和谐英语

新视野大学英语读写教程听力 第四册 课文 4t03c

2012-05-17来源:和谐英语
[by:和谐英语学习网|http://www.hxen.net|和谐英语||和谐英语学习网]
[00:00.00]喜欢hxen.net,就把hxen.net复制到QQ个人资料中!A Hard Job to Come By
[00:-1.00]You could feel sorry for Alberto Torres,who is blind.
[00:-2.00]The last thing he remembers seeing was his daughter being born 13 years ago.
[00:-3.00]Then the world went blank;
[00:-4.00]he can only imagine what his only child looks like now,
[00:-5.00]as a teenaged honor student.
[00:-6.00]Total darkness came as a result of a swelling of the nerve leading to his eye
[00:-7.00]— a condition that was unrelated to the eye disease
[00:-8.00]that had limited his vision since birth.
[00:-9.00]"I went to sleep and woke up with nothing," he said.
[00:10.00]Bad luck is no stranger to this warm and thoughtful 37-year-old man.
[00:11.00]His mother died of cancer when he was 4,and Mr. Torres's father,
[00:12.00]who was often ill, had to give him up to the care of the state when he was 11.
[00:13.00]He later worked for 19 years in a workshop
[00:14.00]assembling brooms and other household goods,deathly boring work.
[00:15.00]Earlier this month,Alberto Torres's wife,
[00:16.00]who had just been laid off from her job,
[00:17.00]had to have a breast removed due to cancer
[00:18.00]and now faces a year of radiation treatments.
[00:19.00]Things seemed always to go from almost incredibly bad to worse.
[00:20.00]Even Mr.Torres's good luck has a dark side:
[00:21.00]Five years ago,his beloved guide dog pulled him out of the path of a truck.
[00:22.00]Mr.Torres was not hurt.The dog was killed.
[00:23.00]But know this and know it well:
[00:24.00]Mr.Torres does not feel sorry for himself.
[00:25.00]"These are just little bumps you have to go over in your life,"he said.
[00:26.00]At 5 A.M.on a recent morning,
[00:27.00]we caught up with Mr.Torres at a subway stop in Brooklyn,New York,
[00:28.00]near where he lives in a third-floor apartment (without an elevator).
[00:29.00]He had been up since 3 A.M.,
[00:30.00]feeding his new dog,making coffee,getting ready.
[00:31.00]"When you're blind,it takes a little longer to do things,"he said.
[00:32.00]Mr. Torres was beginning the complicated
[00:33.00]two-hour trip to his job developing film
[00:34.00]in the X-ray department of the emergency room
[00:35.00]of the Bronx Municipal (市立的) Hospital Center.
[00:36.00]He would take the G train to Queens Plaza (广场) station
[00:37.00]where he would walk up a set of stairs and down another to the R train,
[00:38.00]heading towards Manhattan.
[00:39.00]He would then ride the R train to 59th Street
[00:40.00]where he would walk upstairs to switch to the Number 6 train.
[00:41.00]At one point along the journey,
[00:42.00]he might chat with a stranger.
[00:43.00]At another,someone would pat his dog,calling him by name.
[00:44.00]People offered assistance,even seats.
[00:45.00]At 125th Street,
[00:46.00]Mr.Torres would transfer to the Number 4 train by crossing the platform.
[00:47.00]At 149th Street,he would descend to the Number 2.
[00:48.00]He would take that to East 180th Street
[00:49.00]where he nearly always has a long wait for his final train,
[00:50.00]to Pelham Parkway (帕尔汉大道).
[00:51.00]Then he and his dog would walk 20 minutes to the hospital.
[00:52.00]"They shouldn't make any special provisions for me,"Mr.Torres said.
[00:53.00]"It's a job,and I should be on time."
[00:54.00]It was a hard job to come by.Before he got the job,
[00:55.00]Mr.Trres was determined to escape the workshop run by the Lighthouse (灯塔),
[00:56.00]an organization dedicated to help people who can't see,
[00:57.00]and to try to make it on his own.He wanted a job developing X-ray film,
[00:58.00]something that everyone must do in the dark.
[00:59.00]The Lighthouse called many hospitals,with no result,
[-1:00.00]even though they offered to pay his first three months'salary and provide training.
[-1:-1.00]The Lighthouse people would have much preferred
[-1:-2.00]for him to find a job closer to his home.
[-1:-3.00]But they believed he could handle the long trip,as well as the work.
[-1:-4.00]"Our philosophy here is that blind people
[-1:-5.00]can do just about anything except drive buses,"