
Lunasa is the start of the prime campfire and stargazing season – bringing the unique combination of both warmth and longer nights “Sunlit Summer”, see the 8 season names here. Lunasa arrives again, but it’s not like last year, nor the year before. Why not? Because the many nested and interwoven cycles of our solar system make each stargazing season unique, and hence make every Lunasa unique! Last year the moon was out of the way, giving great Perseids! This year, however, the moon mostly washes out the best times in the middle of the night – still, you can get some decent Perseids before moonrise, which is ~10:30 pm on August 13. Plus, here are a half dozen online Lunasa ritual opportunities!
Can you imagine what the reaction would be if a Muslim Imam carried out a terrorist attack on US soil, targeting a list of elected leaders, killing two and wounding another in two separate attacks, before being stopped? What if this was all motivated, by the killer’s own words, by his Muslim faith? This would be running 24/7 on conservative media for days at least, if not weeks, and there could well be national policy changes like banning immigration from Muslim countries or especially if he had a background in another country. That terrorist attack happened a couple weeks ago, with the only difference was that the terrorist was Christian, radicalized by Christian websites and such – standard stochastic terrorism (see below). So the story quickly vanished, and even when stories ran on it, they downplayed or *didn’t even mention* his Christian motivation.
Happy Summer Solstice! In case you missed the Stonehenge Summer Solstice Sunrise simulcast, you may be able to catch the Stonehenge Summer Solstice *Sunset* simulcast! You can catch the Solstice Sunset livestream from Stonehenge, with coverage from 3:30 – 5:30 pm EDT *today*. (Also, it is Winter Solstice/Yule for those in the Southern Hemisphere). Any Summer Solstice is the peak of the Sun’s presence on Earth, and this year we are just passing the peak of the 11 year solar activity cycle, with our time for the best auroras until 2034 drawing to a close within about a year from now.