My sister and I were flying by ourselves from our home in Kansas to a summer camp in Minnesota. Our plane had a two-hour stop at the airport in Omaha, Nebraska. A flight attendant took us to a souvenir shop, where a toy airplane looked just like the plane my sister and I were flying on. I really wanted that airplane. I had $10 and the plane cost $8. I had no idea what I needed to buy at camp, but I bought the plane anyway. When we reached the camp, I discovered that there were no showers! Instead, we bathed in a lake every night. I needed to buy special soap because the regular soap I brought had chemicals that could harm the fish. The special soap cost $4 at the camp store. However, I had only $2 left.

    What upset me was that I couldn't get clean without the soap, which was soon found by my teacher, Sally. I had to tell her that I had spent most of my money on a toy airplane. She laughed and explained to me that a budget was necessary and it was a plan for spending money to help make sure you set aside enough for things you need, like soap, before you buy fun things, like toys.

    Sally gave me one of her extra(额外的) bottles of special soap. When I returned home, I decided to budget. I spent several weeks writing down everything I bought, just to get an idea of how I was already spending my money. Then I made my first weekly budget. My budget wasn't always the same each week. For some weeks, I would have more in my “Money In” account because I did some jobs around the house. Once summer vacation started, I didn't need to buy school lunches, so I had extra money to go to the neighborhood swimming pool or to give to the town animal shelter.

    Budgeting was hard, sometimes. Whatever week it was, I always made sure that “Money In” equaled “Save and Spend.” That's called making ends meet, and it's how you make sure that the money you have will always be enough to cover your plans to spend and save.

    My friend BJ Gallagher told me a great story recently, about her own experience with resentment (愤恨). She once worked as the training manager for a large newspaper, where she found the corporate culture extremely frustrating. The company was a hundred years old and their past success ha d blinded them to the need for change. Finally, after butting heads with several senior executives (主管) many times, she left the company. But she found that she hadn't left her resentment, frustration, and anger behind when she resigned.

    “I finally decided to write about my experiences and my feelings at the newspaper. I wanted to be rid of that company and those people, once and for all. So I wrote and I wrote. It wasn't just a story that poured out; it was a whole book! We called it A peacock in the Land of Penguins. I was the peacock and those newspaper executives were the penguins.”

    “It took me several more years to finally get over my negative emotions. Through a lot of soul-searching and reflection, I finally was able to let go of my resentment. I came to see that there was nothing personal in the way they treated me, and they were good people doing what they thought best for the company. I was the one who had made it personal. I thought they were making my life miserable on purpose.”

    “Finally, the time came when I decided to make amends (弥补) for the sharp, angry things I had said about the company. I invited my former boss to dinner and made my apology. It was a great healing process for me. I finally felt free of the resentment that had been eating me up.”

    “What was the final outcome?” I asked her.

    “Gratitude,” she replied. “Not only wasn't I resentful any more, I was grateful to the company. If I hadn't had those painful experiences, I would never have written a book. And the book became hugely successful – now published in 21 languages; it transformed my business.”

B

    According to a new study ,a smiley face emoji（笑脸符）in work-related e-mails may not create a positive impression and could even weaken information sharing. In formal business emails, a smiley is not a smile.

    In one of the experiments, people were asked to read a work-related e-mail from an unknown person and then tell about both the ability and warmth of that person. Before that, they all received similar messages. But some included smileys while others did not. The results suggested that contrary to face-to-face smiles, which increase both ability and warmth, the smileys in a business e-mail had no effect on the perception（感知）of warmth, and in fact had a bad effect on the perception of ability. The perceptions of low ability in turn weakened information sharing.

    In another experiment, the use of a smiley was compared to a smiling or neutral photograph. The findings showed that in the case（情况）of a photograph, a smiling sender was judged to be more able and friendly than a neutral one. However, when an e-mail on formal work-related maters included a smiley, the sender was thought to be less able. The smiley did not influence the opinion on the sender's friendliness.

    “People are easy to accept that a smiley equals a real smile, but the findings of this study show that in the workplace, this seems not the case, especially when first communications are concerned.” Dr. Glikson says. “In such a situation, it is better not to use smileys to people at whatever age. Smileys could hardly be a wise choice to a person you are not familiar with.”

    A Pennsylvania patrol (巡逻) officer rescued（营救）a German shepherd (牧羊犬) from a car accident in South Londonberry.

    Since the rescue, a photo of patrol officer Nick Ague carrying the 1 that his fellow police officers posted to Facebook has got nearly 4,500 likes and tons of 2  comments(评论).

    "Amazing people still do exist (存在)!” one user 3 .

    The act of heroism began on Aug. 11, when Ague heard on the radio that there had been a car 4  nearby, and that two dogs involved in the crash had fled (逃离) from the 5 .

    "I heard other people say they saw a German shepherd 6 ," Ague told ABC News.com. "Based on the location I could 7  the dog was heading west."

    So Ague and a few fellow 8  set out to find the dog, who they later learned was named Mya. They flagged Mya down, 9  every time they stopped their patrol cars, she would run from them. They called Mya's 10 , and when she arrived on the scene, Mya 11  stopped running. And then the dog wouldn't move at all.

    That was when Ague realized something was 12 . He quickly realized that it wasn't that the dog wouldn't move but 13  not move.

    "The dog was not moving because the skin on her feet was hanging off 14  the distance she ran," Ague explained. "She ran two miles from the crash on hot asphalt (柏油).

    "When I realized that's why she couldn't walk," he said, "the 15  thing I could think of doing was to pick her up."

    So he 16  Mya up, who he said weighed around 75 pounds, and 17  her about 100 yards to her owner's car.

    Mya's owner, Megan Smith, said that Mya's feet were already healed(痊愈), and she was now walking 18 .

    Ague, who has a German shepherd of his own and described himself as "a real animal 19 ", said he never thought of doing anything besides 20  Mya.

Reading is essential but how can one choose the right books to read and where can one find them? A few famous people may give you some helpful tips.

●Read books from past eras.

Otherwise, you'd be "completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of your times, "just as Alert Einstein put it. "Somebody who reads only newspapers and books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who dislikes eyeglasses, "he said.

Reading too wide a variety in too short a time would keep the teachings from leaving a lasting impression on you. Seneca the Younger, a first-century Roman philosopher, suggested that "you must linger（流连）among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would obtain ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. "

●Shop at secondhand bookstores.

Virginia Woolf believed the works in secondhand bookstores have an attraction which the usual volumes of the library lack. Browsing through these hooks gives you the chance to run into something that wouldn’t have risen to the attention of librarians and booksellers.

Check out authors' reading lists.

In his 1940 guide How to Read a Book, American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler talked about low to choose books. He attached importance to those that other authors consider worth reading.

Mortimer wrote that "one way to understand them is to read the books they read. "

●Make the final decision by yourself.

It's you yourself who should choose what, how and when to read. Theodore Roosevelt recommended choosing books on subjects that interest you and letting your mood guide you to your next great read.

A. Interest is the best teacher.

B. Great authors are great readers.

C. Leave some room for older works.

D. Learn more about those great authors.

E. Don't jump too quickly from book to book.

F. There's no "best books" list that everyone should follow.

G. Usually they are much more selective in organizing their collections than secondhand book owners.

    One day, on a small farm in Maine, a man sat in a barn watching a large grey spider spin a web. The man was E.B. White — or Andy, as he was called — who thought spiders were wonderful creatures. He thought that one day he might like to write a children's book about a spider.

    But writing was hard work for Andy. He had written many articles and essays and poems. He had also written one children's book, Stuart Little. But Andy could never just rush to turn an idea into an article or a book. He told his editor (编辑) that he needed to let his ideas ripen.

    So for years, Andy continued to think about writing a children's book about a spider. He did some of his best thinking while he wandered around his farm.

    Once while he was cleaning his barn, he found a spider's egg sac (卵囊). Andy wanted to see the eggs hatch. But he was scheduled to leave for a trip to New York City. So he found a small box and carefully placed the egg sacinside. When he got to his hotel, he put the box on the dresser. One morning he woke up, and there were hundreds of baby spiders rushing across the dresser!

    Years later, Andy finally began writing Charlotte's Web, the story of a spider named Charlotte and a pig named Wilbur. Andy created most of the book sitting by himself in the tiny boathouse of his farm.

    Sometimes he stopped writing and aimlessly drew pictures of spiders. Andy always said Charlotte's Web was more than just a children's story about animals. It was a timeless story about true friendship.

I've been writing since before I could write. As a kid, I dictated stories to my parents. About 12 years ago, I was living in New York City and pursuing a master's degree in creative writing. For years I'd been suffering vision disorder, but in New York my symptoms worsened. I became unable to read or write for any considerable length of time. I tried vision therapy, an overhead projector, a special pair of glasses — all in vain.

Eventually, I discovered a computer program for the visually challenged. As I typed, my words were read aloud by an automated voice. With my screen dimmed (变模糊) to black, I relied entirely on the automated voice to know what I had written.

Facing the blank page is worrying, but facing the black page is worse. The dark screen is a sinkhole that swallows creative hope. Sentences disappear into it like an astronaut into a black hole. I managed to complete

my master's degree, but it took me years to adapt to my new reality. The greatest barrier seemed to be the automated voice, which was like a robot parrot on my shoulder, and I wanted nothing more than to drive it away. If a pianist were forced to practice on an untuned piano, would it corrupt his ear over time?

Of course, I could have quit writing and stopped making myself suffer. But it honestly never occurred to me—and I'm glad it didn't. Last year, after I told my story on the radio, I was contacted by VocaliD, a Massachusetts-based company that created a voice modeled on my own.

The first time I heard the voice they created, it is so close to my own that the two are nearly indistinguishable. I've only just begun using this new voice. My hope is that this will restore a sense of solitude (孤独) to my writing process, allowing me easier access to that inner space where the imagination can take over, and I can forget myself, and the real work can begin.

The black screen still exists — it always will — but the robot parrot has taken wing.