  The Sun provides the energy necessary to sustain our existence. While the Sun
provides for us, it is also capable of taking away. The weather and climatic
scales of solar evolution and the Sun-Earth connection are not well understood.
There has been tremendous progress in the century since the discovery of solar
magnetism - magnetism that ultimately drives the electromagnetic, particulate
and eruptive forcing of our planetary system. There is contemporary evidence of
a decrease in solar magnetism, perhaps even indicators of a significant
downward trend, over recent decades. Are we entering a minimum in solar
activity that is deeper and longer than a typical solar minimum, a "grand
minimum"? How could we tell if we are? What is a grand minimum and how does the
Sun recover? These are very pertinent questions for modern civilization. In
this paper we present a hypothetical demonstration of entry and exit from grand
minimum conditions based on a recent analysis of solar features over the past
20 years and their possible connection to the origins of the 11(-ish) year
solar activity cycle.
