Moby Dick,or The Whale,of which only 5 copies were sold in the year of its first publication,has been recognized as one of the greatest masterpieces of the twentieth century novels across the world.Yet its author,Herman Melville,was not blessed enough to change his fate as the great work did.

Herman was born into an upper class New York family in 1819,but he had to drop out of school at the age of 15due to bankruptcy （破产）of the family.He struggled for living by working as a clerk at a bank,a farmer and a primary school teacher,but did not manage to hold on quite long to any of the jobs.And in 1841,he turned himself a whaling sailor on a big whaler.

In the next three years,his sailor’s life was torn apart by betrayal,injury,living with anthropophagi（食人族）， love,killing,imprisonment,prison break,which did not bear the expected   fruit of fortune or being a captain.

At the age of 25 ,Herman returned to America,starting his writing career.During the following five years,he published five novels,among which was Moby Dick,but none of the works brought him any fame or sense of success.

He had to live up with his poor life,supported by regular financial help from his father in-law.Not much changed even after his father-in-law assisted him onto a post at the customhouse(海关).His self-doubt whether he should fight to write as an author disturbed Herman for the rest of his life till his death in 1899,which is suggested in his wife’s diary.And his wife described his several struggles where he fought bitterly back to his desk to pick up his pen.

Most people probably wondered who would voluntarily choose to live in a cooperative house with 14 other people. Well I would, and for me, it’s one of the best decisions I've made for myself.

The house has three floors and 15 bedrooms. It has communal spaces such as the kitchen, bathrooms, living room, and a big old dining room table, where we talk, laugh, disagree, play games, learn from each other, and most importantly break bread together.

My housemates and I share the housework and do the cook cycle, which generally means cooking dinner for the house about once every two weeks and we attend weekly house meetings where we make decisions about the operations of the house together.

What I worried most about at first was how my son might feel about the new housing situation. To my surprise, he loved it by the first visit to the house! He has never complained about this house being smaller than his dad’s. One of my housemates has two children his age, so he now has two new friends. This is important for me as a parent because I want to teach him that happiness doesn’t come from the size of your home, but from the love that is inside.

When I lived with a roommate in college, we never discussed about any agreements on quiet hours, cleaning up the communal areas and so on. Every cause of conflict during that time was due to lack of communication. On the contrary, in our house we talk about and have policies on almost everything.

Besides less cost on housing, I'm more concerned about the connection with other people that I was longing for. Cooperative living isn’t for everyone, but with increasing costs of living and decreasing connection with other people, it can definitely be a great option for more people.

For over a century, the Nashua River in Massachusetts provided power for factories, which gave jobs to thousands of people. Over the years, these paper, cotton, wood, and woolen factories had poured their waste into its waters.

By the 1960s,the Nashua River was about as polluted as any river could get. Its waters became red or green or blue with dye(染料) from paper factories lying on its banks. The smokes from this dye blackened the paint on the buildings near the river.

Then along came Marion Stoddart with a simple but overwhelming（压倒性的）idea-clean up the Nashua River. This was no one-woman campaign. Stoddart encouraged the paper factories and the business community to form partnerships to reclaim the river. She carried jars of dirty river water to local officials to demonstrate the seriousness of the problem. Stoddart talked with business leaders about economic problems. She talked with environmentalists about the long-term problems of pollution.

Stoddart knew that the State Water Pollution Control Board would have the final say on forcing the clean-up. When she spoke to the board, she insisted that the Nashua River should be made safe for swimming. They thought her goals were unrealistic.

However, the partnerships Stoddart had helped form and the volunteers who were drawn to her cause never gave up. They all realized that cleaning up the river was in everyone's best interests. By 1993, several water treatment plants had been built, and a conservation area called a "green way" had been created along the banks of the river.

Today factories are still operating along the river, but there are also fish in the river. The Nashua River welcomes boaters, naturalists, and even swimmers. None of this would have been possible without a woman of vision and a community working together.