Usually, people visit bookstores to buy books. But those who walk into Cotoha come to see its owner, Chen Bing-Hong. They bring him books with different problems. Some have lost their covers, some are missing a few pages, and some have pages that are falling out. Chen can always fix the books and make them whole again.

       Chen sees himself as a doctor. He says that books, like people, get sick and need help. In Taiwan, there are not many “doctors” like him, and most of them work for big libraries and museums. If big libraries and museums are hospitals, Chen’s bookstore is a health center. Big libraries and museums fix important old books with serious problems, and Chen helps people with books that have smaller problems. However, the smaller size of the problems doesn’t mean Chen’s job is less important. 

        Chen gave an example of a science book he once worked on. It was very old and half of its cover was lost. Its owner still wanted to keep it because it was a gift from a teacher who helped him follow his dream of studying science. When he got his book back, he was very surprised at the new-old book. He felt he was brought back to the days with his teacher. Seeing the owner’s smile made Chen happy, because smiles like that are what his magic is for.

       If you want to learn about bringing back extinct animals, reading John Smith’s Back from the Dead is a good start. But I have to say I can’t agree with everything he says.

      From his book, I can see Smith is an advocate of bringing extinct animals back. He says we have lost many animals because we made their living spaces too dirty. He also thinks we must do everything we can to bring them back. However, I don’t know how much time and money we would need to make the world a better place for them, and honestly no one knows if they could actually come back.

       Smith also says that bringing back extinct animals may be good for us. He talks about an extinct frog that grew tadpoles in its stomach. Some women’s babies die before they are born, and Smith believes bringing back the frog may be an answer to the problem. According to him, by studying how the tadpoles grow inside the frog’s stomach, we might be able to find new ways to help these women successfully keep their babies. But I don’t think things are as easy as Smith thinks. We have spent ten years and millions of dollars on this kind of frog, but all we have got are only a few dead frog eggs. If we can’t see a real frog, how can we be sure women will get the help they need?

       Dr. Solomon Wang from the Animal Saving Office says the study of bringing back extinct animals is “throwing good money after bad.” And he’s right. A lot of hard work has been put into this expensive dream, but we haven’t seen anything come out of it. So should we still keep going down this road?

 

 A HISTORY LESSON ON THE PANDEMIC     2020.10.29 

       Since the Covid-19 pandemic started, people have begun “social distancing”— keeping a safe space between you and anyone you don’t live with. Though it has been a very popular topic this year, social distancing__40__ . In fact, it was widely used in the U.S. in the flu pandemic in 1918. But how well did it work? The Americans’ experience can tell us whether it really saved lives.

       From the picture, we can see that__41__ started social distancing earlier than the other three cities. This helped the city keep the number of deaths down. Besides taking early action, keeping the action long enough was also important in fighting the pandemic. The picture shows that Portland and Denver did well in the first few weeks. However, both cities__42__ , and the numbers of deaths climbed again.

       But there was one thing Portland did right. The city used several ways of social distancing at the same time to deal with the pandemic.__43__ , sick people were kept away from healthy ones; schools were closed; public activities were not allowed. All these were useful in keeping people safe.

       The lessons of the 1918 pandemic bring us hope. While we are still learning to fight Covid-19, social distancing may be the best way to get us through the dark days, at least for now.