Eclipses across North America – a wake up call

12 thoughts on “Eclipses across North America – a wake up call”

1. Interesting that the paths for both eclipses intersect in Texas. Does that bode something significant for the Lone Star State?

   The October 2023 eclipse also goes through almost all of Central America and the Brazilian rainforest. Will they be significantly impacted?

2. Thank you, Marjorie, for thinking of Canada as “robust and resourceful”! I am a neurotic Canadian, always anxious for this country…

3. I think that my compatriot, Andre, is spot on with his observations concerning Canada and its denial of Quebec nationalism. in the last provincial election in Quebec, the incumbent nationalist and conservative Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) government was reelected with 90 of the 125 seats in Quebec’s National Assembly, despite only winning about 40% of the popular vote. The CAQ is a nationalist party with many former members of the secessionist Parti Quebecois and the ostensibly federalist Liberal Party of Quebec active within the party. The Liberals won 21 seats with only 14.37% of the vote, while the secessionist Quebec Solidaire and Parti Quebecois parties only earned 11 and 3 seats respectively despite winning 15.42% and 14.60% of the popular vote.
   The CAQ government has openly challenged the Trudeau government in Ottawa with its use of the notwithstanding clause in Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to impose discriminatory policies against the Anglophone minority in Bill 96. such as the right to offer access to instruction in English to non-Anglophones as well as the imposition of additional course credits in French for Anglophone students to complete their education in community colleges (CEGEPS). Under Bill 21, Premier Francois Legault’s CAQ government has also banned any public employee from displaying religious symbols, such as the wearing of crucifixes, yarmulkes, hijabs, niqabs, burkas and turbans, or the display of a kirpan. In addition to Bills 21 and 96, the Quebec government allowed the Parti Quebecois to table and pass a successful motion that defies federal law requiring federal and provincial members of the House of Commons and the provincial legislatures to swear an oath of allegiance to the monarch. Instead, members of Quebec’s National Assembly voted that members must only swear an oath to the people of Quebec in order to be seated and that any oath sworn to King Charles was voluntary and not binding.
   Ottawa has also passed amended the Official Languages Act to allow a greater and more prominent use of French in Quebec in federally regulated fields such as interprovincial and international travel and banking, further eroding the historic rights of the Anglophone minority in Quebec. These issues are bound to come to the fore in the upcoming years as court challenges are filed and the cases make their way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
   So far, Justin Trudeau’s minority Liberal government has shown no signs of action in countering the regressive legislation passed by Legault’s CAQ government, which is curious, seeing how such laws openly defy the Constitution Act of 1982 whose passage through the Parliaments of Canada and the U.K. was guided by no other than former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Justin’s father, a man who had no time or patience for Quebec nationalism.

4. @Larry, there have been growing calls in the U.S. to impose stringent ethics requirements on the Supreme Court (it’s the only court in the federal judiciary that is exempt—it’s essentially self-policing), and to expand the court to address the current corruptly engineered far-right imbalance (the Constitution doesn’t specify a set number of justices, and in fact the number has varied throughout U.S. history).

   Bills to make these changes have been introduced in both houses of Congress. Of course, with a closely divided legislature, these bills don’t currently have a chance of becoming law, but they have symbolic value and can be used as a rallying cry for change leading up to the national elections in November of 2024, as can the rage at the Republicans’ (including SCOTUS’) ongoing efforts to curb women’s reproductive rights and human rights generally. The conservative SCOTUS has also been busily hampering states’ ability to maintain limits on gun ownership and access to firearms, which efforts have a majority of Americans, pardon the pun “up in arms,” and which is another huge issue in the upcoming elections.

   If the ideological composition of Congress can move sufficiently in the direction of the Democrats, the current situation can and will change, because the majority of Americans are angered by the status quo and frightened by the vocal minority that is enamored of firearms, misogyny, homophobia, and authoritarianism in all its forms. People are more politically activated now than at any time since the Sixties, and they want their country back.

   Everything hinges on the national elections in November of 2024, and April is traditionally when the the national campaigning intensifies. I’m sure that eclipse augurs trouble.

   But what else is new? There’s always some degree of political trouble here. But perhaps this time, some of it will be what John L. Lewis, the civil rights activist, called “good trouble.”

5. Southern Illinois also experienced the total solar eclipse in 2017, as it will in 2024. It’s the home of Kaskaskia (millennium old indigenous ceremonial site), Champaign (Caterpillar tractor HQ and labor unrest including worker death in forge) and Springfield (Abraham Lincoln’s home and tomb).

   • This area of southern Illinois/southeast Missouri/western Kentucky also has the New Madrid geological fault running through it. Some have wondered aloud if these eclipses will trigger a major earthquake. Time will tell, of course.

6. I think along the lines of Andre about Canada’s Neptune. We don’t always see ourselves clearly and like to project a nice guy image to the world when with our Aries ascendant and Pluto-Saturn opposition we are quite capable of being ruthless in our goals–just ask our Indigenous people or look back to how our troops fought in both Great Wars. I think Neptune here also indicates our strong identification with socialized medicare that requires adjustments from time to time with our ally the USA (Saturn in the 7th) who has tried to claim it is a kind of subsidy in free trade agreements. Bill Meridian has written that countries with Uranus conjunct the Sun (like Canada) tend to be fractured by disunity and I think Andre is right that the seams may come apart when the transiting Pluto-Saturn opposition is square Canada’s Saturn-Pluto opposition in the mid-2030s.

   Trudeau’s Moon at 17 Aries will also be hit by the 19 Aries April 2024 solar eclipse along with Canada’s ascendant at 16 Aries. But I’m glad Marjorie brought up climatic events because since the unprecedented wildfires of this past spring I am wondering if next spring’s eclipse (and the March 2025 eclipse in Aries) suggests more of the same. The IPCC’s “final warning” report came out just a few weeks before the April 30th eclipse at 29° Aries which I felt in a fire sign at the “last chance” degree of Aries really reflected this stark warning to humanity. In my home province of British Columbia we are battling the largest wildfire ever recorded in Donnie Creek in northeast BC and it has occurred (along with other notable fires) while Uranus has transited our 19 Taurus Pluto and now 21 Taurus ascendant. Uranus will be at 21 Taurus conjunct BC’s ascendant again at the April 2024 eclipse. I figured on some kind of natural disaster and thought maybe earthquake (which could still happen) but for now it looks like it’s going to be wildfires, probably followed by flooding.

   Of course this could all provoke a huge crisis for Trudeau, especially since the province of Alberta wants to fight him on the federal government’s climate change initiatives. They were called a “Just Transition” but that freaked people out who thought it smacked of the Great Reset and saw it as a threat to their way of life based on oil and gas production. So now the plan is called “Sustainable Jobs”. There is so much denial in Alberta that conspiracy theories abound about climate activists setting this spring’s fires to force rural people off their land and into cities and also to rev up support for climate change legislation. Alberta’s premier buys into it all and wants investigations into how the fires started. If you think it’s only the US that has nutty people, Canada has its fair share too.

   Thanks for this, Marjorie. Always good to look ahead.

   • Cheers Laurien always a treat to see your comments.

     I do have a quibble over the issue of forest fires.

     Arson is part of the story, in any fire season. To diminish it as conspiracy or as nutty doesn’t seem to be well considered.

     The Coastal fire centre here in BC has recently revealed that all 46 fires on Vancouver Island this year are human caused.

     A Cold Lake man facing ten arson charges in Alberta.

     Just two years ago RCMP charged a 54 year old woman in Glendon AB with 32 counts of arson.

     The Nova Scotia RCMP recently determined that three Pictou County fires were deliberately set.

     The Alberta RCMP Forestry Crimes Unit has ongoing investigations into 12 suspicious wildfires.

     Premiere Danielle Smith has hired a team of professional arson investigators, which does seem to be a reasonable response to what is going on in Alberta.

     One might ask, who’s denying what now?

     • Hi PC! Always nice to hear from you! It is true that a small number of forest fires are set by arsonists and always have been but to claim without evidence that these people are climate activists further polarizes people on the issue and distracts from the overall causes of the current wildfire crisis. Most of the arsonists are probably people with psychological problems or who have other motivations like covering up crimes and insurance fraud. The Narwhal did an excellent treatment of this subject at https://thenarwhal.ca/wildfire-canada-explainer/ and included some relevant facts. They quote BC Wildfire Service figures as of June 20th indicating more than a third of the 460 wildfires were caused by lightning. 275 were attributed to human carelessness, not arson, involving fireworks, discarded cigarettes, vehicle and engine use, and industrial activity to name a few. The Narwhal quotes Alberta Wildfire as saying arson is not an emerging trend they are worried about right now, and the RCMP as saying that most of the current fires are not suspicious. As of June 12th the RCMP Forestry Crimes Unit was investigating 12 suspicious wildfires. In 2022 it was 21, and in 2021 it was 40. So a very small total of the hundreds of fires that we are dealing with.

       The RCMP and other police forces have always investigated cases of arson. Albertans don’t need a special investigation into them, although a public inquiry into the causes of forest fires in general might come up with some things we can do to cut the numbers down. The underlying cause is that the forests are tinder dry due to climate change and then it only takes a spark from lightning or human activity to cause a massive fire. But there is also evidence that some of our forestry practices contribute to fires including replanting softwood monocultures that burn easily. There are other interesting and feasible ideas to cut down on wildfire risk. For example, some scientists think that bringing back the beaver will lessen the impact of droughts and cut down on fires. By giving credence to conspiracy theories about climate activists being responsible for the current crisis, we are missing out on opportunities to deal with the real issues. The denialism does seem like a kind of a collective insanity to me. I worry that we aren’t going to get our act together on this and that things are just going to get more and more catastrophic. I think it’s an existential issue that should go beyond partisan politics and everyone should work together on it but that is probably hoping for too much.

       Oh, I should throw in a bit of astrology, lol. Maybe it’s not just the conspiracy theories but the smoke itself blanketing our country and parts of the US that is part of the current Neptune transit at 27° Pisces squaring Canada’s Moon at 28° Gemini. If so, it’s more evidence that we’ll be dealing with this for a few years yet.

       • Growing up we learned the difference between forest fires/wild fires and the distinctions between human/natural causes, and arson. Those used to figure prominently when hearing about any blaze of note.

         There are many factors at play and I tend to bristle when some are readily dismissed and others seemingly overplayed. Questioning received wisdom is too often now referred to as denialism, even though it has always been a vital part of scientific inquiry.

         The human element has always figured prominently with fires. It was no accident that during the lockdowns we had record low levels.

         As you mentioned above, the nature of our forests have also changed considerably. From what were mixed, naturally generated growth to now what in so many cases amount to being extensive plantations. A monoculture certainly burns differently to a relatively mixed canopy, especially in the absence of our national manager of wetlands – the beaver.

         Sadly, add to the mix that forest management is rarely explored as an aspect in how fires now burn. Too much suppression allows for abundant undergrowth to develop, rather than being cleared by small relatively cool burns. Fires now burn hotter, fed by the uncleared brush. Some traditional First Nations practices employed controlled burns, to better manage the forest resources.

         If Canadians are to find their way to low carbon energy by abandoning the abundant Natural Gas, Coal & the oil patch, it must make sense. Far more people globally die of the cold rather than the heat.

         The stellar performance of CANDU reactors, could be the much hoped for answer to net zero. Wind and solar are intermittent by nature and are no match for the constancy of nuclear.

         Ontario abandoned all their coal plants, supported by their nuclear fleet. Happily the supply chain is 96% Canadian with the spent fuel all safely contained.

         I would actually quite look forward to see one of your deep dives on the CANDU Laurien. Increasing the fleet by tenfold would lead the way to power an all electric, low carbon Canada.

         It is a bit hypocritical for the Canadian Gov’t to to dismantle natural gas and oil production while simultaneously exporting vast quantities of coal to China.

         Increasing taxes with no viable plan to undertake the monumental shift to net zero can easily be seen as a mere tax grab.

         Perhaps the above are just part of the Neptune smoke and mirrors.

7. The negative view of Canada’s yodal Neptune has been widely shared by Canadians over generations searching for a national identity. Canada does tend to underwhelm itself because of its dazzling neighbor. That is why, for example, it will probably cling to the monarchy long after Australia, New Zealand or Jamaica. It is at times a neurotic Cancer country. It often overcompensates its patriotism superficially and lives in deep denial of the existential threat of Québec nationalism which it has consistently failed to address. All this will come to the surface in spades with transiting Pluto’s square to its Pluto-Saturn opposition. This will be highlighted in coming months by the end of the Trudeau political dynasty.

8. “Saturn in Libra puts an emphasis on cooperation and a responsible justice system – neither of which are too obvious at present. So maybe a wake up call to move towards a stance of integrity, decency, ethics and a willingness to take other’s viewpoints into consideration.”

   My gut take is that SCOTA has taken on too corrupt a lead…reigning in rights which it is supposed to defend. The subtle and not-so-subtle paid-for-trips from special interest groups, etc, has corrupted the vision and intent of SCOTA.

   Perhaps it is time to can the entire court and begin anew?