Changing Lifestyles
Text A
In the United States, many people harbor romantic feelings about country life. Many people who lived in towns dreamed of starting their own farms and of making a living off the land. Few people actually go out and turn their dreams into reality. And maybe there's nothing wrong with that, because, as Jim Dougherty experienced when he first began his dual career as a writer and farm operator, the farming life is far from easy. But he writes that he has no regrets and remains enthusiastic about the lifestyle-altering decision he made.
Mr. Dougherty Creates His Own Ideal Life
Salesman Sam Dougherty
There are two things I've always wanted to do - write and farm. Today I do both at the same time. As a writer, I'm not in the same league as E. B. White, and as a farmer, I'm not in the same league as my country neighbors, but I'm coping just fine. After years of disappointment in the city as well as the suburbs, my wife Sandy and I have finally found spiritual fulfillment here in the countryside.
It's a self-reliant life. We grow almost all the fruits and vegetables we eat. Home-grown chickens provide eggs, with dozens left over for sale each week. Our own bees provide honey, and we cut our own firewood, which is enough to keep us warm in the winter.
It was also a satisfying life. In summer we canoe on the river, picnic in the woods, and take long bike rides. In winter we ski and skate. We thrill to the afterglow of the setting sun. We love to smell the earth warming up and hear the cows mooing. We keep watch to see the hawks fly overhead and the deer play in the cornfields.
But such a wonderful life can sometimes become quite grueling. Just three months ago, the temperature dropped to -30 degrees Fahrenheit, and we labored for two full days hauling firewood along the river on a sled. In another three months the temperature will rise to 95 degrees and we'll be loosening corn, weeding strawberry fields, and butchering poultry. A while back Sandy and I had to renovate the back roof. In a little while, the younger two of the four kids, Jimmy, 16, and Emily, 13, will help me work on the outdoor outhouse that has been dragging for a long time and was built for outdoor work. Later this month, we'll be spraying fruit trees, painting the barn, seeding the vegetable garden, and cleaning out the coop before the new chicks arrive.
Between all these chores, I find time to spend fifty or sixty hours a week either typing up articles or conducting interviews for articles I submit to newspapers as a freelance writer. Sandy, on the other hand, had her own busy schedule. In addition to her daily chores, she tended the vegetable garden and the beehive, baked bread, canned and froze food, drove the children to music lessons and practiced with them, took organ lessons herself, did some research and typed for me, wrote articles herself sometimes, tended the flower garden, stacked firewood, and transported eggs. As the old saying goes, under these circumstances the bad man can't rest - and neither can the virtuous man.
None of us will ever forget the first winter. From December until the end of March, we were stuck with snow up to five feet deep. Storms raged, one after another, with snow thickly covering the house and barn, while indoors, we warmed ourselves with a fire of firewood we had cut, ate home-grown apples, and were cozy and happy every minute.
There have been two floods since the beginning of spring. One was when the river overflowed and quite a few of our fields were flooded for a couple weeks. The next time was when the growing season arrived and wave after wave of produce came in and overwhelmed us. Our refrigerator was stuffed with cherries, blueberries, strawberries, asparagus, peas, green beans and corn. Then the shelves and cupboards where we stored our food jars began to fill with jars of pickled foods, tomato juice, grape juice, plums, jams and jellies. Finally, the cellar was littered with huge piles of potatoes, gourds, and squash, and the barn was full of apples and pears. It was wonderful.
The next year we planted more crops and pretty much survived the winter on firewood cut from our own woods and a mere 100 gallons of fuel oil. At that point, I began to seriously consider quitting my job to pursue freelance writing. The timing was poor. At the time, our two oldest daughters, Sean and Emi, were attending expensive Ivy League schools, and we only had a few thousand dollars in the bank. But we came back again and again to the age-old question: could there really have been a better time? The answer was undoubtedly no. So, with my boss's blessing and a six-month paycheck in my pocket as an accumulated stipend, I left.
There have been some anxious moments since then, but on the whole, things have been better than we expected. I climbed into a black bear den for Sports Illustrated, sledded a team of dogs for Smithsonian Magazine, investigated the truth about the Lake Champlain monster for Science Digest, and paddled a canoe in Minnesota through a public **** wilderness preserve in the U.S.-Canada border waters for End of the Line magazine.
I make far less money than I did when I held a full-time job, but we don't need as much money today as we used to. I make enough money to cover a $600/month mortgage payment on my home and the daily expenses of my family. Those expenses include everything from music lessons, dental bills, car repairs, and college fees. As far as insurance goes, we have an insurance policy for major medical programs for low income earners. We have to pay an initial $500 for any one medical expense for each family member and Medicare pays 80% of the excess. While we still pay a small portion of our medical expenses, our premiums are also low - only $560 per year - and we insure ourselves against major illnesses. Other than this insurance program, and $400 per year for both cars, we have no other insurance. We do, however, set aside $2,000 per year into a personal retirement sticker.
We make up the difference in income by saving money without significantly lowering our standard of living. We still go out to eat once or twice a month, but now we patronize local restaurants rather than the fancy ones in town. We still go to the opera and the ballet in Milwaukee, though only a few times a year. We ate less meat, drank cheaper wine, and saw fewer movies. Sprawling Christmases became a memory, and we completed manuscript appointments as part of our vacations ......
I don't think all people who love the countryside would be happy to live the kind of life we do. This life requires some special qualities. One of them is the ability to endure loneliness. Because we are so busy and tight-fisted, we rarely treat ourselves. There was simply no time for socializing during the crop growing season. Jimmy and Emily stayed home most of the time, although they participated in various school activities.
Another requirement was physical strength - considerable physical strength. The way to achieve self-sufficiency on a small scale is to resist the temptation to acquire tractors and other expensive labor-saving machinery. Instead, you have to do it yourself. The only machines we have (excluding the mower) are a small 3-horsepower rotary cultivator and a 16-inch chain saw.
No one knows how much longer we'll have the energy to stay here - maybe for a long time, maybe not. When it's time to go, we'll leave with a sense of sadness, but also a sense of pride in what we've done. We'll also make quite a bit of money selling the farm. We have invested about $35,000 of our own money in the farm, and if we sold it now we could almost double the price. But now is not a good time to sell. But once the economy improves, the demand for farms like ours will increase again.
But we didn't move here primarily to make money. We came here because we wanted to improve our quality of life. When I watch Emily collect eggs in the evening, fish on the river with Jimmy, or enjoy an old-fashioned picnic in the orchard with the whole family, I know we've found the lifestyle we've been seeking.
Unit 2
Civil Rights Heroes
Text A
In 2004, a center honoring the "Underground Railroad" will open in Cincinnati. The railroad was unusual in that it didn't sell tickets or run trains. But it transported thousands of passengers to their dream destinations.
The Giver of Freedom
Fergus M. Bordewich
I step out of this two-story cottage, a light breeze blowing off the Canadian plains. Beside me is a slim black woman, a guide who takes me back in time. Back then, a hero of American history lived in this part of Dresden, Ontario. We head to a plain gray church, and Barbara. Carter spoke proudly of her high ancestor, Josiah Henson. "He firmly believed that God wanted all men to be born equal. He never stopped fighting for that right to be free."
Carter's loyalty to his ancestor is not just about pride, but about family honor. For Josiah Henson is still known to this day as the man who inspired the creation of an American fictional character: Uncle Tom, Harriet, the rebellious nigger in Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Ironically, everything this character symbolizes is nowhere to be found in Henson. A black man unwilling to rise to the occasion and betray his race? Carter is quite outraged by this. "Josiah Henson was a man of principle," she affirms.
I traveled a long way to Henson's last home - now a historic site that Carter once managed - to learn more about the man who was, in many ways, an African-American Moses. After Henson himself was freed from his status as a Negro, he secretly helped many other Negroes escape north to Canada - to the land of the free. Many settled with him in this part of Dresden.
But this place was only a stopping place for the onerous mission I had undertaken. Josiah Henson was just one name in a long list of fearless men and women who created the Underground Railroad, a clandestine network of escape routes and trusted homes to free black slaves in the American South. Between 1820 and 1860, as many as 100,000 black slaves traveled this route to freedom.
In October 2000, President Clinton approved $16 million for the construction of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center to commemorate the first great civil rights struggle in American history. The center is scheduled to be completed in Cincinnati in 2004. It is high time that such a center was built. Because the heroes of the Underground Railroad are still unknown, and their legacy is still under-recognized. I want to tell their stories.
John Parker tensed when he heard a soft knock on the door. He opened the door and peered in, recognizing in the night that it was a trusted neighbor. "There's a group of fugitive slaves hiding out in the Kentucky woods, just twenty miles from the river," the man whispered in an urgent tone. Parker did not hesitate a moment. "I'll be right there," he said, slipping two pistols into his pocket.
Twenty years ago, in the 1920s, Parker, born a Negro, was taken from his mother when he was only eight years old and forced to walk in shackles from Virginia to Alabama, where he was bought in the Negro market. Determined to live a free life someday, he managed to learn the trade of cast iron. Later he finally saved enough money from this trade to redeem his freedom. Today, Parker works during the day in an iron foundry in Port Ripley, Ohio. At night, he became a "steward" on the Underground Railroad, helping people avoid the men who hunted for escaped slaves. In Kentucky, where he was headed, authorities offered a $1,000 reward for his capture, dead or alive.
On that chilly night, Parker crossed the Ohio River and found ten bereft runaways. "Grab your packages and follow me," he instructed them as he led the eight men and two women toward the river. Just as they reached the bank, one of the night watchmen spotted them and hurried away to report.
Parker saw a small boat, and with a shout, pushed the fugitive niggers into it. Everyone got into the boat, but there was not room for two. The boat sails across the river and Parker watches as his pursuers surround the two men he was forced to leave behind.
The rest of the men made it to shore, and Parker hurriedly arranged for a car to take them to the next stop on the Underground Railroad - the first leg of their journey to the safety of Canada. John Parker led more than four hundred Negroes to safety in his lifetime one ****.
Blacks often went to work as stewards because of their own painful experiences, while those who were white were often inspired by religious beliefs. Levay Coffin, a Quaker who grew up in North Carolina, explains, "The Bible just tells us to feed the hungry and clothe the shirtless, but it doesn't say anything about skin color."
In the 1820s, Coffin moved west to Newport, Indiana (today's Fountain City), where he opened a small store. Legend has it that fugitive Negroes were always sheltered at Coffin's house. Sometimes he sheltered as many as seventeen runaways at a time, and he had a team of men and vehicles to transport them to the next leg of their journey. By the time three major routes converged at Coffin's, Coffin's became the central station of the Underground Railroad.
Coffin was often threatened with being killed for the work he did, and received warnings about the burning of his store and home. Almost every crewman faced similar dangers - or worse. In the North, sheriffs fined or sentenced to short terms of imprisonment for aiding runaways. In the Southern states, whites were sentenced to months or even years in prison. A courageous Methodist minister, Calvin Fairbank, who was imprisoned in Kentucky for more than seventeen years, recorded the beatings he received: a total of 35,105 lashes of the ****.
As for the Negroes, escape meant hundreds of miles of long-distance travel, and it meant traversing unfamiliar territory where one was highly unrecognizable. There were no signposts and almost no route maps, and they traveled by word-of-mouth and by secret markers - like the nails in the trees - that the stewards used to mark the route north with Song.
Many Negroes traveled under the cover of night, sometimes with their faces thickly powdered. Quakers often made their "passengers" of both sexes wear gray clothes, deep-brimmed hats, and veils that completely covered their heads. At one point, Levay Coffin was transporting so many fugitive slaves that he dressed them up as a funeral procession.
Canada was the preferred destination for many escapees. Slavery had been abolished there in 1833, and Canadian authorities encouraged fugitive slaves to settle on its vast uncultivated lands. Among them was Josiah Henson.
As a child in Maryland, Henson saw his entire family sold to different masters, and saw his mother beaten in an attempt to keep him with her. Henson takes advantage of all the opportunities fate gives him, working hard and being highly valued by his masters.
Financial hardship eventually forced Henson's owner to send him, his wife, and children to one of the owner's brothers in Kentucky. After a few years of hard labor there, Henson heard terrible news: his new master was going to sell him to work on a farm in the far hinterlands of the South. The slave would be separated from his family forever.
There was only one way out: escape. "I would recognize the North Star," Henson wrote many years later. "Like the savior of Bethlehem in the Holy Land, it told me where I could be saved."
Henson and his wife took great risks and took their four children on the road. Two weeks later, the hungry and exhausted family arrived in Cincinnati, where they made contact with members of the Underground Railroad. "They provided us with room and board, were very caring, and then drove us thirty miles in their car."
The Hensons continued north and ended up in Buffalo, New York. There, a friendly sea captain pointed across the Niagara River. "'See those trees?' He said, 'They grow in the land of the free.'"' He gave Henson a dollar and arranged for a small boat, which carried the Negro and his family across the river to Canada.
"I flung myself to the ground and rolled in the sand and dirt and danced around on my hands and knees, and at last the men who were there decided that I was crazy. 'He's crazy,' said one Colonel Warren."
"'No, it's not! Know what? I'm free!'"
Unit 3
Safety Issues
Text A
Many years ago, in the United States, it was common for families to leave their doors unlocked day and night. In this article, Greene laments the fact that people no longer trust each other and have to rely on sophisticated security devices to protect themselves and their property.
The Land of Locks
Bob Greene
When I was a kid at home, our front door was always unlocked at night. I don't know if this is a local saying or if it's just the way everyone says it; "unlocked" means that the door is covered, but not locked. None of us carry keys; the last person home at night closes the door and that's it.
Those days are gone. In the country, in the city, - doors are no longer left closed and unlocked, even for some time in the evening.
In many ways, the suburbs and countryside are even more vulnerable than the heavily patrolled city streets. Statistics show that crime has risen more dramatically in those supposedly peaceful areas than in towns and cities. In any case, the days of leaving the front door ajar and unlocked are gone.
In their place are burglar locks, security chains, electronic alarm systems, and alarm devices connected to police stations or private security companies. Many homes in the suburbs have glass sliding doors on their decks with carefully fitted steel bars on the inside so that no one can pry them open.
In the coziest of homes, it is not uncommon to see small notices in the windows stating that the house is under the supervision of a security agency or a security company.
The lock has become the new symbol of America. Indeed, a recent public service announcement from a major insurance company did not use a chart to show how much danger we are in, but instead used a picture of a stroller with the padlocks that are everywhere these days hanging from it.
The ad points out that, yes, it's true that insurance companies pay claims for stolen items, but who is going to pay for the impact that the new climate of distrust and fear is having on our way of life? Who is going to make moral amends for the transformation of America from a land of the free to a land of the locked?
Because that is the status quo. We have become so used to protecting ourselves from the new climate of American life, so used to putting up barriers, that we have no time to think about what it all means.
For some reason, we feel reassured when we feel well-protected; we don't think to ask ourselves: why is this happening? Why do we have to isolate ourselves from our neighbors and the people who live in the same town, and when did all this start to dominate our lives?
It does dominate our lives. If you work for a medium-sized or large company, you probably don't get in and out of the office. You probably carry some kind of access card with you, electronic or otherwise, because it gets you in and out of the workplace. Maybe the security guard at the front desk recognizes your face and lets you in with a wave of his hand on weekdays, but the fact is that the company you work for is y threatened, so you need to use these "keys" to keep outsiders out.
This has not always been the case. Even a decade ago, most private companies still had free access. It never occurred to managers that the appropriate tool was mistrust.
Look at airports everywhere. Parents used to take their kids to the gate to watch planes take off and land. That sort of thing no longer happens. Airports are no longer a fun place to learn; they have become places with the most sophisticated security screening systems.
With electronic vision, it seems that we have finally figured out a way to keep terrorists, real or imagined, at bay. It's such a relief to have this problem solved that we don't think much about what it means for our quality of life. Nowadays we don't even look at these electronic searchers when we walk past them; the devices, and everything they represent, have won.
Our living quarters are under intense light; we don't want to give ourselves even small pleasures like shadows.
More and more businessmen are acquiring new machines attached to telephones that dissect the voice of the caller. That kind of machine is said to let a businessman know if his friend or client is lying, with a very small probability of error.
All this is being done in the name of "security": that's what we tell ourselves. We're afraid, so we try to lock that fear out, and we decide that that's what safety is all about.
But it is not; with all this security, we are perhaps the most insecure people in the history of human civilization. What better word could be used to describe the lifestyle we are forced to choose? What more pathetic indication of the trepidation we feel in this bewildering new era?
We trust no one. Suburban housewives with rape whistles on the keychain of the family station wagon, we have become so smart about self-defense that we end up being all too smart for our own good. We may have locked evil out; but in doing so we locked ourselves in.
That is perhaps the spiritual legacy we will remember most when we look back on this era: that in dealing with the invisible fears in our midst, we have become our own prisoners. In our problematic times, all men are prisoners.
Unit 4
Alien
Lesson A
It was just a mistake, a stupid mistake, the kind of mistake everyone can make. It's just that no spaceman will ever come to visit Earth again from now on. Never again.
Waterland
Isaac Asimov
We'll never have another space tourist come. Aliens will never land on Earth - at least never again.
This is not pessimism on my part. The fact is that aliens have landed on Earth. I know this. There may be many spacecraft traveling among the millions of planets in the universe, but they will never come back to us. I know that too. And it was all due to a ridiculous mistake.
Let me explain.
It was actually Bart Cameron's fault, so you have to know a little bit about Bart Cameron. He's the sheriff of Twingalchi, Idaho, and I'm his deputy. Bart Cameron was a short-tempered man, and was even more prone to lightening up when it came time for him to have to sort out how much income tax an individual should pay. You see, in addition to being a sheriff, he ran a grocery store and owned shares in a sheep ranch, as well as being entitled to Disabled Veteran's (wounded knee) benefits, and certain other similar benefits. This naturally complicates the calculation of his personal income tax.
It wouldn't have been so bad if he had asked the tax man to fill out the form for him, but he had to do it himself, and it made him whine. Every year, on April 14, he becomes unapproachable.
That flying saucer landing on April 14, 1956 was a big mistake.
I watched it land. My chair was backed up against the wall of the sheriff's office, and I was looking out the window at the stars, wondering if I should leave work and go to bed, or continue to listen to Cameron cussing and swearing as he checked, for the 127th time, the columns of numbers he'd filled in on his tax return.
At first it looked like a meteor, but then the light grew wider and wider and became two streams of what looked like a rocket jet or something, and the thing landed without making a sound.
Two people came out.
I couldn't speak or do anything. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't gesture with my hands, I couldn't even widen my eyes. I just sat there.
Cameron? He didn't even look up.
There was a knock on the door. The door opened and the two men from the saucer walked in. If I hadn't been watching the saucer land, I would have thought they were the townspeople. The two men wore gray suits, white shirts, and dark reddish brown ties. They wore black shoes, black hats, dark complexions, curly dark hair, and brown eyes. Both were serious looking and both were about 5 feet 10 inches tall and looked very much alike.
God, I was scared.
But Cameron only looked up slightly the moment the door opened and frowned. "What's up, man?" He said as he tapped his hand against the tax bill, clearly busy.
One of the two men stepped forward and said, "We've been watching your people for a long time." He spoke carefully and word for word.
Cameron said, "My people? I only have my wife. What does she do?"
The man in the suit says, "We chose this place as our first point of contact because it is remote and quiet. We know you are the leader here."
"If you mean the sheriff, I am, so let's get to the point, what kind of trouble are you guys in?"
"We have taken great care to follow your style of dress and even adopted your appearance. We have also learned your language."
You can see a look of comprehension begin to appear on Cameron's face. He says, "You two are foreigners?" Cameron doesn't like foreigners much, and hasn't seen many of them since he got out of the military, but in general he tries his best to be fair to people. The
The UFO visitor said, "Foreigners? Precisely. We come from the watery land you call Venus."
Without even blinking, Cameron said, "Well. This is America. We are all equal here, regardless of race, color, or nationality. I am at your service. What can I do for you?"
"We would like you to immediately contact the dignitaries of your country, what you call the United States, to come here and discuss joining our great organization."
Cameron's face grew red. "We join the Rare Still Snapping Organization. We are already a member of the United Nations and God knows what else. I think it's for me to get the President here, eh? Right now? Come to Twingalch? Send an urgent letter?" He looked at me as if he wanted to see a smirk on my face, but at the moment I wouldn't have fallen to the ground if someone had jerked the chair away from behind me.
The UFO visitor said, "It's not too late."
"Do you want Congress too? And the Supreme Court?"
"If it helps, sheriff."
Now Cameron was really pissed off. He heaved the tax bill onto the table and barked, "Good chit, you guys are making trouble with me, and I don't have time to tangle with you smartasses, especially foreigners. If you don't get out of here right now, I'll lock you up for disturbing the peace and never let you out."
"You're asking us to leave?" Venusian asked.
"Get out now! Get out of here, go back to your old homes, and don't come back. I don't want to see you, nobody here wants to see you."
The two men looked at each other.
The one who had been acting as spokesman then said, "I can see that you really do not want to be disturbed. We would never want to impose our own views or those of our organization on the unwilling recipient. We respect your personal freedom to leave immediately. We will not return. We will post a warning around your planet that no more will come."
Cameron said, "Sir, that's enough of this nonsense, I'm going to count to 3--"
The two men turned to leave, and of course I knew that they were telling the truth about everything. You know, I was listening to them the whole time, Cameron wasn't, he was preoccupied with his tax bill, and I seemed to know what was going on in their heads, you know what I mean? I know that a barrier will be erected around the planet to keep others out.
They were gone before I could speak again - and it was too late. I screamed at the top of my lungs, "My God, Cameron, they're from space. Why did you kick them out?"
"From space!" He glared at me with both eyes.
I bellowed, "Look!" I still don't understand how it happened, he outweighed me by 25 British pounds, but I actually yanked him by his collar and dragged him to the window.
He didn't even fight back in his shock, and when he came back to his senses and seemed to want to knock me down, he saw the window just in time to gasp for air.
They were getting into the flying saucer, those two, and the saucer was there, you know, big and round and shiny and kind of imposing. And then the saucer takes off. It rose gently, like a feather, and there was an orange-red glow on one side, and the light got stronger and stronger, and the saucer got smaller and smaller, and then finally it turned back into a shooting star and disappeared.
I said, "Sheriff, why are you kicking them out? They wanted to see the President. Now they'll never come back."
Cameron inquired, "I take them for foreigners. They speak to learn our language. And they say inexplicable things."
"Hmph, come on, foreigners."
"They said they were foreigners, and the two looked Italian. I thought they were Italian."
"How could they be Italian? They said they were from Venus. I heard that? That's what they said."
"Venus." His eyes grew round.
"That's what they said. They call it the Water Country or something. Mind you, Venus is full of water."
So you see, it was just a mistake, a stupid mistake, the kind of mistake everyone can make. It's just that there won't be any more Venusians visiting Earth from now on. Cameron the fool, and his damn tax bill!
He was heard to mutter, "Venus! I thought they meant Venice when they said Water Country!