The Eclipse That Wasn’t

To be fair, the moon did in fact eclipse the sun for about a minute here in Central New York.

Trouble is, we barely saw it.

I suppose it was a good thing that it was so cloudy we didn’t need our special eclipse-viewing glasses to see where the phenomenon ought to be. And there were a few brief seconds when the clouds were thin enough that we could see the sliver that the sun had become, hiding behind the moon. And it did get dark. The robins were singing up a storm as the day moved toward what looked like dusk. A few street lights came on. It was eerie and really cool.

But–where was the awe? The beautiful ring-like sight of a total eclipse?

For what it’s worth, here are the few decent photos I managed to take in the minutes before and after totality.

Wait…there it is…gone again…there it is…where did it go? …Oh there it is: look! total ecl–! Oh.

If I stick around for another few hundred years I’ll see another total eclipse come through town. And to be honest, I’ve already seen an “almost” total eclipse in 1963 (we lived just south of the totality path). I was ten years old and I distinctly remember standing in my backyard with a “pinhole camera” over my head desperately trying to see the shadow of the eclipse on a cardboard box. But I feel sorry for the thousands of people who spent a ton of money and flocked to New York to see a sight like they’d never see again…and then didn’t get to see it.