The Great American Eclipse

The Great American Eclipse  – gary daily, Arts Illiana, 8/17/2017

What’s being called The Great American Eclipse is about to sweep across America.  Its grand arc will cross Salem, Oregon in the Willemette Valley, home for thousands of years to the  Molala and Chinook peoples.  It will glance against the man made Gateway Arch in St. Louis and cross the mighty Mississippi into the bustling Grand Ol’ Opry shrine and showplace city of Nashville, TN. Then, it will end its course in Charleston, S.C.. In Charleston, it will fittingly bring its timeless solar  deep shadow to the meager, yet deeper darkness of measured historical time–probing Antebellum slave markets, darkening the heavy steps of the  Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the memory charred site of a recent racist church massacre. 

So the path of totality angles across America. It will fall within 200 miles of 70 million people.  As the marketing boys will tell you, that’s a lot of potential foot traffic coming to your cash register Mr. and Ms. Business America.  From Chambers of Commerce to those who rent Port-a-Potties, they’re all rubbing their hands in anticipation and delight. 

In the America of the almighty dollar,  it’s far too easy to sniff at a seedy motel in Casper, Wyoming.  But why should the gloriously named 1st Interstate Motel miss this main chance cosmic event?  Rated “absolutely filthy” on the Trip Adviser web site, as of this past weekend you could still snag a room there on the sun’s shady path for $1,211 a night. For the record, the usual toll at the 1st Interstate Motel is $63 per. I hope these prices guarantee semi-clean sheets.

Over in Carbondale, Illinois, planning for this event has been going on  for years.  Go online and reserve your parking space, now!  Tomorrow will be too late. Get a ticket to do your viewing in Saluki Stadium with 15 to 20,000 of your sky-gazing friends. You will know them by their sun gazing  gear–special eye glasses festooned with rainbow rims, deep sea diving helmets, modified and safety inspected Lone Ranger masks,  Grateful Dead CDs of the song “Dark Star” with pin holes in them.  Before and after the sun and the moon do their dance together, head for the bars, the eateries and souvenir stands. Be sure to get a “Make America See the Light Again” hat.

Southeast along the path of totality, the posh L27 Rooftop Bar in The Westin Nashville, is a prime eclipse viewing spot. (I recommend settling in here if you can’t grab a spot at the Casper 1st Interstate.) The bar at the L27 Rooftop will be featuring one of those custom cocktails I’ve heard about. They’re calling it a Chromosphere. The price wasn’t listed with the recipe I saw for it.  But I’m guessing most eclipse gawkers will be doing their solar calculations with a bottle of Corona in hand.


All in all, way back in the 1920s,  President Cal Coolidge did nail the soul of America firmly in place when he said, “The business of America is business.”    . . .  We still live in that shadow.

But I hasten to add that science and mystery are a real part of The Great American Eclipse. I’ve seen plenty of assurances from long time scientific eclipse junkies that close observations, data gathered, hypotheses tested, will one day serve to answer questions touching on climate, space travel and, if you believe in it, evolution. 

There’s also the minor matter of human existence.  When old Sol sputters out and dies, ending global warming on earth, but turning our solar system into something resembling Sears and shopping malls today–empty, cold, space awaits.  Eclipses send out this news from the future.

Personally, I prefer pondering the mysteries reported during the blocking out of the sun during past eclipses. But to be candid, I find most of these a little underwhelming. 

For example, during totality:  Animals appear baffled. (Fair is fair. Face Book cats and dogs have always baffled me.)  Birds scatter and screech or huddle silently in roosts.  (Sounds like standard human behavior to my mind.)  Shrimp and clam larvae swim toward the surface of the sea as the sky turns dark.  (Sorry 1st Interstate Motel eclipse geeks, you’re going to miss the shrimp and clams doing their thing. Geologists tells us the Sea of Wyoming dried up millions of years ago.)  And dramatic turbulence and changes in winds and temperature can be expected. (Hey, what’s new,  I’m from Chicago.)

But I was moved by this (hold up  NYT picture from graphic strip) and Ferris Jabr’s  words accompanying the final panel in this work.   He marvels and warns us of something to think about as we observe this always singular, always repeating celestial event: 

“A total eclipse is not just the momentary theft of day.  It is a profound interruption of the world as we know it, all the more terrifying in its insistence.  Imagine what would happen if we altered the planet’s relationship with the sun.  An eclipse of our own making.  A new era of twilight with no promise of dawn.”

But I give the poets the last word.  Louis Menand recently wrote that every crisis is an opportunity for poetry.  I believe this deeply. 

So I close these personal thoughts with the following poem because I also believe, just as deeply, that along with Jabr’s warnings, at home with Menand’s poems of  crisis, there are jokes, and Suns everywhere –at our feet. I know this because a poet told me so.

                  _______________________________                        

Seeing the Eclipse in Maine
BY ROBERT BLY

It started about noon.  On top of Mount Battie,   
We were all exclaiming.  Someone had a cardboard   
And a pin, and we all cried out when the sun   
Appeared in tiny form on the notebook cover.   

It was hard to believe.  The high school teacher   
We’d met called it a pinhole camera,   
People in the Renaissance loved to do that.   
And when the moon had passed partly through   

We saw on a rock underneath a fir tree,   
Dozens of crescents—made the same way—   
Thousands!  Even our straw hats produced   
A few as we moved them over the bare granite.   

We shared chocolate, and one man from Maine   
Told a joke.  Suns were everywhere—at our feet.