Volcanoes

Got a bit of a brain clog going on here so I thought I'd try to move it aside by writing a bit about a random subject...volcanoes.

Volcanoes have been my favorite random subject after seeing a scene in the Willie Nelson movie Honeysuckle Rose (aka On the Road Again). In the movie Willie plays a country singer on tour (I bet it was difficult for him to take such a huge leap in acting a character so far from his real life persona). One of his long time band members, Garland, had retired and Willie is lamenting about the conversations he used to have with him. He says, "Let's talk about volcanoes. Garland knows everything in the world about volcanoes." How can I remember that line when the last time I saw the movie was more than 22 years ago but I'm not entirely sure where I packed my water filter for camping less than 6 months ago?

I don't seem to be able to channel Slim Pickens, the actor that played Garland, very well this morning so I don't know everything in the world about volcanoes, but not knowing anything never stopped me from talking about it before...so why change the trend?

One thing I've always wondered about with volcanoes is: was the whole "throw the virgin into the volcano" thing ever really a part of any culture for a population that lived near a volcano? Or is the meme just a Hollywood movie maker's excuse to put a nubile young woman, skimpily dressed, a bit sweaty, and displaying an endearingly frightened look, on the screen?

The volcanoes I've seen in person look like it would be very difficult to get close enough to the active part to actually toss a person in to the fiery parts. You could toss them down onto the rocks in most cases but to actually throw a person, even a petite young virgin, far enough out to hit the lava would take a toss worthy of the efforts described in the old saw "I don't trust farther than I can throw him."

Would throwing a virgin into a volcano even work often enough to become a part of a culture's "things to do when our world is coming apart" list of remedies? The volcano is rumbling, you toss in a virgin, it still blows it's top and kills half the population...wouldn't the surviving half have thoughts somewhere along the lines of "Okay, in the future...don't throw young girls into the big boiling mountain of melted rock...it pisses it off and it kills half of us. We need to form a committee to brainstorm other ideas for the next time." Even if pure coincidence made it work three out of four times...I would think that fourth time where half the folks get killed would make them rethink the whole thing.

How did they come up with the idea on the first place? The volcano starts rumbling, people think it's going to start spewing and destroying stuff, they look around and the best idea they can come up with is to take a young girl (were there guy virgins involved too, movies only show girls) and toss her in. How about just move out of the way?

This of course brings up another question (always so many questions). How many places in the world have a volcano and no place to move away from? I guess that Pompeii is pretty good proof that even if you have room to move sometimes you're not collectively smart enough to do so.

Speaking of Pompeii, when we lived in Italy, Cyrilee and I got to see the Israel Symphony Orchestra in one of the old amphitheatres there. Very interesting concert... open air amphitheatre, ancient beyond belief. I sat and wondered what it was like to attend the opening night of the "new" theater when Pompeii was an actual living town. The music was great, a warm, but not overly hot Italian night. Belly full of good food and wine. And fully armed Caribinieri lining the uppermost wall around the seating area.... first and only time I've listened to classical music surrounded by a bunch of folks with rifles held at the low ready position.

I've rambled on long enough at this point...thanks for sticking around to the end. Looking back at this I seem to not only have talked about volcanoes but virgins too..maybe I'm channeling Joey Tribiani right after he bought the "V" volume of the encyclopedia from Penn Jillette (you can follow him on Twitter by the way..also, one of the astronauts on the next space shuttle mission will be tweeting from space...way too cool).

take care...t