It was a weeknight. We were a half dozen guys in our late teens, hanging around “the flat” — as usual. The flat was poorly furnished, which, after some time, grew tiresome. We wanted action.

    We got in a car, big enough for all of us to crowd into — and off we went, in search of adventure. We soon found ourselves at Blue Gum Corner, a place named after the huge old blue gum tree that stood by there, a well-known local landmark. It stands at a minor crossroad leading to our town. The trunk is tall and smooth with no handholds for climbing. About six metres from the ground the first branch sticks out over the road. We parked beneath the huge old tree and discussed what we might do. All of a sudden we hit upon an idea — a hanging! I was chosen as “hangee”.

    The plan was quite simple. As I stood upon the roof of the car, the rope (绳子) was threaded down my jacket through my collar and down one leg of my jeans. I put my foot through the loop at the bottom. There I hung, still. The boys rolled about laughing until, a car, I hear a car! Before they ran to hide in the nearby field, they gave me a good push so that “the body” would swing as the car drove by.

    To our disappointment, the car simply turned off for town without even slowing. The boys came out of their hiding places and we discussed the situation. Surely they had seen me, hadn't they? Then we heard another car. The act was repeated, but still without any obvious reaction. We played the game about five or six times, but as no one seemed to notice, we abandoned the trick.

    What we did not know was that every car that had passed had unquestionably seen “the body” and each one, too scared to stop, had driven directly to the local Police Station. Now at that time of the night, the local policeman was sound asleep in his bed, so the first person sent to the scene was the traffic officer that happened to be on duty that particular night. He had been informed that some person had been killed, by hanging, at Blue Gum Corner. When he arrived, the body was gone! And he was hearing “unnatural sounds” from the surrounding area. As far as he knew, some fierce animal was hiding in the field before him, possibly dragging a body behind him — and we thought we were scared!

    He went to his radio and made a call that really began to worry us. I lay so close that I could hear every word. He called for the “armed police” and a “dog team, better make it two” and he had a “serious situation” at Blue Gum Corner. Then the police officer arrived. After a briefing from the traffic officer he decided not to go into the field until armed police and dog teams arrived. Now two spotlights were on the field and none of us could move.

    As luck would have it, police cars cannot leave their spotlights on all night without charging their batteries. So, after a time, the two officers began lightening the field by turns, allowing us the opportunity to move on our fours for freedom. One by one, we all managed to steal away and make our way home. Behind us we left what must have looked like a small city of lights, police cars, roadblocks, barking dogs, armed officers and an old rope hanging from a tree.

    When I think back to that night, to that tree, to what the drivers of the cars think happened, to what police believe happened, and to what I know happened, I am reminded of a simple truth — our eyes see darkness and light, color and movement, our ears hear only vibrations (振动) in the air. It is how we explain these vivid pictures that shapes our “reality”.

    When it was announced that Patrick Modiano had won the Nobel Prize in Literature on Oct.9, the Swedish Academy had not yet managed to reach the writer himself to tell him the news. as the Telegraph put it, “It was a curious case of missing personhood in an author whose career had been spent in searching others, within the confines (界限) of a single city.”

    Though the 69-year-old French author has had a successful writing career, only six of his books have been translated into English. One reason for this might be that “Modiano's storylines are as slim as the books themselves”, said the BBC.

    While most of Modiano's works don't run for hundreds of pages, they explore serious subjects. The author's signature themes are Germany's occupation during World War II and the evolution of Paris over the past century.

    Modiano's life has been greatly affected by Nazi Germany's occupation during the war, and his family's connections to it. According to New York-based newspaper Forward, his father survived the war dishonorably. When Paris's Jews were rounded up for deportation(驱逐)to concentration camps, the businessman did not join them but spent the time making money from deals with Nazis on the black market.

    “The novelist has a duty to record the traces of the people who were made to disappear,” French writer Clemence Boulouque, also an expert in Jewish Studies, told The New York magazine.

    In his more than three dozen novels, Modiano has returned again and to the same themes: Jewishness, the Nazi occupation, and loss of identity.

    Paris is another recurring(重复的)theme in Modiano's works .Most of his novels are set in the city , from the rich parts of downtown Paris to more remote suburbs where the characters try to live anonymous protect lives.

    Anne Ghisoli, the director of  Librairie Gallimard, a bookstore in Paris, concluded, “Modiano is a master of writing on memory and occupation, which haunt(萦绕)and inform his works. He is a chronicler(年代记录者)of  Paris ,its streets, and its present.”

    My motivation for starting our family tradition of reading in the car was purely selfish: I could not bear listening to A Sesame Street Christmas for another 10 hours. My three children had been addicted to this cassette on our previous summer's road trip.

    As I began to prepare for our next 500-mile car trip,I came across a book Jim Trelease's The Read Aloud Handbook. This could be the answer to my problem, I thought. So I put Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach into my bag. When I began to read aloud the tale of the boy who escapes the bad guys by hiding inside a giant peach, my three kids argued and wrestled in their seats. But after several lines, they were attracted into the rhythm of the words and began to listen.

    We soon learned that the simple pleasure of listening to a well-written book makes the long miles pass more quickly. Sometimes the books we read became highlights of the trip. I read Wilson Rawls's Summer of the Monkeys as we spent two days driving to the beach. We arrived just behind the power crews restoring(恢复)electricity after a tropical storm. The rain continued most of the week, and the beach was covered with oil washed up by the storm. When we returned home, I asked my son what he liked about the trip. He answered without hesitation, “The book you read in the car. ”

    Road trips still offer challenges, even though my children now are teenagers. But we continue to read as we roll across the country. And I'm beginning to see that reading aloud has done more than help pass the time. For at least a little while, we are not shut in our own electronic worlds. And maybe we've started something that will pass on to the next generation.

    People seem to have a natural need for friends and with good reason, friends increase your enjoyment of life and relieve feelings of loneliness. They even can help reduce stress and improve your health. Having good friends is especially helpful when you are going through any kind of hard time such as when you are experiencing anxiety, panic(恐慌) attacks, or depression.

    When you are with good friends, you feel good about yourself, and you are glad to be with them. A friends is someone who—

●you like, respect, and trust, and who likes, expects and trusts you, doesn't always understand you, but accepts and likes you as you are, even as you grow and change, allows you the space to change, grow, make decisions, and even make mistakes.

●listens to you and shares with you both the good times and the bad times.

●respects your need for secrets, so you can tell them anything.

●lets you freely express your feelings and emotions without judging, laughing at or criticizing you.

●accepts the limitations you have put on yourself and helps you to remove them.

    A person once said. "Friendship is a continuing source of bonding(连接),releasing, and creating in yourself and with the other person, there is an emotional bond between the two people."

    A good friend or supporter may or may not be the same age or the same sex as you, and may not have the same educational, cultural, or religious background, or share interests that are similar to yours. Friendships also have different depths(深度). Some are closer to the heart and some more superficial, but they're all useful and good.

    Wolves strike fear into the hearts of many species, humans included. Our fear of them has brought them to the edge of dying out, as we have cruelly killed them as competitors and trouble-makers. But researchers are discovering that the very fear they put into prey（被捕食者）species is exactly what helps make ecosystems（生态）healthy.

    Yellowstone National Park is a typical example of just how wolves can help repair an ecosystem. An October 2018 study analyzed 40 years of research on large animals inside the park.

    "Yellowstone has benefited from the reintroduction of wolves in ways that we did not anticipate, especially the complexity of biological interactions（互动） in the park," explained Mark Boyce, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences." We were really surprised at that and we'd never have seen these responses if the park hadn't adopted ecological-process management—allowing natural ecological processes to take place with least human intervention."

    After the wolves were re-introduced at Yellowstone, willow and cottonwood trees increased in number. The population of bears and bison also rose and what was once a ruling deer-wolf interaction is now more diverse.

    To learn more about just how wolves are beneficial, a short documentary from Quest explains how the presence of wolves influences the behavior of deer, which eventually makes entire ecosystems more biologically diverse and healthy. In this documentary, biologist Aaron Wirsing explored why wolves and other top predators （捕食者）were needed for diverse ecosystems to develop. Using a simple video camera, Wirsing is gaining a unique view point on predator-prey relationships and changing the way we think about wolves.

    The research is one more piece of evidence for why protecting these top predators is important not just for wolves as a species, but for hundreds of species at every level of an ecosystem. The fear they bring along may be the very angle that helps save them from dying out.

    What's the one thing every child wants in school? More breaks! And that is exactly what some schools are giving students, which turns out to be beneficial for everyone. Eagle Mountain Elementary School in Fort Worth, Texas, is one of four public schools carrying out the LiiNK program, a project that increases breaks per day to improve creativity, develop character, and heighten school success.

    LiiNK was inspired by Scandinavian approaches to learning based on the simple concept （观念）of giving children more outside playtime and less time spent indoors. In Finland, where the system has been in place for decades, students have some of the highest scores on global assessment tests. Instead of spending increasing amounts of time inside the classroom, they're putting more and more focus on physical activity. Finnish kids get to enjoy 15 minutes of playtime for every hour of class.

    After spending six weeks in Finland in 2016, Debbie Rhea, the creator of LiiNK and professor at Texas Christian University, discovered that the additional breaks of "outdoor play" actually helped students improve their performance inside the classroom. "You start putting 15 minutes into these kids every so often and it gives the platform for them to be able to function at their best level," she says.

    Other studies have shown that outdoor playtime decreases restlessness, anxiety, and has a whole other benefits such as improved motor skills, physical fitness, and social development. Rhea started carrying out the program in private schools in 2017, and has since expanded her program to districts in Texas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Utah and the children in these schools are all the happier for it. It just goes to show that the best way to raise happy and successful children, is to simply let them be kids every once in a while.