and out of the way. Now when the toddlers were asked who they liked, the results were different: Only 4 out of 23 children liked the winner.

    These data suggest that children already love a winner by the age of 21-31 months. This does not necessarily mean that the preference is inborn: 21 months is enough time to learn a lot of things. But if a preference for winners is something we learn, we appear to learn it quite early.

    Even more interesting, the preference for winners is not absolute. Children in our study did not like a winner who knocked a competitor down. This suggests that already by the age of 21-31 months, children's liking for winners is balanced with other social concerns, including perhaps a general preference for nice or helpful people over aggressive ones.

    In a time when the news is full of stories of public figures who celebrate winning at all costs, these results give us much confidence. Humans understand dominance, but we also expect strong individuals to guide, protect and help others. This feels like good news.