Mark Twain and the Jumping Frogs of Calaveras County - One of America's most unusual contests is

the whimsical "Jumping Frog Jubilee" that takes place each year at Angels Camp, in Calaveras county,
California. And it's all due to a popular short story by Mark Twain.

Up in the Gold Country of California lies the historic little town of Angels Camp, in Calaveras County, that the
celebrated American author Mark Twain made world famous with his humorous "tall tale", entitled "The
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (text).
Mark Twain not only wrote the story that soon became an American classic, but he also inspired a real jumping
frog contest that has become a tradition and almost a legend in itself.
Twain's six page tale -- his first published success -- rapidly established him as an American humorist, and it also
brought fame to rural Angels Camp, which still has a small population of only 2,300 people.
People come from everywhere in the spring of each year to enter frogs in the Calaveras Jumping Frog contest, or
to watch other frogs competing for prizes ranging from $10 to $1,500. "Jockeying", encouraging your frog to jump
as far as he can -- is lots of fun for both entrants in the contest and for spectators. The Jumping Frog Jubilee -- held
every third weekend in May at the Calaveras County Fair -- is hailed as one of America's "truly original
celebrations".

All this excitement and fun came about because Samuel Clemens, who wrote under the name of Mark Twain,
made a trip from San Francisco to the Gold Country to see a friend in the year 1860. There he heard the story that
he retells so well that the reader always laughs, even when he knows the surprise ending.
Twain relates, with humor typical of the early American West, how a scoundrel named Jim Smiley
constantly boasted that his big frog named Daniel Webster could "outjump any frog in Cavaleras County". As a
matter of fact, Daniel Webster probably could do just that.
However the boastful owner lost his $40 bet when a quiet stranger tricked him and beat him, by getting Webster
to swallow down something pretty heavy; so of course, when the contest began, the poor frog couldn't jump at all!
As time went by, Twain's story became more and more famous, and so did the little town of Angels Camp; and
so it was that in 1928, the people of the town decided that they really ought to make jumping frogs into a local
attraction.
Jumping Frog contests have been held annually ever since, and have become more and more popular each year.
People entering frogs now come from all over the world, and last year there were entries from as far away as
Malaysia, China, Britain, France, Germany, and all over North America. All had frogs who, they hoped, would win
the title of World Record Holder.
The current holder of the title is a famous frog from Santa Clara, California, called Rosie the Ribiter. In 1986, she
jumped 21 feet, 5 3/4 inches in three jumps, and no-one has beaten her since.
Every day of the big county fair, there are frog jumping trials; most of the people come along with their own
frogs, but if they don't happen to have one of their own, they can always rent a frog for the fee of $3 !
Everyone is very serious about trying to win, but the contest is mostly just lots of fun. What would Mark Twain
say now, if he knew what a big thing he had started!
=

Crazy American Festivals - If you think jumping frogs is, well, kinda' crazy, please note that the Calaveras County
Frog Jumping contest is just one of a whole lot of loony festivals held all over the U.S.A., most of them during the
warm months.
Down in Red Bluff, California, they have an annual "wild cow milking contest" as part of the annual rodeo! Now
most people find it hard to milk a tame cow! Milking a wild one must be just.... wild!
Several thousand miles away, at Springhill, Florida, they have another strange festival boldly known as the World
Chicken Pluckin' Championship! Teams come from all over the world (maybe that's a slight exaggeration), to see
who can take the feathers off a chicken fastest; the winners often find themselves with a place in the Guinness
Book of Records, since there are not many other places round the world where anyone bothers to time people for
their speed in this event!
 Up in Rio Grande, Ohio, it's live chickens, not dead ones, that figure at the center of an annual festival. Here they
run the "International" Chicken Flying Meet, where people get together to see whose chicken can fly furthest.
And in communities big and small across the USA, there are dozens of other crazy festivals, where folks get
together to do extraordinary things! Well, after all, not every town can be chosen for the Olympic Games; and if
you want to host an international event, the best way to do so is to invent your own! They say Americans are
pretty inventive!
whimsical: curious, unconventional - tall tale: imaginary story - hailed as: acclaimed as - jubilee: celebration -
scoundrel: rogue, bad guy - boasted: bragged, claimed proudly - trials: tests - kinda: sort of - loony: crazy
- tame: domesticated - wild: bizarre - bothers to: takes the trouble to - to host: to put on.

Steaming on the River - The story of the Mississippi's paddleboats

Along with the Statue of Liberty and the skyscraper, the Mississippi steamboat or "paddlewheeler" is one of the
classic symbols of the United States.
The great riverboats, with their tall chimneys and rotating rear paddles, were unlike any other boats anywhere
else in the world, when they first appeared on the great river.
It was not really surprising, of course; Europe did not have any rivers like the Mississippi, and boats have always
been designed in function of the conditions in which they were to be used.
Slow-moving and often shallow, particularly in summer, the Mississippi required boats that more or less
sat on the water, rather than in it. The flat-bottomed stern-wheelers did just that, drawing only a few feet of
water, in spite of their large size. Even the stern wheel was a result of the river's shallowness. Boats needed plenty
of power to go upstream, but traditional side paddles would have had to go too deep; great wide stern wheels
provided maximum thrust at minimum depth.
The first steam boat appeared on the Mississippi in 1811; by 1850, thousands of steamboats were chugging up
and down the river, carrying people between the riverside communities, cotton from the plantations, and other
agricultural produce.
Competition was intense and ruthless, as ship owners and masters competed for lucrative trade. In the mid 19th
century, there were over 10,000 paddlewheelers on the Mississippi and its tributaries. Boats raced each other, and
were often pushed to their limits.... and even beyond! The average length of life of a Mississippi steamboat was
just 18 months.... but the cost of a boat could be paid for in two round trips with a full load of passengers and
cargo!
Navigation on the river was (and still is) frequently dangerous. Mudbanks and sandbanks could shift rapidly, and
water levels rise and fall. In many places, pilots were necessary to guide boats past difficult sections.
All kinds of boats could be seen on the river. The great passenger boats of the 19th century were magnificently
decorated, like floating palaces with all the luxuries that first-class passengers could wish for; but other more
ordinary boats carried a mix of passengers and cargo.
There were the legendary "Showboats" too, floating cabarets, music halls and theatres that would
bring entertainment to the towns and cities along the river and its tributaries.
Today there are few paddlewheelers left on the Mississippi; and those that remain are for tourists. Nevertheless,
one of them, the American Queen, is the largest stern-wheeler ever built. Launched in 1995, it has seven decks, a
crew of 160, and a capacity for over 400 passengers.
With two other large boats, the Mississippi Queen and the Delta Queen (the latter built in 1926), the American
Queen now carries tourists up and down the river between New Orleans and St. Louis.

paddles: the wheels that make the boat move- shallow: the opposite of deep - drawing: needing - stern: the back
end of a ship - thrust: push, force - ruthless: determined, insensitive - lucrative: profitable - tributary: a secondary
river - entertainment: amusements, shows .

Aeroponics; feeding tomorrow's world ?

If our world is to survive for much longer, we have no choice but to reduce the use of natural resources and cut
out wastage. Compared to traditional agriculture, aeroponics does both.

The world's population is expected to continue growing until the end of the twenty-first century; that at least was
the general consensus of experts until 2019. Maybe in the new post-Covid reality, the rate of growth will slow; but
even so, unless Covid-19 or some other new virus causes millions more deaths than initially predicted, the world's
population will continue to grow, putting ever-increasing pressure on the natural environment, on resources, on
living space, and most critically on food and water. Aeroponics will be part of the solution.
According to a United Nations FAO report published in 2011, almost half of the fruit and vegetables produced in
the world go to waste – they never get consumed by the humans for whom they are grown.
Wastage occurs throughout the production and distribution cycle, during production, during transformation,
during transport, and even – notably in developed economies – after purchase by the final customer.
Fifty percent of all fruit and vegetables going to waste, that is an enormous amount of wastage, and not just in
economic terms. This wastage has a huge impact in terms of natural resources, particularly space and water,
which in turn have huge implications for the global environment.
Cutting out all waste in the production and distribution of food is an impossible goal. Even people living in
small eco-sustainable communities generate waste. Even in organic crop production, pests and disease cause
wastage; and even if harvested and distributed locally, part of a crop will always be wasted.
But there is a large difference between wasting fifty percent of all fruit and vegetables produced worldwide, and
the unreachable goal of achieving no waste at all. Between 50% and zero, there is plenty of scope for significantly
reducing the volume of food waste worldwide simply through the use of new more efficient production methods.
Studies have shown that packaging and distribution systems account for about 25% of total wastage of fresh
fruit and vegetables, leaving plenty of opportunity for improvement. In an ideal world, and as in the past, much of
the food consumed in cities would be produced locally, not shipped thousands of miles as happens today.
In 1998, the US Department of Agriculture released a study into fruit and vegetables arriving at the Chicago
Terminal Market, the main point of distribution for the American Middle West. The report showed that basic
vegetables including lettuce, broccoli, peas or cauliflowers all traveled over 2000 miles (over 3000 km) before
reaching the market... and before being shipped on to supermarkets across the region. Yet Chicago is in the heart
of a massive agricultural area. Granted it can get pretty cold in winter, but with modern agricultural techniques,
the Midwest could be self-sufficient for many types of fruit and vegetables, cutting out the massive environmental
cost of shipping tons of vegetables half way across a continent.
Since 2011, Chicago's O'Hare airport has been home to an aeroponic garden (photo top of page) , where people
can see how vegetables can be grown in an environment that is not only without soil but even without any
permanent medium in which to grow. In this experimental garden, plants are grown, as the name suggests, ... in
the air, their roots hanging down in nothing.
Hydroponics, growing plants in troughs of nutrient-rich water, has been developing since the 1970's. Aeroponics
takes things one step further, by removing the water and replacing it with air. Not just air, obviously; while plants
are grown with roots hanging in the air, these roots are regularly sprayed with a nutrient-rich solution that gives
them just what they need for optimum growth. It's very high-tech, it's not cheap, and it's a long way from currently
popular organic farming techniques. Yet in many ways, aeroponics is actually more environment-friendly than even
the most strictly managed traditional organic farming methods. And it's down to one factor: waste.
Traditional farming is wasteful; modern intensive agriculture relies on large inputs of external resources, notably
heat, water and nutrients. The vast amounts of water used by agriculture are already causing serious problems in
many parts of the world; beneath California's San Joaquim Valley, the world's most productive agricultural
area, water tables have been dropping for almost a century, and scientists estimate that the land... not the water
table below it... has sunk by over 8 metres in some parts. NASA calculate that Southern California had a "water
deficit" of 4.2 gigatons per year from 2002 to 2015.
Aeroponic agriculture reduces water waste to zero. The only water used is what is actually taken up by the roots
of plants when they are sprayed. Any water not used can be collected and reused.
 The same goes for nutrients; in traditional agriculture, plants only extract a small proportion of nutrients from
the ground, and good ground will have many nutrients in it that will not be used at all by the crops grown on it. In
an age of diminishing natural resources, traditional agriculture uses millions of tons of chemical fertilizer each year,
much of which goes to waste. In Brittany, France, many streams and beaches have been seriously polluted by
nutrient-rich water running off fields, causing "algal bloom" along the seashore and covering some beaches in
green slime. With aeroponic agriculture, no nutrients are lost, so there is no risk of unintended pollution.
One big advantage of traditional agriculture is that it almost always uses natural heat and light, even if under
glass or plastic. Aeroponic agriculture, by contrast, may require artificial heat and light, specially if practised
indoors. But with the development of small-scale locally-sited renewable energy production, and highly energy-
efficient buildings and lighting systems, large-scale indoor aeroponic vegetable growing units are liable to be a
feature of tomorrow's cities.
If all the lettuces consumed in Chicago in winter could be grown locally, in carbon-neutral zero-waste aeroponic
"farms", instead of being brought in by truck from California, that in itself would lead to a huge reduction in the
use of water, minerals, land-space and transportation costs. Reproduced on a global scale, reduced use of natural
resources will be vital for ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come, even when the global population
goes above 10 billion.
consensus: agreement, accord - rate: speed - initially: originally - FAO: the Food and Agriculture Organisation -
purchase: buy - in turn: then, next - implications: consequences - sustainable: renewable, able to continue
permanently - pests: insects and animals that cause damage - harvest: pick, cut - scope: opportunity - granted: it is
true that... - medium: substance - trough: basin - nutrient: food for plants - gigaton: a billion tonnes - algal
bloom: proliferation of green vegetation in the water - slime: muck, a wet sticky mess - are liable to be: will
probably be.

Log Cabins and the White House

Bill Clinton's father - a man the former president never knew - was a truck driver who gave his son nothing but his
nationality and his family name. Bill spent his early years in a small wooden one-story house in the small town of
Hope, Arkansas, the kind of house in which millions of ordinary working class Americans still live. In a sense, it is
the nearest one can get today to the fabled "log cabin" in which so many American heroes are reputed to have
been brought up.
Among other recent presidents, both Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan, but not Donald Trump nor George W
Bush, were men who made their way up to the presidency from fairly simple origins. Reagan became known first
as a minor Hollywood star; his screen image, as a tough cowboy, at home in the saddle and in log cabins,
undoubtedly helped him in his original struggle for the Republican nomination and the presidency.
Since the start of the nineteenth century, candidates for the American presidency have taken pride
in demonstrating the humble roots from which they have come; the image of the "log cabin" became symbolic of
humble proletarian origins, at a time when the United States were beginning to move west and occupy new
territory, and home-built log cabins were the only form of housing available for the pioneering homesteaders.

Yet the only American president who could truthfully claim to have been born in a log cabin was Abraham Lincoln,
who was born in just such a building on a farm in Hardin County, Kentucky.
The story of Abraham Lincoln's childhood is one of the great classics of the American Dream; Lincoln spent his
childhood years in a variety of log cabins, as his father moved from place to place, advancing slowly westwards. In
the winter of 1816-17, the Lincolns lived in a "half-faced camp", a log cabin which was totally open on one side, in
an "unbroken forest" in the heart of almost uninhabited Indiana.
While quite a few other American presidents have come up from humble roots, some others whose roots were
somewhat more privileged have willingly disguised the fact.
The classic example was William Harrison, who was elected president in 1840. Harrison campaigned for the
presidency using a specially-written theme tune called the Log Cabin March; indeed, his whole campaign was won
with the slogan "log cabin and hard cider".... but the tune and slogan were just marketing gambits, neither of
which had anything to do with reality! Harrison was actually a man with whom few Americans had much affinity,
since he was a prosperous Virginia landowner, whose father was one of the signatories of the Declaration of
Independence.
Ironically, Harrison's attempts to portray himself as a tough man of the people got him nowhere; standing with
neither hat nor coat during his inauguration ceremony on a bitter winter's day in 1841, he caught pneumonia and
died a month later.
In more recent times, Jimmy Carter, the Democratic president from 1977 to 1981, was also portrayed as a
"country boy", and was popularly known as the peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia. The fact that he was actually
the owner of a very large and prosperous farm and a string of family businesses, rather than a simple
homesteader, was often conveniently forgotten by those who wanted the president to seem like a simple man
with simple roots.

Then in the year 2000, the man who was chosen as the 43rd American president was not someone who had come
from nowhere and made it to the top by his own skills and determination, but a man from a very privileged
background. George Bush Jr. came from an illustrious family background, being the son of President George Bush
Sr., and grandson of a US senator..... which is the US equivalent of royalty.
Naturally, there are many people in America who yearn nostalgically for a return to old ways; but in today's
mediatized world, where image is everything, and money buys the time and the TV and social media ads without
which images cannot be built, it is hard to imagine the clock being put back. Besides, although many poor
Americans still live in small wooden houses, few of those who do go on to become politicians. The age of the log-
cabin-raised president is definitely over.

bitter: very cold - convenient: useful - gambit: strategy - homesteader: person establishing a new home or firm in
new virgin territory - log: cut trunk or large branch of a tree - saddle: seat on the back of a horse - skills: abilities -
string: chain, group - take pride in: be proud of - theme tune: anthem - willingly: happily - yearn: hope.

California's earthquake risk - Awaiting the "big one"

Back in the 1980s, scientists completed a ten-year survey on the earthquake risk in California; and they came
up with an alarming prediction. The next "Big One", that massive earthquake that Californians know is coming,
could well strike some time after the year 2020. And Californians well know that this prediction could be right.
California often experiences earthquakes, and a "big one" is sure to hit the state again some time soon. Larry
Wood, who lives virtually on top of the "Hayward fault", knows what it is like to be in an earthquake.

California is known all over the world for its size, its sun, and its surf, its glamour and its optimism. But it is known
too as "Earthquake Country " — a truly vulnerable region where big devastating quakes have occurred in the past
and could happen again. It is unlikely that a disaster on the scale of recent disasters in Italy or Japan could occur in
California; California has learnt from its past disasters, and most buildings are designed to withstand major quakes.
Nevertheless, Californians are worried. When will the next big quake strike the state, and where will all the shaking
and crumbling and rocking begin?

Nobody knows for sure, but at all times California is on the alert. The could be an earthquake in California today.
Consequently the earth is permanently monitored with high-tech seismographs situated in universities and
government research stations; they are constantly watched by highly-trained employees and volunteers from the
California Office of Emergency Services; and students in every school receive training in what to do in the event of*
an earthquake.

Working at Menlo Park, near Stanford University, in the middle of "Earthquake Country", scientists from the United
States Geological Survey are always monitoring and studying fault systems, and trying to predict where
earthquakes are going to take place next.
Back in 1988, a team of USGS scientists completed a ten-year survey on "earthquake possibilities", and came up
with the conclusion that there's going to be a lot of shaking in the years ahead. In particular, they predicted a 50%
possibility of an exceptionally big quake of 8.3 sometime before 2018, somewhere along the San Andreas or
Hayward faults.

In the two centuries from 1812 to 2012 , California has suffered dozens of earthquakes. The last seriously
damaging earthquake was the 1994 quake in the Los Angeles area, that registered 6.7 on the Richter scale, and did
up to $40 billion worth of damage. A much stronger quake, of 7.2 on the Richter scale, struck Baja California
(Mexico) in 2010, doing over a billion dollars worth of damage in this far less populated area.

Since 1812, California has experienced 15 major earthquakes of a magnitude of 7.0 or larger. Two of these were
the great quake of 1857, with an estimated magnitude of 8.3, and the great earth-quake of 1906, which nearly
levelled the port city of San Francisco and had a magnitude of 8.25.

Responsibility for California's earthquakes lies in the fact that the state sits atop the famous and terrifying San
Andreas Fault. This fault rocks and quakes often and unexpectedly as the earth's tectonic plates shift along fault
lines that run 700 miles from the Mexican border to the north California coast. It is almost unbelievable that more
than 20 million people should choose to live along this fault; but because their state has prosperity, an ideal
climate, and a wonderful ambiance, Californians take a laissez-faire attitude to the potential danger.

Living in the hills above the Hayward Fault, I know all about the danger. Like many Californians, I buy costly
earthquake insurance for my home. If I walk along certain streets in the town of Hayward, I can see how the
earth creeps and shifts. In some places, the town looks as if the architects and builders made big mistakes in
construction, because the buildings are out of kilter.

Actually, what has happened is that the streets have cracked and shifted, so that curbs no longer meet. Houses
have shifted, so that walls are uneven. Buildings have interior and exterior cracks that can't be prevented, because
the slowly shifting earth causes an inexorable movement in foundations, walls and streets! Geologists believe that
displacements along this fault have been occurring for 15-20 million years. The drift can be measured — in the
present decades — as a displacement of two inches per year, on average. It doesn't take an expert to figure out
what moving part of a building two inches a year will do to that structure. During the destructive 1906 earthquake,
in some places the earth moved as much as 21 feet!

Scientists now know that major earthquakes occur at about 150-year intervals along the San Andreas fault; but in
the future, they will probably not happen unannounced. Scientists can now better predict when a quake is coming,
by foreshocks and other techniques discovered in the studies they are constantly undertaking, so Californians can
normally fo to bed at night without worrying whether the house will fall down around them while they are
sleeping.

Still, with or without a warning, the next Big One, when it comes, will still do enormous damage. It's something
that we Californians just live with.

survey: study - prediction : talking about the future - strike: hit, happen - vulnerable: at risk - unlikely: improbable
- withstand: resist - monitored: watched - seismograph: apparatus that detects movements in the ground -
training: instruction - downtown: central - shift: move - to creep: move slowly -out of kilter: not in a straight line -
curb: edge of the road - inexorable : unstoppable, inevitable - drift: movement - two inches: about 5 cm.

Wall Street Culture - the heart of America - For many Americans, the most important street in the USA is Wall
Street - In the United States of America, there are plenty of famous streets. But of all the streets in world, there is
one which is in the news every day: WALL STREET . This is the street on which fortunes are made and lost. But
more generally what goes on on“ the street i”s of vital interest for most Americans..... and the rest of the world
too. As they say, when Wall Street sneezes, America catches cold.
Say "the streets of New York" to a non-American, and he'll probably think of Times Square, Madison Avenue or
Broadway; but mention the subject to an American and for many the first name that comes to mind will be Wall
Street.
For many, Wall Street is indeed just "the street", probably the most important street in the USA or even in the
world, as what goes on on Wall Street, more perhaps than what goes on in Congress, can have a direct influence
on the lives of everyone in the USA, if not most people in the world.
Wall Street is of course the home of the New York Stock Exchange, the financial heart of the American business
world. Each day, billions of dollars of shares are traded on the floor of the stock exchange on behalf of companies,
pension funds and private individuals wanting to protect their investments or their life's savings, and make sure
that they too are on the bandwaggon of prosperity.

The New York Stock Exchange is the biggest and most active stock exchange in the world; over half of all adult
Americans have some, if not all, of their savings invested directly on Wall Street, so it is not surprising that
the fluctuations of the Street's famous indexes, the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq, are followed daily by millions of
ordinary Americans. When the Dow and the Nasdaq are on a rise, millions of Americans feel more
prosperous; when they are falling, millions start feeling worried about their financial security and their retirement
years. Yet more importantly, when Wall Street booms it is a sign that the American economy is booming, creating
jobs and prosperity for people throughout the nation; when Wall Street slumps for more than a short period, it is
because the American economy is slowing down, putting investment and jobs at risk.
Nevertheless, in spite of its periodic crashes and downturns, most Americans know very well that by investing
directly in the stock market, they are probably ensuring the best possible long term return on their investments.
Over time, direct investments on Wall Street have always done better than most other forms of long-term
placement, and logically speaking this is inevitable. Ultimately, most forms of investment depend on the
performance of the US economy in general, and by investing directly on Wall Street, American investors are simply
ensuring that they personally take full advantage of the growth of the stock market, rather than share their gains
with banks, investment trusts or other intermediaries offering investment services.

The risk of a crash on Wall Street is a reality that must always be borne in mind: Wall Street "crashed" most
spectacularly in the fall of 1929, when share values dropped over 50% in the space of a few days. By the time the
fall bottomed out in 1932, over 80% had been "wiped off" the value of shares on the American stock
market, and the Great Depression had begun.
Before 1929, as the stock market boomed, over a million Americans had been speculating on the Street,
borrowing money that they did not have in order to buy shares for sale at a profit. When the crash came, hundreds
of thousands of these speculators, both individuals and companies, went bankrupt, causing immense distress and
poverty.
More recently, Wall Street crashed in 2007 - 2008, almost triggering a collapse of the world financial
system. When the stock market eventually stopped falling in March 2009, it had lost 54% of its value, and many
people had lost their life's savings.
Previously in 1997, almost over a third of its value was wiped out in a few days; but this time the consequences
were less dramatic. While most Americans saw the value of their savings tumble, few went bankrupt as a result.

In today's America, borrowing money solely for the purpose of speculating on Wall Street is not a common
habit, so the money that was "lost" in recent crashes was mostly money that people owned themselves, not
money that they owed to someone else.
One day no doubt, in some unforeseen future, Wall Street will crash spectacularly again; but when that happens
there will have to be both a cause and an effect. The most likely cause will be a major world crisis; the most likely
effect, given today's "global economy", will be a major economic catastrophe around the world, perhaps similar to
the hyperinflation that affected Germany under the Weimar republic.
If that happens, society as we know it will grind to a halt, and most forms of saving, except perhaps gold
and real estate, will lose most of their value; until that day, Wall Street will remain as one of the nerve centers of
the global economy.

be on the bandwagon: be part of - bear in mind: remember - comes to mind: he thinks

of - distress: alarm - fluctuation: ups and downs - grind to a halt: stop - likely: probable - on behalf
of: for - plummet: fall sharply - purpose: reason - real estate: land and buildings - retirement years: years when
one no longer works - share: investment, bond - slump: go downhill, fall - solely: just - stock: share, investment
- trade: buy and sell - tumble: fall

The Yukon Quest - A thousand-mile race that's said to be the toughest race in the world

Each year, in the middle of February, up to thirty-five teams of men and animals set out from the town of
Fairbanks, Alaska, or from Whitehorse, Canada, at the start of what is described as the "toughest race in the
world". The Yukon Quest is the most exciting of several North American dog-sled races, taking participants over a
gruelling 1000 mile course through Alaska and northern Canada..

Imagine mushing along broken snowy trails behind some of the toughest, sure-footed little athletes in the world;
the only sounds to be heard are those of crunching snow, the hiss of the sled's runners, and the puffing of the
team of dogs out front. This is life on the Yukon Quest, a ten-to-fourteen day dog-sled race across one of the
coldest parts of the world - the northern parts of North America.
As the teams battle across the frozen wastes, temperatures can vary from freezing on the warmest of days,
down to -62°C if cold weather really sets in. Hard packed snow, rough gravel, frozen rivers and mountain terrain
can make the trail fast at times, or else slow to a crawl.
There are other long-distance sled-dog races; but none quite like the Yukon Quest, which follows a trail across
some of the most sparsely populated and undeveloped terrain in North America. Named after the Yukon river, the
Quest takes teams from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Whitehorse, Canada in even-numbered years, and the other way
round over the same route in odd-numbered years - a trail once followed by miners and trappers on their way to
and from the icy North.
Teams come from all over North America to take part in this the hardest of sled-dog races. Depending on the
year, up to 35 teams take part - each team being composed of a "musher" and up to 14 dogs.
Training for the race is long and hard, and the teams that start out on the Quest in mid February have been
training since August. Dogs and men have to be in tip-top condition, to confront the 1000 miles of the race, which
take them almost up to the Arctic Circle.
Running 1000 miles - about the same as running 3 marathons a day for 11 days in a row - would be impossible
for humans; but this is the challenge that faces the dogs. In order to cover up to 100 miles some days, much of the
time in darkness, the teams generally alternate six to eight hour periods of running and resting - mushers sleeping
on their sleds, the dogs in the snow.
Since the race was first run in 1984, teams and equipment have improved; in 1984, the winning team completed
the race in just 12 days. For the next twenty-five years, winning times were mostly ten or eleven days, depending
on the weather conditions. But then, in 2009 Canadian musher Sebastian Schnuelle first finished in less than 10
days; then five years later American musher Allen Moore had a winning time of under 8 days and 15 hours.
Though physical fitness is of paramount importance both for dogs and mushers, a musher needs to know his
dogs perfectly before taking them out on such a gruelling test of endurance. Performance, nutritional needs, stress
symptoms and other aspects of the dogs' physical and mental conditions need to be precisely assessed.
Starting with a maximum of 14 dogs, each musher has to reach the end with no fewer than 6. Vets are on hand
at check-points along the route to keep detailed track of each animal's condition; but between check points, it's
the musher himself who has the job of making sure that his animals remain in good form. Blood tests, urine
samples, measurements of weight gain or loss and body temperature are all carefully examined, to make sure that
each animal remains fit and healthy. Dogs are constantly checked for dehydration and fatigue - and if there is any
doubt about an animal's ability to continue the race or not, it is dropped off at the first available opportunity.
 The interdependence between a musher and his animals is total - the dogs relying totally on their musher to
take care of them, and the musher depending totally on the dogs to get the sled across the snowy miles, and
ultimately to the distant destination.
The Yukon Quest is probably not the only claimant to the title of "the toughest race in the world". There can be
few others however - if any at all - that can have such a valid claim to this superlative.
gruelling: demanding - to mush: to drive a dog-sled - trail: track (don't confuse with trial ) - runners: the flat
parts under a sled - wastes: empty terrain - set in: gets established - gravel: small stones and sand - crawl: very
slow pace - course: itinerary - fit: in good form - paramount: primary - assess: analyse, judge - rely pronounced
[ri'lai]: depend

America's Teenage courts - Where teenagers are judged by others of the same age group

In the small city of Odessa, western Texas, local judicial authorities have reinterpreted the old legal principle
that offenders should be tried by a jury of their peers. Odessa's "Teen Court" is one of over a thousand such
courts in the USA, where teens themselves are responsible for trying and sentencing teenage offenders. And the
results are very encouraging..

In the year 1215, the Norman barons of England drew up an ultimatum that they presented to King John and
forced him to sign. Among other things, the document, called Magna Carta, the great charter, formally recognized
basic human rights, and re-established one of the fundamental principles of English law — that a man should be
judged by his peers, or equals. Trial by a jury has been a key feature of English law ever since.
When Thomas Jefferson and others drew up the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, one of the
complaints that they made was that the King of England had deprived Americans of their right to trial by jury.
Twelve years later, this right was enshrined in Article III of the new Constitution of the United States, where it has
remained ever since.
But what is a jury of equals? Is a teenager, faced with a jury composed of people his parents' age, being judged
by his peers? Most teens would answer "no".
The idea of "teen courts" has been around in the USA for many years. It was in the 1980s in Odessa that the
Teen Court was first suggested. Realizing that many teenage offenders were alienated by a justice system
organized and controlled by people of a different generation, the court in Odessa decided to let offenders opt to
be tried by other teenagers.
Many thousands of teens have since been tried by their peers in Odessa, and almost all agree that it was the
right thing to do. Statistics confirm this, as rates of recidivism among teens tried in different Teen Courts are under
5% (compared to up to 50% with normal courts).
Odessa's Teen Court is one of many now operating in the state of Texas, which in 1990 became the first
American state to establish a state-wide organization to develop teen courts. Until the 1990s, the number of new
courts increased slowly; but since the millennium, hundreds more cities all across the USA have seen that the
system works, and have introduced it in their own community. In 2007, the idea crossed the Atlantic, with the
opening of the first teen court in England, in Preston, Lancashire.
Teen courts operate in just the same way as a real court, the major difference being that the only professional in
the process is the judge. Run by volunteers, the court sits every Tuesday evening under the control of a local judge,
also a volunteer; proceedings are conducted as in a real court, with teenagers taking the roles of prosecution and
defense: a panel of teens sits as jury, and it is they who propose the sentence they consider to be appropriate.
While there is no possibility of an Odessa teen jury fining an offender or sending him or her to prison, there is a
range of punishments available, including community service, driving classes, counseling and also jury service in
the Teen Court. The range of sentences available reflects the type of offenses referred to the court, minor
misdeeds such as traffic violations, (including speeding), fighting, vandalism and intoxication. Furthermore, the
Court only has the right to judge other teens who have (a) decided to plead guilty, and (b) agreed to be tried by
their peers.
Most other Teen Courts that have been set up operate with similar restrictions, though some, more
controversially, have been given powers to determine guilt or innocence in certain cases, and even recommend
detention.
Teens who opt for trial by the Teen Court, thinking that it will be a soft option, are generally surprised. A Los
Angeles teen jury recently sentenced 14-year old Michael C. to 600 hours (!) of community service for stealing a
car stereo. Judge Jamie Corral, presiding, reduced the sentence to 200 hours, but Michael still had to spend a lot of
his free time for six months doing community service as a gardener at Abraham Lincoln High School. "I didn't
expect them to be so hard on me, but I deserved it," he said afterwards.
In 2022, there are well over 1000 teen courts in operation across the United States, and the number is
increasing month by month. Teens, judges and community leaders all agree that the system is good, and especially
good at stopping young offenders going any further down the road to a life of crime. Evidence shows that young
offenders are much more receptive to warnings and reprimands and punishments delivered by their peers, than to
those delivered by "the authorities".
Finally, it is not only teens who are benefitting from the Teen Court. In Odessa, teenage offenders have now
contributed over 100,000 hours of community service to the city and to volunteer organizations since the Teen
Court was first set up, something that has not gone unnoticed by local residents. "Because of these youth giving
the community service hours back to the City of Odessa, they have become an effective part of our community,"
says Tammy Hawkins, the project's coordinator. "We have found that the kids that are active in the Teen Court
Program have less of a desire to drop out of school. They've found a purpose in their lives, and in their own
neighborhoods they feel safer because they are becoming an active part of the community."

offender: minor criminal - to try: to judge - peer: person of similar situation deprive of : take away something -
enshrined: included - alienated : marginalized - recidivism: reoffending, committing the same crime again -
process: system (this word has no judicial meaning) - prosecution: lawyers who accuse - fine: impose a financial
punishment - guilty: opposite of "innocence" –

John Lennon - much more than just a Beatle

It's November 2023, and the last great Beatles single, featuring John Lennon, has just been released - 42 years
after the singer was killed. John Lennon was assassinated in New York in December 1980 - just three months
after the launch of Linguapress's Spectrum magazine. This retrospective, one of the oldest items in the
Linguapress online archive, appeared in January 1981.

The circumstances of the murder of John Lennon are well enough known for it to be unnecessary to repeat them
now. It was ironic that John Lennon, advocate of non-violence, should have died the way he did : though perhaps it
was ironic too that John should have chosen to live in New York, one of the more violent cities in th"lt could only
have happened in New York," said one stunned fan, shortly after the news broke; that may or may not be true.
That it did happen in New York certainly was. "lt's a part of our youth that has died," said someone else ; and
tributes to John Lennon came in from people all over the world – from politicians, from musicians, from writers,
from Englishmen, from Frenchmen, from Japanese people. There is probably no country in the world in which
John's death did not come as a shock to some people. US president Ronald Reagan described it as "a great
tragedy", and music radio-stations across the world played Lennon's songs, some of them in a non-stop tribute to
the former Beatle who had such a tremendous effect on the world of the nineteen-sixties and early seventies.
AN ACCIDENTAL HERO

John Lennon never set out to become a hero, nor the leader of a whole generation. It came on him more by
accident. He didn't want to be thought of as the leader of the Beatles — people forced it on him. "We're a co-
operative" he used to say : but in the early nineteen sixties that was something people couldn't accept. "You must
have a leader," they answered, and so John became the chief Beatle. He deserved the position, indeed, since he
was the founder of the group, he wrote the words of most of their songs, and he was the dynamic force behind the
others. "I'm just a 'uman bein' " he used to say.
 What was it therefore which made the Beatles what they were ? In short it was a combination of various things;
their music, the words of their songs, their attitude, and their appearance.
Right from the start they were different; their music was good, and original; the words of their songs (Lennon's
words) were often different. At the start Lennon wrote about love and romance, but it wasn't Hollywood love, it
was 1960's everyday romance : something with which millions of young people in the cities of Britain and America,
later Europe too, could identify. And in the nineteen sixties, there were millions and millions of teenagers and
twenties just searching for something new to identify with. The expression "generation gap" was just becoming
popular. The Beatles, led by Lennon, became the leaders of a new generation.
Forced into the role of leader, John Lennon accepted it, modestly. Even in 1970, he was still saying "l'm just a
’uman bein' " : but by then he knew he was a human being with influence; he knew that what he said or sung
would be repeated all over the world. His songs had usually said something, right from the start; but in the period
1969-70, he began to say things more consciously. He had always been a symbol of an alternative life-style; but in
the late 60s, his message became more overt. He wrote "Revolution", a song which classed him as peaceful, not
violent, revolutionary, then there was his famous "Give Peace a Chance", and the more socially-conscious
"Working-class Hero".
In fact, Lennon left the Beatles and the Beatles split up because they had "nothing more to say", whereas he had
a lot. The Lennon of the early seventies was the most influential. He was "John Lennon", not just "a Beatle".e USA.

Shortly after the end of the Vietnam war, Lennon retired from public life. In a sense, the Beatles’ generation had
managed, by then, to change the face of western society. Attitudes had become much more liberal, and pop music
part of our culture.
Shortly before his death, John Lennon recorded another album; and the day he died, he had been in the
recording studio. After five years of family life, he was returning to public life. Was it a need for more money ?
Certainly not. Lennon was returning to life, perhaps, because he could see the world returning to its old ways. Re-
armament, a return to conservatism, international tension, talk of war. The ex-leader of a generation which had
tried to give peace a chance, could not sit back and watch things change for the worse. Tragically, in the end, peace
would not give him a chance.

Advocate : supporter, promoter - Stunned : shocked - former : ex- , one-time - set out to: planned to - deserve :
merit - founder : creator - ’uman bein' (slang) : human being - gap : separation, distance - overt : frank, open
- whereas : when (opposition) - retired from : left, quit.

Mississippi Music

Though New York and Los Angeles are the current day capitals of the American music industry, it is half way
between the two of them, in the Mississippi Valley, that the roots of American popular music are to be found.

There are six classic forms of American popular music; jazz, the blues, bluegrass, soul, rock 'n' roll, and country and
western.
With the exception of bluegrass and country and western, the Mississippi valley is the birthplace of them all.
Like American culture in general, American music has evolved out of the different traditions that reached the
New World from the old. But out of all the different types of music that reached the New World - from England,
Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Africa and many other places - one was to have a particularly significant impact:
African music.
While European influences provided melody and a lyric tradition, African influences added a new sense of
rhythm and new harmonies, which were to give rise to several new forms of music that were different from
anything European.
New American forms of music developed among the slave communities working in the cotton fields near the
mouth of the Mississippi; Christianized slaves developed gospel music and Spirituals, which soon became popular
far beyond the rural states of the South.
Following emancipation, Blacks had much more opportunity to develop their musical talents, and many did
exactly that, adding instrumentation to the essentially vocal tradition of the spiritual.
From the Spanish musical tradition they added the guitar, a popular instrument in the southern states which had
been originally colonized by the Spanish. From a more general European tradition they added brass instruments
such as trumpets, which were popular with the marching bands used at all kinds of ceremonial events in the
American states.
It was thus in the late nineteenth century that two new forms of American music began to develop, both of
them in the Mississippi valley.
Firstly there was the blues. In the cotton-growing Delta region of the state of Mississippi (not to be confused
with the Mississippi Delta), the blues appeared in the 1870's, sometimes as a purely vocal tradition, at other times
using the guitar as accompaniment. It was a form of music through which poor exploited Blacks expressed their
sadness and their problems, their "blues". The sadness of the blues is evident both in the music itself, and in the
titles of countless popular blues songs, such as Poor Boy Blues, Homesick Blues and many many others.

Jazz, on the other hand, developed in and around New Orleans, as a type of music for festive moments and
dancing. The most famous jazzman of all, Louis Armstrong (Satchmo) was born in New Orleans.
Both of these forms of music migrated up the Mississippi valley with the Blacks who went north in search of
work in the early twentieth century. Satchmo was one of them; he went north, ending up in Chicago, where his
"New Orleans Jazzmen" soon established a national reputation, thanks to the development of both radio and the
gramophone.
In the 1920's, many of the Blacks who migrated north went looking for jobs in the booming American
automobile industry, in and around Detroit, and it was here in "Motown", i.e. mo(tor) town, that soul music and
other new varieties evolved.
With the advent of radio and records, all varieties of black music became increasingly popular. In the north
Detroit became the capital of soul music; in the south New Orleans remained the capital of jazz; and between the
two, at the heart of the Mississippi valley, Memphis became the center for an exciting new type of music; rhythm
'n' blues.
This music soon attracted the attention not just of Blacks but of Whites too; and with very little change, R & B
evolved into yet another new type of music; rock 'n' roll.

Elvis Presley

The man who did most to help rock 'n' roll conquer first America, then the world, was in fact not a black
musician, but a white boy from rural Mississippi, by the name of Elvis Aaron Presley. Elvis's family was poor, very
poor; as a kid, Elvis lived in a two-room shack in Tupelo, Mississippi. There was not much to distinguish the lifestyle
of his poor white family from that of the equally poor black families in the region, and young Elvis had plenty of
contact with black culture and music.
After making his first records in Memphis, Elvis became the biggest rock star the world had ever seen; "the King".
Yet he never abandoned his Mississippi valley roots, and it was in Memphis that he established his famous home,
Graceland.
In the space of the last sixty years, rock 'n' roll has become the basis of popular music worldwide. In this respect,
it could be argued that the Mississippi valley is the source of the greatest cultural phenomenon of the twentieth
century.

evolve: develop - lyric: music that tells a story - give rise to: create - slave: unpaid worker - gospel: parts of the
bible - emancipation: freeing of the slaves - brass: a yellow metal - countless: innumerable - shack: poorly-built
house.

America's Bald Eagles - A REMARKABLE STORY OF SUCCESS

When it comes to wildlife, the stories that are told in magazines and on television tend to be stories of
catastrophe and destruction – stories about the disappearance of species in the face of ever-more destructive
human activity.
So it comes as nice change to learn that there are exceptions - some of them quite remarkable; and as far
as the United States is concerned, there can surely be no more encouraging story than that of the famous "bald
eagle", saved at the eleventh hour from the possibility of total extinction in all but the most isolated of regions.
No doubt the fact that this magnificent bird of prey is America's national symbol has something to do with it;
but for over a hundred years, these great birds' symbolic status did little to save them from destruction.
It is estimated that there were in the region of 100,000 bald eagles in the USA in the year 1782, when their
image was first adopted as a national symbol by the young States. This great bird, with its wingspan of almost two
metres, was almost a natural choice for those who were looking for a symbolic beast to stand alongside the lion of
England or the Russian bear. After all, it could be found virtually throughout North America, and was also the only
eagle unique to the continent.

Yet although they had chosen it as a proud national emblem, Americans did little to ensure its survival; in the
course of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, the bald eagle slowly but surely disappeared
from state after state, a victim of spreading urbanization, new farming techniques, and the shotguns of
indiscriminate hunters.

In 1940, noting that the national bird was "threatened with extinction," Congress passed the Bald Eagle
Protection Act, making it illegal to kill, harass, possess (without a permit), or sell bald eagles; but that was not
enough to save the bird. By the early 1960s there were fewer than 450 nesting pairs in the contiguous USA; only in
Alaska was their survival still guaranteed.
In 1967, bald eagles were officially declared an endangered species throughout the United States south of
the 40th parallel; and a massive information campaign was launched by the federal government and by wildlife
organizations, to try and save the nation's emblem, and protect its habitat from further destruction.

Among all factors that had led to the eagle's destruction, the greatest was almost certainly the massive use of
pesticides by American farmers, from the 1940's onwards. One such pesticide, DDT, was sprayed
on croplands throughout the USA and its residues washed into lakes and streams, where they were absorbed by
fish. The contaminated fish, in turn, were consumed by bald eagles.

The chemical interfered with the eagle's ability to develop strong shells for its eggs. As a result, bald eagles and
many other bird species began laying eggs with shells so thin they often broke during incubation or failed
to hatch. Their reproduction disrupted, bald eagle populations fell sharply. It was not until after the dangers of DDT
became known, in large part due to Rachel Carson's famous book Silent Spring, that this chemical was banned for
most uses in the United States in 1972.

As the extent and speed of the decline in eagle populations became apparent, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
developed a captive-breeding program at its Research Center at Patuxent, Maryland. Here scientists increased the
species' breeding potential by removing each first clutch of eggs as soon as they were laid, and incubating them
artificially. The bald eagles would usually then lay a second clutch, which they were allowed to incubate
themselves. In all, 124 bald eagles were hatched at Patuxent, and subsequently returned to the wild, during the
critical years.
Today, thanks to years of protection and breeding programs, the decline in the eagle population has been
reversed, and numbers have begun to grow again. There are now over 4000 breeding pairs south of the 40th
parallel, and the bald eagle has been officially taken off the list of endangered species in the USA. Nevertheless, it
remains officially classified as a "threatened" species, and one which is protected by no fewer than three acts of
Congress - with two other acts banning theft, sale or possession of its eggs.
Perhaps that is in the end the only way to ensure the survival of America's most famous bird . Even this high
degree of protection is not enough to save the bald eagle from the most ruthless or thoughtless of hunters; there
are those who will shoot anything for pleasure.
Last year, a Florida man was fined $1500 for shooting an eagle; he got off very lightly, given that federal law
allows prison sentences and fines of up to $100,000 dollars for those who knowingly kill or capture these
magnificent birds.

a species: a variety of creature or plant - isolated: distant, inaccessible - bird of prey: bird that eats small
animals - wingspan: width across the wings - unique to: found nowhere else but in - contiguous USA: continental
USA excluding Alaska - 40th parallel: the Canadian border (in the west) - crops: plants cultivated as food
- shell: hard outer casing - incubation: period when the mother bird sits on her eggs - hatch: produce a baby bird
- to breed: to produce young - clutch: group - theft: stealing, taking - ruthless: without compassion, determined
- got off: escaped - knowingly: intentionally –