I saw this essay about getting your hamster off the treadmill and being in the moment. It’s not just for University of Iowa employees. I do the mindfulness thing, I juggle, I make dumb YouTube videos. And for a little over a month now, I have not scrolled past the first few headlines at the top of the on-line news outlets. It’s a little easier than I thought to give up FOMO zombie-scrolling news habit, if you can even call it the news.
And the nail video is a hoot.
Yesterday, we went out to Terry Trueblood Recreation Area to see the solar eclipse. It was a gorgeous day for it, although a bit chilly. When we got there about 11:30 AM, the parking lot was pretty empty and only a few people were there. We even ran into a few on the trail who didn’t know about the eclipse at all.
However, as the day went on, more visitors showed up, although by no means a crushing crowd. Sena and I were testing out our pinhole and cereal box viewers, and I practiced using the solar filter with my smartphone. While we were doing that, a woman approached us and we struck up a great conversation about the eclipse, which she was looking forward to as well.
As the time approached for the big event, others took up positions around the park. It didn’t take long for us to share stories with others. A woman shared her pinhole viewer with us. She also shared her eclipse glasses (Sena did as well) with another couple who had a NASA live feed on their large screen smartphone. They in turn shared the NASA live feed with us. The irony was the couple didn’t have eclipse glasses and couldn’t safely look up at the partial eclipse right where we were in Iowa City.
And that’s how we all got to share our experience of 4 eclipses, 3 of them total eclipses (albeit vicariously by the NASA live feed by smartphone) with Carbondale, Illinois as well as Arkansas and Texas. The videos were mesmerizing.
As the eclipse progressed, we noticed it got colder and darker. The birds stopped singing. On the NASA live feed, we heard a reporter excitedly remark that the bats were flying out of the caves because they thought it was nightfall. The Terry Trueblood Park lights turned on it got so dim; then they came back on as the eclipse reversed.
The eclipse itself was spectacular. Even more fascinating was how it brought some of us together with others to share it. It reminded me of an old term “the happening.” It was coined in the 1950s and, although I think it originally referred to artistic events, you could apply it to a lot of big and cool events—like eclipses. It was a happening.
We’ll be off to try to see the eclipse today, because the weather report yesterday (and this morning!) said it would be sunny and warm.
For the occasion, I made a cereal box eclipse viewer just for fun. We’ll see if it works. I sacrificed a box of Raisin Bran for it. Sena wondered where her cereal box viewer was. We had only one box of cereal in the pantry.
And we’ve got some eclipse glasses. Good luck out there!
The University of Iowa Dept of Physics and Astronomy and the Sciences Library invites the public to view the partial solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 between 12:30 PM-3:00 PM at the Pentacrest and the Sciences Library courtyard. Solar eclipse glasses free while they last.
The solar eclipse is just around the corner! We’re hoping for decent weather. We’re also hoping that everyone views the event with safety in mind.
University of Iowa Health Care ophthalmologist Dr. Ian Han has great tips on how to observe the solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. He pointed out that eclipse glasses that pass muster for safe viewing of what will be a partial eclipse in Iowa are typically on a list of approved eyewear and often have an ISO (that stands for International Organization for Standardization) number stamped on them. Our glasses have the right stuff!
However, animals sometimes get confused by solar eclipses, including cicadas (see my other post about cicada weirdness posted today). Cicadas might stop singing or maybe their gonads drop off a little sooner than usual, I don’t know exactly. But the zombie cicada gonad apocalypse timing probably makes that a non-issue. I did say “probably.” But how could we protect them if necessary?
There might be a scientific way to custom fit the cicadas with solar eclipse glasses using groundbreaking technology first used in the 1989 documentary film, “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” which I have not personally watched but which could be featured on Svengoolie. We’d have to scale up production for possibly trillions of bugs. And I guess we can’t protect their gonads.
But we can all protect our eyes.
Update: I found a very good web site which tells you how to check if your solar eclipse glasses are genuine and protective. In addition to the information above, you can test the eclipse glasses indoors by putting them on. You shouldn’t be able to see anything but the brightest light bulbs and those just barely. You can test them outside as well. On a sunny day, look around at any reflective surface. You shouldn’t be able to see much at all. I tested ours and they passed with flying colors.
Both Sena and I stayed up to see the cheesy 1972 horror flick The Gargoyles last Saturday night. No kidding, Sena stayed up for the whole thing! The show runs from 7-9:30 PM but the actual movie is only a little over an hour long. It’s about a clan of gargoyles that every 500 years hatch from eggs and wage war on humans to take over the planet. They never get the job done, probably because humans have all the guns and all the gargoyles have are claws and flimsy wings which you don’t see used until the very last scene. Like all of the Svengoolie movies, all of the jokes are so bad they’re good.
You can ask a fair question, which would be what else is on in addition to the movie? There’s a lot of commercials, of course, as well as the corny jokes and skits. But the other features last Saturday were excerpts from the Flashback Weekend Chicago Horror Con, in August 2023. I think it’s an annual historical horror convention that takes place in Rosemont, Illinois.
One of the attractions was a panel presentation about the history of the 90th anniversary of the drive-in theater hosted by Svengoolie and Joe Bob Briggs. It was arguably better than the feature flick. I have heard the history elsewhere about how the drive-in theatre began (I think it was on the travel or history channel).
The most interesting part of the history is how the Covid-19 pandemic influenced the recent history of the drive-in theaters. The point was that, when the pandemic hit the country, all indoor theaters closed, leaving the drive-ins the only place to watch movies for several weeks. They did pretty good business.
Moreover, horror movies and drive-ins go together like cheese and crackers (see what I did there, cheese as in cheesy movies?). OK, fine.
Anyway, horror films were mainly linked to low budget projects that big stars and big directors avoided like the plague. Mainly, those movies were played at the drive-ins—which is how they got a tarnished reputation. That led to cherished stories by older people who used to sneak their friends into the drive-ins by stowing them in the trunks of their cars. That probably did happen, even in the old Mason City Drive-In Theater in Iowa where Sena and I grew up. It was demolished in 1997.
As far as The Gargoyle movie goes, the one thing I couldn’t find out was exactly why Bernie Casey, who played the head gargoyle, didn’t voice his own lines. The web references I found just mentioned briefly that it was because his natural speaking voice didn’t fit the character. They were dubbed in by Vic Perrin who did the voice-over for the introduction to The Outer Limits.
Maybe the funniest scene was when the head gargoyle placated and playfully slapped the fanny of the female head breeder gargoyle after she noticed he was flirting with the human woman he kidnapped. The breeder was obviously really jealous. Maybe this means that the battle between gargoyles and humans will always come to a stalemate because we’re too much alike.
Finally, I have found a copy of the FDA recommendation to the DEA to reschedule Marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III. The whole document is in Dropbox and is 252 pages long. The actual recommendation starts on page 62. The basis for the recommendation is three-fold:
The third one sounds like a reason not to reschedule marijuana until you read the clarifying text, which indicates low likelihood of serious outcomes.
On the other hand, the FDA did request feedback from professional organizations on the level of concern that might lead to not recommending marijuana. Only the American Psychiatric Association had reservations against it (pages 27-28):
“FDA also considered position statements from professional organizations relevant to the indications discussed. The vast majority of professional organizations did not recommend the use of marijuana in their respective specialty; however, none specifically recommended against it, with the exception of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which stated that marijuana is known to worsen certain psychiatric conditions.”
Further, in Iowa which has passed restricted legislation since 2017, there is disagreement about a new bill, House Study Bill 665, which would add more regulation to the sale of some hemp products. Hemp product growers are less than pleased with it. It would restrict minors from access to all hemp products, even those not containing THC. Mental health advocates, while supporting medical marijuana, are understandably concerned about the psychiatric risks attributed to cannabis, especially in adolescents.
There is a recently published paper written by Canadian authors who raise concerns about the emergency room evaluations of children in the context of marijuana exposures. (Crocker CE, Emsley J, Tibbo PG. Mental health adverse events with cannabis use diagnosed in the Emergency Department: what are we finding now and are our findings accurate? Front Psychiatry. 2023 May 25;14:1093081. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1093081. PMID: 37304435; PMCID: PMC10247977.):
“There are more studies on the impact of cannabis on mental health in the adolescent population since our last review. One recent study using sentinel surveillance of self-harm using the electronic Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program from 2011 to 2019 showed an increase of 15.9% per year in self harm with intentional substance-related injuries exceeding unintentional injury cases and 92.3% of the cannabis-related self-harm being in the 10–19 years of age group.”
I’m ambivalent about the FDA recommendation to reschedule marijuana. On the one hand, marijuana is probably less dangerous than alcohol. On the other hand, if it’s your child that has the bad outcome related to marijuana, you’d likely be opposed to making a change.
We’re putting on the Ritz for the solar eclipse next month! We got our crazy T-shirts and the eclipse glasses and solar filter.
We didn’t know we’d be blind after donning the glasses. You don’t want to go for a walk wearing them because you’re likely to trip over something, mainly other eclipse observers.
We’ve got instructions for snapping photos of the eclipse safely. We’ve got our fingers crossed that it won’t be overcast on the big day—April 8, 2024.
So, are Iowans going to get “the whole enchilada” when it comes to seeing the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024? No, but we’ll see a partial eclipse. The T-shirt Sena got for me says “Total Eclipse” on it—but it also has extraterrestrials on it, which I really like.
The paths of these total eclipses are narrow. The path of the Total Solar Eclipse on August 21, 2017 would not have been visible in the totality phase for Iowans either. So, no whole enchilada then either.
In fact, I don’t remember the 2017 solar eclipse at all. Sena watched it on TV when CNN televised a special program about it. She noticed that it got dark, probably in the early afternoon. I don’t know what I was doing, but I was no doubt running around the hospital responding to psychiatry consultation requests. I probably wouldn’t have noticed a gigantic enchilada stalking the earth.
In fact, to see a total eclipse back then and next month, we’d have to drive to Carbondale, Illinois. That’s at least a 6-hour drive and probably longer since a lot of people would be on the road with the same goal. There are already warnings from some officials about traffic jams, cell phone problems, and other disasters which can happen during the mad rush to see the whole enchilada.
Which brings me to the question: do you know the origin of the phrase “the whole enchilada”?
I guess the history of the expression is a little dark, in a manner of speaking. Some people don’t define it and bail by comparing it to other similar phrases like “the whole nine yards” or whatever. On the other hand, there are variations on another story of the origin that date back to the Watergate tapes scandal in the era of President Nixon’s administration in the 1970s. Supposedly, John Ehrlichmann called Attorney John N. Mitchell “the big enchilada.”
In general, it means the whole thing, the entirety, everything. So, if we want to see the whole enchilada as far as the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, we’d have to drive 6 hours to either Carbondale, Illinois or Poplar Bluff, Missouri. We’ll pass on that.
However, Sena did make the whole enchilada last night for dinner.
Sena has placed the order for our eclipse glasses and eclipse T-shirts. They should get here in plenty of time for the solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. And if the weather is really crappy that day—we have 30 days to return them.
There is an interesting history of eclipses on the NASA website. It mentions how Einstein hypothesized that gravity warped space and time, distorting the universe. The sun is big enough that its gravity could bend light. In fact, during the eclipse on May 29, 1919, scientists noted that some stars were in the wrong place, proving Einstein’s theory.
And now for some eclipse jokes:
What do you call it when you fall in love on April 8, 2024? A total eclipse of the heart.
What will the moon bring to the beach on April 8, 2024? Sunblock.
Jupiter to the moon on April 8, 2024: Do you remember the sun?
Moon: No, I blocked it out.
Sena: How do you organize a solar eclipse party?
Jim: I don’t know. How?
Sena: You planet!
An interesting Iowa history story is about the solar eclipse of 1869. Several small markers were placed in various locations to mark the event. Many were lost. They were plowed out or covered up. The author mentions the upcoming 2024 solar eclipse and wonders if anyone will leave markers to remember it.
I think what some may leave behind are tattered eclipse glasses and cheeseburger wrappers. But we’ll have our memories to pass on in stories, pictures, and dad jokes—a living monument.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 