SPECIALENGLISH 的个人资料www.SpecialEnglish.tk照片日志列表更多  |  工具 帮助 |
|
|
See which town ranked highest in BusinessWeek's fourth annual survey of the Best Places to Raise Your Kids. Hint: It's in Illinois.You'd think that the character of a village that grew from 12,000 to 60,000 residents in less than 40 years might have changed with the population. But young families move into Tinley Park, Ill., a proud village 25 miles southwest of Chicago, for the same reason that Edward and Emily Zabrocki chose to raise their children there in 1970. "We looked at the schools and the community services," said Zabrocki, a retired high school guidance counselor who has been Tinley Park's mayor since 1981. "And we found a house that was good for our pocketbook."
Tinley Park, with its top-rated schools, low crime, beautiful parks, relatively affordable houses, and easy access to jobs, is the winner of BusinessWeek's Best Places in America to Raise Kids. Working with OnBoard Informatics, we chose a winner for each state, but the Chicago suburb-only an hour south of last year's winner, Mount Prospect, Ill.-scored the highest. Named after the village's first railroad master in the 1800s, Tinley Park has two train stations, which carry commuters to Chicago in 45 minutes. Single-family homes for sale in Tinley Park start at $166,000 for a two-bedroom, two-bath house spread over 1,200 square feet to brand-new four-bedroom house for $630,000. Settling DownAll three of the main high schools serving Tinley Park are ranked in the top 100 in the state. And the students are closely tied to the community and often stay there after graduating.At Andrew High School, where each student is required to complete 24 hours of community service to graduate, only about 3% of the 2,400 student body move away during high school, compared with the state average of 14%, said principal Robert Nolting. "There are a high number of kids in Tinley Park who have lived there their whole life," Nolting said. "Of the communities I've lived in or have been part of, it has more interconnectedness to it. It feels smaller than it is." The village is quiet and safe. But it was shaken on Feb. 2, 2008, when a man posing as a delivery man shot five women to death at a clothing store in one of Tinley Park's outdoor malls. It was a big shock but it brought the community even closer, said Tinley Park High School Principal Theresa Zielinski. "It shocked everybody," said Zielinski, a lifelong resident. "It's not what happens here in our town." Friendly AtmosphereSafety, along with school test scores, air quality, and affordability, were weighted especially highly in this year's calculations. But we also considered job growth, diversity, and amenities such as museums, parks, and theaters.Many of our picks also share Tinley Park's family-friendly atmosphere. Owensboro, our top pick for Kentucky, is a good example. The industrial town, about 100 miles southwest of Louisville known for its mutton barbecue and as the birthplace of actor Johnny Depp, takes pride in its school district and hires accordingly, said Keith Lawrence, business reporter for the Messenger-Inquirer newspaper in Owensboro. The town's former superintendent left to become superintendent of the Lexington school district.The median home is about $100,000, and it's so safe that two middle-aged women once set out to walk every mile of the 18.7-square-mile city. "They started walking after getting off work at 10 p.m., Lawrence said. "There aren't a whole lot of cities you would do that." "It's kind of a 21st century version of Leave It to Beaver-church and family and Little League and soccer," said Lawrence who raised a family in Owensboro. "It's really family-oriented. If you're single, though, it's rough."
Tinley Park, a fast-developing southwestern suburb of Chicago, is this year's Best Place to Raise Your Kids--not just for Illinois, but for the nation as a whole. It has great schools, a vibrant downtown, and housing options that range from modest to luxurious. Oak Park Avenue, which serves as a Main Street shopping area, includes a beautiful town square where residents gather and children ride bicycles. Tinley Park also has a 28,000-seat outdoor concert amphitheater, one of the largest in the Chicago area.
Arcadia, located about 20 miles from Los Angeles, is the state's best place to raise kids for the second consecutive year because of its low crime and excellent schools. The population of Arcadia includes a number of peacocks that hang out in the neighborhood near the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanical Garden.
Warner Robins, about 120 miles south of Atlanta, is home to the 6,400-acre Robins Air Force Base, the state's largest single employer. Many of the residents of this proud town outside Macon, Ga., are former military personnel. Warner Robins won the Little League World Series in 2007.
Honolulu, the state capital, is surrounded by gorgeous beaches, rainforests, waterfalls, and mountain ranges. But there is more to Honolulu than surfing, sunny weather, and sandy beaches. It also has a thriving arts scene, great ethnic restaurants, and each year it hosts the NFL Pro Bowl and college football's Hawaii Bowl. The island of Oahu also has a strong military presence, including Schofield Barracks, the state's largest Army post.
Quincy, located about 10 miles south of Boston, is the birthplace of U.S. Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams and is known as the "City of Presidents" and "Birthplace of the American Dream." The community has plenty of historic sites, miles of coastline, and great schools. The district, which prides itself on a low student-teacher ratio, has 12 elementary schools, 5 middle schools and 2 high schools that teach a diverse student body, including speakers of 32 dialects.
Woodbury, a growing suburb just 10 miles southeast of St. Paul, is close to major employers, including the state government and 3M, which makes everything from post-it notes to safety equipment. It has 100 miles of multi-use trails and is surrounded by thousands of acres of park land. The city is served by three independent public school districts and is home to the Math & Science Academy charter school.
Tonawanda, a northern suburb of Buffalo, has one of the state's largest school districts, which includes the Village of Kenmore and most of the Town of Tonawanda. It contains 13 schools.
Beaverton, seven miles west of Portland, has a park located within a half-mile of every resident, a 25-mile network of bike paths, nearby ski slopes, beaches, and shopping areas. The highly-regarded public and private schools send students to top-ranked universities.
Clarksville, in Middle Tennessee, 40 miles northwest of Nashville, is among the nation's fastest growing communities. It has lot of new buildings-schools, hospital, and subdivisions. Its low cost of living and good schools make it a choice setting for families.
San Marcos, located in Central Texas between San Antonio and Austin, is home to Texas State University-San Marcos. For residents, the university provides plenty of cultural opportunities and the San Marcos River and parkland allow for a variety of outdoor recreation. Write or Wrong: The Death of Handwriting?Do American children still learn handwriting in school? In this age of the keyboard, some people seem to think handwriting lessons are on the way out. We asked a literacy professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Steve Graham says he has been hearing about the death of handwriting for the past fifteen years. So is it still being taught?
Ninety percent of teachers also say they are required to teach handwriting. But studies have yet to answer the question of how well they are teaching it. Professor Graham says one study published this year found that about three out of every four teachers say they are not prepared to teach handwriting. STEVE GRAHAM: "And then when you look at how it's taught, you have some teachers who are teaching handwriting by providing instruction for ten, fifteen minutes a day, and then other teachers who basically teach it for sixty to seventy minutes a day -- which really for handwriting is pretty much death." Many adults remember learning that way -- by copying letters over and over again. Today's thinking is that short periods of practice are better. Many experts also think handwriting should not be taught by itself. Instead, they say it should be used as a way to get students to express ideas. After all, that is why we write. Professor Graham says handwriting involves two skills. One is legibility, which means forming the letters so they can be read. The other is fluency -- writing without having to think about it. The professor says fluency continues to develop up until high school. But not everyone masters these skills. Teachers commonly report that about one-fourth of their kids have poor handwriting. Some people might think handwriting is not important anymore because of computers and voice recognition programs. But Steve Graham at Vanderbilt says word processing is rarely done in elementary school, especially in the early years. STEVE GRAHAM: "Even with high school teachers, we find that less than fifty percent of assignments are done via word processing or with word processing. And, in fact, if we added in taking notes and doing tests in class, most of the writing done in school is done by hand." American children traditionally first learn to print, then to write in cursive, which connects the letters. But guess what we learned from a spokeswoman for the College Board, which administers the SAT college admission test. More than seventy-five percent of students choose to print their essay on the test rather than write in cursive. Golden Orb Spiders Help Produce a Work of Art
Silk is a smooth, shiny and costly natural material. People usually get their silk supply from worms. But spiders make silk, too. In fact, their silk is even lighter and softer than silk from silkworms. But getting silk from a spider might seem more difficult. Especially from a big spider that can bite. Recently, two men in Madagascar proved it can be done with extraordinary results. Mario Ritter has more.
The American Museum of Natural History in New York City has a most unusual object on exhibit. It is a beautiful wall covering made of shiny, bright golden silk. The tapestry is about three meters long and one meter wide. It is light as a feather but strong as steel. The tapestry was woven with silk provided by the golden orb spider.
Both were interested in the idea of making a textile piece from silk of the golden orb spider. These spiders are native to Madagascar as well as many other places. The females make huge webs, sometimes large enough to hang between trees on either side of a rural road.
Mister Peers had researched stories of spider silk being used by human weavers. Together he and Mister Godley paid local people to gather about three thousand female spiders daily.
The tapestry was finished after about four years of gathering the silk and weaving it together. The piece has a traditional Malagasy design woven into it. Mister Godley and Mister Peers hope the tapestry will help protect the golden orb spider and bring attention to the needy country of Madagascar. 'The Boarded Window' by Ambrose BierceIn eighteen thirty, only a few miles away from what is now the great city of Cincinnati, Ohio, lay a huge and almost endless forest. The area had a few settlements established by people of the frontier. Many of them had already left the area for settlements further to the west. But among those remaining was a man who had been one of the first people to arrive there. He lived alone in a house of logs surrounded on all sides by the great forest. He seemed a part of the darkness and silence of the forest, for no one had ever known him to smile or speak an unnecessary word. His simple needs were supplied by selling or trading the skins of wild animals in the town. His little log house had a single door. Directly opposite was a window. The window was boarded up. No one could remember a time when it was not. And no one knew why it had been closed. I imagine there are few people living today who ever knew the secret of that window. But I am one, as you shall see. The man's name was said to be Murlock. He appeared to be seventy years old, but he was really fifty. Something other than years had been the cause of his aging. His hair and long, full beard were white. His gray, lifeless eyes were sunken. His face was wrinkled. He was tall and thin with drooping shoulders—like someone with many problems. I never saw him. These details I learned from my grandfather. He told me the man's story when I was a boy. He had known him when living nearby in that early day. One day Murlock was found in his cabin, dead. It was not a time and place for medical examiners and newspapers. I suppose it was agreed that he had died from natural causes or I should have been told, and should remember. I know only that the body was buried near the cabin, next to the burial place of his wife. She had died so many years before him that local tradition noted very little of her existence. That closes the final part of this true story, except for the incident that followed many years later. With a fearless spirit I went to the place and got close enough to the ruined cabin to throw a stone against it. I ran away to avoid the ghost which every well-informed boy in the area knew haunted the spot. But there is an earlier part to this story supplied by my grandfather. When Murlock built his cabin he was young, strong and full of hope. He began the hard work of creating a farm. He kept a gun--a rifle—for hunting to support himself. He had married a young woman, in all ways worthy of his honest love and loyalty. She shared the dangers of life with a willing spirit and a light heart. There is no known record of her name or details about her. They loved each other and were happy. One day Murlock returned from hunting in a deep part of the forest. He found his wife sick with fever and confusion. There was no doctor or neighbor within miles. She was in no condition to be left alone while he went to find help. So Murlock tried to take care of his wife and return her to good health. But at the end of the third day she fell into unconsciousness and died. From what we know about a man like Murlock, we may try to imagine some of the details of the story told by my grandfather. When he was sure she was dead, Murlock had sense enough to remember that the dead must be prepared for burial. He made a mistake now and again while performing this special duty. He did certain things wrong. And others which he did correctly were done over and over again. He was surprised that he did not cry — surprised and a little ashamed. Surely it is unkind not to cry for the dead. "Tomorrow," he said out loud, "I shall have to make the coffin and dig the grave; and then I shall miss her, when she is no longer in sight. But now -- she is dead, of course, but it is all right — it must be all right, somehow. Things cannot be as bad as they seem." He stood over the body of his wife in the disappearing light. He fixed the hair and made finishing touches to the rest. He did all of this without thinking but with care. And still through his mind ran a feeling that all was right -- that he should have her again as before, and everything would be explained. Murlock had no experience in deep sadness. His heart could not contain it all. His imagination could not understand it. He did not know he was so hard struck. That knowledge would come later and never leave. Deep sadness is an artist of powers that affects people in different ways. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, shocking all the emotions to a sharper life. To another, it comes as the blow of a crushing strike. We may believe Murlock to have been affected that way. Soon after he had finished his work he sank into a chair by the side of the table upon which the body lay. He noted how white his wife's face looked in the deepening darkness. He laid his arms upon the table's edge and dropped his face into them, tearless and very sleepy. At that moment a long, screaming sound came in through the open window. It was like the cry of a lost child in the far deep of the darkening forest! But the man did not move. He heard that unearthly cry upon his failing sense, again and nearer than before. Maybe it was a wild animal or maybe it was a dream. For Murlock was asleep. Some hours later, he awoke, lifted his head from his arms and listened closely. He knew not why. There in the black darkness by the side of the body, he remembered everything without a shock. He strained his eyes to see -- he knew not what. His senses were all alert. His breath was suspended. His blood was still as if to assist the silence. Who — what had awakened him and where was it! Suddenly the table shook under his arms. At the same time he heard, or imagined he heard, a light, soft step and then another. The sounds were as bare feet walking upon the floor! He was afraid beyond the power to cry out or move. He waited—waited there in the darkness through what seemed like centuries of such fear. Fear as one may know, but yet live to tell. He tried but failed to speak the dead woman's name. He tried but failed to stretch his hand across the table to learn if she was there. His throat was powerless. His arms and hands were like lead. Then something most frightful happened. It seemed as if a heavy body was thrown against the table with a force that pushed against his chest. At the same time he heard and felt the fall of something upon the floor. It was so violent a crash that the whole house shook. A fight followed and a confusion of sounds impossible to describe. Murlock had risen to his feet. Extreme fear had caused him to lose control of his senses. He threw his hands upon the table. Nothing was there! There is a point at which fear may turn to insanity; and insanity incites to action. With no definite plan and acting like a madman, Murlock ran quickly to the wall. He seized his loaded rifle and without aim fired it. The flash from the rifle lit the room with a clear brightness. He saw a huge fierce panther dragging the dead woman toward the window. The wild animal's teeth were fixed on her throat! Then there was darkness blacker than before, and silence. When he returned to consciousness the sun was high and the forest was filled with the sounds of singing birds. The body lay near the window, where the animal had left it when frightened away by the light and sound of the rifle. The clothing was ruined. The long hair was in disorder. The arms and legs lay in a careless way. And a pool of blood flowed from the horribly torn throat. The ribbon he had used to tie the wrists was broken. The hands were tightly closed. And between the teeth was a piece of the animal's ear. German artist poses 1,250 Nazi garden gnomes STRAUBING, Germany – A German artist is posing 1,250 garden gnomes with their arms outstretched in the stiff-armed Hitler salute in an installation that he calls a protest of lingering fascist tendencies in German society. Artist Ottmar Hoerl posed the gnomes in the historic central marketplace of Straubing, a town in southeastern Germany, on Wednesday. The exhibit called "dance with the devil" is to run through Oct. 19. Most of gnomes are black plastic, but about 20 are painted shiny gold. Displaying Nazi symbols is illegal in Germany but a court ruled earlier this year that Hoerl's gnomes were clearly satire and thus allowed. Hoerl says: "the fascist idea, the striving to manipulate people or dictate to people ... is latently dangerous and remains present in our society." UFOAnd you thought rainbows were cool. A few days ago, a mysterious cloud shaped like a halo appeared over Moscow, and the buzz has yet to break. We're the first to admit that a photograph of the heavenly cloud appears to be photoshopped. It's just so...perfect. But meterologists have spoken up and said the cloud wasn't digitally altered. However, it wasn't exactly what it appeared to be, either. When the cloud initially formed, some UFO enthusiasts declared it to be a "true mystery." Some even compared it to the giant spaceship hovering over Earth in the movie "Independence Day." Reality quickly dashed any predictions of an alien invasion. An article from the Daily Mail explains that the "luminous ring-shaped cloud" was simply an optical effect. An official spokesperson for Moscow's weather department said, "Several fronts have been passing through Moscow recently, there was an intrusion of the Arctic air too, the sun was shining from the west — this is how the effect was produced." The cloud loomed last week, but the searches are still soaring. Lookups on "halo cloud" and "moscow cloud" are both booming, and a video clip has garnered hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. You can check it out for yourself below...
Fatima 1917In May 1917 in Fatima, a small town in Portugal, three shepherd children, Lucia dos Santos, 9 years old and her cousins Francisco Marto, (eight years old) and Jacinta Marto (six years old) claimed to have seen an apparition of luminous lady who stood on a cloud in an evergreen tree in a pasture called the Cova de Iria, near the village of Aljustrel about a mile from Fatima.
The local authorities and some Church leaders made every effort to bring the children's story into disrepute. Despite this, on the 13th of October thousands of people came to Cova de Iria, hoping to share the vision. They experience a dramatic solar phenomenon however, the woman was visible only to the children. She appeared on the 13th day of six consecutive months in 1917, starting on 13 May, the Fatima holiday. She called herself "Our Lady of the Rosary" and requested that the children pray the rosary everyday erect a chapel at the site of the visions and proclaim the need for a moral life The Grand Canyon: A True Wonder of the World
HitlerTHE game was up. The war was lost. Their leader had killed himself.So why would Adolf Hitler's aides have gone to such lengths and risked their lives to take his body and that of Eva Braun out of his bunker, under fire from Soviet artillery, and try to burn them beyond recognition?Now a fragment of skull, believed for 64 years to have been from the remains of the Fuhrer, has been shown to be that of a woman aged between 20 and 40. It is a sinister thought but conspiracy theorists all over the world will be asking once more: Did Hitler really die in his bunker? Historians have generally agreed since the end of the Second World War that, staring defeat in the face, an increasingly feeble and paranoid Hitler had married Eva Braun in the bowels of his Berlin bunker after midnight on April 29, 1945, and later dictated his will. His physician Werner Haase, in response to Hitler's questions, had recommended a dose of cyanide and a gunshot to the head as the most reliable form of suicide. ‘ I saw Hitler slumped by the table. I did not see any blood on his head ’BODYGUARD ROCHUS MISCH Hitler, convinced of the treason of SS leader Heinrich Himmler, doubted the reliability of the SS-supplied cyanide tablets and had one tested on his dog Blondi, after which the dog died. Following lunch on April 30, with Soviet forces less than 500 metres from the bunker, Hitler and Eva said goodbye to staff and fellow occupants, including the Goebbels family, private secretary Martin Bormann and military officers. They went into Hitler's personal study at 2.30pm and at around 3.30pm some witnesses reported hearing a loud gunshot. Those, including valet Heinz Linge, who went into the study reported the smell of almonds, consistent with cyanide gas. They said they saw Hitler slumped on his desk with a bullet wound to his head, a pistol on the floor and blood pooling on the arm of the sofa on which Eva lay beside him with no visible sign of injury. ShellingSeveral witnesses said the bodies were then carried up to the emergency exit and into a small bombed-out garden behind the Chancellery where they were doused with petrol and set alight, then buried in a small crater when the Soviet shelling made it unsafe for the cremation to continue. Seven and a half hours later, Red Army troops began storming the Chancellery and the remains of Hitler, his wife and two of his dogs were said to have been discovered in a shell crater by a Soviet soldier. But were they? The Soviet story changed regularly in the aftermath of the fall of Berlin and in the following years. Conspiracy theorists point to suggestions that: Joseph Stalin told Western leaders at the Potsdam conference in 1945 he believed Hitler may have escaped to Spain or South America. Stalin's top army officer, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, said: "We found no corpse that could be Hitler's." The acting chief of the US trial counsel at Nuremberg, Thomas J Dodd, said: "No one can say he is dead." The most convincing evidence of Hitler's suicide came from the testimonies of those who were in the bunker - but they did not all agree on the details. Hitler's bodygyuard Rochus Misch, the only survivor of the bunker still alive, told this year how he heard someone shout to Hitler's valet, "Linge, Linge, I think it's happened." He told The Sun: "They'd heard a gunshot, but I hadn't. I saw Hitler slumped by the table. I did not see any blood on his head." After the bodies were carried upstairs, Misch said: "Someone shouted to me, 'Hurry upstairs, they're burning the boss!' " But Misch decided not to go, in case the "last witnesses" were shot. He was later captured after fleeing the bunker and spent eight years in Soviet prison camps. Details of a Soviet autopsy on the remains they found, released years later, apparently showed gunshot wounds and cyanide poisoning. The remains were repeatedly buried and exhumed by Russian agents during their relocation from Berlin to a new facility at Magdeburg. There, they were put in an unmarked grave with the bodies of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, his wife and their six children.
When the facility was due to be handed over to the East German government in 1970, the KGB, it is said, exhumed all ten bodies, burned them and threw the ashes in the river Elbe to prevent the area becoming a Nazi shrine. They kept Hitler's jaw and part of his skull - the fragment now thrown into doubt by US archaeologist Nick Bellantoni, who was given permission to examine the artefacts in the Russian state archive. Other discrepancies which have muddied the waters include a photo released by Soviets at the time of the fall of Berlin which purported to be the body of Hitler, shot in the forehead. It is now thought to be one of Hitler's body doubles. Others who believe he escaped subscribe to a variety of conspiracy theories. The most popular include one or more of these elements:
Hitler and Eva Braun escaped from the bunker on April 22, 1945, leaving behind doubles who killed themselves or were murdered. They were flown to Norway where German subs were waiting to transport them away from Europe. They were helped by the Vatican to escape to Spain then Argentina. Two German submarines seized by Argentina after the war had delivered Hitler to a secret Nazi base in the heart of Antarctica. RocketThe Falklands War was fought by Britain not to protect the islanders but the secret that British authorities knew about the Nazi base in nearby Antarctica. Hitler thrived in a community of Germans in Argentina where he went under the alias of priest Father Krespi. When 'Krespi' died in 1993, Germans from all over the world flew in for the funeral. Using rocket technology, the Nazis sent Hitler to a secret base on the moon. Not all of the theories are so far-fetched. In the book Hitler's Escape, by Ron T Hansig, the author argues that the Nazi leader may have made his getaway to Spain. It claims that Gestapo chief Heinrich Muller told his American interrogators in 1948 that he had arranged Hitler's escape and that the German leader and Eva Braun flew to Barcelona on April 26, 1945. So did Hitler survive? Were the details of his death deliberately muddled by the Soviets? The truth of what happened in Hitler's bunker may never be known, but the only survivor, Rochus Misch, is convinced he saw his master dead. He told The Sun: "Hitler's body was wrapped in a blanket as I watched. He was then taken outside to be burnt. It was over." HISTORIANS were rocked yesterday after a DNA test showed Hitler's skull to be from a WOMAN.The discovery was made by an expert given access to the Fuhrer's remains by Russia. Last night it cast doubt on whether the Nazi tyrant really did commit suicide in his Berlin bunker in April 1945. For 64 years history books have stated the World War II monster took a cyanide pill aged 56 and shot himself as the Red Army closed in. The Russians later dug up a burnt and buried corpse - its head sporting a bullet hole - which they declared was his. In 1970 the KGB finally cremated it, saving only the jawbone and a fragment from the skull. US archaeologist Nick Bellantoni flew to Moscow after being granted permission to examine the artefacts in the state archive - including bits of the bunker's bloodstained sofa - for one hour. He not only discovered the skull was female but also that it was from someone much YOUNGER. He said: "The bone seemed very thin - male bone tends to be more robust. It corresponds to a woman between the ages of 20 and 40." Hitler's lover Eva Braun, who also took cyanide, was 33. But Dr Bellantoni said: "There is no report of her having shot herself or having been shot afterwards. It could be anyone's." . Mayor won't stop beggingThe new mayor of an Indian town is refusing to give up begging - because he's making too much money.Dharmveer Bhoora, 56, says he makes so much money from begging he can subsidise town council projects in Khaikheri, northern India. On a good week, the veteran pan-handler - who has never held a steady job - reckons he rakes in more than £350'"The money I make from begging provides for my family and sometimes the whole town," he said. "I am responsible now for looking after the development of the village and part of the money I make out of begging will also be utilised for undertaking developmental projects in the village.".
|
Tinley Park, Illinois
Although all three children saw the vision, only Lucia and Jacinta heard the woman speak. She asked the children to return to the site on the thirteenth of each month until October.
Hundreds of rocky points rise from the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Some are very tall. Yet all are below the level of an observer on the edge, looking over. 
|
Why Do We Dream?
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dream.
~Eleanor Roosevelt
Some say our nightly escapes are extensions of reality. Others say our dreams are predictors of the future, as the Biblical Joseph was adept at interpreting.
Both views have merit, but one must take into account whether the dream in question is unconscious or conscious, nocturnal or day. When a rookie makes his debut at The Masters, for instance, he's usually quoted at some point as saying, "It's always been a dream of mine to play The Masters." This falls under the latter, daydream category, a goal we hope to achieve through some extraordinary effort often yet to be shown. It's the same as when we "dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair." We desire a relationship with the girl of our dreams, although we feel inadequate in our crooning.
I, however, am for the moment more interested in the dreams we have when we shut our eyes, the ones fantastical and outrageous in scope. Particularly, what am I to make of this recurring golf dream I've had a few times over the years? It goes like this:
I'm playing The Masters, but there's nothing specific about the people around me. I don't know who my fellow competitor is. There is the usual big crowd around the first tee, the course is in Masters magnificent shape, and I'm called to tee off. "Fore, please, Cliff Schrock now driving." I bend over to tee the ball, step back and address it, but before I can take the club back, the ball falls off the tee. I calmly bend over, re-tee, and set-up once more, but the ball falls off again. The dream continues with this comedy routine (although I never get razzed by the gallery). I never do tee off, never get to hit a shot, and the dream fades away to no conclusion.
I've developed a few theories about what the dream means, approaching it from the angle that this is an interpretive dream about my life.
Theory No. 1: I'm a success at golf. Even though I don't strike a shot at the Masters, the fact that I'm on that grand stage indicates I've shown some golfing prowess and have a legacy to be proud of.
Theory No. 2: I'm a failure at golf. The Masters background is just a tease. It symbolizes what I've hoped to achieve as a golfer, but because I don't step off the first tee, it indicates I'm just a pretender, a 12-handicap wannabe who can't play with the big boys. I'm not even allowed on the course with them.
Theory No. 3: It's a windy day at Augusta and it's just my bad luck that I got such a lousy day to play one of the world's most magnificent courses. But because everyone else is playing in the same conditions, I'm on equal footing with the field. The dream shows how the breaks usually level out in golf.
Theory No. 4: An amalgam of the above. The dream illustrates that I love to play the game, that I would have liked to have played at the highest level. As some consolation, it shows I have a natural competitiveness because I keep on re-teeing the darn ball. I'm determined to make a go of it despite all the circumstances against me. The fact that no one else stands out in the dream reflects the solitary nature of golf and how we only get out of it what we put into it. As a golfer who has played for more than thirty-five years, I find my passion hasn't abated, but my patience has worn thin. I feel time is running out to achieve a repeatable, dependable swing.
Some may find this peculiar, though other die-hards may wish they had had such maniacal foresight. I have kept track of every under-par hole I've ever made. I have had a double eagle, two eagles and 493 birdies at eighty-two courses. When No. 500 comes I expect it to be quite memorable. I have logged all my rounds played since 1984, from my old home muni of Highland Park in Bloomington, Illinois, to Winged Foot, Pine Valley and the Old Course. I've tracked fairways and greens hit, as well as number of putts. I look back at these rounds and read all the pithy comments I made about them. "Worst performance since moving to Connecticut," I wrote of a 97 in 1987. "Give it up," I noted after a round in 1990.
But I've been more complimentary lately, and have learned to be kinder to myself―being my "own best friend" as Bob Rotella would say―praising either my "eight one-putts" or my "parring of the last six holes."
I like Theory No. 4 because I think it speaks to all golfers who have a passion to play the game, yet lack the talent and wherewithal to be anything better than a regular Joe. Once the game has sunk its teeth in us, we have no choice but to stay strong mentally, keep striving to improve, and take the highs and lows with equal amounts of dignity.
And in the end, there's nothing wrong―or better―than dreaming of great things to come.
My Fathers Voice
My father raised me mostly by example. He was a doctor who also had a farm in the Midwest on which he raised cattle, horses and hunting dogs. I learned by watching how to work; how to handle animals and the kinds of unforeseen events that are so frequent in the life of a doctor's family.
My father took things as they came, dealt with them and, as he used to say when some obstacle had been overcome, "Let's move right along." He had a few precepts I was expected to live by, and he always referred to them by their combined initial letters: DL! DC! SDT! And DPB! They stood for Don't Lie; Don't Cheat; Slow Down and Think; and Don't Panic, Bud! I was amazed as a boy how often he found occasion to say one or another of those things.
He thought animals were splendid teachers, and he taught me to watch them carefully. One winter, a squirrel invaded our house around Thanksgiving. We never saw or heard it, but I found stashes of nuts hidden under the cushions of the couch and almost every chair. The fascinating thing is that the nuts were always one of a kind. Acorns in my father's chair. Hickory nuts at one end of the sofa and almonds in their shells―stolen from the holiday bowl that my mother kept on the coffee table.
I thought the squirrel was very smart to sort out his larder that way. My dad said the squirrel was even smarter than I had imagined and gathered only one kind of nut at a time. And that would be much more efficient than gathering a mix and then having to sort them out.
That kind of teaching did not alter much even when I was a grown man, even to the day he died. I was thirty when he became ill on Christmas Eve. We buried him on the third of January, his coffin draped in an American flag. The United States soldier who received the folded flag from the bearers handed it to me without a word. I clutched it to my heart as my wife and I left that most sorrowful of places for the long, forlorn drive to the airport.
The world seemed darkened by his absence. There was an emptiness so great that at times I thought I could not bear it. At his funeral, the minister told me that all he had been to me still lived. He said if I listened I could hear what my father's response would be to any concern I needed to bring him. But after I left the small country town where he lived and returned to the large city where I was making my way, I never once heard his voice. Never once. That troubled me deeply. When I was worried about leaving one job for another―something I would have talked over with my dad―I tried to imagine that we were sitting in his barn having one of our "life-talks," as my mother used to call them. But there was only silence and the image of me alone, waiting and profoundly sad.
Although I worked in the city, my wife and I bought an old farmhouse on a few acres of land some forty miles away. It had a pond where I could teach my son to fish and a meadow where we could work our dog.
One day during the same dreadful winter that I lost my father, I set out with my young son to do a few errands. We drove out into the country to look at some antique dining room chairs I was thinking of buying as a surprise for my wife. I said we'd be home by suppertime. We had gone a few miles when my son saw deer grazing just beyond the edge of a parking lot that belonged to our country church. I pulled in the lot, turned off the engine and let the car glide as close to the deer as I could without spooking them.
A buck and three does rummaged in the snow for grass and leaves. They occasionally raised their heads and took a long slow read of the air. They knew, of course, we were there. They just wanted to be certain they were safe.
We were as still as we could be and watched them for some time. When I took my son's hand and turned around to leave, I saw a pall of smoke coming from under the hood of my car. We stopped in our tracks. Oh God, I thought, the engine is on fire. And I am alone with a child in the middle of winter in the middle of nowhere. I did not have a cell phone.
I told my son to stay where he was, and I went to the car to investigate. I opened the driver's door, pulled the hood latch and went to the front of the car. Gingerly, I opened the hood. As soon as I did, I saw that the right front of the engine was aglow with fire, and smoke was coming out of it at a pretty good clip. I closed the hood without latching it down and went to where my son stood in the snow, excited and amazed.
"Daddy, is the car gonna blow up?"
"No. But I sure have to do something, and I don't know what...."
"Snow will put it out," he said.
"Snow might crack a cylinder, too." What could be the matter? I thought. Engines just don't catch fire like that. My mind began to move irrationally. I would have to find a house along the road, call for help. I would have to call my wife, frighten her probably. There would be the expense of the tow and probably a new engine. Then as clearly as I ever heard it in my life, I heard my dad say, "DPB!"
I am still astonished that I was immediately calmed. The frantic racing of my mind ceased. I decided to see exactly what, in fact, was burning. I retrieved a stick from a little oak and went to the car, opened the hood and poked at the glowing red place on the engine. Coals fell from it, through to the ground. I could see then, sitting on the engine block in a perfect little circle―a small collection of acorns, cradled by the shape of the metal.
I laughed out loud. "Come here," I said to my son. "Look, a squirrel stowed its treasure in our car. And when the engine got hot, his acorns got roasted."
I knocked the acorns and the rest of the glowing coals off the engine, closed the hood, put my son in his car seat and got in beside him.
When we drove away to finish our errand, I knew―for the first time since my dad died―that I could get on with my life. For on that snowy day in the parking lot of our country church, I discovered that his voice was still in my heart, and his lessons would be with me forever
China Vows Action on Trafficking
2009-05-21
Parents of missing children in China call for a more thorough investigation as the number of kidnappings grows.
AFP
A young Chinese girl takes a break during a dance class in Hefei, in China's central Anhui province July 9, 2006.
HONG KONG—China says it has rescued more than 400 kidnapped women and children from human-trafficking gangs during a crackdown last month, but parents of missing children say government efforts have barely scratched the surface of a growing social problem.
Public security vice minister Zhang Xinfeng vowed last week to extend the anti-trafficking campaign, which ran from April 9-May 4, calling on police at all levels to seek more information from the public in missing persons cases.
He said police had already rescued 196 children and 214 women during the campaign and broken up 72 human-trafficking rings, mostly in Guizhou, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong, Henan, and Shanxi provinces, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
But parents in the southern city of Nanning said 200 children were still missing in their region, and police had prevented parents from staging a public protest to draw attention to the problem.
"On the day we planned to hold the protest, the police kept watch at the bus terminal and intercepted us," said a parent of a missing child surnamed Mo.
...Some men snatched the baby from my daughter’s arms and got away in a van..."
Dongguan mother
Mo, who is a member of a nongovernment group set up to support parents of missing children, said police figures from last month's campaign were suspect.
"Those are all old cases," he said of the reported success stories. "They were reported a long time ago."
"They re-reported the found children," Mo said. "We have several hundred missing children in the Alliance but not one has been found by police."
Mo said many parents who tried to report their children missing met with refusal by police even to open a case file, while local media had failed to publicize information about lost children.
Southern protests
Parents of missing children in the southern province of Guangdong said they were also planning further protests but faced surveillance from their neighborhood security committee.
"The police dispatched the neighborhood committee to monitor us," one parent said. "Whenever we go anywhere, they will follow us."
"Two days ago, a Hong Kong TV station tried to interview some parents of missing children, but had to do it secretly in a hotel. Once we contact any strangers or try to leave Dongguan, they will question us immediately," he added.
Vice police chief Zhang called for the speedy completion of a nationwide DNA database to help parents and police identify trafficked children.
Police departments at all levels should be ready to collect blood samples from parents whose children were confirmed missing and parents who actively ask to donate blood samples to aid investigations, he said.
Blood samples should also be routinely taken from rescued children, children of unknown origin who may have been trafficked, and homeless street children, he said.
Demand for children
Liao Tianqi, deputy publisher of the U.S.-based Chinese-language online magazine "Observe China," said the trafficking problem was fueled by a huge demand for children in China, regardless of their source.
"There is a huge market in China for children," she said.
"China has a one-child policy, and yet a lot of families want to have a boy. Of course it's not just male children who are being trafficked. It's girls as well."
She said boys were often sold to people as sons, while the girls ended up filling a traditional rural role, that of daughters-in-law who are raised in the same household before marriage to one of the family's sons.
"With the women, they are sold to rural families as wives, and in the worst cases, young girls and women are forced into prostitution," Liao said. "Another reason is to do with [deteriorating] social morality."
Paid airtime
China has published a list of the top 50 most-wanted names for human trafficking, with two arrests made so far.
A mother from Dongguan, in southern China's Guangdong province, said her six-month-old boy was snatched from his sister's arms just outside the family's house in November 2007.
"My son was playing with my eight-year-old daughter. My daughter was holding him," the woman, surnamed Deng, said.
"Then some men snatched the baby from my daughter’s arms and got away in a van with a few other men inside," she added.
She said the local police had refused to support the family's plans to air a paid commercial appealing for information.
"The TV station demanded a note from the police station proving that our child was really missing," Deng said.
"But the police station said this was a big criminal case and as such cannot be publicized," she said.
"They said it would have a bad effect on society."
She said her family planned to continue protesting in the face of apparent inaction by the authorities.
Parents' support groups say around 1,000 children have gone missing in recent years from Dongguan and surrounding areas, although official figures only show 400 missing child cases.
Original reporting in Cantonese by Ho Shan and in Mandarin by Xi Wang. Cantonese service director: Shiny Li. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.
Dr Pepper artifact may reveal soft drink's origin
DALLAS – Poking through antiques stores while traveling through the Texas Panhandle, Bill Waters stumbled across a tattered old ledger book filled with formulas.
He bought it for $200, suspecting he could resell it for five times that. Turns out, his inkling about the book's value was more spot on than he knew. The Tulsa, Okla., man eventually discovered the book came from the Waco, Texas, drugstore where Dr Pepper was invented and includes a recipe titled "D Peppers Pepsin Bitters."
"I began feeling like I had a national treasure," said Waters, 59.
Dr Pepper's manufacturer says the recipe is not the secret formula for the modern day soft drink, but the 8 1/2-by-15 1/2 inch book is expected to sell between $50,000 to $75,000 when it goes up for auction at Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries on May 13.
"It probably has specks of the original concoction on its pages," Waters said.
Waters discovered the book, its yellowed pages stained brown on the edges, underneath a wooden medicine bottle crate in a Shamrock antiques store last summer. A couple months after buying it, he took a closer look as he prepared to sell it on eBay.
He noticed there were several sheets with letterheads hinting at its past, like a page from a prescription pad from a Waco store titled "W.B. Morrison & Co. Old Corner Drug Store." An Internet search revealed Dr Pepper, first served in 1885, was invented at the Old Corner Drug Store in Waco by a pharmacist named Charles Alderton. Wade Morrison was a store owner.
Faded letters on the book's fraying brown cover say "Castles Formulas." John Castles was a partner of Morrison's for a time and was a druggist at that location as early as 1880, said Mary Beth Webster, collections manager at the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute in Waco.
As he gathered more information, Waters took a slower turn through the book's more than 360 pages, which are filled with formulas for everything from piano polish to a hair restorer to a cough syrup. He eventually spotted the "D Peppers Pepsin Bitters" formula.
"It took three or four days before I actually realized what I had there," Waters said.
The recipe written in cursive in the ledger book is hard to make out, but ingredients seem to include mandrake root, sweet flag root and syrup.
It isn't a recipe for a soft drink, says Greg Artkop, a spokesman for the Plano-based Dr Pepper Snapple Group. He said it's likely instead a recipe for a bitter digestive that bears the Dr Pepper name.
He said the recipe certainly bears no resemblance to any Dr Pepper recipes the company knows of. The drink's 23-flavor blend is a closely guarded secret, only known by three Dr Pepper employees, he said.
Michael Riley, chief cataloger and historian for Heritage Auction Galleries, said they think it's an early recipe for Dr Pepper.
"We just feel like it's the earliest version of it," he said.
He hasn't, however, tested that theory by trying to mix up a batch. Neither has Waters; he's thought about it but would need to find someone to decipher all the handwriting.
Jack McKinney, executive director of the Waco museum, surmised that Alderton might have been giving customers something for their stomachs and added some Dr Pepper syrup to make it taste better.
"I don't guess there's any definitive answer. It's got to be the only one of its kind," Riley said.
McKinney said the ledger book was bound to be popular with Dr Pepper collectors because it's from the time the drink was invented.
Riley said the book was probably started around 1880 and used through the 1890s. It's not known who wrote the Dr Pepper recipe in the book, but they don't think it was the handwriting of Alderton or Morrison. Some of the formulas have Alderton's name after them.
At first, Alderton's drink inspired by the smells in the drugstore was called "a Waco." "People would come in and say, 'Shoot me a Waco,'" Riley said.
Soon renamed Dr Pepper, the drink caught on and other stores in town began selling it. Eventually, Alderton got out of the Dr Pepper business and Morrison and a man named Robert Lazenby started a bottling company in 1891.
Flipping through the pages of the ledger book takes one back to a time when drugstores were neighborhood hubs, selling everything from health remedies to beauty products mixed up by the stores' chemists. And among the formulas being mixed up in drugstores were treats for the soda fountain. A two-page spread in Waters' book has recipes for "Soda Water Syrups," including pineapple, lemon and strawberry.
"There were very few national brands," Riley said. "Their lifeblood was all their formulas."
I Never Wanted To Be a Supermom
Everybody knows that a good mother gives her children a feeling of trust and stability. She is their earth. She is the one they can count on for the things that matter most of all.
~Katharine Butler Hathaway
I never wanted to be a supermom. I just wanted to be a regular, run of the mill mom. You know the kind that is part nurse, part chauffer, part toy truck mechanic, and part nutritional and financial counselor. I didn't want to be the kind of mom who juggles career and family. I was content just being in charge of the home and family.
I will admit there were times when I felt judged for my decision. There were also times when finances dictated I do something to earn a little extra money. I was thankful for my college education because it did allow me to earn money from home as a freelance writer. I was the new June Cleaver, and very happy. I didn't know just how happy I was, though, until I was thrown into a new role.
At first the choice was just that: a choice. My husband had been ill with a chronic but manageable illness. We felt that if he could take some time off from his crazy manufacturing manager shifts, we all would enjoy a better quality of life. I went back to full-time work and he became the full-time stay-at-home dad while he took courses to help him find a career conducive to better health.
It was a struggle at first. I felt like I was missing out on all I had enjoyed for the last twelve years as a stay-at-home mom. I felt I was missing the day trips to the beach in the summer and having the time to decorate the house for the holidays. It literally took me nine months to adjust to the fact that I was gone twelve or thirteen hours a day, including the commute, and had only weekends to accomplish what I used to do while the kids were in school.
I only had to endure another year of that schedule until the company restructured and my job was eliminated. Even though I was happy to be free from a job I barely tolerated, I worried about many things. I had provided the health insurance for my family and a little more than half of the income. I was hopeful at this time, too, though. My husband was truly happy for the first time in many years, working toward a career he loved and one that would provide well for our family. His health had improved greatly by being home and able to stop and rest when he needed to.
We enjoyed this for three short weeks. Then life changed in a way we never imagined and one that would leave us redefining each role in our family. My boys suddenly needed a supermom the day my forty-eight-year-old husband died from a heart attack.
The boys are fourteen, twelve and nine. They need a father and a mother. I find myself wondering how I can be all things to them. How I can be their driving teacher, catch partner, nurturer, and just mom, the person they go to for warm cookies and hugs? How can I provide for them? I struggle with the roles because I never felt like a great mom. Can I be a better dad? Certainly not. I feel like I was really good at being a wife, but that role no longer exists.
What is a supermom then? To me a supermom is someone who recognizes her shortcomings and asks for forgiveness of her children without the guilt trip. She is someone who tries a little harder each day to have more patience than the day before. She is someone who strives to end each day, no matter how hectic or chaotic, with a goodnight kiss and an "I love you" that is heartfelt. With this definition, we can all be supermoms.
Chewing gum may raise maths grades in teens
CHICAGO (Reuters) – In a study likely to make school janitors cringe, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday that chewing gum may boost academic performance in teenagers.
Many U.S. schools ban chewing gum because children often dispose of the sticky chaw under chairs or tables.
But a team led by Craig Johnston at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston found that students who chewed gum during math class had higher scores on a standardized math test after 14 weeks and better grades at the end of the term than students in the class who did not chew gum. The study was funded by chewing gum maker Wrigley.
"For the first time we've been able to show in a real-life kind of situation that students did perform better when they were allowed to chew," said Gil Leveille, executive director of the Wrigley Science Institute, a research arm of Wm Wrigley Jr, which is now a part of Mars.
Leveille said Wrigley has gotten feedback from many of its gum customers who say chewing gum helps them stay focussed.
So, four years ago the company started the science institute to see if some of these claims have merit.
The researchers at Baylor studied four math classes or 108 students aged 13 to 16 years old from a Houston, Texas, charter school that serves mostly low-income Hispanic students.
About half got free Wrigley's sugar-free gum to chew during class, homework and tests. They chewed at least one stick of gum 86 percent of the time they were in math class and 36 percent of the time they were doing homework.
The other half went without.
After 14 weeks, the gum chewers had a three percent increase in their math scores on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills achievement test, a small but statistically significant change, according to Johnston and colleagues, who presented their findings at the American Society for Nutrition scientific meeting in New Orleans.
They found no difference in math scores between the two groups in another test called the Woodcock Johnson III Tests of Achievement. However, the gum-chewers did get better final grades in the class than their non-chewing peers.
Another Wrigley-funded study found that college students in a lab who were given difficult computer tasks had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol when they were chewing gum compared to when they were not.
Leveille said he thinks chewing gum helps reduce stress so students can do their best work. And while he is aware that many schools have a dim view of students chewing gum in class, he hopes the findings may change that a bit.
"It's not a matter of chewing. It's a matter of gum disposal," Leveille said, adding that that can be overcome by teaching proper disposal behaviours.
If that fails, he quipped, "We'll have to provide the janitors with scrapers."
A scary night
| "Who's there?" I shouted. Suddenly there was a flash of lightning; I saw a face at the window. It looked like an alien ... an alien that I had seen on the television show, "the X files." |
I peeped out of my blanket but it was too dark to see anything. Then I heard footsteps. They were getting louder and louder. It was dark but I knew the way to my drawer where I kept my camera. I ran there and took out my camera and started to take pictures in the direction of the window. Soon the footsteps died off.
The grandfather clock struck ... Dong ... It was 12 midnight. I went back to my bed and tried to sleep. But I could not sleep. I felt too frightened. I sat up, my mind was full of thoughts. Time passed ... one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock. Finally, I fell asleep. |
When I reached home I told my father the whole incident and he started to laugh. I started laughing too when he told me that he had dressed up as an alien for the party. Today, I am still amused to think I was so afraid of my own father.
|
|
