First, peace to all, and make it a good International Day of Peace. Next, the Autumnal/Spring Equinox is tomorrow morning at 7:44 AM USCDT/whatever time it is where you are. Here’s a beautifully peaceful photo from NASA’s Photo of the Day:
Explanation: The defining astronomical moment of this September’s equinox is at 12:44 UTC on September 22, when the Sun crosses the celestial equator moving south in its yearly journey through planet Earth’s sky. That marks the beginning of fall for our fair planet in the northern hemisphere and spring in the southern hemisphere, when day and night are nearly equal around the globe. Of course, if you celebrate the astronomical change of seasons by watching a sunrise you can also look for crepuscular rays. Outlined by shadows cast by clouds, crepuscular rays can have a dramatic appearance in the twilight sky during any sunrise (or sunset). Due to perspective, the parallel cloud shadows will seem to point back to the rising Sun and a place due east on your horizon on the equinox date. But in this spectacular sunrise skyscape captured in early June, the parallel shadows and crepuscular rays appear to converge toward an eastern horizon’s more northerly sunrise. The well-composed photo places the rising Sun just behind the bell tower of a church in the town of Vic, province of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
(One of the teachers with whom I worked had a beautiful tattoo of this painting on her inner wrist. She said it gave her strength. I need to send this to her, as she tutors STEAM aside from classroom work, and this is her top favorite painting.)
Starry Night, by Vincent van Gogh. The painting is currently held in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, USA.
Scientists have peered at Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night painting and discovered it displays a startling resemblance to real atmospheric turbulence.
To see stars, one needs clear skies. But just because we can’t see it, doesn’t mean there aren’t intricate patterns of air movement above us on a clear night.
A paper published in Physics of Fluids, suggests that van Gogh had an “intuitive” understanding of this while making his famous painting in 1889.
A Chinese and French team analysed the brush strokes in The Starry Night, aiming to see how similar they were to real atmospheric movements.
The masterpiece has been the subject of several atmospheric studies before, with contradictory conclusions, but the researchers say they’re the first to look at all of the painting’s whirls and eddies.
They looked at the 14 main swirls in the painting, and compared these with theories on energy and turbulent flows in the atmosphere.
“The scale of the paint strokes played a crucial role,” says author Associate Professor Yongxiang Huang, a researcher in fluid dynamics at Xiamen University, China.
“With a high-resolution digital picture, we were able to measure precisely the typical size of the brushstrokes and compare these to the scales expected from turbulence theories.”
The authors measured the whirling brush strokes in van Gogh’s “The Starry Night,” along with variances in brightness of the paint colours, to see how closely they reflected real atmospheric physics. There were several matches between the painting and fluid dynamics, suggesting van Gogh had an “intuitive” understanding of these concepts. Credit: Yinxiang Ma
As well as brush stroke size, the researchers also examined the “relative luminance” of paint colours used in the painting’s swirls.
They found that the picture aligned with a theory of turbulence called Kolmogorov’s Law, which predicts atmospheric movement based on measured inertia.
The changes in brightness reflect a process called Batchelor’s scaling, which describes how fluids diffuse at smaller scales.
“It reveals a deep and intuitive understanding of natural phenomena,” says Huang.
“Van Gogh’s precise representation of turbulence might be from studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere or an innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky.”
An asteroid is approaching, but it won’t crash into Earth. Instead, it’ll be our planet’s little companion for 2 months before continuing on its merry way.
In a study published in the journal Research Notes of the AAS, a pair of asteroid dynamics researchers calculated the asteroid’s size, speed and path. The researchers determined the asteroid would complete a single orbit around Earth over 53 days before being flung back into outer space.
The asteroid will start its orbit of Earth on 29 September. The bus-sized “mini moon” is scheduled to depart on 25 November.
Many asteroids follow a similar journey, falling into partial or full elliptical orbits around our planet as they pass by. One such “quasi-moon” is an asteroid discovered last year which astronomers believe has been orbiting Earth for more than 2,000 years.
Other quasi-moons make much briefer visits, like the 5m 2006 RH120 which orbited Earth for about a year and 2020 CD3 which was a mini companion of our planet for several years before leaving us in May 2020.
The researchers also believe they know from where 2024 PT5 is joining us based on its trajectory.
“Such orbital elements are consistent with those of the Arjunas, a sparsely resonant population of small NEOs [near-Earth objects] in a secondary asteroid belt found surrounding the path followed by the Earth–Moon system,” they write.
The Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable has traveled around the state for “boot camps” aimed at better mobilizing Black women to get out the vote. They face roadblocks in a state with a deep history of voter suppression.
This article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on September 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.
SOUTHAVEN, MISSISSIPPI — The training in northwest Mississippi that Cassandra Welchlin led was focused on get-out-the-vote efforts, but the longtime community organizer wanted to make space to sing.
Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around …
“Come on, y’all!” Welchlin told the crowd of nearly 100, who joined in on the next verse. Turn me around …
Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around. I’m gonna keep on walking, keep on talking, marching up to freedom lane …
“I am so happy to have y’all in the house,” she said at one point. “If y’all could see what I see.”
What Welchlin saw that August morning were the faces of Black women — and a lot of them. Their interests, varied and historically overlooked, are at the center of a new kind of intentional voter engagement training.
“Black women mobilize their communities,” she told The 19th. “They are the catalyst.”
Welchlin is executive director of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, a civic engagement and policy advocacy organization whose members, all of them Black women, have traveled the state for months to host trainings called the “Power of the Sister Vote Boot Camp.”
On paper, their goal with the boot camps is an increase in voter turnout among Black women in the Mississippi counties where they visit. They also want to create a years-in-the-making pipeline to better mobilize Black women, whom Welchin views as the glue holding together democracy, especially in a state and region that continues to be impacted by policies that have historically suppressed Black voters.
“I was raised in a house of Black women — my aunties, my grandma, and then the neighborhood of elders,” she said. “I know the power of Black women taking care of Black women, and taking care of the community.”
At the trainings, Welchlin and her staff dress in military fatigues — a “boot camp” theme that has manifested into the advertisement the group uses to promote the events and the T-shirts they distribute to attendees. But there is a deeper significance.
“Voting feels like a battle in Mississippi,” she explained.
Mississippi is one of just three states that does not offer early voting to all residents, and one of eight states that does not offer online voter registration. The 12-hour window that many residents have to cast a ballot on Election Day can be difficult for people with irregular work shifts, child care responsibilities and challenges to accessing transportation.
Welchlin said she knows Black women overwhelmingly run their households. They also take on the added responsibility of getting their communities to the ballot box.
“I wanted to do something a little bit more strategic and formal that would bring excitement,” Welchlin said. “I just kind of sat with the idea of, ‘What would make people want to come?’”
Cassandra Welchlin, executive director of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, emphasizes the role of Black women as catalysts for democracy and community change. (Imani Khayyam for The 19th)
Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, and convener of the national Black Women’s Roundtable programming, credited Welchlin for designing a training theme that not only has the potential to turn out more voters, but could lead to more Black women becoming leaders who run for office. She added that Welchlin is taking their political power “to another level.”
“Having a Cassandra Welchlin in leadership, who’s doing unique things — there could be more Black elected officials in the state of Mississippi, because the demographics are there. But when you talk statewide, it’s not reached its full potential,” she said.
There are about 1.9 million registered voters in Mississippi, where the governor’s office, Senate and House of Representatives are controlled by Republicans. Welchlin’s group estimates that more than 123,000 Black women in the state did not vote in the past three election cycles. The group’s goal is to increase voter participation among these women by 10 percent this November. Black women voters in the counties the group has targeted for boot camps are among those who have voted most infrequently since 2021.
It’s part of why Allytra Perryman, deputy director of the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP, which has partnered to help host some boot camps, also sees such potential in mobilizing them.
“When you train a Black woman on how to do anything, you train a community,” she said.
On the morning of the boot camp, Velvet Scott seemed to be everywhere.
As director of civic engagement and voting rights for the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, she was ready to help roll out attendee tables and chairs; she was there to open boxes and hand materials to roundtable staff. She and Welchlin made sure the check-in table had updated registration lists, lunch was ordered and the child care in a nearby room was set up.
“Today we’re going to go through, of course, important information, but we’re going to have fun while doing it,” Scott told the women, many already wearing the matching boot camp T-shirts.
Their meeting space was attached to a church on a hill — New Hope Missionary Baptist Church — nestled along a road filled with so many churches it’s called Church Road. Among the permanent signage adorning the room were Biblical-themed messages of hope: “We will not fail nor be discouraged, till our mission is complete….”
“We welcome you today to be energized and to be educated,” said Pamela Helton, a leader within New Hope and the wife of the church pastor, in opening remarks.
Earlier, Welchlin seemed determined to shake the hands of every person who walked through the doors. For those she knew, she offered a hug. “So glad to see so many beautiful Black women,” she said at one point. “We comin’.”
When Welchlin helped host the first boot camp ahead of last year’ gubernatorial race, her organization did not collect data about the trainings. Anecdotal feedback showed a clear interest in organizing Black women around voter turnout, but the full scope of the programming’s reach in its pilot run is unclear.
“We realized that we had a gap,” Welchlin said. “But part of it had to do with capacity on our end to collect that data and do the follow-up.”
Scott, who joined the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable late last year, has committed to doing things differently. She honed a data mindset while first working in insurance, a job that brought her into the homes of Black and Brown people who increasingly sought her guidance about available social services. In 2018, Scott began volunteering at a youth-focused civic engagement organization and then joined the staff full-time.
At the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, Scott tries to capture more information about the organization’s approach to community programming. That’s meant more of a focus on spreadsheets, more surveys and more individual follow-ups to ensure attendees have support afterward.
Velvet Scott, director of civic engagement and voting rights for the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, believes in the power of organizing and uplifting Black women in community spaces. (Imani Khayyam for The 19th)
Scott has tweaked the boot camps since they launched in April in order to make them more accessible. She’s made some trainings available on weeknights instead of Saturdays, when people tend to be most busy with family responsibilities. She has sometimes shortened the hours of programming to see if a tighter agenda keeps up engagement. She recently helped organize a virtual training.
As a mother to a newly walking toddler, she tries to think about what the attendees might need. She, like Welchlin, feels strongly about onsite child care. (During the Southaven training, Scott stepped away to breastfeed her child.) She ensures that a meal is provided during the trainings, as well as a gift card. The group set aside roughly $50,000 to run the program this election cycle, according to Scott. They’ve been under budget thanks to partnerships with other civic engagement groups.
Scott believes strongly in the power of Black women organizing their communities.
“We don’t live single-issue lives,” she said. “So to uplift Black women in the room is to say, ‘Hey, I see you. We’re going to work on this together, we’re going to be in community together, and we’re going to be in fellowship together.’”
Scott also wants to find the balance in her work. She’s tried to move away from an unspoken expectation in community organizing that she must be go-go-go. She doesn’t want to burn out, and she wants to be present with her family.
“Rest is resistance,” Scott said, who referenced research on the topic. “And advocates deserve joy.”
When Jessica Orey hears Welchlin’s singing, she perks up. Orey is attending alone, and the music comforts her.
As a young adult, Orey jumped into organizing through a local NAACP chapter. Those meetings also made space for “freedom songs” used at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. It’s why Orey was impressed by its emphasis in Southaven.
“She’s kind of bringing back the old school type-feel of it,” Orey said of Welchlin. “Like, hey, we’re going to sing our way through. This is what’s going to push us to the next level.”
Welchlin said her mentor, Hollis Watkins, the late civil rights activist who founded the voting rights organization Southern Echo, taught her the freedom songs that he once sang at mass organizing meetings.
“It’s teaching a new generation about what the meaning of song is, and what these words mean,” she said. “And so it’s a history lesson, while it’s also a spiritual blessing to our souls.”
Sheneka Bell is also in the room alone, listening along.
At 45, Bell is a longtime voter but has not been active in voter turnout efforts. But politics continues to seep into her life — from the national debate about reproductive rights, to local property rezoning. Last year, Bell joined the local county chapter of the NAACP.
“I have a responsibility to understand what’s going on in my neighborhood and beyond,” she said.
In some ways, Orey felt compelled to be at the boot camp: Her grandmother is Delores Orey, a longtime civil rights activist who worked alongside key leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.
“This is all I know. This is what Big Mama taught us,” said the 36-year-old, referring to her grandmother. “This is what Big Mama pushed for. So if any injustice is around me, it’s like, ‘What would Big Mama do?’ A lot of this stuff is ingrained. It’s a part of my DNA.”
After her grandmother died in 2014, Orey stepped back from community organizing. But she wants to get involved again, and she felt like the boot camp was a first step. Orey has since signed up for roundtable updates and alerts from several civic engagement groups. She recently participated in a GOTV event in Jackson.
“I know it’s time for me as a former advocate,” she said. “I need to get my shoes back in the game. There’s work to be done.”
Since the boot camp, Bell has looked into signing up to be a poll worker. She is open to phone banking, and recently showed her nieces how to check their voter registration statuses.
“I’m new to this space,” she said. “I’ve never done any of this before.”
Welchlin cautioned against ignoring inequity around the ballot box in Mississippi, especially as Republican lawmakers advance voting restrictions around the country. They have increasingly claimed without proof that there is widespread voter fraud, and such policies often appear in states with large Black and Brown populations.
“Mississippi is part of the fabric of the struggles in the South,” Welchlin said. “We have a history, and a muscle, and a foundation in which we have built.”
As the boot camps in Mississippi wrap up this election cycle, its ripple effect is coming into focus. A state lawmaker recently expressed interest in running a boot camp. At least one organization is now trying to offer similar programming targeting Black men. And the umbrella organization’s Michigan affiliate has reached out about replicating some of boot camp programming.
“We know that their data is going to look different, but we’re giving them the template to adjust it the way they need,” she said. “It’s a model, and Michigan is going to be testing it.”
Welchin has tried to lean into the joy of the work ahead, despite the obvious obstacles. With Black women by her side, she feels empowered to find a way.
“Good things do come from the South, and we know that Black women have been a part of making that happen,” she said.
To check your voter registration status or to get more information about registering to vote, text 19thnews to 26797.
Fully recovered from the effects of my multi-vacs, I took Corky out on a nice, long walk while it was cool in the morning on Thursday. Of course there were numerous species of pollen blowing around, but I was bulletproof because I use Allegra . Anyway, my sinuses have been protesting since then, but that’s a thing I’ve always had, anyway, so it is what it is. Corky was quite happy, and is looking forward to doing it again tomorrow. Yes, she told me so. (She didn’t. I just know. She’ll go on a walk any time, anywhere, no matter what else she may be doing.)
I went to the store to stock back up today, and I found a thing. It was an irresistible thing, and I love it, so I bought it. She’s a she, and her name is Millie. That’s her up above. Closer to the season, I’ll put her in the front window, but right now, we’re enjoying her in our front room. She seems to enjoy being photographed.
It’s been one heck of a week. A debate that was almost fun, some stochastic terrorism agged on and on and yet further on by Maga, and good news, too, some of which got posted. I had a few other things up to post, but the puter thought it was too hot, shut down, and lost my tabs (at least one of which must have been too busy. Time for maintenance on the puter, probably.) Anyway, I’ve got a few posts up anyway, and whatever I didn’t will either come around again, or be way outdated when I recall what they were. My apologies, but get a look at Millie, why don’t ya? 😀🦴💀
September 15, 1915 In a letter, Turkish Minister of the Interior Mehmet Talaat Pasha explained that the real intention of sending the Armenians to the Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) Desert (now in Syria) was to annihilate them. Talaat had primary responsibility for planning and implementing the Armenian Genocide. The day before, The New York Times reported that the murder of 350,000 Armenians in Turkey had already occurred. 1915, orphaned Armenian children in the open, many covering their heads from the desert sun. Location: Ottoman empire, region Syria. The Turkish Adolf Eichmann
September 15, 1935 The “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor” and the “Reich Citizenship Law” were adopted by the Nazi (National Socialist German Workers’) Party Rally in Nuremberg, depriving German Jews of their citizenship.
September 15, 1963 During Sunday School, 15 sticks of dynamite blew apart the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four children in the basement changing room, and injuring 23 others. Prime suspects were the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and Nacirema (both white supremacist organizations; Nacirema is “American” spelled backwards). A week before the bombing Governor George C. Wallace had told The New York Times that to stop integration, Alabama needed a “few first-class funerals.” The four girls lost in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, the ruins of the church and grieving parents This event set off racial rioting and other violence in which two African-American boys were shot to death, and became a turning point in generating broad American sympathy for the civil rights movement. A member of the church, studying on a scholarship in Paris at the time, was Birmingham High School student Angela Davis. Lives cut short… Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Caole Robertson (14), Denise McNair (11) Read more
September 15, 1981 A blockade started at a nuclear power plant construction site in Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo, California. Nearly 10,000 people tried to prevent fuel rods from being loaded into the two reactor cores. Over two weeks, 1,901 are arrested in the largest occupation of a nuclear power site in U.S. history. Their immediate major concern was over the region being seismically active and the plant’s location near the Hosgri fault. In 2004 a 6.5 (on the Richter Scale) earthquake was centered less than 40 miles from the plant. Four other faults nearby have since been identified. Additionally, 9.5 billion liters (2.5 billion gallons) of water needed to cool the reactors each day are discharged directly into the Pacific 11°C (20°F) warmer than the surrounding ocean water, affecting marine plant and animal life there.Diablo canyon As with all nuclear plants, the problem remains with storage of spent nuclear fuel that remains dangerously radioactive for more than 10,000 years. Diablo Canyon generates 110 spent fuel rod assemblies each year. There is still no satisfactory solution to this long-term storage problem. Diablo Canyon timeline
September 15, 1986 Veterans Duncan Murphy (World War II) and Brian Willson (Vietnam) joined Charles Liteky & George Mizo in the Fast For Life, opposing U.S. support for the terrorist contra war against Nicaragua. The contras were insurgent guerillas using violence against civilians in the countryside to bring down the newly formed Sandanista government. The contras were supported in contravention of the Boland Amendment which prohibited U.S. agencies from providing military equipment, training or support to anyone “for the purpose of overthrowing the Government of Nicaragua.” Duncan Murphy, Brian Willson, Charles Liteky, George Mizo The Fast for Life from Brian Willson’s perspective
September 15, 1996 6,000 rallied and 1,033 were arrested near the Headwaters Grove in rural Carlotta, California, in protest against cutting one of the last large unlogged stands of redwood trees in the world. Redwoods are coniferous trees (sequoia sempervivens: the genus is named for Sequoya, or George Guess, an American Indian scholar; sempervivens is ever alive in Latin) that can reach over 90m (300 ft.) over a life as long as 2000 years.
September 15, 1997 Sinn Fein, the political party closely allied with the goals of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), entered Northern Ireland’s peace talks for the first time.
September 15, 2001 Four days after 9/11, Representative Barbara Lee (D-California) cast the only congressional vote against authorizing President Bush to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against anyone associated with the terrorist attacks of September 11. “I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States.” Barbara Lee – Alone on the Hill
The presidential election has turned into a contest between a capable, smart woman who emphasizes what Americans can achieve when they work together for the common good, and a sundowning old racist creep who would be pathetic if he weren’t so dangerously close to returning to power.
In case you’re wondering what the difference looks like, compare the hate and division the old racist creep is spreading with some recent announcements from President Joe Biden’s administration, nearly all of them about programs funded by one or another of Biden’s big legislative packages. Just a little reminder of why elections matter, and of the legacy that Kamala Harris is committed to building on. For, y’know, the people.
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
(These fill me with wonder almost every day. There are far worse ways to start the day!)
Diablo canyon
Scottie's Playtime 
