Two summers ago I was about to tum fifty and wanted to do something I'd never done before. My daughter Bailey thought skydiving (跳伞) would be perfect for me. I can promise you that of all the things I was thinking of doing, jumping out of an airplane never came close to making the list. As I age, I seem to have developed a growing fear of heights.

    After several requests from my daughter, I finally said yes and she looked almost shocked. I told a friend what we were doing, then we set off. We had a 3-hour drive to the jump site. We drove through some beautiful countryside, but then we passed a small cemetery (基地) Then we passed another cemetery and another one. I asked if so many people died jumping out of airplanes in this area that they needed to keep building more cemeteries to bury all the bodies!

    As we squeezed into the little plane, I tightly held the right hand of my partner Ronnie. The short ride to altitude was cruel for me. As Bailey stepped to the door, she looked back at me and said “Dad, I'm sure you can do it!” I said yes as she rolled out, I immediately looked behind me and said “RONNIEI AM NOT FEELING GOOD” He said, “It's going to be great. Besides, it's too late now anyway”, any we jumped out.

    The next five minutes were some of the most exciting of my life. It was so beautiful and peaceful—except for the parts where I was screaming. I prayed to God for the parachute(降落伞)to open, but mostly I told Him how thankful I was for my life and being with me through good and bad.

Londoners are great readers. They buy vast numbers of newspapers and magazines and of books — especially paperbacks, which are still comparatively cheap in spite of ever-increasing rises in the costs of printing. They still continue to buy "proper" books, too, printed on good paper and bound（装订）between hard covers.

    There are many streets in London containing shops which specialize in book-selling. Perhaps the best known of these is Charring Cross Road in the very heart of London. Here bookshops of all sorts and sizes are to be found, from the celebrated one which boasts of being "the biggest bookshop in the world" to the tiny, dusty little places which seem to have been left over from Dickens' time. Some of these shops stock, or will obtain, any kind of book, but many of them specialize in second-hand books, in art books, in foreign books, in books on philosophy, politics or any other of the countless subjects about which books may be written. One shop in this area specializes only in books about ballet!

    Although it may be the most convenient place for Londoners to buy books, Charring Cross Road is not the cheapest. For the really cheap second-hand books, the collector must venture off the beaten track, to Farringdon Road, for example, in the East Central district of London. Here there is nothing so impressive as bookshops. The booksellers come along each morning and pour out their sacks of books onto small hand carts. And the collectors, some professionals and some amateurs, have been waiting for them. In places like this they can still, occasionally, pick up for a few pence an old one that may be worth many pounds.

    Adding math talk to story time at home is a winning factor for children's math achievement, according to a new research from a university. The study from psychologists Sian Beilock and Susan Levine shows a marked increase in math achievement among children whose families used Bedtime Math, an iPad app that delivers engaging math story problems for parents and children to solve together.

    Even children who used the app with their parents as little as once a week saw gains in math achievement by the end of the school year. The app's effect was especially strong for children whose parents tend to be anxious or uncomfortable with math.

    Previous research from this group has demonstrated the importance of adults' attitudes about math for children's math success. For example, a recent study found that math-anxious parents who help their children with math homework actually weaken their children's math achievement.

    The new findings demonstrate that structured, positive interactions around math at home can cut the link between parents' uneasiness about math and children's low math achievement.

    "Many Americans experience high levels of anxiety when they have to solve a math problem, with a majority of adults feeling at least some worries about math," said Beilock, professor in Psychology and author of Choke, a book about stress and performance. "These math-anxious parents are probably less likely to talk about math at home, which affects how competent their children are in math. Bedtime Math encourages a dialogue between parents and kids about math, and offers a way to engage in high-quality math interactions in a low-effort, high-impact way."

    Study participants included 587 first-grade students and their parents. Families were given an iPad installed with a version of the Bedtime Math app, with which parents and their children read stories and answer questions involving math, including topics like counting, shapes and problem-solving. A control group received a reading app that had similar stories without the math content and questions related to reading comprehension instead. Children's math achievement was assessed at the beginning and end of the school year. Parents completed a questionnaire about their nervousness with math.

    The more times parents and children in the math group used the app, the higher children's achievement on a math assessment at the end of the school year. Indeed, children who frequently used the math app with their parents outperformed similar students in the reading group by almost three months in math achievement at year's end.

    Since 1904, Ravinia Festival has been Chicago's “sound of summer”, a place where you can meet up with your friends, have a wonderful time and hear some of the greatest music in the world. We've got stars on the stage and stars in the sky, and it's all within your reach. But there's more to Ravinia than merely the world's greatest music. For as many people who walk through Ravinia's gate each summer, there are just as many ways to enjoy what we call “The Ravinia Experience”. For some, it all starts with a picnic picked up along the way, greeting your friends at your favorite spot on the lawn.

    Ravinia Dining

    Whether you want to add a bottle of wine and some cheese to your picnic on the lawn or sit down to a meal, Ravinia has a wide variety of choices and we welcome you to explore them all.

    Ravinia gifts

    There are two locations for your shopping convenience! Visit our Main Store in the Dining Pavilion. There you will find different CDs, jewelry, games and more. Or fill your more immediate needs at the shop located behind the Martin Theatre.

    How to Buy Tickets Online

    Tickets for the 2018 season begin to go on sale online on Tuesday April 25. Ravinia Festival's online ticketing makes ordering tickets for your favorite performances easier than ever before. It is available 24 hours a day at www.ravinia.org.

    Click on the date of your choice to select an event, select your seats and add it to your ticket order. Once you have selected all the events you wish to attend, simply enter your payment information and submit your order.

    By Phone

    Phone sales for the 2018 season start on Monday May 22.

    Order tickets by phone by calling 847-266-5100.

    Monday- Friday: 10: 00 am-5: 00 pm

    Saturday/Sunday: Closed

    What's best to read this year?

    Secrets I Know (Random House Children's Books, ages 3-7)

    This tale written by Kallie George and pictured by Paola Zakimi follows a young girl and her little friend as they move from rain to sunshine, from pleasant loneliness to sweet friendship, and finally from adventures on earth to an exploration of the sky above. The colors of Zakimi's pencildrawings are calming and George's poetic text tells her story with simple language.

    Pandora (Clarion Books, ages 3-7)

    The award-winning author Victoria Turnbull tells the story of a little fox Pandora. Pandora lives alone. She makes herself a handsome home, but no one ever comes to visit. Then one day something falls from the sky -- a bird with a broken wing. Little by little, the bird helps Pandora feel less lonely. Turnbull's watercolor and colored pencil drawings make this story of friendship and growth an atmospheric delight.

    Prince and Pirate (G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Younger Readers, ages 5-8)

    A different kind of friendship is described in this book, by Charlotte Gunnufson with pictures by Mike Lowery. Prince and Pirate are a pair of mismatched fish put into the same aquarium（水族馆). At first it seems that they'll never learn to be friends. It's only when both take pity on a frightened dogfish that they learn the benefits of cooperation, and soon all three fish become good friends.

    The Giant Jumperee (Dinal Books, ages 3-5)

    The story was written by the award-winning British author Julia Donaldson. When Rabbit hears a loud voice bellowing（吼叫）threateningly from inside a cave, he gathers Cat, Bear and Elephant to help him decide what to do. But it's Mama Frog who fearlessly confronts（面对）the unknown creature. Helen Oxenbury's soft watercolors creat a beautiful countryside and her characterizations of the animals are impressive.

    I had reached the age of twenty-eight. Still, I doubted the letter from my past would make it to me, all these years later. It was a simple creative writing assignment from when I was eighteen. The teacher collected our letters to our future selves in self-addressed envelopes with stamps and promised to mail them ten years later. Yet so much time had passed. Would he even remember?

    Thinking back on the letter, I vaguely recalled giving my future self some advice. When you're eighteen years old, twenty-eight seems like a grown-up age but I wasn't feeling as grown up as I believed my younger self had expected me to be.

    When the letter finally reached me, I opened it eagerly. It began," How much do you bet this letter will never get to you "It continued to greet me casually as if we were having an IM (instant messaging) chat. My eighteen-year-old self was so stressed! As a senior in high school, facing the SATS and college applications, I was apparently not quite happy and hoped I wouldn't worry so much in the future, and that I wouldn't forget to be present and enjoy my life!

    Contrary to my belief, my eighteen-year-old self did not have any demands of me, or expectations I might have failed to meet. Instead, she wrote," I'll stand by whatever you do. Even if you are not who I'm imagining now, I'll support you, because maybe who I' m imagining is someone else, and you are-well you're not someone else, you're me."

    I was blown away, and tears welled up in my eyes at this self-acceptance through time. I had put a lot of pressure on myself to be the best version of myself that I could be. However, I came to realize what I would have accomplished in ten years' time would pale in comparison to how I'd feel and who I'd be.