Volunteering is one of the major wealth of any American city or town. People get together to help others less fortunate than themselves, or victims of a natural or man-made disaster. Since the start of our country, this has been one of the noticeable features of our society.

Beginning in the Colonial Period and continuing down to today, our country’s history is full of examples of people helping each other. Requiring high school students to take part in voluntary community service projects introduces them to this important part of our society. And while many students complain about this program at first, a large number of them find great individual satisfaction when they look back at the things they achieved.

Our son, who graduated in 2005, found that he enjoyed the time he spent with primary school students helping them with their reading. In some ways, he became a hero to the young boys and girls he was spending time with, simply because he was a high school student and took the time to get to know them. By the end of his first year in the program he was looking forward to the next school year and a new group of kids. It was particularly satisfying when a child he had helped saw him some place in the community and remembered him.

Having high school students take part in required community service activities helps give them an important sense of belonging to the adult world. It also gives them first-hand experience in activities and situations they might not otherwise experience. And it shows them that they can make a valuable contribution towards the society with just a little effort and a few hours of their time.

One of the important subjects in contemporary poetry is identity — with an open-ended explanation of that word Poets, young and old are exploring what identity is, using their own lives as the background.

British poet Phoebe Power, in her first collection of poems, Shrines of Upper Austria, explores a different aspect of identity: a personal understanding of national identity the collection received the forward prize for Best First Collection and was on the final list for the t.s. Eliot Prize.

Power was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne and raised in Cumbria. She has taken part in a number of performance art and video art projects. She received a Northern Writers’ Award in 2014 and an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2012. Now she lives in York in northern England.

Power’s starting point is her grandmother. She came to England from Austria as a new bride (新娘) married to a British soldier in 1946, the first year after the end of World War Ⅱ. Imagine the reactions of her British neighbors, and her new British family. Imagine what she had left behind. The grandmother’s experiences influenced Power greatly.

In Shrines of Upper Austria, we walk with the poet to see her grandmother’s life before Britain. We can learn about the small town where she lived and where “many of the shopkeepers were Jews”, the bodies of water, and buildings that existed when her grandmother lived there power also added some prose (散文) to the book, which tells us some stories of her grandmother’s early life. For example, it tells the stories about how her grandmother was found as a baby and given to a farmer when she was two.

The poems in the collection are pieces of a life. We can no more walk in our grandparents’ shoes than they can walk in ours. However, we can study old family photographs. We can see pieces of their lives — where they lived perhaps; where they played as children; what lakes or rivers they swam in. Like Power, we are left with pieces. These pieces don’t all make sense, but collectively they show a life.

The commonly held view is that people arrived in North America from Asia via a land bridge once connecting the two continents at the end of the Ice Age around 13,000 to 16,000 years ago. But recent discoveries have suggested humans might have been there earlier. Researchers studying fossilized human footprints in New Mexico say that humans were there at least 23,000 years ago.

Matthew Bennett, a specialist in ancient footprints and author of a study on the new findings published in Science, and his colleagues studied 61 footprints by radiocarbon(放射性碳) dating layers of aquatic (水生的) plant seeds preserved above and below the footprints and accurately dated they were made 21,000 to 23,000 years ago. The people who made the footprints were living there in the last Ice Age when two massive ice sheets covering the continent and cold temperatures would have made a journey between Asia and Alaska impossible, indicating humans must have been there much earlier than previously thought.

According to their analysis of the footprints, they were likely made in soft ground at the edge of a wetland by children who were sent to do the work like fetching and catching by adults. Wind probably blew dust over the surface, accumulating in the prints, thus, leaving footprints that previously recorded.

Their finding also makes it possible to explore the older and more controversial sites. One such site is Chiquihuite Cave in central Mexico, where stone tools dating back to 30,000 years ago have been found.

David Rachal, an experienced geoarchaeologist (地质考古学家) thought the footprint dates provided by Bennett and his team looked extremely solid, with seeds providing very reliable and precise ages through radiocarbon dating. “You could not ask for a better setup,” said Rachal. However, he was puzzled that no artifacts, such as stone tools, had been found in the area. “We need to be cautious and more research needs to be done.” Rachal said.