Ken and I met and saw each other just three times before he left for Vietnam. He never gave me flowers or candy. There were no moonlight walks, no lingering good-byes on the front porch. Our courtship took place by mail.
I felt sorry for him, far from home in the service of his country. Writing to him seemed almost a patriotic duty. But as we got better acquainted, our letter-writing pace increased—to as many as three a day. I started driving home at lunch to collect the mail.
Then Ken came back in leave, and we surprised ourselves by getting mantled and going overseas together. Romantic？ Not really, because then he left on a three-week mission, making our honeymoon a by-mail event too.
We didn't set out to defy romantic customs; it just turned out that way, and stayed that way. We had been married seven years before we remembered our anniversary—and then only because my mother phoned to wish us a happy one. It took another ten years for us to notice Valentine's Day.
To celebrate our alertness that year, we decided to have a conventionally romantic evening; a quiet, just-the-two-of-us dinner at a nice restaurant.
When we arrived at the restaurant, we were told there would be a 40-minute wait, and so we headed for another nice, but not so romantic place. About halfway to our second choice, Ken realized that the restaurant would not honor our credit card and we were low on cash. I sighed and said, "I do have enough for a fast-food place." Clearly, we were veering far off the conventional coupe.
While Ken placed the order, I gathered napkins and straws and went to select a romantic spot in the nonsmoking area. There I found a woman methodically turning chairs up onto tables. "This section's closed," she said.
"But it's the only nonsmoking section," I protested. She pointed across the room. "You can sit over there."
"That's the smoking section," I argued.
"I know," she said. "But you don't have to smoke."
I started to protest but stopped to choke back a laugh. Maybe because she thought I was going to cry, she removed the opened chairs from a table and said, "This okay？" I thanked her and, after she had gone, sat giggling until Ken arrived with the hamburgers.
Surrounded by a forest of upside-down chair legs, we had our Valentine dinner. It wasn't exactly quiet, with grill workers yelling at each other in the kitchen past the swing door near our table. But it was just the two of us, if you didn't count the person with the mop who kept humping our chairs.
According to the context, "flowers or candy, moonlight walks, lingering good-byes" are to indicate ______.
A．some examples of conventional customs
B．an intimate friendship
C．a special relationship
D．an ordinary acquaintance
I Cry, Therefore I Am [A] In 2008, at a German zoo, a gorilla （大猩猩) named Gana gave
I Cry, Therefore I Am [A] In 2008, at a German zoo, a gorilla (大猩猩) named Gana gave birth to a male infant, who died after three months. Photographs of Gana, looking stricken and inconsolable (伤心欲绝的), attracted crowds to the zoo. Sad as the scene was, the humans, not Gana, were the only ones crying. The notion that animals can weep has no scientific basis. Years of observations by biologists Dian Fossey, who observed gorillas, and Jane Goodall, who worked with chimpanzees (黑猩猩), could not prove that animals cry tears from emotion.
[B] It’s true that many animals shed tears, especially in response to pain. Tears protect the eye by keeping it moist. But crying as an expression of feeling is unique to humans and has played an essential role in human evolution and the development of human cultures.
[C] Within two days an infant can imitate sad and happy faces. If an infant does not cry out, it is unlikely to get the attention it needs to survive. Around 34 months, the relationship between the human infant and its environment takes on a more organized communicative role, and tearful crying begins to serve interpersonal purposes: the search for comfort and pacification (抚慰). As we get older, crying becomes a tool of social interaction: grief and joy, shame and pride, fear and manipulation.
[D] Tears are as universal as laughter, and grief is more complex than joy. But although we all cry, we do so in different ways. Women cry more frequently and intensely than men, especially when exposed to emotional events. Like crying, depression is, around the world, more commonly seen in women than in men. One explanation might be that women, who despite decades of social advances still suffer from economic inequality, discrimination (歧视) and even violence, might have more to cry about. Men not only cry for shorter periods than women, but they also are less inclined to explain their tears, usually shed them more quietly, and tend more frequently to apologize when they cry openly. Men, like women, report crying at the death of a loved one and in response to a moving religions experience. They are more likely than women to cry when their core identities—as providers and protectors, as fathers and fighters—are questioned.
[E] People who score on personality tests as more sympathetic cry more than those who are more rigid or have more self-control. Frequency of crying varies widely: some shed tears at any novel or movie, others only a handful of times in their lives. Crying in response to stress and conflict in the home, or after emotional trauma (创伤), lasts much longer than tears induced by everyday sadness—which in turn last longer than tears of delight and joy.
[F] Sadness is our primary association with crying, but the fact is that people report feeling happier after crying. Surveys estimate that 85% of women and 73% of men report feeling better after shedding tears. Surprisingly, crying is more commonly associated with minor forms of depression than with major depression involving suicidal thoughts.
[G] People widely report that crying relieves tension, restores emotional balance and provides “catharsis”, a washing out of bad feelings. The term “catharsis” has religious implications of removing evil and sin; it’s no surprise that religious ceremonies are, around the world, one of the main settings for the release of tears.
[H] Crying is a nearly universal sign of grief, though some mourners report that, despite genuine sorrow, they cannot shed tears—sometimes even for years after their loved one has gone. Unlike today, when the privacy of grief is more respected, the public or ceremonial shedding of tears, at the graveside of a spouse or the funeral of a king or queen, was once considered socially or even politically essential.
[I] Crying has also served other social purposes. Rousseau wrote in his Confessions that while he considered tears the most powerful expression of love, he also just liked to cry over nothing.
[J] The association of tears with art has ancient roots. The classic Greek tragedies of the fifth century B.C. were primarily celebrations of gods. Tragedies, like poetry and music, were staged religions events. Even then it was recognized that crying in response to drama brought pleasure.
[K] I have argued that there are neurobiological (神经生物方面的) associations linking the arts and mood disorders. When I lecture on crying, I ask my audience to let me know, by a show of hands, which art forms most move them to tears. About 80% say music, followed closely by novels (74%), but then the figures fall sharply, to 43%, for poetry, and 10-22% for paintings, sculpture and architecture.
[L] The physical act of crying is mainly one of breathing in air, which is why we choke up when we weep. This suggests to language scientists that emotional crying evolved before language, perhaps explaining why tears communicate states of mind and feelings that are often so difficult to express in words. Of course, from an evolutionary perspective, recognition of emotion (usually through facial gesture) was essential for survival.
[M] The earliest humans arrived several million years ago, but only 150,000 to 200,000 years ago, did cultures, language, religion and the arts arise. Along the way, tears became more than a biological necessity to lubricate (润滑) the eye and developed into a sign of intense emotion and a signal of social bonding. The development of self-consciousness and the notion of individual identity, or ego; storytelling about the origins of the world, the creation of humanity and life after death; and the ability to feel others’ sadness—all were critical parts of the neurobiological changes that made us human
[N] More recently, we’ve learned from neuroscience that certain brain circuits (回路) are activated (激活), rapidly and unconsciously, when we see another in emotional distress. In short, our brain evolved circuits to allow us to experience sympathy, which in turn made civilization, and an ethics based on sympathy, possible. So the next time you reach a tissue box, or sob on a friend’s shoulder, or shed tears at the movies, stop and reflect on why we cry and what it means to cry. Becanse ultimately, while we love to cry, we also cry to love.
46. Nowadays people respect the privacy of grief more than in the past.
47. Infants cry to attract attention for survival.
48. There is no scientific evidence as yet that animals can shed tears from emotion.
49. Tears can perform. certain communicative functions which words cannot.
50. Our ability to experience sympathy is essential to the development of civilization.
51. People are more inclined to cry when suffering minor forms of depression.
52. Sometimes people cannot cry despite genuine grief.
53. In humans’ long history, tears have developed an essential role in social relationships.
54. Men are less likely to give reasons for their tears.
55. Crying has long been associated with art.
Only two countries in the advanced world provide no guarantee for paid leave from work to care for a newborn child. Last spring one of the two, Australia, gave up the dubious distinction by establishing paid family leave starting in 2011. I wasn't surprised when this didn't make the news here in the United States—we're now the only wealthy country without such a policy.
The United States does have one explicit family policy, the Family and Medical Leave Act, passed in 1993. It entitles workers to as much as 12 weeks' unpaid leave for care of a newborn or dealing with a family medical problem. Despite the modesty of the benefit, the Chamber of Commerce and other business groups fought it bitterly, describing it as "government-run personnel management" and a "dangerous precedent". In fact, every step of the way, as (usually) Democratic leaders have tried to introduce work-family balance measures into the law, business groups have been strongly opposed.
As Yale law professor Anne Alstott argues, justifying parental support depends on defining the family as a social good that, in some sense, society must pay for. In her book No Exit: What Parents Owe Their Children and What Society Owes Parents, she argues that parents are burdened in many ways in their lives: there is "no exit" when it comes to children. "Society expects—and needs—parents to provide their children with continuity of care, meaning the intensive, intimate care that human beings need to develop their intellectual, emotional and moral capabilities. And society expects—and needs—parents to persist in their roles for 18 years, or longer if needed."
While most parents do this out of love, there are public penalties for not providing care. What parents do, in other words, is of deep concern to the state, for the obvious reason that caring for children is not only morally urgent but essential for the future of society. The state recognizes this in the large body of family laws that govern children' welfare, yet parents receive little help in meeting the life-changing obligations society imposes. To classify parenting as a personal choice for which there is no collective responsibility is not merely to ignore the social benefits of good parenting; really, it is to steal those benefits because they accrue (不断积累) to the whole of society as today's children become tomorrow's productive citizenry (公民). In fact, by some estimates, the value of parental investments in children, investments of time and money (including lost wages), is equal to 20-30% of gross domestic product. If these investments generate huge social benefits—as they clearly do—the benefits of providing more social support for the family should be that much clearer.
注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。
What do we learn about paid family leave from the first paragraph？
A．America is now the only developed country without the policy.
B．It has now become a hot topic in the United States.
C．It came as a surprise when Australia adopted the policy.
D．Its meaning was clarified when it was established in Australia.
