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2/12/2024 (#31 this year)
Did you have a good three-day weekend? What did you do? And once you get throughthis week, you have another long vacation. You only have classes 1 and 2 on next
Monday. Then you have the rest of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off. We haveclasses on Thursday and then Friday is another public holiday. You are very lucky. You
have so much time to study for your tests! Haha. I expect you will all get 100 points!
Good luck. And Valentine’s Day is this week. Are you excited? Are you going to give andreceive a lot of chocolates? My daughter always makes me something, which is nice. Itis my 17th wedding anniversary1 on Valentine’s Day as well!
10 differences

Last week’s answer
1

Something you didn’t know about Shoes
1. People have worn coverings2 on their feet for thousands of years. We realized3 that
we could run further and faster if we protected our feet.
2. The earliest shoes discovered come from 10,000 years ago. They are bark4 sandals.
3. High heels for women were first worn by Catherine de Medici in 1550. Men alreadywore high heels because they used them for horse riding.
4. The metal holes in your shoes that your laces go through are called eyelets. Themetal pieces on the end of each lace are called aglets. They stop the lace fraying5
and make it easier to put through the eyes. They were invented in 1790 by Harvey
Kennedy. The name comes from the French “aiguillette”, which means needle.

Cobbler Goes Viral
An American cobbler has gone viral on Tik Tok, Instagram, and YouTube.
Jim McFarland is a cobbler6 in Florida. His grandfather became a cobbler in1918 and he ran a successful business. He trained his son, Jim’s dad, and heopened up a shop in the 1970s. He trained Jim to be a cobbler and Jim opened
his shop, McFarland Shoe Repair in 1986. Jim is a master craftsman7, but wewould never have heard of him if it hadn’t been for the Corona Virus
pandemic. People couldn’t leave theirhouses and his business dried up8. He
didn’t know what to do, but hisdaughter persuaded him to try
YouTube. Jim started making videos
where he repairs shoes. Because of hislevel of skill, people started to watch thevideos. Before long, he went viral.
Today, he has over 1.2 million
subscribers on TikTok. He has 650,000
on Instagram, and 180,000 on YouTube.
And all he does is fix shoes. Jim says thata lot of the comments ask him how
people can train to become a cobbler.
He says that makes him happy because
cobbling is a dying
profession9.
Not
many young peoplein schools ask theirteachers how they
can become acobbler. He alsosays it is good
because people arestartingtofixthings, rather than
throw them away.
1.wedding anniversary 結婚記念日 2.covering 被覆 3.realize 気づく 4.bark 木の皮 5.fray 擦り切れさせる 6.cobbler 靴修理屋 7.master craftsman 優れた職人 8.business dry up 仕事（お客さん）がなくなる 9.dying profession 消えゆく技

One thing we can do to help the environment

World record
When you go to the subway station, do you take the stairs or the escalator? I know I
should take the stairs, but I tend to1 use the escalator more often. So, here are someescalator world records. The world’s smallest escalator is actually in Kawasaki, Japan. It
is has only 5 steps showing at any time and it takes 8 seconds to ride. It is called thePetitcalator. (Petite+escalator). The longest escalator in the world is in a subway stationin St. Petersburg, Russia. It goes up 69 m, is 125 m long, and it has 770 steps. It takes
three minutes to ride the escalator. The longest escalator system is in Hong Kong. It is aconnected system of escalators, not just one. You step off one and you step onto thenext one. The whole system is 800 m long.

#16 Fix things
I wrote about the cobbler Jim McFarland in the news on the other side ofthis English News. He is doing something that we all need to do if we aregoing to help our planet. He is fixing3 things. We live in a throwaway society4
these days. If something is broken, we just throw it away and buy a new one.
Now, not all of that is our fault5. Over the last 20 years, companies havestopped making things that we can fix and have started making things thatgo out of date and get replaced. I cannot fix my phone if it breaks. I cannot
fix a car if it breaks. When my dad was younger, he could fix anything in acar, but these days you need computers to analyze the cars diagnostics6. Youneed to be an IT technician, not a mechanic. Things are changing. Apple’s
latest iPhone can be fixed. We may not be able to fix devices, but wecertainly can fix our clothes, bags, and shoes. There are many places that fix
things like that or remake older items into newer ones. If we use places like
that, or fix our clothes ourselves, we will be helping the environment.

Almost everything will work again if you 1.tend to～しがち 2.unplug コンセントを一回抜く 3.fix 直す 4.throwaway society
unplug it for a few minutes, including you. 使い捨て社会 5.fault せい 6.diagnostic 診断
2– Anne Lamott