Word: ascendant
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...this album is all about. Not just the obvious kind, chasing after the girl or boy of your dreams, but the romance too that colored attitudes toward adventures of old. Today people are educated to be skeptical of heroes who skirted the globe alone, or became the first to ascend Mt. Fuji, or flew across an ocean singlehandedly, but Buffett ascribes to them the old allure of glory, bravery, and unadulterated accomplishment He harks back to the days when people were more innocent--more easily deluded, the cynics will say--when there was no People Magazine...
...ultimate tragedy of stories like Silkwood's lie in their very appeal. Crucified for a popular cause, crowned with a garland of public approval, these "martyrs" ascend into the realm of legend. Their names become watchwords for the faithful, but the details of their struggles are lost in political rhetoric and strife. Their stories are invoked without being remembered, and many who write about them sensationalize--relying solely on an inherent emotional appeal to those who do not wish to believe. Such works are often dismissed as propaganda...
...horns wanes into an A minor chord, and the reiteration of this three-second transformation during the hour-and-a-half of Abbado's new Deutsche-Grammophon recording with the Chicago Symphony warps the texture of adventure, love and almost militant drive and power until the five angels ascend, Wormwood falls, locusts emerge from the great pit, or--is it possible to compare--Brando gets what he deserves. The Pentagon might object to this violent death, or respond by sending in troops of its own. Mahler, who became a Roman Catholic in 1997, seven years before he completed the symphony...
...falling back to earth in showers of shrinking fragments. The shuttle will honor round-trip reservations, going up and coming down intact, not once, but time and time again, if all goes well, reducing the cost of working in space and vastly increasing its possibilities. Columbia is designed to ascend like a rocket, orbit as an all-purpose freight truck and passenger bus, ward off melting re-entry temperatures with an armor of glazed silica tiles, then land like an airplane?or like an 80-ton glider...
...charming, promiscuous children. They have no memories, and she gradually sinks into their condition. Then she drowns. "Circle dancing is magic," Kundera writes, pointing out the allure of the group to isolated souls. An image recurs several times in these stories: people join hands, laughing and singing, and ascend slowly heavenward. The author portrays all movements, crusades, organized religions and political parties as extended circle dances. "I too once danced in a ring," Kundera writes, describing how he joined the Communist Party in 1948. His expulsion shortly there after taught him something: "Leave a row and you can always...