VOA慢速英语 2007 0511b

HOST:

Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC¹ in VOA Special English.

(MUSIC)

I'm Doug Johnson. This week on our show:

We answer a question about the Web sites of American presidential candidates ...

We also have music by Cortney Tidwell ...

And we tell you about a new American stamp that honors an event from four centuries ago.

Jamestown Stamp

HOST:

This weekend, after years of planning, Virginia observes the four hundredth anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown. Jamestown was Britain's first permanent colony in the New World. Queen Elizabeth was there last week. And now, three days of historic re-creations and other events are planned through Sunday. The events includes the release of an unusual postage stamp. Barbara Klein has our story.

BARBARA KLEIN:

 
The Settlement of Jamestown stamp is in the shape of a triangle. The design represents the three-sided fort that the settlers built four hundred years ago.

David Failor is the executive director of stamp services for the United States Postal² Service. He says a citizens advisory³ committee helped decide what the stamp would look like.

The fifteen-member committee is made up of volunteers. They meet about four times a year to consider suggestions from the public for new stamps.

The first step was to approve a Jamestown commemorative stamp. Then the Postal Service began to search for the best way to represent the subject.

A nineteen forty-nine painting by artist Griffith Baily Coale was chosen. It shows the three ships that carried the first settlers to Jamestown.

David Failor says this is only the second time the Postal Service has issued a triangular⁵ stamp. The first time was in nineteen ninety-seven in honor of the International Stamp Show in San Francisco.

Every post office in the country will sell the Jamestown stamp for several months. The stamp is the first to be sold at the new first-class mail rate in the United States -- forty-one cents.

About seventy million Jamestown stamps were printed. David Failor says there will be no more. Only the future will tell if they are popular enough to become valuable collector's items.

The Jamestown commemorative stamp is not for raising money to help pay for the anniversary events. He says the purpose is to raise public awareness⁶ about the history of Jamestown.

Candidates' Pages on MySpace

HOST:

Our VOA listener question this week comes from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Van Hoosh wants to know more about the MySpace pages of the American presidential candidates.

 
 
MySpace, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, is the leading social networking site on the Internet. Users have lists of "friends," and those friends have lists of friends. Now, candidates are competing for MySpace friends in the same way they compete for money -- as a measure of popularity.

The Web site TechPresident is following the online activities of the two thousand eight presidential election campaign. It says that among the Democrats⁷, Hillary Clinton had more than sixty-three thousand MySpace friends as of Wednesday. That was four thousand more than Barack Obama. John Edwards had thirty-four thousand.

Among the Republicans, John McCain had thirty thousand MySpace friends. Mitt⁴ Romney had seventeen thousand. And Ron Paul, a congressman⁸ from Texas, had thirteen thousand.

But the candidates are not the only ones who create pages for their campaigns. Supporters and local political groups have also created MySpace pages for their favorite candidates. As our listener in Saudi Arabia points out, it can be difficult to know which pages belong to the candidates themselves.

For example, a supporter of Barack Obama created a MySpace page under the senator's name. More than one hundred thousand friends joined the list.

MySpace later decided⁹ that the Obama campaign team had the right to take control of the page. The supporter got a new address, but he was permitted to take his list of friends with him.

MySpace recently created a special page just for the presidential election. The address is impact.myspace.com. It has links to all of the official pages for the candidates. It also includes links to voter registration¹⁰ groups and other sites.

MySpace has announced that it will hold its own presidential nominating election early next year. Voting in this online primary will be open to any MySpace member.

Candidates recognize the power that social networking sites have to reach large numbers of people. These include teenagers who grew up with the Internet and will turn eighteen next year -- old enough to vote for the first time.

Cortney Tidwell

HOST:

Cortney Tidwell grew up with a grandfather and mother who sang country music in Nashville, Tennessee. So it is not surprising that she, too, turned to a career in music. Her songs have a dreamy quality with unexpected electronic sounds and, yes, now and then the sound of a country guitar. Katherine Cole tells us more.

KATHERINE COLE:

 
 
Cortney Tidwell controls her voice carefully, but her music is hard to define. Sometimes the sounds that come out of her mouth are unusual and surprising. In her songs you might also hear things like sudden changes in the beat or words that sound far away.

The musical result is poetic¹¹ and striking. One critic says it is like listening to the sound of moonlight.

This song, from her first full-length album, released earlier this year, is called "Pictures on the Sidewalk."

(MUSIC)

Cortney Tidwell says she is influenced by children’s laughter, the night sky and the ups and downs of people’s emotions. Yet the mournful sound that we hear in "Pictures on the Sidewalk" can also be found in many of her other songs.

She has described how her mother suffered from severe depression and would express her sadness through music. As a result, Cortney Tidwell says that as a child she came to connect music with being unhappy.

But she says that in time, she recognized that writing music helped her survive some very difficult times. Here is a song simply called "La La."

(MUSIC)

Cortney Tidwell lives in Nashville with her husband, who helped produce her album. We leave you with the title song from "Don't Let the Stars Keep Us Tangled¹² Up."

(MUSIC)

HOST:

I'm Doug Johnson, hoping you enjoyed our program today. Our show was written by Brianna Blake, Dana Demange and Jill Moss¹³. Caty Weaver¹⁴ was our producer. For transcripts¹⁵ and MP3 files of all of our programs, go to voaspecialenglish.com. 

And send your questions about American life to [email protected]. Please be sure to include your full name and mailing address. You can also write to American Mosaic, VOA Special English, Washington, D.C., two-zero-two-three-seven, U.S.A. 

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

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 postal   

adj.邮政的，邮局的

参考例句：

• A postal network now covers the whole country.邮路遍及全国。
• Remember to use postal code.勿忘使用邮政编码。

3 advisory   

adj.劝告的，忠告的，顾问的，提供咨询

参考例句：

• I have worked in an advisory capacity with many hospitals.我曾在多家医院做过顾问工作。
• He was appointed to the advisory committee last month.他上个月获任命为顾问委员会委员。

4 mitt   

n.棒球手套，拳击手套，无指手套；vt.铐住，握手

参考例句：

• I gave him a baseball mitt for his birthday.为祝贺他的生日，我送给他一只棒球手套。
• Tom squeezed a mitt and a glove into the bag.汤姆把棒球手套和手套都塞进袋子里。

5 triangular   

adj.三角（形）的，三者间的

参考例句：

• It's more or less triangular plot of land.这块地略成三角形。
• One particular triangular relationship became the model of Simone's first novel.一段特殊的三角关系成了西蒙娜第一本小说的原型。

6 awareness   

n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智

参考例句：

• There is a general awareness that smoking is harmful.人们普遍认识到吸烟有害健康。
• Environmental awareness has increased over the years.这些年来人们的环境意识增强了。

7 democrats   

n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Democrats held a pep rally on Capitol Hill yesterday. 民主党昨天在国会山召开了竞选誓师大会。
• The democrats organize a filibuster in the senate. 民主党党员组织了阻挠议事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 Congressman   

n.（美）国会议员

参考例句：

• He related several anecdotes about his first years as a congressman.他讲述自己初任议员那几年的几则轶事。
• The congressman is meditating a reply to his critics.这位国会议员正在考虑给他的批评者一个答复。

9 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。

10 registration   

n.登记，注册，挂号

参考例句：

• Marriage without registration is not recognized by law.法律不承认未登记的婚姻。
• What's your registration number?你挂的是几号？

11 poetic   

adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的

参考例句：

• His poetic idiom is stamped with expressions describing group feeling and thought.他的诗中的措辞往往带有描写群体感情和思想的印记。
• His poetic novels have gone through three different historical stages.他的诗情小说创作经历了三个不同的历史阶段。

12 tangled   

adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• Your hair's so tangled that I can't comb it. 你的头发太乱了，我梳不动。
• A movement caught his eye in the tangled undergrowth. 乱灌木丛里的晃动引起了他的注意。

13 moss   

n.苔，藓，地衣

参考例句：

• Moss grows on a rock.苔藓生在石头上。
• He was found asleep on a pillow of leaves and moss.有人看见他枕着树叶和苔藓睡着了。

14 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。

15 transcripts   

n.抄本（ transcript的名词复数 ）；转写本；文字本；副本

参考例句：

• Like mRNA, both tRNA and rRNA are transcripts of chromosomal DNA. tRNA及rRNA同mRNA一样，都是染色体DNA的转录产物。 来自辞典例句
• You can't take the transfer students'exam without your transcripts. 没有成绩证明书，你就不能参加转学考试。 来自辞典例句