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VOA慢速英语2012 AMERICAN MOSAIC - Corn Maze Craze; Skydive and SpaceX; Songs From Above

时间:2012-10-21 08:53:44

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AMERICAN MOSAIC1 - Corn Maze2 Craze; Skydive and SpaceX; Songs From Above

Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC in VOA Special English.

I’m June Simms.

On our show this week, we tell about sky divers3 and space flight.

We also play some sky and space songs.

But first we go get lost in a very special kind of corn field…

Corn Maze Craze

Growing food is the main job of farmers. But in the United States, some farmers are growing another crop -- harvest-time fun. This “agri-entertainment” can include pick-your-own pumpkin4 fields and horror houses guaranteed to frighten visitors around Halloween time.

And then there is the corn maze. 

Barbara Klein has our report.

The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye at the Denver Botanic Garden’s demonstration5 farm. The tall green plants in this three and one-half hectare field are filled with ripening6 ears of corn. They will be used when they are ready to feed livestock7

But right now, the crop is profitable. People from the city pay to enter the corn field at one place and try to find their way out another.

This is called a corn maze. The tall plants grow in rows that create many paths that suddenly end. Visitors can find circular trails and rectangular routes that lead to nowhere.

Visitor David Williams says he will not get lost.

“You don’t go the quickest way doing this, but you go the sure way.”

“You just stay to the right here, see? Always touch the right wall.”

Suddenly, Mr. William’s grandsons race by. Their grandmother -- Cathy Williams -- is chasing them.

“I’m, I’m following the kids. They’ll get me out, right?”

Many people enjoy getting lost in this corn maze.

“OK…move forward? Keep going?”

“OK, I think we take the right.” 

“No, we can’t take the right…”

One hundred thousand people pay to come to the maze every year. That makes Denver Botanic Garden’s maze one of the most popular in the United States. Will Jones leads the public relations department at the Garden.

“We have people who actually travel all over the world -- or from all over the world -- to come to our corn maze. I met a bunch of folks last year, and this is the time of the year that they go from city to city, going from maze to maze, getting lost.”

Visitors also can buy pumpkins8 and apple fritters, a sweet, fried treat. The head of the farm, Adam Lucas, says pumpkin sales and maze tickets bring in a lot of money.

“You can make more off a corn maze than you can just growing the corn and selling it for feed, or whatever. So they call it ‘agri-tainment.’”

Mr. Lucas says like any crop, agri-tainment is a lot of work. The labor9 began in the spring with the choosing of a maze design and the planting of corn seeds. A maze company makes marks on the corn when is just centimeters high. Then they follow the marks to cut the field so it grows up to become a series of very confusing pathways.

“I meet them with them out here, and they mark it with blue dye when the corn’s only about a foot, not even a foot tall. Takes them about four to six hours to cut it out.”

Farm workers keep the paths of the maze clear as the corn grows through the summer months. On opening day in September the corn on both sides of the paths was taller than a man.

On her one hundred hectare farm near Denver, Rachelle Wegele says agri-tainment can bring people to see her family farm in operation.

“We’ve been farmers since nineteen eleven.”

Ms. Wegele began Anderson Farms with grain and cattle. In nineteen ninety-seven, they planted pumpkins. 

“We started just here with a little pumpkin patch, nothing else. I think we had a few farm animals, little-bitty concession10 stand. And then two years later, we added the corn maze. And we were the first corn maze in Colorado.”

Each autumn harvest season, fifty thousand people visit Anderson Farms for the agri-tainment. They come for the pumpkins and the corn maze. They see women wearing old-style clothing and makeup11 that gives them the look of the “living dead” -- haunting, hollow eyes and bluish skin. One entertainer will be a zombie creature.

“Tonight I will be the haunted school teacher, and I will be popping out of a corner, yelling at people for their homework.”

As the sun sets, wagons12 fill with visitors armed with paintball guns that shoot small balls filled with washable orange paint.

“We’re here for the first time to shoot zombies with paintballs. This is, this is gonna' be a kick!”

A farm tractor pulls a wagonload of zombie hunters into a lighted corn field. Suddenly, there’s a zombie. 

The visitors fire their paintball guns and cover the zombie with orange paint. As the tractor rolls along more and more zombies appear. Finally, all the paintballs have been fired.

“This is actually an extremely fun experience. Can’t wait to come back again!”

Such rural fun is taking place across the United States now at thousands of corn mazes13 and agri-tainment centers. Visitors celebrate the harvest season and help support American farms.

This week, Felix Baumgartner of Austria became the first skydiver to break the speed of sound. The International Federation14 of Sports Aviation says he reached a speed of one thousand three hundred forty-two kilometers an hour. That is equal to Mach one point twenty-four. No one has ever reached that speed while wearing only a high-tech15 space suit.

Last Sunday, a huge balloon filled with helium gas carried Felix Baumgartner in a pressured capsule high in the sky. He jumped out of the device when it was more than thirty-eight kilometers above the New Mexico desert. He said his jump was more difficult than anything he has ever done.

"When I was standing16 there on top of the world you become so humble17 you do not think about breaking records anymore. You do not think about gaining scientific data. The only thing that you want is -- you want to come back alive because you don't want to die in front of your parents, your girlfriend and all of the people watching this.”This became the most important thing to me when I was standing out there."

Felix Baumgartner landed safely in the desert. Using a parachute, his return trip to Earth lasted about ten minutes. 

The Austrian man broke the world record for a high-altitude jump, which American Joe Kittinger set in nineteen sixty. He also broke a fifty-two year old record for the highest parachute jump and set an altitude record for a balloon passenger.

Speaking of high flying, the American business SpaceX successfully launched its first cargo18 supply mission to the International Space Station this month. SpaceX made history earlier this year by being the first private company to fly to the Space Station. 

Sky and Space Songs

We were quite moved by all the news falling from the sky and speeding through space. It inspired us to play a few songs about sky and space. Christopher Cruise is our pilot.

There are a lot of space songs to choose from in rock and pop music. One of the most famous is “Space Oddity” by David Bowie. He released the song in nineteen sixty nine on his album of the same name.

“Space Oddity” tells the story of an astronaut who floats away from Earth forever when something goes wrong with his space vehicle.

Ten years later, the American New Wave band the B-52s came out with “Planet Clair.” It is about a space alien who visits Earth. The song says, she came from Planet Clair / I knew she came from there / she drove a Plymouth Satellite / faster than the speed of light.

“Swinging on a Star” is a song from the nineteen forty-four movie “Going My Way.” Bing Crosby starred as a young, untraditional Roman Catholic priest. And, of course, he sings. In “Swinging on a Star” Crosby asks the question would you like to swing on a star / carry moonbeams home in a jar / and be better off than you are.

The band Smash Mouth also sings a song about visiting a star. We leave you with Smash Mouth performing “Walkin’ on the Sun.”


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1 mosaic CEExS     
n./adj.镶嵌细工的,镶嵌工艺品的,嵌花式的
参考例句:
  • The sky this morning is a mosaic of blue and white.今天早上的天空是幅蓝白相间的画面。
  • The image mosaic is a troublesome work.图象镶嵌是个麻烦的工作。
2 maze F76ze     
n.迷宫,八阵图,混乱,迷惑
参考例句:
  • He found his way through the complex maze of corridors.他穿过了迷宮一样的走廊。
  • She was lost in the maze for several hours.一连几小时,她的头脑处于一片糊涂状态。
3 divers hu9z23     
adj.不同的;种种的
参考例句:
  • He chose divers of them,who were asked to accompany him.他选择他们当中的几个人,要他们和他作伴。
  • Two divers work together while a standby diver remains on the surface.两名潜水员协同工作,同时有一名候补潜水员留在水面上。
4 pumpkin NtKy8     
n.南瓜
参考例句:
  • They ate turkey and pumpkin pie.他们吃了火鸡和南瓜馅饼。
  • It looks like there is a person looking out of the pumpkin!看起来就像南瓜里有人在看着你!
5 demonstration 9waxo     
n.表明,示范,论证,示威
参考例句:
  • His new book is a demonstration of his patriotism.他写的新书是他的爱国精神的证明。
  • He gave a demonstration of the new technique then and there.他当场表演了这种新的操作方法。
6 ripening 5dd8bc8ecf0afaf8c375591e7d121c56     
v.成熟,使熟( ripen的现在分词 );熟化;熟成
参考例句:
  • The corn is blossoming [ripening]. 玉米正在开花[成熟]。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
  • When the summer crop is ripening, the autumn crop has to be sowed. 夏季作物成熟时,就得播种秋季作物。 来自《简明英汉词典》
7 livestock c0Wx1     
n.家畜,牲畜
参考例句:
  • Both men and livestock are flourishing.人畜两旺。
  • The heavy rains and flooding killed scores of livestock.暴雨和大水淹死了许多牲口。
8 pumpkins 09a64387fb624e33eb24dc6c908c2681     
n.南瓜( pumpkin的名词复数 );南瓜的果肉,南瓜囊
参考例句:
  • I like white gourds, but not pumpkins. 我喜欢吃冬瓜,但不喜欢吃南瓜。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • Then they cut faces in the pumpkins and put lights inside. 然后在南瓜上刻出一张脸,并把瓜挖空。 来自英语晨读30分(高三)
9 labor P9Tzs     
n.劳动,努力,工作,劳工;分娩;vi.劳动,努力,苦干;vt.详细分析;麻烦
参考例句:
  • We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
  • He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后,他已经疲惫不堪了。
10 concession LXryY     
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。
11 makeup 4AXxO     
n.组织;性格;化装品
参考例句:
  • Those who failed the exam take a makeup exam.这次考试不及格的人必须参加补考。
  • Do you think her beauty could makeup for her stupidity?你认为她的美丽能弥补她的愚蠢吗?
12 wagons ff97c19d76ea81bb4f2a97f2ff0025e7     
n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 );铁路货车;小手推车
参考例句:
  • The wagons were hauled by horses. 那些货车是马拉的。
  • They drew their wagons into a laager and set up camp. 他们把马车围成一圈扎起营地。
13 mazes 01f00574323c5f5c055dbab44afc33b9     
迷宫( maze的名词复数 ); 纷繁复杂的规则; 复杂难懂的细节; 迷宫图
参考例句:
  • The mazes of the dance were ecstatic. 跳舞那种错综曲折,叫人快乐得如登九天。
  • For two hours did this singlehearted and simpleminded girl toil through the mazes of the forest. 这位心地单纯的傻姑娘在林间曲径中艰难地走了两个来小时。
14 federation htCzMS     
n.同盟,联邦,联合,联盟,联合会
参考例句:
  • It is a federation of 10 regional unions.它是由十个地方工会结合成的联合会。
  • Mr.Putin was inaugurated as the President of the Russian Federation.普京正式就任俄罗斯联邦总统。
15 high-tech high-tech     
adj.高科技的
参考例句:
  • The economy is in the upswing which makes high-tech services in more demand too.经济在蓬勃发展,这就使对高科技服务的需求量也在加大。
  • The quest of a cure for disease with high-tech has never ceased. 人们希望运用高科技治疗疾病的追求从未停止过。
16 standing 2hCzgo     
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的
参考例句:
  • After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
  • They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。
17 humble ddjzU     
adj.谦卑的,恭顺的;地位低下的;v.降低,贬低
参考例句:
  • In my humble opinion,he will win the election.依我拙见,他将在选举中获胜。
  • Defeat and failure make people humble.挫折与失败会使人谦卑。
18 cargo 6TcyG     
n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物
参考例句:
  • The ship has a cargo of about 200 ton.这条船大约有200吨的货物。
  • A lot of people discharged the cargo from a ship.许多人从船上卸下货物。

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