LaShenda Williams was a woman who had been sleeping in a parking lot for a year. It was a pity that she had been battling alcohol addiction and had been spending the nights in her car at a Nashville Kroger after driving around different locations during the day. Williams was really poor, and she would lean her seat in the car all the way back so that no one would see her because she wasn’t supposed to be there.

At the end of last year, Jackie Vandal, a hiring manager at a Kroger grocery store, noticed Williams and encouraged her to attend an upcoming job fair. With some help from Vandal, Williams spent a few hours filling out the application. Once Vandal saw the message indicating she had successfully applied, Vandal hired her on the spot.

It became a great day! Williams was brimming with happiness and smiled from ear to ear. From then on,she loved her work and got excited every day to come in. She couldn’t wait to see the workers who she worked with. She couldn’t wait to see the customers. Her positive attitude had been a blessing to the staff, too.

Even Jackie Vandal thought that they were so lucky to have Williams as part of their team members. Her uplifting spirit was inspiring. She had made such a positive impact on her fellow team members, and so many customers as well.

Williams said it was easy to be enthusiastic after everything that had happened. She was sleeping in a parking lot and looking for something to eat last year.   However, now，all Williams’s colleagues there love her. No one laughs at her, and no one calls her dumb and stupid. For the first time in her life, she gets peace and happiness.

Winter is on its way. Here in the New York area, we can expect a few perfect days of cold, clear air and snow that sparkles in the sun; but the season’s dominant notes will most likely be rain, overcast skies, bone-chilling winds, and more rain.

For all of us who have cherished our walks in the park and our socially-distanced conversations, the change in the weather feels like the final offense. The pandemic continues and now we won’t even be able to get outside.

I don’t have any new solutions for the pandemic, I’m afraid, but take it from someone who grew up in northern England: Terrible weather does not mean you don’t get to socialize outdoors.

If a little thing like rain stopped British people from enjoying a day at the seaside or a hike in the hills, I might never have known the joys of the Yorkshire barbecue. It was sometimes my appointed role to hold an umbrella over the grill while my father tended to the sausages and burgers because a barbecue had been planned, and so a barbecue was going to take place.

The big secret about bad weather is that, certain dangerous storm conditions aside, it’s really bad only if you decide it’s bad. You may know the experience of being caught unprepared in heavy rain, starting to hurry toward shelter, then finally surrendering to the reality that you’ll be getting a soaking. Much of the discomfort of rain or cold temperatures arises not from the sensations themselves, but from a kind of internal struggle to avoid feeling them. The key to British enjoyment lies in not expecting your time outdoors to be especially warm or dry in the first place.

A friend of mine has treasured memories of her parents setting out a wonderful picnic spread just as the heavens opened, but deciding to let the kids go ahead and eat anyway, in a chaos of wet sandwiches and hysterical laughter. Whatever else this winter has in store, we might use it to create some similarly joyful and affection-filled memories, remembering always the words by the British writer Alfred Wainwright: “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing. ”

On May 21, 2022, Tom Turcich of New Jersey became the 10^th person to walk around the world. Over seven years, he walked 48,000 kilometers across six continents and 38 countries with his dog Savannah.

Speaking to CNN, Turcich explained (解释) that, after a friend died in an accident at the age of 17, he started to look at life differently, and decided to go on a journey around the world. It took him over eight years to save and plan before Turcich finally left his home on April 2, 2015 on his way to Panama. He had a stroller (折叠推车) to carry his hiking equipment, a sleeping bag, a laptop, a camera and a box of food.

About four months into the journey, Turcich adopted (收养) Savannah from an animal shelter in Texas. She joined him for the rest of the trip, becoming the first dog to walk around the world. The pair walked around 30-40 kilometers a day, spending most nights camping. Some parts could not be done on foot, however, such as when Turcich and Savannah took a boat from Uruguay to Antarctica. In late 2017, Turcich also had to return home to recover from an illness he got while traveling through Ireland and the UK.

Turcich and Savannah started walking again in May 2018, going through Europe, North Africa and Turkey before getting stuck in Azerbaijan for six months because of the COVID-19 pandemic. They were able to travel to Kyrgyzstan before taking a plane to Seattle. From there, he and Savannah walked back to New Jersey. Turcich said the most difficult place to walk through was “deserted” Wyoming.

Now that he’s back home, Turcich says he wants to stay in one place for a while and write a book about his trip.