Eclipse Snippets

Here are words that strayed into the Blog Editor’s pocket notebook:

Eclipse day morning, August 8th, 2024
9am, bluebird
Daylilies are 1″ tall.
Quiet here after the sugar on snow party yesterday
The event seems personal yet all these other people –
We are millions.
I want to experience the whoosh.
What if something goes wrong?
11am, inner excitement, don’t ask me to do any task.
I tried to call C. I will walk to her house at 2pm.
Third cup of tea

As the moon swallowed the sun:
Desaturated light
Muddy light
Accoutrement (the glass?)
Heather’s house blurs.
Dropping F-stops
Feeling faint
Indigo

Totality: no notes

As the moon released the sun:
“Let’s talk cars,” said Oliver, age four. “I have a Toyota, Elliot has an Audi.”
Elliot, age two, nodded with his eyes.

“Is that truck going by a Ford?” I asked.
“No, it’s a GMC,” said Oliver.

Heading home up Falls Brook Lane, social gravity pulled us toward the McBrine crowd:
A telescope
An astrophysicist
Three Coast Guard cadets over there
Solar prominence
Some material…
Cooler – hydrogen gas…
When rotating it looks like a tomato.
Field
Why is the corona hot?
Solar wind – particles that break off
Earth blocks UV.
37 Coast Guard cadets never showed up.
Granularity: Half the pixels were removed.

Chatter at twilight, the regular one:
Draining light, clarity.
R, who was home alone, heard wild animals howling.
Freedle’s favorite part was seeing Eddie Adams.
Chas wants to do it again.
No whoosh for me.

The next day:
The sun is out.
Photos of cars, people, pilgrims.
It was desaturated, it was horror movie light.
Those 37 Coast Guard cadets who didn’t make it to Stowe got as far as Montpelier.

Yesterday the Spanish astrophysicist named Mari taught me how to adjust my dominant eye to the telescope. After several attempts, I could see the sun as a clean red sphere. At the base of the sun hung a triangle finely pencilled in red. Mari said that was the solar prominence. She drew me a sketch and explained it all as she drew. Due to her thick accent and my slow mind I grasped little but I felt privileged to be in her presence, and to have been invited to look through her telescope. A man hustled her and the three Coast Guard cadets into a car and off they rushed to the Stowe-Morrisville airport.

“Why did you choose to study the sun?” I asked.
“It’s close,” she laughed.

It was my day off for the Sun and Moon and People.