All Alice Waters wanted was bread, jam and lettuce that tasted real, with a cup of good coffee or a glass of wine on the side. The founder of Chez Panisse, the California restaurant famous for launching the farm-to-table movement, certainly didn't plan to start a revolution.

    Returning to the United States in 1965 after studying in France, Waters missed the delicious food and community of the little cafes where she spent most of her time. “The United States was a land of frozen food, so eating even just fresh bread and jam was an extremely pleasant surprise to me,” says Waters. “And spending time in restaurants with friends… it was very important to me.”

    One day, an idea struck Waters that maybe her cooking and sense of community could help her make some money. Believing they could do anything, she and a group of friends raised money, found a house in Berkeley and opened a little restaurant called Chez Panisse in 1971.

    Most ingredients Waters could find were from industrial farms. They tasted totally different from the ones her parents planted during World War II and the ones she had enjoyed in France. Thus she began a search for suppliers who would grow good ingredients.

    “I was looking for taste. And I couldn't find taste until I met the local organic farmers who were growing vegetables for flavor,” Waters recalls. “I realized that I would be dependent on them for the success of my restaurant.”

At first, the finances were a disaster. If any of the ingredients didn't taste right, chefs threw them out. Staff had to taste the wine to sell it. That meant thousands of dollars of wine disappeared on a regular basis. People who offered ingredients were given meals in trade.

    But Chez Panisse had lines out of the front door from the very first night. Waters' sense of taste and her dedication to making the best food possible kept people coming back. It didn't take long for Chez Panisse to catch the attention of foodies (“吃货”). Throughout its existence, the restaurant has earned the highest praise of many critics. It has sometimes been called the best restaurant in America.

    Now 72, Waters is not content with staying at home and cooking in her kitchen. Last September, she flew to Washington D. C., to meet members of Congress to discuss the benefits of free lunch for all schoolchildren.

    Many people have called Waters unrealistic over the course of her 45-year fight for good food. Nevertheless, her single-mindedness ended up sparking a farm-to-table movement. “She didn't start Chez Panisse to change the world,” said Marion Nestle, a New York University nutrition professor. “But what she did was absolutely revolutionary. She's a force and deserves every bit of recognition that comes her way.”

    It's AOL Jobs Week. We'll have many job listings, so settle in and get your resume ready. And be sure to check out the rest of our Jobs Week content: from resume writing and networking to day jobs and time management to getting a new restaurant off the ground. Lastly, don't forget to enter our sweepstakes (抽奖) for a chance to win a personal session with one of our career experts!

    Customer Service Workers

    Median salary: US$31,547

    Top cities for hiring: Houston, Texas; Chicago, Illinois; Atlanta, Georgia

    We've all dealt with customer service representatives, those disembodied voices (不见其人的说话声) helping you over the phone with various company or purchase - related matters. Love them or hate them, the customer service field is currently blowing up in the United States - big time.

    Warehouse Workers

    Median salary: US$29,357

    Top cities for hiring: Houston, Texas; Chicago, Illinois; Columbus, Ohio

    Without warehouse workers, everything we've ever purchased would still be sitting in a building somewhere. The rise of online shopping sites like Amazon has made warehouses a hot spot for hiring.

    Accountants

    Median salary: US$63,550

    Top cities for hiring: Chicago, Illinois; Houston, Texas; New York

    Death and taxes may be two reasons for the popularity of accounting jobs, which are frequently in high demand. You'll need to become a CPA (Certified Public Accountant 注册会计师) to get started. But while some jobs are at the mercy of the economy, the economy itself isn't going away. Neither are accountants.

    Human Resources Managers

    Median salary: US$99,720

    Top cities for hiring: Chicago, Illinois; Houston, Texas; New York

    Speaking of job security, workers in company's human resources department are always needed to find and assess new hires, along with countless other tasks essential to keeping a company well- peopled. CareeiCast named it one of the ten best jobs of 2016, because it has high income and low stress.

    Moksh Jawa, 16, a student at Washington High School in the US, has already become a legend(传奇) among students. “Why not?” might be his favorite question to ask.

    As a seventh-grader, he taught himself coding(编程) by studying on the Internet.

    As a high school freshman, he passed the AP Computer Science A exam with a 5, the highest score possible.

    As a sophomore (高中二年级学生), he developed his own online course and helped his classmates get through it because his high school didn't teach coding.

    Everything he did came from his own interest. His father sent him a link to Codeacademy, an online coding training program, in middle school. He learned a programming(编程) language all by himself after signing up to the website.

    “I just fell in love with computer science,”Jawa said. Along the way, he lit a fire of curiosity and passion among classmates to learn coding too.

    “All of my friends, especially the girls, were really, really afraid of computer science,” he said. But the subject and exam weren't things to be feared, he said, “Computer science is all about logic(逻辑), not about how smart you are. ”

    To make his knowledge available online, Jawa set about creating his own online course, with easy-to-follow lessons. He included quizzes and tests too.

    The course has so far attracted 3, 200 students across the US and in 120 countries and regions, including China, Ukraine and Algeria.  It shows, Jawa said, the huge need for coding lessons.

    When video lecturing, “I deliver it like I'm talking from one high school student to another,”Jawa said. “It's always great to make it as clear and fun as possible, and to try to keep my voice as energetic as possible. ”

    He also does that, when teaching members of the computer science club he founded at his high school.

    “His tutorials(辅导) were great, ”said Taj Shaik, the club's co-president, who took the whole course last year. “I'm definitely one of the early adopters(使用者) of Moksh. ”

    “He's pretty amazing, ”said Bob Moran, principal of Washington High School, who saw him lead the club. “He was just a fantastic teacher—clear, organized and entertaining. When a student got the right answer, he would throw him a candy. ”

Letter One

Dear Editor,

    After I finish my homework, I often go online and chat with my friends. Sometimes I play computer games. But my parents hate to see me playing games on the computer. Maybe they have heard too much news about how QQ and computer games harm children. Once I went to a net bar(网吧) to play games after school. But after that I told my parents that I was playing basketball at school. I said so because I didn't want to make them unhappy. I feel bad about it. However, I need to rest for a while by playing computer games after studying for a long time. I really want my parents to understand that. Do foreign parents do the same to their children? Please help me.

Li Ping,

Beijing

Letter Two

Dear Li Ping,

    I don't think it's strange for parents to keep their children away from anything bad. Foreign parents will do the same as your parents! They may not let their children watch TV for too long a time, or like your parents, they don't want their children to play computer games.

    Talk to your parents and be honest to them, I think. Tell them what you are doing and why you are doing so to make them understand you. It's never good to do things behind your parents. They aren't fools as you think sometimes! Our parents seem to know what is the best for us.

Remember: to be honest is the best way.

Good luck,

Rebecca

    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.