What Freaking Eclipse?

This past Monday, people all across the USA were absolutely nutso over the solar eclipse.  Folks were driving or even flying hours to be where they could witness the totality, and to experience whatever it is you experience when the sun is completely blotted out by the passing moon.

I must have missed it.

I live and work really close to the path, in a home that was in the 98.5% totality zone, meaning that the moon would be covering 98.5% of the visible surface area of the sun.  Now, I know that within an hour's drive or so, the sun would disappear and it would get so dark midday that you could see stars.  And that was what I was expecting, or close to it.

Maybe not stars, but certainly for much or most of the sun's light to be blotted out, and for it to be one of those weird, vaguely yellow-hazed crepuscular experiences.  I remember the solar eclipse in 1979, I was in Boston and it really got weird, even though that one wasn't total locally either (and 1979 Boston started from a pretty weird place).

So as it got to be a bit after one in the afternoon, and things were supposed to start, I was looking out my window at the day's light level.  It was a partly cloudy day, so the light was changing from time to time just based on that, but I was really bracing for the weirdness to come upon us.  I mean, you know, 98.5%.  That's a lot of percent.

I had no plans to look up at the sun, with or without those nifty plastic 3-D glasses you were supposed to have on.  I know what Pac-Man looks like, and it really wasn't necessary to see, actually see the sun get eclipsed.  No, I was particularly looking forward with trepidation to the deep twilight at 2:30 or so in the afternoon, kind of like northern Alaska in winter.

Well, not so much.

At a half-hour before peak, with no discernible change, I told my best girl that it must be that the darkness descends in a hurry, just before the appropriate time, and lightens just as quickly thereafter.  So we walked outdoors, at ten minutes before the peak time, to wait for whatever was coming.

And waited ... and waited.  It was still partly to mostly cloudy, with not a lot of blue to be seen.  The illumination of the sun was what you would have expected on a mostly cloudy day.  The peak time, according to the geniuses at NOAA or whoever was putting out the word, came and went.

Nothing.

Now I have a degree from M.I.T., albeit in biology, and probably not wonderfully relevant, but I do think that my expectations should have been reasonable, even if I had only one experience from 40 years back to have as a reference.  But I expected a natural miracle, darn it, and I got no more darkness in a "98.5% zone" than I would have gotten on any of 200 other days here when the clouds go by.

Surely the big deal was that if you did look at the sun directly, or if you were to cut a hole in a piece of something and let the shadow go through, you'd see that Pac-Man shape and go "Oooohh, Pac-Man."  I didn't seem to feel the need to do that, and I was suitably disappointed.

Maybe next time, I'll drive to an actual place of totality.  Or just watch it on TV.  There were some neat views on TV.

Or I'll just wait for the next cloudy day and pretend.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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