The Great American Eclipse of 2017
Monday, August 21,
2017
We had been talking about the eclipse for weeks. The reason
was that my friend, Tom Dale, announced at our coffee klatch some weeks ago
that he planned to be in Tennessee for the event. He explained how the sun and
the moon interacted during the eclipse and that the path for the best viewing
was along a thin strip of land from Oregon to South Carolina. He intended to be
in one of those viewing spots, he said.
Despite Tom’s enthusiasm, I didn’t develop any plans for viewing
the eclipse. I assumed that this event would be like other celestial events I
have attempted to view; the recent northern lights flare-up comes to mind, that
which prompted me to wander around outdoors in my underwear at 4 AM one
morning. After a half dozen mosquito bites and not a single nocturnal emission
(is that an appropriate description of the sun’s failure?), I went back to bed
disappointed and itching. And so, my only plan for the Great American Eclipse
of 2017 was to be at home, in my lawn, ready to marvel at the sudden daytime
darkness and brag to anyone who would listen that I had stopped the sun on its
normal path for a few moments just to demonstrate my powers. I got this idea
for a bit of braggadocio from Tecumseh, the famous Indian who used the eclipse
of 1811 to convince other Indians of his supernatural powers. [By the way, the
subterfuge worked for Tecumseh, he convinced several tribes to join him in the
battle against the invading Americans during the War of 1812.]
I went to my front lawn around 1 PM, planning to work in the
lawn so that I would be readily available and aware of the sunlight aberrations
associated with the eclipse. I didn’t have the required glasses for viewing,
but Marjorie had convinced me that the system she used for children she taught
in grade school would surely work since she had used it previously. Unfortunately,
it turned cloudy as the afternoon wore on. Nevertheless, I soldiered on, rooting
around in my front lawn in my ongoing battle with weeds that were more successful
in populating my lawn than the cheap “Sunny Mix” grass seed I had planted
and re-planted several times.
The hot sun seemed to relent a bit during my labors, but it
was still too bright to look at even as it peeked at me behind the cloud cover.
It was hot and the sweat began to bead on my forehead. At one point, Marjorie
came out to show me the paper with the tiny hole. When she held it up to the
sun, the light was projected onto a white paper that she held a few inches
behind the small hole. The picture on the white paper appeared as a small dot. We
both looked at the dot until it seemed silly to be staring at a dot that
offered no clue what was happening to the sun that was still too bright to
observe. She went into the house and I returned to my lawn.
Sometime later she called me in the house. “You should see
this on TV,” she said, ”It is the last of the eclipse, as seen from South
Carolina.”
“What?” I ejaculated. “What about our eclipse, don’t we get
one?”
She explained that our eclipse occurred when she brought out
the paper with the hole and we looked at the dot. I recalled how it did seem a
little less bright and how it wasn’t quite so hot just then. So there you have it, The Great American Eclipse of 2017, Northern Michigan style. I would call it “The Great (but narrow strip of
land that happened to be in small portions of American) Eclipse in 2017.
The TV pictures of the eclipse were great, probably even better than Tom viewed amidst the several
thousands who joined him for the actual event. I’ll be sure to tell him what a
great view I had and how the traffic around my house was just about the same as
it always is and I’ll point out that I had no risk of eye damage, unlike Donald
Trump, who removed his shaded glasses to get a better view of the sun.
