Eclipse 2024 notes

Monday, April 8, 2024, will be the nearest a total solar eclipse has come to Tulsa in my lifetime.

The path of totality stretches from south Texas to northern New England. Oklahoma southeast of a line from Antlers to Poteau will have a total eclipse, and Tulsa will reach 95%. By comparison, totality for the August 21, 2017, eclipse was about a four-hour drive away near Kansas City, and Tulsa reached 89% obscuration. Tulsa also reached 89% obscuration in the annular solar eclipse of May 12, 1994. Last October 14th's annular eclipse which crossed Texas covered 70% of the sun in Tulsa.

Monday will be the last total eclipse to cross North America until August 12, 2045, when Tulsa will be in the path of totality. There will be a partial solar eclipse covering most of North America on January 14, 2029; in Tulsa about 56% of the sun will be blocked.

If you plan to observe the eclipse here are some resources you may find helpful:

• Pivotal Weather has very useful cloud-cover forecast maps based on various weather models, zooming in on specific regions along the path of totality.
• TimeAndDate.Com interactive eclipse map: Zoom in and click on the map to get specific times (start and end of partial eclipse, start and end of total eclipse, peak), peak obscuration percentage, weather forecast, and average cloud cover since 2000.
• TimeAndDate.com comprehensive eclipse resource
• Todd Vorenkamp for B&H Photo on how to photograph a solar eclipse, including important precautions for the safety of your eyes and your camera equipment
• Reports of traffic problems before and after the 2017 eclipse offer some useful perspective
• Many cities and towns in the path of totality are offering special eclipse events; check the official website of the town where you're headed for activities of interest and useful information on parking and places for observation.

In weird news, Oklahoma City Public Schools has decided to treat students of Native American descent as ignorant, superstitious pagans:

"A lot of tribes believe it's a time of change. Some believe it's a ceremonial time. Some believe it's a natural occurrence to respect and not be outside," said Star Yellowfish, director of Native American Student Services.

OKCPS is preparing its teachers, students and staff by finding alternatives for students who may have differing views of the eclipse.

"We're prepping our schools and teachers help them understand that a lot of our native students may have tribal customs and traditions that aren't in line with what the school activity is," Yellowfish explained.

The district is home to over 2,600 Native American students, with nearly 80 tribes represented. Each culture has differing values.

"There's all these different tribes that have all these different customs, and really we just want teachers to know who are your native students, what are they going to do during the eclipse, to notify their parents what their activities will be so they can decide if they want their kid involved or not," Yellowfish said.

OKCPS has sent an informative letter to teachers as a way to talk to their students as they get ready for Monday's eclipse.

"We want to make sure those native students have a fun place to go if they're not supposed to be outside, or if their families feel like they need to be kept home that they get an excused absence," Yellowfish stated.

For the students who will be in attendance, the district will provide safe spaces to pray, meditate or practice stillness.

Star Yellowfish (wasn't that the name of a Dr. Seuss character?) might be interested to know that the vast majority of Oklahomans who identify as American Indian also identify as Christian. They understand as well as non-Indian Christians that God has established an order in the heavens that can be studied and predicted, setting the celestial bodies in their courses and establishing the laws of motion, and that the timing and extent of a solar eclipse is a function of geometry and physics, something that can be calculated centuries and millennia in advance.

Only around 240 solar eclipses of any sort occur in any given century, where the moon crosses the earth's orbit around the sun and the alignment occurs over the part of the earth that is in daylight at the time. Recall that 70% of the earth's surface is water, plus there are uninhabited regions like Antarctica, and the earth's population was much smaller in ancient times. There was a very small likelihood that any given person, living out his life within a short distance of his birthplace, would witness a significant solar eclipse. According to TimeAndDate.com, it takes about 375 years for a total solar eclipse to happen again at the same location. Partial eclipses are visible at any given place every 2.5 years (more frequently the closer you are to the poles), but most of these must be a very low percentage of obscuration.

It's telling that Yellowfish is so vague with her claims -- "a lot of tribes." Surely the director of Native American Student Services for Oklahoma City Public Schools should have examples of specific tribal beliefs and practices involving eclipses. A significantly noticeable solar eclipse would be a rare event for any given location. How would these tribes have known to "stay inside" if they didn't have the mathematical and scientific knowledge to predict an eclipse?

I'm reminded of Mark Twain's book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court where a man from the 20th century finds himself in Arthur's Britain, and uses his historical knowledge of a solar eclipse to impress the Britons and gain power. In 1504, Christopher Columbus, shipwrecked on Jamaica, used an almanac's accurate prediction of a lunar eclipse to gain better treatment from the natives.

My Celtic ancestors were delivered from paganism by the Gospel in the 5th and 6th centuries, thanks to Patrick and Columba, my English ancestors in the 7th century, thanks to Augustine of Canterbury, my German ancestors in the 8th century, thanks to Boniface (and his axe). In the 17th century the Gospel came to the native peoples of North America, and they turned to follow Jesus, translating the Bible into their own languages. The aboriginal peoples of North America also embraced the practices of civilization that they observed in the new European arrivals, learning to farm, developing systems of writing, building permanent settlements with permanent structures, establishing institutions of common and higher education, holding to their own cultural traditions while learning to succeed as part of the majority American culture. To this day, people of aboriginal American descent make use of the advances of science in medicine, transportation, illumination, computing, personal comfort, and, of course, slot machines. Every culture had pre-scientific myths about what they saw in the skies: No reason to be embarrassed about them, but also no reason to pretend that they usefully model reality.

KOCO's Facebook post about this story drew a pile of AWFLs and pretendians joining OKCPS in their virtue-signalling. The only specific tribal belief anyone could cite was a 2017 statement from the Navajo nation claiming that their practice was ever and always to stay indoors and fast, because the moon is having intercourse with the sun. Given the short duration of eclipses, fasting doesn't seem like much of a sacrifice. I have my doubts that ancient people would have understood that an eclipse was caused by the moon; the new moon wouldn't be visible in the sky until it begins to cover part of the sun. During the 2023 annular eclipse, the Navajo banned visitors to Monument Valley. I have a feeling that this "tradition" suddenly emerged in modern times. A quick newspapers.com didn't turn up any references to Navajo eclipse tradition in Arizona papers before 2017.

The 2017 Navajo statement reads less like an account of historical practice and more like rabbinical guidance offered to the anxiously observant, applying traditional practices connected with death and birth to novel circumstances (the "death" and "rebirth" of the sun). There is a hint here that this tradition was manufactured in response to demand:

Our office has been bombarded with phone calls and emails, asking and requesting that the Diné Institute post some teachings and general advisement for anyone who may have questions and seek advisement on the correct way to observe the Solar Eclipse, which is set to occur on, Monday, August 21, 2017.

Without the ability to predict an eclipse, a culture could only react to its surprising onset, perhaps by making loud noises to drive away the big black squirrel or frog trying to eat the sun.

What seems to be driving this is a push throughout the Anglosphere to separate people of aboriginal descent from the rest of society. This is a crucial element of the project to use aboriginal people to bypass democratic control of government. (This process is much further along in New Zealand, but a push in this direction in Australia was rebuffed.) People of aboriginal descent must be seen and must see themselves as other, separate from and spiritually superior to the majority population, with special needs and special perspectives in conflict with those of the majority, and special sensitivities that must be honored. (In New Zealand, for example, Maori taboos justify banning non-Maori from certain beaches.) This in turn justifies two systems of justice, dual sovereignty, and co-governance, where the "representatives" of the minority of people who have aboriginal descent have a veto over the decisions of the elected representatives of all the people.

Historically, this way of thinking is alien to Oklahoma, where the policy of allotment and full citizenship before statehood allowed people of American Indian heritage full participation in the economic, political, and cultural development of the state, where people with and without tribal citizenship live in the same neighborhoods, send their children to the same schools, worship at the same churches, work at the same jobs, and marry one another. Many (perhaps the vast majority of) tribal citizens have minuscule blood quanta and whatever attachment they may have to tribal tradition was acquired by personal study rather than handed down through the generations. Unless we want our state to be ruled by unaccountable authority, we need to push back against narratives of division and alienation and affirm our common interests while celebrating the distinctive traditions of our ancestors. Ancient explanatory myths for an eclipse may give us a glimpse of our ancestors' understanding of the world, and they may amuse us, but we wouldn't employ them as scientific facts.

Meanwhile, some Christians are wondering if the eclipse, or the crossing of this eclipse's path with that of the 2017 eclipse (almost 7 years ago), is a sign of the End Times. Atlas Obscura offers a map of all total eclipses from 2000 to 2025 showing that it's a common thing for eclipse paths to cross, although most of the time it happens over the 70% of the earth's surface that is water. The strong earthquake that hit New Jersey Thursday morning and the expected abundance of cicadas this year are mentioned as "signs" in connection with the eclipse.

For Bible-believing Christians, the darkening of the sun could be a prompt to remember God's 9th plague upon Egypt, where a thick darkness engulfed the Egyptians for three days while the Israelites enjoyed sunlight, a plague echoed in the fifth bowl of God's wrath in Revelation 16. The plagues can be read as the One True God announcing his triumph over the idols of the Egyptians. They might think on the prophecy of Joel, quoted by Peter on Pentecost:

I will show wonders in the heavens
and on the earth,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.
The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
And everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Here in Eastertide, the eclipse should bring to mind the darkness that fell over the land for three hours as Jesus was dying on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins.

If you want something profound and religious to do when you witness a total eclipse, you could recite scripture and prayers for the occasion.

I gather that Jewish scholars historically regarded a solar eclipse as an ill omen, and that no blessing was to be recited. But this article mentions a respected Lithuanian rabbi who witnessed an eclipse in 1922 and "declared that it's a mitzvah [a righteous deed] to watch the eclipse to see how the sun is a creation and not a creator, how HaShem [the Lord] smites the Avodos Zarah [strange worship, idolatry]."

This inspired a Jewish layman to suggest it would be appropriate after the end of totality to recite the first six verses of Psalm 148 ("Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light."), Psalm 121 ("The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night."), and Psalm 150 ("Praise ye the LORD. Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power."), followed by this blessing, Yotzer Or (Creator of light):

Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the universe, Creator of light and darkness, Who makes peace and fashions all things. In mercy do You give light to the earth and to all who dwell upon it, and in Your goodness do you renew every day, continuously, the work of Creation. How great are Your works, Adonai! In wisdom you made them all, filling the earth with your creatures. The Ruler Who alone was exalted before Creation, Who has been praised, glorified and raised on high since ancient days, Eternal God, in Your abundant mercies, have mercy upon us. Our powerful God, our rock-like fortress, our shield of redemption, be a stronghold for us! Blessed God, great in knowledge, prepared and formed the rays of the sun. The beneficent One created honor for God's Name, and placed luminaries around God's might. The heads of God's legions, holy ones, exalters of the Almighty, are always relating the honor of God and God's holiness. May You be blessed, Adonai our God, beyond the praises of Your handiwork and beyond the brightness of the luminaries that You created--may they glorify You!

May You shine a new light on Zion, and may we all soon be worthy of its radiance.

Blessed are You, Adonai, Creator of the heavenly lights.

Or as a simple thanks for the opportunity to see such a marvel, you could say the Shehecheyanu:

Blessed are You, L-rd our G-d, King of the Universe, who has granted us life, sustained us and enabled us to reach this occasion.