A Music Camp Where Grown-Ups Learn the Art of Bluegrass

mp3

HOST:

Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC, in VOA Special English.

(MUSIC)

I'm Doug Johnson. On our show this week:

We answer a question about Uncle Sam …

Play some bluegrass music …

And report about the Labor Day holiday.

Labor Day

Monday, September fourth is Labor Day in the United States. In many other countries, Labor Day is celebrated in May. Mario Ritter explains.

MARIO RITTER:

The first day in May is the day to honor workers in almost every industrial country except the United States and Canada. May first has also been the traditional day to celebrate spring since ancient times.

The first link between honoring workers and the ancient May Day celebration was made in eighteen thirty-three. The British social reformer Robert Owen chose that day for the start of a period of joy and hope for the world.

In eighteen eighty-nine, the first workers convention in Paris, France declared a great international workers demonstration on May first. Since then, the International Labor Day has been observed on the first of May.

The United States, however, chose another day for its labor celebration. New York labor leader Peter McGuire is said to have suggested the first Monday in September as a holiday to honor labor. He proposed public parades to show the strength of labor organizations. And he urged people to end the day with outdoor parties.

The first American Labor Day celebration was held in New York City on September fifth, eighteen eighty-two. About ten thousand workers marched through the streets. Then everyone went to a nearby park to eat a meal, and hear speeches and music. The idea quickly spread throughout the country. Congress approved a bill declaring Labor Day a national holiday in eighteen ninety-four.

For many years, the first Monday in September was a day when American workers demonstrated for better working conditions and pay. Over the years, however, the conditions of American workers improved. Such demonstrations are no longer common.

Now, for most Americans, Labor Day weekend is a day off from work. It is a time to celebrate the last warm days of summer. Many Americans celebrate the holiday by inviting their family and friends to a cookout or barbecue -- a meal cooked and eaten outside. You can hear more about this tradition of barbecues Monday on the Special English program This Is America.

Uncle Sam

HOST:

Our VOA listener question this week comes from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Gilberto Moretti asks where the words “Uncle Sam,” meaning the United States, came from.

History experts are not really sure where this idea of Uncle Sam as a symbol of the United States came from. The Library of Congress says one idea is that Uncle Sam was named after Samuel Wilson.

During the War of Eighteen Twelve, the United States was fighting British troops. Samuel Wilson was a businessman from Troy, New York. He supplied meat to soldiers in the United States Army. The meat was in large wooden containers called barrels.

The barrels had letters that said “U.S.,” short for United States. When asked what the letters stood for, one of Sam Wilson’s workers said they stood for Uncle Sam Wilson.

The suggestion that the meat shipments came from “Uncle Sam” led to the idea that Uncle Sam represented the federal government. In nineteen sixty-one, Congress passed a resolution that recognized Samuel Wilson as the idea for the symbol of Uncle Sam.

Over the years, pictures of Uncle Sam were used to represent the United States. Political cartoonists created Uncle Sam’s traditional appearance. Thomas Nast was one of these political cartoonists. He produced many of the earliest cartoons of Uncle Sam in the eighteen sixties.

The most famous picture of Uncle Sam was created in nineteen seventeen during World War One. James Montgomery Flagg painted the picture and used a version of his own face for Uncle Sam. He is shown as an old, white-haired man with a white beard. He wears red, white and blue clothing and a high hat with stars on it. He looks very serious and is pointing his finger straight out.

The poster was designed to urge young American men to join the Army. Millions of copies of the poster were printed during World War One. Because of its popularity, the poster was used again during World War Two in the nineteen forties. Below Uncle Sam’s picture are the words: “I Want You for U.S. Army.”

Bluegrass Camp

Many American children attended camps this summer. While they were at camp, their parents enjoyed some peace and quiet. The RockyGrass Bluegrass Academy, however, is a very different kind of camp. Most people who attend it are not children who want to play in nature, but adults who want to play bluegrass music. Faith Lapidus has more.

(MUSIC)

FAITH LAPIDUS:

That was “Black Mountain Rag” by Roy Acuff and his Smoky Mountain Boys. Musicians from the southeastern Appalachia area of America began to play a kind of music they called “bluegrass” in the nineteen forties. Musicians use many instruments with strings to play bluegrass. These include the fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin and bass.

Bill Monroe is considered to be the “father of bluegrass music.” Monroe and his band, the Bluegrass Boys, were the first to become popular playing this kind of music. Here is their song “Can You Hear Me Callin.”

(MUSIC)

The RockyGrass Bluegrass Festival started in nineteen seventy-three in the

Bluegrass lovers gather for the RockyGrass Festival

western state of Colorado. Since then, many of America’s best bluegrass musicians travel to Colorado each year to play for huge crowds.

In nineteen ninety-four, a man named Craig Ferguson decided that having a festival every year was not enough. He did not want people just to listen to bluegrass music. He wanted people to come together to learn how to play bluegrass music. So Mister Ferguson started the RockyGrass Bluegrass Academy.

The academy meets every summer for four days. Adults and families come to Lyons, Colorado to practice their music skills with expert teachers. Some professional bluegrass musicians come to learn how to play different instruments.

People who come to this grown-up summer camp say it is very peaceful. They often play bluegrass music next to the Saint Vrain River. At the end of the camp, everyone stands in the river to sing and play their instruments together. People say that playing music this way makes them feel very happy. We leave you now with another bluegrass song, “Big Country” by Edgar Meyer with Bela Fleck and Mike Marshall.

(MUSIC)

HOST:

I'm Doug Johnson. I hope you enjoyed our program today.

Our show was written by Sarah Randle and Nancy Steinbach. Mario Ritter was our producer. To read the text of this program and download audio, go to our Web site, voaspecialenglish.com.

Send your questions about American life to mosaic@voanews.com. Please include your full name and mailing address. Or write to American Mosaic, VOA Special English, Washington, D.C., two-zero-two-three-seven, U.S.A.

Join us again next week for AMERICAN MOSAIC, VOA’s radio magazine in Special English.

Read more...

Importance of New Findings About Charter Schools Argued

mp3

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

A new school year is beginning in the United States -- and with it comes new debate about charter schools. These are publicly financed but privately operated schools. Charter schools can be found in most of the fifty states and Washington, D.C.

First-grade students at a New York charter school

The Department of Education says more than one million students attend charter schools. That compares to almost fifty million in traditional public schools.

A charter school might be fully independent or connected to the local school system. It might be operated by a non-profit group or a profit-making company.

In any case, charter schools do not have to follow all of the same rules as traditional public schools. They have greater freedom to decide what to teach and how to teach.

Class sizes may be smaller in charter schools, but the teachers often have less power through unions than in traditional schools.

The Bush administration supports charter schools as a choice for parents whose local schools are bad. But some education officials, parent groups and unions argue that the money spent on charter schools could help traditional schools improve.

Critics say studies so far have not shown enough gains for charter schools to justify the possible loss of resources from traditional schools. They say a study released last week by the Education Department only strengthened their arguments. Supporters of charter schools, however, found much to criticize in the study.

The study used test scores from the two thousand three National Assessment of Educational Progress. The researchers compared the scores of fourth grade students in charter schools with those in traditional public schools.

The traditional schools had an average score five points higher in reading and almost six points higher in mathematics than the charter schools.

But the study showed that charter schools connected with a public school system performed about the same as traditional schools. Fully independent charter schools had lower scores by comparison.

Supporters of charter schools say the results show nothing about student progress over time or about individual schools. And they say charter school students may not do well on tests because they came from terrible traditional schools.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. You can read and listen to archives of our reports at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Steve Ember.

Read more...

1933: President Roosevelt's First 100 Days Give People Hope

mp3

VOICE ONE:

THE MAKING OF A NATION -- a program in Special English by the Voice of America.

(MUSIC)

The inauguration speech of President Franklin Roosevelt in March, nineteen thirty-three, gave hope to millions of Americans. The new president promised to fight the terrible economic crisis, the Great Depression.

Roosevelt kept his promise. His administration launched into action even before the inauguration ceremonies were finished. As Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, watched the traditional inauguration parade, his assistants began working.

The lights of Washington's federal office buildings burned late that night. And not just on inauguration night, but the next night and the next night, too. The nation was in crisis. There was much work to do.

President Roosevelt signing legislation into law

VOICE TWO:

The first three months of Franklin Roosevelt's administration were an exciting time. Roosevelt led the Congress to pass more important legislation during this short period than most presidents pass during their entire term. These three months are remembered today as "The Hundred Days."

Sunday, March fifth, was the day after the inauguration.

Roosevelt told Congress to begin a special meeting on Thursday. And he ordered all the nation's banks to close until the economy improved. Roosevelt also banned the export of gold.

Congress met on Thursday, as Roosevelt had asked. It passed everything that Roosevelt wanted. Both the House and Senate approved Roosevelt's strong new banking laws in less than eight hours. Roosevelt signed the bills into law the same day.

VOICE ONE:

The next day, Friday, Roosevelt called on Congress to cut federal spending. Once again, Congress met and approved Roosevelt's request immediately.

Two nights later, Roosevelt spoke to the nation in a radio speech. His warm, powerful voice traveled to millions of homes. He gave listeners hope that they could once again trust their banks and political leaders. On Monday, Roosevelt called on Congress to pass laws making it legal to drink wine or beer. And once again, Congress agreed.

Roosevelt's success in passing these important and difficult laws excited the nation. People across the country watched in wonder as the new president fought and won battle after battle.

VOICE TWO:

Washington was filled with activity. The air was full of energy, like a country sky during an electric storm. People from around the country rushed to the capital to urge the administration to support their ideas.

Bankers came by the thousands to win favorable legislation. Experts of all kinds offered new ideas on how to rescue the economy. Ambassadors came from Britain, France, Brazil, Chile, China, and many other countries to speak with Roosevelt on economic and diplomatic issues. And members of the Democratic Party arrived by the thousands to seek jobs in the new administration.

Americans watched closely what was happening in Washington. And they liked what they saw. They had voted for action. Now, Roosevelt was giving them action.

VOICE ONE:

One of the most important areas of action for the new administration was agriculture. American farmers had been hurt more than any other group by the economic depression. The average income of American farmers had dropped in three years from one hundred sixty-two dollars a year to just forty-eight dollars. Farm prices had fallen fifty-five percent. The buying power of the average farmer had dropped by more than half.

Many farmers could not even earn enough money to pay for their tools and seeds.

The main cause of the farmers' problem was that they produced too much. There was too much grain, too much meat, too much cotton. As a result, prices stayed low. The situation was good for people in cities who bought farm products. But it was a disaster for the farmers themselves.

VOICE TWO:

Roosevelt attacked the problem by limiting production. His administration put a new tax on grain products, increasing their price and reducing demand. The administration paid cotton farmers to destroy some of their crops. And it bought and killed five million pigs to reduce the amount of meat on the market.

It was a strange situation. Some Americans had trouble understanding the economic reason why food had to be destroyed so people could have enough to eat. But more officials agreed that this was the only way to limit supply, raise prices, and save farmers.

The plan worked. Production fell rapidly. Hot weather and bad harvests in nineteen thirty-three and nineteen thirty-four reduced the amount of grain even more. As a result, prices rose. Farm income increased fifty percent in four years.

VOICE ONE:

The administration also attacked the problem of falling industrial production.

At the time of Roosevelt's inauguration, American industry was producing less than half the goods that it had just four years before. Business owners reacted by cutting costs: lowering wages and reducing the number of workers. This only reduced the number of people with enough money to buy goods. And so production went down further and further.

The administration created a national recovery administration to allow companies to cooperate to increase production. Business owners agreed to follow certain rules, such as limiting the number of hours people could work. They also agreed to raise wages and to stop hiring children. They agreed to improve working conditions and to cooperate with labor unions.

At the same time, Roosevelt created a public works administration to provide jobs to unemployed workers. The federal government put people to work building dams, bridges, water systems, and other major projects.

VOICE TWO:

On money policy, Roosevelt and the Congress decided that the dollar should no longer be tied to the price of gold. They passed a home owner's bill that helped many Americans borrow new money to protect their homes. And a bank insurance bill guaranteed the safety of money that Americans placed in banks, greatly increasing public faith in the banks.

Roosevelt and the Congress created a new civilian conservation corps to put young men to work in rural areas to protect the nation's natural resources. These young men planted trees, improved parks, and protected natural water supplies. They also worked with farmers to develop crops and farming methods to protect soil from wind and rain.

VOICE ONE:

One of Roosevelt's most creative projects was a plan to improve the area around the state of Tennessee in the southeastern part of the country. The Tennessee River Valley area was very poor. Forests were thin, floods common, and income low. Few farms had electricity.

Roosevelt and Congress decided to attack all these problems with a single project. The new Tennessee Valley Administration (authority) built dams, cleared rivers, expanded forests, and provided electricity. It succeeded in helping farmers throughout the area, creating new life and hope.

VOICE TWO:

"The Hundred Days" -- the first three months of the Roosevelt administration -- were a great success. One reporter for the New York Times newspaper observed that the change from President Hoover to President Roosevelt was like a man moving from a slow horse to an airplane. Suddenly, the nation was moving again. There was action everywhere.

Newsman Frederick Allen described the situation this way:

"The difference between Roosevelt's program and the Hoover program was sharp," Allen wrote. "Roosevelt's was not a program of defense, but of attack. In most of the laws, there was a new push for the good of the common man. There was a new effort to build wealth from the bottom up, rather than from the top down." Said Allen: "there was a new willingness to expand the limits of government."

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

You have been listening to the Special English program THE MAKING OF A NATION. Your reporters were Harry Monroe and Rich Kleinfeldt. Our program was written by David Jarmul.

Read more...

'Houston, We’ve Had a Problem Here': The Survival of Apollo 13

mp3

ANNOUNCER:

EXPLORATIONS -- a program in Special English by the Voice of America.

(MUSIC)

American astronauts in Apollo Eleven landed on the moon July twentieth, nineteen sixty-nine. A second landing was made four months later. Both flights were almost perfect. Everything worked as planned. Everyone expected the third moon-landing flight, Apollo Thirteen, would go as well as the first two. But it did not.

Apollo 13's damaged service module, as seen from the command module, after an oxygen tank exploded

Today, Shirley Griffith and Sarah Long tell you the story of Apollo Thirteen -- the flight that almost did not come home.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Apollo Thirteen roared into space on Thursday, April eleventh, nineteen seventy. The time was thirteen-thirteen, one-thirteen p.m. local time.

Navy Captain James Lovell was commander of Apollo Thirteen. He had flown on Apollo Eight, the first flight to orbit the moon.

The two other crew members were civilians -- John Swigert and Fred Haise. Apollo Thirteen was their first space flight.

VOICE TWO:

The Apollo Thirteen spacecraft was like the earlier Apollos. It had three major parts. One was the command module. The astronauts would ride to the moon in the command module and then ride back to Earth in it. It was the only part of the spacecraft that could survive the fiery return through the Earth's atmosphere.

The lunar module was the second part. It would carry two of the astronauts to the moon's surface. It would later launch them from the moon to rejoin the command module.

The third part of the Apollo spacecraft was the service module. It had a rocket engine that the astronauts fired to begin circling the moon. They fired it again to break out of moon orbit for the return flight to Earth. The service module carried tanks of oxygen for the flight, and the fuel cells that produced electricity and water the astronauts needed to survive.

VOICE ONE:

There was what seemed to be a minor problem during the ground tests before launch. Two large tanks in the service module held liquid oxygen. The oxygen was the fuel that provided water and electricity for the command module. One of the oxygen tanks failed to empty normally during the ground test. Engineers had to boil off the remaining oxygen by turning on a heater in the tank.

Commander Lovell said later he should have demanded the oxygen tank be replaced. But it seemed to be fixed. So no change was made.

VOICE TWO:

After launch, Apollo Thirteen sailed smoothly through space for two days. Controllers on the ground joked that the flight had gone so well they did not have enough to do.

That changed a few hours later. The first sign of trouble was a tiny burst of light in the western sky over the United States. It looked like a far-away star had exploded.

VOICE ONE:

Near the space center in Houston, Texas, some amateur star-watchers were trying to see the Apollo spacecraft through telescopes. One of the group had fixed a telescope to a television set so that objects seen by the telescope appeared on the television screen.

The spacecraft was too far away to be seen. But suddenly, a bright spot appeared on the television screen. Over the next ten minutes it grew into a white circle.

The observers on the ground had no reason to believe the white spot they saw was made by the spacecraft. They thought it was a problem with the television. So they went home to bed.

VOICE TWO:

It was not a problem with their television. It was a serious problem with Apollo Thirteen.

It happened a few minutes after the three astronauts completed a television broadcast to Earth. The astronauts heard a loud noise. The spacecraft shook. Warning lights came on. Swigert called to Mission Control, "Houston, we've had a problem here."

The number two oxygen tank in the service module had exploded. The liquid oxygen escaped into space. It formed a huge gas ball that expanded rapidly. Sunlight made it glow. Within ten minutes, it was almost eighty kilometers across. Then it slowly disappeared. The cloud was the white spot the observers in Houston had seen on their television.

VOICE ONE:

The loss of one oxygen tank should not have been a major problem. Apollo had two oxygen tanks. So, if one failed, the other could be used. But the astronauts soon learned that the explosion had caused the other oxygen tank to leak.

The astronauts were three hundred twenty thousand kilometers from Earth with little oxygen, electricity and water. Their situation was extremely serious. No one knew if they could get the spacecraft back to Earth, or if they could survive long enough to return.

VOICE TWO:

The astronauts and the flight control center quickly decided that the lunar module could be their lifeboat. It carried oxygen, water, electricity and food for two men for two days on the moon's surface.

But there were three astronauts. And the trip back to Earth would take four days. The men greatly reduced their use of water, food and heat. And they turned off all the electrical devices they could.

Back on Earth, space scientists and engineers worked around the clock to design and test new ideas to help the astronauts survive.

VOICE ONE:

Getting enough good air to breathe became the most serious problem. The carbon dioxide the astronauts breathed out was poisoning the air. The lunar module had a few devices for removing carbon dioxide. But there were not enough to remove all the carbon dioxide they created.

Engineers on the ground designed a way the astronauts could connect air-cleaning devices from the module to the air system in the lunar module. The astronauts made the connector from a plastic bag, cardboard and tape. It worked. Carbon dioxide was no longer a problem.

VOICE TWO:

Now the problem was how to get the astronauts back to Earth as quickly and safely as possible.

They were more than two-thirds of the way to the moon on a flight path that would take them to a moon landing. They needed to change their flight path to take them around the moon and back toward Earth. They had to do this by firing the lunar module rocket engine for just the right amount of time. And they

had to make this move without the equipment in the command module that kept the spacecraft on its flight path.

Five hours after the explosion, flight controllers advised firing the rocket for thirty-five seconds. This sent the spacecraft around the moon instead of down to it. Two hours after Apollo Thirteen went around the moon, the astronauts fired the rocket for five minutes. This speeded up the spacecraft to reach Earth nine hours sooner.

VOICE ONE:

The lunar module was extremely uncomfortable. The astronauts had very little to drink and eat. But the cold was the worst part of the return trip. The temperature inside the lunar module was only a few degrees above freezing. It was too cold for them to sleep much.

They used the electrical power in the lunar module to add electricity to the batteries of the command module. They would need the electrical power for their landing.

VOICE TWO:

The crew moved back to the command module a few hours before landing. They turned on the necessary equipment and broke away from the damaged service module. As the service module moved away, they saw for the first time the damage done by the exploding oxygen tank. Equipment was hanging from a huge hole in the side of the module.

One hour before landing, Lovell, Swigert and Haise said thanks and goodbye to their lifeboat, the lunar module. They separated from it and sent it flying away from them.

VOICE ONE:

Now, the command module of Apollo Thirteen headed alone toward Earth. It fell through the atmosphere. Its parachutes opened, slowing its fall toward the Pacific Ocean, near Samoa.

A helicopter recovers the Apollo 13 crew after splashdown

Ships and planes were waiting in the landing area. And thousands of millions of people around the world were watching the live television broadcast of the landing. People everywhere cheered as the cameras found the spacecraft floating downward beneath its three parachutes. They watched as it dropped softly into the water.

The Apollo Thirteen astronauts were safely home.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

NASA officials celebrate the return of Apollo 13

This Special English program was written by Marilyn Rice Christiano and directed by Paul Thompson. Your narrators were Shirley Griffith and Sarah Long. This is Steve Ember. Join us again next week for another EXPLORATIONS program on the Voice of America when we finish the story of the Apollo moon landing program.

Read more...

Scientists Develop Stem Cells Without Loss of Embryos

This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

Researchers say they have found a way to produce stem cells from human embryos without harm to the embryo.

Image from Advanced Cell Technology shows a single cell being removed from a human embryo

The technology uses a single cell taken from an eight-cell embryo known as a blastocyst. The researchers say that from among the cells they removed, they developed two stem cell lines that were genetically normal.

Company scientists at Advanced Cell Technology in Worchester, Massachusetts, did the experiment.

Nature magazine published the study online last week.

Current technology uses cells from blastocysts that are more developed. But the process destroys the ability of the embryo to continue to grow.

Embryonic stem cells are able to develop into all of the different kinds of cells in the body. Many scientists believe embryonic stem cells could be used to develop new treatments for diseases.

But the scientific use of embryos is an issue of debate. Some people, including President Bush, say destroying the embryo destroys life.

The removal of a single cell from a blastocyst is not a new idea. It is often done when people go for reproductive assistance at fertility clinics. The process is called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or P.G.D. A cell is removed to test for genetic disorders. The cell is destroyed in the process. But the blastocyst from which it came can continue to develop into an embryo and then a fetus.

Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology was the senior author of the new study. In a statement he said it demonstrates that stem cells can be produced "without interfering with the embryo's potential for life." Doctor Lanza said that to date, more than one thousand five hundred healthy children have been born following P.G.D.

The company's chief executive officer, William Caldwell, tells us there is no evidence that the removal of a single cell has any effect on the embryo.

Some people say this method could end the moral debate over the use of embryonic stem cells. But other people think that is not likely.

The Bush administration, in a statement, said: "Any use of human embryos for research purposes raises serious ethical concerns." But a presidential spokeswoman said the study does hold some promise, and that the president believed it should get a good look.

And that’s the Special English Health Report, written by Caty Weaver. You can read transcripts of our reports and download audio files to listen on an MP3 player, at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Barbara Klein.

---

Editor's Note: The experiment was meant to show that stem cells could be developed with a single cell taken from an eight-cell embryo wiithout harming the embryo. In fact, as a corrected press release from Nature and other reports later made clear, all 16 embryos used in the study were destroyed because the scientists removed a total of 91 cells.

Read more...

Unapproved Biotech Rice in U.S. Is Investigated

mp3

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

Opponents of genetically engineered crops say they worry about possible dangers to health and the environment. Supporters of biotechnology say these crops are safe and tested before governments approve them.

A scientist at the Bayer CropScience research center in Yuki, Japan

But unapproved crops can accidentally reach market, although such incidents are believed to be rare. American officials are now investigating a case involving rice from Bayer CropScience of Germany.

The company tested the long-grain rice in fields in the United States between nineteen ninety-eight and two thousand one. Bayer never tried to market the biotech rice.

So officials say they do not know how small amounts of it got into rice from last year’s crop.

Bayer reported its findings to the government on July thirty-first and commented publicly on August eighteenth. The company said it was cooperating with the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.

Last week the Agriculture Department approved a test to find the rice in shipments. But the two agencies say, based on the scientific information they have, there are no public health or environmental concerns.

Still, Japan quickly suspended imports of American long-grain rice. Japan mostly imports short- and medium-grain rice from the United States anyway.

Also, the European Union will now require imports of American rice to come with statements saying they are free of the unapproved rice. This requirement will stay for at least six months.

The rice was found in Arkansas and Missouri, mixed in with supplies from several states. Riceland Foods, a big marketer in Arkansas, said one of its export buyers discovered the unapproved rice in January. It says tests showed that the amounts were very small, about six kernels in ten thousand kernels of rice.

The rice contains a protein, called Liberty Link, genetically engineered to resist damage from Bayer's Liberty herbicide. The chemical is used to kill weeds around crop plants.

Two other kinds of rice with the same protein have been approved in the United States, although Bayer has not marketed them. But the protein is used in other products.

About half of the American rice crop is exported. And about eighty percent of exports are long-grain rice. The government estimates this year’s rice crop at almost two thousand million dollars.

And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Mario Ritter and online at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Doug Johnson.

Read more...

From the Laboratory to the Playing Field: World of Sports Doping

mp3

VOICE ONE:

This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I’m Faith Lapidus.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Doug Johnson. Our subject this week is sports doping.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Justin Gatlin

Last week, American runner Justin Gatlin accepted the results of a drug test from April. The test showed the presence of manufactured testosterone or other steroids. Gatlin has said he "never knowingly used any banned substance."

This was his second offense. The twenty-four-year-old runner could have faced a lifetime ban from competition.

But the United States Anti-Doping Agency says Gatlin has promised to cooperate in the effort to end the use of drugs in sports. So the agency agreed to suspend him for as long as eight years. The agreement gives the Olympic gold medal winner the right to seek a reduction in that period.

VOICE TWO:

In May, in Qatar, Justin Gatlin equaled the world record time of Asafa Powell of Jamaica in the one hundred meter dash. Gatlin will keep that result at least for now, while he appeals his possible eight-year suspension.

His first offense, in two thousand one, involved his medicine for attention-deficit disorder. The medicine contained a stimulant banned for athletes. He could have been suspended for two years. But officials considered the violation a mistake, so he served only a one-year suspension.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Drug tests recently showed that American cyclist Floyd Landis had unusually high levels of testosterone during the Tour de France. The results led race officials to say they no longer considered Landis the winner.

The results also led one of our listeners in Nigeria, Lazarus Adumo, to ask what it means to have high levels of testosterone.

Testosterone is a steroid hormone. Hormones are chemicals that help keep the body working normally.

VOICE TWO:

The effects of testosterone can be seen in boys when they become young men. They develop muscle power and become stronger. Testosterone is also important for other changes, like a deeper voice and the growth of body hair.

Testosterone is produced in the reproductive organs and the adrenal glands. Both men and women produce testosterone. Men produce much more of it than women do. But not all males produce the same amounts. Some naturally have higher levels than others.

VOICE ONE:

Some people take testosterone supplements produced in a laboratory for medical purposes. But some athletes use synthetic testosterone to strengthen their muscles and improve their performance. These products are banned in many sports.

Floyd Landis

Officials say tests on Landis’ urine found synthetic testosterone in addition to high levels of the kind produced naturally in the body.

Landis has denied taking any synthetic testosterone. And he has said the high testosterone levels could have resulted from medicines and from drinking beer and whiskey the night before the tests. Floyd Landis is to appear before the United States Anti-Doping Agency next month to try to explain the test results.

VOICE TWO:

Researchers who have studied testosterone generally agree that long-term use may increase athletic performance. But they disagree about the short-term value. Also, testosterone supplements have risks. Most doctors agree that taking large amounts of testosterone can cause harmful effects. These include an increased risk of heart disease.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

In nineteen ninety-nine, the International Olympic Committee held a conference that led to the creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency. This all followed events at the Tour de France. In the summer of ninety-eight, police carried out a raid and found banned medical substances.

After that, the International Olympic Committee led efforts to create an independent agency to set and enforce common anti-doping rules. The agency has representatives from the Olympic movement and public officials from around the world. WADA, as the agency is known, has its headquarters in Montreal, Canada.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

"Doping" is the general term for the use of banned substances or practices to improve athletic performance. The World Anti-Doping Agency says the term probably came from the Dutch word "dop." That was the name for an alcoholic drink used by Zulu fighters in Africa to improve their performance in battle.

The agency says the word doping began to be used for athletes in the beginning of the twentieth century. At first it meant the illegal drugging of racehorses.

The agency notes that athletes have used substances for centuries to improve their performance. Ancient Greeks used special foods and drinks. Nineteenth century cyclists and others used alcohol, caffeine, cocaine -- even strychnine, a strong poison.

By the nineteen twenties, sports organizations were attempting to stop the use of doping substances. But at the time they lacked scientific ways to test for them.

VOICE ONE:

One method of doping is called blood doping. This is the use of substances such as hormones or blood itself to increase the production of red blood cells. That way the blood moves more oxygen to the muscles, increasing their strength and performance.

One of these hormones is known as EPO. Recently anti-doping officials announced the discovery of EPO in a urine test on Marion Jones. If the results are confirmed, the Olympic champion runner could be banned from competition for two years.

Doctors say hormones used for blood doping thicken the blood and increase the chances of heart disease and stroke. Also, the use of blood from another person can spread viruses. But doctors say even the use of a person’s own blood to increase the level of red blood cells in the body can raise the risk of heart disease and stroke.

VOICE TWO:

Another substance that can be used to increase performance is human growth hormone. This hormone is produced naturally by the pituitary gland in the brain. Athletes may take injections of human growth hormone, although that can be found with blood tests. Experts say such use of the hormone can cause diabetes, muscle and bone pain, high blood pressure and other disorders.

VOICE ONE:

Some of the most common doping substances are steroids. These drugs are used to increase muscle strength. Steroids can damage the liver and halt the production of testosterone. They can also cause personality changes. People who take them may become increasingly angry. Some become dependent on the steroids and feel they cannot live without them. Users can become depressed and, in some cases, even want to kill themselves.

VOICE TWO:

Sports dopers continually look for new substances and technologies. The World Anti-Doping Agency has already banned gene doping, although it says it does not believe anyone is doing it yet.

Officials say they want to be ready with a test to find genetic changes.

For example, imagine an athlete whose body contains genetic material from an animal. In theory, such a person could become a great athlete overnight.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Last week, Chinese media reported that investigators found employees injecting students with performance drugs at a sports school. Those employees at the school in the northeastern province of Liaoning now face criminal charges.

So what is wrong with doping? That is a question some people ask, even some health professionals. These people support the idea of medically supervised doping. They say it would reduce the dangers. They say competitions would be fairer if all the competitors were openly permitted to take part in doping.

Earlier this month, the World Anti-Doping Agency published a statement on its Web site from its medical director. Alain Garnier says doctors should have nothing to do with doping. Doctor Garnier says helping athletes perform better is not necessarily good for their health.

And he called it wrong and irresponsible to say that permitting doping would create an equal playing field. To accept doping, he says, would permit economic resources and scientific expertise to decide competition. And, he adds, only those with the resources and the expertise would win.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by George Grow, Nancy Steinbach and Caty Weaver. Brianna Blake was our producer. I’m Doug Johnson.

VOICE ONE:

And I’m Faith Lapidus. Transcripts and archives of our shows are at voaspecialenglish.com. We hope you can join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.

Read more...

Roberto Clemente, 1934-1972: First Latino in Baseball Hall of Fame

mp3

VOICE ONE:

I’m Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

Roberto Clemente

And I’m Faith Lapidus with People in America in VOA Special English. Today, we tell about Roberto Clemente. He was one of the most honored baseball players in history. He became the first Latino baseball player to be included in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Most sports players are known for how great they play a game, or how many records they break. But Roberto Clemente was loved not only for his ability in sports, but also for the kind of person that he was.

Clemente was one of the first professional Latino baseball players in the United States. He became one of the best. He also worked to change the way baseball, and the country, treated racial minorities in the nineteen fifties and sixties. He stood up against racism and did not permit anyone to be treated differently in his presence.

Today’s Latino baseball players say Roberto Clemente opened doors for them to reach their goals in a sport that had not always treated them equally.

VOICE TWO:

Roberto Clemente Walker was born in nineteen thirty-four in Carolina, Puerto Rico. Roberto’s family struggled financially. As a young boy, he helped his father, who worked on a sugar farm and also managed a store that sold food.

In school, Roberto was an excellent runner. He also won awards for throwing the javelin. But more than anything, he loved playing baseball. Puerto Rico’s warm island climate made it easy for the young boy to play baseball all year. He had many skills. But his strongest quality was his powerful right arm that could throw a ball a great distance.

While in high school, Roberto signed a contract to play baseball for the Santurce Crabbers in the Puerto Rican winter league. At the age of eighteen, Roberto was already hitting a baseball better than many professional players in the United States.

VOICE ONE:

This ability was recognized the following year. An official from the Brooklyn Dodgers team in New York City came to Puerto Rico looking for new, young players. The official, Al Campanis, was pleased with Roberto’s skill. He offered to give him a ten thousand dollar gift to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

But Roberto was unable to join the major league team because he was still in high school. The young baseball player told Mister Campanis that he would join the Brooklyn team as soon as he finished school.

By the time he finished high school, Roberto had received several other offers from major league teams in the United States. One team offered him a thirty thousand dollar gift just to sign a contract agreement. Although Clemente had not signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers, he kept his word to the team. He refused the other offers and signed on to play for Brooklyn.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

The Dodgers put Roberto Clemente on one of their minor league teams where young players often begin. But soon after his first season, the Pittsburgh Pirates took Clemente for their team. Clemente began playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates in nineteen fifty-five. At the time, Clemente was still learning to speak English.

In the nineteen fifties the United States was still very much divided between racial lines. Pittsburgh did not have a Latin American community at the time. Clemente, a black Puerto Rican, was shocked when he experienced racism in America.

VOICE ONE:

In the spring, baseball players attended training camps in the southern state of Florida. Many eating-places in the South at that time did not serve black people. So the black players on the team were forced to ask their white teammates to buy food for them. The black players would then eat on the bus that drove them to the games.

Roberto Clemente had a very strong sense of self-worth. He would not let others treat him unequally. Clemente felt that having to ask his teammates for food was insulting. He later became a strong believer in the messages of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Junior. Clemente’s work helping poor people, especially those in Puerto Rico, became a very important part of his life.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Roberto Clemente stood out among the other players on his team. He was a strong right fielder who quickly became known for his powerful throwing and near-perfect aim. Clemente had an unusual way of hitting the baseball. He stood farther away from the pitcher than most players, and used a heavier bat than most players. He was also known as a very aggressive hitter, swinging hard and fast at almost any ball.

The Pittsburgh Pirates did not do well the first few years Clemente played on the team. But by nineteen sixty, all that changed. That year, he played in the first of his twelve All-Star games. Every year, the best players from the National and American leagues compete in an All-Star game. That same year, Clemente helped his team beat the New York Yankees to win the World Series – the national baseball championship.

VOICE ONE:

Clemente continued to improve. He had suffered for years from pain caused by an automobile accident. Yet even with his health problems Clemente rarely missed a game. By nineteen sixty-one, he was feeling better and it showed. He hit extremely well that year and won his first batting award.

Roberto Clemente was one of the best baseball players at the time. But he did not receive as much interest from the national media as other top players like Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. Many people believe that was because he played for a team in a smaller city.

However, Clemente’s popularity began to grow during the nineteen seventy-one World Series. The Pittsburgh Pirates won the series against the Baltimore Orioles. Clemente was voted the Most Valuable Player of that year’s World Series. One sports writer later described Clemente’s throwing, running and hitting during the World Series as close to the level of perfection.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Roberto Clemente was also a loving husband and father. He had married Vera Cristina Zabala in nineteen sixty-four. Together they had three sons. Clemente never forgot his Puerto Rican roots. He made sure all of his sons were born on the island.

During his eighteen years in the major leagues, Clemente won many awards and helped his team win two World Series championships. In nineteen seventy-two Clemente made his three thousandth hit in the last game of the regular season. At that time, no one knew that it would be his final baseball season.

VOICE ONE:

During the winter of that year, Clemente returned to Puerto Rico with this family. He began to work on one of his long-time dreams – opening a sports center for the young people of San Juan.

Then, on December twenty-third, a major earthquake struck Managua, Nicaragua. Thousands of people were killed. Clemente quickly organized an aid effort to help thousands of homeless earthquake victims. But he was angered by reports from the area that the Nicaraguan government was not getting the supplies to the victims.

So Clemente paid for a small plane and a pilot to take supplies to Nicaragua. Clemente and four others were on that plane on December thirty-first, nineteen seventy-two. But the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after take-off. Everyone on the plane was killed. Clemente’s body was never found. He was thirty-eight years old.

VOICE TWO:

The Baseball Writers Association of America held a special election. The usual five-year waiting period for entrance into the Baseball Hall of Fame was suspended. Soon after his death, Roberto Clemente became the first Latino player to be included in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Pittsburgh Pirates also honored him in nineteen seventy-three. They removed Clemente’s number – twenty-one – from their team. That meant no other player on the team could ever wear that number.

Roberto Clemente once said: “Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better and you don’t, then you are wasting your time on Earth.” Clemente truly lived, and died, by those words. Some experts have called him baseball’s greatest hero.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

This program was written by Brianna Blake. It was produced by Lawan Davis. I’m Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I’m Faith Lapidus. You can download transcripts and archives of our shows at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English.

Read more...

One Year After Katrina, Uneven Progress Marks Efforts to Rebuild

mp3

VOICE ONE:

Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Barbara Klein.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Doug Johnson. This week, our subject is the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The storm hit land three times in the final days of August of two thousand five. Its third landfall, on August twenty-ninth, was the one that caused the most damage.

VOICE ONE:

Katrina was blamed for about one thousand eight hundred deaths along the Gulf of Mexico coast. Property damage estimated at around seventy-five thousand million dollars made it the most costly hurricane in American history.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

A newly built flood wall in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward ...

In the year since Hurricane Katrina, people in the affected areas have heard many promises and seen some progress.

Congress and state governments have provided for thousands of millions of dollars in aid. Engineers are developing plans that they say will improve flood protection systems. And emergency officials say they are planning better ways to get people to safety.

... but the Lower Ninth remains mostly empty

But the progress has not been enough to satisfy many of the people who lived through the storm. They say they will believe the promises when they see the results.

VOICE ONE:

The National Association of Community Health Centers estimates that as many as two million people had to leave their homes because of Katrina. Many found they no longer had a home or a job to return to. A year later, some are still trying to re-establish their lives.

Across the affected states, progress has been uneven.

Rebuilding in New Orleans

Rebuilding has begun. But workers have yet to clear away many of the homes and other buildings wrecked by the storm.

Thousands of people now live in temporary trailer housing provided by the government. Many homeowners are still waiting for insurance payments or government help to rebuild.

Many people have left to make new lives in other places.

Today, perhaps half of New Orleans appears normal or near normal. But other areas of the city look as if Katrina struck yesterday. Almost half of the public schools are still closed.

Before Katrina, New Orleans had nine hospitals. Now only a few are open. Katrina was not the only problem. Hurricane Rita caused additional flooding in September.

VOICE TWO:

About one thousand six hundred people from the state of Louisiana died as a result of Katrina. More than two hundred thirty were killed in Mississippi. Florida, Alabama and Georgia also had victims.

The remains of about fifty people are still unidentified in Louisiana. Some were found months after the storm.

(MUSIC)

People crowd into the Superdome in New Orleans on August 28, 2005. The sports center became a shelter for thousands. They faced dirty conditions and a long wait for help to arrive. Also, part of the roof was damaged.

VOICE ONE:

During the past year, investigations examined government responses to Hurricane Katrina. Rescue operations and evacuations of communities were painfully disorganized. Many thousands of people went for days without receiving food, water or medical care.

Government officials blamed each other. And almost everyone blamed FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But, as one investigation put it, there was enough blame to share.

VOICE TWO:

On June first, the Army Corps of Engineers accepted responsibility for faults in the New Orleans levees. These barriers were built to protect the city which sits below sea level.

One year later, the Superdome is preparing to reopen

The corps released a six-thousand-page report that described many problems with engineering and design of the flood protection system.

Several levees failed as a result of Katrina and Rita. Water rushed through and covered everything in its path.

Saltwater flowed into Lake Pontchartrain. For a while, even areas far inland looked like part of the Atlantic Ocean.

In some inland areas, people are still finding pieces of boats that Katrina blew in from the Gulf of Mexico.

VOICE ONE:

The Army Corps of Engineers repaired the broken levees. Now the corps says it will begin a project to reduce the damage that future hurricanes might cause. The work includes adding floodgates and pump stations. The project is supposed to be finished by September of two thousand seven.

The current hurricane season began June first and will continue through November. Government weather scientists say this Atlantic season probably will not be as severe as the last one. But they still expect an above-normal number of storms.

The existing flood protection system is not designed for a Category Five hurricane -- the most severe. For a time Katrina had been at Category Five strength. But the storm lost some of that strength by the time it hit land southeast of New Orleans on August twenty-ninth.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Some parts of New Orleans were not heavily affected by Katrina. The famous entertainment area around Bourbon Street, for example, began to re-open not long after the storm.

But damage was severe and widespread in some other areas of the city, including some of its poorest communities.

Some people in New Orleans and other areas hit by Katrina had stayed in their homes after they were warned of the coming storm. They stayed for different reasons. Some had no transportation. Others had survived earlier hurricanes in their homes. They thought they could live through this one.

Some were lucky -- they were pulled from rooftops by helicopters or rescued by boats. Others were not -- their bodies were found in the weeks and months after Katrina.

VOICE ONE:

In New Orleans today, the mostly black community that was the Lower Ninth Ward is almost empty. Film director Spike Lee has made a four-hour documentary on HBO television about the suffering of the Lower Ninth.

"When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts" has received praise but also some criticism. Some people say it could give the wrong idea that mostly black people suffered in Katrina.

VOICE TWO:

The United States Census Bureau released its most recent population estimates for the affected Gulf Coast areas in January. The report showed that the population of New Orleans was sixty-four percent smaller than before. Only about one hundred fifty-eight thousand people were left in the city.

Before the storms, two out of three people in New Orleans were black. Now the average citizen is more likely to be white, a little older and better off financially compared to the averages a year ago.

Before Katrina and Rita, thirty-six percent of the people in the New Orleans metropolitan area were black. That number dropped to twenty-one percent.

But Katrina increased the populations of cities like Houston, Texas, that received thousands of people needing shelter.

Harry and Silvia Pulizzano search for her brother's home in Waveland, Mississippi, on Sept. 1, 2005

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

The American Psychological Association says many Katrina survivors suffer from depression. They are also at increased risk of drug and alcohol problems.

Many displaced families moved several times after the storm. The children may have attended two or three schools, or more. Not surprisingly, some have trouble keeping their minds on their schoolwork.

Katrina destroyed a large number of community medical centers that had been providing care to poor people. These centers were under pressure for resources long before the storm. Now the ones that remain do not have enough doctors and nurses. In Louisiana, community health care officials say seventy percent of local doctors and nurses have yet to return to damaged parts of the state.

VOICE TWO:

In some Gulf Coast communities, strong economic influences have been the driving force to rebuild. Biloxi, Mississippi, is a good example. Before Katrina, eight to ten million people each year came to Biloxi to gamble. Katrina destroyed or heavily damaged the city's famous riverboat casinos. Fifteen thousand employees had no work.

Today Biloxi is recovering. Seven of its nine casinos are operating again or will soon. Visitors are returning. City official Vincent Creel says Biloxi has lived through hurricanes before. He tells us, "Biloxi will endure and prevail."

A young woman who lives and works in New Orleans shows the same spirit about the city that people call the Big Easy. In her words, "There will always be a New Orleans."

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Our program was written by Jerilyn Watson and produced by Caty Weaver. Transcripts and archives of our shows can be found at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Barbara Klein.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Doug Johnson. We hope you can join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.

Read more...

Kiva: How Anyone Can Become a Personal Lender of Microcredit

mp3

This is the VOA Special English Development Report.

Sometimes a small loan is a big deal. Microcredit has helped many poor people who want to develop self-employment projects into businesses. And it has helped small businesses grow so people can rise out of poverty.

Guatemalan woman sells chickens after receiving a microcredit loan

Today there are thousands of microlending organizations. Most depend on banks and rich supporters for the money they lend. But what about people who do not have a lot to invest but want to be socially active? They can go through a microlender in San Francisco, California, called Kiva. Kiva means agreement or unity in Swahili.

Matthew and Jessica Flannery wanted to create a way for average individuals to lend small amounts to businesses in developing nations. In two thousand four the couple spent several months in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. She worked for Village Enterprise Fund, a microlender; he was a filmmaker. They tested Kiva in Uganda in March of last year. They quickly raised money from friends and family to make loans to seven small businesses.

Kiva operates through a Web site, kiva dot org -- k-i-v-a dot o-r-g. People can lend as little as twenty-five dollars at a time. And they can pay with a credit card through the PayPal system, which is processing the payments for free.

The money reaches small businesses around the world through Kiva's local lending partners. These partner organizations charge interest but Kiva does not. Loans are generally for a period of six to twelve months, sometimes longer.

More than four hundred entrepreneurs are in the process of repaying their Kiva loans. At least thirteen have fully repaid them. Lenders receive e-mails with progress reports about the businesses they supported.

On a recent day the Kiva Web site listed twelve businesses in need. Tom Okwii, for example, is an entrepreneur in Mbale, Uganda. He needed five hundred dollars to buy chickens. Alice Wanjiku in Kiserian, Kenya, was trying to raise seven hundred fifty dollars to buy two dairy cows.

The biggest Kiva loan listed to date was for two thousand dollars. The local partners are responsible for forwarding repayments every three months. People who lend money do have a risk of not being repaid. But Kiva says its repayment rate so far is one hundred percent. And it says its partners have historical repayment rates that average better than ninety-six percent.

And that's the VOA Special English Development Report, written by Jill Moss and online at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Steve Ember.

Read more...

The Law of Life

mp3

ANNOUNCER: Now, the V.O.A. Special English Program, AMERICAN STORIES.

(MUSIC)

Our story today is called “The Law of Life.” It was written by Jack London. Here is Shep O’Neal with the story.

STORYTELLER: The old Indian was sitting on the snow. It was Koskoosh, former chief of his tribe. Now, all he could do was sit and listen to the others. His eyes were old. He could not see, but his ears were wide open to every sound.

“Aha.” That was the sound of his daughter, Sit-cum-to-ha. She was beating the dogs, trying to make them stand in front of the snow sleds. He was forgotten by her, and by the others, too. They had to look for new hunting grounds. The long, snowy ride waited. The days of the northlands were growing short. The tribe could not wait for death. Koskoosh was dying.

The stiff, crackling noises of frozen animal skins told him that the chief’s tent was being torn down. The chief was a mighty hunter. He was his son, the son of Koskoosh. Koskoosh was being left to die.

As the women worked, old Koskoosh could hear his son’s voice drive them to work faster. He listened harder. It was the last time he would hear that voice. A child cried, and a woman sang softly to quiet it. The child was Koo-tee, the old man thought, a sickly child. It would die soon, and they would burn a hole in the frozen ground to bury it. They would cover its small body with stones to keep the wolves away.

“Well, what of it? A few years, and in the end, death. Death waited ever hungry. Death had the hungriest stomach of all.”

Koskoosh listened to other sounds he would hear no more: the men tying strong leather rope around the sleds to hold their belongings; the sharp sounds of leather whips, ordering the dogs to move and pull the sleds.

“Listen to the dogs cry. How they hated the work.”

They were off. Sled after sled moved slowly away into the silence. They had passed out of his life. He must meet his last hour alone.

“But what was that?” The snow packed down hard under someone’s shoes. A man stood beside him, and placed a hand gently on his old head. His son was good to do this. He remembered other old men whose sons had not done this, who had left without a goodbye.

His mind traveled into the past until his son’s voice brought him back. “It is well with you?” his son asked. And the old man answered, “It is well.”

“There is wood next to you and the fire burns bright,” the son said. “The morning is gray and the cold is here. It will snow soon. Even now it is snowing. Ahh, even now it is snowing.

“The tribesmen hurry. Their loads are heavy and their stomachs flat from little food. The way is long and they travel fast. I go now. All is well?”

“It is well. I am as last year’s leaf that sticks to the tree. The first breath that blows will knock me to the ground. My voice is like an old woman’s. My eyes no longer show me the way my feet go. I am tired and all is well.”

He lowered his head to his chest and listened to the snow as his son rode away. He felt the sticks of wood next to him again. One by one, the fire would eat them. And step by step, death would cover him. When the last stick was gone, the cold would come. First, his feet would freeze. Then, his hands. The cold would travel slowly from the outside to the inside of him, and he would rest. It was easy…all men must die.

He felt sorrow, but he did not think of his sorrow. It was the way of life. He had lived close to the earth, and the law was not new to him. It was the law of the body. Nature was not kind to the body. She was not thoughtful of the person alone. She was interested only in the group, the race, the species.

This was a deep thought for old Koskoosh. He had seen examples of it in all his life. The tree sap in early spring; the new-born green leaf, soft and fresh as skin; the fall of the yellowed, dry leaf. In this alone was all history.

He placed another stick on the fire and began to remember his past. He had been a great chief, too. He had seen days of much food and laughter; fat stomachs when food was left to rot and spoil; times when they left animals alone, unkilled; days when women had many children. And he had seen days of no food and empty stomachs, days when the fish did not come, and the animals were hard to find.

For seven years the animals did not come. Then, he remembered when as a small boy how he watched the wolves kill a moose. He was with his friend Zing-ha, who was killed later in the Yukon River.

Ah, but the moose. Zing-ha and he had gone out to play that day. Down by the river they saw fresh steps of a big, heavy moose. “He’s an old one,” Zing-ha had said. “He cannot run like the others. He has fallen behind. The wolves have separated him from the others. They will never leave him.”

And so it was. By day and night, never stopping, biting at his nose, biting at his feet, the wolves stayed with him until the end.

Zing-ha and he had felt the blood quicken in their bodies. The end would be a sight to see.

They had followed the steps of the moose and the wolves. Each step told a different story. They could see the tragedy as it happened: here was the place the moose stopped to fight. The snow was packed down for many feet. One wolf had been caught by the heavy feet of the moose and kicked to death. Further on, they saw how the moose had struggled to escape up a hill. But the wolves had attacked from behind. The moose had fallen down and crushed two wolves. Yet, it was clear the end was near.

The snow was red ahead of them. Then they heard the sounds of battle. He and Zing-ha moved closer, on their stomachs, so the wolves would not see them. They saw the end. The picture was so strong it had stayed with him all his life. His dull, blind eyes saw the end again as they had in the far off past.

For long, his mind saw his past. The fire began to die out, and the cold entered his body. He placed two more sticks on it, just two more left. This would be how long he would live.

It was very lonely. He placed one of the last pieces of wood on the fire. Listen, what a strange noise for wood to make in the fire. No, it wasn’t wood. His body shook as he recognized the sound…wolves.

The cry of a wolf brought the picture of the old moose back to him again. He saw the body torn to pieces, with fresh blood running on the snow. He saw the clean bones lying gray against the frozen blood. He saw the rushing forms of the gray wolves, their shinning eyes, their long wet tongues and sharp teeth. And he saw them form a circle and move ever slowly closer and closer.

A cold, wet nose touched his face. At the touch, his soul jumped forward to awaken him. His hand went to the fire and he pulled a burning stick from it. The wolf saw the fire, but was not afraid. It turned and howled into the air to his brother wolves. They answered with hunger in their throats, and came running.

The old Indian listened to the hungry wolves. He heard them form a circle around him and his small fire. He waved his burning stick at them, but they did not move away. Now, one of them moved closer, slowly, as if to test the old man’s strength. Another and another followed. The circle grew smaller and smaller. Not one wolf stayed behind.

Why should he fight? Why cling to life? And he dropped his stick with the fire on the end of it. It fell in the snow and the light went out.

The circle of wolves moved closer. Once again the old Indian saw the picture of the moose as it struggled before the end came. He dropped his head to his knees. What did it matter after all? Isn’t this the law of life?

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER: You have just heard the American story “The Law of Life.” It was written by Jack London. Your storyteller was Shep O’Neal. Listen again next week for another American story in V.O.A. Special English. I’m Faith Lapidus.

Read more...

Pluto and Dark Matter Both Star in a Busy Week for Astronomers

mp3

This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

Pluto compared to other solar system bodies including Earth.

This week, there were two big developments in astronomical science. One was a decision to name Pluto a "dwarf planet."

The other was the announcement earlier in the week that scientists have found direct evidence for dark matter. But they say they are still not sure what this mysterious matter is or where it comes from.

Scientists have theorized about dark matter for about seventy years. The idea is that the matter we see does not have enough gravitational pull to keep galaxies together. Visible matter has been estimated to represent only about five percent of the universe.

The new findings come from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes.

"Bullet cluster" formed after the collision of two galaxy clusters. The blue areas show where astronomers find most of the mass in the clusters. Hot gas observed in X-rays is seen as the pink areas, which contain most of the normal matter in the clusters.

A team of scientists observed a group of galaxies that formed when two galaxy clusters smashed into each other. They call it the "bullet cluster." It contains a bullet-shaped cloud of hot gas from a smaller cluster that passed through the hot gas from a larger one.

The bullet cluster is more than three thousand million light-years away. It formed in the last one hundred million years.

Scientists can observe what they believe to be dark matter only through its gravity. But the team says the crash was violent enough to break dark matter away from "normal" matter. Normal matter in galaxy clusters is mostly in the form of hot gas and stars.

They call it the strongest evidence yet that most of the matter in the universe is dark.

They say the observations cannot be explained by theories of gravity that remove the need for dark matter. These theories propose that gravity is stronger with huge galaxy clusters than the theories of Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein would suggest.

The findings will appear in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Now on to Pluto. This week the International Astronomical Union met in Prague, in the Czech Republic, with the goal to officially define a planet.

Scientists voted to set three requirements for a planet: It must orbit the sun. It must have enough mass so that its own gravity has formed it into a nearly round shape. And it must have cleared the area of other objects around its orbit. That is where Pluto fails: its orbit around the sun crosses paths with Neptune's.

American Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in nineteen thirty. People have long debated about considering it the ninth planet in our solar system. Now Pluto will be called a dwarf planet along with at least two others: Xena and Ceres.

The changes divide astronomers. But supporters say recent discoveries of large objects in the outer solar system require them.

So the new model of our solar system has eight "classical" planets. The smaller, rocky worlds are Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The four huge gas planets are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English, written by Brianna Blake and online at voaspecialenglish.com. This is Shep O'Neal.

---

Correction: The definition approved by the I.A.U. refers to "planets" and "dwarf planets" but not to "classical."

Read more...

'Grandmother to the Nation' Celebrated in Traveling Art Show

mp3

Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC, in VOA Special English.

(MUSIC)

I'm Doug Johnson. On our show this week:

We answer a question about America’s capital city …

Play some music that honors the city of New Orleans …

And report about a new Grandma Moses art show.

Grandma Moses

HOST:

The American artist known as Grandma Moses did not begin painting until she was more than seventy-five years old. But her work was soon popular all over the world. Barbara Klein tells about a new show of her work.

BARBARA KLEIN:

Grandma Moses

The new show is at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. It is called “Grandma Moses: Grandmother to the Nation.” Critics say the new exhibit of thirty-eight paintings makes it clear why her work was and still is so popular. They say her colorful paintings show American life in a more simple time.

Anna Mary Robertson Moses painted happy pictures of everyday life in small farming villages. Her paintings include farms, houses, mountains, fields, animals and people. Sometimes she painted the same scene many times at different times of the year -- in the snowy winter and the green summer.

People say Grandma Moses painted the past as she remembered it. But not all the paintings were made from memory. Art experts say she used pictures in magazines and newspapers to help create her paintings.

"Sugaring Off"

One of the best known of these paintings is called “Sugaring Off.” She painted it in nineteen forty-five. It shows people working on a snowy farm gathering and processing maple syrup from trees. “Sugaring Off” was based on a work of art by the famous artists Currier and Ives.

“Sugaring Off” is one of the paintings included in the new show at the Fenimore Art Museum. Another is called “A Country Wedding,” painted in nineteen fifty-one. It shows a bride and groom and guests at an outdoor wedding in the summer.

Grandma Moses began painting such pictures when the disease arthritis forced her to stop creating art with wool and other materials. She showed her paintings at county fairs and stores in New York State where she lived. An art collector from New York City saw them in a drug store window in nineteen thirty-nine. He bought ten paintings. One year later, Grandma Moses had her first art show. It was called “What a Farmer’s Wife Painted.”

Grandma Moses died in nineteen sixty-one at the age of one hundred one. She had produced more than one thousand six hundred paintings in the last twenty years of her life. The exhibit in Cooperstown will travel to four other American cities next year.

Washingtons

HOST:

Our VOA listener question this week comes from Bangladesh. Shafiqul Islam asks about the difference between Washington and Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., is the capital city of the United States. The city is also known simply as Washington. It was named for the country’s first president, George Washington.

That story goes back to the beginning of the United States more than two hundred years ago. The states approved a constitution in seventeen eighty-eight. But they could not decide where to build the permanent capital. Northern states did not want the capital in the South because slavery existed there. The southern states did not want the capital in the North.

Finally, after much negotiation, the United States Congress agreed to build the capital along the Potomac River between the states of Virginia and Maryland. The city would be built in a federal area on land provided by the two states. The city would be called Washington. The larger federal area would be named the District of Columbia.

Columbia was another name for the United States, used mostly by poets and other writers. The name came from Christopher Columbus, the explorer who sailed from Europe across the Atlantic Ocean to the western hemisphere.So the city became known as Washington, the District of Columbia or Washington, D.C.

Many other places in the United States are named after President George Washington. They include the western state of Washington and the town of Washington, Pennsylvania.

In fact, twenty-four different American states have towns named Washington. Many other townships and counties within states are also called Washington. And at least fifteen mountains in the United States are called Mount Washington.

So you can find many places in the United States called Washington, but only one called Washington, D.C.

The River in Reverse

HOST:

Rock musician Elvis Costello and rhythm and blues artist Allen Toussaint have released an album that honors New Orleans, Louisiana. Mario Ritter tells about “The River in Reverse,” and plays some of its songs.

MARIO RITTER:

Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint appear to be an unlikely pair. Allen Toussaint’s professional life in music began in the late nineteen-fifties in his hometown of New Orleans. He played piano in clubs in that southern city while still a teenager. He later wrote many rhythm and blues hit songs and became a successful producer.

Elvis Costello began recording in London in the late nineteen seventies. He helped build a musical bridge between punk and pop music. Later he explored many other kinds of music including classical and jazz.

“The River in Reverse,” includes seven songs Toussaint wrote years ago and five new songs that he and Costello wrote together. Here is the title song, the only one Costello wrote by himself.

(MUSIC: “The River in Reverse”)

Many of the songs were written long before Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans last year on August twenty-ninth. However, the men perform them in a way that creates a musical link to the tragedy. The old song, “Tears, Tears and More Tears,” is a good example.

(MUSIC)

Elvis Costello’s band, the Imposters, and the Crescent City Horns also perform on the album. Crescent City is a nickname for New Orleans.

We leave you now with another song from “The River in Reverse.” Here is Ascension Day.”

(MUSIC)

HOST:

I'm Doug Johnson. I hope you enjoyed our program today.

This show was written by Nancy Steinbach and Caty Weaver, who also was our producer. To read the text of this program and download audio, go to our Web site, voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for AMERICAN MOSAIC, VOA’s radio magazine in Special English.

Read more...

You've Got Trouble: America Online's Big Mistake With Search Data

mp3

This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.

How much information can people learn about you by seeing what you look for on the Internet? Too much, say some people with Internet service from America Online.

These people should know. AOL put the Internet search records of more than six hundred and fifty thousand people in a public area on part of its Web site.

The records included every search these users made between March and May of this year.

The company says the release was an accident. It says the records were meant for researchers. The purpose was to help them study how people use the Internet so search tools can be improved.

To protect privacy, AOL used numbers instead of names to identify the users. But people who saw the records quickly recognized that some users could be identified through the details of their searches.

The New York Times decided to prove it. The newspaper was able to identify one of the users as Thelma Arnold of Georgia. The sixty-two-year-old woman was surprised to get a telephone call from the reporter who found her. But she agreed to a story about her searches.

Many of them, for example, involved medical conditions. Someone might think she was very sick. In fact, in many cases, Thelma Arnold was searching for information to help friends.

Still, the records from AOL show that Internet searches can tell a lot about what people are thinking. That includes things they might never want others to know they are thinking.

The records could be highly useful to marketers. But some researchers say they will not use them because the information is too personal.

People became angry when they learned that their searches had been made public. AOL took the information off its Web site. The company apologized and called the release "a screw-up."

Some people, however, had already copied the data before AOL removed it.

The World Privacy Forum and the Electronic Frontier Foundation want the Federal Trade Commission to punish AOL. Both groups say the company violated its privacy agreement with its millions of customers.

AOL has promised to make changes in the company to help keep records private. The incident has cost three people their jobs, including the researcher who posted the information.

And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Sarah Randle. You can read and listen to archives of our reports at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Faith Lapidus.

Read more...

'That’s One Small Step': The Story of the First Humans on the Moon

mp3

EXPLORATIONS -- a program in Special English by the Voice of America.

(SOUND)

A rocket launch countdown. A common sound in the nineteen sixties. But this was not just another launch. It was the beginning of an historic event. It was the countdown for Apollo Eleven -- the space flight that would carry men to the first landing on the moon.

The ground shook at Cape Kennedy, Florida the morning of July sixteenth, nineteen sixty-nine. The huge Saturn Five rocket moved slowly up into the sky. It rose perfectly. Someone on the launch crew spoke the words, "Good luck. And Godspeed. "

Today, Steve Ember and Dick Rael tell the story of the flight of Apollo Eleven.

VOICE ONE:

In the spacecraft at the top of the speeding rocket were three American astronauts whose names soon would be known around the world: Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins.

Neil Armstrong was the commander of the spacecraft. He was a test pilot. He had flown earlier on one of the two-man Gemini space flights. Armstrong was a calm person, a man who talked very little.

Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin was pilot of the moon lander vehicle. The astronauts gave it the name Eagle. Aldrin had flown on the last of the Gemini flights. He also was a quiet man, except when he talked about space.

Michael Collins was the pilot of the command module vehicle, Columbia. He also had made a Gemini flight. He would wait in orbit around the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin landed and explored the surface. Collins was very popular and always ready with a smile.

VOICE TWO:

Two-and-one-half minutes after the Apollo Eleven launch, the first-stage rocket separated from the spacecraft. Twelve minutes later, the spacecraft reached orbit. Its speed was twenty-nine thousand kilometers an hour. Its orbit was one hundred sixty-five kilometers above the Earth.

This was the time for the crew to test all the spacecraft systems. Everything worked perfectly. So, the NASA flight director told them they were "go" for the moon. They fired the third-stage rocket. It increased the speed of the spacecraft to forty thousand kilometers an hour. This was fast enough to escape the pull of the Earth's gravity.

Apollo Eleven was on its way to the moon. In seventy-seven hours, if all went well, Apollo Eleven would be there.

VOICE ONE:

Halfway to the moon, the astronauts broadcast a color television program to Earth. The broadcast showed how the astronauts lived in the spacecraft. It showed their instruments, food storage, and details of how they moved and worked without gravity to give them weight. The television broadcast also showed the Earth behind Apollo Eleven. And it showed the moon growing larger in the blackness ahead.

As hours passed, the pull of the moon's gravity grew stronger. Near the moon, the astronauts fired rockets to slow the spacecraft enough to put it into moon orbit.

VOICE TWO:

Apollo Eleven circled the moon while the crew prepared for the landing. Finally, spacecraft commander Armstrong and NASA flight controllers agreed it was time to separate the lander module "Eagle" from the command module "Columbia."

Armstrong and Aldrin moved through the small opening between the two spacecraft. Then they moved Eagle away from Columbia. Armstrong reported, "The Eagle has wings!" The lunar module was ready. Men were about to land on the moon.

On Earth, all activity seemed to stop. President Richard Nixon gave federal government workers the day off to watch the moon landing on television.

Around the world, five hundred million people watched the television report. Countless millions more listened on their radios.

VOICE ONE:

Armstrong and Aldrin fired the lander rocket engine. The firing slowed the spacecraft and sent it down toward the landing place. It was in an area known as the "Sea of Tranquility."

The lunar lander, controlled by a computer, dropped toward the airless surface of the moon. One hundred forty meters from the surface, the astronauts took control of the lander from the computer. They moved Eagle forward, away from a very rocky area that might have caused a difficult landing.

The voices of Aldrin and Armstrong could be heard in short messages. "Forward. . . Forward. . . Good. Forty feet. Kicking up some dust. Big shadow. Drifting to the right a little. Contact light. Okay. Engine stop. "

Armstrong reported, "Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed!"

VOICE TWO:

NASA's plan had called for the astronauts to test instruments, eat and then rest for four hours before leaving the Eagle. But Armstrong and Aldrin asked to cancel the four-hour sleep period. They wanted to go out onto the moon as soon as they could get ready.

NASA controllers agreed.

It took the astronauts more than three hours to complete the preparations for leaving the lander. It was difficult -- in Eagle's small space -- to get into space suits that would protect them on the moon's surface.

VOICE ONE:

Buzz Aldrin prepares to walk on the moon, in a picture taken by Neil Armstrong

Finally, Armstrong and Aldrin were ready. They opened the door. Armstrong went out first and moved slowly down the ladder. At two hours fifty-six Greenwich Mean Time on July twentieth, nineteen sixty-nine, Neil Armstrong put his foot on the moon.

"That’s one small step for man," he said, "One giant leap for mankind."

The world could see the history-making event on television. But the man who was closest to what was happening, Michael Collins, could only listen. He was orbiting the moon in the command module Columbia. It did not have a television receiver.

VOICE TWO:

Armstrong moved carefully away from the Eagle. He left the cold, black shadow of the lander and stepped into the blinding white light of the sun.

On Earth, all was quiet. No sound came from televisions or radios. No one felt able to talk about what was happening.

Armstrong began to describe what he saw. "The surface appears to be very, very fine grain, like a powder. I can kick it loosely with my toes. I can see footprints of my boots in the small, fine particles. No trouble to walk around.”

VOICE ONE:

Aldrin appeared on the ladder. Down he came, very slowly.

Soon, both men were busy placing experiments to be left behind on the moon. They collected more than thirty kilograms of rock and soil to take back to Earth. They moved easily and quickly, because the moon's gravity is six times less than Earth's.

Hours passed. Too soon, it was time to return to the Eagle. Armstrong and Aldrin re-entered the lander. They rested for a while. Then they began to prepare to launch the lander for the return flight to the orbiting command module.

VOICE TWO:

Listeners on Earth heard the countdown from Tranquility Base. "Three, two, one. . . first stage engine on ascent. Proceed. Beautiful. Twenty-six. . . thirty-six feet per second up. Very smooth, very quiet ride." Eagle was flying. Man had been on the moon for twenty-one and one-half hours.

Eagle moved into the orbit of the command module. It connected with Columbia. Armstrong and Aldrin rejoined Collins in the command ship. They separated from Eagle and said good-bye to it. The lander had done its job well.

VOICE ONE:

Eight days after it started its voyage to the moon, Apollo Eleven splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. Left behind on the moon were the footprints of Armstrong and Aldrin, an American flag and scientific equipment. Also left forever on the moon is a sign with these words:

"Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the Moon -- July, nineteen sixty-nine A.D. We came in peace for all mankind. "

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

This Special English program was written by Marilyn Rice Christiano. It was produced by Caty Weaver. Your narrators were Steve Ember and Dick Rael. This is Phoebe Zimmermann. Listen again next week at this time to Explorations on the Voice of America as we continue the story of the Apollo space flight program.

Read more...