Anticipation is riding high as Saturday’s annular solar eclipse approaches, with millions across North America looking forward to the second to last such event for the next two decades in our part of the world. Ideal viewing conditions are forecast by the National Weather Service for the duration of the eclipse, with clear and sunny […]
Ryan Spencer
Posted inArts & Culture
Black Sky Affair
2023’s annual Perseid meteor shower has arrived and conditions including modest waning moonlight promise hopeful viewing. Oklahoma summers are marvelous for stargazing – as the heat eases with the setting sun, stunning celestial sights break forth — and this perennial celestial event is no exception. Partly cloudy skies with a 20 percent chance of late […]
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Let’s queer the air
While Stef Fortney is no low-key human being, Out in the Open, her Guthrie Pride event this year, aims to offer guests a relaxed air. “No titties or taints” is her edict, and Fortney hopes allies and families will turn out June 24 from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. The weather in Guthrie is expected […]
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In living memory
To donate to Clayton Bahr’s medical bills and end of life care, please visit his GoFundMe page. The heat clung to the final summer Sunday of the year as dozen after dozen poured into the Tower Theatre to mourn a man still amongst them. Those hundreds gathered for “A Toast to the Good Life — […]
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Black Sky Affair: Artemis I
Son of Zeus, god of the sun, immortal. Olympian. All know Apollo. Influential still, if only in the realm of philosophical ideals and the context of ages past. His time, however, is nearly done. Artemis — Apollo’s twin, goddess of the hunt, for millennia intimately associated with our moon — stands poised to outleap her […]
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Back Sky Affair – Blood Moon Eclipse
Oklahoma night skies are due to be graced once again with a full blood moon eclipse on May 15. This time, however, we won’t have to stay up until the wee hours to catch it. Like celestial clockwork, these eclipses occur twice annually but aren’t visible everywhere across the globe, nor do they always cover […]
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Black Sky Affair: Oh, Be A Fine Guy (or Gal), Kiss Me
No, Black Sky Affair hasn’t lost its mind. Not yet. The above is a mnemonic device for remembering the seven types of main-sequence stars in descending order from hottest to coolest according to the Morgan-Keenan-Kellman spectral classification. In 1835 Auguste Comte, French philosopher and originator of the school of positivism, notoriously predicted humankind would forever […]
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Black Sky Affair: Ingenuity
Astoundingly, we have flown a helicopter on Mars. Aptly christened “Ingenuity,” its relatively modest size belies its colossal achievement in being the first powered aircraft to fly on another world, and that within an unforgiving environment radically different from our own. Borne to our planetary neighbor slung underneath the Perseverance rover (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s […]
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Period Poverty
Menstruation can come as a surprise, but for many, the reality of being unable to afford hygiene products becomes a regular obstacle. “I was in seventh grade at school and I got my period in class. I went to the restroom and literally thought I was dying … Later, my best friend got a pad […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Black Sky Affair
Don’t Look Up exemplifies Hollywood’s obsession with space rocks slamming into our planet wreaking havoc on Earth-shattering scales, such as Jennifer Lawrence’s obsession with a certain American general’s ten-dollar-a-shot grift fired at White House neophytes. But, flippancy aside, such catastrophic events have undoubtedly occurred and most certainly will. Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid roughly […]