Sports Mascots / Neil Armstrong / Music by Jen Chapin

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2004-4-1

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HOST:

Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC, in VOA Special English.

(THEME)

This is Doug Johnson. On our show this week: music by singer and
songwriter Jen Chapin. We answer a question about a famous
astronaut. And, we report about some wild creatures of the sports
world...

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Sports Mascots

HOST:

The calendar says April, but March Madness continues in the
United States. March Madness is the name for the yearly championship
series in college basketball. And as the teams play, some strange
looking creatures perform for the crowds. Gwen Outen explains.

ANNCR:

A diamondback turtle larger than a man runs across the basketball
court. Really, a man dressed as a turtle. He is not one of the
players. He is Testudo, the official mascot of the Terrapins, the
team from the University of Maryland.

A terrapin is a kind of turtle.
There is a saying at the University of Maryland: "Fear the turtle."
But basketball supporters love Testudo.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines mascot as a
person, animal or object used to represent a group, especially to
bring good luck. The word dates back centuries to masca, Latin for
witch.

Many schools have mascots. For example, teams at Pennsylvania
State University are called the Nittany Lions. Crowds try to make
the sound of a mountain lion roar when the Nittany Lion mascot
appears.

People get very attached to their mascots. Consider the case of
Western Kentucky University. The school in Bowling Green, Kentucky,
is taking international legal action to protect its mascot. Its
mascot is a red, roundish creature called Big Red. It looks very
much like a red, roundish creature called Gabibbo. Gabibbo appears
on a television comedy in Italy. The university says the Italian
media company that owns the show stole the idea.

That company, Mediaset, denies any wrongdoing. Italian Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi owns Mediaset. Western Kentucky wants
two-hundred-fifty-million dollars for the use of Gabibbo -- or Big
Red as the school sees it.

Neil Armstrong

HOST:

Our listener question this week
comes from Vietnam. Nguyen Trong Tuyen wants to know about the
American astronaut Neil Armstrong and the famous words he spoke in
nineteen-sixty-nine.

Neil Alden Armstrong was born in nineteen-thirty in Wapakoneta,
Ohio. He became interested in flying when he was a young boy. He had
his first airplane ride when he was six years old although he told a
reporter he had no memory of it. Ten years later, Neil had learned
to fly a plane and got his first pilot's license. After high school,
Neil joined the Navy and was accepted in a special program that paid
for his college education. He went to Purdue University in Indiana.
It had a strong flight engineering program. However, the start of
the Korean War delayed his studies there. He fought in Korea and
returned to complete his studies at Purdue after the war ended in
nineteen-fifty-two.

Neil Armstrong was working as a test pilot when the American
space agency chose him to become an astronaut. His first trip to
space was with the Gemini program in nineteen-sixty-six. Three years
later he was named commander of the Apollo Eleven flight. This was
the first attempt to land humans on the moon. Apollo Eleven left
Earth on July sixteenth, nineteen-sixty-nine.

A few days later, hundreds of millions of people around the world
watched or listened to the Apollo Eleven landing on the moon. On
July twentieth, the door of the lunar module Eagle opened. There was
Neil Armstrong with astronaut Buzz Aldrin behind him. Neil Armstrong
stepped on to the moon. Here is what he said:

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Neil Armstrong later served as a NASA official, a college
professor, a writer and speaker. He is considered an American hero
of flight. In two-thousand-one, Neil Armstrong spoke with historians
as part of NASA's Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. One of
the reporters asked Mister Armstrong if he would like to return to
space. He answered, with a laugh, that he would like to lead a
mission to Mars. Neil Armstrong will be seventy-four in August.

Jen Chapin

HOST:

Jen Chapin is a singer and songwriter from New York City. She
released her first album on a national record label in February.
Shep O'Neal tells about the musician and plays some of the songs
from her album, called "Linger."

ANNCR:

Jazz Times magazine has called Jen Chapin an excellent story
teller. Her songs discuss many different issues. They include
political activism, the music business, and the busy but meaningless
lives some people lead. But, of course, a number of songs also talk
about love, like this one called "Me Be Me."

(MUSIC)

Jen Chapin is a political and social activist as well as a
musician. In this way she follows in the footsteps of her late
father, singer and songwriter Harry Chapin. Jen Chapin is head of
the board of directors of the non-profit group her father helped
establish in the nineteen-seventies. World Hunger Year works to end
hunger mainly through community-based solutions.

One of Jen Chapin's songs seems like an appeal for political and
social activism. Here is "Passive People."

(MUSIC)

Jen Chapin says she loves New York City and feels linked to its
people. But she also says she sometimes desires a quieter life. We
leave you now with the first song on "Linger." It is called "Little
Hours."

(MUSIC)

HOST:

This is Doug Johnson.

Our program was written by Caty Weaver. Paul Thompson was our
producer. And our recording engineer was Audreus Regis.

I hope you enjoyed AMERICAN MOSAIC. Join us again next week for
VOA's radio magazine in Special English.


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