Cold weather has a great effect on how our minds and our bodies work. Maybe that is why there are so many expressions that use the word cold. For centuries, the body's blood has been linked closely with the emotions. People who show no human emotions or feelings, for example, are said to be cold –blooded. Cold –blooded people act in merciless ways. They may do cruel things to others, and not by accident. For example, a newspaper says the police are searching for a cold-blooded killer. The killer murdered someone, not in self-defense. He seemed to kill with no emotion.

    Cold can affect other parts of the body, the feet, for example. Heavy socks can warm your feet, if your feet are really cold. But there is an expression—to get cold feet –that has nothing to do with cold or your feet. The expression means being afraid to do something you had decided to do. For example, you agree to be president of an organization. But then you learn that all the other officers have given up the position. All the work of the organization will be your responsibility. You are likely to get cold feet about being president when you understand the situation.

    Cold can also affect your shoulder. You give someone the cold shoulder when you refuse to speak to them. You treat them in a distant, cold way. The expression probably comes from the physical act of turning your back toward someone, instead of speaking to him face-to-face. You may give a cold shoulder to a friend who has not kept a promise he made to you. Or, to someone who has lied about you to others.

    A cold fish is not a fish. It is a person. But it is a person who is unfriendly, unemotional and shows no love or warmth. A cold fish does not offer much of himself to anyone.

    Out in the cold is an expression often heard. It means not getting something that everybody else got. A person might say that everybody but him got a pay raise. He was left out in the cold. And it is not a pleasant place to be.

    Parents have widely different views on the problem of pocket money. Four new fathers were asked this question and this is how they answered.

    Ashish Khanna: Although many argue that pocket money helps develop children's sense of value, I don't agree. I wouldn't give my child any pocket money. First of all, I never got pocket money and I seem to have a good value for money. If my child ever needed something and I felt it was a reasonable（合理）request , I would buy it for him .

    Sharad Sanghi: No, I wouldn't give my child pocket money because I don't want to create the perception（观念） of “ her ” money and “ my ” money . Besides, if I refuse to buy her something that I think is bad for her, she may buy it with her pocket money on the sly. In this way, I would lose control over my child's requests. I feel it also encourages children to care more about money than anything else. I don't want my child to start judging(评判) other children by the amount of money or pocket money they have.

    Rakesh Shah: Yes, I would give my child pocket money. I feel that children should learn to spend money intelligently and not go overboard spending. They will learn what their limitations（限制）are and feel the difficulty when they have to pay for something that is over their own pockets .

    Rajiv Patel: Yes, I would give my child pocket money because it is important that she learns to manage money. I will give her a fixed amount every month and if she spends the money before the month is over, then she will learn a lesson and not spend money so freely.

    Vikram Desai: Yes, I would certainly give my child pocket money. But I would not give it to him on a weekly or monthly basis. He would have to earn it. If he helped me finish some of my jobs or helped his mother with housework, I would reward him. This helps him realize that “money does not grow on trees” and it requires hard work to earn money.

    One evening at a busy crossroads, I noticed a sister struggling to keep her little kid under control while she talked on the pay phone. She wanted him to stay still next to her, but he wanted to run and play by the road, close to rushing buses and taxis. One could sense the woman's frustration, that she was pulled in too many directions: She was angry at the person on the telephone and shouting at the younger that she would “snap（折断）his leg” if he moved again. As I waited for the traffic light to change, the child began to complain and struggle to free himself from the woman's grasp. She dropped the phone, seized（抓住）the neck of his tiny. T-shirt and gave him a back-hand blow across the face that I know made his little head spin.

    The light changed, and passers-by continued on their way. But I stood there, fixed to the pavement. I knew this extremely upset woman would carry through on her threat of violence to the child. Before, I had wanted to get close to her and offer to watch the youngster while she dealt with the troubling situation on the phone. Now I wanted to comfort the little boy. I also wanted to speak to the sister to calm her and to caution（告诫）her, as I wish someone had cautioned me when I was passing my pain on to my daughter and causing her emotional suffering. But I was chicken. I thought, she may think I'm out of line, or I may be her next target.

    Often I've thought about that child and the many others abused（虐待）by adults. I wonder how they will internalize（使……藏在心底）their pain, and if it will crush their spirits. Will this little boy grow up to be an abusive man? Will he be gloomy（阴郁的，沮丧的）and withdrawn（孤僻，内向的）? Will he find it hard to communicate with women, with other men? Or will he survive and be sensitive, caring and determined not to continue the cycle?

    There is too much cruelty（残忍）in the world, too much cruelty between people. I tremble at the increasing verbal（言语的）bitterness and violence among Black girls, and among young mothers trying to discipline their children. This behavior isn't class-or age-related: I hear sharp words from Black women from all walks of life who are overworked and stressed out and have grown impatient. At times I, too, become impolite to others, or, like the sister on the phone, strike out at（抨击）those closest to me.

    Often we're tired because we've made the wrong choices. Young girls who still need mothering are loaded with children. We sisters easily get hurt and annoyed when we don't compromise with our own sense of self. Our personal fulfillment requires knowing what is best for us, setting our boundaries（界限）and keeping them undamaged. We will always be asked to do more than we are comfortable doing. When we know our boundaries, we can decline comfortably. People—and we ourselves—will act in ways we don't like. But they, like us, are still worthy of love.

    Whatever irritates（激怒）us about a person should be examined. Is the person reflecting behavior in us that needs to be changed? Often, when I find people irritating, I find they mirror something about me that I need to correct.

    What's needed in our personal relationships is a return to gentleness and tolerance（容忍）. We must allow one another our learning experiences. Just as violence results to violence, verbal violence—the hard words and sharp tones we use to release inner stress—adds to the distance between us.

    What we people of African root must do to become, and continue to be strong begins with love, sensitivity and our ability to work together. We Black women have these spiritual resources in abundance（丰富）. Now we must encourage them to create a peaceful place—for ourselves, our children, our men.

    October might seem to be pumpkin month in the U.S. The holiday of Halloween (万圣节) comes on October 31. Americans around the country are already using social media to show off their pumpkin growing and carving skills.

    Pumpkins are round, orange fruits related to squashes (南瓜小果) and gourds (葫芦). People use their flesh and seeds for food, but they are also popular decorations in the fall.

    Two big pumpkins recently made headlines in the U.S. A farmer in the northeastern state of Rhode Island broke the record for the largest pumpkin ever grown in North America. Richard Wallace's pumpkin weighed 1,026 kilograms. It broke his son's record from 2015. Ron Wallace's pumpkin only weighed 1,011 kilograms last year. A schoolteacher in the northwestern state of Washington brought her large pumpkin to an event in California. Her pumpkin was the champion, weighing 866 kilograms. It turns out that Cindy Tobeck's pumpkin grew from one of the seeds from Ron Wallace's pumpkin from 2015.

    While those pumpkins are large, they are still not the largest in the world. According to the website BigPumpkins.com, Richard Wallace's pumpkin is only the second-heaviest pumpkin of the year. A man in Belgium produced a pumpkin that weighed almost 1,200 kilograms. Smithsonian magazine wrote a story about people who try to grow large pumpkins. In 35 years, the size of record pumpkins has grown from about 225 kilograms to over 1,000 kilograms. Pumpkin farmers trying to grow record fruits are taking the seeds of champion pumpkins from one year and breeding them with other large pumpkins.

    But people are not just growing pumpkins. They are carving them, too. One Twitter user from Britain recently posted a photo of a pumpkin designed to look like U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump. No word of a Hillary Clinton pumpkin design. But one pumpkin farmer in California allows visitors to shoot small pumpkins out of a cannon（大炮）. The targets? Large paper cut-outs of both Trump and Clinton.

    The evidence for harmony may not be obvious in some families. But it seems that four out of five young people now get on with their parents, which is the opposite of the popularly held image of unhappy teenagers locked in their room after endless family quarrels.

    An important new study into teenage attitudes surprisingly shows that their family life is more harmonious than it has ever been in the past." We were surprised by just how positive today's young people seen to be about their families," said one member of the research team. "They're expected to be rebellious(叛逆的) and selfish but actually they have other things on their minds; they want a car and material goods, and they worry about whether school is serving them well. There's more negotiation and discussion between parents and children, and children expect to take part in the family decision-making process. They don't want to rock the boat."

    So it seems that this generation of parents is much more likely than parents of 30 years ago to treat their children as friends. "My parents are happy to discuss things with me and willing to listen to me," says 17-years-old Daniel Lazall. "I always tell them when I'm going out clubbing. As long as they know what I'm doing, they're fine with it." Susan Crome, who is now 21, agrees." Looking back on the last 10 years, there was a lot of what you could call negotiation. For example, as long as I'd done all my homework, I could go out on a Saturday night. But I think my grandparents were a lot stricter with my parents than that."

    Maybe this positive view of family life should not be unexpected. It is possible that the idea of teenagers' rebellion is not rooted in real facts. A researcher comments, "Our surprise that teenagers say they get along well with their parents comes because of a brief period in our social history when teenagers were regarded as different beings. But that idea of rebelling and breaking away from their parents really only happened during that one time in the 1960s when everyone rebelled. The normal situation throughout history has been a smooth change from helping out with the family business to taking it over."