Famous Short Story

We asked Times readers to tell us what they were thankful for this year, in fewer than 100 words — a storytelling style popularized by The Times' Tiny Love Stories. We received nearly 1,500 entries that touched on everything from large moments of gratitude, like a lifesaving drug or the birth of a child, to the joys of the mundane, like ice cream and exercise. Here are a few of the responses we received: Spaghetti Pie and laughter Halfway through a five-years-long goodbye with my father, I forgot what his laugh sounded like. After his death a few months ago, my siblings and I recovered three treasures. Gifts, really: a recipe card for Spaghetti Pie, an experimental dinner he made for us once that was as disgusting as it sounds; a photo of him dressed as a turkey, something he did most Thanksgivings just to embarrass us; and mock infomercials he'd recorded a decade before he got sick. In the video bloopers, I heard his laugh again — a breathy "pah" not unlike my own. —

Under AB 705, many colleges have eliminated prerequisites to college composition and now grant direct access to this course to all students, including ELs who graduated from a US high school. Indeed, through our scan of ESL course pathways we found about one-third of colleges where no ESL course was listed as a prerequisite to college composition. Partly in response to this change, faculty indicated that colleges are seeking ways to support ELs who go directly into college composition. These supports are discussed below. The use of assessment tests declined significantly. Colleges can use tests approved by the Chancellor's Office to assess an EL's reading comprehension, sentence skills, grammar skills, listening skills, and/or writing skills (Lowe 2022). These tests are typically multiple choice and can be completed either on paper or on a computer (see Technical Appendix B for an example). The writing assessments usually ask students to respond to a writing prompt, which is

Hui Ming Lin dedicates anywhere from six to eight hours each day to learning English. She's enrolled in an online ESL class, practices English daily with her American friends, and consumes a lot of American media — usually pop songs or family comedies, where she learns idioms and conversational American English. "I'm determined to learn English because I want to be independent, communicate or do anything with Americans and I don't rely on my kids," said Lin, who immigrated to Chicago from Taiwan over a year ago. Lin currently lives with her 27-year-old son, Kevin, who came to the U.S. as a teen and lived with his aunt in New Jersey. After high school, college and being in the workforce for several years, Kevin now speaks English fluently. As she sat next to Kevin, Lin said some of her American friends have told her: "'Oh, you have to talk with your son in English.'" Lin then looked at her son, and they both started laughing. "I spend the

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[unable to retrieve full-text content] NC Baptist: On book bans, Moms for Liberty sure has a narrow view of liberty    Charlotte Observer

S omething was missing from the encomia marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kurt Vonnegut nine days ago. There was no reference to his characteristically dystopian work Harrison Bergeron . Given that the late American novelist's own country is riven by the debate over discrimination based on race, this short story published in 1961 is strangely topical. It describes a society that has taken concerns about fairness to their logical conclusion: the 211th, 212th and 213th amendments to the US constitution mandate that no American shall be made to feel inferior to another. Vonnegut creates the terrifying character Diana Moon Glampers, who is the US handicapper-general. Her task is to decide the various impediments that must be imposed on the most "unfairly" intelligent or

John Banville, 76, grew up in Wexford. He is arguably Ireland's greatest living writer. In 1969, he began working with the Irish Press as a sub-editor, part of a career in newspapers that lasted over 30 years. In 1970, he published his first book, a collection of short stories entitled Long Lankin.  His novel The Sea won the Booker Prize in 2005. Other classic novels include Doctor Copernicus (1976), the first of The Revolutions Trilogy, and The Book of Evidence (1989). He has also published crime novels as Benjamin Black. His latest novel The Singularities is published by Knopf. Catechism of the Catholic Church  The first book that was a great influence on me – and continues to be – was the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It told us everything. Who made the world. Why did God make the world. Blah blah blah. Things like simony and the difference between concupiscence and lust and so on. Very important things for a boy of seven to know. Just William  A

Yen Press announced The Infernal Devices: The Complete Trilogy , a collection of  The Infernal Devices  graphic novel adaptation written by Cassandra Clare with art by HyeKyung Baek. The three books in the trilogy,  Clockwork Angel, Clockwork Prince,  and  Clockwork Princess , are prequels to the best-selling and wildly popular  The Mortal Instruments . Following the Yen Press tradition of beautiful deluxe repackagings,  The Infernal Devices: The Complete Trilogy  will be published as a hardcover collection with a dust jacket—a must have for fans of the prolific Cassandra Clare.  The Infernal Devices: The Complete Trilogy  is scheduled to release in August 2022. The first graphic novel in the series,  Clockwork Angel , was originally released by Yen Press in 2012, and the series remains one of the most popular YA graphic novel adaptations they have published, along with the likes of&

Nathan Tom and his son walking along the coastline in Newtok, Alaska, where the thawing permafrost, regular floods, and coastal erosion make it dangerous for them to remain in their village Vlad Sokhin/Panos Pictures/Red​ux We often think of global warming as being linear: Emit too much carbon and the planet's thermostat goes up proportionally. And, while this is generally true, the resulting climate consequences —like severe drought—don't necessarily follow that track. In other words, 10 percent more CO2 doesn't just equal 10 percent more impact. The more complex reality is that the cumulative effects of continued greenhouse gas emissions could potentially trigger what scientists refer to as climate tipping points. These are critical thresholds that, once crossed, tip a natural system into an entirely different state and lead to potential