About 15 years ago, Andrew McLindon, a businessman and keen cyclist, was riding his bike in Austin, Texas, when he thought about a friend’s 12-year-old son. The boy had never known the joy of biking because he suffered from hydrocephalus, a buildup of fluid in the brain that often causes balance disturbances.

When he got home, McLindon, now 60, went online and found a three wheel recumbent bike with a seat belt, perfect for a child with balance issues. Soon the boy was pedaling around the street with his peers, having fun and getting exercise. But there was more, as McLindon gleaned from his friend’s reaction. “To see his son interacting with other kids,” McLindon says. “I’ll never forget the smile on his face.”

That smile launched the McLindon Family Foundation. Funded by donations, the group works with pediatric rehab (小儿科康复) clinics to find children who can benefit from owning an adaptive bike—and to help craft each bike to the particular needs of the child. A bike may include a headrest, a shoulder harness, a seat belt, and a caregiver’s steering and braking mechanism in the back. The bikes are expensive—$3,000 to S4,000, and that’s with the foundation’s steep manufacturer’s discount. For kids lucky enough to get one, they’re a life changer.

“We worked with a 14-year-old who has spina bifida (脊柱裂),” says McLindon. “She spent most days on the couch watching TV. Soon after she got her bike, she was training for special-needs triathlons (铁人三项). In a magazine interview, she said, I always knew there was an athlete in me.”

So far, the foundation has given away 450 bikes, and that’s just a start. “I do a lot of things. I run a lot of companies,” McLindon says. “But getting these kids their bikes is the most important thing that I do.”

Every morning I walk outside and bring in the morning newspaper. There was a time when every house on both sides of the street had a newspaper in the driveway. There was also a time when every house had a landline telephone, but not anymore. Not for a long time.

My husband is less willing to accept the downward trend of print-edition newspapers, as he has worked in newspapers since the age of 16. Even before that, he was what you would call an “independent publisher”.

Recently, we were at a Chicago park with our grandchildren. My husband had a newspaper folded under his arm. He sat down and put the paper on the bench beside him. A young girl walked over, looked at the newspaper, picked it up and asked, " What's this?"

I thought he was going to fall over. The color faded from his face. His eyes rolled back in his head and his legs were giving out. I rolled up his paper and waved it under his nose. The smells from the ink woke him up.

Some people simply love paper ― the feel, the portability, and the pleasure of piling them higher and higher until their wife cries, “Enough!"   My husband was happy when he spent time with our youngest daughter and her husband. When they lived with us, they raced to pull the crossword puzzle from the paper every day. It's hard to do a crossword online. Pencil doesn't come off a computer screen as easily as you might think.

Now my husband will be very excited that I have found further proof that there may still be hope for the survival of print. I was chatting with a young mother who subscribes to the daily newspaper. I asked why she did something so conservatively. She looked shocked. "Because it's print!" she said. "I love print! When the paper didn't come one day, would you believe I called the main number to let them know and the lady said, ' Why don't you just subscribe to the online version? '” She shook her head in disbelief.

My husband will be so thrilled that he might write this young woman into his will. I say we leave her all our piles of old newspapers.

Kincaid looked at his watch: eight-seventeen. The truck started on the second try, and he backed out, shifted gears, and moved slowly down the alley under hazy sun. Through the streets of Bellingham he went, heading south on Washington 11, running along the coast of Puget Sound for a few miles, then following the highway as it swung east a little before meeting U.S Route 20.

Turning into the sun, he began the long, winding drive through the Cascades. He liked this country and felt impressed，stopping now and then to make notes about interesting possibilities for future expeditions or to shoot what he called “memory snapshots.” The purpose of these causal photographs was to remind him of places he might want to visit again and approach more seriously. In later afternoon he turned north at Spokane, picking up U.S Route 2, which would take him halfway across the northern United States to Duluth, Minnesota.

He wished for the thousandth time in his life that he had a dog, a golden retriever, maybe, for travels like this and to keep him company at home. But he was frequently away; overseas much of the time and it would not be fair to the animal. Still, he thought about it anyway. In a few years he would be getting too old for the hard fieldwork. “I must get a dog then.” He said to himself.

Drives like this always put him into a sentimental mood. The dog was part of it. Robert Kincaid was alone as it’s possible to be – an only child, parents both dead, distant relatives who had lost track of him and he of them, no close friends.

He thought about Marian. She had left him nine years ago after five years of marriage. He was fifty–two now, that would make her just under forty. Marian had dreams of becoming a musician, a folksinger. She knew all of the Weavers’ songs and sang them pretty well in the coffeehouse of Seattle. When he was home in the old days, he drove her to the shows and sat in the audience while she sang.

His long absences – two or three months sometimes – were hard on the marriage. He knew that. She was aware of what he did when they decided to get married, and both of them had a vague (not clear) sense that it could all be handled somehow. It couldn’t when he came from photographing a story in Iceland and, she was gone. The note read, “Robert, it didn’t work out, I left you the Harmony guitar. Stay in touch.”

He didn’t stay in touch. Neither did she. He signed the divorce papers when they arrived a year later and caught a plane for Australia the next day. She had asked for nothing except her freedom.