美国国家公共电台 NPR Bringing Together Young And Old To Ease The Isolation Of Rural Life

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

There's a part of Minnesota that has more trees and lakes than people. It's beautiful, but the people who live there say it can also be lonely.

ANNA VIERKANDT: For me to go anywhere to see anyone that I know personally, it would be, like, a 30-mile drive.

SHAPIRO: That's Anna Vierkandt. She's one of an estimated 14 million rural Americans who have few people nearby to rely on. It's based on a recent poll¹ by NPR looking at life in rural America. As NPR's Rhitu Chatterjee reports, a group in Anna's hometown is trying to reconnect the community.

JACK²: Oops (unintelligible).

VIERKANDT: Hey, Jack, would you like to go outside?

RHITU CHATTERJEE, BYLINE³: Anna Vierkandt lives on a small farm in a rural town called McGregor. She's 20 years old, married and has two children.

VIERKANDT: The moon - you see the moon.

CHATTERJEE: She's trying to create the kind of family she didn't have growing up. When she was a kid, she and her family rarely saw their neighbors or friends. And there was this incredible⁴ distance within the family.

VIERKANDT: We'd just be there to eat or if we did talk or on the off chance there was a good table conversation, it would just be - you know, someone would be getting ridiculed⁵.

CHATTERJEE: Anna's recently had a baby, and these memories of her childhood are weighing on her mind. She had three siblings⁶ and three half-siblings, and they were on their own a lot.

VIERKANDT: Being the oldest sister, I was expected to just help take care of the kids, so my mom wouldn't go out and play with them or anything like that. Sometimes we'd just be inside playing, and she'd be in her room or sitting on her phone.

CHATTERJEE: Her father lived in another town, and her stepfather worked long hours. Anna felt alone. By the time she was about 12, she was struggling with anxiety and depression. Studies show that social isolation⁷ and loneliness put people at risk for a range of physical and mental health problems. But one day, when Anna was in seventh grade, she finally found an escape from her loneliness. She saw flyers for an after-school program called AGE to age that connected kids with older people in the community, like Barbara Coplan.

BARBARA COPLAN: Gosh, you know, being old, memory's not so good.

CHATTERJEE: But Barb⁸ does remember Anna when they first met.

COPLAN: Very bubbly, happy girl, but she would be stressed and inward and I think she needed a little bit of encouragement to be more outgoing and to be Anna because Anna is a really cool person.

CHATTERJEE: So Barb got to work. Anna says they'd meet up after school and head out into the community.

VIERKANDT: I would help with the community meals. We went to a soup kitchen once, concession⁹ stands at school. Like, we did a bake sale. We did a flower sale. Like, anything really that they needed help with, I was usually there because I didn't want to be at home.

CHATTERJEE: As Anna got to know Barb better, she started to open up, talked about how isolated¹⁰ she and her family were and also how she was afraid to talk to people. Barb would say to her...

COPLAN: Hey, you're a great person, and you talk to people and communicate with them like you want. I mean, you're loving. You understand things. And if they don't want to talk to you, what's the very worst that can happen? They say away from me, OK?

CHATTERJEE: Barb and Anna worked together for about three or four years through this program. It's run by a local group called Kids Plus, and it connects about 175 children each year with about 30 seniors in the community. Cheryl Meld runs the organization.

CHERYL MELD: I would like to see a more connected community and one that sustains¹¹ those connections.

CHATTERJEE: The poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health finds that 46% of rural Americans say they have few or no one nearby to rely on. Nearly 1 in 5 say they often or always feel isolated or lonely. Cheryl, who grew up in the next town over from McGregor, says things weren't always like this. These were once thriving, connected communities.

MELD: There were large families, so there were a lot of people doing things together and a real sense of neighbors and neighborhoods.

CHATTERJEE: That started to change a couple decades ago when the local economy began to decline¹². Stores like Walmart and Costco arrived, pushing out local businesses. Minnesota's timber¹³ industry, a big source of employment, began to struggle, and family farms did too as they became less profitable¹⁴ and young people moved away looking for other careers.

MELD: So we lost that sense of generational businesses and generational families living here. People don't just get together or drop by to visit. You don't see kids playing pickup¹⁵ games. You don't see them getting together just to play a game of softball.

CHATTERJEE: Cheryl says poverty and isolation are part of the reason for rising addiction¹⁶ rates here.

MELD: We see people trying to find happiness in self-medication or alcohol use or substance use.

CHATTERJEE: She's been working for about a decade on this program to give the town a different future, one with a sense of connection, for older people who may not get to see their kids or grandkids for months at a time, and for young people like Anna Vierkandt.

MELD: Yes, exactly (laughter).

VIERKANDT: Yeah, that's what my kids do, too.

CHATTERJEE: Anna recently stopped by the Kids Plus office to see Cheryl and her mentor¹⁷ Barb, who continues to look out for her.

COPLAN: And do you take me time? Because you need that, too, you know.

CHATTERJEE: Anna says Barb is like her second mother. She's the first person she texted with pictures after her baby was born. She says Barb changed her life by giving her...

VIERKANDT: A sense of purpose and belonging.

CHATTERJEE: There are programs like this one in 17 other rural communities in northeastern Minnesota. It's one of the few places in the country that's working to fight isolation on such a scale by connecting different generations. Rhitu Chatterjee, NPR News.

1 poll   

n.民意测验，民意调查，选举投票

参考例句：

• The result of the poll won't be known until midnight.选举结果要到午夜才能揭晓。
• They expected a heavy poll.他们期望会有很高的投票数。

2 jack   

n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克

参考例句：

• I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
• He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

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

4 incredible   

adj.难以置信的，不可信的，极好的，大量的

参考例句：

• Some planets run at incredible speed.某些星球以难以置信的速度运行着。
• Her answer showed the most incredible stupidity.她的回答显示出不可思议的愚蠢。

5 ridiculed   

v.嘲笑，嘲弄，奚落( ridicule的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Biosphere 2 was ultimately ridiculed as a research debade, as exfravagant pseudoscience. 生物圈2号最终被讥讽为科研上的大失败，代价是昂贵的伪科学。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She ridiculed his insatiable greed. 她嘲笑他的贪得无厌。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 siblings   

n.兄弟，姐妹( sibling的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• A triplet sleeps amongst its two siblings. 一个三胞胎睡在其两个同胞之间。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She has no way of tracking the donor or her half-siblings down. 她没办法找到那个捐精者或她的兄弟姐妹。 来自时文部分

7 isolation   

n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离

参考例句：

• The millionaire lived in complete isolation from the outside world.这位富翁过着与世隔绝的生活。
• He retired and lived in relative isolation.他退休后，生活比较孤寂。

8 barb   

n.（鱼钩等的）倒钩，倒刺

参考例句：

• The barb of his wit made us wince.他那锋芒毕露的机智使我们退避三舍。
• A fish hook has a barb to prevent the fish from escaping after being hooked.鱼钩上都有一个倒钩以防上了钩的鱼逃走。

9 concession   

n.让步，妥协；特许(权)

参考例句：

• We can not make heavy concession to the matter.我们在这个问题上不能过于让步。
• That is a great concession.这是很大的让步。

10 isolated   

adj.与世隔绝的

参考例句：

• His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident. 他的不良行为只是个别事件。
• Patients with the disease should be isolated. 这种病的患者应予以隔离。

11 sustains   

v.维持( sustain的第三人称单数 )；支撑；忍受；长期保持

参考例句：

• The sea wall sustains the shock of the waves. 海堤能抵挡海浪的冲击。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The breakwater sustains the shock of the great waves. 防波堤承受巨浪的冲击。 来自辞典例句

12 decline   

n.衰微，跌落，下降；vt.使降低，婉谢；vi.下降，衰落，偏斜

参考例句：

• I must decline to show favour to any of the candidates.我必须拒绝偏袒任何一位候选人。
• The birthrate is on the decline.出生率在下降。

13 timber   

n.木材，原木，大木料，栋木

参考例句：

• These trees need more time to grow into useful timber.这些树不够年头，还没成材呢。
• The timber is graded according to its thickness.木材按厚度分级。

14 profitable   

adj.有益的，能带来利益的，有利可图的

参考例句：

• That business became profitable last year.那项生意去年变得很赚钱。
• The convention business is very profitable for the hotel industry.承办会议业务能给旅馆业带来很高的利润。

15 pickup   

n.拾起，获得

参考例句：

• I would love to trade this car for a pickup truck.我愿意用这辆汽车换一辆小型轻便卡车。||The luck guy is a choice pickup for the girls.那位幸运的男孩是女孩子们想勾搭上的人。

16 addiction   

n.上瘾入迷，嗜好

参考例句：

• He stole money from his parents to feed his addiction.他从父母那儿偷钱以满足自己的嗜好。
• Areas of drug dealing are hellholes of addiction,poverty and murder.贩卖毒品的地区往往是吸毒上瘾、贫困和发生谋杀的地方。

17 mentor   

n.指导者，良师益友；v.指导

参考例句：

• He fed on the great ideas of his mentor.他以他导师的伟大思想为支撑。
• He had mentored scores of younger doctors.他指导过许多更年轻的医生。