2006年NPR美国国家公共电台八月-Storycorps : Moved to Write, After So Muc

Time now for Storycorps, the project that's collecting an oral history of America, stories about you, your friends, your family can be archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Excerpts¹ are played here on morning edition.

Nora Percival is 91 years old, she met her late husband Herman Gun in college in New York city. They were both aspiring² novelists. Here, Nora Percival shares her story with her granddaughter Emily Wynns.

Oh in 1936 I had many dreams. It was the Depression and it was very hard for young people then to get their lives started, but we did get married and we finally got jobs, and we were very happy. But soon after that, in 1939, Herman was diagnosed³ to have acute⁴ leukemia and the doctor did not want the patient to be told that he was not going (to) recover. But it was very hard for me not to tell Herman such an important thing because we told each other everything. The day that he died, the doctor was there, gave him morphine so that he would sleep into a coma⁵. But after a couple of hours of that he woke up, very bright, bushy-tailed, talking and laughing and, made me lie down by him, and held me, and talked for 3 hours before he lapsed⁶ into unconsciousness. It was the best gift he could have given me. I couldn't imagine how I was going to live in a world that didn't have him in it. But life has a way of demanding that you live it and I was pregnant⁷, and I was determined⁸ that I was going to have his child in spite⁹ of the advice of all my elders who said I was only 24 years old and I was going to make my life so difficult to raise a child alone. It never occurred to me to think about aborting¹⁰ the child. He was born in the following February, and has been a joy of my life ever since.

Tell me about why you became an author at 88.

That was an ambition that began in my 20s, and because my life changed so suddenly, it made it hard for me to think about when to write, but when I got older, and things eased up, then I realized that there was one more active resurrection that I needed to do, and I wrote a book, using the letters that Herman and I had written to each other, hundreds of letters that I have kept in a sealed box for over 60 years. I opened that box and I told our story, so that the words that he should have put into novels and books if he had lived could now be in a book, in fact, I put his name on the cover as the co-author because half the words were his.

What are your hopes for me after you are gone?

I hope that you are going to find somebody that you can love as completely as I loved Herman Gun, because there's nothing in the world as wonderful as two people in love, there is nothing better.

Nora Percival, with her granddaughter Emily Wynns at Storycorps in New York. Nora Percival's book was published last year, to learn how to record your story, and to listen to more Storycorps interviews, go to NPR.org

Major funding for Storycorps comes from the corporation for public broadcasting.
－－－－－－－－－－－－－－
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed
happy and full of energy
acute leukemia
急性白血病
resurrection
the Resurrection
the return of Jesus Christ to life after his death on the cross, which is one of the main beliefs of the Christian religion
2
formal a situation in which something old or forgotten returns or becomes important again
a resurrection of old jealousies

1 excerpts   

n.摘录，摘要( excerpt的名词复数 )；节选（音乐，电影）片段

参考例句：

• Some excerpts from a Renaissance mass are spatchcocked into Gluck's pallid Don Juan music. 一些文艺复光时期的弥撒的选节被不适当地加入到了格鲁克平淡无味的唐璜音乐中。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He is editing together excerpts of some of his films. 他正在将自己制作的一些电影的片断进行剪辑合成。 来自辞典例句

2 aspiring   

adj.有志气的；有抱负的；高耸的v.渴望；追求

参考例句：

• Aspiring musicians need hours of practice every day. 想当音乐家就要每天练许多小时。
• He came from an aspiring working-class background. 他出身于有抱负的工人阶级家庭。 来自辞典例句

3 diagnosed   

诊断( diagnose的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Some foetal malformations cannot be diagnosed until late in pregnancy. 有些胎儿的畸形部位得等到妊娠后期才能诊断出来。
• He diagnosed the trouble that caused the engine to knock. 他找出了引擎咔咔响的毛病所在。

4 acute   

adj.严重的，激烈的，敏锐的，急性的，尖的

参考例句：

• A period of acute depression can sometimes follow childbirth.分娩之后可能会有一段时间的急性抑郁期。
• The publication comes as the answer to an acute demand.这一出版物是为满足急需而出版的。

5 coma   

n.昏迷，昏迷状态

参考例句：

• The patient rallied from the coma.病人从昏迷中苏醒过来。
• She went into a coma after swallowing a whole bottle of sleeping pills.她吃了一整瓶安眠药后就昏迷过去了。

6 lapsed   

adj.流失的，堕落的v.退步( lapse的过去式和过去分词 )；陷入；倒退；丧失

参考例句：

• He had lapsed into unconsciousness. 他陷入了昏迷状态。
• He soon lapsed into his previous bad habits. 他很快陷入以前的恶习中去。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 pregnant   

adj.怀孕的，怀胎的

参考例句：

• She is a pregnant woman.她是一名孕妇。
• She is pregnant with her first child.她怀了第一胎。

8 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

9 spite   

n.（用于短语）虽然，不顾，尽管

参考例句：

• He has modern ideas in spite of his great age.尽管他年事很高，但思想观念却很入时。
• In spite of his anger,his remarks were restrained.他尽管生气，说的话还是有节制的。

10 aborting   

v.（使）流产( abort的现在分词 )；（使）（某事物）中止；（因故障等而）（使）（飞机、宇宙飞船、导弹等）中断飞行；（使）（飞行任务等）中途失败

参考例句：

• Target machine is rebooting due to a different deployment task. Aborting deployment. 由于有另一个部署任务，目标计算机正在重新启动。正在中止部署。 来自互联网
• The number of seconds elapsed before aborting a connection attempt. 在中止连接尝试之前经过的秒数。 来自互联网