As a child, I was a space buff. Mike Mars, John Carter, Kimball Kinnison–these characters and the writers behind them fueled my imagination, and that drove me to non-fiction to find out what was really going on out there. So I learned about eclipses sixty years ago, and I learned then that there would be one in 2017. I’ve been waiting for Monday since then. I wasn’t disappointed! The details of it are memorable. Mount Jefferson, fifty miles to the west, turning black as the moon’s shadow raced toward us; the temperature drop; the red arc of Bailey’s beads; the brilliance of the ‘diamond ring;’ the feeling of sunset; the cries of my fellow viewers (including “We’re sorry about Trump!”) I was with 200,000 people in Madras, all united by the overwhelming sense of insignificance that such a cosmic event drives in any human. Climate change? Eh! The earth lives in the the rhythm of the cosmos, where millions of years fly by in a moment. Our lives are not at all important, despite our struggle to make them so. The dinosaurs witnessed eclipses, and whatever arises after humans are eclipsed will, too.
If I can figure out iMovie, I’ll post a clip from the video I took during the event.

Mark Sees the Eclipse