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Showing posts from January, 2018

Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie

I thought it would be fun to read this series, since there is a British TV show based on it that looks interesting. But after reading the following, I'm done: Hildegard Staunton was paler than he remembered from her husband's funeral. Her short hair was blonde and curly; her eyes were large and green. Her eyebrows were pencil-thin and she wore no lipstick; as a result, her face looked as if her feelings had been washed away. So, it's only possible to read feelings on a woman's face if she's wearing lipstick? I had no idea! If the book had been written in the '50s or something, I probably could have overlooked this, but no, it was published in 2012. I may be overreacting, but there's a lot of good stuff to read and this time, I choose not to spend my time on something that implies that women absolutely must wear makeup or they can't get along in society.

More of Chad's photos of the eclipse, 21 August 2017

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These are small, low-quality versions of the photos. If you're interested in high-quality files, you can contact Chad directly. His email is included in a link at the bottom of the post. Stepping to Totality, Chad's composite of photos throughout the eclipse. The center photo, during totality, is without any kind of filter. The blue filter shows sun spots really clearly. The orange filter looks like what we saw through our eclipse glasses. Photos without a filter during totality, which lasted over 2 minutes. Check out the sun flares! The Diamond Ring, which appears at the beginning and end of the total eclipse, as the sun starts to appear again. This is kind of what it looked like during totality. These are the two prints that Chad has available. You can email him here for info.

Total Solar Eclipse, 21 August 2017

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Photo by our good friend Chad Roberts .* This is what I wrote in my journal not long after we saw totality in our front yard for about 2 minutes 19 seconds: That was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. I’m afraid that I’m so tired my brain is going to forget how it looked – black circle surrounded by glowing white flames, sunset colors along all horizons around us, very bright red planet to the south, very bright white planet above, dim star next to the sun, nearly dark, shadow bands along the sidewalk just before and after, the diamond ring as the totality ended. It was awesome and beautiful and amazing. When it hit totality, everybody started exclaiming and shouting like a much louder response to fireworks or something. The response almost seemed involuntary. Everyone said the animals would freak out, but it seemed like it was just the humans who freaked out. Really, it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. So beautiful and awesome and