AMERICAN MOSAIC - Music by Cole Porter/Muhammad Ali turns 60

AMERICAN MOSAIC¹ -January 18, 2002: Music by Cole Porter/Muhammad Ali turns 60/Martin Luther King

holiday
HOST:
Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC
—
VOA’s radio magazine in Special English.
(THEME)
This is Doug Johnson. On our program today we:
play music written by Cole Porter ..
.
tell about a man who may be Americas’s most famous athlete ..
.
and report about the holiday that honors Martin Luther King Junior.

Martin Luther King Junior

HOST:

Monday, January twenty-first is Martin Luther King Day in the United States. It celebrates the life and work of
the American civil rights leader. Sarah Long tells us about him.
ANNCR:
Martin Luther King Junior was born on January fifteenth, Nineteen-Twenty-Nine in Atlanta, Georgia. His father

was a minister of a Christian² Baptist Church.

 

At that time, laws in the American south kept black people separate from white people. The
laws forced blacks to attend separate schools and live in separate areas of the city. Blacks did
not have the same civil rights as whites.

Martin Luther King attended Morehouse College in Atlanta. There he studied the ideas of
India’s spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi. He also studied American philosopher Henry David
Thoreau. Both Gandhi and Thoreau wrote about ways to fight injustice³. They urged people to
disobey unjust laws, but not to use violence.

At a June 5,
1961, press
conference in Martin Luther King Junior wanted to spread these ideas about peaceful protest. He became
a
New York. Baptist minister like his father. He and his wife Coretta moved to Montgomery, Alabama.

One day in Nineteen-Fifty-Five, a black woman got on a city bus in Montgomery. She sat in a seat saved for
white people. She refused to move. She was arrested.

Martin Luther King organized a peaceful protest against the city bus system. The protest succeeded. The
Supreme⁴ Court later ruled that racial separation in the Montgomery bus system was illegal. Martin Luther King
became well known. Groups formed to protest racial separation. He became the leader of the struggle.

Each year, Americans celebrate Martin Luther King’s life and work on the Monday nearest his birthday.
Schools and government offices are closed. Cities and towns hold special ceremonies to honor him. These
include music events, readings and movies.

For more information about the life and work of Martin Luther King Junior, listen Sunday to the broadcast of the
Special English program PEOPLE IN AMERICA.


Muhammad Ali

HOST:

Yesterday, January seventeenth, was the birthday of American boxing champion Muhammad Ali. He was sixty
years old. Muhammad Ali is the only professional boxer⁵ to win the heavyweight championship three times. Shep
O’Neal tells us about him.

ANNCR:

He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in Nineteen-Forty-Two. His parents named him Cassius
Clay.

Cassius Clay won a gold medal for boxing at the Nineteen-Sixty Summer Olympic Games in
Rome, Italy. He was eighteen years old. Then he became a professional boxer.

Cassius Clay won the heavyweight boxing championship for the first time in Nineteen-Sixty-
Four when he defeated Sonny Liston. Then he joined the Black Muslim religion and changed
his name to Muhammad Ali.

Standing⁶ over

Sonny Liston,
In Nineteen-Sixty-Seven, Ali refused to serve in the United States army during the Vietnam 1965
War. The World Boxing Association took away his title as champion and refused to let him fight again.

A court later found him guilty of refusing to serve in the military. However, in Nineteen-Seventy-One, the United
States Supreme Court changed the lower court’s decision. America’s highest court said Ali had the right to
refuse to serve in the military because of religious reasons.

Ali re-gained the heavyweight championship in Nineteen-Seventy-Four by defeating George Foreman. He lost
the championship to Leon Spinks in Nineteen-Seventy-Eight, then re-gained it by defeating Spinks later that year.

Muhammad Ali often appeared on television. He called himself “The Greatest.
”
He said his boxing method
was to “float like a butterfly and sting⁷ like a bee.
”
He wrote funny poems about his opponents. He traveled
around the world. Ali earned a lot of money as a boxer. He used some it to build schools, hospitals and Islamic
religious centers.

Muhammad Ali boxed professionally for twenty-two years. He had more than sixty fights. He retired⁸ from
boxing in Nineteen-Eighty. The next year, doctors discovered that he had Parkinson’s disease, a nervous system
disorder⁹. Ali did not often appear in public after that. But in Nineteen-Ninety-Six, he lit the fire to open the
Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. He recently attended the opening of a movie made about his life,
called “Ali.
”

Earlier this month, officials in Los Angeles, California announced they were naming January seventeenth in his
honor. They said the city was honoring Muhammad Ali for his boxing skills and his humanitarian¹⁰ work.

Cole Porter

HOST:

Our VOA listener question this week comes from Peru. Cesar Montanez Revenga asks about American
songwriter Cole Porter.

Cole Porter wrote almost one-thousand songs, mostly in the Nineteen-Twenties, Thirties and Forties. Yet they are
still being sung and played today. One of his best songs is “Night And Day.
”
Lena Horne sings it here.

((CUT 1: NIGHT AND DAY))

Cole Porter was born in Eighteen-Ninety-One in the state of Indiana. He died in
Nineteen-Sixty-Four. He lived in Europe as a young man. He served with the French
military during World War One. Cole Porter married Linda Lee Thomas in Nineteen

 


Nineteen. They were very rich and gave parties for their friends that lasted for days.

Although happily married most of the time, Cole Porter was homosexual. This was both
forbidden and accepted in high society at that time. Love affairs between men were not
secret. But they could never be admitted publicly.

Cole Porter wrote songs about love, passion and desire. The words were often
unexpected and shocking for their time. Here is an example: Susannah McCorkle sings
the original words to Cole Porter’s famous song, “Anything Goes.
”

((CUT 2: ANYTHING GOES))

Cole Porter won fame as a musical theater writer by the early Nineteen-Thirties. His plays were produced on
Broadway in New York City. He had a new play every year or so. We leave you now with one of his most
beautiful songs. It was written for the Nineteen-Thirty-Five show “Jubilee¹¹.
”
Ella Fitzgerald sings “Begin the
Beguine.
”

((CUT 3: BEGIN THE BEGUINE))

This is Doug Johnson . I hope you enjoyed our program today. And I hope you will join us again next week for
AMERICAN MOSAIC
—
VOA’s radio magazine in Special English.

This AMERICAN MOSAIC program was written by Nancy Steinbach and Carolyn Weaver¹². Our studio engineer
was Tom Verba. And our producer was Paul Thompson.

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1 mosaic   

n./adj.镶嵌细工的，镶嵌工艺品的，嵌花式的

参考例句：

• The sky this morning is a mosaic of blue and white.今天早上的天空是幅蓝白相间的画面。
• The image mosaic is a troublesome work.图象镶嵌是个麻烦的工作。

2 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

3 injustice   

n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利

参考例句：

• They complained of injustice in the way they had been treated.他们抱怨受到不公平的对待。
• All his life he has been struggling against injustice.他一生都在与不公正现象作斗争。

4 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

5 boxer   

n.制箱者，拳击手

参考例句：

• The boxer gave his opponent a punch on the nose.这个拳击手朝他对手的鼻子上猛击一拳。
• He moved lightly on his toes like a boxer.他像拳击手一样踮着脚轻盈移动。

6 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

7 sting   

vt.激怒，刺痛，刺伤，蛰伤；n.刺痛，刺伤

参考例句：

• Most flies do not sting.大多数苍蝇不叮人。
• The scorpion has a sting that can be deadly.蝎子有可以致命的螫针。

8 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。

9 disorder   

n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调

参考例句：

• When returning back,he discovered the room to be in disorder.回家后，他发现屋子里乱七八糟。
• It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder.里面七零八落地装着许多信件。

10 humanitarian   

n.人道主义者，博爱者，基督凡人论者

参考例句：

• She has many humanitarian interests and contributes a lot to them.她拥有很多慈善事业，并作了很大的贡献。
• The British government has now suspended humanitarian aid to the area.英国政府现已暂停对这一地区的人道主义援助。

11 jubilee   

n.周年纪念；欢乐

参考例句：

• They had a big jubilee to celebrate the victory.他们举行盛大的周年纪念活动以祝贺胜利。
• Every Jubilee,to take the opposite case,has served a function.反过来说，历次君主巡幸，都曾起到某种作用。

12 weaver   

n.织布工；编织者

参考例句：

• She was a fast weaver and the cloth was very good.她织布织得很快，而且布的质量很好。
• The eager weaver did not notice my confusion.热心的纺织工人没有注意到我的狼狈相。