B

    I first met Paul Newman in 1968, when George Roy Hill, the director of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, introduced us in New York City. When the studio didn't want me for the film— it wanted somebody as well known as Paul— he stood up for me. I don't know how many people would have done that; they would have listened to their agents or the studio powers.

    The friendship that grew out of the experience of making that film and The Sting four years later had its root in the fact that although there was an age difference, we both came from a tradition of theater and live TV. We were respectful of craft（技艺）and focused on digging into the characters we were going to play. Both of us had the qualities and virtues that are typical of American actors: humorous, aggressive, and making fun of each other— but always with an underlying affection. Those were also at the core （核心）of our relationship off the screen.

    We shared the brief that if you're fortunate enough to have success, you should put something back— he with his Newman's Own food and his Hole in the Wall camps for kids who are seriously ill, and me with Sundance and the institute and the festival. Paul and I didn't see each other all that regularly, but sharing that brought us together. We supported each other financially and by showing up at events.

    I last saw him a few months ago. He'd been in  and out of the hospital.He and I both knew what the deal was,and we didn't talk about it. Ours was a relationship that didn't need a lot of words.

    Blind people usually possess one advantage over other people who can see. Their sense of hearing is far more acute. Bats, whose sight is poor, use a sound location system to help them avoid blocks in the dark. They send out pulses of sound waves, pitched at 50,000 cycles per second, far above the limits of the human ear, which can hear sounds up to frequencies of about 20,000 cycles per second. As the echoes bounce back off obstacles such as trees and walls, the bats are able to take proper action.

    The first steps to help blind people to see with sound are based on exactly the same principle. The sound is given off by an ultrasonic (超声的) torch, whose shape is different from a normal electric torch. It is double-barreled. It works in a similar way to a sonar (声呐) unit on a warship or submarine. The unit's transmitter sends out pulses of ultrasonic waves at the same frequency as the bat and the receiver picks up the returning echoes. Because these are still above the frequency at which the human ear can pick them up. The echoes are filtered (过滤) through circuits that turn them into “bleeps” which can be clearly heard before passing them into headphones.

    This means that a person holding the torch can point it ahead of him and scan the area for obstacles over a range of about 25 feet. If there are no return echoes coming through the headphones, then there is nothing in the way. If echoes do come back, then the closer the obstruction the faster the succession of bleeps and the deeper the pitch of each bleep. With practice, the torch could help a blind person to lead a more normal life.

    At present, the experimental ultrasonic torch requires a shoulder bag to carry the batteries, cables for the power supplies and earphones, as well as the torch itself. Fortunately, reducing the size of the electronic equipment is progressing and it should not be long before the whole set-up can be reproduced in a form small enough to fit into a pair of glasses. The wearer would face in the direction he wanted to check, and lift or lower his head just as a sighted person would.

    An organization, Eye Care 4 Kids, is bringing much-needed eye care to poor kids. It provides free eye examinations for kids from poor families. Founded by Joseph Carbone in 2001, the organization has helped around 100,000 children in Utah and Nevada.

    Now, Cecil Swyers, a biomedical(生物医学的) engineer who was once a poor child himself, is bringing the charity's(慈善) services to poor students in Arizona, so that vision impairment(视力受损) doesn't stand in the way of their education.

    “Eye Care 4 Kids is bringing eye care and glasses to families that wouldn't have the means to pay for them,” said Mario Ventura from Isaac Elementary School District, the first school district in Arizona to receive its services.

    Good vision is important to a child's learning experience. According to a study, up to 80 percent of learning happens through sight for children between 6 and 18 years old. Without proper eye care, it's difficult for students to learn better and succeed.

    Swyers is hoping that by bringing the organization to Arizona he'll help a lot more students. He teamed up with two other organizations to get doctors to volunteer their time with the group. Using an Eye Care 4 Kids mobile clinic, Swyers visited Alta E. Butler Elementary School and has already helped 40 students.

    The school was grateful to receive the eye care, especially since the services came to them. “It's great for us,” said Assistant Principal Cindy Alonso.

    Swyers is hoping to bring Eye Care 4 Kids' services to other schools in the state. He said that hopefully his work will have a positive effect on students' futures. “If we can help students while they're young, we can make a difference in their futures,” he said.

    Do you know of anyone who uses the truth to deceive(欺骗)?When someone tells you something that is true, but leaves out important information that should be included, he can give you a false picture.

    For example, someone might say,“I just won a hundred dollars on the lottery(彩票).It was great. I took that dollar ticket back to the store and turned it in for one hundred dollars!”

    This guy's a winner, right? Maybe, maybe not. We then discover that he bought $200 worth of tickets, and only one was a winner. He's really a big loser!

    He didn't say anything that was false, but he left out important information on purpose. That's called a half-truth. Half-truths are not technically lies, but they are just as dishonest.

    Some politicians often use this trick. Let's say that during Governor Smith's last term, her state lost one million jobs and gained three million jobs. Then she seeks another term. One of her opponents(对手) says,“During Governor Smith's term, the state lost one million jobs!”That's true. However, an honest statement would have been,“During Governor Smith's term ,the state had a net gain of two million jobs.”

    Advertisers will sometimes use half-truths. It's against the law to make false statements so they try to mislead you with the truth. An advertisement might say,“Nine out of ten doctors advised their patients to take Yucky Pills to cure toothache.”It fails to mention that they only asked ten doctors and nine of them work for the Yucky Company.

    This kind of deception happens too often. It's a sad fact of life: Lies are lies, and sometimes the truth can lie as well.

    I never planned to be a teacher. I was headed for a law school, for a real career. Teaching was something to "get out of my system". I would teach a couple of years and then go to get a real job. After the first couple of years, I promised myself I would leave if I didn't love my job any more. Twenty-nine years later, that day still has not come.

    So, why do I stay? I stay because I laugh and learn every day. The children are funny, insightful, and honest. If my shoes don't match my outfit, they tell me. If my argument that Invisible Man is an important twentieth century classics doesn't convince them, they tell me.

    I stay because every single day is different. Some days, my lessons are great, and I have classes of students who are engaged in reading, writing and thinking. Some days, my lessons fall flat, and I realize that I need to start from scratch — even after 29 years.

    I stay because I love to see the children realize that they have learned something — whether it's how to craft an argumentative thesis sentence or how to understand the effect of repetition in The Declaration of Independence. I love to see the children write well; I love the feeling of reading a well-argued essay, and I love smiling as I write a final "Awesome job!" on a paper on which a student has worked hard.

    I stay because what I've learned in 29 years is that I do have a "real" job — the most real job there is. It's the one that leads to other jobs, that helps to create good thinkers who go on to be productive in our society, and that supports our community as it grows and times change. My job is among the ones that matter most.

In Bududa, a lush yet landslide-prone district of eastern Uganda, Mary Butsina and a growing number of other women farmers are building their livelihoods around coffee. "I'm supporting all of my 10 children with it." says the 36-year-old, holding a red bucket.

From farming stock, Mary first went to work with her father at the age of 10. Profits from his coffee crop covered her school fees. She married into coffee too, with her husband giving her 100 trees as a wedding present. But Mary's since planted more than 300 herself and joined a women's cooperative. "The aim was to reduce the dependence of women on men in coffee." Mary says, though husbands are allowed to join too—as they tend to own the coffee plantations and support their wives. "More women have started to plant their own coffee." she says. 

Mary rises early every day to pick the coffee cherries. "It's hard work but when you concentrate it can become easy." says Mary. After gathering the ripe fruit, she puts it in a bucket of water to weed out the unhealthy cherries. The beans are then fermented (发酵) in water for at least two days before being laid out to dry in direct sunlight. Once dried, the beans are gathered up and later collected by Endiro Coffee, a social enterprise working with women-led, organic farms. The coffee is later milled, roasted and ground, ready for use.

It hasn't been an easy journey for the Bududa farmers, who've faced annual landslides for the past 15 years. In 2018, Mary's mother's house was destroyed and she lost some of her coffee plantations. She dreams of living in a solidly built house with water nearby, so she doesn't have to trek (跋涉) a long way to fetch it－but these will take time to save for. "I've worked a lot and I don't want to stop, but I want my money to work for me." she says.