522
1/22/2024 (#28 this year)
What did you do last Tuesday when the school was closed? The snow was crazy! I
cannot remember the school ever being closed because of snow. It has been closed
because of typhoons, earthquakes, a bomb threat1, the corona virus, and even floods2,
but never for snow. It was insane3. Looking out my window, I couldn’t see anything. Justwhite. Up until that point, we hadn’t had much snow at all. It is almost as though awhole month’s worth of snow fell in one day. Maybe we won’t have any more snow
until the end of the season. What do you think? I am a little worried. It seems likeclimate change is getting worse year by year.
10 differences

Last week’s answer

Something you didn’t know about Cuckoo clocks
1. Nobody knows who invented the first cuckoo clock4, or when, or why.
2. The first description5 of a cuckoo clock comes from 1629, so they must have been
invented long before that date.
3. Cuckoo clocks come from the Black Forest area of southwestern Germany.
4. When the clock strikes the hour6, the cuckoo comes out and makes a “cuckoocuckoo” sound. The wooden bird is pulled out by a series of weights7 that movewhen the hour hand of the clock reaches 12. The sound is made by a bellows8. Theweights pull the bellows, and they send a puff of air9 through some small pipes thatmake the sound of the bird. They are very clever clocks.

Cuckoo Clock Heir
Do you like cuckoo clocks? Have you ever seen one? They are usually
made of wood and they usually have a pendulum10. Most cuckoo clocks arevery ornate. They have a clock in the middle and a little door at the top. Everyhour, the clock strikes, but it makes a cuckoo sound instead of a bong. At thesame time, the door opens and a little cuckoo comes out. They are usuallybigger than normal clocks. What do you think? Would you like to have one athome? If you would, then you should get in touch with Roman and Maz
Piekarski. They own 750 cuckoo clocks of many different designs and they
display them in their museum, which they have called “Cuckooland”. The twobrothers are getting old now, Roman is 71 and Maz is 69, and they don’t haveany children. They are both unmarried and they are worried about what will
happen to Cuckooland after they are gone. They are searching for an heir11.
They want to find somebody who can look after the clocks and give guided
tours. Looking after the clocks is not easy because most of them are notbattery powered and they need to be wound12. They also need to be set so
their time is accurate. The brothers have many antiques in their collection andall of the clocks are probably worth a lot of money, but they don’t want to sell.
What do you think? Do you want to be the owner of Cuckooland?

1.bomb threat 爆弾脅迫 2.flood 洪水 3.insane おかしい 4.cuckoo clock カッコウ時計
5.description 記述 6.strike the hour 時計が正時を知らせる 7.weight 重り 8.bellows ふいご 9.puffof air 空気をひと吹き 10.pendulum 振り子 11.heir 相続人 12.wind a clock 時計のねじを幕

One thing we can do to help the environment

World record
Here is a record we could beat, if we had help from parents and brothers and sisters.
Youngstown State University in the USA has the world record for the largest gathering1of people dressed as penguins. On 28th October, 2017, 972 people came to the university
dressed as penguins. We don’t have enough students to beat that, but if you got yourparents and your brothers and sisters to join in, we could smash2 that record. I don’tknow how much a penguin costume costs, but we could make our own. Of all the animal
costumes you can get, a penguin costume must be the easiest to make. If you feel like adifferent challenge, there are many records like this. We could have the largest
gatheringofsantas,orEinsteins,orwitches,orGhandi,oranything
wewant really. The
largest gathering
ofpeopledressed like Sara
Smith might beinteresting.

The question isn’t who is going to letme; it’s who is going to stop me.
– Ann Rand

#13 Go PaperlessI am thinking that I need to start producing my English News as a digital
version3 only. I put it on the school’s homepage every week, but I print out
copies for all of the students in the English department, the students thatrequest it, and for all of the teachers. That is about 260 copies a week. Thisis edition number 522. 522x260=135,720. I have used one hundred andthirty-five thousand seven hundred and twenty pieces of paper!!!! That’s
ridiculous! 4 One tree makes (roughly5) 10,000 pieces of paper. That means,because of me, 13.5 trees have died. Wow! I am a tree killer! And then I
have to think about the ink. I don’t know how much printer ink I have used
to print my 135,720 pages of English News, but it must be a staggering6
amount. And printer ink is not very good for the environment. Pollution7 is
produced when printer ink is made and printer ink contains a lot ofchemicals8 that make it harmful9 when the paper is thrown away. I am gladthat I have thought about this. I will finish this school year with paper andthen I will go digital from 2024. That is something I can do.

1.gathering 集まり 2.smash （記録）を破る 3.digital version デジタル版 4.ridiculous ばか
ばかしい 5.roughly 大体 6.staggering 圧倒する［非常に驚かせる］ほどの 7.pollution 汚
染 8.chemicals 化学物質 9.harmful 有害な