Those of you who live in the far north, heads up.
Aurora alert: magnetic storm 7 on scale of 9 hits Earth
by CJ | Apr 5, 2010 | Journal | 17 comments
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Not to mention those of us who are amateur (or professional) radio operators. I was a professional Navy Radioman, now I’m an amateur, hence my name and callsign as my user name.
I recall driving across South Dakota in mid-June 1991, there was a fantastic aurora we could see all night. When we got to our motel, we were watching the news and they said that the aurora was visible as far south as St. Louis, MO.
The only time I have ever seen an aurora was in Wisconsin. It wasn’t like the colorful curtains you see in pictures either – it was more like waves of light speeding across the sky. Really strange and very cool.
When I was in Northern Quebec in ’77 we had an unbelievable Aurora light show. It looked like the whole planet Earth was in a warp field. Heart stoppingly beautiful. Haven’t seen anything remotely like it since.
The one we saw here in Spokane back in 2001 looked like a neon green waterfall in the sky. We drove out to a wheatfield to see it clear of city lights.
I have read that some of the northern tribes believe the aurora to be a bad omen. Sort of like the comet to the Romans.
It often coincides with bad weather in the Southwest. Every time the auroras would get wild enough to be visible that far south, we’d have dust storms, violent winds—I always as a kid thought the bad weather must be connected to the auroras. But up here, they come on crystal clear nights if we’re really lucky—foggy if not—and no wind to speak of. Just kind of curious.
But beautiful to see. Have you seen the one on the Nasa site of the currently erupting volcano in Iceland with the aurora above it? Beautiful and strange.
This is going to be completely random: You familiar with a writer named Philip Jose Farmer? I was in a used bookstore in Peoria Illinois (The Book Nook to be exact) a couple days ago and his entire collection of personal books were in there. I guess he passed away and dropped all of his books off there (or his family did at least) and they had posted a note next to his shelves saying as much. I was looking through some Thieves’ World books they had there and saw he had contributed to it and went back and it does look like the same guy. I’ve never read any of his stuff before, but I looked him up on wiki and he was from Peoria. Since I used to work at an archive my instinct said to rescue them, but it was seriously a giant collection of his stuff and I didn’t have the cash for such a large collection. *sigh* I need to stop getting emotional about books. It’s just paper after all, but when I see a complete collection like that it kills me to see it segmented off.
Yes, I knew him. Didn’t know he’d gone. Quick search says he passed away 9 Feb 2009. I used to do panels with him, back when I lived in the central US. I hope somebody can buy the whole collection: you might put the local library wise to it—or your local university. It’s a shame to see it split up.
I am not sure what kind of archive the college down there has. You’d think a local literary figure would get some kind of recognition though. It’s probably a good idea to start a relationship with an archive early on while you still have control of your papers. We dealt with Madeleine L’Engle’s collection, but she had been using us as a fan mail resource for a number of years too and had already started transferring stuff over. Easier than letting the whims of distant relations figure out how much they value your work for you. My mom is grooming me to be the receiver of her genealogy stuff so maybe I’m more sensitive than the average person though.
I’ll send an email and maybe hunt up an online community of his fans to see if anyone there wants to step in. The good thing is that the used book store is the best in town, clean, fairly priced for used stuff, and otherwise good at taking care of the books they have. I always stop over there when visiting. Usually I’m an OCD mess when in place like that, but this one is a rare exception. I am thinking they also hope someone takes the whole lot because they did post the note about how it came to be and kept it apart from the rest of the stuff.
Much the same thing happened to Sprague de Camp’s library when he died. His children auctioned it off to the highest bidder, which was Half-Price Books of Dallas. They cherry-picked the ones with memorabilia value and distributed the rest piecemeal to their various stores. Some of the foreign-language edition of his work were still available a year or more later…
Still, what do you do with the librarians of all but the most famous authors? There are only so much that the universities can absorb and the children may not have a place to keep the library even if they wanted to.
Very true. Sprague had been collecting for decades—yet I recall with all the books he had, he had to put out an appeal to find a copy of his own “The Clocks of Iraz”, which he wanted to put back into print, and had no copy in his library. Knowing Sprague, he’d probably lent it to somebody. He had the bearing and style of a British colonel from the 1800’s, but was a thorough-going fan, and a funny guy—who’d just be apt to lend out his only copy. I miss him and Catherine. They were at so many central US cons while their health held out.
The fact that a work from back before e-files could perish out of the writer’s library and almost from existence points up another bennie of the internet. In the old days, a wise writer would keep about 10 copies in library—for reference, in case of a sequel, for giving to special people over the years, and most importantly, in case of a re-sale/reprint of the title. They’d need it. Nowadays they just want a file.
And to think that only a few months ago some people were starting to think that solar activity wasn’t coming back on schedule! (It’s late, definitely, and we may not see anything quite like the last few cycles for a while. Or the sun might surprise us again.)
Have you seen this? http://www.universetoday.com/2010/04/05/amazing-pic-iss-flys-through-aurora/ — astronaut photo of the aurora from the ISS.
Wow, quite a picture!
That is an amazing picture!
Back in the late 80’s we had one winter where we had three different Northern Lights displays. Once I was driving over a hill; sheets of light looked like they were dancing up and over the fields. At that time there were very few houses out here so we had gallery seats for all the lights.
So sorry to hear of Philip Jose Farmer’s death….another old master gone.
CJ says, “Have you seen the one on the Nasa site of the currently erupting volcano in Iceland with the aurora above it? Beautiful and strange.”
I looked for it but couldn’t find it. 🙁
Okay, I’ve tried. I don’t know where that picture of the aurora over the volcano in Iceland is located. I’ve searched NASA, I’ve searched the UniverseToday…..
CJ, thank you.