When did you last see a polar bear(北极熊）? On a trip to a zoo, perhaps? If you had attended a winter activity in New York a few years ago, you would have seen a whole polar bear club. These "Polar Bears" are people who meet frequently in the winter to swim in freezing cold water. That day, the air temperature was 3℃,and the water temperature was a little higher. The members of the Polar Bear Club at Coney Island, New York are usually about the age of 60.Members must satisfy two requirements. First, they must get along well with everyone else in the group; this is very important because there are so many different kinds of people in the club. Polar Bears must also agree to swim outdoors at least twice a month from November through February.

    Doctors don't agree about the medical effects of cold-winter swimming. Some are worried about the dangers of a condition in which the body's temperature drops so low that finally the heart stops. Other doctors, however, point out that there is more danger of a heart attack during summer swimming because the difference between the air temperature and water temperature is much greater in summer than in winter.

    The Polar Bears themselves are satisfied with the benefits of cold-water swimming. They say that their favorite form of exercise is very good for the circulatory system(循环系统）because it forces the blood to move fast to keep the body warm. Cold-water swimmers usually turn bright red after a few minutes in the water. A person who turns blue probably has a very poor circulatory system and should not try cold-water swimming.

    The main benefits of cold-water swimming are probably mental. The Polar Bears love to swim all year round; they find it fun and relaxing. As one 70-year-old woman says," When I go into water, I pour my troubles into the ocean and let them float away."

    Imagine a mass of floating waste is two times the size of the state of Texas. Texas has a land area of more than 678,000 square kilometers. So it might be difficult to imagine anything twice as big. All together, this mass of waste flowing in the North Pacific Ocean is known as the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch（太平洋垃圾带）. It weighs about 3,500,000 tons. The waste includes bags, bottles and containers-plastic products of all kinds.

    The eastern part of the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch is about 1,600 kilometers west of California. The western part is west of the Hawaiian Islands and east of Japan. The area has been described as a kind of oceanic desert, with light winds and slow moving water currents（流，流动）. The water moves so slow that garbage from all over the world collects there.

    In recent years, there have been growing concerns about the floating garbage and its effect on sea creatures and human health. Scientists say thousands of animals get trapped in the floating waste, resulting in death or injury. Even more die from a lack of food or water after swallowing pieces of plastic. The trash can also make animals feel full, diminishing their desire to eat or drink.

    The floating garbage also can have harmful effects on people. There is an increased threat of infection（感染）of disease from polluted waste, and from eating fish that swallowed waste. Divers can also get trapped in the plastic.

    Its existence first gained public attention in 1997. That was when racing boat captain and oceanographer Charles Moore and his crew sailed into the garbage while returning from a racing event. Five years earlier, another oceanographer learnt of the trash after a shipment of rubber duckies got lost at sea. Many of those toys are now part of the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch.

    In August,2017, a team from the University of California, San Diego became the latest group to travel to it. They were shocked by the amount of waste they saw. They gathered hundreds of sea creatures and water samples to measure the garbage patch's effect on ocean environment.

    Hilton Head Island, in South Carolina, is a popular vacation spot on the East Coast of the US. There are 250 restaurants on the island. You can try the following excellent restaurants.

    Skull Creek Boathouse

    397 Squire Pope Road

    843-681-3663

    It's a good place for seafood lovers. Lunch is served daily from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., dinner from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., and weekend lunch is served from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The menu is mostly seafood.

    Quarterdeck

    32 Greenwood Road

    1-866-561-8802

    The view from this restaurant is wonderful. You have many choices, such as beef, burgers and soups. Open for lunch and dinner, the hours are 11:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. for lunch, and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. for dinner.

    Frankie Bones

    1301 Main Street

    843-842-4033

    They are open 7 days a week for lunch and dinner from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday lunch is served from 11:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. For lunch you can enjoy sandwiches, salads, rice, and pasta dishes. The entrée (主菜) is served with soup or salad. The salad also has cheese, pine nuts and dried berries.

    Mellow Mushroom

    33 Office Park Road

    843-686-2474

    If you want something different, stop in at the Mellow Mushroom. They have specialty (特色菜) pizzas, salads, and sandwiches. If you enjoy wines, you'll surely find something you like. It is open 7 days a week — Sunday through Thursday from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.

    As Amy Hagdorn rounded the corner across the hall from her classroom, she ran into a tall boy from the fifth grade running in the opposite direction.

    "Watch it. Squirt." the boy yelled, as he kept away from the little third grader. Then, with an unfriendly smile on his face, the boy took hold of his right leg and imitated the way Amy limped(跛行) when she walked.

    Amy closed her eyes for a moment.

    "Forget it!" she told herself as she headed for her classroom.

    It wasn't as if he were the only one. It seemed that ever since Amy started the third grade, someone teased her every single day. The tease made Amy feel all lonely.

    Back home at the dinner table that evening, Amy was quiet. Her mother knew that things were not going well at school. That's why Patti Hagdorn was happy to have some exciting news to share with her daughter

    "There's a Christmas Wish Contest on the newspaper, she announced." Write a letter to Santa and you might win a prize.

    Out came a pencil and a piece of paper and Amy went to work on her letter. She wrote:

Dear Santa Claus,

    My name is Amy. I am 9 years old. I have a problem at school. Can you help me, Santa? Kids laugh at me because of the way I walk and run and talk. I have cerebral palsy(脑瘫). I just want one day when no one laughs at me or makes fan of me.

Love

Amy

    The next day, a picture of Amy and her letter to Santa made the front page of the News Sentinel. The little girl's story spread quickly. She asked for such a simple, yet remarkable Christmas gift-just one day without being teased.

    During that unforgettable Christmas season, over two thousand people from all over the world sent Amy letters or cards of friendship and support.

    Amy did get her wish of a special day without being teased. Additionally, teachers and students in her school talked together about how bad tease can make others feel.

    Sally Dawly is a woman from Auburn, California. Over the last three and a half years, the anti-littering woman has spent most of her free time picking up cigarette butts (烟头) from the streets of her home city.

    Called the "Butt Lady" by her local community, Dawly began her mission to rid the streets of her city of cigarette butts in October, 2014. The woman looked for cigarette butts, picked them up and threw them in the trash. To keep a count of how many butts she picks up, the Butt Lady has been using a tablet, and earlier this month, she hit a historic milestone—one million cigarette butts.

    "I got tired of going on my walks and seeing cigarette butts everywhere," Sally Dawly said. "I'm just shocked that I had to pick up so many. I've ever picked up 3,000 butts in one day," she said. "Don't throw away your butts; better yet, stop smoking."

    With so many cigarette butts littering the streets, can one person's efforts really make a difference? Surprisingly, the answer seems to be yes. Soon after the Butt Lady of Auburn started her mission and word of her efforts spread, cigarette cans started appearing around bars and restaurants in the city. Members of the local community even came out to cheer her on as she approached her one-million-butt milestone.

    Sally knows her city's cigarette butt littering problem won't be solved anytime soon, but she hopes her work will inspire people to at least think twice before dropping cigarette butts in the streets. She has decided to continue cleaning up after irresponsible smokers, and already has a new milestone in her sights—two million cigarette butts.

    Word of the Butt Lady's efforts to keep the streets cigarette butt-free has reached neighboring communities as well, and CBS Sacramento reports that other cities have started seeking her help as well.

    Passenger pigeons (旅鸽) once flew over much of the United States in unbelievable numbers. Written accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries described flocks (群) so large that they darkened the sky for hours.

    It was calculated that when its population reached its highest point, there were more than 3 billion passenger pigeons—a number equal to 24 to 40 percent of the total bird population in the United States, making it perhaps the most abundant bird in the world. Even as late as 1870 when their numbers had already become smaller, a flock believed to be 1 mile wide and 320 miles (about 515 kilometers) long was seen near Cincinnati.

    Sadly the abundance of passenger pigeons may have been their undoing. Where the birds were most abundant, people believed there was an ever-lasting supply and killed them by the thousands.

    Commercial hunters attracted them to small clearings with grain waited until pigeons had settled to feed, then threw large nets over them, taking hundreds at a time. The birds were shipped to large cities and sold in restaurants.

    By the closing decades of the 19th century, the hardwood forests where passenger pigeons nested had been damaged by American's need for wood, which scattered (驱散) the flocks and forced the birds to go farther north, where cold temperatures and storms contributed to their decline. Soon the great flocks were gone, never to be seen again.

    In 1897, the state of Michigan passed a law prohibiting the killing of passenger pigeons but by then, no sizable flocks had been seen in the state for 10 years. The last confirmed wild pigeon in the United States was shot by a boy in Pike County, Ohio, in 1900. For a time, a few birds survived under human care. The last of them, known affectionately as Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoological Garden on September 1, 1914.