美国国家公共电台 NPR What It's Like To Live In A Small, Rural, Politically Divided Town

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

If you should fly into Haines, Alaska, you'll be on a propeller¹ plane so small that your pilot will call the roll.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Melissa.

MELISSA BLOCK, BYLINE²: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Mary.

MARY: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Joseph.

JOSEPH: Right here.

INSKEEP: Just 2,500 people live in Haines, but lately, this idyllic³ town surrounded by water with snowy mountains and lush, green forest beyond has been roiled⁴ by a political battle because a group of residents wants to recall more than half the members of the local government. NPR's Melissa Block was on that little plane. You heard her name called out. She was visiting Haines for her series Our Land.

(LAUGHTER)

BLOCK: We've gathered a small group together in this small town to talk about what's going on; among them, one of the targets of the recall effort and...

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Hey, Shane.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Hi, Shane.

BLOCK: ...One of the men who's circulating the recall petition.

SHANE HORTON: I have a petition to get rid of you out in my truck if that would help, but no (laughter).

BLOCK: That's Shane Horton. He owns a motel and drives a snowplow. I ask him, so what's the deal with all this division?

HORTON: (Laughter) Well, this is kind of like a family. It's typical of a very dysfunctional family. There is little but dissent⁵ around here for the most part.

BLOCK: Sitting right next to Horton is Heather Lende, a writer and one of the targets of that recall. She was just elected to the Borough⁶ Assembly last fall. And when she heard that some in her community were trying to oust⁷ her...

HEATHER LENDE: I felt like - this has never happened to me, but it was the closest thing I've had to feeling like I've been married for 34 years and suddenly my husband cheated on me. It was heartbreaking.

BLOCK: And social media makes it worse, Lende says. People in Haines are saying things online they wouldn't dare say in public in such a small town. Haines Tormey chimes in. He shares a name with the town where he grew up.

HAINES TORMEY: It's a pretty hot political climate here. It's like a - it's like a petri dish (laughter).

BLOCK: Tormey is a mechanic and a commercial fisherman. At 34, he's the youngest of the group. He moved away from Haines but recently decided⁸ to move back with his wife and four kids. It's a different place than he remembers - angrier, louder.

TORMEY: Haines is following footsteps with what's happening in our country, I think. The rhetoric⁹ and the volume has been turned up.

BLOCK: That gets nods of agreement around the room. So what's the root of all the contention¹⁰? People erupt over local issues like a harbor expansion or who should be the new borough manager. But it's about more than that - old-timers versus¹¹ newcomers, to some extent; also people who want resource development, like mining or logging, against the greenies, environmentalists who stand in the way.

HORTON: One of the things that makes ornery, bitter old farts like me is that I came here and was doing this...

BLOCK: Shane Horton again.

HORTON: ...I was doing construction and dirt work involved with the timber industry. And that went away, so I went into doing something else, and then that gets blown out of the water. How many times can I get told to completely start over because what I am doing is now not acceptable?

BLOCK: Maybe it's a question of who are we now? What's our identity in this place that's changing? Dave McCandless, a family physician in Haines, has seen these same tensions in other places he's lived.

DAVE MCCANDLESS: I think we're actually hardwired to judge things around us and decide if somebody is one of us or one of them. But once you decide somebody is one of them, it's really easy to, you know, switch over and say, well, if I disagree about this, maybe I disagree with them about everything. And suddenly, I can't find any common ground.

BLOCK: That common ground has been elusive¹² in Haines lately. But Heather Lende says despite the recall effort against her, she's optimistic. She's a liberal and has very close friends who are Trump¹³ supporters.

LENDE: I'm not going to lose a friend over who ever votes for someone in the national election. And maybe that's the lesson that can come from Haines for the rest of the world. I mean, we've lived with divisiveness for a long time, but it's like, is it worth losing a friend over? I don't think so.

BLOCK: And Dave McCandless, the doctor, says this dissension, it's normal in small-town Alaska. He sees it every year. Anger builds through the long, dark, winter months.

MCCANDLESS: And February, March, April is when people kind of fall apart. The holidays are over, and it's a long time till spring.

BLOCK: Shane Horton laughs, yeah, that sounds about right.

HORTON: When I first came to Alaska, that was basically a kind of a joke is that about March there was a whole slew¹⁴ of divorces and screaming arguments and everybody switched. It was like a dance party. You just kind of switched partners around, traded vehicles, bought a new truck, ended up with a new wife, and then everybody took off and struggled through another year again. I didn't participate in most of that but...

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: Except for the truck maybe.

HORTON: It went on that way an awful lot, and it was just because people are nuts when they get through with a long winter.

JOANNE WATERMAN: Spring breakup.

BLOCK: That's Joanne Waterman. She's just retired¹⁵ from working at the ferry terminal.

WATERMAN: We will go through these times. We will fight. We will scrap¹⁶. We'll go to the bar and have a beer together, and we'll bounce back, and we'll be different. But, you know, we'll still be a community that at the base of it, at the heart of it, we love each other.

BLOCK: But remember Haines Tormey who moved back here with his young family? He's rethinking that decision.

TORMEY: All the time because I'm scared that it's never going to stop, and I don't think it's a healthy way to live.

MCCANDLESS: I guess what I really want to do is reassure¹⁷ you.

BLOCK: Dr. Dave McCandless wants Haines to know this...

MCCANDLESS: What you're seeing, this tension and this turmoil¹⁸ and all that, it's all happened before. This country has been full of that just like the town is full of it. But what will change is your way of thinking of it. OK? You'll come to grips with that. Three years from now, we'll be arguing about something else just as feverishly¹⁹, and we won't be able to remember what this was.

BLOCK: But there will be something else that you'll be arguing about.

MCCANDLESS: Oh, trust me.

(LAUGHTER)

BLOCK: Melissa Block, NPR News, Haines, Alaska.

1 propeller   

n.螺旋桨，推进器

参考例句：

• The propeller started to spin around.螺旋桨开始飞快地旋转起来。
• A rope jammed the boat's propeller.一根绳子卡住了船的螺旋桨。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 idyllic   

adj.质朴宜人的，田园风光的

参考例句：

• These scenes had an idyllic air.这种情景多少有点田园气氛。
• Many people living in big cities yearn for an idyllic country life.现在的很多都市人向往那种田园化的生活。

4 roiled   

v.搅混（液体）( roil的过去式和过去分词 )；使烦恼；使不安；使生气

参考例句：

• American society is being roiled by the controversy over homosexual marriage. 当今美国社会正被有关同性恋婚姻的争论搞得不得安宁。 来自互联网
• In the past few months, instability has roiled Tibet and Tibetan-inhabited areas. 在过去的几个月里，西藏和藏人居住区不稳定。 来自互联网

5 dissent   

n./v.不同意，持异议

参考例句：

• It is too late now to make any dissent.现在提出异议太晚了。
• He felt her shoulders gave a wriggle of dissent.他感到她的肩膀因为不同意而动了一下。

6 borough   

n.享有自治权的市镇；(英)自治市镇

参考例句：

• He was slated for borough president.他被提名做自治区主席。
• That's what happened to Harry Barritt of London's Bromley borough.住在伦敦的布罗姆利自治市的哈里.巴里特就经历了此事。

7 oust   

vt.剥夺，取代，驱逐

参考例句：

• The committee wanted to oust him from the union.委员会想把他从工会中驱逐出去。
• The leaders have been ousted from power by nationalists.这些领导人被民族主义者赶下了台。

8 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

9 rhetoric   

n.修辞学，浮夸之言语

参考例句：

• Do you know something about rhetoric?你懂点修辞学吗？
• Behind all the rhetoric,his relations with the army are dangerously poised.在冠冕堂皇的言辞背后，他和军队的关系岌岌可危。

10 contention   

n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张

参考例句：

• The pay increase is the key point of contention. 加薪是争论的焦点。
• The real bone of contention,as you know,is money.你知道，争论的真正焦点是钱的问题。

11 versus   

prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下

参考例句：

• The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
• The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。

12 elusive   

adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的

参考例句：

• Try to catch the elusive charm of the original in translation.翻译时设法把握住原文中难以捉摸的风韵。
• Interpol have searched all the corners of the earth for the elusive hijackers.国际刑警组织已在世界各地搜查在逃的飞机劫持者。

13 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

14 slew   

v.（使）旋转；n.大量，许多

参考例句：

• He slewed the car against the side of the building.他的车滑到了大楼的一侧，抵住了。
• They dealt with a slew of other issues.他们处理了大量的其他问题。

15 retired   

adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的

参考例句：

• The old man retired to the country for rest.这位老人下乡休息去了。
• Many retired people take up gardening as a hobby.许多退休的人都以从事园艺为嗜好。

16 scrap   

n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废

参考例句：

• A man comes round regularly collecting scrap.有个男人定时来收废品。
• Sell that car for scrap.把那辆汽车当残品卖了吧。

17 reassure   

v.使放心，使消除疑虑

参考例句：

• This seemed to reassure him and he continued more confidently.这似乎使他放心一点，于是他更有信心地继续说了下去。
• The airline tried to reassure the customers that the planes were safe.航空公司尽力让乘客相信飞机是安全的。

18 turmoil   

n.骚乱，混乱，动乱

参考例句：

• His mind was in such a turmoil that he couldn't get to sleep.内心的纷扰使他无法入睡。
• The robbery put the village in a turmoil.抢劫使全村陷入混乱。

19 feverishly   

adv. 兴奋地

参考例句：

• Feverishly he collected his data. 他拼命收集资料。
• The company is having to cast around feverishly for ways to cut its costs. 公司迫切须要想出各种降低成本的办法。