Total Eclipse of the Heart | ‘24 Solar Eclipse Facts | City Reliquary Museum | Ancient Rome | YouTube Rabbithole
Alright @YouTheReader,
Today’s tune on this Sunday Stumblin’ Along is Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler. My mother was on her game Friday morning. Before my first sip of coffee, she sent me a list of songs with eclipse references, decided that I needed solar eclipse glasses for Monday, and then shared a couple of videos from her new favorite comedian, Colleen Landry. She is hilarious and seems to share my mom's same sort of concern/sense of humor. @ColleenLandryComedy on TikTok.
Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart hit the US in the summer of 1983. It was released in Europe a few months prior and had already been the #1 song in Ireland and the UK. It spent a month in 1983 at the #1 spot on US Billboard’s Hot 100 as well. It would be the Welsh singer’s biggest hit.
This song was written by Jim Steinman, who was from Out East in Hewlett, New York on Long Island. Steinman also wrote hit songs for the band, Meat Loaf, such as “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That).” His playbook for writing songs was a bit over the top with passion, but there is a bit of charm to them, which this tune encapsulates.
Do not look at the GIF below or you will go blind in 2-6 business days.
A nice tune that everybody knows and it has an eclipse reference so it plays.
On to the history…
10 Facts of the ‘24 Solar Eclipse
I’m not a big astrology guy, so I don’t know much about stars and space. This list of fun facts was compiled with the help of Astrology.com…
10. People born between October 24 - November 22 are “Scorpios.”
Okay, so this is kinda interesting to me at least because it falls in line with my birthday. To keep it 100% though, I don’t think I fit these characteristics whatsoever.
9. Astrologer Pandit Jagannath Guruji predicted the pandemic.
Uhh…okay, I didn’t know space people were fortune tellers, but apparently, this astrologist predicted global job loss and a financial crisis for the year ‘20. He noted, “I also predicted that many people living abroad would come back to India. I had even told some of my clients they might face some health problems, and it came true because of the pandemic.” Again, kinda interesting but I thought the eclipse had to do with the sun.
8. The moon may alter your mood.
At least we’re back in outer space. I thought I might have been on the wrong website for a minute. Did you know that the word “lunatic” came from the idea that changes in the mental state were related to lunar cycles?
7. Presidents were Astrology fiends.
According to the New Yorker, US President Ronald Reagan would consult with an astrologer before ‘virtually every major move and decision’ including his reelection announcement. One would think that NASA people are pretty smart so I mean, maybe not the worst idea to consult with them, right? President Theodore Roosevelt would also view his horoscope every morning. I guess a horoscope is like a Presidential telescope. Who knew Teddy was a big space guy? I would have thought President John F. Kennedy would’ve been a big astrology guy as well with his whole trip to the moon bit and all, but there’s no clear astrology and JFK connection. Interesting.
6. Benjamin Franklin was also an astrology enthusiast.
Ben Franklin would use a pseudonym, Richard Saunders, to publish astrological papers called Poor Richard’s Almanack. Wow, talk about a man ahead of his time. Again, interesting, but what the hell does this have to do with the Solar Eclipse glasses my mudder bought me?
5. There is a difference between astronomy and astrology.
My bad, I was on the wrong website. Ah jeez, well, no bother, we’re already halfway through the 10 facts. Astronomy.com says a solar eclipse occurs when the Sun, the Moon, and Earth are aligned. A shadow gets cast.
4. Past & Future Solar Eclipse
That last Solar Eclipse to occur was on August 21, ‘17. It crossed from Oregon to South Carolina. Before that one, the most recent happened on February 26, 1979. The next one that will occur after tomorrow will be on August 23, ‘44.
3. Nature will take heed.
The birds will stop chirping, it’ll get pretty quiet with little wind, and feel like nighttime with a stillness.
2. Everyone in the continental US will see at least a partial eclipse.
Texas will get hit first and New Mexico will have a totality of 4 minutes and 28 seconds. The rest of us will only experience a couple of minutes, maybe seconds.
1. Safety first.
As always, the moms are right fellas. Whatever you do, don’t stare at the sun. It will cause permanent eye damage. Sunglasses are not going to do the trick with the solar eclipse so if you’re out in public I suggest seeking shelter at a local drinking establishment to stay safe.
Quite a few Sundays ago, somehow in my drunken stupor, I Stumbled Along to The City Reliquary in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The museum filled with cool New York City history is open on Saturdays and Sundays from Noon to 6 PM. For a $10 visit, you can see a ton of cool relics from The City. This week's Stumblin’ Along on Week to Week Notes features another piece on an assortment of things on one of their displays.
I. N. Phelps Stokes wrote New York Past and Present: Its History and Landmarks 1524-1939. It’s $40 bucks on Amazon. His full name was Issac Newton Phelps Stokes so I can see why INPS shortened his name. INPS was born on April 11, 1867, in a Brownstone on Madison Avenue in The City. The oldest son of a successful banker, INPS kept busy as an architect, civic reformer, historian, collector, and major benefactor for New York City cultural institutions. Being that his family was well off in the Guilded Ages, they owned a summer house in Staten Island.
INPS graduated from Harvard in 1891 before going over to Paris in 1894. While on his trip overseas, he became obsessed with housing studies. He would take notes incognito with a messy beard and dirty clothes, oftentimes hanging out at École des Beaux-Arts - an extremely influential art school. His stay in Paris had a huge impact on his architecture and seemed to have influenced his worldview.
In 1895, INPS came back to New York and married Edith Minturn. He met her when they were children, staring at each other from across pews in the middle of the summer at an Episcopal Church on Staten Island. Edit was a doll of her day. One of her claims to fame was that she stood for Daniel Chester French’s Statue of the Republic, which was on display at the World Fair of Chicago in 1893.
Unfortunately, the statue would burn down in Chicago by 1896, but Edith wasn’t just a trophy wife for INPS. They both championed social equality and in 1901 INPS co-wrote the 1901 New York tenement house law, which banned the construction of dark, poorly ventilated tenement buildings in the state of New York. It also required certain things like indoor toilets and fire safeguards, pretty important stuff we don’t even think about today. INPS and Edith also shared an expensive hobby of collecting old maps of New York City, which makes a ton of sense considering he wrote a book New York Past and Present: Its History and Landmarks 1524-1939.
Next up, there was an item from F.W. Woolworth Co. They were a mass retail store that Frank Winfield Woolworth established in Utica, New York, in 1879. When FWW was 15 years old, he left his family farm to work in a shop for a man named William Moore in Watertown, New York. Despite studying commerce and bookkeeping, Moore didn’t find FWW all that helpful as an accountant. Instead, FWW was in charge of display and stock management. One of his jobs was to set up the tables for the display of fixed-price five-cent goods.
That concept must have sparked an idea in the young Frank Winfield Woolworth, who with William Moore’s blessings decided to start a 5-cent store in Upstate New York. When it wasn’t initially successful, he took the concept down to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the Amish loved it. The popularity of it grew so much that they even started making 10-cent stores all over Pennsylvania, New York (such as Port Jervis), New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut. By 1904, there were 120 retail stores in 21 states, which wasn’t enough, so FW Woolworth took its stores overseas. They established a store on Grafton Street in Dublin, Ireland, right around the outbreak of World War I.
In 1913, FW Woolworth made a pretty penny off nickeling and diming. He built the largest building in the world at the time calling it the Woolworth Building. The neo-Gothic skyscraper is still around today on 233 Broadway and stands at 58 floors. While FW Woolworth would pass away in 1919, his low-priced retail company turned corporation would continue to live on until 1997. While they may no longer be selling products for nickels and dimes, they did spawn Footlocker in 1974 so their legacy still sorta lives on to this day. Pretty cool!
There’s a bit more on the display like the Domino Sugar and a pamphlet of the Bronx Zoo. Maybe I’ll lead with the sugar next week if the research is sweet. As far as the Bronx Zoo, it would be kinda odd for a pretty much 30-year-old to go Stumblin’ Along a zoo alone so I’ll have to take Shane with me. Albeit, he’ll have had to ask to have a catch first.
This Week’s Bit on The Roman Empire
This week your quick bit on The Roman Empire brought to you by Week to Week Notes featuring Ancient Rome: The Exhibition in New York is on the legionary’s training poles.
Soldiers of the Roman Legionaries would use poles like the one above to train in hand-to-hand combat. The gladius (short sword) for training was often made of wood. This was partly precautionary to prevent injuries during training but also because iron was expensive and hard to obtain. A member of the legionary wouldn’t be given all his combat equipment until he finished his training and only if he was considered apt for combat.
Legionaries in training would use the pole to improve their attack and defense techniques. They would train with other wannabe legionaries as well, hitting the pole instead of each other. Legionaries had instructors who would observe the fights and weigh in on techniques or mistakes if there were any. These training poles would also be used in gladiator ludus, which was what they would call gladiator schools. Kinda a dull name for a badass school, no?