How 'Mavericks,' 'Earmarks' Made Their Way From Cows and Pigs Into Politics

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AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: we continue our discussion with dictionary editor Ben Zimmer about terms related to the presidential campaign.

RS: "One word that's being associated with John McCain -- or John McCain wants to have associated with him -- is the term 'maverick.'"

BEN ZIMMER: "It was originally the name of a cattle rancher in Texas whose name was Samuel Maverick, in the mid-nineteenth century. He was also a politician, but he owned a large herd of cattle in Texas. And he was notorious because he never branded his cattle, as was usually done by the cattle ranchers. And he said that this was as a way of being less cruel to the animals. But his rivals, the other cattle ranchers in Texas, thought that this was just a ploy so that he could claim that any cattle that didn't have a brand were his, and that he could just claim them that way.

"In any case, this term maverick then was applied to the cattle themselves. 'Mavericks' were unbranded calves. And then, from there, it got extended to mean just someone who kind of runs wild, somebody who's very independent-minded, has a free spirit."

RS: "Speaking of cruelty to animals, can you put lipstick on a pig?"

BEN ZIMMER: "I wouldn't want to try, but -- "

RS: "Explain that to me."

BEN ZIMMER: " -- we've certainly heard a lot about lipstick on a pig. Barack Obama told a crowd, 'You can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig.' And then, very swiftly, the McCain campaign said that this was somehow directed at Sarah Palin. But we can see that this has a very interesting history, too.

"It's been used by lots of different people. In fact, John McCain himself used it just last year to describe Hillary Clinton's health care plan. And that's actually an old concept of taking a pig and trying to convert it into something pretty. There's even a biblical proverb, there's an echo from the Bible: 'As a ring of gold in a swine's snout, so is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion.'

"But then it became a common source of expressions in the English language to refer to a pig that's somehow dressed up. So there are expressions like 'A hog in a silk waistcoat is still a hog.' And in the twentieth century then we get variations on that which involve other types of prettying up, including lipstick, or putting perfume on a pig. There's lots of different ways that people have talked about trying to convert something from ugly to pretty, or from useless to useful."

AA: "A sow's ear into a silk purse."

BEN ZIMMER: "Exactly. That's an expression that dates back to the mid-sixteenth century: 'You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear.' So the idea is the ear of a sow, or a female hog, is something that is not very pretty at all and not very useful.

"Earmark is another pig-related term which originally referred to the marks on a pig's ear and eventually got used in politics to refer to this special set-aside money that's used for different projects, and that a congressman can try to bring these special appropriations back to their home state or home district."

RS: "Bring home the bacon, as it were."

BEN ZIMMER: "Bring home the bacon. And bring home the pork, to use yet another pig expression."

TERESA ROOF: "Well, pork products today are actually a lot leaner than in the past."

AA: Teresa Roof must wince at the irony anytime someone refers in politics to budgetary fat as pork. She is public relations manager for the National Pork Board, an industry group where an "earmark" can still refer to an identifying tag on a pig.

TERESA ROOF: "Compare the pigs from nineteen fifties. Today's model has slimmed down considerably with seventy-three percent less fat. And that's mainly due to the demand that consumers want a leaner product."

AA: "Isn't the argument that some people have now that pork is almost too lean, that it's lost some of its flavor because they've cut some of the fat out?"

TERESA ROOF: "There's various different breeds and various different models out there today to satisfy every consumer's need. There's an active niche market out there [for] people who are looking for a specific breed of pork, or pork to meet those demands, so there's basically everything out there on the market, for a wide variety of consumers."

AA: That was Teresa Roof at the National Pork Board. And before that we heard from Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus, an online thesaurus and dictionary. Part one of our discussion of terms related to the presidential campaign can be found at our Web site, voanews.com/wordmaster. You can also learn more about two other terms in the news right now: "bailout" and "golden parachute."

And that's all for WORDMASTER this week. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

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'Catch Shares': A Better Way to Share the World's Fish?

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This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

Too much fishing has reduced many fishery populations by ninety percent or more from their highest recorded numbers. Some fishing seasons last only a few days because the catch limit is quickly reached.

Two years ago, a Canadian scientist, Boris Worm, predicted the risk of a worldwide fishery collapse by two thousand forty-eight. But a new study says a management system called "catch shares" could offer a solution.

It divides the total permitted catch in a fishery into shares. These are bought and sold like shares of stock in a company. Shareholders in the fishery are each guaranteed a percentage of the catch.

Catch share systems are common in Australia, New Zealand and Iceland. And they have been gaining popularity in the United States and Canada.

Systems differ from place to place. But in general, experts set yearly limits, or quotas, on a fishery. The number of fish that each company or individual may catch is usually based on past averages.

Shares become more valuable as fish populations increase. With more fish in the fishery, catch limits also increase.

Human nature would tell us that shareholders are more likely to think about the long-term health of the fishery. They have a greater interest to protect the supply than in traditional, open access fisheries. But does that really happen?

Researchers looked at more than fifty years of records from eleven thousand fisheries worldwide. They compared open access fisheries with one hundred twenty-one fisheries that use catch share systems.

The study found that almost a third of the traditional fisheries have collapsed. But the number was only half that for the catch share fisheries. The findings appeared this month in the journal Science.

Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Hawaii did the study. The economist who led the research, Christopher Costello at Santa Barbara, called the results very hopeful. He says the system can improve the world's fishing grounds and rebuild collapsed fisheries.

Still, not everyone likes the idea. Some environmental activists say the catch share system makes a public resource into a private enterprise. Generally speaking, anybody can work a traditional fishery. There is no need to organize into a group or company. Yet if scientists' warnings are correct, those fisheries may not have many fish left to catch by the middle of the century.

And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. I'm Bob Doughty.

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The Color of Money: Bureau of Engraving and Printing Produces Millions of Dollars a Day

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VOICE ONE:

Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Bob Doughty.

And I'm Barbara Klein. Today on our program, we visit the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D.C. to learn about how American dollars are made. Last year, the Bureau produced about thirty-eight million bills a day. Printing money requires both artistic and technological skills. The bills are made so that they are interesting to look at but very hard to copy. In total, there are sixty-five separate steps required to make a dollar bill.

(MUSIC: "Give Me Money?")

VOICE ONE:

in Washington, DC " alt="Bureau of Engraving & Printing in Washington, DC " src="http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/images/DCMain-Exterior_w_27sep08_s.jpg" border="0" vspace="2" width="210" height="131" hspace="2">

Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D.C.

Guided tours of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington D.C. are a popular activity for visitors. These tours are a good way to learn new and interesting facts about the history of money and its complex production methods. It is also very exciting to stand in a room with millions of dollars flying through machines.

TOUR GUIDE: "All right, Ladies and Gentlemen, once again welcome to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. And this is where the color of money begins. The money making process begins when a yearly order sent by the Federal Reserve Board. That order will then be divided in half. Half will be done here in Washington, D.C. and the other half will be done in Fort Worth, Texas".

VOICE TWO:

Next, the Bureau orders special paper from the Crane company in the state of Massachusetts. The paper is actually cloth since it is made up of seventy-five percent cotton and twenty-five percent linen. This paper is made so that it can last a long time. And, it is made with details that make it hard to copy. For example, bills contain security threads. These narrow strips of plastic inside the paper run along the width of the bill. This special paper is also made with very small blue and red fibers. Both of these designs make it very hard for counterfeiters to copy. Counterfeiters are criminals who create false money.

VOICE ONE:

The first stage of production is called intaglio printing. This is done on high-speed presses using printing plates onto which images have been cut. Each plate receives a layer of ink, which gathers in the cut areas of the plate. Then, each sheet of paper goes into the press to receive the printing plate. The machine forces about twenty tons of pressure onto the printing plate and paper. One side of a dollar bill is printed in green ink, while the other is printed in black. Each side must dry for about forty-eight hours.

VOICE TWO:

The printing plate used in this process is created from hand-cut engravings called master-dies. Highly skilled artists called engravers draw images into soft steel to make the dies. There are separate dies for the different images on the bill, such as the portrait of the president, the lettering, and other designs.

VOICE ONE:

Inspecting printed sheets of money

After each master-die is copied, they are fitted together to make a printing plate that has thirty-two copies of the bill being printed. A master-die can last for many years. For example, the master-die with the picture of President Abraham Lincoln was made in the eighteen sixties. It was used again this year to redesign the five-dollar bill.

Next, the large printed sheets are carefully examined to make sure there are no mistakes on any of the bills. This process used to be done by people. Now, computers do the work.

TOUR GUIDE: "OCIS is an acronym for Off-line Currency Inspection System and this is where the money from the last phase will be inspected.

Now that blue box will take a picture to size of the sheets of the money and compare its cut, color and shape with the master image sent by the Federal Reserve Board. It will take that picture and break it down into over one million pixels. Every single last one has to be absolutely correct."

VOICE TWO:

In this part of production, the thirty-two bill sheets are cut into sheets of sixteen. In the next step, the bills are printed with a series of identifying numbers and seals.

TOUR GUIDE: "And this is where the money from the last phase will be put to its final state. If you look to the left of the room ladies and gentlemen, there is a tall machine with green ink at the top of it. That is the machine that will print your serial numbers, Federal Reserve seal and Treasury seal onto the money."

VOICE ONE:

The serial numbers on the money tell the order that the bills were printed. Other numbers and letters printed on the bill tell when the note was printed, what space on the printing plate the bill occupied and which Reserve bank will issue the bill.

VOICE TWO:

"Bricks" of five dollar bills

Once the money is printed, guillotine cutters separate the sheets into two notes, then into individual notes. The notes are sorted into "bricks", each of which contains forty one-hundred-note packages. The bricks then go to one of twelve Federal Reserve Districts, which then give the money to local banks. Ninety-five percent of the money printed each year is used to replace money that is in circulation, or that has already been removed from circulation. The Federal Reserve decides when to release this new money into use.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

You may know that America's first president, George Washington, is pictured on the one-dollar bill. But do you know whose face is on the two, five, ten, twenty, fifty and one hundred-dollar bills? They are, in order, President Thomas Jefferson, President Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, President Andrew Jackson, President Ulysses Grant and statesman Benjamin Franklin.

VOICE TWO:

During the tour, visitors can learn many interesting facts about money. For example, the average life span of a one-dollar bill is twenty-one months. But a ten-dollar bill lasts only about eighteen months. The one hundred-dollar bill lasts the longest, eighty-nine months.

One popular question that visitors ask is about the two-dollar bill. This bill is not printed very often. This is because many Americans believe two-dollar bills are lucky, so they keep them. Two-dollar bills do not have to be printed often because they do not become damaged quickly like other bills. People can send their damaged or torn bills to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The Bureau will replace damaged bills with new bills. However, it is illegal to purposely damage United States currency in any way. Anyone found guilty of damaging American money can be fined or jailed.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing first began printing money in eighteen sixty-one. It operated in a room of the Treasury building. Two men and four women worked together there to place seals on money that was printed in other places by private companies. Today, The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has over two thousand employees in its two printing centers in Washington and Fort Worth.

VOICE TWO:

The Treasury Department continually works to change the design of bills to make it difficult for counterfeiters to copy. One method it uses is called microprinting. For example, what looks like a very thin line around the edge of a portrait may actually be the words "The United States of America" printed in very small letters. Also, many bills now have color-shifting ink that looks like metallic paint. In the last five years, the ten, twenty and fifty-dollar bills have been redesigned. All the bills are mostly green. But other colors are added when they are redesigned.

VOICE ONE:

The picture of Abraham Lincoln on the new five dollar bill

The newest design in American currency is the five-dollar bill, which was released earlier this year. This new bill has a second watermark. A watermark is an image that can be seen from both sides of the bill when it is held up to light. The new five-dollar bill also has a security thread that is on the right side of President Lincoln's picture. On older designs, this thread was on the left side.

The new bill also has an area that is printed in purple ink. The number five is printed very large to help people who do not see well. The next note that will be redesigned is the one hundred-dollar bill. This is the highest value bill now used in the United States.

VOICE TWO:

American money might soon be legally forced to change its appearance in more extensive ways. In May, a federal appeals court ruled that the design of American money discriminates against blind people. Most other countries make bills in different sizes depending on the value of each note. But American dollars are all the same size. The American Council for the Blind brought the case to court.

The judges decided that the Treasury Department has failed to show that it would be too costly to make American dollars so that blind people could tell their value by touch. The Treasury Department says it would cost over a hundred and seventy million dollars to order new printing presses and as much as fifty million dollars to make new printing plates. Other experts estimate that it would cost over three billion dollars to redesign food and drink machines to accept bills of different sizes.

VOICE ONE:

It might be a long time before this case is settled in court. Until then, the printing presses at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing will continue to produce the green dollars that are recognizable to people around the world.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Our program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I'm Barbara Klein.

VOICE ONE:

And I'm Bob Doughty. Our programs are online with transcripts and MP3 files at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.

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Louis Armstrong, 1901-1971: 'The Ambassador of American Jazz'

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VOICE ONE:

This is Gwen Outen.

VOICE TWO:

And this is Steve Ember with People in America in VOA Special English. Today we tell about Louis Armstrong, one of the greatest jazz musicians. His voice, trumpet-playing skill and creativity continue to influence jazz artists today. One of Louis Armstrong’s biggest hits was “Hello Dolly.”

(MUSIC: “Hello Dolly”)

VOICE ONE:

Louis Armstrong at Voice of America

Louis Armstrong played jazz, sang jazz and wrote jazz. He recorded hit songs for fifty years and his music is still heard today on television, radio and in movies.

Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on August fourth, nineteen-oh-one. New Orleans is a port city at the mouth of the Mississippi River. It is a city where the customs of many different people mixed together.

Louis Armstrong grew up in Storyville, one of the poorest areas of New Orleans.

His father left the family shortly after he was born. His mother worked to support him and his sister. But Armstrong spent most of his time with his grandmother.

VOICE TWO:

Jazz was just beginning to develop when Louis was a boy. It grew out of the blues songs and ragtime music that had been popular at the turn of the century.

Louis discovered music early in life. He was surrounded by it. The music of churches, bands, parades and drinking places were all a daily part of New Orleans culture. Louis sang with other boys on the streets for money. There he began to develop his musical skills.

VOICE ONE:

When he was eleven years old, Louis was sent to a reform school for firing a gun outside to celebrate New Year’s Eve. At the school, he learned to play the trumpet in the school’s brass band.

Louis spent eighteen months at the reform school. Then he went back to work. He sold newspapers, unloaded boats and sold coal from a horse and cart. He also listened to bands at popular clubs in Storyville. Joe “King” Oliver played with the Kid Ory Band. He soon became young Louis’s teacher. As Louis’s skills developed, he began to perform professionally.

VOICE TWO:

At the age of eighteen, Armstrong joined the Kid Ory Band, one of the finest bands in New Orleans. The experience helped him develop his music skills. Armstrong later replaced King Oliver in the band when Oliver moved to Chicago, Illinois. In nineteen-nineteen, Armstrong joined Fate Marable’s band in Saint Louis, Missouri. Marable’s band played on steamboats that traveled up and down the Mississippi River. Working with Marable helped prepare Armstrong to play for white audiences.

VOICE ONE:

In nineteen twenty-two, Armstrong left the Marable Band to play with King Oliver in Chicago. By then, Chicago had become the center of jazz music.

The Hot Five

A year later, Armstrong made his first recordings as a member of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. He later moved to New York City, where he influenced the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra with his creativity.

Armstrong returned to Chicago in nineteen twenty-six and formed his own group. They were called the Hot Five and later the Hot Seven. Their recordings are considered some of the most influential in jazz history.

Armstrong could make his voice sound like a musical instrument. He could make an instrument sound like a singer’s voice. The song “Heebie Jeebies” is said to be the first recorded example of what became known as scat singing. He recorded it with the Hot Five.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

By nineteen twenty-nine, Armstrong was becoming very popular. He returned to New York to play in an all-black Broadway musical called “Hot Chocolates.” The show included the music of Fats Waller. Armstrong’s version of Waller’s song, “Ain’t Misbehavin’, was a huge hit.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

"Satchmo"

By the end of the nineteen twenties, Armstrong had formed his own band. In nineteen thirty-two, he sailed to England, and had great success. A reporter there called him “Satchmo,” and he kept that nickname for the rest of his life. For the next three years, Armstrong played in cities across the United States and Europe.

Louis Armstrong returned to the United States in nineteen thirty-five. He hired Joe Glaser to be his manager. Glaser proved to be a great manager and friend.

Glaser organized a big band called Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra. It was one of the most popular groups of the “swing” music period. Swing was a style of jazz played by big bands in the nineteen thirties.

VOICE TWO:

The group played together for the next ten years. During that time, Armstrong became one of the most famous men in America. He experienced racial unfairness during his life. But he rarely made public statements. One time, however, he criticized the way the government treated blacks in the American South in the nineteen fifties. Newspapers accused him of being a troublemaker for speaking out.

In the nineteen forties, Armstrong grew tired of leading a large group. For the remaining years of his life, he led a six-member group called the All Stars. The group included some of the best musicians in America. They performed extensively in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America.

VOICE ONE:

Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World"

Over the years, Armstrong recorded with many famous musicians. For example, he worked with singers Ella Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby and the great composer Duke Ellington. Armstrong was known as friendly and easy to work with.

Armstrong’s biggest hits came later in his life. The song “Mack the Knife” was a big hit in nineteen fifty-five. In nineteen sixty-four, his version of the song “Hello Dolly” was the top hit around the world. It even replaced a top-selling hit by the hugely popular British rock group, the Beatles. Three years later, he appeared in the motion picture version of “Hello Dolly” with singer Barbra Streisand. The song “What a Wonderful World,” recorded in nineteen sixty-eight, was his final big hit.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Louis Armstrong never finished the fifth grade in school. Yet he wrote two books about his life and many stories for magazines. He appeared in more than thirty movies. He composed many jazz pieces. He won several gold records and many other awards. Armstrong performed an average of three hundred concerts each year, traveling all over the world. He became known as the ambassador of American Jazz.

Louis Armstrong was married four times. Lucille Armstrong was his fourth wife. They married in nineteen forty-two and stayed together for the rest of his life. They had no children.

Louis Armstrong died in nineteen seventy-one. His death was front page news around the world. In nineteen seventy-seven, his home in Queens, New York, was declared a national historic place. It is now a museum. For more information about Louis Armstrong and his house, you can go to the museum’s Internet Web site. The address is www.satchmo.net.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

This program was written and produced by Cynthia Kirk. This is Gwen Outen.

VOICE TWO:

And this is Steve Ember. Listen again next week for People in America in VOA Special English.

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Pedal-Powered Computers for Rural Villages

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This is the VOA Special English Development Report.

A nonprofit group in San Francisco, California, is trying to take bicycle-powered computers to rural villages around the world. The computer was developed with villagers in Laos.

The group is the Jhai Foundation. Jhai, j-h-a-i, is a word in the Lao language that means "hearts and minds working together."

Lee Thorn shows schoolgirls how to use a pedal-powered computer near Vientiane, Laos

Lee Thorn is the chairman. He says there are tens of thousands of dead computers in rural villages. He says villages often receive computers that they do not know how to use or how to keep working.

So Lee Thorn worked with another Lee -- Lee Felsenstein, an early developer of personal computers. The result is the Jhai PC. The small computer costs about two hundred dollars. It does not use much electricity. The battery that powers it is recharged when a person pedals a bicycle.

Memory-storage devices called flash drives are connected to the computer to hold information. The Jhai PC has a steel cover designed to resist water and weather. The foundation says the computer is built to work for ten years.

In addition to Laos, the group is in contact with villages in Vietnam, India, Ghana and other countries.

The foundation offers to help villagers learn to make the computers themselves with local materials. The group looks for a business person in each village who will create a ten-year business plan. The plan must include hiring people in the village. It also must include maintaining the computers and paying for electricity and a connection to the Internet.

The Jhai Foundation provides business and computer training. It also provides classes for teachers on ways to use computers in school. The group has received awards from the United Nations.

The group also works with villagers on other ways to improve their lives. Fifty-one villages in Laos are in a coffee farmers cooperative. The foundation is helping the farmers sell their coffee in the United States.

Lee Thorn started the foundation ten years ago after visiting Laos to begin a process of reconciliation. He calls it the opposite of war. He was in the United States Navy during the Vietnam war. On an aircraft carrier he loaded planes with bombs to drop on neighboring Laos. Later he and Lee Felsenstein were active in the antiwar movement.

And that's the VOA Special English Development Report, written by Karen Leggett.

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Wall Street, Without the Big Investment Banks

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This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.

Many financial companies have moved to other New York streets. But Wall Street still holds its place in the language as the capital of American finance.

Now Wall Street is being reshaped by the crisis over mortgage-related securities. The markets are unable to place a value on them. So banks and other investors are unable to find a buyer except possibly the government.

The aim is to unblock the flow of credit markets now, then sell the securities later, when the housing market improves.

But the new shape of Wall Street will be missing a piece. The credit crisis has ended the age of big investment banks. This week the last two, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, became bank holding companies.

As commercial banks, they can take deposits from the public and borrow from the Federal Reserve at any time. This will help them raise capital. But they will also face closer government supervision.

Henry Paulson headed Goldman Sachs before he became treasury secretary in two thousand six.

Morgan Stanley also agreed this week to sell up to twenty percent of itself to Japan's largest bank, Mitsubishi UFJ. And investor Warren Buffett agreed to buy at least five billion dollars in Goldman stock.

Six months ago, there were five big, independent investment banks. Then, in March, J.P. Morgan Chase bought Bear Stearns in a rescue sale. And this month Merrill Lynch agreed to be sold to Bank of America.

The government provided loans to aid the sale of Bear Stearns. But officials decided to let Lehman Brothers, a one hundred fifty-eight year old investment bank, fail. Last week the British bank Barclay's purchased much of Lehman in bankruptcy court.

Investment banks raise money for companies through offerings of stocks and bonds. They also sell and trade securities and provide other services.

The banks could borrow huge amounts against relatively little capital. And they created ever more complex securities.

The Glass-Steagall Act of nineteen thirty-three barred commercial banks from owning investment banks. Morgan Stanley split from J.P. Morgan as a result of Glass-Steagall.

Congress passed the law to reduce risk to deposits following the stock market crash of nineteen twenty-nine. But Congress ended Glass-Steagall in nineteen ninety-nine. Now, commercial and investment banks are together again, much as they were before nineteen thirty-three.

And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Mario Ritter. I'm Steve Ember.

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For Kay Ryan, Poetry Is 'the Most Private Form of Communication'

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HOST:

Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC in VOA Special English.

(MUSIC)

I'm Doug Johnson. This week, a special poetry show:

We hear some songs of famous poems by France's First Lady Carla Bruni ...

Answer a question about American poet Emily Dickinson …

And tell about Kay Ryan, who begins serving as poet laureate of the United States this weekend.

(MUSIC)

Kay Ryan

HOST:

The United States has a new poet laureate, Kay Ryan. She will read some of her poetry Saturday at the National Book Festival on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Barbara Klein tells about the poet and her work.

BARBARA KLEIN:

Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan did not know she could be a writer until she had a brief talk with the universe. She was on a very long bicycle trip, from the West Coast to the East, in nineteen seventy-six. Riding through Colorado's Rocky Mountains, a question came to her: "Can I be a writer?" Ryan said the universe answered, also with a question: "Do you like it?"

She said yes, she liked it more than anything else. A few years later, she and her friends self-published her first book of poetry, "Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends."

Kay Ryan generally writes short poems that have short lines. The poems look simple on the page, and can be read simply, but they are complex in subject. They are often many things at once: funny, sad, troubling or mysterious, frightening yet hopeful. And her poetry has a wonderful playfulness with words. Kay Ryan says she likes to use rhyme in unexpected ways.

The poem, "Blandeur," is a good example. She read it at the Library of Congress in two thousand one.

KAY RYAN:

"If it please God,
let less happen.
Even out Earth's
rondure, flatten
Eiger, blanden
the Grand Canyon.
Make valleys
slightly higher,
widen fissures
to arable land,
remand your
terrible glaciers
and silence
their calving,
halving or doubling
all geographical features
toward the mean.
Unlean against our hearts.
Withdraw your grandeur
from these parts."

Kay Ryan was born in nineteen forty-five in Southern California. She grew up in small valley and desert towns. She received both her bachelor's and master's degrees in English from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has taught English at the College of Marin in Kentfield, California, for more than thirty years. She lives in Marin County with Carol Adair, her partner of thirty years.

Kay Ryan says she believes poetry is "the most secret, the most private form of communication in language." She says she does not believe it will ever lose value no matter how many, or how few, readers it has.

Kay Ryan has advice for those who want to write poetry: Read a lot. Not necessarily poetry. Read science, philosophy, newspapers, murder mysteries and all kinds of things. And, she says it is good to have a love of language.

Kay Ryan has won many poetry prizes. She has also been compared to American poet Emily Dickinson, but dismisses the suggestion. Some of her favorite American poets include William Carlos Williams and Robert Frost. Her international favorites include Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska and Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa.

Emily Dickinson

HOST:

Our listener question this week comes from Yemen. Sameer Taher Mahdi wants to know about what he calls the "strange life" of Emily Dickinson.

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was born in eighteen thirty in the small Massachusetts town of Amherst. She lived and died in the same house where she was born. She received a good education. She studied philosophy, the Latin language, and the science of plants and rocks.

Emily's parents were important people in Amherst. Many famous visitors came to their house, and Emily met them. Her father was a well-known lawyer who was elected to Congress for one term.

Mister Dickinson believed that women should be educated. But he also believed a woman's one and only duty in life was to care for her husband and children. Emily once said: "He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they upset the mind. "

Emily Dickinson wrote more than one thousand seven hundred poems. There are three books of her letters. And there are many books about her life.

Some of her best poems were written between eighteen fifty-eight and eighteen sixty-two. Here is one of them.

I live with Him -- I see his face --
I go no more away
For Visitor -- or Sundown --
Death's single privacy
Dreams -- are well -- but Waking's better,
If One wake at Morn --
If One wake at Midnight better --
Dreaming -- of the Dawn --
This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to me --
The simple News that Nature told --
With tender Majesty

Although Emily Dickinson did not believe in organized religion, religious music of the time influenced the form of her poetry. She also used unusual words. She once wrote that the dictionary was her best friend. The English writer William Shakespeare, the Christian holy book the Bible and nature also influenced her work.

Emily Dickinson's life was strange because the older she became the more she withdrew from the world. By her early thirties, she had stopped socializing almost completely. Within several years, she would not even open her door to visitors. She rarely left her house.

Emily Dickinson died in eighteen eighty-six at the age of fifty-five. She had made her sister Lavinia promise to burn all her writing but, luckily for us, that did not happen.

Very few of Emily Dickinson's poems were published when she was alive. She gained no fame until years after her death. Her complete works were published in nineteen fifty-five. She is now considered one of the world's great poets.

Carla Bruni

HOST:

Carla Bruni

We continue our poetry theme with an album of poems put to music. Italian-born Carla Bruni is well known for her career as a model and her recent marriage to French President Nicolas Sarkozy. But Miz Bruni also writes and sings music. Her second album is called "No Promises." It is her first album in English. The album has musical versions of eleven poems by some of the most important English and American poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Faith Lapidus plays three of these songs.

(MUSIC)

FAITH LAPIDUS:

That was "Those Dancing Days Are Gone," written by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. It is a good example of Carla Bruni's style. The singer says she sometimes felt guilty about repeating sentences in Yeats' poem since the poet did not repeat them in his original work. But she decided that Yeats would not have minded if she had sung the sung for him.

When she was planning this album, Carla Bruni thought she would combine songs she wrote with musical versions of these famous poems. But she said that the poetry reaches such a level of perfection that she only kept the poems. Here is "Lady Weeping at the Crossroads" by the poet W. H. Auden.

(MUSIC)

To make this album, Carla Bruni worked with her friend, British singer Marianne Faithfull, to improve her voice and diction. Faithfull also shared her knowledge of English and American poetry.We leave you with Carla Bruni's version of Emily Dickinson's poem "I Felt My Life With Both My Hands."

(MUSIC)

HOST:

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

It was written by Dana Demange and Caty Weaver who was also the producer.

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

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Foreign Student Series: College, University or Institute?

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Americans use the term "college students" to mean students either in colleges or universities. Not only that, Americans almost never say "going off to university" or "when I was in university." That sounds British. Instead, they say "going off to college" and "when I was in college."

College, university: what's the difference? We answer that this week in part three of our Foreign Student Series on American higher education.

Colleges and universities have many things in common. Both offer undergraduate degrees in the arts and sciences, for example. And both can help prepare young people to earn a living.

But many colleges do not offer graduate studies. Another difference is that universities are generally bigger. They offer more programs and do more research.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Another place of higher education, especially in technical areas, is an institute, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yet even an institute of technology can offer a wide choice of programs and activities. M.I.T. says that seventy-five percent of freshmen come there with a strong interest and involvement in the arts.

Modern universities developed from those of Europe in the Middle Ages. The word "university" came from the Latin universitas, describing a group of people organized for a common purpose.

"College" came from collegium, a Latin word with a similar meaning. In England, colleges were formed to provide students with places to live. Usually each group was studying the same thing. So college came to mean an area of study.

The first American universities divided their studies into a number of areas and called each one a college. This is still true.

A college can also be a part of a university. For example, Harvard College is the undergraduate part of Harvard University.

Programs in higher learning can also be called schools, like a school of engineering or a medical school within a college or university. You know, learning all these terms is an education in itself.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our reports are at voaspecialenglish.com.

We invite your questions for our Foreign Student Series. We cannot offer any personal advice or assistance. But we might be able to answer a general question during our series.

Be sure to tell us your name and where you are. Write to special@voanews.com or use the Contact Us link at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember.

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American History Series: Monroe Dislikes but Signs Missouri Compromise

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James Monroe

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

In the spring of eighteen twenty, President James Monroe was coming to the end of his first four years as president. He wanted to be elected again. But he faced a difficult decision.

Congress, after much debate between the North and the South, had approved a bill giving statehood to Missouri. Missouri was part of the Louisiana territory. Southern lawmakers wanted Missouri to permit slavery. Northerners wanted no slaves in Missouri. A compromise was reached. Missouri could have slaves. But nowhere else in the northern part of the Louisiana territory would slavery be permitted.

Now, Sarah Long and Steve Ember continue our story of the presidency of James Monroe.

VOICE ONE:

Many southerners were not satisfied. The compromise closed the door against slavery entering large new areas of land. Southerners -- like all other Americans -- had a right to settle in the new territory. President Monroe was a slave-owner. He understood the feelings of the South. His friends urged him to veto the compromise bill, because it limited slavery in the territory.

Monroe believed the compromise was wrong -- but not because it kept slaves out of the territory. The president did not believe the Constitution gave Congress the right to make such conditions.

Monroe even wrote a veto message explaining why he could not approve the compromise. But he did not use the veto. He also understood the strong feelings of those opposed to slavery.

He believed there might be civil war if he rejected the compromise. So Monroe signed the bill. Missouri had permission to enter the union as a slave state.

VOICE TWO:

The crisis seemed ended. But a few months later, a new problem developed. Missouri wrote a state constitution that it sent to Congress for approval. One part of this constitution did not permit free black men to enter the state. The constitution was immediately opposed by a number of congressmen. They charged that it violated the United States constitution.

The United States Constitution said citizens of each state had the rights of citizens of each of the other states. And since free black men were citizens of some states, they should have the right to be citizens of Missouri. The debate over this lasted several months.

Former House speaker Henry Clay finally proposed a compromise that both sides accepted. Missouri could become a state if its legislature would make this promise: it would never pass any law that would violate the rights of any citizen of another state. This second compromise ended the dispute over slavery in Missouri and the Louisiana territory.

VOICE ONE:

The compromise of eighteen twenty settled the crisis of slavery for more than twenty years. But everyone knew that the settlement was only temporary.

[Former President] Thomas Jefferson used these words to explain his feelings about the compromise: "This question -- like a fire bell in the night -- awakened and filled me with terror. I understood it at once as the threat of death to the union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment.

"But," said Jefferson, "this is a reprieve only. Not a final settlement."

Monroe's decision to approve the compromise did not hurt his election chances in eighteen twenty. There was at this time really only one party -- the Republican -- and he was its leader. The opposition Federalist Party was dead. It was no longer an election threat.

Monroe was the only presidential candidate in the election of eighteen twenty. He received the vote of every elector, but one. William Plumer of New Hampshire voted for John Quincy Adams. He explained later that George Washington had been the only president to get all the electoral votes. Plumer said he did not want anyone to share this honor given to Washington.

VOICE TWO:

Monroe's first four years as president had been successful. He had increased the size of the United States. Florida now was part of the country. And the problem of slavery had been temporarily settled. There had been economic problems -- some of the worst in the nation's history. But the situation was getting better.

The nation was growing. As it grew, new problems developed between its different sections. There were really three separate areas with very different interests. The northeastern states had become the industrial center of the nation. The southern states were agricultural with large farms that produced cotton, rice and tobacco. Much of the work on these farms was done by slave labor.

The western states were areas of small farms where grain was produced with free labor. It was a place where a man could make a new start. Could build a new life. The land did not cost much. And the fruits of a man's labor were his own.

VOICE ONE:

This division of the nation into different sections with opposing interests ended the one-party system of Monroe's administration. The industrial Northeast wanted high taxes on imported products to protect its industry from foreign competition. This part of the country also believed the national government should pay for roads and waterways to get their products to markets.

The South did not agree to high import taxes. These taxes raised the prices on all goods. And import taxes on foreign goods might cause foreign nations to raise import taxes on southern cotton and tobacco. The South also opposed spending federal money for roads and canals. The mountains through the southern Atlantic states would make road-building difficult and canals impossible.

The western states supported government aid in the building of roads and canals. The Ohio and Mississippi rivers were the only inexpensive transportation systems for moving their products to markets. The westerners also supported high taxes on imports, because they believed such taxes would raise the prices of their agricultural products.

VOICE TWO:

The separate interests of these different sections produced an exciting presidential election campaign in eighteen twenty-four. Each section had at least one candidate. Several had more than one. The campaign began almost as soon as Monroe was elected for the second time.

John Quincy Adams

At one time, as many as sixteen men thought of themselves as presidential possibilities. By eighteen twenty-two, the number had been reduced to six men. Three of them were members of Monroe's cabinet: Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, Treasury Secretary William Crawford, and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun.

Adams was the only northern candidate. He was an extremely able man. There were few jobs in government he could not do, and do well. But he was not the kind of man that people liked. He was cold, questioning, and had a sharp tongue. His father was John Adams, the second president of the United States.

VOICE ONE:

Treasury Secretary Crawford was a southerner -- born in Virginia -- and a large landowner in Georgia. Crawford had received some votes when the Republicans chose Monroe as their presidential candidate in eighteen sixteen. He was a good politician and supported by most southern Republicans.

War Secretary Calhoun also was a southern candidate. But he had much less support than Crawford. His home state -- South Carolina -- first named another man as its candidate. When that man died, they named Calhoun.

The West had two candidates in the election of eighteen twenty-four. One was Henry Clay of Kentucky -- "Harry of the West" -- a great lawyer, congressman, speaker of the House and senator. The other was Andrew Jackson -- "Old Hickory" -- the hero of New Orleans [the Battle of New Orleans during the war of 1812]. Jackson was poorly educated, knew little about government, and had a terrible temper. He was a fighter, a man of the people.

The sixth candidate was Dewitt Clinton of New York. He was governor of that state and leader of the commission that built the Erie Canal. But New York presidential electors were chosen by the legislature, which was controlled by Clinton's enemies. So Clinton's chances were poor.

VOICE TWO:

William Crawford

Treasury Secretary Crawford was clearly the leading candidate two years before the election. But he had a serious illness in the autumn of eighteen twenty-three. He could not meet with the cabinet for months. He could not sign official papers.

Crawford did go back to work. But he was only a shadow of the man he had been. "He walks slowly, like a blind man," wrote one reporter. So that took secretary Crawford out as a possible candidate for the coming election.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Steve Ember and Sarah Long. To learn more about American history, go to voaspecialenglish.com. We have transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs as well as historical images. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION – an American history series in VOA Special English.

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New Findings Add to Health Concerns About a Chemical in Plastics

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This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

Bisphenol A is a chemical widely used to make hard, polycarbonate plastic. Food storage containers, reusable water bottles and baby bottles are among the many different products that may contain BPA. BPA is also commonly used in protective coverings inside metal food and drink cans.

People can swallow small amounts of BPA as they eat or drink. An industry Web site says more than forty years of safety research shows that products made with bisphenol A are safe.

But others question the safety of BPA. Now, a large study has linked it to diabetes and heart disease in adults.

Canadian Environment Minister John Baird, left, and Health Minister Tony Clement hand out baby bottles that are free of BPA. In April, Mister Clement announced Canada's plans to limit use of the chemical.

Researchers divided almost one thousand five hundred American adults into four groups based on BPA levels in their urine. All the levels were within the limits considered safe by the United States Food and Drug Administration. Yet the study found that the highest group was more than twice as likely as the lowest group to have heart disease or diabetes, or both.

The Food and Drug Administration and chemical industry officials said the study does not show that bisphenol A caused the diseases. The researcher who led the study, David Melzer at England's University of Exeter, agrees. He says the findings must be reproduced and that other studies are also needed.

But he also says that if BPA is a cause of these conditions, then just reducing contact with it might prevent some cases. The study appeared last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Earlier this month, United States government scientists from the National Toxicology Program released a final report on BPA. They found that the chemical is of "some concern" for effects on development of the prostate gland and brain in fetuses, infants and children. They made the same finding for behavioral effects.

The scientists based their findings mostly on studies of laboratory animals. Even so, the program director said "the possibility that BPA may affect human development cannot be dismissed."

In April, Canada became the first country to propose a ban on plastic baby bottles that contain BPA. The government has said it will publish its final decision by October eighteenth.

Some plastic goods are now being marketed as BPA-free. But some people wonder whether any other chemicals that might take its place are any better.

And that's the VOA Special English Health Report, written by Caty Weaver. I'm Jim Tedder.

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Knowing the Lingo as Americans Cast Their Ballots, Absentee or Otherwise

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AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: dictionary editor Ben Zimmer explains terms from the U.S. presidential campaign.

RS: We start with "battleground state" and "swing state."

BEN ZIMMER: "Well, they're usually used pretty interchangeably. They are states where we don't whether they will go for the Republican ticket or the Democratic ticket, and that's where the election will be decided."

RS: "So the swing states or the battleground states would be Michigan. Ohio ... "

AA: "Ohio. Pennsylvania, we hear a lot."

RS: "Florida."

BEN ZIMMER: "That's right, and those are the states that have been really crucial in the past few presidential elections. One way that people have been talking about it in the past few elections is in terms of color. There are red states, which are assumed to go for the Republicans, blue states for the Democrats, and the ones that we're not sure of, people call purple states.

"The television networks actually set up a system of color-coding so that there would be no favoritism. They would actually switch the colors blue and red based on the incumbent party. So, for instance, in two thousand the incumbent party was Democratic and that color was blue.

"In two thousand four the incumbent party was Republican and they switched the color-coding so that the incumbents had red. But that meant that the Democrats were blue again.

"The system was supposed to switch over again this year, but it looks like they're just going to hold on to that. Otherwise it would just be very confusing for people, because that's the association everybody has now."

RS: "And it's good that it's not on the ballot."

BEN ZIMMER: "That's true. I'm color blind, so I would have a real problem with that if they started using colors on the ballot."

RS: "Speaking of ballots, what's an absentee ballot? We're hearing a lot about that too."

BEN ZIMMER: "This is actually becoming a very widespread phenomenon now. A lot of states are encouraging people to vote ahead of time. They don't ask you why anymore. They just say go ahead, do it by mail. And this is seen as a way to increase voter participation for people who might have a problem getting out to the polls on Election Day.

"But it's also changing things quite a lot because large numbers of people are voting by mail well before Election Day. And so the whole dynamics of the kind of endgame of the election could be very different because people are voting much earlier now."

AA: "And in fact even the campaigns are offering to send people absentee ballot applications."

BEN ZIMMER: "That's right. I mean, this is really crucial also with older voters who might have trouble getting to the polling stations. And so we've seen a big push in states like Florida to have elderly voters vote absentee."

RS: "One of the expressions we've been seeing in the news lately because we've had two political conventions is post-convention bump."

BEN ZIMMER: "That refers to the spike in the polls for a candidate immediately after a political convention. So the Democrats had their convention first this year and we saw a rise in the polls that favored Obama.

"And then the Republicans had their convention the next week and they got an even bigger bump because of all the attention mostly surrounding the vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska."

AA: "And another term we're hearing in connection with Sarah Palin is 'Hail Mary pass.'"

BEN ZIMMER: "Well, that's an interesting term that made the transition from religion to sports to politics. So a 'Hail Mary' is a devotional prayer that's said by Catholics, and then it made the transition to sports. Roger Staubach, who was a famous football player in the nineteen seventies, referred to a forward pass that he made at the end of an important football game as a 'Hail Mary pass,' which means he just threw it and said a prayer, hoping that it would be caught.

"And sure enough, the ball was caught and his team won that important game. And so that then became a metaphor for any kind of desperate move made to try to obtain a victory. So when Sarah Palin was announced, some people said 'Oh, this is just a Hail Mary pass. He's just trying to get ahead of Obama by making this unexpected move.'"

RS: Ben Zimmer is executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus, an online thesaurus and dictionary. More terms from the campaign trail next week.

AA: As for those post-convention bumps, we should note that as of Tuesday, the RealClearPolitics.com average of national polls had Barack Obama ahead by three points.

RS: And that's WORDMASTER for this week. With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

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National Cryptologic Museum Is Filled With Secrets of the Past

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VOICE NE:

This is Mary Tillotson.

VOICE TWO:

And this is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program EXPLORATIONS. Today we visit a small museum in the state of Maryland. It is called the National Cryptologic Museum. It is filled with information that was once very secret.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

The little National Cryptologic Museum is on the Fort George G. Meade military base near Washington, D.C. It tells the story of cryptology and the men and women who have worked in this unusual profession. The word cryptology comes from the Greek "kryptos logos." It means "hidden word." Cryptology is writing or communicating using secret methods to hide the meaning of your words.

VOICE TWO:

An example of a slave quilt at the National Cryptologic Museum

The museum shows many pieces of equipment that were once used to make information secret. It also has equipment that was used in an effort to read secret information. One unusual example is a kind of bed covering called a quilt. Quilts are made by hand. They usually have a colorful design sewn on them. One special kind of quilt was used to pass on secret information.

In the early history of the United States, black people from Africa were used as slaves in the southern states. Slaves sewed quilts that had very unusual designs. These quilts really told stories. The quilts were made with designs that told slaves how to escape to freedom in the northern states.

The museum has an example that shows a design that represents the North Star. Slaves knew they had to travel from the South to the North to escape to freedom. The quilt tells a slave to follow the North Star. Other designs in the quilt represent roads and a small house.

History experts say about sixty thousand slaves escaped to freedom during the period of slavery. The experts do not know how much the quilts really helped, but they did provide needed information for those trying to escape.

VOICE ONE:

The Cryptologic Museum has several examples that show the importance of creating secret information, or trying to read secret information written by foreign nations. Secret information is also called code.

One of the most important displays at the museum shows American attempts to read Japanese military information codes during World War Two. The Japanese Navy used special machines to change their written information into secret codes. This coded information was then transmitted by radio to ships and bases. Much of this information contained secret military plans and orders.

Joseph Rochefort

The leaders of the Japanese Navy believed no one could read or understand the secret codes. They were wrong. An American Naval officer named Joseph Rochefort worked very hard to break the Japanese code. He did this in an effort to learn what the Japanese Navy was planning.

Mister Rochefort did his work in a small building on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It was early in nineteen forty-two. The American naval commander in the Pacific Ocean was Admiral Chester Nimitz. His forces were much smaller than the Japanese Naval forces. And the Japanese had been winning many victories.

(SOUND)

VOICE TWO:

Joseph Rochefort had worked for several months to read the secret Japanese Naval code called J-N-Twenty-Five. If he could read enough of the code, Mister Rochefort would be able to provide Admiral Nimitz with very valuable information. Admiral Nimitz could use this information to make the necessary decisions to plan for battle. By the early part of the year, Mister Rochefort and the men who worked with him could read a little less than twenty percent of the Japanese J-N-Twenty-Five code.

VOICE ONE:

From the beginning of nineteen forty-two, the Japanese code carried information that discussed a place called "A-F." Mister Rochefort felt the Japanese were planning an important battle aimed at "A-F."

But where was "A-F"? After several weeks, Mister Rochefort and other naval experts told Admiral Nimitz that their best idea was that the "A-F" in the Japanese code was the American-held island of Midway.

Admiral Nimitz said he could not plan an attack or a defense based on only an idea. He needed more information.

VOICE TWO:

The Navy experts decided to try a trick. They told the American military force on Midway to broadcast a false message. The message would say the island was having problems with its water-processing equipment. The message asked that fresh water be sent immediately to the island. This message was not sent in code.

Several days later, a Japanese radio broadcast in the J-N-Twenty-Five code said that "A-F" had little water.

Mister Rochefort had the evidence he needed. "A-F" was now known to be the island of Midway. He also told Admiral Nimitz the Japanese would attack Midway on June third.

Admiral Nimitz used this information to secretly move his small force to an area near Midway and wait for the Japanese Navy. The battle that followed was a huge American victory. History experts now say the Battle of Midway was the beginning of the American victory in the Pacific. That victory was possible because Joseph Rochefort learned to read enough of the Japanese code to discover the meaning of the two letters "A-F."

(SOUND)

VOICE ONE:

One American code has never been broken. Perhaps it never will. It was used in the Pacific during World War Two. For many years the government would not discuss this secret code. Listen for a moment to this very unusual code. Then you may understand why the Japanese military forces were never able to understand any of it.

(MUSIC)

You may have guessed that the code is in the voice of a Native American. The man you just heard is singing a simple song in the Navajo language. Very few people outside the Navajo nation are able to speak any of their very difficult language.

At the beginning of World War Two, the United States Marine Corps asked members of the Navajo tribe to train as Code Talkers.

VOICE ONE:

The Cryptologic Museum says about four hundred Navajos served as Marine Corps Code Talkers during the war. They could take a sentence in English and change it into their language in about twenty seconds. A code machine at that time took about thirty minutes to do the same work.

The Navajo Code Talkers took part in every battle the Marines entered in the Pacific during World War Two. The Japanese were very skilled at breaking codes. But they were never able to understand any of what they called "The Marine Code."

For many years after the war, the American public did not know about the valuable work done by the Marine Navajo Code Talkers. The United States government kept their work a secret and their language continued to be a valuable method of passing secret information.

VOICE TWO:

The Cryptologic Museum has many pieces of mechanical and electric equipment used to change words into code. It also has almost as many examples of machines used to try to change code back into useful words.

Examples of Enigma machines

Perhaps the most famous is a World War Two German code machine called the Enigma. The word "enigma" means a puzzle or a problem that is difficult to solve.

The German Enigma machine was used by the German military to pass orders and plans. The United States, Britain, and the government of Poland were all successful in learning to read information transmitted by the Enigma. It took thousands of people and cost millions of dollars to read the Enigma information. However, the time, effort and money resulted in a quicker end to the war against Nazi Germany.

VOICE ONE:

The National Cryptologic Museum belongs to the United States National Security Agency. The agency is usually called the N.S.A. One of the N.S.A.'s many jobs is cryptography for the United States government. The work of the N.S.A. is not open to the public. However, the National Cryptologic Museum tells the story of the men and women who work at the N.S.A. long after their work is no longer secret.

Each part of the museum shows the value of this secret, difficult and demanding work. Visitors say it is really fun to see equipment and read documents that were once very important and very, very secret.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

This program was written by Paul Thompson. It was produced by Cynthia Kirk. I'm Steve Ember.

VOICE ONE:

And I'm Mary Tillotson. Join us again next week for EXPLORATIONS, a program in Special English on the Voice of America.

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Burros as Guard Dogs on the Farm

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This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

A burro is a small donkey. Donkeys are related to horses; both are part of the equine family. Another way people say it is BOOR-oh. The name comes from Spanish and, before that, from a Latin term for small horse.

Burros reach an average height of over a meter and can weigh more than two hundred twenty-five kilograms. The long-eared animals are often gray with white noses, jaws and undersides. But they can also have coats of red or blue.

Burros are known for their sure footing on mountains while carrying heavy loads. In the United States, they are best known for their history as pack animals in the desert Southwest. In fact, burros in the wild are related to pack animals that ran away or were freed by gold miners and others.

But burros are not only good pack animals. They can also help calm and control nervous horses and guard sheep and goats on farms. Robin Rivello works with the New Jersey chapter of the American Mustang and Burro Association. She says burros have protected farm animals even against bears.

People may have the idea that burros and donkeys do not like being told what to do. But experts say the animals are not being stubborn; they just like to take their time considering what they will do.

In the United States, there are breeders who raise and sell burros. Or Americans can buy a burro taken from the wild by a federal agency, the Bureau of Land Management.

People who get a wild burro need to "gentle" the animal. "Gentling" means training it to accept the human attention needed for care and grooming.

Burros like to clean each other. But these desert animals groom themselves with dust instead of water. So it is normal for a burro to have some dirt in its coat. A brush can remove hardened mud.

Experts like Robin Rivello advise owners not to let their burros eat too much. Being fat can ruin their health. Overweight burros can also develop a condition that threatens their well-known walking ability.

Robin Rivello says a burro's feet should be cleaned and cared for every six to eight weeks. But she warns owners not to raise the feet as high as with a horse. A burro's legs differ from a horse's legs. The pain could make the burro kick.

And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our reports are at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Jim Tedder.

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Dead Sea Scrolls Coming to the Internet

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VOICE ONE:

This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Barbara Klein.

VOICE TWO:

Scientists are bringing the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Internet

And I'm Steve Ember. This week, we will tell about an effort to place two thousand year old documents on the Internet. We will tell why two American scientists are concerned about frogs. And we tell about Down syndrome -- a disorder that has been noted in the American election campaign.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Israeli officials have announced plans to make the Dead Sea Scrolls available on the Internet. Officials say scientists have begun using space technology to take pictures of the scrolls. They say the technology will help uncover some writings that have been hidden for years.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are about two thousand years old. They include pieces from about nine hundred documents. The scrolls contain the oldest known copies of the Hebrew holy book or Bible. They also include descriptions of life for Jews and early Christians during the time of Jesus.

The scrolls were found near the Dead Sea in nineteen forty-seven. They are written on two kinds of paper: parchment or papyrus. Some parts of the documents have become difficult to read over the years.

VOICE TWO:

The Dead Sea Scrolls are in the possession of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Last month, officials announced that all of the scrolls would be digitally copied and placed on the Internet. The scientists say they are using non-damaging, high-tech imaging technology. Infrared cameras were used to make pictures of the Dead Sea Scrolls not long after they were found. Since then, infrared technology has greatly improved.

Scientists say the new method will show never before seen details. Officials say the imaging process will be done in way that protects the documents from the harmful effects of light and heat.

VOICE ONE:

The imaging technology being used on the scrolls now has also been used in space. Scientist Greg Bearman is taking part in the project. Mister Bearman recently retired from the American space agency. He says the imaging equipment is used to study planets, but that it also works on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Officials say the goal of the project is make the scrolls more widely available to researchers and the public. The work is expected to take about five years.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Two American scientists believe many kinds of wildlife life are in great danger. The scientists say these animals and plants could permanently disappear from Earth. They also say a widespread loss of amphibians in recent years shows that a biological disaster has begun.

Amphibians are land animals that reproduce in water. The scientists studied a well-known amphibian -- the frog. They found that some frog populations are only two to five percent of their normal size. David Wake and Vance Vredenburg reported the finding in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

VOICE ONE:

Mister Wake teaches at the University of California at Berkeley. Mister Vredenburg works at the university's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and teaches at San Francisco State University. Their joint observations represent almost fifty years of research.

The report says at least two hundred species, or kinds of life, have died out during the past twenty years. But the scientists are hopeful about some amphibians. They believe at least some will live through the current threat of extinction.

Professor Wake says people are mainly responsible for conditions that threaten wildlife. He blames human beings for destruction of the animals' habitats or living areas. This often happens when unoccupied land is developed for human use.

VOICE TWO:

The men and their team did some of the research in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Five of seven amphibian species at the top of the mountains are threatened.

The scientists walked along forty kilometers of streams and lakes to observe the frogs. Mister Vredenburg says one area -- Yosemite National Park -- is especially well protected. Yet its population of two kinds of frogs dropped sharply in recent years. Ninety-five to ninety-eight percent of the Sierra Nevada Yellow-legged Frog and the Southern Yellow-legged Frogs disappeared during that time.

VOICE ONE:

Professor Vredenburg says the frogs may have started disappearing in the nineteen nineties. At that time, people were adding rainbow trout to streams and lakes. The fish like to eat frog eggs and young frogs. When the trout were removed, the frogs stopped dying for a time.

Mister Vredenburg says they came back by the thousands, but later died off again. He says a few hundred yellow legged and Sierra frogs are alive today. That compares with many thousands in the past.

VOICE TWO:

The University of California team said the frogs died from an infection caused by a fungus. This disease, chytridiomycosis, also has killed many other animals over the past five years. And it has spread to other species around the world.

It is not known how the disease is spread. Birds or wind may be responsible. But experts now have been able to complete a genetic map of the fungus. They hope to develop prevention methods within a year. Mister Wake notes that new kinds of animal and plant life have developed and died off over the centuries. Sometimes, however, an extinction event takes place. During this time, many more species die out permanently than develop. Mister Wake says humanity is living in the sixth great extinction event of history. He says human responsibility makes it different from the first five extinction events.

VOICE ONE:

Scientists disagree about when the present mass extinction began. Some say it may have started about ten thousand years ago. That is when humans began to hunt.

Many large mammals disappeared from Earth during that period. Or, Mister Wake said, it may have started in the nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution began. But he and Mister Vredenburg believe it already has started.

Mister Wake says amphibians have lived for two hundred fifty million years. He says they survived when dinosaurs did not. And he warns the fact that amphibians are dying out should send people an important message.

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VOICE TWO:

This month, the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, accepted the Republican Party's nomination for vice president. Governor Palin has a son who was born with Down syndrome. She and her husband also have four other children who do not have the disorder.

Human genes are normally organized along forty-six chromosomes -- twenty-three from each parent. But as a result of a mistake in cell division, some people have three copies of the twenty-first chromosome. There are supposed to be just two.

About one in every seven hundred babies has this extra copy. A British doctor, John Langdon Down, first described the condition in the eighteen sixties.

VOICE ONE:

Many babies with Down syndrome have low muscle tone, so they need extra support when they are held. Their heads are smaller than average and they can have unusually shaped ears. Also, their eyes often point upward.

People with Down syndrome often have other symptoms. These include problems with their heart and with their breathing and hearing. But a lot of the problems are treatable.

As a result, people with Down syndrome are living longer. In nineteen eighty-three, they lived an average of just twenty-five years. Today the average life expectancy is fifty-six. But that longer life has led to a sad discovery. People with Down syndrome may have an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease at an early age. The disease slowly destroys memory, thinking and reasoning skills.

VOICE TWO:

Down syndrome is the most common genetic cause of mental retardation. Most people with Down syndrome are mildly to moderately retarded. Many are able to attend classes with other students. Later, as adults, many hold jobs and lead independent lives.

There are tests to look for Down syndrome during pregnancy. The risk of it is higher for older mothers. The rate for those under thirty is one in one thousand births. In women age forty-four, like Governor Palin, that number is one in thirty-five.

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VOICE ONE:

This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS program was written by Jerilyn Watson, Caty Weaver and Brianna Blake, who was also our producer. I'm Barbara Klein.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Steve Ember. Join us again at this time next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.

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Special Edition: How 'Bailouts' and 'Golden Parachutes' Got Their Name

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The Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of the financial industry is the talk of Washington right now. But where exactly did the term "bailout" come from? In this special edition of Wordmaster, Avi Arditti and Rosanne Skirble turn to dictionary editor, Ben Zimmer, for the answer.

BEN ZIMMER: "Originally a bailout referred to a way that a pilot could get out of a plane very quickly by opening up a parachute and parachuting to safety. And that is spelled b-a-i-l-out in American usage, but British speakers tend to spell it b-a-l-e-out. But either way, it then became applied to financial situations, where a company or corporation would have to be rescued in the same way that someone had to be rescued from a plane, by making an emergency landing by parachute."

AA: "My first thought when I would hear that term was maybe it had something to do with a boat taking on water and you would bail it out. You're saying it had to do with a pilot bailing out of a plane?"

BEN ZIMMER: "Yeah, actually it is also related to the idea of bailing water out. The general image is of letting something out. If you spell it as b-a-l-e you can understand it as letting a bundle out, through a trap door, for instance. You're --

RS: "A bale of hay."

BEN ZIMMER: " -- bailing out that way. So it had these various senses relating to just trying to get something out the door very quickly. But the financial expression comes specifically from the idea of someone in a plane needing to make an emergency parachute landing."

RS: "A jump to safety."

BEN ZIMMER: "Right. A 'golden parachute.'"

AA: "Right, a golden parachute, what the CEOs get, right? And just briefly, a golden parachute, since you brought that up, what exactly is a golden parachute?"

BEN ZIMMER: "The idea is that as the company is going downhill, as the company is about to crash, the CEO [chief executive officer] or other executives get some very sweet deal to get out of the situation. So they're not just being bailed out, but they're getting a tidy sum of money. So that became referred to as a golden parachute. Starting in the nineteen eighties we heard about that, where sometimes there'd be a contract that was agreed upon so that if, for instance, an executive -- not necessarily if that company was going to go bankrupt, but just if the company was going to fire someone, the executive would make sure that he or she had something in the contract stating that they would get a very large sum of money if that should happen. And that was also called a golden parachute."

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White Sands National Monument: A Wonder of Nature, in New Mexico

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ANNOUNCER:

Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA IN VOA Special English. I'm Faith Lapidus.

One of the world's great natural wonders is in the state of New Mexico, in the American Southwest. Nature has created huge moving hills of pure white sand. These sand dunes cover more than seventy thousand hectares of desert.

Now, Steve Ember and Mary Tillotson are your guides as we explore White Sands National Monument.

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VOICE ONE:

White Sands National Monument

It is one of the largest sand dune fields in the United States. The bright white sand dunes are always changing, always moving, like waves on the ocean. Driven by strong winds, the sand moves and covers everything in its path. It is like a huge sea of sand.

VOICE TWO:

The sand dunes have created an extreme environment. Plants and animals struggle to survive. A few kinds of plants grow quickly to survive burial by the moving sand dunes. Several kinds of small animals have become white in color in order to hide in the sand.

White Sands National Monument protects a large part of this dune field. It also protects the plants and animals that live there. More than five hundred thousand people visit White Sands National Monument each year. They climb on the dunes and observe the moving sea of sand.

VOICE ONE:

You may wonder how all this sand arrived in the area. To understand that, you would have to travel back in time two hundred fifty million years. An inland ocean once covered the area. The minerals calcium and sulfur were at the bottom of the ocean. Over time, the water slowly disappeared. The calcium and sulfur remained. The minerals formed gypsum rock.

Then, seventy million years ago, the Earth's surface, or crust, pushed upward. The rocks formed two groups of mountains. Later, the crust pulled apart. The area between the mountains broke and fell down. It formed a half-circle shape of a bowl. This bowl of rock is known as the Tularosa Basin.

VOICE TWO:

About twenty four thousand years ago, it rained a great deal in the area. The rain filled the Tularosa Basin and formed Lake Otero. The rain and snow that washed down the mountains into Lake Otero carried gypsum with it.

Gypsum Dunes

Later, Lake Otero almost completely dried up. Gypsum remained. A strong wind moved into the area. It blew across the land for thousands of years. Pieces of gypsum broke off. The wind wore them away to a size small enough to pick up and carry for short distances. Wherever the wind dropped sand, dunes formed.

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VOICE ONE:

The sand dunes at White Sands National Monument are unusual because they are made of gypsum. Gypsum sand is different from common sand. Most sand is made of quartz, a hard silicon crystal. Gypsum sand is made of softer calcium sulfate. It dissolves easily in water. So it is rarely found in the form of sand dunes. Most gypsum would be carried away by rivers to the sea. But the Tularosa Basin is enclosed. No rivers flow out of it. So water with dissolved gypsum has nowhere to go.

Gypsum sand is being made all the time. The dunes continue to form and move under the influence of water and wind. Water continues to wash down from the mountains carrying dissolved gypsum into the Tularosa Basin. Wind continues to blow across the Basin carrying the gypsum.

The gypsum sand grains crash into each other. The crash creates tiny lines or scratches on the surface of the sand. These scratches change the way light shines off the surface. This makes the sand appear white. The sand dunes look like great masses of bright white snow. But they are not cold and wet. It only rains about eighteen centimeters each year.

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VOICE TWO:

There are four kinds of sand dunes at White Sands National Monument. Some of the dunes are small and fast-moving. They are called dome dunes because they are shaped like a half-circle. Few if any plants grow on them. These dunes move the fastest, up to twelve meters a year.

Other dunes are called transverse dunes. They form in long lines across the dune field. They can grow to be one hundred twenty meters thick and eighteen meters high.

Another kind of dunes are barchan dunes. They form in areas with strong winds but a limited supply of sand. These dunes have sand in three parts, like a body in the center and two arms on the sides. The sand in the two arms moves faster than the sand in the center.

Parabolic dunes are the opposite of barchan dunes. They form when plants hold sand in the outer parts of the dune but the center of the dune continues to move.

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VOICE ONE:

You may wonder how anything can live in this extreme environment of a white sand desert. There is not much rain. The heat in summer is intense. The sand lacks nutrients.

Yet almost four hundred kinds of animals live in White Sands National Monument. Many of them are birds or insects. There are also twenty-six kinds of reptiles, including rattlesnakes and lizards. And there are more than forty kinds of mammals. They include rabbits, foxes and coyotes.

Scientists know that plants and animals often change to be able to live in extreme environments. For example, they change color to protect themselves from enemies. Many of the animals that live in the sand dunes have become white. So it is difficult to see the animals in the sand.

There is another reason why you may not be able to see the animals. Many of them remain underground during the day when it is very hot. They come out at night when it is cooler. You may be able to see their footprints.

VOICE TWO:

Plants do grow in the White Sands dune field. But even plants that grow in most deserts have trouble surviving. A major reason is that the dunes bury any plants in their way as they move across the desert. Yet, a few plants have developed techniques to avoid being buried by moving sand.

For example, some plants grow taller and their roots grow deeper into the sand. The soaptree yucca plant can make its stem grow longer to keep its leaves above the sand. The plant grows up to thirty centimeters a year.

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VOICE ONE:

White Sands National Monument is about twenty-four kilometers southeast of the city of Alamogordo, New Mexico. In the visitor center at the entrance of the park, you can find out about special activities and guided walks. From the visitor center, you can drive about thirteen kilometers into the center of the dunes. It is like driving on a lonely white planet. Along the way there is information that tells about the natural history of the white sands.

You can also explore the dunes on foot. There are four marked trails. Signs along the trail tell about the plants growing in the sand. You can see some unusual and beautiful plants and flowers growing in the sand dunes. But you may not remove or destroy any plants or animals at White Sands.

You can even camp there overnight. But you must be careful. It is easy to get lost in the waves of moving sand especially during sandstorms. There is no water to drink. The temperature can rise to thirty-eight degrees Celsius in summer. There is no shelter from the sun's rays.

VOICE TWO:

There is another reason to be careful at White Sands National Monument. The White Sands Missile Range completely surrounds the park. It covers one million hectares. The missile range was first used as a military weapons testing area after World War Two. It was used to test rockets that were captured from the German armed forces. The missile range continues to be an important testing area for experimental weapons and space technology.

These tests take place about two times a week. For safety reasons, both the park and the road from it south to Las Cruces, New Mexico may be closed for an hour or two while tests are taking place.

VOICE ONE:

White Sands National Monument is part of America's National Parks System. The park system includes more than three hundred seventy protected areas. White Sands National Monument is just one of the more unusual examples of America's natural and cultural treasures.

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ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Shelley Gollust and read by Steve Ember and Mary Tillotson. I'm Faith Lapidus. Internet users can find our programs at voaspecialenglish.com. We hope you join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.

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