Word: crystalize
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...picture that will rank among the classics of the space program. As Apollo sped toward the moon after blasting into its translunar trajectory, he pointed his camera back toward home and caught a stunning view of the earth, with the side visible to the astronauts completely illuminated. In crystal-clear detail it shows almost the entire coastline of Africa and the offshore island republic of Malagasy, the Arabian peninsula and an unusually thick cover of swirling clouds over Antarctica and the surrounding region at the bottom of the world...
There was also scrub baseball, in which the littlest kid was allowed to play "pigtail," meaning that he stood behind the catcher and retrieved all the passed balls. There were boat races on nearby Crystal Lake, where the air was afume with adult cigar smoke ("One of the great disappointments of my life has been the fact that no cigar ever tasted as good as that cigar smoke used to smell there by Crystal Lake"). Of course there was a high school play. In a performance of Peg o' My Heart, Bruce was called upon by the script...
Premonitions. On rare occasions, there were grim premonitions. One day Bruce and a friend went ski-sailing for the first time on Crystal Lake. The experience was exhilarating: "I do not be lieve that I have ever felt more completely in tune with the universe than I felt that morning." Then, without warning, the ice turned thin, and as Catton looked down he could see only the blackness of the water below. "It was not just my own death that had been down there," Catton writes. "It was the ultimate horror, lying below all life, kept away by something...
...freeway revolt" against indiscriminate paving of the countryside began in San Francisco, Alioto said, when the auto lobby proposed that a freeway be built alongside the "crystal lakes" of the Bay area. Alioto said that he could only reply. "You gotta be kidding...
...kind of parable on our troubled world," to quote the composer, Black Angels uses the surrealistic screech of amplified strings to call forth the grim world of night insects in a way the listener is not likely soon to forget. Elsewhere, the players trill with thimble-capped fingers, bow crystal glasses tuned with water, even play maracas and tam-tams. What others might have left at the level of mere gimmickry, Crumb has turned into a chilling evocation of medieval damnation and redemption. Not for easy listening, though...