1, Bats and Fish Farming

I’m Barbara Klein.

And I’m Mario Ritter with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Today, we learn about the environmental and agricultural importance of bat populations. And, we visit the “Cod Academy,” a training program for fishers in the American state of Maine.Bats

The United Nations has declared twenty eleven to twenty twelve the Year of the Bat. The campaign was launched last year as a way to strengthen efforts for protecting the world’s only flying mammal.

These creatures can be found in many parts of the world. Bats live in cities, deserts, grasslands and forests. There are over one thousand two hundred bat species.

The smallest bat in the world is from Southeast Asia. The Bumblebee bat measures about thirty millimeters in length. The world’s largest bat, the Giant Golden-Crowned Flying Fox, has a wingspan of one and a half meters. Most bats eat insects, but many feed on fruit or nectar from flowers.Many people think bats are blind, but this is not true. Many species have very good sight. Most bats communicate and find their way by making “echolocation” noises. They produce high-frequency noises and can estimate the distance of an object by using the sound echoes that bounce back to them. So, while bats may travel in total darkness, they “see” using sound.

Sadly, bats are widely feared and misunderstood. Most bats come out of their shelters only at nightfall. Three bat species feed on blood. Because of these qualities, bats have long been linked in many cultures to death, darkness and vampires.

Yet bats are important for agriculture and our environment. They help pollinate plants and spread seeds. They also help control insects. Bats eat huge numbers of insects, including kinds that damage crops.

For example, a brown bat can eat more than one thousand insects the size of a mosquito in one hour. One report says bats save American farmers billions of dollars every year by reducing crop damage and limiting the need for chemicals that kill insects. The report was published earlier this year in Science magazine.Bats have also proved useful in the medical industry. Some bats carry a substance in their saliva that has been manufactured and used in medicine to help stroke victims.

Over one-fifth of all bat species are under threat. They face disease and the human destruction of their natural environments. In the eastern United States, a disease called white-nose syndrome has greatly damaged bat populations over the past five years. The organization Bat Conservation International says white-nose syndrome has killed more than a million bats since it was discovered in a New York cave in two thousand six. In some areas, the disease has killed nearly one hundred percent of bat populations.

White-nose syndrome has now spread to at least nineteen other states and parts of Canada. The name of the disease comes from a white fungus found on the faces and wings of infected bats. The disease causes the creatures to awaken more often during hibernation, the period when they normally rest. Infected bats leave their shelters during winter and can freeze to death. Or they may use up stored body fat and starve to death.

Leslie Sturges is doing what she can to save bats. She is the director of Bat World NOVA, a bat protection group in the Washington, D.C. area. She cares for injured bats in the basement of her home. Then she releases them back into the wild.LESLIE STURGES: “You hear a lot of people refer to bats as filthy. But they aren’t. They groom like cats and dogs do. They use these toes back here to actually comb their fur coat out.”

Ms. Sturges also talks about the importance of bats during visits to schools and nature centers. Her goal is to support their protection by bringing attention to the good things that bats provide to people and the environment.

She and her assistant are caring for about thirty injured, sick or orphaned bats this summer.

When the bats are healthy, she moves them to a closed off area next to her home so they can learn once more how to fly.One of her bats is named Shaggy. She plans to release him, but first wants to make sure he eats well. When the sun sets, she sets him free. But he does not want to leave just yet.

LESLIE STURGES: “So I think what I am going to do is put him back in and let him nap for an hour and I am going to try and release him later tonight. Because he has to go. He can’t live here.”

Ms. Sturges says Shaggy has a good chance of survival because red bats are common in the area.

Fish FarmingSeveral fishermen in Maine recently completed a study program at the country’s first ever “Cod Academy.” The Maine Aquaculture Association directs the program. It trains fishermen who usually earn a living fishing in the ocean to be fish farmers. The program is aimed at helping commercial fishers to find a new way to carry out their trade.

On a recent morning, a fishing boat left the public dock in the seaside community of Sorrento, Maine. But the men on the boat were not going fishing … they were going farming.

SEBASTIAN BELLE: “Today we’re probably going to be moving cages and sorting codfish so the students will get experience doing that”.

That was Sebastian Belle. He is head of the Maine Aquaculture Association. It operates the new “Cod Academy” in partnership with the University of Maine and other organizations.About one and a half kilometers out to sea, the boat finds eight circular pens. A rubber tube encloses each one. The pens are covered with netting material to keep out seabirds. Inside each of the fifty-meter wide areas are up to fifty thousand cod. Most of these fish will be served on dinner tables around the world.

This is the only commercial cod farm in Maine. The operator is Great Bay Aquaculture, a fish-farming company. It is one of the partners in the Cod Academy.

Mr. Belle says that during a year, students are taught everything they need to know about operating a floating farm.

SEBASTIAN BELLE: “One of the things we’ve been teaching the students is how to feed the fish and not overfeed the fish. So you want to give them enough feed, and not waste any feed and make it as efficient as possible.”The fish-farmers in training take turns throwing special fish food into the pen.

Air bubbles appear as thousands of cod come up to feed. They can be seen from the boat with an underwater camera.

Bill Thompson is one of the Cod Academy’s four students. He says the program has showed him that aquaculture, or fish-farming, is a wise choice.

BILL THOMPSON SR: “Even if the wild stocks came back to their fullest capacity they still wouldn’t feed the world. So this is the way of the future. And it’s feasible for a family to run a business also.”That is why Mr. Thompson’s son is also a student at the academy. Thirty-nine year old Bill Thompson Junior has been a working fisherman for much of his life. He earns a living diving for urchins and fishing for lobster. But he notes that he has a wife and four children to support, so it was time for a change.

BILL THOMPSON JR: “Well I’ve seen a depletion of the source of everything I have been harvesting over the years. I look into the future, I can’t see my kids set up in what I’m doing right now as far as, you know, lobstering, urchining. I don’t want to see them get a source that’s depleting every year.”

Becoming a fish-farmer has its own financial risks. Sebastian Belle says students need to develop a business plan before they can graduate. They will be expected to raise about half of the money they would need for any farm they want to create. Mr. Belle says the “Cod Academy” is based on successful programs started in Japan and Norway more than thirty years ago. Those programs were created to retrain fishers who once caught tuna and herring.

SEBASTIAN BELLE: “It’s never been done before in America and we’re trying to see if it’s a model that has some potential.Mr. Belle says he hopes the program will help people in Maine realize the huge promise that cod farming holds. He admits aquaculture has its critics. Critics say that crowding fish together in a farm can spread disease and produce unhealthy fish.

But Mr. Belle says Maine’s fish farmers have learned from those mistakes. And he says state inspectors make sure that fish farms obey environmental rules.

The first students of the “Cod Academy” graduated this month. They are now permitted to seek financial aid from the Maine Aquaculture Association to start their own cod-farms.

This program was written and produced by Dana Demange, with reporting by Tom Porter and Jeff Swicord.  I’m Barbara Klein.And I’m Mario Ritter.  You can find our programs online with transcripts, MP3s, podcasts and pictures at voaspecialenglish.com Join us again next week for EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English.his is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

What can you do with earthworms? Some people use the creepy crawlers to catch fish. But others put worms to work making compost. Compost looks and feels like good soil. Gardeners and farmers add it to soil to make plants grow better.

You can make compost from food waste at home with or without the help of worms. How the worms help is by first eating and processing the food. It comes out the other end of the worm as rich compost.

Kim Gabel from the University of Florida Extension service in Key West suggests using red worms known as red wigglers.KIM GABEL: "The red wigglers are the best varieties for doing it because they are more of a surface feeder. Because different worms live in different strata, or portions of the earth."

You need a container to hold the waste and the worms. The size of the composting bin depends on how much compost you want to make. You need about a kilogram of worms for each half a kilogram of daily food waste that you add.

Kim Gabel says the bin needs holes so the worms can get air.

KIM GABEL: "The worms do breathe. So that is a very important factor, along with they also like to be in the dark."So cover the bin to keep out the light.

One thing worms do not like is very high temperatures. Kim Gabel lives in the warm climate of southern Florida. She keeps her worm bin indoors. Unpleasant smells can be prevented by controlling the amount of food waste added to the bin and avoiding meat or bones.

For composting with worms, you need bedding that is moist but not too wet. The amount of water you add will depend on the bedding material you use. Kim Gabel uses newspaper cut into strips about two and a half centimeters wide. Add two handfuls of soil for every half square meter of bedding material and mix well.

Spread the worms over the bedding. The worms will start to wiggle their way down. Remove any worms that remain on top of the bedding after two hours.When you feed the worms, place the food about two and a half centimeters below the surface of the bedding and cover it.

The worm's waste, or castings, should be ready to use as compost within two to six months.

To remove the compost, you can push it all to one side of the bin. Place new bedding and food on the other side. Within a few weeks the worms will move to the new bedding. Now you can remove the compost and fill the empty space with new bedding.

And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. Have you ever made compost with worms? Tell us your story at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Jim Tedder.

2, About Sharks and the Killing of Sharks

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

This week, we tell about sharks. We tell how demand for shark fin soup has led to the killing of millions of these creatures. And we tell about tests on pieces of bone said to be from pilot Amelia Earhart.

Sharks

A picture in the newspaper shows a person standing next to a huge shark. The body of the shark is hanging with its head down. The words below the picture say the shark was a very big one. Or perhaps it was one of the biggest ever caught in the area. The person who brought in the shark is smiling. That person won a battle with what has been called one of nature’s fiercest creatures.

Some people, however, do not approve of catching sharks. They do not think all sharks are terrifying enemies. They know that studies show lightning and snakebites hurt more people than do shark attacks. Sharks kill about ten people a year. Yet people kill tens of millions of sharks a year.

Activists for sharks note that sharks are valuable in the ocean. They eat injured and diseased fish. Their hunting means other fish do not become too great in number. This protects other creatures and plants in the ocean.Wildlife activists worry that some kinds of sharks are in danger of disappearing. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates fishing operations kill more than one hundred million sharks every year.

Sharks are harvested for meat and cartilage, liver oil and, especially, for their fins. And many sharks die when fishermen harvesting other kinds of fish pull in sharks by accident. Sharks are vulnerable to over-fishing. Sharks grow and develop slowly and do not produce many young.

George Burgess leads the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He says shark attacks increased during the past century for a good reason: hundreds of millions of people now use the world’s oceans.

The International Shark Attack File says the number of shark attacks rose twenty five percent last year. Seventy-nine shark attacks were reported in twenty ten. Six people were killed. The File gives likely reasons for the increase, including higher water temperatures because of unusually warm weather. There were thirty-six shark attacks in the United States -- the most of any country.The International Shark Attack File describes shark attacks as either provoked or unprovoked. An unprovoked attack means the person is alive when bitten. It also means the person must not have interfered with the shark.

But some divers interfere with sharks on purpose. They want to get the attention of sharks, perhaps to take pictures of them. The diver may put food in the water to get the animal to come close. Sharks do not normally want to be with people. But their excellent sense of smell leads them to food.

Some experienced divers say they may not face danger when near a shark. But they say the next person who comes near the shark may be in trouble. The animal’s experience with being fed may make it connect food with people.

Some divers and filmmakers enter a shark’s territory while inside containers made of steel. Others wear heavy metal equipment for protection. And others get near sharks wearing only normal diving equipment.This close contact with sharks has its critics. Some people say it is an invasion of the animals’ territory for no good reason. The contact can produce exciting films that may increase public interest and sympathy for sharks. But they may also make us more afraid of them.

Today, a major threat to sharks comes from shark fin soup. This food has increased in popularity over the years. Fisheries can earn a lot of money for even one kilogram of shark fins.

“Finning,” as it is called, is big business. Fishers cut off the shark’s fin while the shark is still alive and throw the animal back into the water. The shark is unable to swim or eat. In hours or days, it bleeds to death on the bottom of the ocean.

Wildlife protection groups and many people worldwide have denounced finning as torture. Some areas have banned this activity. But it is hard to enforce the ban in many places.Many people want to save sharks and stop finning. One of them is John McCosker. He is the head of the aquatic biology department at the California Academy of Sciences. Professor McCosker has been studying sharks for more than thirty years. He says finning is not only cruel, but bad for the oceans.

JOHN MCCOSKER: “We must stop the shark-finning which is resulting in the death of thirty to seventy million sharks each year because that has so upset ocean ecology by the removal of these often apex, top-level predators.”

Professor McCosker says demand for shark fin soup is strong in China.

John McCosker: “It is a cultural tradition, and not all Asian cultures believe in it. But what it now is, is a demonstration really of wealth and status. Shark fin soup is usually served at weddings and at banquets, and it’s very expensive.”The European Union, the nation of Guam and some individual American states want to stop finning. In January, President Obama signed a measure known as the Shark Conservation Act. The measure strengthens American laws against finning. It requires the fishing industry to bring sharks to port before their fins are cut.

Fishers can make a lot of money by selling shark fins. Professor McCosker believes the best way to stop finning is to educate owners of Chinese restaurants not to sell shark fin soup. He also wants to persuade people not to buy it.

State lawmakers in California are considering a bill that would make it illegal for people to have, sell or distribute shark fins. Supporters say the bill will help protect sharks. But opponents have described the measure as an attack on Chinese culture.

State Senator Leland Yee and Chinese restaurant owners say they are concerned about the overfishing of sharks. In fact, they want a federal law to ban the practice of finning. But Senator Lee says not all sharks are in danger of extinction. He says the proposed law to ban the eating of shark fins is an unfair attack on Asian culture and cuisine.Amelia EarhartThe mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart will go on. Earhart disappeared more than seventy years ago while attempting to fly around the world. Experts at the University of Oklahoma say they could not link a small piece of bone to the famous pilot. But they also say they will continue tests on a piece of soil or human waste.The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery had asked the university to study the material. The group found it on an archeological dig on Nikumaroro, an island in the southwestern Pacific Ocean.

Nikumaroro was once called Gardner Island. It could have been on Earhart’s way to Howland Island. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were hoping to reach Howland to get more fuel for their airplane.

Historical records say Earhart died on July second, nineteen thirty seven, when her plane fell into the ocean after all its fuel was gone. But the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery disputes the official version of events. It suspects that she and Noonan found their way to Nikumaroro Island.

Members have repeatedly explored there over the years. They have found a number of objects that might be connected to Earhart. But a link between those objects and her or Noonan has yet to be firmly established.Members recently found what could be a piece of human finger bone and the possible human waste. First tests of the bone fragment showed that human genetic material, human DNA, was present. But later tests could not repeat the results.

Scientist Cecil Lewis said the human DNA could have been there because people had had contact with the bone. Or, he said human DNA really was present in the bone, but the bone was too small or low-quality to repeat the first results. Or, the DNA in the bone might be non-human.

The test results of the piece of soil or waste material were more promising. These results showed human DNA.

Mr. Lewis said his team is using a genetic method to examine bacteria species inside the material. He said the presence of some plant and animal DNA would be a further sign that the piece is waste material. That material could contain information about what the individual was eating and his or her health.This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by Christopher Cruise and Jerilyn Watson. June Simms was our producer. I’m Faith Lapidus. And I’m Christopher Cruise. Listen again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.

3, Cashmere Goats and Angora Goats

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This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.Goats are valuable not just for their milk and meat. Or for their ability to control weeds and help renew grasslands. Or even for their ability to be gentle around children. Goats can also be valuable for their hair.

Cashmere goats produce cashmere and Angora goats produce --

Did you think we were going to say angora? No, angora fiber comes from rabbits. Angora goats produce mohair.

Mohair is used in sweaters, scarves, coats and other products, including floor coverings and doll hair.The United States is a leading producer of mohair, along with South Africa and Turkey. America's top producing state is Texas.

An adult Angora can produce as much as seven kilograms of hair each year. As the goats grow older, however, their hair becomes thicker and less valuable.

Hair from white or solid-colored goats is the most popular, but the appeal of mixed-color mohair has grown.

Angora goats are also used as show animals. They require little special care. The animals need milk from their mothers for three or four months.They reach full maturity when they are a little more than two years old. But even then they are smaller than most sheep and milk goats.

Cashmere goats are usually larger than Angoras. They can grow big enough to be kept with sheep and cattle.

The outer hair of the animal is called guard hair. Behind it is the valuable material on a cashmere goat. Cashmere is valued for its softness and warmth without much weight.

Some farmers comb their cashmere goats to remove the hair. But if the animals do get a haircut, it often takes place at the time when they naturally lose their winter coat -- between December and March.Angora goats generally get their hair cut two times a year, in the spring and fall. The job can be done with simple cutting tools or by hiring a professional shearer. Angoras may need special protection from the cold for about a month after shearing.

The value of an animal's coat depends on the age, size and condition. But whatever kind of goat you choose, be sure you have a good fence. Goats love to explore.

And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. To learn more about agriculture, go to voaspecialenglish.com for transcripts and MP3s of all of our reports. We're also on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube at VOA Learning English. I'm Steve Ember.

Cashmere Goats and Angora Goats

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(Right-click or option-click and save link)

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.Goats are valuable not just for their milk and meat. Or for their ability to control weeds and help renew grasslands. Or even for their ability to be gentle around children. Goats can also be valuable for their hair.

Cashmere goats produce cashmere and Angora goats produce --

Did you think we were going to say angora? No, angora fiber comes from rabbits. Angora goats produce mohair.

Mohair is used in sweaters, scarves, coats and other products, including floor coverings and doll hair.The United States is a leading producer of mohair, along with South Africa and Turkey. America's top producing state is Texas.

An adult Angora can produce as much as seven kilograms of hair each year. As the goats grow older, however, their hair becomes thicker and less valuable.

Hair from white or solid-colored goats is the most popular, but the appeal of mixed-color mohair has grown.

Angora goats are also used as show animals. They require little special care. The animals need milk from their mothers for three or four months.They reach full maturity when they are a little more than two years old. But even then they are smaller than most sheep and milk goats.

Cashmere goats are usually larger than Angoras. They can grow big enough to be kept with sheep and cattle.

The outer hair of the animal is called guard hair. Behind it is the valuable material on a cashmere goat. Cashmere is valued for its softness and warmth without much weight.

Some farmers comb their cashmere goats to remove the hair. But if the animals do get a haircut, it often takes place at the time when they naturally lose their winter coat -- between December and March.Angora goats generally get their hair cut two times a year, in the spring and fall. The job can be done with simple cutting tools or by hiring a professional shearer. Angoras may need special protection from the cold for about a month after shearing.

The value of an animal's coat depends on the age, size and condition. But whatever kind of goat you choose, be sure you have a good fence. Goats love to explore.

And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. To learn more about agriculture, go to voaspecialenglish.com for transcripts and MP3s of all of our reports. We're also on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube at VOA Learning English. I'm Steve Ember.

4, Now We Know Just How Sharks Follow Their Nose to Dinner

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

And I'm Bob Doughty. This week, we will tell how sharks use their wonderful sense of smell to find food. We also will tell about what some researchers are calling the world's oldest leather shoe. And, we will have some good news for people fifty years of age and up.Few creatures on earth are as good as sharks at finding their dinners. People often say that a shark follows its nose to its meals. Now, scientists have learned more about how those noses work to help the much-feared fish direct its movements.

Recently published research questions a common belief about sharks.

Some people think that sharks simply follow the strongest smells that reach them to find their prey, or target. But scientists now can show that differences between the time when a shark’s nostrils receive smells is more important than the strength of the odors.

Researchers Jayne Gardiner and Jelle Atema reported their findings in the publication Current Biology.The researchers studied small sharks called smooth dogfish, common to America’s New England coast. The animals were swimming in a tank or container.

The scientists placed special equipment on the sharks to direct odors directly to their nostrils. The smells were from squids -- a favorite meal of the smooth dogfish shark.

Then the scientists watched and recorded which way the sharks turned to follow the odor.

Ms. Gardiner said the delay between the arrival of the smell at each nostril could be as little as a half second or less. The animals turned and swam in the direction of the nostril that first received the odor. Ms. Gardiner said this was true even if the odor in the second nostril was stronger.Following the odor received by the first nostril guided the sharks into smelly areas in the water. The fish then followed the odors to the squid.

The findings also led the researchers to consider why some sharks have strangely shaped heads. The hammerhead shark family is a good example. The name hammerhead describes the animal’s wide, flat head. One theory is that the shape developed over the ages to improve this shark’s sense of smell.

When hammerheads swim into clouds of odor, they usually do not swim straight on. Instead, their bodies are on an angle.

Hammerhead sharks have nostrils that are more widely spaced than those of sharks with pointed noses. The placement creates a longer delay between the time the left and right nostrils receive an odor than in sharks with pointeatd noses.This suggests that animals with more widely spaced nostrils could attack from better positions while swimming fast. Ms. Gardiner believes this ability may have helped the development of hammerhead sharks over the ages.

Comparison of underwater odors is the idea behind some mechanical searching devices now in use by the military. These robots use odors to seek underwater bombs.  Ms. Gardiner suggests that the current research with sharks may lead to better robotic devices.

Jayne Gardiner is a doctoral candidate at the University of South Florida. Professor Atema works with Boston University and the Marine Biological Laboratory at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, both in Massachusetts.

Nothing fits like an old shoe -- especially if that shoe walked the earth five thousand five hundred years ago. Researchers in Armenia found the world's oldest leather shoe, and they say it was in surprisingly good condition.Doctoral student Diana Zardaryan of the Institute of Archeology found it in a cave near the border with Iran and Turkey. In her words, "even the shoe laces were preserved."

It fact, the team of archeologists first thought it was about six or seven hundred years old. Then two laboratories in the United States and Britain did radiocarbon tests.

The tests showed it was four hundred years older than the Stonehenge formation in England -- and a thousand years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.

The cool and dry conditions in the cave protected the shoe and other objects. So did a thick, solid layer of sheep dung covering the floor. This acted as a seal to prevent damage.The shoe was made from a single piece of cowhide. The researchers believe the shoe was shaped to fit the wearer’s right foot. The shoe is small -- a European size thirty-seven, or a women's size seven in the United States.

The lead author of the research says he does not know if the shoe was made for a man or a woman. Ron Pinhasi of University College in Cork, Ireland, says it could have fit a man from that period.

His team also found grass placed inside the shoe. The researchers say the grass might have been used to keep the wearer’s foot warm. Or it could have been used to hold the shape of the shoe while it was not being worn.

The shoe is similar in design to "pampooties." These were shoes worn on the Aran Islands, in the west of Ireland, until the nineteen fifties. This kind of shoe appears to have been worn for thousands of years across a large area of Europe and beyond.The researchers also found large containers of wheat, barley and apricots in the cave, along with a broken pot and sheep's horns. They also found the graves of children buried near the back of the cave. They do not know why all these things were found together in one place. They do not know what the purpose of the cave was.

The archeologists published their findings in the online scientific journal PloS One, from the Public Library of Science. They are continuing their work in Armenia. They say there are many other parts of the cave they have yet to explore.

The oldest footwear of any kind ever found are sandals made of plant material. Scientists believe sandals found in the Arnold Research Cave in the American state of Missouri are about seven thousand five hundred years old.

That makes them about two thousand years older than the leather shoe found in Armenia.Finally, old age does not sound exciting to most people. But a recent study offers good news for older adults.

It found that people become happier and experience less worry after they reach the age of fifty. In fact, by age eighty-five, people are happier with their life than when they are eighteen years old.

The findings came from a study of more than three hundred forty thousand adults living in the United States. The Gallup Organization questioned them by telephone in two thousand eight. At the time, the adults were between the ages of eighteen and eighty-five years old.

The researchers asked questions about emotions like happiness, sadness and worry. They also asked about mental or emotional tension -- better known as stress.Arthur Stone was a leader of the study. He works for the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stony Brook University in New York. His team found that levels of stress were highest among adults between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-five.

The study found that stress levels dropped sharply after people reached their fifties.

Surprisingly, people in their seventies and eighties were least likely to report feeling negative or harmful emotions.

Happiness was highest among the youngest adults and those in their early seventies. The study showed that men and women had similar emotional patterns as they grew older. However, women reported more sadness, stress and worry than men at all ages.The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a report about the study.

Researchers do not know why happiness increases as people get older.

One idea is that, as people age, they grow more thankful for what they have, and have better control of their emotions. They also spend less time thinking about bad experiences.

Professor Stone says the emotional patterns could be linked to changes in how people see the world, or maybe even changes in brain chemistry.The researchers considered other possible influences, like having young children, being unemployed and being single. However, such influences did not affect the levels of happiness and well-being related to age.

This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by Brianna Blake, Jim Tedder and Jerilyn Watson. Our producer was June Simms. I'm Faith Lapidus.

And I'm Bob Doughty. Join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.

___CORRECTION:

This story mistakenly said that the Marine Biological Laboratory is part of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. While they are neighbors, they are separate.

5,   Sharks: A Bad Image, but Oceans Value Them

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in VOA Special English. I'm Bob Doughty. And I'm Faith Lapidus.

This week, we will tell about sharks -- a fish with a public relations problem.A picture in the newspaper shows a person standing next to a huge shark. The body of the shark is hanging with its head down. A scale is measuring its weight.

The lines below the picture say the shark was a very big one. Or perhaps it was one of the biggest ever caught in the area. The person who brought in the fish looks extremely pleased. That person won a battle with what has been called one of nature's fiercest creatures.

Some people, however, do not approve of catching sharks. They do not think all sharks are terrifying enemies. They know that studies show lightning and snakebites threaten people more than shark attacks.

Activists for sharks note that the fish are valuable in the ocean. Sharks eat injured and diseased fish. Their hunting means that other fish do not become too great in number. This protects other creatures and plants in the ocean.Environmental activists worry that some kinds of fish are in danger of dying out. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated that fishing operations kill more than one hundred million sharks every year. Sharks are harvested for meat and cartilage, liver oil and, especially, for their fins. Many of the animals die when people harvesting other kinds of fish pull in sharks by accident.

George Burgess leads the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History of the University of Florida. He says shark attacks increased during the past century for a good reason. Hundreds of millions of people now use the world's oceans, more than in the past.

Professor Burgess says the first ten years of the twenty-first century are expected to register the most attacks of any ten-year period.

Yet the International Shark Attack File reports that the number of shark attacks has, in fact, decreased in recent years. During this period, there was an average of sixty-three attacks worldwide each year. That compares with a high of seventy-nine in two thousand.The file gives some likely reasons for the decrease. One reason is that overfishing of sharks and related fish has reduced the size of some shark populations.

Another is that more people are careful to stay away from waters where sharks swim. And the file says workers responsible for boating and beach safety may be doing a better job of warning people when sharks are seen.

The International Shark Attack File describes shark attacks as either provoked or unprovoked. An unprovoked attack means the person is alive when bitten. It also means the person must not have interfered with the shark.

Some divers interfere with sharks on purpose. They want to get the attention of sharks, perhaps to take pictures of them. The diver may put food in the water to get the animal to come close. Sharks do not normally want to be with people. But their excellent sense of smell leads them to food.Some experienced divers say they may not face danger when near a shark. But they say the next person who comes near the shark may be in trouble. The animal's experience with being fed may make it connect food with people.

Some divers, filmmakers and nature photographers enter a shark's territory while inside containers made of steel. Others wear heavy metal equipment for protection. And others get near sharks wearing only normal diving equipment.

Close contact with sharks has its critics. Some people say it represents invasion of the animals' territory for no good reason. But exciting films may increase public interest and sympathy for the animals.

Many people wanting to save sharks have formed activist groups. For example, a group called Shark Safe helped prevent the killing of sharks at a fishing competition in Florida earlier this month. Event organizers had said the goal would be to catch and release sharks.But the Shark Safe Project said the stated goal of "bringing in the big one" would lead to killing of the biggest sharks. The big ones are the most likely to reproduce.

The Shark Safe Project planned a demonstration against the competition. The demonstration never took place, however. Instead, the event organizers changed their plans. Participants were to catch the sharks as expected. But all sharks were to be released.

The Shark-Free Marinas Initiative is a campaign aimed at helping sharks worldwide. Under the Initiative, people could not bring a killed shark to a participating marina. People transporting captured sharks to the boat landing for weighing and killing would also be rejected.

The initiative cooperates with several other programs, including the Cape Eleuthera Institute in the Bahamas islands. The Institute is an educational center that also operates a shark research program.In late two thousand seven, a United Nations conference reported that one kind of shark, the basking shark, is in danger of dying out. The numbers of basking sharks have been decreasing for the past half-century. The animals are the second largest shark, after whale sharks. They swim with their mouths open, cleaning the water as they move. They take up and eat objects like fish eggs and tiny sea organisms.

Scientists want to know how and where basking sharks travel.

Recently, experts on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean were interested in a huge basking shark discovered in eastern Canada. The remains of the eight-meter long animal were found on a rocky beach in Saint John, New Brunswick. Experts said the cause of death is unknown.

Donald McAlpine heads the zoology collection at the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John. He said scientists removed the head and some backbones from the shark for examination. Mr. McAlpine said pictures of the animal were sent to scientists in Britain. The British scientists had requested the pictures to learn if the shark was the same fish they had observed on their side of the Atlantic.Sharks can be identified by their individual markings and sometimes by healed wounds.

For years, the travels of basking sharks have been a mystery to scientists. Basking sharks from the northeastern United States are not seen in the winter. They seem to disappear from cool waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Yet studies published in the journal Current Biology are providing clues about the mystery.

The studies found that the sharks went to warmer waters of the Atlantic during the winter. The animals did a good job of staying hidden from sight. They swam in waters from two hundred to one thousand meters deep.

Like Americans living in cold climates, some of the sharks traveled to Florida for the winter. Others went even further south. One spent a month in waters near Brazil.One of the investigators was Gregory Skomal of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. He says the fish probably get to eat more plankton in the warmer waters.

Today, a major threat to sharks comes from shark fin soup. The popularity of the soup has increased greatly over the years. Fisheries can earn a lot of money for even one kilogram of shark fins.

Finning, as it is called, is big business. It means cutting the fins off a live shark. Fishermen cut off the shark's fins and throw the animal back into the water. The shark then bleeds to death on the bottom of the ocean.

Many animal-protection groups and people worldwide have denounced finning as cruel. Some areas have banned this activity. But it is hard to enforce the ban in many places.Ann Luskey is an activist for the world's sea environment. She lives on a boat and often dives to watch underwater life. Her three children took part in an unusual recording project. The family hopes the music will attract attention to the need for taking good care of the earth and its seas.

One of the recordings is a hip-hop song called "Shark Fin Soup." It urges people not to eat the soup because it threatens sharks.

This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by Jerilyn Watson. Brianna Blake was our producer. I'm Faith Lapidus. And I'm Bob Doughty. Listen again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.

6,  Mapping the Genes of the Woolly Mammoth (No Living Example Needed)

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SCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English. I'm Bob Doughty. And I'm Barbara Klein.

This week, we will tell about a genetic map for an animal that disappeared long ago. We will tell about an unusual-looking insect from South America. And we will tell about a reported link between animals and health problems in children.Scientists say they have completed most of a genetic map for an ancient creature -- the woolly mammoth. The map is said to be the first to show the genetic structure of an animal that no longer exists.

Biologists at the Pennsylvania State University studied the remains of two woolly mammoths from Siberia. One mammoth lived twenty thousand years ago. The other lived at least sixty thousand years ago.

The woolly mammoth belongs to a species, or group, linked to the modern African elephant. With its thick, long hair, the now extinct mammoth was able to survive in cold weather. Lead researcher Stephan Schuster says the mammoth and African elephant share more than ninety-nine percent of their genetic material.

STEPHAN SCHUSTER:"So this tells you that they are very, very similar. And also, just because the mammoth is extinct does not mean it is an ancient elephant. It is as modern as an Asian or African elephant. But unfortunately, it had the bad luck to go extinct before today."Mr. Schuster and the research team studied genes, or DNA, that were found in long pieces of mammoth hair. They say genes from hair are better to study than those from bones or other remains. That is because the genes from hair are less likely to mix with other kinds of DNA.

The researchers say they were able to uncover about seventy percent of the mammoth's genome, or genetic structure. They also say the study will help scientists better understand how elephants evolved, or developed.

Mr. Schuster says the information shows the mammoth evolved from the African elephant six million years ago. Mammoths disappeared about ten thousand years ago.

The researchers hope their work will also increase understanding of how the woolly mammoth evolved and why it died out. Their findings were reported in the publication Nature.The study also provides some information that would be needed to re-create the mammoth. But scientists say such an animal would not be possible any time soon -- if ever.

Some researchers like to study animals that disappeared long ago. But others want to discover new species -- creatures that may have existed for thousands of years, but remain unknown to scientists.

One recent discovery was made in Brazil. This is where a researcher from the United States discovered a new ant species. Christian Rabeling is a graduate student at the University of Texas in Austin. He believes the species could be linked to some of the earliest kinds of ants to have evolved.

The ant has a very unusual appearance. It is extremely light in color and has no eyes. It also has large extensions from its head called mandibles. These are likely used to capture food.Because of its appearance, the ant was given the scientific name Martialis heureka. The name means "ant from Mars."

The insect is two to three millimeters long. Scientists believe its appearance resulted from changes that took place for the ant to better live under the ground.

Genetic testing shows the ant belongs to a new ant subfamily. There are twenty-one known ant subfamilies. The discovery marks the first time since nineteen twenty-three that a new ant subfamily has been identified. Since then, new subfamilies have only been found from fossilized ant remains.

The genes of the new ant also show that it comes from a species that first evolved from the wasp. Ants developed from these insects more than one hundred twenty million years ago. Some species changed to live in trees or in their leaves.Scientists believe others like the new species may have evolved to live in the dirt. That would explain the ant's loss of eyes and light color.

Christian Rabeling collected the only example of the new species in two thousand three. It was found among leaves in the Amazon rainforest. Mr. Rabeling reported on the discovery in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He says finding new ant species could help scientists understand more about the evolution of ants. He believes many other species have yet to be discovered in warm climates.

Many families in the United States have at least one pet. The most popular are dogs, cats and fish. Some Americans own exotic, less traditional pets. They care for animals like hedgehogs, monkeys or snakes.

Recently, a report warned that non-traditional pets may cause serious health problems in children. The report appeared in Pediatrics, a publication of the American Academy of Pediatrics. It says families with children less than five years old should not have exotic pets. It says children that age should avoid contact with such animals in petting zoos, schools and other public places.The report says the number of exotic pets available in the United States has increased since nineteen ninety two. Many people find them easier to care for than other pets. For example, more than four million American homes have reptiles like snakes and turtles as pets.

Another exotic pet, the hedgehog, is native to Europe, Asia and Africa. But hedgehogs can now be found in forty thousand homes. Yet the animal also can spread salmonella infections. The sharp spines on their back also make it easier to spread infections like E. coli. Exotic pets also can cause allergic reactions and sicknesses like rabies.

Larry Pickering was a lead researcher in the study. He says eleven percent of salmonella infections in children are believed to be caused by touching lizards or other reptiles. Salmonella can cause the uncontrolled expulsion of body wastes. It also can cause high body temperatures and stomach problems.

Children can become sick by kissing or touching animals and then putting their fingers in their mouths. Young children are especially at risk because their natural defenses against disease are still developing. Also at risk are other persons with weakened defense systems, older adults and pregnant woman.The report says parents need to be educated about the health risks caused by exotic pets. And, it says, families with children under the age of five should not own such animals.

It says parents should first talk with their children's doctors and animal experts to see if there is cause for concern. And, it suggests washing hands often to help decrease risks for disease.

Bacterial meningitis must be treated with antibiotic drugs as soon as possible or the infection can cause hearing loss and brain damage. It can also kill.

A large area in Africa holds the world record for the most meningitis cases. Known as the meningitis belt, this area extends from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in the east. More than two hundred fifty thousand people got sick there in nineteen ninety-six and nineteen ninety-seven. Twenty-five thousand of them died from meningitis. The disease still strikes the area from time to time.Nations along the meningitis belt agreed in September to support a campaign to protect their populations with a new vaccine. The World Health Organization will provide technical aid with the vaccine.

The campaign will also get help from weather experts. One partner in the effort is America's National Center for Atmospheric Research. It will make long-term weather predictions along the meningitis belt. Local health officials can then plan the best times to vaccinate people.

The disease often strikes during dry, dusty weather. One possible reason is that dust can affect the breathing passages and people may be more open to infection. Another theory is that people may stay in their homes more during the dry season, making it easier to catch meningitis from others. The infections usually stop when the rainy season begins.

Weather experts will provide fourteen-day forecasts of atmospheric conditions. The weather program will start in Ghana next year.This SCIENCE IN THE NEW was written by Lawan Davis, Jerilyn Watson and Brianna Blake, who was also our producer. I'm Barbara Klein. And I'm Bob Doughty. Join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.9.  Betty Friedan, 1921-2006: A Leader in the Modern Women's Rights Movement

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I'm Faith Lapidus. And I'm Steve Ember with PEOPLE  IN AMERICA in VOA Special English.  Today we tell about Betty Friedan.  She was a powerful activist for the rights of women.

Betty Friedan is often called the mother of the modern women's liberation movement.  Her famous book, "The Feminine Mystique," changed America.  Some people say it changed the world.  It has been called one of the most influential nonfiction books of the twentieth century.

Friedan re-awakened the feminist movement in the United States.  That movement had helped women gain the right to vote in the nineteen twenties.  Modern feminists disagree about how to describe themselves and their movement.  But activists say men and women should have equal chances for economic, social and intellectual satisfaction in life.Fifty years ago, life for women in the United States was very different from today.  Very few parents urged their daughters to become lawyers or doctors or professors. Female workers doing the same jobs as men earned much less money.  Women often lost their jobs when they had a baby.  There were few child care centers for working parents.

Betty Friedan once spoke to ABC television about her support for sharing responsibility for the care of children:

"If child-rearing was considered the responsibility of women and men or women and men and society, then we really could pull up our skirts and declare victory and move on."

Betty Friedan was born Betty Goldstein in nineteen twenty-one in Peoria, Illinois.  Her immigrant father worked as a jeweler.  Her mother left her job with a local newspaper to stay home with her family.Betty attended Smith College in Northhampton, Massachusetts. It was one of the country's best colleges for women. She finished her studies in psychology in nineteen forty-two.

After college she attended the University of California at Berkeley to continue her studies.  But her boyfriend at the time did not want her to get an advanced degree in psychology. He apparently felt threatened by her success.  So Betty left California and her boyfriend.  She moved to New York City and worked as a reporter and editor for labor union newspapers.

In nineteen forty-seven, Betty Goldstein married Carl Friedan, a theater director who later became an advertising executive.  They had a child, the first of three.  The Friedans were to remain married until nineteen sixty-nine.

When Betty Friedan became pregnant for the second time, she was dismissed from her job at the newspaper.  After that she worked as an independent reporter for magazines.  But her editors often rejected her attempts to write about subjects outside the traditional interests of women.In nineteen fifty-seven, Friedan started research that was to have far-reaching results.  Her class at Smith College was to gather for the fifteenth anniversary of their graduation. Friedan prepared an opinion study for the women.  She sent questions to the women about their lives. Most who took part in the study did not work outside their homes.

Friedan was not completely satisfied with her life. She thought that her former college classmates might also be dissatisfied.  She was right.  Friedan thought these intelligent women could give a lot to society if they had another identity besides being homemakers.

Friedan completed more studies. She talked to other women across the country.  She met with experts about the questions and answers.  She combined this research with observations and examples from her own life.  The result was her book, "The Feminine Mystique," published in nineteen sixty-three.

The book attacked the popular idea of the time that women could only find satisfaction through being married, having children and taking care of their home. Friedan believed that women wanted more from life than just to please their husbands and children.The book said women suffered from feelings of lack of worth. Friedan said this was because the women depended on their husbands for economic, emotional and intellectual support.

"The Feminine Mystique" was a huge success.  It has sold more than three million copies.  It was reprinted in a number of other languages.   The book helped change the lives of women in America. More women began working outside the home. More women also began studying traditionally male subjects like law, medicine and engineering.

Betty Friedan expressed the dissatisfaction of some American women during the middle of the twentieth century. But she also made many men feel threatened. Later, critics said her book only dealt with the problems of white, educated, wealthy, married women. It did not study the problems of poor white women, single women or minorities.

In nineteen sixty-six, Betty Friedan helped establish NOW, the National Organization for Women.  She served as its first president.  She led campaigns to end unfair treatment of women seeking jobs.Friedan also worked on other issues.  She wanted women to have the choice to end their pregnancies.  She wanted to create child-care centers for working parents. She wanted women to take part in social and political change.  Betty Friedan once spoke about her great hopes for women in the nineteen seventies:

"Liberating ourselves, we will then become a major political force, perhaps the biggest political force for basic social and political change in America in the seventies."

Betty Friedan led a huge demonstration in New York City for women's rights. Demonstrations were also held in other cities.   A half-million women took part in the Women's Strike for Equality on August twenty-sixth, nineteen seventy.  The day marked the fiftieth anniversary of American women gaining the right to vote.

A year after the march, Friedan helped establish the National Women's Political Caucus.  She said the group got started "to make policy, not coffee."  She said America needed more women in public office if women were to gain equal treatment.Friedan wanted a national guarantee of that equal treatment. She worked tirelessly to get Congress and the states to approve an amendment to the United States Constitution that would provide equal rights for women.

The House of Representatives approved this Equal Rights Amendment in nineteen seventy-one. The Senate approved it the following year. Thirty-eight of the fifty state legislatures were required to approve the amendment.  Congress set a time limit of seven years for the states to approve it. This was extended to June thirtieth, nineteen eighty-two.  However, only thirty-five states approved the amendment by the deadline so it never went into effect.

The defeat of the E.R.A. was a sad event for Betty Friedan, NOW and other activists.

In nineteen eighty-one, Betty Friedan wrote about the condition of the women's movement.  Her book was called "The Second Stage."  Friedan wrote that the time for huge demonstrations and other such events had passed.  She urged the movement to try to increase its influence on American political life.Some younger members of the movement denounced her as too conservative.

As she grew older, Friedan studied conditions for older Americans.  She wrote a book called "The Fountain of Age" in nineteen ninety-three. She wrote that society often dismisses old people as no longer important or useful. Friedan's last book was published in two thousand.  She was almost eighty years old at the time.  Its title was "Life So Far."

Betty Friedan died on February fourth, two thousand six.  It was her eighty-fifth birthday. Betty Friedan once told a television reporter how she wanted to be remembered:

"She helps make it better for women to feel good about being women, and therefore she helped make it possible for women to more freely love men."This program was written by Jerilyn Watson.  It was produced by Lawan Davis. I'm Faith Lapidus. And I'm Steve Ember. You can download a transcript and audio of this show at voaspecialenglish.com.  Join us again next week for

PEOPLE IN AMERICA

in VOA Special English.

10,

Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968: He Used Non-Violence and Civil Disobedience to Gain Equal Rights for Black Americans

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PEOPLE IN AMERICA

- a program in Special English on the Voice of America.

Today, Warren Scheer and Shep O'Neal begin the story of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Junior.

It all started on a bus. A black woman was returning home from work after a long hard day. She sat near the front of the bus because she was tired and her legs hurt. But the bus belonged to the city of Montgomery in the southern state of Alabama. And the year was nineteen fifty-five.

In those days, black people could sit only in the back of the bus. So the driver ordered the woman to give up her seat. But the woman refused, and she was arrested.Incidents like this had happened before. But no one had ever spoken out against such treatment of blacks. This time, however, a young black preacher organized a protest. He called on all black citizens to stop riding the buses in Montgomery until the laws were changed. The name of the young preacher was Martin Luther King. He led the protest movement to end injustice in the Montgomery city bus system. The protest became known as the Montgomery bus boycott. The protest marked the beginning of the civil rights movement in the United States.

This is the story of Martin Luther King, and his part in the early days of the civil rights movement.

Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in nineteen twenty-nine. He was born into a religious family.

Martin's father was a preacher at a Baptist church. And his mother came from a family with strong ties to the Baptist religion.In nineteen twenty-nine, Atlanta was one of the wealthiest cities in the southern part of the United States. Many black families came to the city in search of a better life. There was less racial tension between blacks and whites in Atlanta than in other southern cities. But Atlanta still had laws designed to keep black people separate from whites.

The laws of racial separation existed all over the southern part of the United States. They forced blacks to attend separate schools and live in separate areas of a city. Blacks did not have the same rights as white people, and were often poorer and less educated.

Martin Luther King did not know about racial separation when he was young. But as he grew older, he soon saw that blacks were not treated equally.

One day Martin and his father went out to buy shoes. They entered a shoe store owned by a white businessman.The businessman sold shoes to all people. But he had a rule that blacks could not buy shoes in the front part of the store. He ordered Martin's father to obey the rule. Martin never forgot his father's angry answer:

"If you do not sell shoes to black people at the front of the store, you will not sell shoes to us at all. "

Such incidents, however, were rare during Martin's early life. Instead, he led the life of a normal boy. Martin liked to learn, and he passed through school very quickly. He was only fifteen when he was ready to enter the university. The university, called Morehouse College, was in Atlanta. Morehouse College was one of the few universities in the South where black students could study.

It was at the university that Martin decided to become a preacher. At the same time, he also discovered he had a gift for public speaking.He soon was able to test his gifts. One Sunday, Martin's father asked him to preach at his church. When Martin arrived, the church members were surprised to see such a young man getting ready to speak to them. But they were more surprised to find themselves deeply moved by the words of young Martin Luther King.

A church member once described him: "The boy seemed much older than his years. He understood life and its problems."

Martin seemed wise to others because of his studies at the university. He carefully read the works of Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian leader and thinker. Martin also studied the books of the American philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. Both men wrote about ways to fight injustice. Gandhi had led his people to freedom by peacefully refusing to obey unjust laws. He taught his followers never to use violence. Thoreau also urged people to disobey laws that were not just, and to be willing to go to prison for their beliefs.

As he studied, Martin thought he had found the answer for his people. The ideas of Gandhi and Thoreau -- non-violence and civil disobedience -- could be used together to win equal rights for black Americans. Martin knew, then, that his decision to become a preacher was right. He believed that as a preacher he could spread the ideas of Gandhi and Thoreau. Years later he said:"My university studies gave me the basic truths I now believe. I discovered the idea of humanity's oneness and the dignity and value of all human character. "

Martin continued his studies in religion for almost ten years. When he was twenty-two, he moved north to study in Boston.

It was in Boston that Martin met Coretta Scott, the woman who later became his wife.

Martin always had been very popular with the girls in his hometown. His brother once said that Martin "never had one girlfriend for more than a year".But Martin felt Coretta Scott was different. The first time he saw her Martin said: "You have everything I have ever wanted in a wife. "

Coretta was surprised at his words. But she felt that Martin was serious and honest. A short time later, they were married. Martin soon finished his studies in Boston, and received a doctorate degree in religion. The young preacher then was offered a job at a church in Montgomery, Alabama.

Martin Luther King and his wife were happy in Montgomery. Their first child was born. Martin's work at the church was going well. He became involved in a number of activities to help the poor. And the members of his church spoke highly of their new preacher. Coretta remembered their life as simple and without worries.

Then, a black woman, Rosa Parks, was arrested for sitting in the white part of a Montgomery city bus. And Martin Luther King organized a protest against the Montgomery bus system.Martin believed it was very important for the bus boycott to succeed -- more important even than his own life.  But he worried about his ability to lead such an important campaign. He was only twenty-six years old. He prayed to God for help and believed that God answered his prayers.

Martin knew that his actions and his speeches would be important for the civil rights movement. But he was faced with a serious problem. He asked: "How can I make my people militant enough to win our goals, while keeping peace within the movement. "

The answer came to him from the teachings of Gandhi and Thoreau. In his first speech as a leader, Martin said:

"We must seek to show we are right through peaceful, not violent means. Love must be the ideal guiding our actions. If we protest bravely, and yet with pride and Christian love, then future historians will say:"There lived a great people, a black people, who gave new hope to civilization. "

With these words, a new movement was born. It was non-violent and peaceful. But victory was far from sure, and many difficult days of struggle lay ahead.

You have been listening to the VOA Special English program,

PEOPLE IN AMERICA. Your narrators were Warren Scheer and Shep O'Neal. Our program was written by William Rodgers. Listen again next week at this time, when we will complete the story of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Junior.Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968: The Civil Rights Leader Organized the March on Washington, DC in 1963

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PEOPLE IN AMERICA

, a program in Special English on the Voice of America.

Today, Shep O'Neal and Warren Scheer finish the story of civil right's leader Martin Luther King, Junior.

Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in nineteen twenty-nine. He began his university studies when he was fifteen years old, and received a doctorate degree in religion. He became a preacher at a church in Montgomery, Alabama.In nineteen fifty-five, a black woman in Montgomery was arrested for sitting in the white part of a city bus.  Doctor King became the leader of a protest against the city bus system. It was the first time that black southerners had united against the laws of racial separation.

At first, the white citizens of Montgomery did not believe that the protest would work. They thought most blacks would be afraid to fight against racial separation. But the buses remained empty.

Some whites used tricks to try to end the protest.

They spread false stories about Martin Luther King and other protest leaders. One story accused Martin of stealing money from the civil rights movement. Another story charged that protest leaders rode in cars while other protesters had to walk. But the tricks did not work, and the protest continued.Doctor King's wife Coretta described how she and her husband felt during the protest. She said: "We never knew what was going to happen next. We felt like actors in a play whose ending we did not know.

Yet we felt a part of history. And we believed we were instruments of the will of God".

The white citizens blamed Doctor King for starting the protest. They thought it would end if he was in prison or dead. Doctor King was arrested twice on false charges. His arrests made national news and he was released.  But the threats against his life continued.

The Montgomery bus boycott lasted three hundred eighty-two days. Finally, the United States Supreme Court ruled that racial separation was illegal in the Montgomery bus system. Martin Luther King and his followers had won their struggle. The many months of meetings and protest marches had made victory possible.They also gave blacks a new feeling of pride and unity. They saw that peaceful protest, Mahatma Gandhi's idea of non-violence, could be used as a tool to win their legal rights.

Life did not return to normal for Doctor King after the protest was over. He had become well known all over the country and throughout the world. He often was asked to speak about his ideas on non-violence. Both black and white Americans soon began to follow his teachings. Groups were formed throughout the south to protest peacefully against racial separation.

The civil rights movement spread so fast that a group of black churchmen formed an organization to guide it.  The organization was called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Martin Luther King became its president.

In his job, Doctor King helped organize many protests in the southern part of the United States. Blacks demanded to be served in areas where only whites were permitted to eat. And they rode in trains and buses formerly for whites only. These protests became known as "freedom rides. " Many of the freedom rides turned violent. Black activists were beaten and arrested. Some were even killed.In nineteen sixty-three, the black citizens of Birmingham refused to buy goods from the stores in the city. They demanded more jobs for blacks. And they demanded to send their children to white schools. The white citizens were angry and afraid, but they refused to meet the blacks' demands. The situation became tense. Many protestors were beaten and arrested. Even Doctor King was arrested. But he was not in prison for long.

The Birmingham demonstrations made international news. Whites soon saw that it was easier to meet the demands of the protestors than to fight them. Martin Luther King and his followers had won an important victory in Birmingham. It marked a turning point for the civil rights movement.

Martin Luther King recognized the importance of Birmingham. It did not mean that racial separation had ended.  Some still remains today. But he felt that the battle was almost won. And he wanted to call on the nation for its support. So doctor king organized a March on Washington, D. C.

The March on Washington took place in August, nineteen sixty-three. About two hundred fifty thousand persons gathered there. They came to demand more jobs and freedom for black Americans. There were to be many other marches in Washington during the nineteen sixties and early seventies. But this was the biggest up to that time.It was in Washington that Martin Luther King gave one of his most famous speeches. The speech is known as the "I Have a Dream Speech. " It expressed his ideas for the future. Doctor king said:

Martin Luther King received the Nobel Peace Prize in nineteen sixty-four. But he did not live to see the final results of his life's work. He was shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee, in nineteen sixty-eight.

Doctor King always felt he would die a violent death. His life had been threatened wherever he went. And he often spoke to his wife about his fears. But he never believed that his life was more important than the civil rights movement. The night before he died he spoke to his supporters. He said:

(MUSIC: "We Shall Overcome")You have been listening to the story of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Junior. This Special English program was written by William Rodgers. Your narrators were Shep O'Neal and Warren Scheer. I'm Doug Johnson. Listen again next week at this time for another

PEOPLE IN AMERICA

program on the Voice of America.

Molly Brown, 1867-1932: A Social and Political Activist Who Survived the Titanic

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Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Mario Ritter. And I'm Shirley Griffith.

Margaret Brown was a social and political activist in the formative years of the modern American West. Her biggest claim to fame was surviving the Titanic. This week on our program, we tell the story of the woman remembered as "The Unsinkable Molly Brown."

Margaret Brown lived an interesting life, but not all the stories about her are true. For example, a Denver newspaper reporter named Gene Fowler wrote that she survived a tornado as a baby, refused to attend school and chewed tobacco.

Fowler wrote about Brown and others in his book "Timber Line," published after her death in 1932.Kristen Iversen is an English professor and author of "Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth." She says the stories did contain some truth, though, which is that Brown went West to follow a dream and that dream came true.

In the 1964 movie "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" she was played by Debbie Reynolds.

The nickname "Molly" was largely a Hollywood invention, says her biographer. Kristen Iversen says Brown did not like it. The name "Molly" was often used as an insult for an Irish girl, and nobody in her own life called her that.

She was known as Maggie in her hometown of Hannibal, Missouri. She was born Margaret Tobin in 1867, two years after the Civil War ended. Her Irish-born parents had socially progressive beliefs.At that time, American women could not own property or vote. They did not get much education. And they rarely traveled far by themselves. But during her lifetime much of that changed.

In 1886, Maggie Tobin left home for the town of Leadville, Colorado, to join a sister and brother who already lived there. Leadville had gold, silver and copper mines. At that time it was one of the fastest growing places in the country.

She sewed carpets and curtains for a local dry goods company.

She is shown singing in a barroom in both the movie and 1960 Broadway musical "The Unsinkable Molly Brown."Here is biographer Kristen Iversen.

KRISTEN IVERSEN: "She did have a great sense of humor. She enjoyed being around people. But she was very serious, very motivated, very hard working type of person and really a kind of good Catholic girl her entire life. And that barroom saloon girl image is pretty different from the kind of person she really was. So one thing the myth does is it really diminishes that aspect of her life."

The story of her life became linked to romantic ideas about gold mining in the American West and the dream of getting rich quick.

In 1886 Maggie Tobin married James Joseph Brown, J.J. for short. He was 31 years old; she was 19. He was a mine manager in Leadville who developed a way to safely mine for gold deeper than before.The popular story is that J.J. got rich soon after they married. Kristen Iversen says he did become rich, but not until they had been married for seven years and had two children.

In 1894 the Browns bought a house in Denver, Colorado. The popular story is that rich families in Denver society did not accept them because they had been poor and lacked education.

Kristen Iversen says Denver's most conservative social club did exclude them for a time. But she says the Browns were a big part of Denver society. Margaret became involved in social and political events, hosting dinners to raise money for charities.

She traveled around the world and sent her children to school in France. She learned foreign languages and took college classes. She also began to speak out for progressive causes.She worked toward social change through the womens reform movement. She raised money for schools and the poor. And she worked with a judge in Denver to establish the first court in the country to deal only with young people.

In 1912 Margaret Brown was a passenger on the Titanic on its first and only trip. The huge ship hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic. More than 1,500 people died, while just over 700 survived.

Brown was played by Kathy Bates in James Cameron's "Titanic." In this scene, she tries to get the other women in her lifeboat to go back and rescue people from the water.

MOLLY BROWN: "C'mon girls, grab an oar, let's go!"CREWMAN: "Are you out of your mind? We're in the middle of the North Atlantic. Now do you people want to live, or do you want to die?"

MOLLY BROWN: "I don't understand a one of ya. What's the matter with ya? It's your men out there. Theres plenty of room for more."

CREWMAN: "And there'll be one less on this boat if you don't shut that hole in your face."

In real life, Brown is credited with keeping people's spirits up in the lifeboat until they were rescued by another ship, the Carpathia.Later, she raised money to help poor immigrant women who had been passengers on the lower levels of the Titanic. She also raised money for the crew of the Carpathia. She became president of the Titanic Survivors Club and helped build a memorial in Washington.

So who started calling her "unsinkable?" Some say she described herself that way after the disaster. Kristen Iversen says that is not true. She says a Denver newspaper reporter first called her the unsinkable Mrs. Brown in a story. The New York Times called her the heroine of the Titanic.

KRISTEN IVERSEN: "The thing about the Titanic experience, what happened with the Titanic experience and the recognition she got from the New York Times in particular was that it gave her a platform from which to talk about some of the political and social issues --miners rights, womens rights, the development of the juvenile court system, that sort of thing. It gave her an international platform to talk about some of those things."

She actively worked for the right of women to vote in federal elections. Colorado gave women the right to vote in 1893, but that did not happen nationally until 1920. Brown ran for Congress twice in the early 1900s but lost both times.The popular story of Molly Brown is that she was on the Titanic returning home to a happy life with her husband. In reality, their marriage had already failed.

Kristen Iversen says one of their major problems was that Brown was socially progressive and her husband was not.

KRISTEN IVERSEN: "He felt that a womans name -- and she wrote about his -- that a womans name should appear in the newspaper when she married and when she died. And Margaret Tobin Brown liked to see her name in the newspaper for a lot of reasons."

The couple never legally divorced because of their Catholic faith, but they did sign a separation agreement. J.J. Brown died in 1922.During World War One, Margaret Brown went to France to help with the American medical ambulance system. She earned the French Legion of Honor for her work with the American Committee of Devastated France.

In the last years of her life, she traveled and performed on the stage. She also studied and taught acting. In 1929 she received the Palm of the Academy, a French honor, in recognition of her work in dramatic arts.

Margaret Brown died in 1932 while staying at the famous Barbizon Hotel in New York City. She was sixty-five years old. The discovery of a brain cancer after her death explained the severe headaches in the final years of her life.

In 1970, the city of Denver bought the house where she had lived. Each year about 50,000 people visit the Molly Brown House. They learn how a wealthy American family lived at the start of the 20th century. And they learn about the real Molly Brown.To biographer Kristen Iversen, Brown represents other women who also worked for social progress but whose lives "are invisible to history." So what lesson is there to learn from the myth of "The Unsinkable Molly Brown?"

KRISTEN IVERSEN: "I think the story in some ways tells us what we want to think of ourselves as an American. That is, this kind of pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, that with enough determination and hard work that you can transcend limitations of money or class or gender. And thats part of the myth and I think thats also part of the reality of her story.

"So its a very inspirational story. There are so many aspects of the myth that are not true. Yet I think the myth story itself speaks to her spirit and speaks to some of the ways we like to think of ourselves as Americans."

Our program was written by Nancy Steinbach and produced by Caty Weaver. I'm Mario Ritter. And I'm Shirley Griffith.Rosa Parks, 1913-2005: Mother of the American Civil Rights Movement

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in VOA Special English.  Today, we tell about Rosa Parks, who has been called the mother of the American civil rights movement.

Until the nineteen sixties, black people in many parts of the United States did not have the same civil rights as white people. Laws in the American South kept the two races separate.  These laws forced black people to attend separate schools, live in separate areas of a city and sit in separate areas on a bus.On December first, nineteen fifty-five, in the southern city of Montgomery, Alabama, a forty-two year old black woman got on a city bus. The law at that time required black people seated in one area of the bus to give up their seats to white people who wanted them.  The woman refused to do this and was arrested.

This act of peaceful disobedience started protests in Montgomery that led to legal changes in minority rights in the United States.  The woman who started it was Rosa Parks.  Today, we tell her story.

She was born Rosa Louise McCauley in nineteen-thirteen in Tuskegee, Alabama.  She attended local schools until she was eleven years old. Then she was sent to school in Montgomery.  She left high school early to care for her sick grandmother, then to care for her mother.  She did not finish high school until she was twenty-one.

Rosa married Raymond Parks in nineteen thirty-two.  He was a barber who cut men's hair.  He was also a civil rights activist.  Together, they worked for the local group of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.  In nineteen forty-three, Mrs. Parks became an officer in the group and later its youth leader.Rosa Parks was a seamstress in Montgomery.  She worked sewing clothes from the nineteen thirties until nineteen fifty-five. Then she became a representation of freedom for millions of African-Americans.

In much of the American South in the nineteen fifties, the first rows of seats on city buses were for white people only. Black people sat in the back of the bus. Both groups could sit in a middle area.  However, black people sitting in that part of the bus were expected to leave their seats if a white person wanted to sit there.

Rosa Parks and three other black people were seated in the middle area of the bus when a white person got on the bus and wanted a seat.  The bus driver demanded that all four black people leave their seats so the white person would not have to sit next to any of them.  The three other blacks got up, but Mrs. Parks refused.  She was arrested.

Some popular stories about that incident include the statement that Rosa Parks refused to leave her seat because her feet were tired.  But she herself said in later years that this was false.  What she was really tired of, she said, was accepting unequal treatment.  She explained later that this seemed to be the place for her to stop being pushed around and to find out what human rights she had, if any.A group of black activist women in Montgomery was known as the Women's Political Council.  The group was working to oppose the mistreatment of black bus passengers.  Blacks had been arrested and even killed for violating orders from bus drivers.  Rosa Parks was not the first black person to refuse to give up a seat on the bus for a white person.  But black groups in Montgomery considered her to be the right citizen around whom to build a protest because she was one of the finest citizens of the city.

The women's group immediately called for all blacks in the city to refuse to ride on city buses on the day of Mrs. Parks's trial, Monday, December fifth. The result was that forty thousand people walked and used other transportation on that day.

That night, at meetings throughout the city, blacks in Montgomery agreed to continue to boycott the city buses until their mistreatment stopped.

They also demanded that the city hire black bus drivers and that anyone be permitted to sit in the middle of the bus and not have to get up for anyone else.The Montgomery bus boycott continued for three hundred eighty-one days. It was led by local black leader E.D. Nixon and a young black minister, Martin Luther King, Junior. Similar protests were held in other southern cities. Finally, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on Mrs. Parks's case.  It made racial separation illegal on city buses.  That decision came on November thirteenth, nineteen fifty-six, almost a year after Mrs. Parks's arrest.  The boycott in Montgomery ended the day after the court order arrived, December twentieth.

Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Junior had started a movement of non-violent protest in the South.  That movement changed civil rights in the United States forever.  Martin Luther King became its famous spokesman, but he did not live to see many of the results of his work. Rosa Parks did.

Life became increasingly difficult for Rosa Parks and her family after the bus boycott.

She was dismissed from her job and could not find another. So the Parks family left Montgomery.  They moved first to Virginia, then to Detroit, Michigan.  Mrs. Parks worked as a seamstress until nineteen sixty-five.  Then, Michigan Representative John Conyers gave her a job working in his congressional office in Detroit.  She retired from that job in nineteen eighty-eight.Through the years, Rosa Parks continued to work for the NAACP and appeared at civil rights events. She was a quiet woman and often seemed uneasy with her fame.  But she said that she wanted to help people, especially young people, to make useful lives for themselves and to help others.      In nineteen eighty-seven, she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development to improve the lives of black children.

Rosa Parks received two of the nation's highest honors for her civil rights activism.  In nineteen ninety-six, President Clinton honored her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  And in nineteen ninety-nine, she received the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor.

In her later years, Rosa Parks was often asked how much relations between the races had improved since the civil rights laws were passed in the nineteen sixties.  She thought there was still a long way to go. Yet she remained the face of the movement for racial equality in the United States.

Rosa Parks died on October twenty-fourth, two thousand five. She was ninety-two years old. Her body lay in honor in the United States Capitol building in Washington.  She was the first American woman to be so honored.  Thirty thousand people walked silently past her body to show their respect.Representative Conyers spoke about what this woman of quiet strength meant to the nation.  He said: "There are very few people who can say their actions and conduct changed the face of the nation.  Rosa Parks is one of those individuals."

Rosa Parks meant a lot to many Americans. Four thousand people attended her funeral in Detroit, Michigan.  Among them were former President Bill Clinton, his wife Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

President Clinton spoke about remembering the separation of the races on buses in the South when he was a boy.  He said that Rosa Parks helped to set all Americans free.  He said the world knows of her because of a single act of bravery that struck a deadly blow to racial hatred.

Earlier, the religious official of the United States Senate spoke about her at a memorial service in Washington.  He said Rosa Parks's bravery serves as an example of the power of small acts.  And the Reverend Jesse Jackson commented in a statement about what her small act of bravery meant for African-American people.  He said that on that bus in nineteen fifty-five, "She sat down in order that we might stand up… and she opened the doors on the long journey to freedom."This program was written by Nancy Steinbach.  It was produced by Lawan Davis. I'm Pat Bodnar. And I'm Steve Ember. Join us again next week for another

PEOPLE IN AMERICA

program on the Voice of America.

Samuel Gompers, 1850-1924: 'The Grand Old Man of Labor'

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I'm Phoebe Zimmerman. And I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English Program,

PEOPLE IN AMERICA.  Today we tell about one of the country's greatest labor leaders, Samuel Gompers.

Samuel Gompers was born in London, England in eighteen fifty.  His parents were poor people who had moved to England from the Netherlands to seek a better life.  Sam was a very good student. However, when he was ten years old, he was forced to quit school and go to work to help feed the family.  He was the oldest of five sons.  Like his father, Sam became a tobacco cigar maker. He liked the cigar-making industry because it had a group of members.   During meetings, workers could talk about their problems.  This is where young Sam began to develop an interest in labor issues.

But life was difficult for the Gompers family in London, even with both Sam and his father working.   They soon decided to move to the United States to again try to make a better life for themselves.  In eighteen sixty-three, the Gompers family got on a ship and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean.  Seven weeks later, the ship arrived in New York City.  The Gompers settled in a poor part of New York where many immigrants lived.Sam soon learned that life in America was not easy.  At that time, most people worked many hours each day for little money.  They worked making goods in factories.  Often these factories had poor working conditions.  New York was known for these so-called "sweatshops."  Whole families, including young children, worked fourteen hours a day in sweatshops for just enough money to stay alive.

Sam hated the sweatshops and refused to work there.  Instead, he and his father became cigar makers again.  Soon Sam joined the Cigarmakers International Union.  In those days, labor unions were not strong or permanent.  They did little to help workers in their struggle for better working conditions and a better life.  Sam believed this needed to change.

Sam Gompers was married at the age of seventeen. He became a father one year later. He earned a living making cigars in shops around New York City.  Employers recognized him as a skilled and valuable worker.  The men he worked with recognized him as an effective labor activist.

Sam also became a student of socialism.  In eighteen seventy-three, he started working for an old German socialist, David Hirsch.   Most of Mr. Hirsch's workers were also socialists from Germany.  These men became Samuel Gompers' teachers.  They taught him much about trade unions.One teacher was Karl Laurrell, who had been the leader in Europe of the International Workingman's Association.  Mr. Laurrell taught Sam Gompers what labor unity meant.  He also taught him about "collective bargaining."  This is how representatives of labor groups meet with the people they work for and negotiate an agreement.  For example, labor and management might negotiate for more money, fewer hours and cleaner working places for workers.

In time, Samuel Gompers used his knowledge of labor issues to help cigar makers throughout New York form a single, representative union.  It was called the Cigarmakers' Local Number One Hundred Forty-Four.  Each cigar shop in New York had its own small union that elected a representative to sit on the council of a larger union. In eighteen seventy-five, this council elected Mr. Gompers as president of Cigarmakers' Local Number One Hundred Forty-Four.

The union's constitution was like the constitution of a democratic government.  All people in the union had a representative voice.  Experts say the organizing of Cigarmakers' Local Number One Hundred Forty-Four was the beginning of the American labor movement.

Sam Gompers believed that one day all working men and women could belong to organized trade unions.  He believed workers should not be forced to sell their labor at too low a price.   He also believed each person must have the power to improve his or her own life.  A person can get this power by joining with others in a union.  He believed a democratic trade union can speak and act for all its workers.  This is the same way a democratic government speaks for the people because voters elect officials to represent them.Labor organizations began to grow stronger in America during the late nineteenth century.   At the same time, Sam Gompers started to speak of new ideas.  He dreamed of bringing all trade unions together into one big, nation-wide organization that could speak with one voice for workers throughout the country.

In eighteen eighty-one, Mr. Gompers was sent as the delegate of the cigar makers union to a conference of unions.  The delegates agreed to organize an alliance called the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada.  The alliance held yearly meeting of national union and local labor councils.  It was designed to educate the public on worker issues, prepare labor-related legislation, and pressure Congress to approve such bills.  Sam Gompers was an officer in the alliance for five years.

During that time, he worked for several measures to improve the lives of workers and children.  These included proposals to reduce the work day to eight hours, limit child labor and require children to attend school. He soon learned, however, that the alliance of unions had neither the money nor the power to do much more than talk about these issues.  So, in eighteen eighty-six, Sam Gompers helped organize a new union for all labor unions.  It was called the American Federation of Labor.

Sam Gompers was elected president of the American Federation of Labor in eighteen eighty-six. He held that position, except for one year, for thirty-eight years until he died. In eighteen ninety, the A.F.L. represented two hundred fifty thousand workers.  Two years later, the number had grown to more than one million workers.  Under his leadership, the A.F.L. grew from a few struggling labor unions to become the major organization within the labor movement in the United States.As leader of the A.F.L. Mr. Gompers had enemies both within and outside the labor movement.  Some opponents believed Mr. Gompers was more interested in personal power than in improving the rights of workers. They believed his ideas about strikes and collective bargaining could not stop big business.  They believed the American Federation of Labor was a conservative organization designed to serve skilled workers only.

Other opponents considered Sam Gompers a foreign-born troublemaker who wanted to destroy property rights.   At the same time, opponents in industry and business feared that the labor leader was demanding too much for workers.  They said his talk violated the law, and that he excited workers and urged them to strike.

Sam Gompers was not troubled by any of these attacks.  He argued that because there was freedom of speech in America, he would not be afraid to speak freely.  He said that no one hated strikes more than he did because workers suffered the most in a strike.  However, he said that in a democracy, strikes were necessary.  After a strike, he said, businessmen and workers understood each other better and this was good for the nation.   He said: "I hope the day will never come when the workers surrender their right to strike."

Sam Gompers also had an interest in international labor issues.  At the end of World War One, he attended the Versailles Treaty negotiations.  He was helpful in creating the International Labor Organization under the League of Nations. He also supported trade unionism in Mexico.Samuel Gompers died in nineteen twenty-four.  He is remembered as "the grand old man of labor."  He worked during his whole life for one cause – improving the rights of workers.  He led the fight for shorter working hours, higher pay, safe and clean working conditions and democracy in the workplace.

In nineteen fifty-five, the American Federation of Labor joined with the Congress of Industrial Organization to form the A.F.L.-C.I.O.   This organization has become an influential part of American economic and political life.  It has also helped improve the lives of millions of American workers.

This Special English Program was written by Jill Moss.  It was produced by Cynthia Kirk.   I'm Phoebe Zimmerman. And I'm Steve Ember.  Join us again next week for another

PEOPLE IN AMERICAProgram on the VOICE OF AMERICA.

Susan B. Anthony, 1820-1906:  She Led the Fight to Gain Equal Rights for Women, Including the Right to Vote

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VOICE ONE:

PEOPLE IN AMERICA

, a program in Special English on the Voice of America.

In the eighteen fifties, women in the United States began to try to gain the same rights as men. One woman was a leader in the campaign to gain women the right to vote. I'm Stan Busby. And I'm Shirley Griffith. Today we tell about a fighter for rights for women, Susan B. Anthony.

In seventeen seventy-six, a new nation declared its freedom from Britain. The Declaration of Independence was the document written to express the reasons for seeking that freedom. It stated that all men were created equal. It said that all men had the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.Not every citizen of the new United States of America had one important right, however. That was the right to vote. At first, the only people permitted to vote in the United States were white men who owned property and could read. By eighteen sixty, most white male citizens over the age of twenty-one had the right to vote.

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution gave black male citizens the right to vote. These amendments were passed in eighteen sixty-eight and eighteen seventy.

Women were not really full citizens in America in the eighteen hundreds. They had no economic independence.

For example, everything a woman owned when she got married belonged to her husband. If a married woman worked, the money she made belonged to her husband. In addition, women had no political power. They did not have the right to vote.In the eighteen fifties, women organized in an effort to gain voting rights. Their campaign was called the women's suffrage movement. Suffrage means the right to vote. American women sought to gain that right for more than seventy years.

One of the leaders of the movement was Susan B. Anthony of Massachusetts. Miss Anthony was a teacher. She believed that women needed economic and personal independence. She also believed that there was no hope for social improvement in the United States until women were given the same rights as men. The rights included the right to vote in public elections.

Susan B. Anthony was born in eighteen twenty. Her parents were members of the Quaker religion. She became one, too. The Quakers believed that the rights of women should be honored. They were the first religious group where women shared the leadership with men.

As a young woman, Susan had strong beliefs about justice and equality for women and for black people. And she was quick to speak out against what she believed was not just.Many young men wanted to marry her. But she could not consider marrying a man who was not as intelligent as she. She once said: "I can never understand why intelligent girls should want to marry fools just to get married. Many are willing to do so. But I am not. "

She did meet some young men who were intelligent. But it always seemed that they expected women to be their servants, not their equals.

Susan B. Anthony became a school teacher in New York state. She realized that women could never become full citizens without some political power. They could never get such power until they got the right to vote. She went from town to town in New York state trying to get women interested in their right to vote. But they did not seem interested. Miss Anthony felt this was because women were not able to do anything for themselves. They had no money or property of their own. The struggle seemed long and hard. She said:

"As I went from town to town, I understood more and more the evil we must fight. The evil is that women cannot change anything as long as they must depend on men for their very lives. Women cannot change anything until they themselves are independent. They cannot be free until they have the legal right to own property and to keep the money they make by working."Miss Anthony went to every city, town and village in New York state. She organized meetings in schools, churches, and public places. Everywhere she went, she carried pamphlets urging rights for women.

She urged the lawmakers of New York to change the state law and give women the right to own property. Her campaign in New York failed at that time. But elsewhere the struggle for women's rights was making progress.

In eighteen fifty-one, Susan B. Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Mrs. Stanton also supported equal rights for women. Mrs. Stanton had many children. She needed to remain at home to raise her large family. Miss Anthony, however, was not married. She was free to travel, to speak, and to organize for the women's rights movement. The two women cooperated in leading the fight to gain rights for women in the United States.

Their first important success came in eighteen sixty when New York finally approved a married woman's law. For the first time in New York, a married woman could own property. And, she had a right to the money she was paid for work she did.At last, Miss Anthony's campaign was beginning to show results. The campaign spread to other states.

The end of the American Civil War in eighteen sixty-five freed Negroes from slavery. Susan B. Anthony felt that there was still much to be done to get full freedom -- for Negroes and also for women. She began to campaign for the right for Negroes and women to vote.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was approved in eighteen sixty-eight. It gave Negro men the right to vote. But it did not give women the right to vote.

Susan B. Anthony led efforts to have voting rights for women included in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Her efforts were not successful. Then Miss Anthony decided to test the legal basis of the Fourteenth Amendment. She did this during the presidential election of eighteen seventy-two.On election day, Miss Anthony led a group of women to vote in Rochester, New York. Two weeks later, Miss Anthony was arrested. She was charged with voting although she had no legal right to do so.

Before her trial, Susan B. Anthony traveled around New York state. She spoke to many groups about the injustice of denying women the right to vote. She said:

"Our democratic, republican government is based on the idea that every person shall have a voice and a vote in making the laws and putting them to work. It is we, the people -- all the people -- not just white men or men only, who formed this nation. We formed it to get liberty not just for half of us -- not just for half of our children -- but for all, for women as well as men.

"Is the right to vote a necessary right of citizens? To my mind, it is a most important right. Without it, all other rights are nothing. "Susan B. Anthony was tried and found guilty of violating the law. She was ordered to pay one hundred dollars as a punishment. She said the law was wrong. She refused to pay.

Miss Anthony then led efforts to gain voting rights for women through a new amendment to the Constitution. She traveled across the country to campaign for such an amendment until she was seventy-five years old. In nineteen-oh-four, she spoke to a committee of the United States Senate for the last time. The committee was discussing the proposal for an amendment to the Constitution giving women the right to vote. She knew the victory would come. But she also knew it would not come while she was alive.

Susan B. Anthony died in nineteen-oh-six at the age of eighty-six. Thirteen years later, in nineteen nineteen, Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The amendment stated that the right to vote shall not be denied because of a person's sex.

The amendment had to be approved by three-fourths of the states. It won final approval on August twenty-sixth, nineteen twenty. It was called the Anthony Amendment, to honor Susan B. Anthony.This Special English program was written by Shelley Gollust. It was produced by Lawan Davis. I'm Stan Busby. And I'm Shirley Griffith. Join us again next week for another

PEOPLE IN AMERICA

program on the Voice of America.

ndy Warhol, 1928-1987: The Father of Pop Art

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PEOPLE IN AMERICA

in VOA Special English.  Today we tell about Andy Warhol, one of the most influential people in American modern art.  Warhol was best known for his bright colored images of famous people and food cans. Through both his art and lifestyle he explored the nature of fame, popular culture, and the media. His artistic influence and unusual personality redefined the modern art world.

 VOICE ONE:Andy Warhol was not always famous around the world. He was born in nineteen twenty-eight in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His parents were immigrants from Czechoslovakia. Their last name was Warhola, which Andy later shortened to Warhol. As a child Andy spent a great deal of time sick in bed. While he was recovering, he would draw pictures. When his father died, he left enough money for Andy to attend art school.

Andy Warhol attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology where he studied pictorial design.  Pictorial design is the art of creating images and drawings. Often these drawings are used in the production of advertisements and magazines.

In nineteen forty-nine Warhol moved to New York City to work as a commercial artist.  He drew pictures for magazines and advertisements. He became very successful. During the nineteen fifties Warhol drew images for many important magazines such as "Vogue" and "Harper's Bazaar." He also became very well known for a series of ads he made for shoes. Warhol used his experience in commercial art as an entry into fine art. He began his painting career as part of the Pop Art movement. This movement was at its strongest during the nineteen sixties.

Pop Art was defined by images of material goods and popular culture. Pop artists rejected the serious nature of the art world. To do this, these artists painted or printed everyday images of things that usually are not considered art. These images included photographs from magazines, drink advertisements and drawings from popular comic strips.Some critics say that Pop Art was a reaction to Abstract Expressionism.  Artists of the Abstract Expressionist movement took themselves very seriously. They did not approve of popular culture. They thought artists should not be concerned with such unimportant parts of culture. Pop artists, however, celebrated popular culture in all of its forms. They approved of using mass media and mass production as an influence in their art.  Pop Art also reflected the rise in wealth and the importance of owning things that America experienced in the nineteen fifties.  One art critic defined Pop art as popular, low-cost, young, mass-produced and sexy.

One of Warhol's first exhibits was in nineteen sixty-two.  He created thirty-two paintings of red and white soup cans. These paintings shook the art world. The soup cans looked like the soup produced by one of America's most popular food companies, Campbell's.  Every painting looked the same except for the words written on the can that described the different kinds of soup.

Warhol used a very smooth painting method so the artwork almost did not look hand-made. The paintings looked like they came out of the same factory that made the soup cans. No one had ever seen art like this. Warhol also made paintings using images such as Coca Cola bottles, dollar symbols, and popular cleaning products. He took the most everyday objects and turned them into fine art.

Warhol soon started making silk-screen prints. This method of reproduction permitted the artist to make many images very quickly. He would often repeat the same picture many times in one artwork. He liked the idea of mass produced art. He once said that he thought everyone should think alike and be like a machine. In fact, the place where he created his art was called The Factory. He had many assistants who helped him produce his art.Warhol explored many other subjects. For example, he made a series of paintings on death and disaster. These works showed images of car accidents and executions. He also made pictures of famous people such as the actress Marilyn Monroe and the singer Elvis Presley. Warhol was very interested in fame. He celebrated famous people and they celebrated him.

Andy Warhol once said something about fame that became very popular and is still repeated today.  He said  that in the future, everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes. Warhol certainly enjoyed being well known. He created a very unusual public personality. He would wear strange wigs on his head made of white hair.  He would go out every night to parties and other social gatherings where there were beautiful and important people. He would talk to reporters in a very shy manner. Often he would provide unclear answers to their questions. Here is a recording of Andy Warhol being asked about his art. It is from a nineteen ninety-one documentary film about Warhol's life.

(WARHOL)

Andy Warhol was much more than just a painter. He was also a film maker, publisher, and manager of a rock band. For example, he produced several low budget art films in the early nineteen sixties. One was called "Empire".  It showed a filmed image of the Empire State Building in New York City. The film was eight hours long. In the movie "Sleep" Warhol recorded a friend sleeping. The film lasts six hours.  When asked about the uneventful nature of these films, Warhol answered that he liked boring or uninteresting things.In the middle nineteen sixties Warhol also managed a rock band called The Velvet Underground. He helped produce one of their records and designed the cover of the album.

Another of Warhol's projects was the creation of "Interview" magazine. This magazine covered many kinds of American popular culture. Andy Warhol was able to interview the kinds of people he liked best, famous people.  A colorful drawing of a famous person was on the cover of every issue of the magazine. The image was drawn in the style of Warhol's paintings.

In nineteen sixty-eight Andy Warhol was shot by a woman who had been in one of his films. Valerie Solanas was angry with Warhol for not making a movie based on a play she wrote. The bullet from the gun hit several of Warhol's organs and almost killed him. The media's reaction to this event made him even more famous.

Even though he worked on many other projects, Andy Warhol always kept producing artwork. In the nineteen seventies he made millions of dollars painting people's portraits. Wealthy people all over the world paid a great deal of money to have him paint their picture. In the nineteen eighties Warhol worked with several younger artists. They included Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Warhol also wrote several books and created two cable television programs.Warhol's art would have surely continued in many new directions. But he died as a result of problems after a minor operation in nineteen eighty-seven. He was fifty-eight years old. At his death, Warhol's total estimated worth was more than one hundred million dollars. Most of this money helped create the Andy Warhol Foundation which helps support the visual arts.

In nineteen ninety-four the Andy Warhol Museum opened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This museum is in a large industrial building. As you walk up the seven floors of the museum, you can see more than five hundred works of art by Warhol. The museum has pieces from every period of his career.

On the fifth floor there is a special exhibit called Silver Clouds. This room is based on an art gallery show that Warhol designed in nineteen sixty-six. The room is filled with many silver colored balloons that are square shaped. The balloons contain helium and oxygen so that they float around with the air currents.  Warhol's idea was to create a joyful and magical room in which the artwork moved around the visitors.

Andy Warhol helped change the way the world defined modern art. His colorful Pop Art images and unusual personality made him one of the most famous and important people in American art and culture.This program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I'm Steve Ember. And I'm Barbara Klein. Join us again next week for

PEOPLE IN AMERICA

in VOA Special English.

Diane Arbus, 1923-1971: Photographer Who Found Unusual People

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PEOPLE IN AMERICA

in VOA Special English. Today, we tell about Diane Arbus, a revolutionary modern photographer.

Diane Arbus is known for creating intense black and white photographs of very unusual people. She used a special camera that produced square shaped images. Often her subjects look sad, conflicted or physically abnormal. But they do not try to hide their insecurities. They openly stare at the camera. One art expert said Diane Arbus turned photography inside out. Instead of looking at her subjects, she made them look at her.Arbus learned to mix the realistic nature of photography with its expressive possibilities. She explored how people live with sameness and difference as well as acceptance and rejection. These combinations created very interesting art that was often disputed.

Diane Arbus was born in nineteen twenty-three to a wealthy family in New York City. Her father David Nemerov, owned a large clothing store in a costly area near Fifth Avenue. Her parents collected art and were part of the "high society" of New York. The family traveled often to Europe. They helped their children express their artistic goals. Diane's brother was the famous poet, Howard Nemerov. Her sister became a sculptor.

After finishing high school at the age of eighteen, Diane married Allan Arbus. Mr. Arbus worked in the advertising department of her father's store.

It was Mr. Arbus who gave Diane her first camera. Diane soon decided to take a class with the famous photographer Berenice Abbott. The Arbuses eventually started taking photographs of clothing. These images were used as advertisements for Diane's father's store. After the birth of their daughter, Doon, the Arbuses started a business together. Their purpose was to photograph clothing fashions. Diane Arbus was the stylist. She would prepare the hair and faces of the fashion models who wore the clothing being photographed. Allan Arbus took the pictures.The couple soon had jobs from important fashion magazines such as "Vogue" and "Harper's Bazaar". Their work was very successful during the nineteen fifties. They became part of a group of artists that were helping to redefine visual culture. They were breaking with past traditions to create a new look for a new decade, the sixties.

But Diane was not satisfied with her secondary role. She wanted a more active part in making photographs. She wanted to explore her own artistic expression and freedom. To do this, she stopped working with her husband. Then she started taking photography classes at the New School in New York City.

Arbus' teacher, Lisette Model, influenced her in many ways. She showed Diane how to use a camera like an expert. She also taught Diane to use her art to face her doubts and fears. Miss Model once said that Diane soon started "not listening to me but suddenly listening to herself."

Diane Arbus chose her subjects very carefully. She photographed many of these people in or near New York City. She often chose to photograph unusual people living on the edge of acceptable society. But she showed the common and recognizable side of such unusual people. For example, she took pictures of extremely short and extremely tall people. She photographed men dressed as women, circus performers, and even patients with severe mental limitations. She once said: "My favorite thing is to go where I've never been."One of her famous photographs was taken in nineteen sixty- six. It is of a young transvestite. A transvestite is a man who dresses and acts like a woman. This man is wearing plastic objects in his hair to curl and shape it. He is also wearing makeup on his face to make it look more like a woman. The picture is taken from close up with severe lighting effects. In the dark centers of his eyes you can see the light from Arbus' camera. You can see every detail and imperfection of his pale skin. He looks directly at you as though he has nothing to hide. His look is one of interest and acceptance.

Another photograph like this is called "Mexican Dwarf in His Hotel Room in N.Y.C." It was taken in nineteen seventy. Here, Arbus uses similar dramatic lighting. She shows a close-up view of the upper body and face of this extremely small man. He looks directly at the camera with the suggestion of a smile. You can see all the lines on his small short fingers. The hair on his chest and face seems very close. You can almost smell the alcohol on the table beside him. You can almost feel the smooth cloth sheets on his bed. It is as though you have entered the personal world of this small stranger.

The expressions of these men are so honest that it is almost unpleasant to observe. Diane Arbus explored this tension in her work. She caught her subjects in positions where they show themselves completely. They do not seem afraid to show their imperfections and strangeness. They do not hide the parts of themselves that are not beautiful. They openly show their bodies and souls. Seeing the pictures, you sometimes feel you are interfering in the private lives of these strange people. You feel like maybe you are not supposed to be looking.

Some art critics believe Diane Arbus photographed such unusual people as a result of her background. She grew up in a safe and wealthy environment. In photographing the strange and imperfect people in society, she rejected her own social group. She revolted against her upbringing to prove that she was artistically independent. She chose to explore the unusual sides of society instead of accepting common subjects to photograph.Arbus also photographed everyday people in a way that made them look very unusual. She was able to take the most recognizable people and environments and make them seem strange. For example, she took pictures of couples and families and even of female twins, sisters born at the same time.

One of her most famous photographs is called "Identical Twins." It was taken in nineteen sixty-seven in Roselle, New Jersey. Two little girls take up the entire center of the photograph. Their faces and bodies are exactly alike. They are wearing the same dark dresses and white bands in their hair. The girls look calmly at the camera with large, pale eyes. Although they are young, they look very wise, like they are intense little adults.

This image of the twins became the cover of an important book of photography titled "Diane Arbus." The book was published in nineteen seventy-two. It became one of the best-selling photography books in history. The photograph of the twins was also part of a major exhibition of Arbus' work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City that same year.

This show set new records in attendance numbers. Sadly, Diane Arbus did not live to see this show. She had killed herself the year before. She was forty-eight years old.The photographs of Diane Arbus remain very popular in America. In March of two thousand five, the Metropolitan Museum in New York had a major exhibit of her work. The museum curators gathered many of her important photographs for the show. They also exhibited many less well-known works. But they also tried to show the personal side of this famous woman. They showed her letters, cameras and books. The book "Diane Arbus Revelations" documents this special exhibition.

Diane Arbus once said: "A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know." This comment helps explain what is so powerful about Diane Arbus's work. The people in her photographs show themselves, but a great deal about them remains hidden as well. Her images make you ask what you might show about yourself -- and what you might try to hide.

Today, Diane Arbus' images remain as fresh and intense as they were forty years ago. Experts say her revolutionary way of capturing people on film has produced some of the most important images in twentieth century photography.

This program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I'm Faith Lapidus. And I'm Steve Ember. Join us again next week for

PEOPLE IN AMERICA

in VOA Special English.

Edward Hopper, 1882-1967: His Simple Paintings Hold Meaning for Americans

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I'm Shirley Griffith. And I'm Doug Johnson with

PEOPLE IN AMERICAin VOA Special English. Today we tell about artist Edward Hopper.  He painted normal objects and people in interesting and mysterious ways.

In June of two thousand-six, visitors entered the redesigned Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. for the first time. When these people walked into the building, they saw two simple, colorful paintings. These paintings showed normal scenes from American life.  But they looked mysterious and beautiful. American artist Edward Hopper painted both of these famous pictures.

Edward Hopper was born in eighteen eighty-two in Nyack, a small town in New York state. From a young age, Edward knew he wanted to be a painter. His parents were not wealthy people. They thought Edward should learn to paint and make prints to advertise for businesses. This kind of painting is called commercial art. Edward listened to his mother and father. In nineteen hundred, he moved to New York City to study commercial art.  However, he also studied more serious and artistic kinds of painting.

One of Hopper's teachers was Robert Henri, a famous American painter in the early twentieth century. Henri was a leader of a group of artists who called themselves the Ashcan School painters. The Ashcan artists liked to paint normal people and objects in realistic ways.  Henri once expressed his ideas about painting this way:  "Paint what you feel. Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you."Edward Hopper agreed with many of these ideas about art. He told people that Henri was his most important teacher.

Hopper studied with Henri in New York City for six years. During those years, Hopper dreamed of going to Europe. Many painters there were making pictures in ways no one had ever seen before. Many of them had begun to paint pictures they called "abstract."  The artists liked to say these works were about ideas rather than things that existed in the real world. Their paintings did not try to show people and objects that looked like the ones in real life. Most American artists spent time in Europe. Then they returned to the United States to paint in this new way.

With help from his parents, Hopper finally traveled to Europe in nineteen-oh-six. He lived in Paris, France for several months. He returned again in nineteen-oh-nine and nineteen-ten.

Unlike many other people, however, Hopper was not strongly influenced by the new, abstract styles he found there. "Paris had no great or immediate impact on me," he once said. At the end of these travels, he decided that he liked the realistic methods he had learned from Robert Henri.When Edward Hopper returned from Paris for the last time, he moved into a small apartment in the Greenwich Village area of New York City. He took a job making prints and paintings for businesses. However, the paintings he made outside of his job were not helping him earn money or recognition. He had a show of his work at a gallery in New York. However, most people were not interested in his simple, realistic style. Very few people bought his paintings.

Things began to improve in nineteen twenty-three. He began a love relationship with an artist named Jo Nivison. Soon they married. His wife sometimes said that Edward tried to control her thoughts and actions too much. However, most people who knew them said they loved each other very much. They stayed married for the rest of their lives. Also, Jo was the model for all of the women in Hopper's paintings.

Success in art soon followed this success in love. In nineteen twenty-four, Hopper had the second show of his paintings. This time, he sold many pictures. Finally, at age forty-three, he had enough money to quit his job painting for businesses. He could now paint what he loved. Edward and Jo bought a car and began to travel around the country to find interesting subjects to paint.

Most people say that Hopper's nineteen twenty-five painting "The House by the Railroad" was his first mature painting. This means that it was the first painting that brought together all of his important techniques and ideas."The House by the Railroad" shows a large, white house. The painting does not show the bottom of the house. It is blocked by railroad tracks. Cutting scenes off in surprising ways was an important part of Hopper's style. He became famous for paintings that are mysterious, that look incomplete or that leave viewers with questions.

Shadows make many parts of the home in "The House by the Railroad" look dark. Some of the windows look like they are open, which makes the viewer wonder what is inside the house. However, only dark, empty space can be seen through the windows. Strange shadows, dark spaces, and areas with light were important parts of many Hopper paintings.

There are no people in the painting, and no evidence of other houses nearby. Hopper was famous for showing loneliness in his art. People often said that, even when there were many people in his paintings, each person seems to be alone in his or her own world.

During the great economic depression of the nineteen thirties, many people saw Hopper's lonely, mysterious paintings of everyday subjects.  They liked the pictures because they seemed to show life honestly, without trying to make it happier or prettier than it really was. As a result, Hopper continued to sell many paintings during those years, even though most Americans were very poor.In nineteen forty-two, Hopper painted his most famous work, "Nighthawks."   The painting shows four people in an eating-place called a diner late at night.  They look sad, tired, and lonely. Two of them look like they are in a love relationship.  But they do not appear to be talking to each other. The dark night that surrounds them is mysterious and tense. There is no door in the painting, which makes the subjects seem like they might be trapped.

Hopper painted "Nighthawks" soon after the Japanese bomb attack against the United States at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Many people thought the painting showed the fear and unhappiness that most Americans were feeling after the attack. The painting became very famous. Today, most Americans still recognize it. The painting now hangs in a famous museum in Chicago, Illinois.

"Nighthawks" was not Edward Hopper's only great success. In nineteen fifty, he finished a painting called "Cape Cod Morning." It shows a brightly colored house in the country. In the middle of the painting, a woman leans on a table and looks out a window. She looks very sad. However, nothing in the painting gives any idea about why she would be sad. Today this painting hangs in a special place in the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington.  It is one the paintings we noted at the beginning of this program.

Edward Hopper began to struggle with his art during the nineteen fifties and sixties.  He had trouble finding interesting subjects.  When he did find good things to paint, he struggled to paint them well.At the same time, the artistic community became less interested in realistic paintings. In the nineteen fifties, the Abstract Expressionist style became very popular. These artists refused to have subjects to paint. They wanted to "paint about painting" and "paint about ideas." They thought Hopper's style was no longer modern or important. As a result, the paintings he did complete met less success than during the earlier years.

Edward Hopper died in nineteen sixty-seven. His wife Jo died less than a year later.

Many years after his death, Hopper's work is still popular in this country and outside America. In two thousand four, the famous Tate Art Gallery in London had a show of his paintings. This show brought the second-largest number of visitors of any show in the history of the museum. Today, people say Edward Hopper was one of the best American artists of the twentieth century.

This program was written by Sarah Randle and produced by Mario Ritter.  I'm Shirley Griffith. And I'm Doug Johnson. You can read, listen to and download this program at our Web site, voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for

PEOPLE IN AMERICA

in VOA Special English.

Edward Weston, 1886-1958: Influenced How Photography Was Seen

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I'm Mary Tillotson. And I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program,PEOPLE IN AMERICA.  Today, we tell about the American photographer Edward Weston.

Edward Weston is one of the most recognized of all American photographers.  He is probably most responsible for helping people to see photography as an art form.

Today, art experts consider photographers who took pictures like Mr. Weston's to be part of the art movement called Modernism.  The kind of photographs Mr. Weston took are called "straight photography."  No unusual effects were used to change the image of the subject.  The photographs appear to show reality in a pure and clear way.Yet, Mr. Weston did not always use his camera to take pictures that way.  At first, he took pictures influenced by the popular photographs of his time.  Photographers, then, made pictures that did not appear sharp and clear.  Instead, they appeared "soft."  They were similar to painted pictures that tried to be beautiful, not realistic.

Edward Weston was born in Highland Park, Illinois, in eighteen eighty-six.  When he was sixteen, his father gave him one of the early cameras made by the Kodak Company.  Edward soon showed some of his photographs at the Chicago Art Institute.

In nineteen-oh-six, Edward Weston decided to move west where he worked for a railroad company.  He briefly returned to Chicago to study at the Illinois College of Photography.  But, he soon returned to California.  He married Flora Chandler in nineteen-oh-nine.  They later had four sons.

Edward Weston owned a store in the area of Glendale, California.  He made and sold pictures of people.  He also had some of his writing on photography published.Several important photographers he met in southern California influenced him.  Imogen Cunningham and Margrethe Mather were two of them.  Ms. Mather worked with Mr. Weston on several pictures.  Ms. Cunningham praised Mr. Weston's work.  She gave moral support that led Mr. Weston to seek out other photographic influences.

Edward Weston decided to travel to New York City in nineteen twenty-two.  He wanted to meet the most influential American photographers in the East.  He expected to be praised by members of the artistic community there.

Alfred Stieglitz was the most influential photographer in the United States at the time.  He was the reason for Mr. Weston's trip to New York City.  He was responsible for a magazine called Camera Works.  Mr. Stieglitz helped many of the photographers whose work he liked, including Paul Strand and Ansel Adams.

Alfred Stieglitz met with Edward Weston two times.  He did not say that he liked Mr. Weston's work.  Mr. Stieglitz would point to some parts of the pictures he liked. Then he would point to something he did not like.Edward Weston discovered an art community in New York that he had never imagined before.  He met many people who, today, are recognized as important American photographers and artists.  One of them was Georgia O'Keeffe.

Ms. O'Keeffe became one of America's most famous woman painters.  Mr. Weston saw some of her work in New York.  He wrote that he would remember it for many years to come.

Edward Weston felt good about his visit to New York, although he was criticized there.  He wrote to a friend saying that his artistic sense was changing.  He said Alfred Stieglitz had not changed him—only intensified him.

The photographer Ansel Adams said that in the early nineteen twenties Mr. Weston had a growing business taking pictures of people.  Yet, he gave up his business and left his family to travel to a foreign land.  In February of nineteen twenty-three, Mr. Weston wrote, "I leave for Mexico City in late March to start life anew."Mr. Weston traveled to Mexico with Tina Modotti.  The two had developed a relationship in Los Angeles.  Both were active in the artistic community of southern California.  They spent most of three years in Mexico.  At the time, many artists and writers were gathering in the Latin American country.

Mr. Weston depended on Ms. Modotti a great deal.  With her help, Mr. Weston was able to experience a cultural life that was completely foreign to him.  He could not speak Spanish, so she helped him communicate.

For a time, the two had both a working and personal relationship.  Mr. Weston agreed to teach Ms. Modotti photography.  In return, she ran his photography business and helped organize shows.

Soon, Ms. Modotti became a well-known photographer on her own.  The two photographers met many famous Mexican artists during their stay.  Painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo were among them.  Ms. Modotti photographed many of Mr. Rivera's wall paintings.  Mr. Weston made one of his best-known pictures by capturing the intense expression of another Mexican painter, Jose Clemente Orozco.In Mexico, Edward Weston started to sharpen the straight photography way of taking pictures that he had begun to develop before his trip to New York.  He took pictures of people he met and of objects and buildings.  His pictures appeared to represent the true nature of his subjects.  He also took many photographs of cultural objects called folk art.  At that time, many artists were reconsidering the importance of folk art.  They began to realize that traditional forms of art are as important to culture as the art that normally is shown in museums.

Mr. Weston's experience in Mexico changed his ideas about photography.  He returned to California permanently in nineteen twenty-six to continue his own work.  Ms. Modotti became involved in political activism.  She traveled to Europe to photograph the rise of Fascism there before she died mysteriously in nineteen forty-two.

After Edward Weston returned from Mexico he began producing fully developed work.  He now made simple photographs that were sharp representations of their subjects.

A sea shell and a vegetable called a green pepper were the subjects of two of his most famous photographs.  The idea he presented was that simple objects are, in fact, beautiful forms.  He would often take pictures of rocks, coastlines, vegetable life and even the unclothed human body.  Mr. Weston's goal was to celebrate the beauty of shapes.Edward Weston's life began to change.  His marriage to Flora Chandler ended and he married Charis Wilson.  They moved to Carmel, California. Mr. Weston spent a lot of time at a nearby place on the coast called Point Lobos.  Many of his best-known pictures show the beauty of the rocky coastline of northern California.  His pictures often were of unusual rock formations.  His new wife, Charis, was his most important model during this time.

In nineteen thirty-seven, Mr. Weston received the highest honor of his lifetime.  He was given the first Guggenheim Fellowship ever presented to a photographer.  The award signaled that photographers were now considered "serious artists."

Edward Weston continued to work through the nineteen thirties and forties.  Yet, he never earned much money.  He lived in a small house that his sons built for him in Carmel, California.  In nineteen forty-five, his second wife, Charis, left him.

Mr. Weston had to stop work three years later.  The effects of Parkinson's disease ended his ability to take photographs and process them.  His sons took care of him until he died ten years later in nineteen fifty-eight.Experts say that Edward Weston helped change the way Americans understood photography.  Photography had been thought of mainly as a way to record information.  Edward Weston showed that photographers worked to capture the same forms that other artists did in their search for beauty.

This Special English program was written by Mario Ritter.  It was produced by Caty Weaver.  I'm Mary Tillotson. And I'm Steve Ember.  Join us again next week for anotherPEOPLE IN AMERICA

program on the Voice of America.---

Correction:

An earlier version of this page included a photograph that was misidentified as an image of Edward Weston.

George Catlin Became One of the Most Famous Artists in American History

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This is Mary Tillotson. And this is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program

EXPLORATIONS.  A new exhibit of paintings is being shown at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C.  Today, we tell about the man who painted them.  His name was George Catlin.  And in this first part of two programs, we tell how he became one of the most important artists in American history.

George Catlin loved people.  He loved their faces.  He loved to paint faces expressing feelings.  He understood how to paint feelings.  You can look at one of his paintings of a person and see pride, honor, respect, intelligence and humor. George Catlin is most famous for painting Native Americans.

In the eighteen thirties, George Catlin traveled into areas of the American West to paint and record the history of Native Americans.  He learned more about the culture of Native Americans than most other white people of his time. George Catlin spent a good part of his life trying to show these people to the world.George Catlin showed his paintings in Washington, D.C; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New York City.  Thousands of people came to see them.  Thousands more came to see them in London, England and in the famous Louvre Museum in Paris, France.   George Catlin probably did more than any other person to educate the public about the great people who lived in North America before Europeans arrived.

We begin our story just a few years after George Catlin was born, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.   He was born in seventeen ninety-six.  His family soon moved to New York State near the great Susquehanna River.

George Catlin always said his early years were fun.  He said he had to have a book in one hand because he was in school.  In the other hand he most often had a fishing pole.  When he was not reading or fishing, he was drawing the natural world he saw outside each day.  George Catlin had little training in art.  He mostly taught himself.  However, his father made sure that he had a good education.

His father was a lawyer and he wanted George to be a lawyer too.  George did as his father wished and became a lawyer.  However he was not happy.As a young man George Catlin was only happy when he was painting.  He truly loved to paint.  He decided to stop being a lawyer and become an artist.   He moved into a small building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began to paint pictures of people.

He was good at this and he loved the work.  He painted very small pictures of people.  The pictures are called miniatures.  Women often wore this kind of painting tied to a ribbon around their necks.  Soon, he moved to New York City.  He painted miniatures and larger pictures.  He was becoming a well-known artist. He began painting pictures of important people.  One was the governor of the state of New York, DeWitt Clinton.

Life seemed good for the young artist.  George Catlin was doing what he loved and he was making a living as an artist.   However, he thought something was missing from his life and his work.  He wanted very much to paint something that was important.

He wanted to give something to the world of art that would be different.  But he had no idea what this could possibly be.In the eighteen twenties, George Catlin saw something that would change his life forever.  It was a delegation of Native Americans. About fifteen representatives from several tribes were passing through Philadelphia.  They were on their way to Washington, D.C. to meet with the president of the United States.

George Catlin had never seen anything like these Native Americans.  Their skin was the color of the metal copper.  Their hair and eyes were dark black. They wore clothes made of animal skins. They seemed fierce and dangerous.

Within a few days, George Catlin made an important decision.  He told his family and friends he would study and paint Native Americans.  His family was opposed to the idea. They told him it was extremely dangerous.  They told him he might be killed.  George Catlin answered his friends and family.  He said, "Nothing but the loss of my life will prevent me from visiting their country and becoming their historian."

In eighteen thirty, George Catlin traveled to the city of Saint Louis, Missouri, near the Mississippi River.  At that time Saint Louis was one of the last cities or towns you would find if you were traveling west.  There was not much beyond Saint Louis but the Great Plains.  There was nothing but wild, unexplored country.  The country beyond Saint Louis could be extremely dangerous.  Few white people had ever been further than Saint Louis.However, George Catlin met someone who knew about the lands of the far West and had been there.  He also knew many of the Native American tribes that George Catlin wanted to visit.  That man was William Clark.

Twenty-six years before, William Clark was part of the famous team of Lewis and Clark who were the first white Americans to explore the far West.  They had traveled from Saint Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back.

George Catlin immediately had a friend in William Clark.  Mr. Clark liked his idea of painting and learning about Native Americans.

He did not think George Catlin's idea was dangerous.   He did his best to help.  General William Clark was the United States Superintendent of Indian Affairs.   He immediately took Mr. Catlin along on a trip up the Mississippi River to a place called Prairie du Chien.Here George Catlin saw a gathering of Native American tribes. He saw their clothes.  He watched them and learned about their culture.  He listened to their language. This trip was important to George Catlin because it strengthened his idea and plans to learn about and paint pictures of Native Americans.

George Catlin quickly returned home to Philadelphia to raise money for his project.  Within a year he traveled west again.  This time he went north to Fort Union in an area called the Dakotas.  Here he set up his painting equipment and began to paint.

He said of this experience:  "I have this day been painting a picture of the head chief of the Blackfoot Nation.  He is surrounded by his own warriors.  He is an important man."

The man George Catlin painted that day was named Stu-mick-o-sucks.  He was chief of the Blood Tribe of the Kainai Blackfoot.  George Catlin said the Blackfoot were a fierce and war-like tribe.  They lived in the area that is now the border between the United States and Canada.The beautiful painting of Stu-mick-o-sucks shows this fierce chief at the height of his powers.  The chief of the Blood Tribe was about thirty years old when George Catlin painted his picture.

His face is a deep copper color.  He has red paint on his jaw.  His eyes are intelligent and watchful.  His black hair hangs down to his shoulders.  Part of his hair falls down between his eyes and is cut straight across.  A head covering made of small feathers surrounds his hair.  One large feather is worn to the right side of his head.

Stu-mick-o-sucks is dressed in his best clothing for this painting. It is clothing that he would wear for special ceremonies. On his chest is a round design made with several colors.  The shoulders of his shirt are covered with pieces of cloth and hair to form other designs.

George Catlin captured in paint a man of honor and courage, a leader of his people.  The artist had wanted to go west to paint Native Americans.  With this painting and the many that were to follow, George Catlin succeeded.  He had found his life's work.Join us again next week when we continue the story of George Catlin and his efforts to paint the people of the American West.  If you have a computer that can link to the Internet, you can see Mr. Catlin's famous painting of Blackfoot Chief Stu-mick-o-sucks and many others.

Use a search engine and type the name Renwick Gallery, R-E-N-W-I-C-K.

This program was written by Paul Thompson.  It was produced by Caty Weaver.  I'm Steve Ember. And I'm Mary Tillotson.  Join us again next week forEXPLORATIONS, a program in Special English on the Voice of America.

George Catlin Painted Native American Tribes and Their Cultures During the 1830s

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This is Mary Tillotson. And this is Steve Ember with the Special English programEXPLORATIONS.  Today we present the second part of our program about American artist George Catlin and his paintings of Native Americans.Last week, we told how George Catlin had begun his working life as a lawyer.  However, he was not happy with this work.  He gave up the law and began painting, first in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and later in New York City.

He became a successful painter.  He painted large and small paintings of people.  But he still felt that he needed to paint something that was important.

George Catlin decided to paint Native Americans after he saw a delegation of Indians on their way to Washington, D.C.

By the year eighteen thirty, he had traveled to Saint Louis, Missouri.  From there he traveled north into lands that few white Americans had ever seen.  It was here that he met the first of the many American Indians he would paint.George Catlin left many letters telling about his travels.  He wrote that he often traveled alone, with only his horse Charlie.  He carried his painting supplies and enough food for a few days.

He also carried a rifle for hunting.   Between eighteen thirty and eighteen thirty-six, Mr. Catlin made five trips into areas of the West that were considered unexplored Indian country.  He traveled many thousands of kilometers and visited fifty different tribes.

George Catlin painted almost everything he saw.  He painted pictures of unusual land that no white person had ever seen before.  He painted Native American men, women, and children.  He painted their clothes, weapons and villages. He painted the people taking part in religious ceremonies, dances and the hunting of buffalo.  He often painted three pictures in one day.

George Catlin tried to capture in paint the Native American people and their culture.  For example, he painted many pictures of Indians playing a ball game. The game is played with a stick that has a small net at one end.  The net is used to control the ball. This Native American game is still played in the United States and other countries today.  It is called by the name the French gave it – lacrosse.George Catlin also kept exact records of the people, places and events. Most of his paintings include the names of the people and when they were painted.

George Catlin began to have deep feelings about the people that he painted.  He learned a great deal about them.  He learned that they were honest.  They were intelligent. They represented different cultures that had great value.   George Catlin believed that many of the men he painted were great leaders in their own culture and would have been great leaders in any culture.

He believed the Native American Indians were people of great worth.  He also understood that the Indians could not block or stop the westward movement of whitePEOPLE IN AMERICA.  He believed that the American Indian would quickly disappear.

George Catlin put together a collection of his many paintings.  He called the display George Catlin's Indian Gallery.  He began showing the paintings in many cities in the United States.  He also gave long speeches about the Indians he lived with.He told those who came to his talks that he had never felt afraid while living in Native American villages.  He said no one ever threatened him or stole anything from him.  He tried to make people understand what a great people Native Americans were.  He said huge areas of the country should be left for Native Americans to enjoy life as they always had.

Many people criticized George Catlin.  Some said the people in his pictures did not really look as intelligent and brave as he had painted them.  They said the religious ceremonies he painted were false and that Indians did not really have ball games.  Some critics said George Catlin had invented these people.

The critics made George Catlin angry.  He began to seek white Americans who had traveled in Indian country.  He asked army officers, fur traders and others to sign documents that said the people and events he painted were real.   The critics stopped saying his paintings were a lie.

George Catlin took his collection of paintings to Europe.  He also took many objects made by American Indians.  The George Catlin Indian Gallery was popular in London, England and in Paris, France.  French art experts praised his paintings.   His paintings and speeches were popular. Many people paid money to visit his Indian Gallery, but he did not earn enough money.  He soon had financial problems.Mr. Catlin returned to the United States.  There were about five hundred paintings in his Indian Gallery.  He offered to sell them to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.  Several people worked to have the United States government buy the paintings for the Smithsonian.  However, Congress never approved a measure needed for the sale.

George Catlin found a buyer for his Indian Gallery. It was Joseph Harrison, a businessman in Philadelphia. Mr. Harrison bought the paintings but did nothing with them. For many years they were left in a room in his factory.  Mr. Catlin was able to pay most of his debts from the money he earned by selling his paintings.  He began painting again.

His new paintings were displayed at the Smithsonian Institution's famous building called The Castle.  For the last year of his life, he worked in a room in that building provided by the museum.  George Catlin died in eighteen seventy-two.  His famous Indian Gallery paintings were still in a room in Mr. Harrison's factory. A fire at the factory almost destroyed them.

In eighteen seventy-nine, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution was Spencer Baird.  Mr. Baird knew the historic value of George Catlin's paintings. The owner of the paintings, Joseph Harrison, had died.  So Mr. Baird began to negotiate with Joseph Harrison's wife, Sarah.  He asked her to give the collection to the Smithsonian.Mrs. Harrison agreed.  She gave George Catlin's famous Indian Gallery to the Smithsonian.  The gift also included many Indian objects that Catlin had collected.  These included maps, books, letters and other papers that told George Catlin's story.

Sarah Harrison's gift was one of the most important ever received by the Smithsonian. For more than one hundred twenty-five years, the public has been able to see George Catlin's paintings.  Art critics, art students and western history experts have studied and examined them.

Today, George Catlin's Indian Gallery is on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery.  The paintings have been carefully cleaned for this event.   They look new and fresh, as if they were painted recently.

Art experts have praised and criticized George Catlin's work.  Some say he was not a good artist and could not paint the human body well.  Others say this is because he painted very quickly.  Most critics say his paintings of people's faces are beautiful.  They seem alive and real.You can see many of George Catlin's paintings on the Internet by using a search engine.   Type the name Renwick Gallery, R-E-N-W-I-C-K.

George Catlin was afraid the American Indian would disappear from the Earth.  That was one of the reasons he painted so many different tribes and different people.  He wanted a record to leave for history.

George Catlin was wrong. The American Indian did not disappear.  But his paintings provide a close look at the people, places and events from a time that is now long gone.

This program was written by Paul Thompson.  It was produced by Caty Weaver.  I'm Mary Tillotson. And I'm Steve Ember.  Join us again next week for

EXPLORATIONS, a program in Special English on the Voice of America.

Ann Landers, 1918-2002: She Helped Millions of People Deal With Their Problems

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I'm Mary Tillotson. And I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English programPEOPLE IN AMERICA. Today, we tell about advice writer Ann Landers.

Many newspapers in the United States have writers who give advice. Some are experts about issues like gardening, food, health or money. People will write to the expert about a problem and he or she will try to solve it.

There also are advice writers who deal with the more personal issues in life. They answer questions about all kinds of things—love, children, mental health problems, morals. This was the kind of advice column that Esther Lederer wrote. She wrote it under the name of Ann Landers.Ms. Lederer did not study to become a newspaper writer. In fact, she did not finish her university studies at Morningside College, in Sioux City, Iowa.

She was born in Sioux City on July fourth, nineteen eighteen. Her parents named her Esther Pauline Friedman. Esther's younger sister was born a few minutes later. She was given the same two first names in opposite order--Pauline Esther. The twins, Eppie and Popo as they were called, had two older sisters.

Their father, Abraham Friedman, had come to the United States from Russia. He sold chickens when he first arrived. Soon, he became a successful businessman who owned movie theaters in several states.

Eppie said she owed a lot to her parents and her childhood in the Middle West. She says both provided her with morals and values that helped her a lot in life.Eppie Friedman was in college when she met Jules Lederer. She left school to marry him in nineteen thirty-nine. Mr. Lederer was a businessman. He helped establish a car service called Budget Rent-A-Car. It became very successful. Mr. and Mrs. Lederer had their first and only child, Margo, in nineteen forty.

For years Eppie Lederer was happy to stay home and raise her child while her husband's business grew. They lived in Wisconsin at first. Mrs. Lederer became politically active in the Democratic Party there.

In nineteen fifty-five, the Lederers moved to Chicago, Illinois. That same year, the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper held a competition among its employees. The paper wanted to find a replacement for its advice columnist who wrote under the name Ann Landers. Eppie Lederer heard about the competition from a friend at the paper and decided to enter. She was one of thirty people who sought the job.

The competition was simple. Competitors were given several letters from people requesting help on different issues. The person who wrote the answers the newspaper officials liked best would win the job.Mrs. Lederer used the help of powerful friends to decide the best advice. For example, one letter writer asked about a tree that dropped nuts on her property. The tree grew on land owned by someone else. The letter writer wanted to know what she could do with the nuts.

Eppie Lederer decided that this was really a legal question so she sought help from a friend who knew about the law. That friend just happened to be a judge on the United States Supreme Court!

Another letter was about a Roman Catholic Church issue. So Eppie Lederer talked to the president of a famous Catholic university, Notre Dame.

The Chicago Sun Times reportedly called Mrs. Lederer a few days after the competition ended. When she answered the telephone a newspaper official said "Good Morning, Ann Landers."The new Ann Landers discovered the job was not easy. She reportedly was deeply affected by many of the sad letters she received from troubled people. Mrs. Lederer later said that one Sun-Times editor helped her harden herself to those stories. He said she must separate herself from her readers and their problems. She said she would not have been successful in her work if it were not for that advice.

Ann Landers' popularity grew quickly. She immediately established herself as different from advice writers of the past. She became known for her easy writing style and her often funny answers. She related to her readers as if they were old friends. She seemed to say exactly what she thought, even when doing so might hurt the feelings of those seeking help. Most people considered Ann Landers' advice to be good, common sense.

For example, early in her work a young person wrote to ask Ann Landers' opinion of sexual activity among teenagers. She explained her objection to such activity by saying, "a lemon squeezed too many times is considered garbage."

As Ann Landers gained fame so did many of her words. People began to repeat some her short, pointed sentences. One of the most famous of these was when she told readers to "wake up and smell the coffee." She would use this comment when advice seekers seemed to be denying situations that made them unhappy or uncomfortable.Another well-known Ann Landers saying was "forty lashes with a wet noodle." She would say this if she believed someone had done something mean, dishonest or just stupid. Ann Landers did not protect herself from such criticism, however. She often published letters from readers who argued against advice she had given. When she agreed with their criticism, she sometimes ordered the forty lashes for herself!

Ann Landers took a lot of risks in her column. She spoke out about many issues that some people considered offensive or socially unacceptable. She discussed homosexuality, alcoholism, drug dependency and mistreatment of children by parents, to list a few.

Ann Landers also spoke out on political issues. She expressed her strong opposition to American involvement in the conflict in Vietnam. She was a major supporter of gun control and the right of a woman to choose to end a pregnancy. She also supported using animals in medical research.

These opinions made her an enemy of several groups, including the National Rifle Association, abortion opponents, and animal protection organizations. But, their pressure did not appear to worry Ann Landers. In fact, she once said she felt proud that these groups hated her.Her political activism was sometimes powerful. She expressed her support of legislation for cancer research in her column in nineteen seventy-one. President Richard Nixon received hundreds of thousands of copies of the column from Ann Landers readers. He soon signed the one hundred million dollar National Cancer Act.

In nineteen seventy-five, Eppie Lederer's life changed. Her husband, Jules, told her he was involved with another woman. That relationship had been going on for several years. Mr. and Mrs. Lederer separated.

This experience affected Ann Landers' advice about seriously troubled marriages. She had always advised couples to stay together to avoid hurting their children. After her separation from her husband she wrote a column about her decision to end her marriage. She received tens of thousands of letters from her readers offering their support and sympathy.

Ann Landers continued to suggest that a husband and wife in a troubled marriage seek counseling. But she was now more willing to consider that a marriage might be beyond repair.Eppie Lederer's sister Popo also became an advice columnist. Her column was called "Dear Abby." Like Ann Landers, Dear Abby was published in thousands of newspapers. Some reports say the competition between the two advice columns led to a dispute between the twin sisters. They reportedly did not speak for five years.

Eppie Lederer's daughter, Margo Howard, is an advice columnist as well. But, neither her daughter nor her sister won the kind of fame and following that Ann Landers did. Her column appeared in The Chicago Tribune and about one thousand two hundred other newspapers around the world. Her advice reached tens of millions of people every day. That was her goal. She said having many readers was more important to her than winning a famous prize.

In January, two thousand two, doctors discovered that Eppie Lederer had multiple myeloma. It is a very serious form of cancer of the bone marrow. Her death came just six months later, on June twenty-second. She was eighty-three.

Eppie Lederer owned the rights to the Ann Landers name and did not want it to be used after she died. So millions of people around the world have received the last words of advice from Ann Landers.This VOA Special English program was written and produced by Caty Weaver. I'm Mary Tillotson. And I'm Steve Ember. Join us again next week for another

PEOPLE IN AMERICA

program on the Voice of America.

Mark Twain, 1835-1910: One of America's Best Known Writers

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I'm Barbara Klein. And I'm Bob Doughty withPEOPLE IN AMERICA

in VOA Special English.  Today we tell about one of America's best-known writers, Mark Twain.  We also talk about his famous book, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."Mark Twain wrote "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" in eighteen eighty-four.  Since then, the book has been published in at least sixty languages.  Some people say it is the best book ever created by an American writer.  American students still read "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."  And parents, teachers and literary experts still debate the issues discussed in the book.

The writer who became Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in eighteen thirty-five.  He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri on the Mississippi River.  After his father died in eighteen forty-seven, young Samuel went to work as an assistant to a publisher.  Ten years later, he became a pilot on a steamboat that sailed on the Mississippi.  He heard the riverboat workers call out the words "mark twain!"  That was a measure for the depth of water.

In eighteen sixty-one, the American Civil War put an end to steamboat traffic on the Mississippi.  So Clemens traveled west and became a reporter for newspapers in Nevada and California.

Later, he wrote funny stories and called himself Mark Twain.  Twain became famous for his story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" in eighteen sixty-five.  It tells about a jumping competition among frogs.Twain also traveled a lot and began writing books about his travels.  His stories about a trip to Europe and the Middle East were published in "The Innocents Abroad."  And his stories about life in the western United States became the book called "Roughing It."

In eighteen seventy, he married Olivia Langdon and moved to Hartford, Connecticut.  During the eighteen eighties, he wrote books for children, such as "The Prince and the Pauper."  It tells about a poor boy who trades identities with a member of England's ruling family.  Twain also wrote "Life on the Mississippi."  This book describes his days as a steamboat pilot and his return to the river twenty years later.

Mark Twain was already a successful writer before he became famous as a public speaker.  Over the years, he had invested a lot of money in unsuccessful businesses.  In eighteen ninety-three, he found himself deeply in debt.  So to earn money, he traveled around the world giving humorous talks.  His speeches made people laugh and remember events they had experienced.

However, his later life was not a happy one.  Two of his daughters died.  His wife died in nineteen-oh-four after a long sickness.  Some critics think Mark Twain's later works were more serious because of his sadness.  He died of heart failure in nineteen ten.Mark Twain was the first writer to use the speech of common Americans in his books.  He showed that simple American English could be as fine an instrument for great writing as more complex language. Through his books, he captured American experiences as no other writer had.

Many of the stories take place in Hannibal, Missouri.  The small wooden house where he lived as a boy still stands there.  Next to the house is a wooden fence.  It is the kind described in Twain's book, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," published in eighteen seventy-six.

In that story, Tom has been told to paint the fence.  He does not want to do it.  But he acts as if the job is great fun.  He tricks other boys into believing this.  His trick is so successful that they agree to pay him money to let them finish his work.  "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is considered one of the best books about an American boy's life in the eighteen hundreds.

Tom Sawyer's good friend is Huckleberry, or "Huck," Finn.  Mark Twain tells this boy's story in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."  Huck is a poor child, without a mother or home.  His father drinks too much alcohol and beats him.Huck's situation has freed him from the restrictions of society.  He explores in the woods and goes fishing.  He stays out all night and does not go to school.  He smokes tobacco.

Huck runs away from home.  He meets Jim, a black man who has escaped from slavery.  They travel together on a raft made of wood down the Mississippi River.  Huck describes the trip:

READER:

"It was lovely to live on the raft.  Other places seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't.  You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft...  Sometimes we'd have that whole river to ourselves for the longest time... We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.  Jim, he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many."Mark Twain started writing "Huckleberry Finn" as a children's story.  But it soon became serious.  The story tells about the social evil of slavery, seen through the eyes of an innocent child.  Huck's ideas about people were formed by the white society in which he lived.  So, at first, he does not question slavery.  Huck knows that important people believe slavery is natural, the law of God.  So, he thinks it is his duty to tell Jim's owners where to find him.  Here is part of the story after Huck decides he must do this.

READER:

"I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt.  And I knowed I could pray now.  But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking -- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell.  And went on thinking...

And I see Jim before me all the time; in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing.  But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind."Huck comes to understand that Jim is a good man.  He finds he cannot carry out his plan to tell Jim's owners where to find him.  Instead, he decides to help Jim escape.  He decides to do this, even if God punishes him.

Huck's moral search is part of Twain's humor.  Huck's heart leads him to do the right thing, even when everything he has been taught tells him it is wrong.  Huck's nature is good, but he has no idea of it.  Twain tells us more through Huck's voice than Huck himself knows.

It took Mark Twain longer to write "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" than any of his other books.  He started writing in eighteen seventy-six, but put the story away after about two years of work.  He returned to it in eighteen eighty-three.  It was published the next year.

From the beginning, the book was hotly debated.  Some early critics praised its realism and honesty.  But the leading critics of Twain's time hated it.  They objected to the personality of Huck -- a rough, dirty and disobedient boy.They were insulted by Twain's attacks on the commonly accepted morals and traditions of white society.  And they disliked the way Twain used the language of a common, uneducated person to tell the story.  No writer had ever done that before.

The debate over "Huckleberry Finn" re-opened in recent years, but for different reasons.  The book uses the racist expressions of its time.  So some people say reading it is too painful and insulting for black children.

They know that Twain was really attacking racism.  But he attacked indirectly, and with humor.  So they feel young people will not understand what he was attempting to do.  A few American schools have banned the book for young children.  A few have banned it for all students.  Some schools used a version in which all racist words have been removed.

Other people say young people can understand "Huckleberry Finn" if they study it with a good teacher.  They say the book remains one of the best denunciations of racism ever written.There is no longer any debate about the importance of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" in American literature.  In nineteen thirty-five, Ernest Hemingway wrote: "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Finn.'  There was nothing before.  And there has been nothing as good since."

This program was written by Shelley Gollust.  Caty Weaver was our producer.  Doug Johnson read the part of Huckleberry Finn.  I'm Bob Doughty. And I'm Barbara Klein.  Join us again next week forPEOPLE IN AMERICA

in VOA Special English.Six Interesting Americans Who Died in 2010

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I'm Faith Lapidus. And I'm Steve Ember with PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English.

Today we remember six interesting people who died in the past year.

Elizabeth Edwards

We start with Elizabeth Edwards. She was the wife of former senator John Edwards and served as a political adviser during his campaigns.

Mr. Edwards was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in two thousand four. He unsuccessfully competed for the presidential nomination in two thousand eight.Elizabeth Edwards had a successful career as a lawyer long before she became involved with politics. She was also the mother of four children.

She faced several tragedies in her life. The Edwards' teenage son Wade was killed in a car accident in nineteen ninety-six. She was diagnosed with breast cancer at age fifty-five. And, during his last campaign, it became public that John Edwards had had an affair and child with another woman. The Edwards later separated.

For many people Elizabeth Edwards was a hero for her brave and very public battle with cancer. She did not let the disease stop her campaign work and activism. She became a fierce supporter for health care reform and women's health issues. She also wrote two best-selling books about her life.

Shortly before her death, she posted her last message on Facebook. She said that she had been supported in her life by three saving graces: her family, her friends, and her belief in the power of hope.  Elizabeth Edwards died of cancer in December at the age of sixty-one.Paul MillerPaul Miller was a lawyer who became a leader in the disability rights movement. In nineteen eighty-six, he graduated at the top of his class from Harvard Law School in Boston, Massachusetts.Many law firms wanted to hire him. But after meeting him, none would give him a job. Paul Miller was born with a condition called achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism. As an adult, he stood about one hundred thirty-seven centimeters tall.

Later in his career, Paul Miller would work to change such forms of discrimination. He became a member of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He helped enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act of nineteen ninety. This law protected disabled people in both public and private employment. He served as an advisor to President Clinton and President Obama.

He also worked to create federal laws protecting the privacy of people's genetic information. Employers and insurance agencies cannot use this information in a discriminatory way.

As a child, Paul Miller's parents took him to meetings of the Little People of America. This group gives support and information to people of short height and their families.He later said going to these meetings made him want to help others like himself.

Paul Miller died of cancer in October at the age of forty-nine.

Dorothy Kamenshek

Dorothy Kamenshek was considered one of the best female players in baseball history. In nineteen forty-three, the owner of the Chicago Cubs created the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

At the age of seventeen, Kamenshek was picked to be on the Rockford Peaches team. Known as "Dottie" to her fans, she became a huge success.

She would jump over a meter in the air to catch the ball at the first base position. She was also a great hitter. She had one of the league's top ten batting averages. Kamenshek played for the All-American Girls League for ten seasons. She was chosen to be on the All-Star team seven times in her career.Her life influenced the role played by Geena Davis in the nineteen ninety-two movie "A League of Their Own."

Dorothy Kamenshek was such a skillful player that a men's minor league team from Florida once tried to buy her contract. She refused the offer.

Kamenshek retired from baseball in nineteen fifty-three. She earned a degree in physical therapy. She later worked for the Crippled Children's Services Department in Los Angeles, California.

Dorothy Kamenshek died in May at the age of eighty-four.Leslie NielsenLeslie Nielsen was a serious actor in television and movies for many years. But using this seriousness to make people laugh changed his career.Leslie Nielsen was born in Canada and later became an American citizen. After serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force, he began studying acting in Toronto and New York City.

He worked in theater and television before making his first movie in nineteen fifty-six. He had major roles in movies including "Forbidden Planet," "Tammy and the Bachelor" and "The Poseidon Adventure."

By the nineteen sixties, Nielsen's hair had turned white. He was often chosen to play the serious roles of government and military leaders.

In nineteen eighty, he was chosen to be in a very different kind of film. The movie "Airplane!" was very funny. It is about a plane and its crew and passengers in a difficult situation.LESLIE NIELSEN: "Can you fly this plane and land it?"

ROBERT HAYS: "Surely you can't be serious."

LESLIE NEILSEN: "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley."

"Airplane!" changed Leslie Nielsen's career. He became famous for his roles in the funny "Naked Gun" movies. He played detective Frank Drebin, a man who does everything wrong.Nielsen spent the rest of his career playing funny parts in movies including "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" and "Spy Hard."  One reporter said his fans loved him because he seemed to be having a good time while making sure the audience had a good time, too.

Leslie Nielsen died in November at the age of eighty-four.

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois was an influential artist best known for her large sculptures of metal spiders. Much of her art was fearless, sexual and strange.

Her paintings and sculptures were often shaped by painful experiences. Her anger toward her father for betraying her mother with another woman was one big influence in her work.

She once said that her artwork was a way to battle her tensions and fears and attempt to be a better person.Louise Bourgeois was born in nineteen eleven in Paris, France. Her parents had a business repairing ancient tapestries. She used her drawing skills to help with repairs. Louise studied math in college, but later changed her area of study to art.

In nineteen thirty-eight she met art historian Robert Goldwater in Paris. They married and moved to New York City. She continued to work as an artist while raising their three sons.

Bourgeois took part in many gallery and museum shows in New York. But she did not become internationally famous until she was in her sixties. In nineteen eighty-two the Museum of Modern Art organized a show of her work. Major museums around the world later bought her artworks.

She once said she was glad she was discovered later in life. This gave her time to work without interruption at her own speed and in her own way. Louise Bourgeois kept working on her art until her last days.She died in May at the age of ninety-eight.

Jerry Bock

Jerry Bock was a celebrated composer who wrote music for many popular Broadway shows. He worked with the songwriter Sheldon Harnick to create seven musicals. These include "Fiorello" and "She Loves Me."  But their most famous musical was "Fiddler on the Roof."  It first played on Broadway in nineteen sixty-three.

The play tells about Jewish life in a small Russian village during the early nineteen hundreds. The main characters are a milkman named Tevye, his wife and five daughters. Jerry Bock was influenced by the Jewish musical traditions he heard as a child.

"Fiddler on the Roof" became a huge success. It won nine Tony Awards. The show played for eight years, making it Broadway's longest-running musical at the time. It was also made into a popular movie.

Jerry Bock was born in nineteen twenty-eight and grew up in New York City. At a young age he was able to play complex music on the piano. In high school he wrote his first musical. He wrote his first musical play for Broadway in nineteen fifty-six.Later in his career, Jerry Bock wrote music for television programs for children. He died in November at the age of eighty-one. We leave you with one of the most popular songs from "Fiddler on the Roof --"If I Were a Rich Man."

This program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I'm Faith Lapidus. And I'm Steve Ember.