This is the presentation Dr. Lucy Hancock gave at a session on space weather at the Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society's session on Space Weather, in January, 2022. Dr. Hancock presented an anomaly in solar radiation data, and suggested it be explained as the effect of space dust shading the line of sight [...]
Who is Matilda in the Divine Comedy?
Who is Matilda? When Dante reaches the top of Purgatory he encounters a lady who guides him through the mysteries he encounters. She is on the opposite side of a stream which he has found. And there appeared to me … A lady all alone, who went along Singing and culling floweret after floweret … [...]
How does a mirror show us Christ?
After Dante passes the last ledge in Purgatory and braves the flames that he compares to molten glass in temperature, the sun sets and he can not go further. Even though he is now at the top of Mount Purgatory the rule that no progress is made in the dark remains. He lies down on [...]
Spinning wheels in the 1700’s
There's a lot of argument about the importance of spinning improvements in a medieval economy, but there is no argument that the device called a 'spinning jenny' helped to start the industrial revolution. Spinning in general consists in taking individual fibers of cotton or wool or hemp or nettle and twisting them together into a [...]
How many popes did you say?
One reason that I love reading about Dante, beyond reading his Divine Comedy, is that the early 1300s were a tumultuous time. It helps to keep our modern troubles in perspective. The Church went through 14 popes in Dante's fifty-six year lifespan. Three of those popes served for less than a year. For comparison, there [...]
