From the Atlantic to the Pacific

The distance between New York and Hawaii is just about the same as the distance between London and Beijing. No traveler crosses the United States from east to west without being astonished by its size.  The airplane speens on, hour after hour, over rolling farmland, huge cities,. empty deserts, high mountains, and wide, fast-flowing rivers.


                       
This is a country without a climate. It has every possible climate. It can snow in New York, be foggy in San Francisco, rain in Atlanta, and be sunny and hot in Phoenix all on the same day. It is a country without one kind of agriculture. It has every kind of agriculture. Anything grows in the hot, wet South. Very little seems to grow in som parts of the cold, windy North.

But America does have one special "way to life". It must have one, because Americans are always talking about it. Perhaps the people you will meet from different parts of the country will tell you what it is...

                               

WORKING WOMEN

Thirty years ago, Americans had a clear picture of how they thought women should be. The pefect woman was happy, bright homemaker in one of the new, middle-class suburbs. She had a washing machine and a vacuum cleaner to make her work easy. She had plenty of time to make her home beautiful, cook delicious meals for her husband and children, and be everyone's friend and adviser.
This advertiser's dream of American women still on TV, but it is far from the real truth. 
By 1980, one in every five families in the US had only one parent, and the number of "single-parent families" continues to rise. Women on their own with children cannot afford to stay at home. They have to find work in order to feed their families.
Many women have decided to go out and find a job. By 1985, two out of three women over the age of sixteen were working outside the home.

                            
Finding jobs may help women in some ways, but ilfe is still not perfect. Women still earn much less than men. For every dollar a man can earn, a woman only earns sixty cents.

YOUNG PEOPLE

American children are also full of energy and confidence, ready to go out and make their own way in the world. 

What's yout idea of a typical American teenager? A rich kid with his own car? A girl whose parents let her do anything she likes? A drug addict? 

Well, maybe you have been watching too much television youtself. Most teenagers do not have enought money to their own car. Drugs, are a serious problem, but the truth is that fewer and fewer young Americans are trying them.

 

 

Typical American teenagers are in facy vary ordinary. They think their teachers make them work too hard, they love their parents but are sure they don't understand anything, and their friendships are the most important things in their lives. Some of them do have a lot of money to spend, but usually they have earned in themselves. Most young people take jobs while they are in the school. They work at movie theaters, fast-food restaurants, gas stations, etc.

 "America, in a country of young men" wrote Emerson.

That's not quite true anymore. The population is growing older.

Young people today are having to fight harder to get the kinds of jobs and homes they want. 

Also, they consider public transportation the best option for digital socializing and one of the most likely ways to connect with the communities they live in.

Today the use of social media is probably the biggest factor behind the myth that young people don’t care about privacy. It is true that young people use social media more. It’s also true that social media can have negative effects on one’s privacy. Much of this is due to the ways that social media confuse our privacy intuitions, for example by giving us the feeling we are communicating with a small set of people, even when we know intellectually that we are being followed by a much larger circle.  

     

THE FIRST AMERICANS

Apache, Sioux, Chelokee and Comanche are some of the hundreds of tribes of Indians, all with different customs. Some have always lived in houses and grown their own food. Some used to move from place to place and hunt animals.

                 

They all share the same love and respect for nature. 

When the Europeans came, the Indians watched with horror as the forest were cut down, the prairie grasses ploughed up, and the wild animals destroyed. They themselves were slowly driven off the good land.  

                

Indians have been given only poor pieces of land, called "reservations", on which to live. Many Indiands experience a terrible sadness for what they have lost. Forty percent are unemployed, and most are poor. Twice as many young Indians as white people take their own lives. Many have serious alcohol problems. 

White people have been learning a few things. Some feel ashamed of what their people have done to the Indians.


A bit of Indian poetry: 

"With beauty before me, I walk
 With beauty behind me, I walk 
 With beauty below me, I walk 
 With beauty above me, I walk 
 With beauty all around me, I walk."

USA

There are fifty states in the United States of America. The US covers a huge area of the North American continent.Two states are geographically separate from the others. These are Alaska, snowy region to the northwest of Canada, and Hawaii, a group of beautiful tropical islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Black, white, rich, poor, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Irish, Italian, Chinese, Hispanic, Russian, German, Japanese, African-The great American idea has always been that all these people should become something new. They should leave their old lives behind and become American.They share the ideas, experiences, and feelings that make up the American culture. But new questions are now being asked. Some people wonder if too much has been lost. They are becoming more interested in the countries their families once left. They are not sure if new immigrants should try to forget their own languages and cultures so completely.