14 News & Topics
14 News & Topics June 1 2023 | World and Press ‘Hello, city helpline? My refrigerator is too noisy’ SERVICE Millions call the service each year for help with everything from broken appliances to hungry raccoons and over-friendly neighbours. mit Audiodatei By Will Pavia 1 LAST AUTUMNa New Yorker called the city’s complaints line to report some unwelcome changes in their neighbourhood. The leaves were turning brown and dropping into the street. “Can someone come and spray the trees so the leaves stop falling?” they asked. It was one of the many ambitious requests received by the operators of New York’s information and complaints service, which has just marked its twentieth anniversary. 2 Callers often hope the city can identify the best pizza parlour in their neighbourhood. Around Christmas, there are many calls – presumably from children – asking when Santa Claus will arrive in Manhattan. 3 But some who rang in the past two decades wanted guidance on specific personal situations. “Can you tell me the steps for boiling a live chicken?” someone asked in 2005. “Can you check if my boyfriend is married?” another call- | Photo: Quino Al/Unsplash er wanted to know in 2009. Ten years later, someone – or perhaps two people – called to ask: “If a couple is divorced, can they live in the same house but in different rooms?” 4 Several complaints have involved animals. “A racoon is eating lasagne on my porch,” a caller in 2014 complained. “A goat is tied in the stairwell in my building,” said another, in 2016. In 2003, the year the line was opened, there was a complaint about a cat “terrorising someone through a screen door”. 5 The 311 service was introduced as the first big policy initiative of Michael Bloomberg’s administration as mayor. Baltimore and Chicago had introduced similar lines in the hope of diverting some of the many misplaced calls to the emergency services. Bloomberg, who was bringing a new managerial style to City Hall, was appalled to see the city operating 40 separate lines and wanted to incorporate them into one call centre, fielding queries in more than a hundred languages and able to help with nearly everything within the city’s jurisdiction. 6 More than four million people called in the first year, many of them with a question about how to dispose of CFCs or freon coolants in their fridge. Last year, there were 35 million callers, and the emphasis had shifted towards parking fines and traffic-monitoring cameras. 7 One early caller rang about a chicken in the corridor of her apartment building in the Bronx, alleging that it had been put there by her landlord in a rent dispute. She was referred to the health department. Another lady telephoned asking if she could speak to the mayor – she turned out to be Bloomberg’s mother, Charlotte. An agent named Sherone Lewis, who fielded the call, telephoned the mayor’s office, where an aide, giggling, said to put her through. 8 The 20 strangest calls – according to staff – included someone wondering if they could claim their dog as a dependant for tax purposes. One caller faced a distressingly friendly character next door. “I’d like to report my neighbour for waving to everyone on the block,” they said. There was also the occasional crank. In 2004, when noise complaints were among the top five issues callers reported, one rang to say: “I’d like to file a noise complaint against my refrigerator.” © The Times, London/News Licensing This article originally appeared in The Times, London. 0 – 4 HELPLINE Beratungs-Hotline — refrigerator Kühlschrank — appliance (Haushalts-)Gerät — raccoon Waschbär — operator h.: Mitarbeiter(in); s.w.u. to operate betreiben — to mark feiern — pizza parlour Pizzeria — live lebend — porch Veranda — stairwell Treppenhaus — screen door Fliegengittertür 5 to divert umlenken — misplaced fehlgeleitet — managerial Führungs- — city hall (AE) Rathaus — appalled entsetzt — to incorporate zus.führen — to field beantworten — query Anfrage — jurisdiction Zuständigkeitsbereich 6 – 7 to dispose of entsorgen — CFCs FCKW — freon coolant Kühlflüssigkeit (f. Markenname) — to shift towards s. verlagern auf — traffic-monitoring camera Verkehrsüberwachungskamera — to allege behaupten — landlord Vermieter — to refer s.o. to jdn. verweisen an — agent Mitarbeiter(in) — aide Mitarbeiter(in) — to giggle kichern — to put s.o. through jdn. durchstellen 8 to claim geltend machen — dependant finanziell abhängige(r) Angehörige(r) — distressingly beunruhigend — character Person — crank (coll) Spinner(in) — to file a complaint e-e Beschwerde einreichen Seattle becomes first U.S. city to ban caste discrimination SOCIETY Activists say people of lower castes have faced discrimination while at work and school. By Niha Masih 1 THE SEATTLECity Council voted Tuesday to ban caste-based discrimination in the first such move by a U.S. city. The move adds caste as a protected category to the city’s anti-discrimination laws, which already include prohibitions against discriminating on disability, religion, and sexual orientation. The movement has won a “historic, first-in-thenation ban on caste discrimination,” tweeted Kshama Sawant, the socialist council member who introduced the legislation. “Now we need to build a movement to spread this victory around the country.” People celebrate Seattle’s banning of caste-based discrimination in February. | Photo: John Froschauer/AP/Picture Alliance 2 The caste system is a hierarchal structure that determines a person’s social standing at birth. It has roots in Hinduism but later proliferated to members of other faiths in South Asia. Dalits, formerly called untouchables, are relegated to the bottom rung in the South Asian order, though India legally abolished the concept of “untouchability” decades ago. 3 But caste-based discrimination remains entrenched in society, and similar practices have followed the South Asian diaspora community to the United States and elsewhere, activists say. More recently, there have been efforts to bring attention to caste-based prejudice in Silicon Valley and Seattle workplaces, where there are many tech professionals of South Asian origin. More than 150,000 people from South Asia live in Washington State, with many based in the greater Seattle area, the city council said. 4 Seattle’s move will prohibit businesses from discriminating on caste lines when it comes to employment, access to public spaces, and housing, Sawant said when she introduced the measure. 5 “It is a national problem,” said Thenmozhi Soundararajan, director of Equality Labs, a Dalit civil rights group in California. She said her organization had received complaints from more than 250 workers, with many alleging “caste slurs in workplaces, bullying and harassment, sexual harassment, demotion to retaliation and even firing.” … 6 The Seattle measure was opposed by the Hindu American Foundation, which said that it was against caste-based discrimination but argued that the measure would single out its community. It said in a Tuesday statement that it is investigating “all avenues of response.” … © 2023 The Washington Post 0 – 2 CASTEKaste — prohibition Verbot; s.w.u. to prohibit — orientation Orientierung — legislation Gesetz — hierarchal hierarchisch — to determine festlegen — standing Status — to proliferate s. ausbreiten — untouchables die Unberührbaren; s.w.u. untouchability — to relegate verweisen — rung Stufe — to abolish abschaffen 3 – 4 entrenched (fig) tief verwurzelt — the … diaspora community die im Ausland lebenden … — prejudice Vorurteil — professional Fachkraft — origin Herkunft — in the greater … area im Großraum … — when it comes to bei — housing Wohnraum 5 – 6 civil rights group Bürgerrechtsgruppe — to allege anführen — slur Beleidigung — bullying Mobbing — harassment Belästigung — demotion Degradierung — retaliation Vergeltungsmaßnahme(n) — foundation Stiftung — to single out herausgreifen — avenue (fig) Möglichkeit
World and Press | June 1 2023 Literature 15 By Lorraine Berry 1 ‘WOLFISH’ by Erica Berry begins with a crime scene. “This is one of those stories that begins with a female body. Hers was crumpled, roadside, in the ash colored slush between asphalt and snowbank.” OR-106, the 106th wolf that had been collared in Oregon (where Erica Berry and I both live, although there’s no relation). OR-106 had been shot, a continuation of a spate of wolf killings across the state in 2021 and 2022. 2 Berry, whose MFA was earned at the University of Minnesota, began studying wolves in 2013. She elucidates the myths and stories we tell about our lupine fears in ferocious and beautiful writing. Like the traveling wolf in search of companionship, Berry ranges far and wide, taking readers along on her own journey – Oregon, the United Kingdom, Italy, the northern United States – in search of answers. book world ‘Wolfish’ by Erica Berry ‘Wolfish’ by Erica Berry, 417 pages, is published by Canongate Books, ISBN 978-1838854607. 3 Wolves’ journeys from Idaho across Oregon and down into California galvanized feelings of both awe and animosity. In the western U.S., the wolf inspires hatred from many ranchers, who, despite raising animals for slaughter, find the killing of their animals by wolves to be intolerable. And while Berry attempts to understand such a contradiction, it’s one of the rare instances in her exemplary study where I felt shortchanged by the discussion. The surface-level of that discussion is a testament to how richly layered and complex the overall work is. 4 Berry recounts how fear accompanied her in her studies, not from the wolf but from everyday encounters with men and, in Italy, from a danger that she could not have anticipated. The most powerful theme that runs through ‘Wolfish’ is human fear, and here Berry’s vulnerability and strength is displayed in poignant detail. While recognizing the cultural safeguards she has inherited as a white woman, she lays bare the real dangers posed to women, especially those traveling alone, and the media-fed paranoia that sees constant danger for women who are without the protection of a man. 5 In addition to the taxonomy, biology, and behaviors of terrestrial wolves, Berry argues that it’s crucial to understand the “cultural taxidermy, created by humans, fabricated with parts gathered across time and space, and howling first and foremost in our heads. The symbolic wolf is enormous.” 6 The symbolic wolf occupies space in the stories told by various tribes – the Kalapuya, the Pueblo, and the Cherokee, for example – in which the wolf is watchdog, creator, and a human relative, and in the stories of wolves that have come down to Western culture from Europe. Fairy tales, idiomatic expressions, warrior tales all amplified human fear and led to the systematic extermination of wolves across Britain and Europe. And if Berry is critical of these harmful stories, she also casts a cynical eye at those who claim to love the wolf, over-identifying the animal with their own views of humanity. 7 In 2021, a mass poisoning in northeastern Oregon killed off the entire Catherine Pack. That deliberate, obliterative act is representative of how the wolf as symbol occupies much more territory in the human head than it does in the narrow bands of space it wanders on the continent. © 2023 StarTribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Glossar Neu! Brexit glossary Lerne wichtige Vokabeln zum Thema Brexit. Damit du das Englisch abitur sicher in der Tasche hast! PDF Download je nur ¤ 2,50 www.sprachzeitungen.de 0 – 1 CRUMPLED zus.gesackt — roadside am Straßenrand — slush Schneematsch — snowbank Schneewehe — to collar mit e-m Senderhalsband versehen — continuation Fortsetzung — a spate of e-e Reihe von 2 MFA = Master of Fine Arts Master-Abschluss in den schönen Künsten — to elucidate erläutern — lupine fears Angst vor dem Wolf (l. wölfisch) — ferocious wild — companionship Gesellschaft — to range far and wide (fig) weit umherschweifen 3 to galvanize wecken — awe Ehrfurcht — animosity Feindseligkeit — hatred Hass — slaughter Schlachtung — intolerable unerträglich — contradiction Widerspruch — exemplary beispielhaft — to feel shortchanged h.: den Eindruck haben, dass etw. zu kurz kommt — surface-level Oberflächlichkeit — to be a testament to ein Beweis sein für — richly layered vielschichtig 4 to recount erzählen — to anticipate vorhersehen — vulnerability Verletzlichkeit — poignant ergreifend — safeguard Sicherheit — to inherit erben — to lay bare offenlegen — … posed to … …, denen … ausgesetzt sind — media-fed (fig) von den Medien geschürt 5 terrestrial an Land lebend — taxidermy Tierpräparation; h.: (fig) Ausgestaltung — to fabricate konstruieren — to howl heulen — first and foremost (fig) vor allem 6 – 7 tribe Stamm — watchdog (fig) Wächter — creator Schöpfer(in) — fairy tale Märchen — idiomatic expression Redewendung — warrior Krieger(in) — to amplify verstärken — extermination Ausrottung — to cast a cynical eye at (fig) e-n zynischen Blick werfen auf — obliterative auslöschend — band Streifen crossword puzzle | By Katrin Günther All the words are in the articles on pages 14 and 15. Solution on page 16. 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 5 Across 2 A vertical passage through a building around which a set of stairs is built (Helpline) 6 To redirect (Helpline) 8 A guardian (Book world) Down 1 Touching; moving (Book world) 3 Unbearable (Book world) 4 To expand (Seattle) 9 10 11 12 13 9 Shocked; alarmed (Helpline) 5 A person (Helpline) 14 11 Wild; fierce (Book world) 13 Directed towards the wrong target (Helpline) 7 By the edge of the road (Book world) 10 A ban (Seattle) 16 15 14 To state; to cite (Seattle) 12 Discrimination (Seattle) 17 15 To explain (Book world) 16 Status (Seattle) 18 Hostility (Book world) 19 In a worrying way (Helpline) 14 To do away with (Seattle) 17 To answer or deal with s.th. (Helpline) 19 18
