Kyle is my big brother. For eighteen years, I felt that Kyle was my enemy. In fact, I found it ridiculous that people thought older brothers looked out for their sisters, protected them and fought off their sisters，bullies. Huh? My brother was the bully (恃强凌弱者).
    When we were little, his fights with others caused my only black eye, cuts in my lips and even a nosebleed or two. I often wished I were an only child!

    Time flew. We ended up attending colleges two thousand miles apart, yet strangely, that's when we began communicating. Through e-mail, we kept in constant touch. Mostly I complained about serious homesickness, impossible roommates difficult classes, and... dating. I felt I lost myself. At a particularly low time, I cried to Kyle about my injured confidence, my broken heart, and the particular jerk (蠢人) who broke it.

    And that's when the package arrived.

    “What's this?” I thought as I tore into it. The box revealed a sweatshirt. “Phi Delta Theta? Thai's Kyle's frat (兄弟会).” Kyle was the president of the frat house. Why would he send this? I put it aside and dug deeper. A pile of letters. And they were all addressed to me. I opened the one on top.

    “Katrina,” it said, “your brother showed me your picture and I think you're awesome and beautiful.” I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, sure.” I opened another letter. And another. Eighteen in all.

    Each one was from a different guy. They complimented (恭维) me. They invited me on dates. And they tried to convince me to make a trip out to Knox College and meet them.

    I loved it. I didn't care about the motive. And mostly, I loved the idea that my big brother had pulled it off. I picked up the phone.

    “Kyle, the box came and I can't believe what you did.” But Kyle wasn't accepting compliments. “Oh”, he said，“I was just tired of reading your complaints.”

    Big brothers, I decided, really did protect their sisters. And mine fought off the biggest bully I'd ever met. Now I return to my true self，full of confidence.

D

    Give yourself a test. Which way is the wind blowing? How many kinds of wildflowers can be seen from your front door? If your awareness is as sharp as it could be, you'll have no trouble answering these questions.

    Most of us observed much more as children than we do as adults. A child's day is filled with fascination, newness and wonder. Curiosity gave us all a natural awareness. But distinctions that were sharp to us as children become unclear; we are numb(麻木的）to new stimulation(刺激), new ideas. Relearning the art of seeing the world around us is quite simple, although it takes practice and requires breaking some bad habits.

    The first step in awakening senses is to stop predicting what we are going to see and feel before it occurs. This blocks awareness. One chilly night when I was hiking in the Rocky Mountains with some students, I mentioned that we were going to cross a mountain stream. The students began complaining about how cold it would be. We reached the stream, and they unwillingly walked ahead. They were almost knee-deep when they realized it was a hot spring. Later they all admitted they'd felt cold water at first.

    Another block to awareness is the obsession(痴迷) many of us have with naming things. I saw bird watchers who spotted a bird, immediately looked it up in field guides, and said, a "ruby-crowned kinglet" and checked it off. They no longer paid attention to the bird and never learned what it was doing.

    The pressures of "time" and "destination" are further blocks to awareness. I encountered many hikers who were headed to a distant camp-ground with just enough time to get there before dark. It seldom occurred to them to wander a bit, to take a moment to see what's around them. I asked them what they'd seen. "Oh, a few birds," they said. They seemed bent on their destinations.

    Nature seems to unfold to people who watch and wait. Next time you take a walk, no matter where it is, take in all the sights, sounds and sensations. Wander in this frame of mind and you will open a new dimension to your life.

    Robert is a boss who hires me as a helper.He has lost his house and now has to live back at home,with his mother,at 46.

    We had a job in Fort Bending.Robert bought me breakfast there.As we were leaving,a man walked to us asking if he could get some work from Roberts' company.Robert explained there was no work for the man and the man started to walk away.As I looked at the man leaving from Robert,I saw Robert taking out some money and went after the man to gave it to him.I asked Robert,"Why did you do that?"Robert said "He really had bad luck—what does a few dollars matter?"

    After a very long,hard day,we stopped at a Quick Trip for a soda.I got through the checkout ahead of Robert and went back out to the work truck.Beside the truck was a woman in a car.She had 3 kids and asked me if I could help—she had been evicted and had nowhere to go with her children.They were living in the car.I told her I was also hurting in these times,so I could not.Robert came out,opened the work truck and we got in.I told him about the lady.I didn't even finish the story when Robert was out his door around the truck and gave the women money to help them out.When Robert returned I asked,"Why did you do that,she didn't even ask you".He said,“I have an ex-wife（前妻）and a kid.If they need help and I am not able,someone will help them”.

    I do not know Sybrina Fulton. Nor can I claim to understand the depth of her pain. Yet, we share a deep connection. A common feature experienced by those women who face the challenge of raising a Black male child in a nation that far too often views Black male bodies through fear. You see, Ms. Fulton is living my nightmare (恶梦). A constant worry that has stayed in the back of my mind since the birth of my eldest son, some sixteen years ago.

    Through the years, I have witnessed the world's reaction to my son evolve as he has grown from a small boy to a young man. In his early years, his easy smile and lovable character were nothing less than magnetic (有磁性的). Complete strangers would approach him in the street, draw him into conversation, and find themselves easily struck by his lively spirit. Even at that time I worried, how would my son react when in the years to come some of those who found themselves so impressed by this cute, intelligent boy, might grasp their purse tighter as he walked by.

    Over the years I have sought to protect his spirit from the hurt that comes from undeserved hatred. I have also sought to arm him with the knowledge that could one day save his life. He knows, for example, that if he is ever pulled over by the police, that he is to keep both hands on the wheel at all times and only reach for his license when the officer is specifically observing his actions. He knows, even in less threatening situations, that rough play and loud interactions with his buddies of any color will be viewed very differently when he does it, than when his white friends display the very same behavior. Still, the truth of the matter is, no amount of advice or voiceless behavior overcomes the physical, immovable fact of the color of his skin. His intelligence, easy smile, and lovable character won't protect him from unfounded assumptions of criminality.

    What makes the Trayvon Martin travesty (歪曲) of justice so painful to me, personally, is the knowledge that Trayvon's mother loved her baby no less than I love mine. The various pictures of moments throughout a happy childhood that have now found a home on nationwide newscasts provides clear evidence of that. Yet no amount of love and care, and no words of advice could have saved her son from the cruel killing he faced at the hands of a self-appointed neighborhood watch-dog. And perhaps even worse, nothing could have prepared her for the inhuman way her son has been treated by officials even in death. To think for three long days, his parents searched for him while officials failed to inform them of his fate and instead, performed drug and alcohol tests on his lifeless body, while failing to do the same for his attacker—the only one of the two who indeed had a criminal past is frankly, unforgivable. To know that the words of her son's killer were given more weight than eye-witnesses and taped evidence of her child's screams and eventual death must be heartbreaking. But to also have to live with the fact that his attacker still breathes free while her son lays buried underground is certainly more than any sorrowful parent should have to endure (忍受).

    It is this type of pain that is not unfamiliar to the Black experience in America, for this is the Black mothers' burden. A burden we have endured for centuries. We know the pain of having our newborn babies grabbed from our loving arms to be sold into lifelong servitude (奴役) and to never again experience the warmth of a mother's loving hug. Yet, there is still the rightful expectation, that in modern-day America, the wheels of justice would not be stopped.

    So today, it is my hope that Trayvon's mother, father, family and friends can take some comfort in the fact that millions of Americans of every color stand with them in their fight for justice. This is a burden no family should have to endure alone.

    We will not give up.

    We will not forget.

    We will continue the fight until justice is done.

    A bicycle may be seen by most people as just another vehicle (交通工具), but for many Londoners, cycling is a way of life. According to an official UK government survey in 2017, about 570,000 bike journeys are made every day in London. In fact, almost half of the vehicles that pass over London Bridge each day are bikes.

    London introduced a public bike-sharing system in 2010. “There can be no doubt that our trusty bicycles have changed the way people get around our great city,” Johnson told the Guardian in 2015.

    In London, bikes are used for more than just taking short trips to and from the subway. No matter where you want to go in the city, taking a bike is usually the quickest and easiest choice.

    And it's not just shared bikes that the government is encouraging people to ride. In many companies across the UK, the UK government's Cycle to Work scheme (骑行倡议) allows employees to buy a brand new bike without having to pay any tax (税). This means that it's common to see many people cycling to and from work, and some employers even provide workplace showers and lockers (储物柜) for their workers. More importantly, a cycle-friendly boss may let you off for being late if you rode a bike to work.

    Not only is it great for the environment and our body, cycling is also good for the mind. According to National Geographic Magazine, “Bike riding can improve people's happiness.”

In the story of "The crow and the Pitcher" from Aesop's Fables, a thisty crow (乌鸦)drops stones into a narrow jar to raise the low level of water inside so he can take a drink.

Now scientists have evidence to back up that story. Crows actually do understand how to make water displacement (移位) work to their advantage, experiments show. The results suggest that the birds are, at least in some aspects, as smart as first-graders.

Researchers, led by Sarah Jelbert at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, presented six crows with tubes filled with water. Inside the tubes, a worm or piece of meat on a piece of wood was floating, just out of reach of the crow. In front of the tubes, the researchers arranged several rubber erasers that would sink, and some plastic objects that would float. The crows found out that they could drop the erasers into the tubes in order to raise the water level and get their snack.

However, the birds handled awkwardly in experiments in which they could choose to drop objects in either a wide tube or a narrow one to get a snack, the researchers said. Dropping objects into narrow tube would lift the water level by a greater amount and put the treat within reach after just two drops; while it took around seven drops to raise the snack to the same level in the wide tube. The crows obviously didn't realize this, and most of them went for the wide tube first.

Previous studies showed that chimps and human children can solve similar tasks. In a 2011 study, chimps and kids found out that they could put water into a tube to reach a peanut that was floating in a small amount of water at the bottom.