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听力1：President Obama walks past casket of Dorothy Height during funeral services in Washington, 29 Apr 2010President Barack Obama eulogized U.S. civil rights leader Dorothy Height on Thursday as a history-making figure in "a righteous cause." The president spoke at the funeral for Height, who died last week at the age of 98.He told hundreds of moruners who filled the the massive Washington National Cathedral that Height should be associated with other American civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and W.E.B. DuBois. "There are giants who fill our history books. Well, Dr. Dorothy Height deserves a place in this pantheon. She, too, deserves a place in our history books. She, too, deserves a place of honor in America's memory," he said.As a young social worker, Dorothy Height helped New York City resolve the 1935 Harlem Riots, and she helped organize protests against lynching, the killing of African Americans, usually by white mobs.Later, she worked alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. and other leaders at the forefront of the civil rights movement, seeking equality for women as well as for African Americans.Height led the National Council of Negro Women for more than 40 years, working on issues affecting African American women and families, such as health, education and economic matters, as well as basic civil rights.She also campaigned for international human rights and humanitarian issues in Africa, India, the Caribbean and other areas.At the memorial service, President Obama said Dorothy Height visited the White House 21 times since he took office in January 2009.He said she was determined to attend a meeting of African American leaders on unemployment in February, even though she was in a wheelchair and a blizzard was approaching.The president said Height told him she would not allow "just a bunch of men" to control the meeting. When she could not attend because cars could not reach her snowed-in home, Mr. Obama says she sent a message with her ideas."I tell that story, partly because it brings a smile to my face, and also because it captures the quiet, dogged, dignified persistence that all of us who loved Dr. Height came to know so well," he said.The president said Height's perseverance advanced the cause of justice, and eventually made it possible for him and his wife, Michelle, to live in the White House.Mrs. Obama was in the audience, as were Vice President Joe Biden and many top U.S. officials.Some of the nation's most prominent African Americans took part in the memorial, including poet Maya Angelou, opera singer Denyce Graves, Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, and gospel singer BeBe Winans.听力2Annual festival in New Orleans honors the memory of jazz musicians who have passed onThe 41st annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is taking place in the city where jazz was born. Over a period of seven days the Festival will be visited by approximately 400,000 jazz music fans from around the United States, as well as from foreign countries. Proceeds from the Festival will go to support educational and cultural programs, and to aid struggling musicians. The Festival combines the music, culture and traditions that are unique to New Orleans.This is the way New Orleans honors the memory of musicians who have passed on. There is joy and sadness and again joy. After all, this is the way the departed would have wanted it. A jazz funeral during a Jazz Festival is an old tradition here.It is a great honor for the deceased to be memorialized in this park -- considered sacred to musicians and others who made major contributions to the history of jazz. And for the living, it is considered an honor to be invited to take part in the New Orleans Jazz Festival.Musician David Egan says it is his favorite festive and that he was honored to be invited.Over a period of seven days, the sounds of jazz, as well as other musical genres that trace their roots to New Orleans jazz, will pour from 12 stages set up at the local horse racing track.Leroy Jones has been playing jazz for about 40 years. He first fell in love with the music at age 12."From jazz came the other so-called popular forms of music -- combinations of different genres of music to make it a different type of sound. But the basis, the foundation, is rooted in jazz, which started in New Orleans," he said.The music performed by this group of young musicians, who call themselves Roddie Romero and the Hub City All-Stars, is an example of the mix of styles that evolved from jazz and other local forms of music."It crossed many genres," Roddie Romero, band leader explained. "You know, we're Cajun, we're Zydeco, we're a little bit Funk, we're a little bit R&B, All of the above."The first New Orleans Jazz Festival in 1970 drew only 350 jazz lovers. This year approximately 400,000 people intend to have a good time at the festival, despite a pouring rain on the first day of the event and a sea of mud on the second.Organizing an event on this scale requires the effort of thousandsof workers and volunteers. But it's not just a matter of putting in the hours [doing the work]."This festival is 41 years old now. So it takes, to do it at this level, all those years of expertise, and I think a lot of heart, actually, and a feel for the culture of New Orleans," said Louis Edwards, who has worked on the organizational committee for the past 25 years.New Orleans is an ideal place to hold a festival. Musician Joe Krown says the city truly breathes music. "There's just so much going on. Everybody wants music for everything. They don't have a meal without having music. They don't, you know, have an event without having music. It's in the middle of everything," he said.The city draws jazz musicians from around the world. Katja Toivola experienced the Jazz Festival 15 years ago as a tourist from Finland and fell in love with New Orleans. She has now been living here for almost 10 years. "Playing traditional jazz, New Orleans, out of the whole world, New Orleans really is the best place to do it," she stated.The New Orleans Jazz Festival is neither the biggest nor the oldest such event in the world. It is, however, unique -- being held as it is in the city that is the cradle of jazz. Jazz has now been eclipsed in popularity by some of the musical styles it helped give birth to, but it remains a beloved and uniquely American art form.听力3:You can relax and go slow — very slow — on the C&O CanalTed Landphair | Washington, DC 29 April 2010This is the famous Paw Paw Tunnel on the canal, through which boats could travel only one way at a time. The tunnel bypasses a section of the Potomac River containing five horseshoe bends.In the early 19th Century, it was thought that canals, in which boats and barges were pulled by mules along an adjacent towpath, would revolutionize commerce and travel. One of them — the Erie Canal — opened the West to commerce by connecting New York's Hudson River with the Great Lakes in the heartland. It made its backers rich.Financiers in the Washington, D.C., area also knew what canals meant to cities like Venice in Italy and Tsaritsyn —later called Stalingrad and Volgograd —in Russia. So they hurried to build a new Chesapeake & Ohio Canal from the old port of Georgetown in Washington to Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania.The Potomac River flows from Georgetown into the Chesapeake Bay, and Pittsburgh is on the Ohio River. Hence the Chesapeake & Ohio name.A lock on the C&O Canal, near the place where the canal begins in Washington's Georgetown section.The portion along the Potomac — 296 kilometers (184 miles) long — was completed to Cumberland in western Maryland in 1850.It provided a calm, safe route west next to the river, which is nearly dry upstream part of the year but whose rapids rage in springtime. Atits peak in the 1870s, more than 500 long, narrow boats carried cargo on the canal. Mule stables dotted the route.But the canal company ran out of money as faster railroads stole most of their business, and the C&O Canal never reached Pittsburgh and the Ohio River.Susan Brown Chase's 1916 drawing of a C&O Canal lockmaster's house.Remnants of its 74 stone locks, as well as brick aqueducts that brought it water from the river, remain. So does one long tunnel, just wide enough for one boat to get through.A famous standoff took place there when boats arrived from each direction, and neither captain would back off. Finally a canal company official showed up and set fire to sheaves of green corn to literally smoke the boatsmen out of the tunnel.In the Washington area, the C&O Canal still holds water. The National Park Service runs replica boats out of Georgetown. They're a big tourist attraction. And most of the old towpath remains, all the way to Cumberland. It's a beautiful, wild trail for hikers, bikers, horseback riders — and canal lovers.。