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.

 

 

Eclipse Report: One Week Out

So the eclipse is nearly upon us.

 

My plans for that weekend: Finishing drywall, plaster, painting, tile, and shelving work in the laundry room. Then watching the eclipse.

 

A few things to report:

 

1. A sister reports a friend who works for the county received at least one call from an out-of-towner wondering if a permit were required for animal sacrifices. So somewhere nearby during the eclipse Monday, that will be happening.

 

2. At least one local store sold out of one percent milk and bananas, but is not – shockingly – sold out of squash, per local news reports. (Update: My wife visited the same store today and found it completely restocked with bananas. The yellow onions, however, were gone.)

 

3. Our local Walmarts have shipped in an enormous amount of firewood – right in time for the county to initiate a burn ban. Also, the parking lot of the Walmart closest to us is already starting to fill with RVs.

 

4. Farmers are frantically cutting grain so as to mitigate any crop losses when the burn ban is inevitably violated.

 

5. Dire warnings are spreading via the Internet on two fronts:

 

Front One: Whatever you do, DO NOT LOOK at the eclipse through anything but ISO-certified glasses with these specific numbers printed on them along with the name of the company which made them.

 

Front Two: Be on the lookout for counterfeit glasses that have the tell-tale required numbers and company names printed on them, but that will BURN YOUR EYES DOWN TO THE NUBS if you use them to look at the eclipse.

 

Front Two-Supplemental: Check lists published online by reputable sources showing the correct glasses to buy. Lists are always helpfully marked as not all-inclusive.

 

Front FYI: Dogs and cats won’t need eclipse glasses because as Space.com notes, “animals don’t really look right at the sun, so their eyes probably will be OK.” 

 

6. I should probably go to the hardware store for the drywall corner bead I need sooner rather than later, just in case the eclipse causes a run on building materials. I don’t expect there to be such a run, but with the loons coming into town mixing with the loons already here, you never know.

 

7. Gelflings still know nothing.

 

With My Own Eyes

Arthur C. Clarke, in his novel “Imperial Earth,” describes a type of people he calls a “tapeworm”.

Tapeworms, his principal character Duncan Makenzie points out, are typically Earth-dwellers who believe their lives are so important or significant they record themselves, both audio and visual, saying and doing every little bitty thing that happens to them. Day and night. He credits this to narcissism and the ubiquity of portable recording devices.

Sounds familiar, right? Never mind that Clarke’s novel was published in the mid-1970s, when such ubiquity wasn’t.

That brings me to the point of this post: The eclipse.

I’m dead certain there will be millions of photos and videos of the event, published everywhere, probably to the point sites like YouTube and Facebook will break down the day of.

So I want to watch the eclipse unrecorded. Using only the eclipse glasses I bought.

Because I’ve got lots of pictures and video of the places I’ve visited. And I never look at it.

Like Linus, I wish to gaze upon this Great Pumpkin with my own eyes.