高级英语听力 lesson 11

Lesson Eleven

   Section One: News in Brief

   Tapescript

   1. Texas Air announced today that it will buy the troubled People

   Express Airlines for about a hundred and twenty-five million

   dollars.  The proposed deal would allow most People Express em-

   ployees to keep their jobs, although the company will eventually lose

   its identity and become part of Texas Air.  Federal officials must ap-

   prove the merger 1.  Texas Air is also trying to buy Eastern Airlines.

   2. A rally on Wall Street today after six consecutive 2 losing sessions,

   the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day up nearly nine

   points, to close at seventeen sixty-seven point fifty-eight.

   3. What's being called a 'freedom flight" of seventy former Cuban

   political prisoners landed in Miami today to an ecstatic reception by

   thousands of relatives and well-wishers.  The plane also carried

   forty7one relatives of former prisoners.  The flight culminated 3 nearly

   two years of negotiations 4 with the Castro regime.

   Section Two: News in     IDetail

   Tapescript

       Texas Air Corporation today announced that it has agreed to

   buy People Express Airlines for one hundred twenty-five million

   dollars in securities.  Texas Air already owns Continental 5 Airlines

   and New York Air.  It is in the process of acquiring Eastern Airlines.

   People Express, one of the first no-frills, low-fare air carriers, has

   been in financial trouble lately.  It was forced to shut down its subsid-

   iary, Frontier Airlfiies.  Texas Air now says it will acquire Frontier's

   assets as part of its deal with People Express.  Joining us now from

   New York, NPR's business reporter Barbara Mantel.

        ' Barbara, it is said this is a very attractive low price, this one

   hundred twenty-five million dollars in securities.  Besides that, why

   does Texas Air want People Express?'

        "Well, Frank Lorenzo, who is Chairman of Texas Air, will get

   airplanes from People Express, which he might need.  He will get the

   lowest cost work-force in the industry at People Express.  He will get

   a new terminal at Newark, New Jersey 6 that People Express is build-

   ing.  He'll get flights to London, and he will get control over competi-

   tion.  People Express competes heavily, especially in the northeast

   corridor, with Texas Air.'

        'This issue of competition has been a sticking point before for

   the Department of Transportation when two airlines wanted to get

   together.  How will Texas Air get around it this time?'

         'Well, they might not.  Texas Air wanted to acquire East ..., or

   wants to acquire, Eastern Airline, and the Department of Transpor-

                                                     . I

   tation said, 'No, not unless you sell more landing slots, more slots in

   the northeast corridor to Pan Am so that we'll have some competi-

   tion there.' And Texas Air agreed to that just last week.  That may

   happen again here.  The Department of Transportation may require

   that Texas Air sell some slots or some gates to another airline to en-

   sure that there is still competition in the northeast part of the

   marketplace.  But Texas Air has some leverage 7 here with the De-

   partment of Transportation because People Express is a failing com-

   pany.  And the Department of Transportation may feel, 'Well, we'll

   let them'buy People Express and keep it running, rather than let ii

   fail and lose all those jobs.'"

       'Mm hm.  Now, if the deal is approved by the Department of

   Transportation, what is it likely to mean for consumers?  If there's

   less competition the fares could possibly go up.  "

       'Well, yes.  You would think that when you move from two

   competitors in a market to just one airliner 8 that prices would just

   have to go up.  But I want you to keep in mind that unrestricted fares

   of the kind People Express offered, you know, wholesale 9 unrestricted

   fares, were being eliminated and phased out anyway, because they

   were not profitable.  And the Department of Transportation theory

   here is that if you allow mergers 10 to take place, or many mergers to

   take place, you might create more efficiencies and low costs, leading

   possibly to lower fares.  And also the Department of Transportation

   believes that there's a lot of potential competition in the

   marketplace.  Airlines can move planes around and buy gates, and so

   that if an airline in a particular market segment was making a lot of

   money and raising prices excessively, other airlines would move in

   and prices would be brought down through competition.  So that it's

   a nice theory, the theory of potential competition keeping prices in

   line, but it's sort of a new idea and it's not clear that that's really the

   way it would work.'

      'Thanks.' From New York, NPR's Barbara Mantel.

     Section Three: Special Report

     Tapescript

       "My audiences have been very devoted 11 over the years through-

     out the country.  And they've expanded and grown and the country

     audience has been just as kind and as supportive as the folk audience

     has been.'

       'I was thinking though, nonetheless, when I put on this album,

     'The Last of the True Believers,' especially the title cut, that I heard

     more country there than I'd perhaps heard before."

        "Well, I guess it has .-.. I've moved in that direction, mainly be-

     cause I am playing with the band more.  My natural roots are there in

     country and hillbilly music.  And so I think that that just comes out

     more when you put the band with it."

     I  'I want to ask you some questions, please, about this album,

     aboutthe ... not so much what's on the inside right now, but whaes

     on the outside - a picture on the front of you in front of a

     Woolworth store, someplace, I guess, in Texas or Tennessee, and

        'Houston, Texas.'

          In Houston, Texas?  Is it the Woolworth store that has the

     hardwood floor still'and the parakeets in the back and that sort of

     thing?'

         "Well, this one that we shot this in front of in Houston Texas is

     one of the largest ones in the country.  It's a two-storey and it's got

     the escalator that does a little pinging noise every couple of minutes.

     And it takes up a whole city block."

         "But, why a cover photo in front of Woolworth's?'

          'Well,, that comes from the song 'Love at the Five and Dime,'

     which was a song that Cathy Mattea also cut this year and had my

     first, you know, top five country hit with.  And it deals with the

     Woolworth store.'

          "There is, on the cover, you are holding a book, and you can/t

   really see. ... What is the name of the book on the cover you're hold-

   ing?'

         'In the Kindness of Strangers, the latest Tennessee Williams' bi-

   ography.'

        'And on the back is Larry McMurtrie's book about a cattle

   drive around the turn of the century, Lonesome Dove.'

        "He's my main prose hero.'

        'Now, why?  Why would you do that?  Why would you pose

   with a book?'

        "Well, I have, my audience consists of a lot of young people be-

   tween the ages of, maybe you know, fourteen and twenty-f'ive.  And I

   read a lot, and I alsowrite short stories and have written a novel.

   And I just feel like young people are missing out because they don't

   read books.  And any time I have the opportunity to influence the

   young person to pick up a book and read it, I would try to do that.'

       'When you hear these lyrics 12, when the words come to you, are

   you hearing the stanzas'as poetry or as music?'

       'Well, I'm hearing them as music.  Lyrics usually come to me,

   and songs come to me as a total picture.  And the music and the lyrics

   come at the same time.  Sometimes they shoot me straight up in bed,

   you know, in the middle of the night.  'The Wing and the Wheel' is a

   very special song to me.  It's probably my favorite song that I've ever

   written.  And that song was inspired at the Vancouver Folk Festival

   by two people who are from Managua, Nicaragua.  They have a duo

   call Duo Guar Buranco.  And just about four o'clock in the morning,

   I was sitting in my hotel room and listening to them sing in the room

   next door, and looking out the window at this little fingernail moon

   hanging out over the Vancouver Bay, and that song just came flow-

   ing, you know, and was inspired by those two people.'

      'Now, that sounds easy.'

      'Well, it IS easy.  If you listen. to yourself and you listen to the

   inspiration that's bringing on that particular song, it's easy.  It's just a

matter of getting up and writing it down.'

     Nancy Griffith, talking with us in WPLN in Nashville.  She is

 continuing her national tour with the Everly Brothers.  Her latest al-

 bum is called "The Last of the True Believers.'