Word: piper
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Indeed, Uilleann piping is so intimately linked with frustration and suffering that players consider themselves initiates in what approaches a religion. According to tradition, it takes "seven years' listening, seven years' practicing and seven years' playing to make a piper," but the reward is mastery of a difficult physical skill, plus the experience of creating one's own musical nirvana. The sound is something like an oboe, something like a bassoon, and, when all the various parts are used, like several of each playing at once...
...break down in dozens of ways without warning, and the prudent performer is always ready for a crisis. "Can anybody help me with this reed?" calls out Sandy Jordan, a Virginia-accented neophyte and the only woman in a room filled with bearded young men. Timothy Britton, a piper, pipemaker and transcendental meditator, comes over to have a look. "The reed's cracked," he says after a quick inspection. "Here, try some Krazy Glue." More trouble from across the room: a cigar-chewing piper, improbably named Roy Rogers Jr., has a mysterious air leak. "Blow some smoke into...
Cover: Designed by Christian Piper, photographed by Roberto Brosan
...last week's collisions involved military planes. In clear skies 20 miles east of Kansas City, a civilian Piper Navajo flying under visual flight rules collided with an Army twin-engine transport, killing all five people involved. In the bright central Texas sky near Brownwood, two unarmed Air Force Phantom F-4 jets crashed while engaged in what the military called a "defensive-maneuver training mission." The crash left debris that stretched for five miles. Two men died, and two parachuted to safety. Finally, over Westerly, R.I., a Piper Cherokee and a Piper Archer, both single-engine, general-aviation aircraft...
...Aeromexico DC-9 and the Piper Cherokee Archer that collided in midair over Cerritos, Calif., last August should have been visible to each other for at least a minute before the crash, experts believe. One if not both of the pilots probably saw the other plane coming. That chilling fact confirms what experienced flyers already know: simply spotting an oncoming plane is not enough to avoid it. The pilot must then gauge whether the other craft's speed and bearing pose a threat. In crowded airspace, the risk of error is high...