The largest campaign of killing rats in history is set to poison millions of rats on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia. Scientists say the campaign planned for 2013 and 2014 will restore beautiful South Georgia to the position it once held as the world's most important nesting sites for seabirds.

    It was sailors in the late 18th century who unintentionally introduced rats to what had been a fresh environment. “If we can destroy the rats, at least 100 million birds will return to their home on South Georgia,” says Tony Martin, a biology professor at the University of Dundee who was invited to lead the project.

    South Georgia is by far the largest island to get rid of animals that destroy native wildlife after being introduced deliberately or accidentally by people. Though rats and mice have done the most damage, cats, foxes, goats, deer, rabbits and other species have been targeted in the campaigns around the world.

    South Georgia is seven times the size of New Zealand's Campbell Island, currently the largest area ever killing rats. The successful war against Campbell Island rats was carried out in 2001 with 132 tons of poison dropped from five helicopters.

    “New Zealand pioneered the techniques for ridding islands of rats and in fact our operation on South Georgia is based on New Zealand's technology.” Says Martin. “Some New Zealanders will be helping our campaign, including our chief pilot, Peter Garden, who was also chief pilot for the projects at Campbell Island and Rat Island, in the Aleutian chain of the north Pacific.”

    The second and third stages in 2013 and 2014 will involve dropping as much as 300 tons of poison from the air onto every part of the island where rats might live. It is a huge operation, carried out during the stormy southern autumn when the rats are hungry and the risks of poisoning native wildlife are less than in the spring and summer months. “Ideally we'd do in winter but the weather makes that too risky,” Martin says.

    The ecological payback will be priceless. But Martin says, “The full benefits will take decades to arrive, because some of these birds are slow to hatch.”

    Yesterday night, over a dinner with my elder brother's family, a topic of happiness came up. My wife, Marla, a psychologist, was sharing Csikszentmihalyi's concept of “flow” with us. Marla explained that according to the research on flow, people are happiest when they are absorbed in a task that is just challenging enough for them to experience a sense of mastery(熟练).

    A few moments later my brother, Yuri, offered the following opinion: “The first and only, necessary and sufficient factor for happiness is to stop associating happiness with pleasure. The two — happiness and pleasure — have nothing to do with each other.” This morning, with my cup of coffee, I searched through a pile of books on my bedside table and—at the bottom—found a book by Bertrand Russell, I started reading but didn't finish. In it, I found the following thought:

    “The human animal, like others, is adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life, and when by means of great wealth homo sapiens can gratify all his whims (突发奇想) without effort, the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness.”

    The conversation came full circle: people are happiest when they are in a state of flow (Csikszentmihalyi's language )…which is the effortful devotion in a moment…which has nothing to do with pleasure.

    Indeed, as Yuri insisted : happiness–as–pleasure is a myth; the association between happiness and pleasure is nothing but a semantic(语义的) habit; psychologically, the two—happiness and pleasure—are arguably different; and breaking up this association between pleasure and happiness might, in fact, be a powerfully first step in pursuit of happiness.

    As I look back on that exchange, I recall that there was an effort, a struggle to find a common understanding about this seemingly difficult idea—a struggle that made me happy.

    After the examination, the doctor told my parents my sight would get worse and that I would lose my sight finally. On the way home from hospital, no one said a word. One day, would I only imagine the scenery beyond the glass rather than see it?

    That September, I entered middle school. Most nights I had homework that included an armful of books to read. To keep up with other children, I took great trouble to finish the task. With my nose a couple of inches from the page, I was tired easily. What's worse, after I had read several pages on my own, the words slipped off the page into inky pools.

    However, then I did not have audio books and electric devices like kids do now. Instead, Mum volunteered to read out loud. Mum worked part-time, cleaned the house, cooked and spent time with Grandma. In spite of being so busy, she showed up in my room like clockwork. She put on her reading glasses. Mum always thought those glasses made her look old. To me, she looked like a teacher.

    In my room, Mum's voice raced with the ticking of the clock. Being forced to focus on listening, I found a way to keep my marks up and compete with the other kids. When the teacher asked a question, I raised my hand with confidence. Teachers praised me for having a good memory. Reading removed my fear for my failing sight, reading also made me curious about other people's challenges and how they managed. Though I could not use my eyes to fix on each passage, my mind lit up with every new book.

    True to what the doctor said, the worst came, but thanks to Mum, my sense of hearing now allows me to “see”. This was the most precious gift from a mother to her child.

    It was Sunday, so Dad and I were at the second-hand goods market, looking for tools, appliances(家用电器), and other things that needed cleaning. Some were broken; others, like silver cups, just needed to be cleaned and polished. It was 1974, and the Depression(经济大萧条) was very serious. Dad worked full-time at a factory, but the money wasn't enough. Dad had tried a second job for a while, but he found it was too hard on the family. One day, he had an excellent idea that set me on a lifelong course of making money to support myself. Standing beside a crowded table at the second-hand goods market, I looked over an ancient manual sewing machine. Someone had changed it to run on electric power. It was much older than Mom's machine, but it looked like it had quality and a long life built into it. "Dad!" I called. "This is a beauty!"

    Dad walked over, pulling a cart full of audio equipment, tools, worn-out appliances, and what appeared to be a block of dull kitchen knife." What have you got, Son?" I described what I saw and what I figured I could do to x the beauty up. Dad paid for my discovery, and we headed home.

    Every day after school I worked on the ancient machine, and every night Dad and I sharpened tools and knives, sanded off rust, polished metal, and replaced missing parts from various items. The next Saturday we headed off, as we did every weekend, to that same market, where we sold the treasures we'd purchased the week before—at a tidy profit. My antique beauty brought in more money than anything else, and Dad let me keep every penny.

    Dad's gone now, but I can never thank him enough. Even if we hadn't needed the extra money Dad and I brought in, I wouldn't have traded those weekends for all the picnics or Little League games in St. Louis—not in a million years.

Volunteer With CarePartners

    CarePartners volunteer opportunities cover a wide range of needs and areas，so whatever your interests, talents or skills are, we can find the fit that works for you.

Retail Volunteers

    Interested in volunteer work at the Hospice Thrift Store or Estate Sales? Check out the list of opportunities, or sign up now. Volunteers are also needed to assist in Rehabilitation Hospital Gift Shop. For more information, please contact Sharon Peareon at 828-277 4888

    Special Event Volunteers

    Drums and Dragons — This is a brand-new fundraising event. Dozens of volunteers managed a dragon boat race. Visit the event website for Drums and Dragons. For updates about this unique and competitive event, please “like” our FaceBook page, Drums and Dragons. To join the race, please contact John Napolitano at 828-277-4816.

    Little Trees Project — For over ten years, the Little Trees

    Project has been delivering decorated trees to patients served by CarePartners programs. Last year, school children and adult volunteers decorated nearly 800 trees with handmade decorations and heartwarming notes. For more information, please contact Lynn Blankenship at 828-777-2827.

    Hospice Volunteer Application Process

    If you're interested in becoming a Hospice volunteer, you will need to fill out an application, sign a confidentiality agreement, and provide two references. Once your application is received, we will arrange a personal interview so that we can answer your questions and become more familiar with your interests and availability. If you are specifically interested in working with Hospice patients, call Danny Johnson at 828-274-9567.

    Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954 to a Mexican American family. As the only girl in a family of seven children, she often felt like she had "seven fathers," because her six brothers, as well as her father, tried to control her. Feeling shy and unimportant, she retreated (躲避) into books. Despite her love of reading, she did not do well in elementary school because she was too shy to participate.

    In high school, with the encouragement of one particular teacher, Cisneros improved her grades and worked for the school literary magazine. Her father encouraged her to go to college because he thought it would be a good way for her to find a husband. Cisneros did attend college, but instead of searching for a husband, she found a teacher who helped her join the famous graduate writing program at the University of Iowa. At the university's Writers' Workshop, however, she felt lonely－a Mexican American from a poor neighborhood among students from wealthy families. The feeling of being so different helped Cisneros find her "creative voice".

    "It was not until this moment when I considered myself truly different that my writing acquired a voice. I knew I was a Mexican woman, but I didn't think it had anything to do with why I felt so much imbalance in my life, but it had everything to do with it! That's when I decided I would write about something my classmates couldn't write about."

    Cisneros published her first work, The House on Mango Street, when she was twenty-nine. The book talks about a young Mexican American girl growing up in a Spanish-speaking area in Chicago, much like the neighborhoods in which Cisneros lived as a child. The book won an award in 1985 and has been used in classes from high school to graduate school level. Since then, Cisneros has published several books of poetry, a children's book, and a short-story collection.