The world’s
Now 66 years old, professor Yacoub still retains his energy and extraordinary enthusiasm for his career. For 43 years, he has dealt with desperate patients whose combination of poor diet, inactive lifestyle and stress overload have caused them to ask for his help.
Professor Yacoub’s life is always hectic (狂热的).
For relaxation, professor Yacoub enjoys
It was somewhere between spring and summer my mom and I were driving through the countryside Back then I was 13 years old and always felt unhappy with Mom. But little did I know that this trip was going to be a special one．
A pot of flowers sat in the back seat, whose heavenly scent filled the car．Suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, my mom pulled over．“What are you doing?” I cried, fearing that the car had broken down and we’d be stuck there, so far from home. But that wasn’t the case. My mom hopped out of the car, grabbing the flowers from the back seat．“It’ll just be a minute，”she called back through the open windows．
My eyes impatiently skimmed the edge of the road before settling on a little sign showing that it was a nursing home. I looked back to the building, somewhat annoyed, as my mom reappeared—empty-handed．
Before she started the car, curiosity drove me to ask，“Do you know someone there?” She shook her head．“Then what did you do with the flowers?” She smiled slightly，“I gave them to the receptionist(前台接待员).”“What?” She laughed at my confusion．“I told the receptionist to give the flowers to whoever needed them, especially who hasn’t gotten any in a while．”
I kept silent for a moment. Not long after we continued our driving, I spoke again，“Did you leave your name?” To this she answered instantly，“No. Leaving flowers there for someone who will appreciate them makes me feel good, which is enough of a thank for me.”
Suddenly, still thinking about Mom’s deeds, I heard something burst loudly. It was our car that broke down! Nothing could be worse, because neither my mom nor I understood how to repair it, and we didn’t know where the garage was. It also seemed impossible to wait for any passer-by, since we had seen so few along the way．
We were worrying about what could be done.
As we drove along, a flower shop came into sight on the road.
During COVID’s first wave, the streets of New York and other major cities became empty. The sound of cars decreased, but urban citizens heard something new: an abundance of birdsong. During walks outside, they breathed cleaner air. Lockdowns had meant fewer cars on the roads, and the effects were unmissable. Levels of nitrogen dioxide-a by-product of fossil fuels burned in cars and in electricity generation—were 30 percent lower along the road from Washington D. C. to Boston in March 2020 compared with previous years. Summer coming, people sat at outdoor extensions of restaurants built in parking zones and moved around on newly added bike lanes. These incidental adaptations to the pandemic allowed citizens to experience the benefits of moving away from the “car is king“ situation in a way that policies for climate-friendly equipment never could, explains Christian Brand, an environmental scientist with the Transport Studies Unit at the University of Oxford. Now, he says, “they know what’s possible.”
Some fought to keep it that way. Paris has been a leader of this conversion. The French capital already had plans to press down car use and encourage cycling before COVID appeared, but in late spring 2020 some 50 kilometers of pop-up bike lanes, called coronapistes, were added almost overnight. They are now a permanent part of Paris’s cycling network, with more in the works.
These measures, Brand says, came in no small part because of political will. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo made climate change a focus of her reelection campaign. Besides providing subsidies(补贴)for purchasing and repairing bicycles, she emphasized the health benefits of reducing car emissions. In other cities, like New York, changes were more modest or temporary. Shutdowns may have presented the possibility of safer, healthier streets-but it was often a fleeting(飞逝的)vision.
1．What happened during COVID’s first wave?| A．Most people were infected with the virus: |
| B．City environment became better. |
| C．People drove cars instead of walking outside. |
| D．People no longer went to restaurants. |
| A．Condition. | B．Competition. |
| C．Change. | D．Struggle. |
| A．Protecting citizens’ safety. | B．Fighting the pandemic. |
| C．Measuring people’s political will. | D．Dealing with climate issues. |
| A．The Pandemic Led to Greener Cities Unexpectedly |
| B．More and More Bicycles Ended ”Car Is King“ Time |
| C．Political Leaders Took Measures to Reduce Pollution |
| D．Covid-19 Brought Benefits to People’s Health |
I began writing poems fifteen years ago while I was in college. One day I was in the library, working on a term paper, when I came across a book of contemporary poetry. I don’t remember the title of the book or any of the titles of the poems except one: “Frankenstein’s Daughter.” The poem was wild, almost rude, and nothing like the rhyme-and-meter poetry I had read in high school. I had always thought that poetry was flowery writing about sunsets and walks on the beach, but that library book contained direct and sometimes shocking poetry about dogs, junked cars, rundown houses, and TVs. I checked the book out, curious to read more.
Soon afterward, I started filling a notebook with my own poems. At first I was scared, partly because my poetry teacher, to whom this book is written for, was a serious and strict man who could see the errors in my poems. Also, I realized the seriousness of my devotion. I gave up geography to study poetry, which a good many friends said offered no future. I ignored them because I liked working with words, using them to reconstruct the past, which has always been a source of poetry for me.
When I first studied poetry, I was single-minded. I woke to poetry and went to bed with poetry. I memorized poems, read English poets because I was told they would help shape my poems, and read classical Chinese poetry because I was told that it would add clarity to my work. But I was most taken by the Spanish and Latin American poets, particularly Pablo Neruda. My favorites of his were the odes ― long, short-lined poems celebrating common things like tomatoes, socks and scissors. I felt joyful when I read these odes, and when I began to write my own poems, I tried to remain faithful to the common things of my childhood — dogs, alleys (小巷), my baseball mitt (手套) and the fruit of the valley, especially the orange. I wanted to give these things life, to write so well that my poems would express their beauty.
I also admired our own country’s poetry. I saw that our poets often wrote about places where they grew up or places that impressed them deeply. James Wright wrote about Ohio and West Virginia, Philip Levine about Detroit, Gary Snyder about the Sierra Nevadas and about Japan, where for years he studied Zen Buddhism (禅宗佛教). I decided to write about the San Joaquin Valley, where my hometown, Fresno, is located. Some of my poems are absolute observations and images of nature — the orange yards, the Kings River, the Sequoias (红杉). I fell in love with the valley, both its ugliness and its beauty, and quietly wrote poems about it to share with others.
1．What does the passage mainly talk about?| A．The author’s experiences with poetry. |
| B．The author’s method of writing poetry. |
| C．The author’s appreciation of poetry. |
| D．The author’s interest in studying poetry. |
| A．“Frankenstein’s Daughter” was a flowery poetry |
| B．the author was able to memorize most poems he read |
| C．the author began to get in contact with poetry of different styles |
| D．the author was curious to read more of rhyme-and-meter poetry |
| A．Moving love stories in history. |
| B．Observations of classical poems. |
| C．True feelings of human friendship. |
| D．Appreciation of wild valley flowers. |
| A．The author’s friends all encouraged him to give up geography to poetry. |
| B．The author became devoted to poetry because of his teacher’s strictness. |
| C．The author loved to find sources of poetry from nature and from the past. |
| D．Spanish and Latin American poems influenced the author as much as Chinese ones. |
| A．accelerated | B．accompanied | C．accumulated | D．acknowledged |
I sat at the breakfast table with my four-year-old son, Matthew, trying to ignore the ache in my stomach. “Mama, want to play?” “Not today, baby,” I shook my head. These days I could barely get out of bed. I was still recovering from a surgery. I hoped for strength and happiness. But the future seemed so hopeless.
Suddenly, Matthew jumped up from his spot on the kitchen floor. “Bird!” he shouted, rushing to our courtyard. Sure enough, there was a white dove (鸽子) seated in a rubber tree. It sat there for a few moments, and then flew away. Strange, I’d never seen one in our neighborhood before.
When I dragged myself to the kitchen the next morning, the dove was back. This time with a mate carrying twigs (小枝). “Look, Matthew,” I said, pointing to the tree. “They’re going to make a nest.” The doves flew in and out of the courtyard all week, building on top of the rubber tree.
Matthew could hardly contain his excitement. Every morning, he’d run into the kitchen and take his spot by the sliding glass door, talking to the birds while they worked. His enthusiasm was influential. As much as I was grieving, I couldn’t help but look forward to the doves’ visits too.
Then it all went wrong. The courtyard was a safe enough spot for a nest, but the rubber tree’s broad, thin leaves were far from stable. One night, a strong wind blew, throwing the doves’ nest to the ground. I heard the twigs break apart.
I surveyed the damage. Nothing good ever lasts. I wouldn’t blame the doves if they never came back. But they returned. And they paid no attention to the pile of sticks that had once been their nest. They started again from scratch. Again, though, the wind destroyed all their hard work. The next day, and the next, they renewed their efforts, as if nothing had happened.
I knew I had to do something.
“It works! The birds are back!” Matthew announced.
Chinese Brush Painting is one of the
Antarctic scientists were left
The team of scientists started a journey through the surrounding waters of Antarctica
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