More People Are Leaving the Rat Race for the Simple Life Time is more precious than money for an increasing number of people who are choosing to live more with less--and liking it Kay and Charles Giddens, two lawyers, sold their home to start a B&B hotel.Four years later, the couple dishes out banana pancake breakfast, cleans toilets and serves homemade chocolate chip cookies to guests in a B&B hotel surrounded by trees on a hill known for colorful sunsets. "Do I miss the freeways? Do I miss the traffic? Do I miss the stress? No," says Ms.Giddens, "This is a phenomenon that's fairly widespread. A lot of people are reevaluating their lives and figuring out what they want to do.If their base is being damaged, what's the payoff?" Simple living ranges from cutting down on weeknight activities to sharing housing, living closer to work, avoiding shopping malls, borrowing books from the library instead of buying them, and taking a cut in pay to work at a more pleasurable job. Vicki Robin, a writer, lives on a budget equal to a fifth of what she used to make."You become conscious about where your money is going and how valuable it is," Ms.Robin says, "You tend not to use things up.You cook at home rather than eat out..." Janet Luhrs, a lawyer, quit her job after giving birth and leaving her daughter with a nanny for two weeks."It was not the way I wanted to raise my kids," she says, "Simplicity is not just about saving money; it's about me sitting down every night with my kids to a candlelit dinner with classical music." Mrs.Luhrs now edits a magazine,Simple Living, which publishes tips on how to buy recycled furniture and shoes, organize potluck dinners instead of expensive receptions, and generally how to consume less. "It's not about poverty," Mrs.Luhrs explains, "It's about conscious living and creating the life you want.The less stuff you buy, the less money goes out of the door, and the less money you have to earn." Simple living includes _ . A) building a home library B) living in the countryside C) enjoying a colorful night life D) sharing housing with others
D
Playing basketball isn't a sport for women.That's what Jewell Chapman's high school headmaster told her in 1961 when he forbade the girls to play basketball."We were very sad,"said Chapman,a player for her high school team of Des Moines. Nearly 50 years later,Chapman is back on the basketball playground.She is 62 years old and plays for the Hot Pink Grannies,joining about 10 other women on a team whose uniforms are black trousers and hot pink socks.They play in the Iowa Granny Basketball League. It is one of the twelve of basketball leagues for women over 50 that have spread up across the country.For some, it's an opportunity to exercise and socialize;for others,it's a once-refused chance to compete."You see more and more senior women's teams taking part in state and national competitions,"said Michael Rogers,a professor in sports studies at Wichita State University."In the future it will be a common thing to have leagues like this." Yearly researches by the National Sporting Goods Association show the number of women of 55 and older who play basketball at least 50 times a year has grown from 16,000 in 1995 to nearly 131,000 ten years later. The women on the Hot Pink Grannies are good-natured but they are competitive when game time comes."I think I'm tough,"says Hot Pink Granny Colleen Pulliam, 69, showing her biceps in a game against the Strutters, known for their bright yellow socks. Granny Basketball Leagues and similar groups are scattered through much of the country, including California,Connecticut, Louisiana,New Mexico,North Carolina,Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. This passage mainly tells us about_. A) American Granny Basketball Leagues B) American women basketball teams C) Chapman and her team D) more old women's joining basketball teams in prefix = st1 /America
D
Q: People have been painting pictures for at least 30,000 years. The earliest pictures were painted by people who hunted animals. They used to paint pictures of the animals they wanted to catch and kill. Pictures of this kind have been found on the walls of caves in France and Spain. No one knows why they were painted there. Perhaps the painters thought that their pictures would help them to catch these animals. Or perhaps human beings have always wanted to tell stories according to pictures. About 5,000 years ago, the Egyptians and other people in the Near East began to use pictures as kind of writing. They drew simple pictures or signs to represent things and ideas, and also to represent the sounds of their language. The signs these people used became a kind of alphabet. The Egyptians used to record information and to tell stories by putting picture writing and pictures together. When an important person died, scenes and stories from his life were painted and carved on the walls of the place where he was buried. Some of these pictures are like modern comic strip stories. It has been said that Egypt is the home of the comic strip. But, for the Egyptians, pictures still had magic power. So they did not try to make their way of writing simple. The ordinary people could not understand it. By the year 1,000 BC, people who lived in the area around the Mediterranean Sea had developed a simpler system of writing. The signs they used were very easy to write, and there were fewer of them than in the Egyptian system. This was because each sign, or letter, represented only one sound in their language. The Greeks developed this system and formed the letters of the Greek alphabet. The Romans copied the idea, and the Roman alphabet is now used all over the world. These days, we can write down a story, or record information, without using pictures. But we still need pictures of all kinds: drawing, photographs, signs and diagrams. We find them everywhere: in books and newspapers, in the street, and on the walls of the places... The Greek alphabet was simpler than the Egyptian system for all the following reasons EXCEPT that _ . A) the former was easy to write B) there were fewer signs in the former C) the former was easy to pronounce D) each sign stood for only one sound
A: C
One of the major problems in our economy is inflation , a situation in which prices are going up faster than salary . Thus, a person has to work more hours to pay for the same thing. For example, let's say that this year a loaf of bread costs $1.00 and average salary in the United Sates is $10.00 per hour. That means a person could earn enough money to buy a loaf of bread in one-tenth of an hour, or six minutes. Then, halfway through the year, the price of the bread goes up to $1.25, while salary stay the same. That means that a person now has to work one-eighth of an hour--seven and a half minutes to buy the same loaf of bread. Now let's say that at the end of the year, salary go up to $11.00 per hour, but the price of bread goes up to $1.50. Now a person has to work more than one-seventh of an hour--over eight minutes--to buy loaves of bread, employees will have less money left over to buy other things, Inflation means that the same money buys fewer things and everybody's standard of living goes down, even if salaries are going up. Some kinds of inflation are worse than others. Moderate inflation does not distort relative prices or incomes seriously. Galloping inflation happens rapidly, say at a rate of 100percent or more within a year. And then there's hyperinflation--inflation so serious that people try to get rid of their currency before prices rise further and make the money worthless. Times of hyperinflation are usually characterized by social and political disorder. Which of the following belongs to the type of moderate inflation? A) People try to get rid of their currency B) Inflation occurs at a rate of 100percent in a year C) Incomes and relative prices rise slightly D) There is social and political disorder
C