{"id":1769,"date":"2010-08-14T15:01:33","date_gmt":"2010-08-14T21:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1769"},"modified":"2010-08-14T15:01:33","modified_gmt":"2010-08-14T21:01:33","slug":"falling-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1769","title":{"rendered":"Falling Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A multicolored, long Perseid crossing the sky (Wikipedia).<\/p><\/div>\n

Last night after walking the dogs I spread an old blanket on the ground and lay watching the stars.<\/p>\n

The Perseid meteor shower<\/a> is under way, and in 15 minutes I saw five meteors.<\/p>\n

One was just a blip of light, two were quick, and two left long streaks.<\/p>\n

I had felt emotionally low all day. Isaac Bonewits’ passing<\/a> was part of the cause, but only part, I think.<\/p>\n

We were friends at a distance, but rarely saw one another. He moved East, and I have attended only one festival there in my life<\/a>, and it was not one that he came to.<\/p>\n

The time of year is part of it. After all those years in the classroom, mid-August still seems like the end of summer.<\/p>\n

Last week I was talking with a friend at the university library. She mentioned that university convocation, which is followed by college and department meetings, comes next week. She said that I flinched when I heard that\u2014even though it no longer affects me, even though it no longer means the end of summer break.<\/p>\n

Back when our ancestors chopped with stone, they no doubt watched the night sky much more than we do. And they saw falling stars, of course, and no doubt they made analogies between meteors and human lives.<\/p>\n

Isaac’s was one of the long streaks\u2014at least so far as we Pagans are concerned. But there is so much black between the stars.<\/p>\n

Still, watch the sky-show if you can. It is all that there is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night after walking the dogs I spread an old blanket on the ground and lay watching the stars. The Perseid meteor shower is under way, and in 15 minutes I saw five meteors. One was just a blip of light, two were quick, and two left long streaks. I had felt emotionally low all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[96,14,5],"class_list":["post-1769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-death","tag-druidry","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-sx","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1214,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1214","url_meta":{"origin":1769,"position":0},"title":"Did a ‘Pagan’ Bury the Staffordshire Hoard?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The \"Staffordshire Hoard\" is a cache of 7th-century Anglo-Saxon sword jewels and other items recently found in England (and a great boost for metal-detector sales, no doubt).The caption on one slide of the golden hoard suggests that because a gold cross was folded in on itself before burial, the person\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11887,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11887","url_meta":{"origin":1769,"position":1},"title":"Why Is the Hippo Goddess Holding a Bull by a Chain in the Northern Sky?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 21, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"This carving comes from a Greco-Roman-era Egyptian temple in Esna,where decorated walls are being carefully cleaned and original colors seen again. As workers in Egypt remove soot and dirt from the temple, sometimes with a mixture of alcohol and distilled water, the original painted carvings and hieroglyphics beneath are so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/bulls-leg.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/bulls-leg.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/bulls-leg.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/bulls-leg.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":934,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=934","url_meta":{"origin":1769,"position":2},"title":"The Wind that Shakes the Pine Trees","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a sunny day with a brisk wind blowing. Pine needles are in the air. M. and I both slept in a little last night after returning at midnight from one of the Spanish Peaks International Celtic Music Festival concerts.We went to one last year too, to hear Kim Robertson's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Celts\"","block_context":{"text":"Celts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=celts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":113,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=113","url_meta":{"origin":1769,"position":3},"title":"Weapons of Singing Destruction","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Since Google sends some readers seeking news and photos about such new Arab singing stars as Haifa Wehbe and Nancy Ajram to this blog, here are two articles by Charles Paul Freund that might interest you. \"Look Who's Rocking the Casbah: The Revolutionary Implications of Arab Music Videos,\" Reason magazine,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Aphrodite\"","block_context":{"text":"Aphrodite","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=aphrodite"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8023,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8023","url_meta":{"origin":1769,"position":4},"title":"Being an “Oxbridge Scholar”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday's mail brought my contributor's copy of The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, to which I contributed an article on contemporary Paganism. There ought to be a long German compound word for \"fear of looking at something you wrote several years ago.\" The back cover of this hefty\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0521509831","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4566,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4566","url_meta":{"origin":1769,"position":5},"title":"CFP: Culture and Cosmos","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Call for papers . . . CULTURE AND COSMOS Vol. 17,\u00a0 no. 1: Literature and the Stars We are inviting submissions for Vol. 17 no 1 (Spring\/Summer 2013) on Literature and the Stars. Papers may focus on any time period or culture, and should deal either with representations of astronomy\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"astrology\"","block_context":{"text":"astrology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=astrology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1769"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1771,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769\/revisions\/1771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}