Word: ashli
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...Five Sacred Trees. According to Williams' program notes on his piece, it was inspired by the writings of poet Robert Graves about the prayers that ancient Celtic tribes incanted before felling a tree. While each tree had its own prayer, Williams invokes five: the great oak, Tortan, yew, ash and the Dathi tree. The work was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for bassoonist Judith LeClair. In this week-end's performance, the solo bassoon part was played by the BSO's principal bassoonist Richard Svoboda, who has been with the orchestra since 1989. Svoboda's moving performance...
...giggles rather than fear. As we leave our traces around the room, Meireles appeals to all of our senses but taste. Yet it is somehow impossible to find an underlying grammar to order our perceptions. Although his materials seem related to combustion (the talc could double as gunpowder or ash), they are somehow irreconcilable. Candles don't smell like gas and neither they nor pure gas fires produce ash. Where is the wood, or the warm smell of gunpowder? In the end, Meireles leaves us not with easy equivalencies, but heightened perception through the uncanny juxtaposition of carefully chosen stimuli...
After the ash, some volcanoes produce what is known as a pyroclastic flow, a ground-hugging cloud of superheated gas and rock that forces a cushion of air down the mountainside at up to 100 m.p.h., incinerating anything in its path. Other mountains spew that signature substance of the volcano: lava. (On this point Dante's Peak was wide of the scientific mark, concocting a fictitious mountain that produces both substances.) Lava moves at speeds ranging from less than 1 m.p.h. to 60 m.p.h...
Even if new gas-sniffing and satellite equipment succeeds in keeping people on the ground safe from volcanoes, people in the skies could still be at risk. For them the danger comes from volcanic ash, which can choke the engines of passenger jets. Since the 1960s there have been 85 such midair encounters, and while none have led to a fatal crash, some have come close...
...combat the problem, the USGS is deploying detectors around volcanoes so that air-traffic controllers can be alerted when an ash cloud belches forth. While this could go a long way toward making the skies safer, the business of setting up the instruments is going slowly. Currently, the faa, which funds the project, is devoting only $2 million a year to it, barely enough to equip two volcanoes. At that rate, it would take 275 years before all the world's active peaks were covered...