The Eclipse
On the eighth of April, a celestial dance ignites! The sun, a fiery titan, waltzes with the moon, a celestial enchantress. Twilight emerges as the moon eclipses the sun, and a blazing crown takes its place, a heavenly counterpoint. We hold our breath. Then, a triumphant roar—the sun breaks free, banishing the inky veil. Light floods back, a testament to the cosmos’ dance. This epic spectacle, forever etched in memory, becomes a tale whispered through generations—the day the sun danced with the moon! Who doesn’t like a good eclipse? They are the stuff of legends. This solar eclipse promises a longer, darker experience with an active sun, and it’s accessible to a large population. Why is this one special? Duration and Darkness: • This year’s eclipse will be longer, with a duration of nearly 4½ minutes. • During the path of totality, where the moon completely blocks out the sun’s disk, the sky will fall darker than before. Active Sun: • The sun will be close to solar maximum in 2024, which is the peak of its roughly 11-year activity cycle. • Bright, petal-like streamers of plasma will extend from the sun’s outer atmosphere (the solar corona). • There’s an increased chance of a coronal mass ejection, a large puff of hot gas blasted away from the sun’s surface. Accessible Path: • Approximately 32 million people will be inside the path of totality, which is about 2½ times as many as during the 2017 eclipse. • Major East Coast cities like Baltimore to Boston are only about 200 miles from the path of totality. • This accessibility means millions more people will witness this astronomical...
Everything is Aw-ful
20th Anniversary Issue It is delightful to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Soulfulliving.com. I was thrilled when Valerie asked me to be part of it. It is good to see anything thrive beyond five years. The dedication, the hard work, the time, the heartache, the jubilation, the satisfaction of making something is a thing to applaud. Producing a body of work is a glorious thing. I could revisit the essays I had written for Soulfulliving. From 2003 to 2009, there were 10 pieces I can point to with pride. There is melancholy in visiting the past. You can see where you were and what your dreams may have been for the future. In the 10 years since I wrote my last essay, life has been a challenge. You know that adage, “when life gives you lemons make lemonade.” It felt buried under a pile of lemons and I wasn’t feeling positive about anything. Years of workshops, visualizations, manifestation rituals, and vision boards and I was no further toward attaining my goals. And I was in a quandary. I didn’t know what to write for this anniversary celebration. After all, everything was awful. Wasn’t it? Politics across the globe seem to be more divisive than ever. We are facing a climate crisis of epic proportions. Refugees have truly become people without homes. Social media, which once brought people together, is creating fault lines in relationships. Shootings are happening at an alarming rate. Terrorist attacks are increasing. We are no longer safe in our places of worship, homes, at the movies or out shopping. Yikes. When I was young, my...Our Sponsor
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