Shopping is a big part of the holiday season,when families and friends gather together and exchange gifts.While the popularity of shopping online has grown,such practices are not always eco-friendly or timely,as gifts bought online must be packaged and shipped,wasting valuable resources and time.

    The benefits of shopping locally go beyond convenience and reduce your carbon footprint.The following are a few ways that shopping locally this holiday season can directly benefit your community and the people who call it home.

    When men and women shop locally,they are putting money back into their local communities.Local businesses may be owned by your neighbors,and it can be comforting to know that your holiday shopping dollars are going to support a neighbor instead of a large company.Local businesses also employ your neighbors,so shopping locally can strengthen the local economy by creating jobs.

    Local businesses go a long way toward creating a neighborhood identity,and that identity can create a stronger sense of community among you and your neighbors.In addition,a unique community    identity can make your town more attractive to outsiders,and can also attract more people to local businesses in your neighborhood.

    The gifts you buy when shopping locally can also benefit your community.Gifts purchased from small local businesses tend to be more unique than items bought from national chains,as smaller retailers tend to sell more home-made items than their national competitors.Recipients of such items may find such gifts more thoughtful than mass produced items bought from national chains.

    The accessibility of customer service is another benefit of shopping locally.When you buy something from national chains,especially during the holiday season when such businesses may have to deal with orders,making contact with customer service departments can be a test of patience.A long wait on the phone or online can make the process of contacting customer service departments extremely frustrating.But such frustration is rare when shopping from local businesses,as consumers can simply buy their products in the store.In addition,shopping locally makes it more convenient for friends and family members who also live in your community to return their gifts.

    "Do you have any idea how hard it is to be a kid?"My 7-year-old daughter once asked me.My initial reaction to her complaint was eye-rolling,along with thinking,“Being a kid is hard?Are you kidding me?”as I mentally ticked off（用记号勾出）all the hard things that her mama does.

    However,as I thought about it a bit more,I realized how silly my reaction had been.Yes,as we adults look back on our childhood,being a kid seems carefree and easy and full of fun.Coloring at school!Playing games!Riding bikes! How could that be hard?So I asked my daughter why being a kid was so hard.

    Her first answer didn't surprise me."Well,because you don't have your own phone,and you can't eat in the living room."

    I asked if anything else was hard about being a kid."Someone else is the boss of you,"she replied.

    I thought some more.What else is hard about being a kid?Well,sometimes,we don't really take kids seriously.

    There are times when I've responded to my children's tears with "It's not that bad,"or"You don't need to be upset about that."Because I believe that a cancelled playdate or a lost toy is no big deal.But for little ones,it is.

    We don't intentionally ignore these opportunities for connection,but sometimes,in busy moments of parenting, we respond unskillfully.We don't take our children's view,and we miss an opportunity to practice compassion（同情心）.

    I tried not to be biased, but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie. His social worker assured me that he would be a good, reliable busboy. But I had never had a mentally handicapped employee. He was short, a little fat, with the smooth facial features and thick-togued speech of Down's Syndrome（唐氏综合症）. I thought most of my customers would be uncomfortable around Stevie, so I closely watched him for the first few weeks.

    I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff wrapped around his stubby little finger, and within a month my regular trucker customers had adopted him as their official truck stop mascot. After that, I really didn't care what the rest of the customers thought of him. He was like a 21-year-old in blue jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh and eager to please, but fierce in his attention to his duties. Every salt and pepper shaker was exactly in its place, not a bread crumb or coffee spill was visible when Stevie got done with the table. Our only problem was persuading him to wait to clean a table until after the customers were finished.

    Over time, we learned that he lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled. Money was tight, and what I paid him was probably the difference between them being able to live together and Stevie being sent to a group home.

    That's why the restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed work. He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a heart surgery. His social worker said that people with Downs Syndrome often had heart problems at an early age and there was a good chance he would come through the surgery in good shape and be back at work in a few months.

    A ripple of excitement ran through the staff later that morning when word came that he was out of surgery, in recovery, and doing fine. Frannie, my head waitress, did a little dance when she heard the good news. Belle Ringer, one of our regular trucker customers, stared at her and asked, “Okay, Frannie, what was that all about?”

    "We just got word that Stevie is out of surgery and going to be okay."

    "I was wondering where he was. I had a new joke to tell him. What was the surgery about?"

    Frannie quickly told Belle Ringer and the other two drivers sitting at his booth about Stevie's surgery, then sighed: "Yeah, I"m glad he is going to be OK," she said. "But I don't know how he and his Mom are going to handle all the bills. From what I hear, they"re barely getting by as it is."

    Belle Ringer nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried off to wait on the rest of her tables.

    After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my office. She had a couple of paper napkins in her hand.

    "What's up?" I asked.

    "I cleared off that table where Belle Ringer and his friends were sitting after they left, and I found this. This was folded and tucked under a coffee cup."

    She handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell onto my desk when I opened it. On the outside, in big, bold letters, was printed "something For Stevie".

    That was three months ago. Today is New Year's day, the first day Stevie is supposed to be back to work. His placement worker said he had been counting the days until the doctor said he could work, I arranged to have his mother bring him to work, met them in the parking lot and invited them both to celebrate his day back. I took him and his mother by their arms. "To celebrate you coming back, breakfast for you and your mother is on me.”

    I led them toward a large corner booth. I could feel and hear truck customers and the rest of the staff following behind as we marched through the dining room. We stopped in front of the big table. Its surface was covered with coffee cups and dinner plates, all sitting slightly on dozens of folded paper napkins.

    "First thing you have to do, Stevie, is clean up this mess," I said.

    Stevie looked at me, and then pulled out one of the napkins. It had 'something for Stevie" printed on the outside. As he picked it up, two $10 bills fell onto the table. Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins peeking from beneath the tableware, each with his name printed on it.

    I turned to his mother. "There's more than $10,000 in cash and checks on that table, all from truckers and trucking companies that heard about your problems. Happy Thanksgiving!"

    While everybody else was busy shaking hands and hugging each other, Stevie, with a big, big smile on his face, was busy clearing all the cups and dishes from the table.

D

    With the development of the television and the Internet, many people have changed their hobbies and the way that they enjoy their free time. Because of the television and the Internet, many people spend less time reading, so the aim of this article is to give reasons why people should read just for pleasure. The reasons that I give you are quite simple: to improve your knowledge, to have more fun, to make your imagination（想象）fly, to find new ways to express your ideas, and to have a better understanding of life.

    Firstly, you can improve your knowledge when you read. There are nil kinds of good books to choose from. People who read more usually have a better idea about life than those who do not read so often.

    Secondly, you can have fun and increase your imagination by reading books Children have very good imaginations, so parents need to read lots of stories that feed their imagination. Adults should try to develop their imagination by reading books that make them think amazing things.

    Finally, no matter how old you are, it can help you to have a better understanding of life and express your ideas to others in a simple and correct form.

    So I suggest that you read more. I know that many of us like to play on the Internet when we are free, but we must also not forget to read books. Try to choose good books in the beginning, and then I'm sure that you will never stop reading.

    Have you ever run into a careless cell phone user on the street? Perhaps they were busy talking, texting or checking updates on WeChat without looking at what was going on around them. As the number of this new “species” of human has kept rising, they have been given a new name — phubbers（低头族）.

    Recently, a cartoon created by students from China Central Academy of Fine Arts put this group of people under the spotlight. In the short film, phubbers with various social identities bury themselves in their phones. A doctor plays with his cell phone while letting his patient die, a pretty woman takes selfie（自拍照）in front of a car accident site, and a father loses his child without knowing about it while using his mobile phone. A chain of similar events eventually leads to the destruction of the world.

    Although the ending sounds overstated, the damage phubbing can bring is real. Your health is the first to bear the effect and result of it. “Constantly bending your head to check your cell phone could damage your neck,” Guangming Daily quoted doctors as saying. “the neck is like a rope that breaks after long-term stretching.” Also, staring at cell phones for long periods of time will damage your eyesight gradually, according to the report.

    But that's not all. Being a phubber could also damage your social skills and drive you away from your friends and family. At reunions with family or friends, many people tend to stick to their cell phones while others are chatting happily with each other and this creates a strange atmosphere, Qilu Evening News reported.

    It can also cost you your life. There have been lots of reports on phubbers who fell to their death, suffered accidents, and were robbed of their cell phones in broad daylight.

Sleep is essential for a person's well-being. Researchers have found that sleep loss increases a person's risk of developing serious medical conditions. Now, a new study has found that getting enough sleep is also the key to improving academic performance.

Jeffrey Grossman, who led the research, was not trying to find the correlation(相关性) between sleep and grades when he handed out a device to the students in his class. Instead, the professor hoped the popular wrist-worn electronic device, which tracks a person's activity 24/7, would show a connection between physical exercise and academic achievement.

As part of the research, a quarter of the participants chose a fitness class specially created for the study. After the school term ended, the researchers carefully analysed the data. Much to Grossman's surprise, they found no measurable difference in test performance between the group that had been physically active and the group that had not.

However, the study presented a surprising viewpoint in the journal Science of Learning. Going through the large amount of data, Grossman noticed an interesting trend(趋势) from the participants' sleep patterns. There was a straight-line relationship between the average amount of sleep and his/her grade in the exams.

Besides, it was not enough for students to just head to bed early the night before a test. Grossman says, "We've heard the phrase ‘Get a good night's sleep. You've got a big day tomorrow.' It turns out this does not relate at all to test performance. Instead, it's the sleep you get during the days when learning is happening that matters most."

The time when students went to bed each night was similarly important. Those who went to bed in the early hours of the morning performed poorly, even if the total sleep time was the same as a higher-performing student.

The research does not prove that sleep is the only component that helps improve academic performance. However, Grossman says the results are a strong indication that sleep really matters. Who knew getting A's just required some extra ZZZ's?