A Goodwill employee finds $42,000 in donated clothing and returns it to the owner.
The discovery came during a regular day on the job as Andrea Lessing, a goodwill employee, was performing her routine quality examination on closing items on the sales floor. As she pulled out two sweaters tied together from a donation box, she felt something heavy left. She first assumed the items were just books. When she pulled the sweaters apart, to her astonishment, she found lots of envelopes filled with $100 bills. The cash was in $100 bills and totaled $ 42,000 dollars.
Andrea Lessing is used to discovering unique treasures in the varied collection of donated items her store receives daily. She always tries to be a good example to her daughter, so she immediately did the right thing and reported the cash finding. Luckily, the store's manager was then able to locate and return the money to the donator who had mistakenly placed the cash in the wrong box.
Andrea, mother of a six year old girl, admitted it was hard for her to do with that much money. Some might have thought that it was Andrea's lucky day, having a small fortune. However, the temptation to keep the cash by herself was just a passing thought. Andrea's honest nature inspired her to do the right thing.
Without hesitation, she handed the cash over to the store's manager so they could find the right owner. Andrea was not expecting a reward, but the owner of the money surprised her with a 1000 reward. Andrea was teary eyed and overcome with joy as her "good deed" flowed right back to her. She plans to spend part of the reward money on a memorable birthday party for her daughter.
Kyra Peralte thought keeping a diary during the pandemic (流行病) might help her sort out her feelings. In April 2020, the mother of two in Montclair, New Jersey, now 46, started writing about the challenges of work, marriage and motherhood during a global crisis. She invited women from near and far to fill the notebook with their own pandemic tales. She named the project The Traveling Diary.
Peralte created a website for people to add their names to the queue. Each person gets to keep the diary for three days and fill as many pages as she wishes. Then she is responsible for mailing it to the next person, whose address Peralte provides. So far, more than 2, 000 women from 30 countries have joined in.
The diary reached Colleen Martin in Florham Park, New Jersey, in November 2020. "I had just recently lost my brother. By the time I actually got it and wrote in it, it was much more of a relief," she says. Adding to the diary, she says, helped her look for meaning and "the growth and development that occurs in terrible times. "
Martin shipped off the diary to the next person, and Dior Sarr, 35, received it at her home in Toronto just before the new year. "I wrote about my ambitions(抱负), my goals and how I wanted to step into the new year, " she says, "It felt meaningful to pass on something so personal. It felt like these were women that I had known even though I didn't know them at all. "
Like many of the women who wrote in her diary, Peralte feels a strong bond with the people who filled its pages, none of whom she would have otherwise known. Her idea, Peralte says, has had a great effect on her and, she hopes, the other women who were part of it.
The traditional Chinese Longtaitou Festival, or Dragon-Head-Raising Festival, falls on the second day of the second lunar month every year, and recognizes the start of spring and farming. This year it falls on March 4.
Ancient people believed that after this day, rainfall increases because the rain-bringing Dragon King has awakened from his winter sleep. A well-known phrase goes, "Er yue er, long tai tou, " meaning, "On the second day of the second month, the dragon lifts his head. "
The festival celebrates ancient agrarian Chinese culture, and while some of traditional ways to celebrate it are no longer practiced, others continue to exist. The most famous tradition is getting a haircut. Some believe that going to the barber on this day gets rid of bad luck, while others believe getting a haircut during the first month of the lunar calendar brings bad luck. Another saying warns that cutting your hair in the first month will cause your uncle to die. Although today few pay attention to it, it was once a tradition to line up outside barbershops on the day of Longtaitou.
People eat tofu balls in East China's Fujian Province during the festival, and often make tofu and vegetable balls to pray for family and business. Fried beans are the traditional festival food for people in parts of Shandong Province. Eating chengyao cakes, which are made with sticky rice, during the festival is a tradition in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province, owing to the saying, "If you eat chengyao cakes on Longtaitou, your waist won't hurt all year. " Meanwhile other foods, like noodles, dumplings, and spring rolls, are named after dragon body parts to mark the day. Noodles are dragon's beard(long xu), dumplings are dragon's ears(long er), spring rolls dragon's scales (long lin).
Many of us think, wrongly, that the moon doesn't change. For example, the Tang Dynasty poet Zhang Ruoxu once wrote that "Generations have come and passed away; from year to year the moons look alike, old and new. "
However, a new study published in the journal: Nature Geoscience shows that the moon is in fact slowly becoming smaller over time. For the study, a group of US scientists examined and analyzed thousands of photographs taken by the NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (月球勘测轨 道飞行器照相机). They found that there were lots of faults (断层)on the surface of the moon. These faults were formed by recent movement on the moon.
According to NASA, the moon is made up of pieces of rocks with a hot core. The moon continued to expand as it was born. But in this process, it released energy and cooled down. Then it began to shrink, in a way comparable to the shrinking of a grape into a raisin（葡萄干）. Over the past several hundred million years, it has become 46 meters "skinnier". But due to its hard and rocky layer, the moon's surface continues to push up. "Some of these quakes can be fairly strong, around five on the Richter scale (里氏震级), " said Thomas Watters, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in the US.
But does that mean the moon is a dangerous place that human shouldn't try to explore and live on in the future? Maybe not, reported The Telegraph. "This isn't anything to worry about. The moon may be shrinking, but not by much. It's not going anywhere, "Watters comforted us.
The new discovery proves that the idea that the moon is a dead, boring place is wrong:"We have been to the moon and we've done some great science, but there is still a lot we don't know. The moon is shrinking—we didn't really realize that until recently. It's a much more active and interesting place than we thought and we should explore that, " NASA scientist Nathan Williams said.
Art has been described in popular culture as something only particularly educated or wealthy people can enjoy. Anyone can come to appreciate art with a bit of time and effort. Here are some tips that can help.
Be open minded. You can think of going to see new kinds of arts as having new experiences rather than just seeing art. Do you feel excited? Calm ? Confused? Art can cause a wide range of emotional responses, so do your best to be aware of yours.
It's important to make efforts to make meaning out of a piece of art. Because every person has a different set of unique experiences, it's right for every person who views a piece of art to walk away with a different understanding of it.
Try enjoying abstract（抽象的） art. To achieve it, think about what catches your eye first in the piece and why the artist might have wanted your attention to go there. Abstract art can be fun because it's like a puzzle. You really have to give it some thought.
Learn what you like and dislike. As you view more and more art, you will start to develop an understanding of what you like and dislike in a piece of art. This can help you seek out similar artists. Artist statements or descriptive brochures can sometimes be misleading, so if you unexpectedly don't like a certain type of art, that's fine.
A. You needn't love everything you see.
B. However, this couldn't be further from the truth.
C. Try to come up with your own story about art.
D. Use your imagination to help you enjoy it more!
E. Only in that way can you come up with a possible meaning for it.
F. What's more, be in touch with your own emotions as you view art.
G. The emotion the artist is trying to express isn't always immediately clear.
Blackburn high school had a reason to be optimistic this season. For one, they had a famous coach Palus. They also had a promising football 1 named Gary. Although he was a green hand, he had the 2 to play football and could give the team a spark (火花). Palus liked Gary so much that he would often give him a 3 home. However, it was 4 at the same place.
"Then one day, he opened up to me that he had to stay with his sister from place to place," 5 Palus to CNN.
Gary said that after his father passed away, the family couldn't 6 to live in an apartment. When he understood his mother's7 , he knew he had to do something. From that point on, Gary said he was couch (沙发)-surfing from friend to friend, not knowing where he'd 8 each night. And he had to do a part-time job after his football 9 every day.
Palus was 10 after hearing his story. After some 11 , he decided to have the boy sleep in his house and 12 him as a family member. Gary trained even harder and became the best one in his team. His story 13 his teammates so much that the team won the first national championship for the school in 2022. When asked, Gary gives all 14 to the one thing that he thought he would never have, "They're my 15 and I can't imagine where I would be without their support. "
Chinese silk is well known all over the world. It is considered as symbol of the origin of civilization. According to legend, a teenage girl in China, saw metamorphosis (蜕变) of a special kind of caterpillars (毛毛虫), did something even more (amaze) — she invented silk! She is Ancest or Lei.
One day, she noticed quite a few caterpillars taking small (bite) of the leaves. A few of them had formed translucent cocoons (半透明的茧) around (they). One by one the cocoons grew thicker so Lei couldn't see through them. They were like eggshells, but smaller and even (strong). She kept wondering was going on inside. Lei started to open them and they turned into bundles of threads. Lei knew that the threads in spider (蜘蛛) webs were strong, but she wondered if the threads from these cocoons were strong enough (make) into cloth. After testing, her doubt was removed.
Later, Lei concentrated figuring out how to make cloth from the cocoon threads. Eventually, Lei invented silk, and the caterpillars (call) silkworms since then.
A 12-year-old boy saw something in a shop window that set his heart racing. It was a necklace with shining pearls. But the price, five dollars would buy almost a week's groceries for his family. Reuben couldn't ask his father for the money. Everything his father made through fishing went to his mother, Dora, who struggled to feed and clothe her five children.
Nevertheless, he opened the shop's door and went inside. Standing proud and straight in his flour-sack shirt and washed-out trousers, he told the shopkeeper what he wanted, adding, "Once we went to New York, my mum saw a same one. I know she liked it very much, because she fixed her eyes on it. I will buy it for her. But I don't have the money right now. Can you please hold it for me for some time?""I'll try," the shop owner smiled. "People around here don't usually have that kind of money to spend on such good-looking but costly things. It should keep for a while. " Reuben respectfully touched his worn cap and walked out. He had made up his mind to raise the five dollars and not tell anybody.
Hearing the sound of hammering from a side street, Reuben had an idea. He discovered that he could collect the hessian sacks (麻袋) thrown away in the street and sell them back for five cents a piece.
Every day after school, Reuben walked down the town, collecting the hessian sacks. On the day when summer holiday began, no student was more delighted than Reuben. Now he would have more time for his "work".
All summer long, Reuben kept on his secret task. Soon the leaves fell and the winds blew cold. Reuben wandered in the streets, diligently searching for his hessian treasures. Often, he was cold, tired and hungry, but the thought of the object in the shop window supported him.
Eventually, the time had come! It was Mothers' Day. He poured the coins out and began to count. Then he counted again. He made it! Exactly five dollars, not a cent more, not a cent less.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Paragraph 1:
Holding the money in hands tightly, Reuben headed for the shop.
Paragraph 2:
Mother opened the box carefully, and a shining necklace appeared.
