大学英语综合教程 第四册 Unit 7A

[00:00.00]Peggy Noonan lives in New York and writes a weekly column for The Wall Street Journal
[00:07.31]This piece is taken from one of them.In it she reflects one her week and on life in the city
[00:15.99]Writing less than a year away from the destruction of the World Trade Center,
[00:22.57]her thoughts are inevitably affected by that terrible event.
[00:28.73]THE NIGHTMARE AND THE DREAMS     by Peqqy Noonan
[00:41.14]It is hot in New York.It is so hot that once when I hand a fever a friend called and asked me how I felt and I said
[00:51.46]You know how dry and hot paper feels when it's been faxed?That's how I feel
[00:58.88]And how I felt all day yesterday.It is hot.We feel as if we've been faxed.
[01:07.06]I found myself fully awake at5 a.m.yesterday and went for a walk on the Brooklyn Bridge
[01:14.63]Now more than ever the bridge seems like a great gift to my city.It spans.In the changed landscape of downtown
[01:24.48]it is our undisturbed beauty,grown ever more stately each year.People seem to love it more now
[01:33.68]or at least mention it more or notice it more.So do I.It's always full of tourists but always full of New Yorkers,too
[01:43.97]I am struck,as I always am when I'm on it,than I am walking on one of the engineering wonders of the world
[01:53.01]And I was struck yesterday that I was looking at one of the greatest views in the history of man's creation,Manhattan at sunrise
[02:02.75]And all of it was free.A billionaire would pay billions to own this bridge and keep this view,but I and my jogging
[02:13.02]biking and hiking companions have it for nothing.We inherited it.
[02:19.62]Now all we do is pay maintenance,in the form of taxes.We are lucky
[02:26.86]As I rounded the entrance to the bridge on the Brooklyn side,a small moment added to my happiness
[02:34.85]It was dawn,traffic was light,I passed a black van with smoked windows.In the driver's seat with the window down
[02:45.49]was a black man of 30 or so,a cap low on his brow,wearing thick black sunglasses.
[02:52.25]I was on the walk way that leads to the bridge
[02:56.67]he was less than two feet away;we were the only people there.We made eye contact. "Good morning!"he said
[03:05.78]"Good morning to you,"I answered,and for no reason at all we started to laugh,and moved on into the day
[03:14.46]Nothing significant in it except it may or may not have happened that way 30or 40 years ago
[03:22.40]I'm not sure the full charge of friendliness would have been assumed or answered.
[03:28.85]It made me think of something I saw Monday night on TV.They were showing the 1967movie "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
[03:38.31]"with Katharine Hepburn,Sidney Poitier and Spencer Tracy,about a young white woman and a young black man who fall in love
[03:47.76]hope to marry and must contend with disapproving parents on both sides
[03:53.82]It's help up well,and parts of it seemed moving in a way I didn't remember,and pertinent.
[04:01.08]There was a bit of dialogue that packed a wallop.Spencer Tracy as the father of the would-be bride
[04:09.13]is pressing Mr.Poitier on whether he has considered the sufferings their mixed-race childern might have to endure in America
[04:17.93]Has he thought about this?Has his fiancee? "She is optimistic," says Mr.Poitier. "She thinks every one of them
[04:28.20]will grow up to become president of the United States.I on the other hand would settle for secretary of state
[04:36.90]"Those words,written 35 years ago may have seemed dreamy then.But in its audience
[04:45.07]when the movie came out would likely have been a young,film-loving Army lieutenant named Colin Powell who,that year
[04:54.03]was preparing for a second tour of duty in Vietnam.And now he is secretary of state.This is the land dreams are made of
[05:04.46]Does that strike you as a corny thing to say and talk about?It is.That's another great thing.
[05:13.29]Late Tuesday,on a subway ride from Brooklyn to the north of Manhattan,I resaw something I'd noticed and forgotten about