Word: timing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Youth. Janáček was born in 1854 in Moravia, now part of Czechoslovakia. He studied music in the town of Brno, married there (unhappily), suffered through the early death of his two children, and enjoyed no major success as a composer until he was 60. About that time, he fell in love with Kamila Stössl, 38 years his junior and the wife of an antique dealer. The affair was apparently platonic; nonetheless, it brought the composer an astonishingly productive second youth. From the time of his meeting with Kamila, his music surged with an energy...
...ways in which the word yes could be pronounced. He was also fascinated by bird calls, animal cries, and the whispering of leaves. Conversations between his dogs were carefully transcribed onto music paper. Czech Conductor Karel Ančerl, now music director of the Toronto Symphony, recalls the first time he saw Janáček: "I was returning home from a party with a few friends. A full moon lighted the park, and suddenly we saw a stocky man in a long overcoat talking to some birds. He was saying, 'Please talk to me, speak...
...course, is everywhere. With all appliances roaring, a modern kitchen can generate louder noise than a factory; both exceed the volume that most experts believe will impair hearing. In some offices, the constant staccato of typewriters and calculators is so nerve-racking that employees quit after a short time on the job. (New York's First National City Bank neatly resolved that problem by hiring deaf clerical help in its check-processing department.) City streets, already filled with roaring trucks and buses, are made intolerable by the added din of construction. Even when people sleep, they hear and react...
Baron knows that most manufacturers will not produce such equipment unless assured of a large market. Nor will users buy it unless compelled to by law. He therefore devotes his time to publicizing the dangers of noise, hoping to push legislators into enacting effective new noise-abatement regulations. Until such laws are passed and enforced, however, all Baron can offer his fellow sufferers is silent sympathy...
Unhappily, after an absence of several years, the gnats returned. In 1954 and again in 1957, stronger doses of DDD killed them off. About the same time, the lake's population of grebes began to decrease, dropping from 1,000 pairs to only 20 within one year. The baffling change was explained in 1962 by Rachel Carson, in Silent Spring. Grebes, she wrote, feed mainly on fish. The fish, in turn, eat insect larvae and zooplankton, and these foods had become saturated with the DDD dumped into Clear Lake. Thus, over a long period, the grebes accumulated lethal amounts...