Eclipse Report: It’s Over

A few things to report:

 

1. The crowdpocalypse did not materialize. Oh, the highways and interstates were busy. But traffic in town on Monday appeared below normal, with people either hunkered down on the last day of an extended weekend, or out on the highways freaking out. We had a couple from Utah park in the shade in front of our house as they were visiting people a few doors down, and they said they were going to wait until the traffic thinned to go home.

 

2. Walmart did not sell out its enormous pile of firewood, but they did sell out of Moon Pies. So did every store in the city, or so we surmise after we visited a half dozen in search of them.

 

3. Mr. Goof joined us for the eclipse, but the dogs did not. Mr. Goof is the neighborhood cat. The dogs were too intent on barking at the squirrels or at the neighbors in their back yard, so we left them in the house. They did not need their doggy eclipse glasses. Mr. Goof, it can be reported, did not look at the sun.

 

4. The eclipse was neat. The totality, completely spectacular. I did not take any pictures of the eclipse; I left that to the professionals.

 

(H/T Farrell Steiner)

 

5. We were advised, as citizen-scientists, to observe animals and plants during the eclipse. The dogs, as mentioned earlier were too bothered with the squirrels to bother with the sun. The squirrels were too bothered with teasing the dogs. Mr. Goof was just jazzed to be part of the show. And the mourning doves – well, the mourning doves did that typical mourning dove thing, which was to sit there dumbfounded by everything around them. The birds did go silent during the totality, but other than that . . . And the plants? Well, the plants in our yard were indifferent to the temporary disappearance of the sun.

 

6. Astronomers Without Borders is collecting eclipse glasses (not yet, apparently, details TBA), to be distributed again for the eclipse in 2024. I look at the three-year shelf-life printed on the glasses we have, and wonder if that program is doomed to failure or if the shelf-life is just a gimmick.

 

7. One other eclipse glasses note: I told my wife it was fine to watch the entire eclipse through them. Afterward, she read the fine print on the glasses: No more than a 3-minute stretch, please. Nobody has reported any adverse effects.

 

8. I did not get any drywall or plastering done. I did, however, install a new storm door and repaired the toilet in the kids’ bathroom.