Words and Their Stories: Easy as Falling Off a Log
Now, the VOA Special English program WORDS AND THEIR STORIES.
Every people has its own way of saying things, its own special expressions. Some of these expressions are easy to understand. The words create a picture in your mind.
“As easy as falling off a log” is one such expression. It describes a job that does not take much effort.
If you ever tried to walk on a fallen tree log, you understand what the expression means. It is easier to fall off the log than to stay on it.
The expression is often used today. For example, you might hear a student say to her friend that her spelling test was “as easy as falling off a log.”
There are several other expressions that mean the same thing. And their meaning is as easy to understand as “falling off a log.” One is, “easy as pie”. Nothing is easier than eating a piece of sweet, juicy pie. Unless it is a “piece of cake.”
“Piece of cake” is another expression that means something is extremely easy to do. A friend might tell you that his new job was a ”piece of cake.”
Another expression is “as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.”
It is hard to imagine why anyone would want to shoot fish in a barrel. But, clearly, fish in a barrel would be much easier to shoot than fish in a stream. In fact, it would be as easy as “falling off a log.”
Sometimes, things that come to us easily, also leave us just as easily. In fact, there is an expression – “easy come, easy go” – that recognizes this. You may win a lot of money in a lottery, then spend it all in a few days. Easy come, easy go.
When life itself is easy, when you have no cares or problems, you are on “Easy Street.” Everyone wants to live on that imaginary street.
Another “easy” expression is to “go easy on a person”. It means to treat a person kindly or gently, especially in a situation where you might be expected to be angry with him. A wife might urge her husband to “go easy on” their son, because the boy did not mean to wreck the car.
If it is necessary to borrow some money to fix the car, you should look for a friend who is an “easy touch”. An “easy touch” or a “soft touch” is someone who is kind and helpful. He would easily agree to lend you the money.
And one last expression, one that means do not worry or work too hard. Try to keep away from difficult situations. “Take it easy” until we meet again.
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You have been listening to the VOA Special English program WORDS AND THEIR STORIES. I’m Bob Doughty.
Experts Urge More Efforts to Fight Cancer in Poor Countries
This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
Health experts are calling for action to expand cancer care and control in the developing world. A paper published by the medical journal Lancet says cancer was once thought of mostly as a problem in the developed world. But it says cancer is now a leading cause of death and disability in poor countries.
Experts from Harvard University and other organizations urge the international community to fight cancer aggressively. They say it should be fought the way HIV/AIDS has been fought in Africa.
Cancer kills more than seven and a half million people a year worldwide. The experts say almost two-thirds are in low-income and middle-income countries.
They say cancer kills more people in developing countries than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. But they say the world spends only five percent of its cancer resources in those countries.
Felicia Knaul from the Harvard Medical School was one of the authors of the paper. She was in Mexico when she was found to have breast cancer. She received treatment there. She says the experience showed her the sharp divide between the rich and the poor in treating breast cancer.
FELICIA KNAUL: “And we are seeing more and more how this is attacking young women. It’’s the number two cause of death in Mexico for women thirty to fifty-four. All over the developing world, except the poorest-poorest, it’s the number one cancer-related death among young women. And, I think we have to again say that there is much more we could do about it than we are doing about it.”
Professor Knaul met community health workers during her work in developing countries. She says they were an important part of efforts to reduce deaths from cervical cancer. They were able to persuade women to get tested and to get vaccinated against a virus that can cause it.
The experts say cancer care does not have to be costly. For example, patients can be treated with lower-cost drugs that are off-patent. This means the drugs are no longer legally protected against being copied.
In another new report, the American Cancer Society says cancer has the highest economic cost of any cause of death. It caused an estimated nine hundred billion dollars in economic losses worldwide in two thousand eight.
That was one and a half percent of the world economy, and just losses from early death and disability. The study did not estimate direct medical costs. But it says the productivity losses are almost twenty percent higher than for the second leading cause of economic loss, heart disease.
And that’’s the VOA Special English Health Report, written by Caty Weaver with Vidushi Sinha. I’m Barbara Klein.
San Francisco Educator Works to Keep Young People ‘Alive and Free’
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
More than half of young black men in the United States do not finish high school. Many grow up without fathers and in neighborhoods with gangs, drugs and violence. Sixty percent of those who drop out of school have spent time in jail by the age of thirty-five.
Joe Marshall co-founded the Omega Boys Club in San Francisco, California, twenty-three years ago. Mr. Marshall tries to give boys — and girls — a safe refuge and a chance at a better future.
Every week, he has two basic messages for his young students: “Stop the violence” and “Don”t do drugs.”
Mr. Marshall spent twenty-five years as a teacher and administrator in San Francisco. He taught math in middle school and expected to see his best students go to college.
Jason Steinberg/Steinberg Imagery
Joe Marshall celebrates the Omega Boys Club’’s 150th college graduate last October
JOE MARSHALL: “I got a lot of horror stories and a lot of my former students ended up dead or in prison for selling drugs, being involved in gangs, girls ended up getting pregnant.”
The Omega Boys Club serves more than four hundred young people every year. Two times a week, it offers after-school classes in math, reading, family and life skills, and college preparation.
In many ways, it serves as a kind of family. It provides teenagers with structure and support.
Joe Marshall has a doctorate in psychology. He sees gangs and violence as a disease that needs to be dealt with as a public health problem.
JOE MARSHALL: “That’’s what these young people get. They develop a street mentality. The big part is dealing with the emotional residue of anger, fear and pain that they develop because they got invested in this in the first place.
“Then we tell them to follow some new rules for living that will decrease their chances of ending up dead or in prison and increase their chances dramatically of staying alive and free.”
The club represents the headquarters of what he calls the “alive and free movement.” But his most effective way to spread his anti-violence message is through radio.
In nineteen ninety-one, Joe Marshall started “Street Soldiers,” a weekly call-in show.
JOE MARSHALL: “OK, let’’s talk to line two. Line two. And this is–Is this Marlena? This ain”t the Marlena I know.”
MARLENA: “Yes Doctor Marshall, this is Marlena!”
JOE MARSHALL: “It is my Marlena!”
Marlena was one of the graduates of the Omega Boys Club.
JOE MARSHALL: “She’’s at Southern University right now, going into her third year. She talked about what she had learned the hard way and how we helped her learn that by coming to Omega, by listening to ”Street Soldiers,” and she said she had learned how to love herself.”
The club provides guidance and financial assistance to help students stay in school. Over ninety percent of members who were accepted into college have graduated.
Twelve other American cities have copied the program. Joe Marshall has been invited to speak in Canada, Nigeria, South Africa and Thailand.
He turned sixty-three this year.
JOE MARSHALL: “I want to build an institution. I”m not going to be here forever, so my big thing is to make sure this goes on.”
And that’’s the VOA Special English Education Report. I’m Steve Ember.
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Reported by JoAnn Mar for VOA’’s American Profiles
