[00:06.90]Lesson 37 1. Read and act
[00:11.31]Dad,this Sunday is Mother's Day.What are we going to do?
[00:16.30]Oh,dear! I almost forgot.Do you have any ideas?
[00:20.64]How about having a big dinner Sunday night? That's good idea.
[00:25.60]Hmm... I think each of us should give Mom a gift.
[00:29.52]Yeah.I'll give her a bunch of red carnations.
[00:33.57]She likes flowers.What about you,Lily?
[00:37.43]Hmm...What shall I get her?
[00:40.28]Dad,what does Mom need most?
[00:43.44]I don't think she really cares what we'll give her.
[00:46.68]A bunch of flowers is enough for both Lucy and you.
[00:50.13]Then what will you do,Dad?
[00:52.38]I'll do all the cooking,washing and cleaning on that day.
[00:56.45]Wow! That'll be the best gift for Mom.
[01:00.21]Only on that day?
[01:02.01]No,till Father's Day comes.
[01:03.89]Lesson 38 2. Read Mother's Day
[01:08.95]For hundreds of years the British people have remembered their mothers on Mothering Sunday.
[01:15.15]In the old days,workers had time off from work to visit their mothers.
[01:20.45] Today Mothering Sunday is called Mother's Day in Britain.
[01:25.10]Children send Mother's Day cards to their mothers.
[01:28.34]They give their mothers flowers or sweets as presents.
[01:32.07]Fathers and children do all the cooking and housework to give mothers a rest.
[01:37.43]They do their best to show their love for them.
[01:40.43] In the USA,mothers are remembered on Mother's Day,too.
[01:45.24]Mother's Day started quite differently from the way it started in Britain.
[01:49.91]In the 1860s
[01:51.72]there was a terrible war in the United States between the North and the South.
[01:57.78]There was a small town in the middle of the USA called Pruntytown.
[02:03.00]In this town,half the people fought on the northern side,
[02:07.16]and half fought on the southern side.
[02:10.00]At the end of the war,the people hated each other.
[02:13.95]Mrs Anna Reese Jarvis wanted the people to make friends with each other again.
[02:19.41]So she started "Mother's Friendship Day".
[02:22.57]On that day,she visited all the other mothers in her town and said,
[02:28.45]"God bless you,let us be friends with each other again."
[02:32.29]Her idea succeeded.
[02:34.09]The same thing happened in other parts of the country.
[02:37.25]Soon,all the women in the United States followed her example.
[02:41.72]After Mrs Jarvis died,her daughter carried on the same idea,
[02:46.26]but she called Mother's Friendship Day Mother's Day.
[02:49.92]The first Mother's Day was celebrated in 1908.
[02:53.94]In 1914,Mother's Day,the second Sunday in May,became a public holiday.
[03:04.39]Lesson 40 2. Read
[03:08.52]In the old days,London was known as a city of fog.
[03:13.17]The fog was as thick as pea-soup.
[03:16.09]London's fog was caused by factory smoke,so it was called "smog".
[03:21.84]The smog was so thick
[03:23.80]that car and bus drivers could hardly see the road in front of them
[03:29.05]even during the daytime.
[03:30.90]People had to wear "smog-masks" over their faces when they went out.
[03:35.87]In December 1952,a very thick dark cloud came down over the city.
[03:42.32]it was the worst smog Londoners had ever had.
[03:45.95]Nearly fifty people died in road accidents.
[03:49.14]Many more people became very unhealthy.
[03:52.19]After three weeks,the smog began to lift slowly.
[03:56.32]Life in London returned to normal.
[03:59.06]But no long after that,over 4,000 people died as a result of the smog.
[04:05.91]In 1956,the British stopped burning coal in houses and factories in the city.
[04:12.41]London's air became cleaner.
[04:14.76]5.Poem
[04:16.62]"M" is for the million things she gave me,
[04:24.17]"O" means only that she's growing old....
[04:28.22]"T" is for the tears she shed to save me,
[04:32.76]"H" is for her heart of purest gold,
[04:36.92]"E" is for her eyes,with love-light shining,
[04:41.96]"R" means right,and right she'll always be,
[04:47.02]Put them all together,they spell "Mother",
[04:51.75]A word that means the world to me. --Howard Johnson |