Because I married a photographer, once we had children, our holiday cards of

游客2024-10-09  5

问题     Because I married a photographer, once we had children, our holiday cards of course became vehicles for their cuteness and his creativity. In 2000, baby number one’s chubby smiling face in a Santa hat was the cover image. In 2004, our now-four faces were ornaments on a tree. By 2006, we wore stocking caps and lay down in bed together with a thought bubble over our sleeping heads filled with cherries. Our best card was our last, in 2010. We dressed in extravagant holiday finery, gowns, jackets and bow-ties. We titled it: " Don We Now Our Gay Apparel. "
    That was two years ago. We mailed it out in envelopes, signed, sealed and delivered by the US Postal Service and its analogues in distant lands. Good cheer and laughs in mailboxes all around! It’s been downhill ever since. By last year, we’d let our mailing list go to seed. We communicated with most of our friends online and no longer had street addresses for them.
    I didn’t know it then but my world, my social world, was changing. Today, my 1, 500 Facebook friends—1, 300 of whom I have never actually met—have already seen the best of the year’s haul of pictures of my kids. They also know where I’ve gone on vacation and sometimes, what I cooked for dinner or what I thought of a movie on a Saturday night in May. There’s little point to writing a Christmas update now, with boasts about grades and athletic skill, hospitalizations and holidays, and the dog’s accidents, when we have already posted these events and so much more of our trifles all year long. The urge to share has already been well satisfied.
    Likewise, as receivers, we already have real-time windows into the lives of people thousands of miles away. We already know exactly how they’ve fared in the past year, much more than could possibly be conveyed by any single Christmas card. If a child or grandchild has been born to a former colleague or high school friend living across the continent, not only did I see it within hours on Shutterfly or Instagram or Facebook, I might have seen him or her take his or her first steps on YouTube.
    Still, the demise of the Christmas photo card saddens me. It predicts the end of the US Postal Service. It signals the day is near when writing on paper is non-existent. Finally, it is part of a decline of a certain quality of communication, one that involved delay and anticipation, forethought and reflection. Opening these cards, the satisfaction wasn’t just in the Peace on Earth greeting, but in the recognition that a distant friend or relative you hadn’t heard from in a year was still thinking about you, and maybe sharing news about major events of the past 12 months.
    We know each other so well now, perhaps too well. And yet, all the time logged into our computers has also taken us away from our nearest and dearest. Who can say they spent as much time looking into the eyes of family, friends and neighbors as into the colorful phone or laptop screen last year? This season, instead of sending cards, my winter holiday greeting at the end of 2012 will be this; after posting the obligatory seasonal wishes online on Christmas Eve, I will be clicking off the electronic messaging services, and trying to connect in person with my friends, neighbors and family members for a change. [br] What does the phrase "go to seed" mean in Paragraph 2?

选项 A、Being used.
B、Out of use.
C、Develop.
D、Available.

答案 B

解析 语义题、由“go to seed”定位到文章第二段第五句,该段第四句表明从两年前贺卡就一直在走下坡路了,而第六句也提到我们和大部分朋友在线交流,也不再有他们的街道地址了,由此可知,第五句是指我们不再使用邮寄名单,所以选[B]”不再使用”。
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