And of Clay We Are Created

When this is the second paragraph in a story,

First a subterranean sob rocked the cotton fields, curling them like waves of foam. Geologists had set their seismographs weeks before, and they knew that the mountain had awakened again. For some time they had predicted that the heat of the eruption could detach the the eternal from the slopes of the volcano, but no one headed their; warnings; they sounded like the tales of frightened old women. 

you know it's going to be good.  It's pretty much guaranteed that everything good in life will somehow (however tenuously) be linked to volcanoes, the theory has now been proven for Isabel Allende. This is an extract from The Stories of Eva Luna, which is a follow up to the novel 'Eva Luna'. It's a book of short stories told by Eva so it's stories within stories which is always nice. Many of the stories contain the same characters as Eva Luna, this one concerns Rolf Carle who ends up as Eva's lover (don't worry this isn't a spoiler). Rolf is reporting on the volcano erpution and encounters a girl, Azucena, trapped in the rubble as they both struggle for her survival and suffering he is reminded of the forgotten suffering of his childhood.

This was probably my favourite story in the book, but I am slightly volcano biased so the others are all also probably worth reading.

How do volcanoes in space greet one another?

Io (an answer to the joke and a greeting to readers of this post)

I seem to remember reading that Io (one of Jupiter's Moons) was the only other celestial body in our solar systam to have active volcanoes. My good friend Alice reminded me of this yesterday when she woke me with a text telling the next The Sky at Night episode will be about volcanoes in space. Soon after realising that I hadn't actually been stirred by the fall of another wicket, I remembered this fact about Io, Alice needs confirmation from Sir Patrick, I now think I do too and maybe Io just has the most volcanism. Whatever the case, it has some which is cool so here are some facts about it.

Io has high orbital eccentricity, which means it is an elliptical shape, this means it has large gravitational pull, resulting in large tidal heating and this causes it's volcanism. Earth's volcanoes are due to magma movement from the geothermal activity or something like that (I really hope no physicists read the blog, actually I don't think anyone really reads it, so I should definitely make more stuff up).  There are three types of eruptions that occur on Io; intra-patera eruptions, flow-dominated eruptions and explosion dominated eruptions. Intra-patera eruptions occur in pateras which are caldera-like depressions on the moons surface, these can eruptions can be divided into those that with lava flows and those with lava lakes (a pool connected to a magma reservoir). Flow dominated eruptions seem to be similar to earth's Hawaiian eruption in that they continue for long periods of time and are often from lava tubes and fissures. Like Plinian eruptions, Explosion dominated eruptions are spectacular and violent, they occur when a magma body reaches a fissure and often produce lava fountains.

Hopefully there will more on this in next weeks The Sky at Night so I will be able to fill in all those gaps in my extraterrestrial volcano knowledge and pass on some wisdom. Issue Three will be out for in time for Christmas and I'm pretty sure that everyone you know would want a copy of the magazine so get ordering.
Finally here is another blog with a volcano of the week feature- definitely a copy of mine! http://www.gishbartimes.org/2010_08_01_archive.html

A pun involving snow and volcanoes

As in England we have had a lot of snow it seemed the only plausible way to celebrate was to have a snowball fight, mulled wine, mince pies and brandy cream and to make a volcano out of snow. This did however create a large debate between Emma, Isaac and me over what to call said volcano made from snow; hence the post title. The best puns we could think of involving snow and volcanoes are volcansnow, voliceno, or snowcano, in order to avoid arguments started combining puns and came up with such gems as snowcansnow, volicesnow and eventually settled on snowicesnow. But I couldn't put this as the title because it makes no sense.

This is the volcano (snowicesnow) pre-eruption. I don't think I really need to explain how to make this, the only tips I will give are that the angle of the volcano shouldn't be more than 45degrees. If this volcano it is entirely the fault of Emma and Isaac who probably both need some volcano education or volcation. Those of you who like things to be scientifically accurate could make a magma chamber, which should be made early on and then the rest of the volcano built around it.

This is the volcano after eruption, to get this effect all you need to do is chuck some leaves over the volcano.

Dinosaurs, Cakes, Volcanoes

Due to having been on a godforsaken Scottish island I haven't recently done any Volcano Club work for which I apologise. The reasons for being in Scotland were entirely unvolcano related however it was actually pretty great and I did see lots of lovely fungi and birds.

I would also like to make an appeal that if anyone wants to make me a cake soon (which is a no doubt a lot of people) then could they please use these candles.

 Because as well as making a volcano cake, which have previously been proved to be great, it could have dinosaurs on it. And then it could be an amazing story cake showing a possible dinosaur extinction theory. This states that the extinction, which occurred around 65 million years ago was due to a supervolcano in modern day India. This theory is supported by evidence showing massive eruptions with huge large flows from this era. Whether its true or not, it would make a truly amazing cake.

Mount Merapi

Recently Indonesia has been shaken by natural disasters including an earthquake and tsunami, now the second large eruption of Mount Merapi in less than two weeks. It is unusual for large eruptions to occur in quick succession, as an eruption releases the pressure inside the magma chamber. It is thought that pressure was building behind a newly formed lava dome which could be seen rising between the two eruptions on 25th October and 5th November. Yesterdays eruption is Mount Merapi's largest since 1870 and there is currently a 20km safety zone around the volcano. Mount Merapi (mountain of fire in Javanese) is a 3,000m high stratovolcano, as Indonesia's most active volcano it can frequently been seen smoking. As a decade volcano Mount Merapi is well monitored and due to the numerous earthquakes in the area the Alert Level was raised to 4, the highest on the scale on the 25th October.

Sadly this has done little to prevent the damage done in Indonesia, the death toll is currently at 122 and there are thousands more injured and in emergency shelters. The eruption on the 25th October killed Mardijan, Mount Merapi's gate-keeper, his role was to calm the volcanoes angry spirits and it was in doing this that he died, on the slopes of Mount Merapi, which he considered his home. So soon after the event, it is impossible to tell the magnitude of devastation these eruptions will cause, however it is likely that amount of dead and injured will rise and unlikely that the those living around Mount Merapi live's will ever be the same again.

Volquiznoes

This is an even lazier post than the previous one, although I did do a page of the new zine today so pressure is building in the metaphorical magma chamber. Earlier today when on a popular quiz website I thought I would search for volcano to see if there were any quizzes, there are a good few, which I'm sure everyone would love to try out!
http://www.sporcle.com/games/tags/volcano
I found out that I really can't spell; apart from of course Eyjafjalljokull which is a word I have no trouble with. I also don't know as many US states as I used to, my knowledge of wars and explorers is also shocking. The only other piece of news from today is that by putting any word inbetween vol and no i.e. volquizno you get a great pun, the next zine issue should prove this. 

Songs of the Volcano

This is quite a lazy post for which I apologise, but basically I have been listening to some volcano related music recently. And when I say related I really just mean songs or bands with the word volcano in. If it was actually music made by volcanoes then that would be far more impressive and worth blogging about. Firstly we have Volcano Choir, who are very Bon Ivery (probably due to the fact that they have one of Bon Iver's members in) so great if you like that sort of thing.

The second piece of volcano music is from Islands, they are Canadian; if that fact doesn't make you want to listen to them, then nothing will. (thanks to Chris for pointing them out)


Hopefully I will do a less lazy post soon. Fashion issue is coming along nicely, so soon you should all be dressing like lovely volcanoes.