Rodney Smith, Jr. started mowing the lawns (割草坪) in Huntsville, Alabama last fall. He used his time between classes at Alabama A&M to reach a goal of mowing 100 yards before winter. Smith has been cutting grass for free to help single moms, the elderly, and the disabled, while teaching the local youth the values that can turn boys into men. “I'm doing something positive. I want boys to follow me and be better than me,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

    Rodney is from Bermuda. He says people there help each other and are always friendly. “That's what drives me to help people.”

    In May this year, he was getting ready to launch his mowing service for the summer when he heard about a 93-year-old woman trying to cut grass by herself. Smith and a friend showed up to do the job for her.

    In November, a local TV station gave him $300, calling it a special gift for his good work. After he received the money, he used it to create the non-profit(非盈利的) service group, Raising Men Lawn Care Service. He also started a page to collect money to buy lawn equipment and other things—including T-shirts with special logos.

    After I read about Rodney's story, I told my friends about him. We also planned to mow lawns for single moms, the elderly and disabled in our neighborhood. And I hope more and more young people will join Rodney's service group—Raising Men Lawn Care Service.

    Is your school good for the environment?

    Being green wasn't easy for Kermit the Frog(a famous cartoon character)—but it is for a growing number of schools around the country.A "green" school is an environmentally friendly building that uses less energy by depending on earth's natural resources for heat,light,and power.Green schools have clean air,a lot of natural light,and renewable power sources.

    New studies show that green schools are not only good for the environment,but good for you too!Kids in classrooms with a lot of daylight scored 25 percent higher on reading and math tests than students who studied in rooms with less natural light.Students in schools with more natural light took three to four fewer sick days than students exposed to artificial classroom lighting.The further study found that those students had less dental decay（龋齿）because they were exposed to more of the vitamin D produced by the sun.

The Willow School in N.J. is a school that was built as a green building in 2002.Parts of the building are made wholly from recycled materials.To help trap heat,for example,building workers filled the walls with material from old blue jeans instead of the traditional insulation（绝缘物）made of chemicals.Every classroom has skylights to allow most sunlight,and solar panels（太阳能电池板）line the south end of the building.It uses about 70 percent less energy than a non-green school.This helps the school cut down on high energy costs.

    Kate Burke Walsh,head of the Willow School,says,"Sunlight has an impact—you're happier."The clean,natural surroundings help both students and teachers "handle stress and stay relaxed and focused…it's a very calming atmosphere."

    Even if trees cannot walk, they are still on the move.

    In parts of the Arctic, entire forests are moving northward. Across the Arctic, temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else in the world. As that happens, the tree line that marks where forests stop and the treeless tundra (冻原) starts has been shifting northward. Trees growing along the tree line must protect themselves from the cold wind. To dothis, plants tend to grow horizontal (水平的) branches low to the ground. The energy it takes for trees to grow this way means they don't have enough energy to make seeds.

    But as Earth's climate has been warming, trees no longer have to just grow horizontally. Many can instead grow up toward the sky. This takes less energy. And with all that leftover energy, these trees have started producing more seeds. This happens especially in places where white spruce (白云杉) grows.

    White spruce, which is a North American tree, is quite able to produce a lot of seeds, which can move long distances in the wind. When wind­blown seeds end up on the tundra beyond the tree line, they eventually can sprout(发芽) new trees. This explains how a forest can move. Of course, the process would work only if the tundra were warm enough. But in recent years, the whole planet has been warming.

    New trees will provide shelters for some snow. Keeping the sun's rays from making the white surface disappear. Instead, the trees absorb the sun's heat. This warms the surrounding air. The extra warmth encourages even more trees to produce seeds. That further boosts a forest's ability to expand. In addition, more trees will trap more snow, preventing much of it from being blown away. Snow can trap heat in the soil below, which encourages trees to grow. The recent rise of temperatures has helped more trees grow past the tree line. People worry about impacts on the animals that depend on frozen conditions for food and shelter.

    For all the pressures and rewards of regionalization and globalization, local identities remain the most deeply impressed. Even if the end result of globalization is to make the world smaller, its scope seems to foster the need for more intimate local connections among many individuals. As Bernard Poignant, mayor of the town of Quimper in Brittany, told the Washington Post, “Man is a fragile animal and he needs his close attachments. The more open the world becomes, the more ties there will be to one's roots and one's land.”

    In most communities, local languages such as Poignant's Breton serve a strong symbolic function as a clear mark of “suthenticity（原真性）”. The sum total of a community's shared historical experience, authenticity reflects a perceived（感知到的）line from a culturally idealized past to the present, carried by the language and traditions associated with the community's origins. A concern for authenticity leads most secular（世俗的）Israelis to champion（捍卫，维护）Hebrew among themselves while also acquiring English and even Arabic. The same obsession with authenticity drives Hasidic Jews in Israel or the Diaspora to champion Yiddish while also learning Hebrew and English. In each case, authenticity amounts to a central core of cultural beliefs and interpretations that are not only resistant to globalization but also are actually reinforced by the “threat” that globalization seems to present to these historical values. Scholars may argue that cultural identities change over time in response to specific reward systems. But locals often resist such explanation and defend authenticity and local mother tongues against the perceived threat of globalization with near religious eagerness.

    As a result, never before in history have there been as many standardized languages as there are today: roughly 1,200. Many smaller languages, even those with far fewer than one million speakers, have benefited from state-sponsored or voluntary preservation movements. On the most informal level, communities in Alaska and the American northwest have formed Internet discussion groups in an attempt to pass on Native American languages to younger generations. In the Basque, Catalan, and Galician regions of Spain, such movements are fiercely political and frequently involved loyal resistance to the Spanish government over political and linguistic rights. Projects have ranged from a campaign to print Spanish money in the four official languages of the state to the creation of language immersion nursery and primary schools. Zapatistas in Mexico are championing the revival of Mayan languages in an equally political campaign for local autonomy（自治权）.

    In addition to causing the feeling of the subjective importance of local roots, supporters of local languages defend their continued use on practical grounds. Local tongues foster higher levels of school success, higher degrees of participation in local government, more informed citizenship, and better knowledge of one's own culture, history, and faith. Government and relief agencies can also use local languages to spread information about industrial and agricultural techniques as well as modern health care to diverse audiences. Development workers in West Africa, for example, have found that the best way to teach the vast number of farmers with little or no formal education how to sow and rotate crops for higher yields is in these local tongues. Nevertheless, both regionalization and globalization require that more and more speakers of local languages be multi-literate.

    Fourth-grader Alice Tapper was on a school field trip when she noticed that most of the girls quietly stayed at the back of the group, while the boys gathered at the front and raised their hands to answer questions. The 11-year-old then realized how often she and her female classmates didn't speak up in class for fears of getting an answer wrong and being embarrassed.

    She decided to change this and launched a campaign to encourage girls to have faith in themselves, even take risks and be leaders —— and support other girls in doing the same. With assistance from her Girl Scout troop (女童子军), she created a new Raise Your Hand program, and soon girls around the country were taking a pledge(承诺) to raise their hands in class.

    In my work as an administration coach I see many women (and some men) with habits that are holding them back. Women at work tend to hang back in meetings for fear they may not have the right answer. They will spend countless hours (and sometimes days) replaying the tapes in their head, while males in similar situations simply move on, until they are perfect when instead they should be establishing relationships. The truth is that after a year no one remembers your nice report. Forget perfect. It doesn't exist. Say what's on your mind and let things go.

    Similarly, women tend to talk more softly than men, which can be problematic, especially the higher up in the organization you go. To have an influence on business, it's not enough to have a seat at the table. You have to have a voice and people have to hear from you. Don't wait for an invitation. Raise your hand, say what you have to say, and when you see an opportunity, go for it!