In 2004 ,when my daughter Becky was ten , she and my husband ,Joe, were united in their desire for a dog . As for me , I shared none of their canine lust.

But why , they pleaded. “Because I don't have time to take care of a dog.” But we'll do it. ” Really? You're going to walk the dog? Feed the dog? Bathe the dog?” Yes, yes , and yes .”I don't believe you .” We will . We promise.

They didn't . From day two (everyone wanted to walk the cute puppy that first day ) , neither thought to walk the dog . While I was slow to accept that I would be the one to keep track of her shots , to schedule her vet appointments , to feed and clean her , Misty knew this on day one . As she looked up at the three new humans in her life (small, medium, and large) , she calculated ,”The medium one is the sucker in the pack .”

Quickly, she and I developed something very similar to a Vulcan mind meld (心灵融合) . She'd look at me with those sad brown eyes of hers , beam her need , and then wait , trusting I would understand — which , strangely , I almost always did . In no time , she became my feet as I read , and splaying across my stomach as I watched television .

Even so , part of me continued to resent walking duty .Joe and Becky had promised. Not fair , I'd balk (不心甘情愿地做) silently as she and I walked . “Not fair , ” I' d loudly remind anyone within earshot upon our return home .

       Then one day — January 1, 2007 , to be exact — my husband ‘ s doctor uttered an unthinkable word : leukemia ( 白血病) .With that , I spent eight to ten hours a day with Joe in the hospital , doing anything and everything I could to ease his discomfort. During those six months of hospitalizations, Becky, 12 at the time, adjusted to other adults being in the house when she returned from school. My work colleagues adjusted to my taking off at a moment's notice for medical emergencies. Every part of my life changed; no part of my old routine remained.

      Save one: Misty still needed walking. At the beginning, when friends offered to take her

through her paces, I declined because I knew they had their own households to deal with.

      As the months went by，I began to realize that I actually wanted to walk Misty. The walk in the morning before I headed to the hospital was a quiet, peaceful time to gather my thoughts or to just be before the day's medical drama unfolded. The evening walk was a time to shake off the day's upsets and let the worry tracks in my head go to white noise.

      When serious illness visits your household, it's , not just your daily routine and your assumptions about the future that are no longer familiar. Pretty much everyone you acts differently.

Not Misty. Take her for a walk, and she had no interest in Joe's blood counts or 'one marrow test results. On the street or in the park, she had only one thing on her mind: squirrels! She Was so joyous that even on the worst days, she could make me smile. On a daily basis she reminded me that life goes on.

      After Joe died in 2009，Misty slept on his pillow.

I'm grateful一to a point. The truth is, after years of balking, I've come to enjoy m' walks with Misty. As I watch her chase after a squirrel, throwing her whole being into the here-and-now of an exercise that has never once ended in victory, she reminds me, too, that no matter how harsh the present or unpredictable the future , there's almost always some measure of joy to be extracted from the moment.

    For most of my 20 years as a teacher, summer vacation was my time to relax. So why was I standing in the schoolyard of an unfamiliar school, wearing myself out for a summer teaching job? The extra paychecks were nice, but I lacked the energy of my younger colleagues. Like Stella. She was in her early twenties, and made keeping up with the kids look effortless. She reminded me of myself, back when I was a bright-eyed student teacher at Ramona Elementary…

    I'd never forget my first day. I was too full of energy. Nervous energy. My supervising teacher was watching, and I wanted to make a good impression. I asked my third graders to take out their crayons for the day's lesson. All of them obeyed. Except one. A girl with two long, dark braids(辫子). Everyone called her Estrellita, or “little star.” Why was she unprepared for class? I demanded to know.

    “My sister has my crayons,” she said.

    “You should each have your own crayons,” I told her. “That's no excuse.”

    “There are 10 children in my family,” Estrellita said quietly, her big brown eyes never leaving my face. “We have to take turns.”

    I was taken aback. I'd completely misjudged the situation. All day Estrellita's words played on my mind. The next morning I bought a pack of crayons to leave on Estrellita's desk. She was so happy! That experience taught me an important lesson. Every student had a unique set of challenges—it was my mission to help my students overcome them. That mission used to energize(激励 )me.

    Rest was almost over. Stella turned to me and we started chatting. “How long have you been teaching?” she asked. I told her I'd started twenty years before, at Ramona Elementary.

    “I went to school there twenty years ago!” Stella said. I looked at her again, this time really seeing her. Those big brown eyes. That long, dark hair...

    “Did you use to have two long braids?” I said. “We called you Estrellita… ”

    Stella shouted. “ You ! You gave me the crayons!”

She'd become a teacher. To help students like I did. Even doing something that small mattered.

    That summer, I threw myself into teaching with a renewed sense of purpose. Estrellita had taught me a lesson once again.

    The FBI is investigating the disappearance of a visiting Chinese scholar from a central Illinois university town as a kidnapping(绑架) as her whereabouts(下落) have remained unknown since Friday.

    Zhang Yingying, 26, was last seen on June 9 near the north end of the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), wearing a charcoal-colored baseball cap, a pink and white top, jeans and white tennis shoes and carrying a black backpack. She boarded a Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District bus and exited the West Springfield and North Mathews avenues at 1:52 pm local time (1852 GMT), police said.

    The FBI has labeled the case as a kidnapping but isn't ruling out anything, said Campus police spokesman Patrick Wade. The suspect appears to be a white male who was in a car and stopped to talk to Zhang on Friday afternoon, the FBI said. Almost one month into a year long appointment at the UIUC campus, Zhang's friends told police that she was heading to an apartment complex in Urbana to sign a lease(租约).

    Security camera footage(连续镜头) on Monday released by university police showed that Zhang talked to the driver of a black Saturn Astra, about five blocks from where she got off a bus in Urbana on Friday afternoon. She entered the car shortly thereafter. Zhang has not been seen or heard from since then and attempts to contact her by phone remain unsuccessful. Authorities have asked the public to help identify that vehicle.

    A massive search has been launched in Urbana in the US state of Illinois since Zhang's disappearance. Police are interviewing with her colleagues, checking local hospitals and coordinating with ride hailing(打车) companies as part of their investigative efforts.

    In an interview with Xinhua through Wechat on Thursday, Zhang Ronggao, father of the ,missing visiting scholar from china's Fujian Province, expressed gratitude to all the people involved in the search and asked US police to accelerate the search.

    The writer Margaret Mitchell is best known for writing Gone with the Wind, first published in 1936. Her book and the movie based on it, tell a story of love and survival during the American Civil War. Visitors to the Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta, Georgia, can go where she lived when she started composing the story and learn more about her life.

    Our first stop at the Margaret Mitchell House is an exhibit area telling about the writer's life. She was born in Atlanta in 1900. She started writing stories when she was a child. She started working as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal newspaper in 1922. One photograph of Ms. Mitchell, called Peggy, shows her talking to a group of young college boys. She was only about one and a half meters tall. The young men tower over her, but she seems very happy and sure of herself. The tour guide explains: “Now in this picture Peggy is interviewing some boys from Georgia Tech, asking them such questions as 'Would you really marry a woman who works?'

    And today it'd be 'Would you marry one who doesn't?' ”

    The Margaret Mitchell House is a building that once contained several apartments. Now we enter the first floor apartment where Ms. Mitchell lived with her husband, John Marsh. They made fun of the small apartment by calling it “The Dump”.

    Around 1926, Margaret Mitchell had stopped working as a reporter and was at home healing after an injury. Her husband brought her books to read from the library. She read so many books that he bought her a typewriter and said it was time for her to write her own book. Our guide says Gone with the Wind became a huge success. Margaret Mitchell received the Pulitzer Prize for the book. In 1939 the film version was released. It won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

    If you want to convince the boss you deserve a pay rise or promotion, the solution could be simple — eat the same food as they do. Psychologists have discovered managers are much more likely to instantly trust us if we choose the same dishes as them.

    During experiments, discussions over wages and work conditions were much more successful if both sides chose to snack on the same treats. And shoppers were much more likely to buy a product advertised on TV by someone eating a similar food to them at the time.

    The reason is thought to be so-called similarity attraction theory — where people tend to like others who have similar tastes or habits to themselves. But this is believed to be one of the first studies highlighting the role of food in this relationship. Researchers at Chicago University in the US conducted a series of experiments to examine food's role in earning trust.

    In a test, participants were told to watch TV — where someone pretending to be a member of the public praised a certain product. The volunteers were given Kit Kat bars to nibble (咬), while the TV people ate either a Kit Kat or grapes as they talked.

    The results showed viewers were much more likely to express an interest in buying the product if the TV showed the other person eating a Kit Kat too.

    The researchers added, “Although similarity in food consumption is not a sign of whether two people will get along, we find consumers treat this as such. They feel more trusting of those who consume as they do. It means people can immediately begin to feel friendship and develop a bond, leading to smoother transactions (交易) from the start.”

    Harley Street psychologist Dr. Lucy Atcheson said it was already known that wearing similar clothes could instantly create trust. But this was the first report that food had the same effect. She said, “This is really interesting. It makes sense as people feel they have common ground and can trust the other person. That means negotiations are more likely to be successful.”

    Wong Fuk-wing, a Hong Kong volunteer at an orphanage (孤儿院) in Yushu, was killed in the earthquake when he was trying to save others on April 14, 2010.

    Wong managed to run safely out of the building with some children when the first quake happened at 7:50 am on April 14, but he went back inside to rescue three other children and three teachers inside, although he knew the danger of aftershocks (余震).

    At 10 am, all the children and one of the teachers were saved. However, Wong was buried under the fallen building and died. The other two teachers were still waiting to be rescued.

    46-year-old Wong was a truck driver, who often said he could only give his efforts to charity instead of money, as he did not earn a lot. His tragic (悲剧的) end touched the hearts of many people both in Hong Kong and on the mainland.

    Wong began volunteering in 2002. In 2003, Wong was told by the doctor he got serious illness, which gave him a great blow. However, the illness did not deter the warm-hearted man. When the earthquake struck Wenchuan is Sichuan Province in 2008, Wong rushed to the disaster area of Shifang to offer his help though his family did not want him to go.

    In fact, Qinghai is a place Wong had often visited since 2006. As a volunteer, he gave out medicine and clothing to the orphanage there. No one could expect that Wong would die helping others.

    Hong Kong Chief Secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen said he had “the highest respect” for the hero who gave his life for others. “What he did has shown the Hong Kong spirit.” The citizens of Hong Kong called him “the pride of Hong Kong's people” and people on the mainland have also praised him as “a true hero”.