Over 40 years ago, a country music DJ convention (大会) was held every year in Nashville, Tennessee. Many country performers used to attend (参加) the convention to give their performances. Fans would go to Nashville hoping to see their favorite performers. In the end, so many fans began showing up in Nashville that a festival named Fan Fair was born.

    The first Fan Fair was held in April 1972, in Nashville for four days. Some of country music's biggest stars attended. There were about fifty thousand fans. The first Fan Fair was so successful that planning began almost immediately for 1973. The date was changed to June, when the weather would be better. Over one hundred thousand fans attended the second Fan Fair.

    Every year brought so many performers and fans to Fan Fair that, in 1982, it was moved to the Tennessee State Fairgrounds. Fan Fair stayed at the fairgrounds for another nineteen years.

    There was always the unexpected during the festival. In 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney attended. In 1992, more than six hundred reporters from Europe, Asia, and South America went to cover the appearance of a popular star, Billy Ray Cyrus, who had introduced a new country line dance. In 1996, Garth Brooks, who made a surprise appearance, signed autographs (签名) for 23 hours.

    In 2001, Fan Fair returned to downtown Nashville as the world's biggest country music festival. Now, over one hundred and twenty-five thousand country music fans go to Nashville every June. As you can imagine, those who want to attend Fan Fair must plan ahead. For example, they need to buy a ticket several months ahead of time. Of course, there's much more to prepare.

    John Smith was a very handsome young man but he was lazy. He had finished his education and was happy to sit in his room and listen to the radio all day long. In fact, he had been doing nothing for almost six months, which worried his father a lot. One day Mr. Smith decided that he had to do something. “Johnny, When I was your age I was working and supporting my ten brothers and sisters. I want you to go out and get a job.” So that was what he did. In fact, in the next three months, Johnny started ten jobs and was fired from ten jobs. He explained to his father.

    “They wanted me to be at work at 8:00 a. m. and told me to do all sorts of unpleasant things.”

    “I don't care how you do it,” Mr. Smith said. “Either you earn some money or move out of the house. I gave you one week's time.”

    In the next few days Johnny began to change. He still stayed in his room all day, but spent his time writing letters and reading through the newspapers. More and more posts began to arrive for him. He bought a new suit for himself and invited his parents to the theatre and for dinner afterwards at the most expensive restaurant in town. When his proud parents arrived home after their evening hour, a policeman was waiting at the front door.

    “John Smith,” he said as he handed him a piece of paper, “I'll see you in the court tomorrow.”

    When he got outside, Johnny told his parents everything. “When you told me to earn some money, I decided to put an advertisement in the newspaper saying, 'New way to money fast! Send me $ 5 and I'll tell you my secret.' When I received the money I wrote back telling people to do as I do.”

    Johnny was fined $250 by the court and was ordered to pay all the people back. As he left the court house feeling very ashamed, a newspaper man came up to him, “Young man, would you like to tell your story to my newspaper for $2,500?”

    Become a Volunteer and Make a Difference

    The First Tee, as an outstanding youth development organization, is always searching for good people that want to volunteer at one of our many Pittsburgh area locations.

    We're Looking for You!

    Nationwide, we currently have more than 3,700 coaches signed up with The First Tee as well as volunteers. But you don't have to be a golf professional or even a good golfer. With The First Tee Coach Program, we provide the training you need.

    Developed with input from leading experts in the field of positive youth development, our program focuses on making participants stronger and more confident through decision-making and exploring options, inspiring the golfers of tomorrow to look to the future, set goals, and unlock their potential.

    We also need more volunteers to make The First Tee possible. Opportunities include:

    Assistant Coach: assist in our weekly golf clinics. All that we request is that you make a 7-week commitment (one day per week), for 2 hours each week. Each clinic is led by one of our trained staff members who creates a written lesson plan for our volunteers to follow.

    Database Manager: input data entry of participants, volunteers, and community relation records and update chapter information for Home Office and community relations. The database manager is expected to update the data a minimum of every other week.

    Equipment Manager: organize and sort donated equipment, get rid of unfit equipment, and arrange equipment for distribution to participants at least once a week.

    Greeter: register participants, hand information to parents, greet visitors, answer phone and provide general program information.

Process of Becoming a Volunteer

    Begin by filling out the Google Forms application below. Once Alison Boyle (our Director of Volunteer and Participant Services) receives your completed application, she will contact you for an in-person interview.

    CLICK HERE to fill out a Volunteer Application via Google Forms

    For more information, please contact our Director of Volunteer and Participant Services, Alison Boyle, at aboyle@the first teepittsburgh.org.

    What's your favorite type of music? Most people may prefer rock and roll, pop or jazz. These types are most publicized by television and the radio. Country music now would seem to mistakenly belong to the category of rock or pop. Publicity of this category started to drop only after the year 2000; however, it did have its peak years just before falling down.

    What people may not know is that this type of music inspired(促成) rock and roll especially with one of the most important figures in music history-Elvis Presley-who is known as the 6/King of Rock and Roll". Elvis used to be very famous at a radio program which broadcast country music back in the late 1940- s.  Country music is influenced by jazz and blues. Rock music is also influenced by jazz and blues so that they may even seem similar.

    Nowadays, country music is closely related to pop music due to artists' preference and popular demand. Starting from the 1980's it slowly divided itself into New and Old Country Music. Legends like Johnny Cash began to slip away because the new understanding of country music actually contains pop and his music just doesn't fit the category. Fortunately, country music is still heavily promoted through websites and reviews.

    Certain types of music nowadays are linked with different age groups. Classical for the people in the mid 19th century, pop in the 1920's, and then there's country music.

    All these types continue to grow and modernize while still appealing to certain age groups. More modern country music compositions tend to become different in their own ways which makes it even harder to identify them as country music while they, again, remain appealing only to certain age groups. Active promoters of country music videos, however, seem to appeal to a large number of age groups especially those active in Australia, for as long as country music isn't mixed with other types, it will eventually regain its charm as music for all ages.

    Machines equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) have performed better than human beings in a high-level test of reading comprehension. Two natural language processing tools received higher test scores than humans in recent exams.

    One of the tools is a product of the American software maker Microsoft. The other was created by the Chinese online seller Alibaba Group. The company said that a deep-learning model developed by its Institute of Data Science of Technologies was the first to beat a human score in the reading comprehension test.

    The test is called the Stanford Question Answering Dataset. It was developed by researchers at Stanford University in California. It has over 100,000 questions and answers. They are based on information found in over 500 stories from the Wikipedia website. The answers to all the questions come from the reading material.

    The AI-powered machines were tested on whether they could provide exact answers to the questions after processing large amounts of information.

    Alibaba said its deep neural (神经的) network model received an “Exact Match” score of 82.44 on the Stanford test. Microsoft reported that a team at Microsoft Research Asia had a score of 82.65. It said the human score on the same questions and answers was 82.304. Many research organizations also appeared on the list—all with scores below 82.

    Alibaba said it has already used its reading comprehension model in different parts of its business. For example, the company is using machines to answer many incoming telephone calls from customers. The company says in the future, the technology could enable machines to guide visitors through museums or provide advice to medical patients.

    Microsoft noted that, overall, people are still much better than machines at understanding the complexity and nuances (细微差别) of language.

    If you have a chance to go to Finland, you will probably be surprised to find how "foolish" the Finnish people are.

    Take the taxi drivers for example. Taxis in Finland are mostly high­class Benz with a fare of two US dollars a kilometer. You can go anywhere in one，tell the driver to drop you at any place，say that you have some business to attend to，and then walk off without paying your fare. The driver would not show the least signs of anxiety.

    The dining rooms in all big hotels not only serve their guests，but also serve outside diners. Hotel guests have their meals free, so they naturally go to the free dining rooms to have their meals. The most they would do to show their good faith is to wave their registration cards to the waiter. With such a loose check，you can easily use any old registration card to take a couple of friends to dine free of charge.

The Finnish workers are paid by the hour. They are very much on their own as soon as they have agreed with the boss at the rate. From then on they just say how many hours they have worked and they will be paid accordingly.

    With so many loopholes(漏洞) in everyday life, surely Finland must be a heaven to those who love to take "petty advantages". But the strange thing is that all the taxi passengers would always come back to pay their fares after they have attended to their business and that not a single outsider has ever been found in the free hotel dining rooms. And workers always give an honest account of the exact hours they put in. As the Finns always act on good faith in everything they do, living in such a society has turned everyone into a real “gentleman”.