My eclipse experience

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor D id you hear about the eclipse?

I kid … unless you have been in a coma (and if so, welcome back) you no doubt have been inundated with news about Monday’s solar eclipse. And yes, I know that not everyone was as into it as some folks were, but it did bring an estimated one million visitors to the state for eclipse viewing. Many of those folks spent lots of money on food, gas, lodging and entertainment during their stay in the Natural State (which was over the weekend and then some for a lot of folks), so even if you’re not an eclipse enthusiast, you’ve got to see the value in hosting such a unique celestial event was for the rest of us.

I remember back in like 1985 or 1986, there was another full solar eclipse that was going to be viewable in the U.S.

And even though there was no internet, Facebook or social media back then, we still managed to spread the word about it. I don’t think those cool eclipse glasses were as readily available back then, because us kids all got instructions on how to make an “eclipse viewer” out of a cereal box. It was kind of a periscope-looking thing and you didn’t watch the actual eclipse so much as get a reflection of the shadow as the moon “ate up” more and more of the sun.

Of course, it was the ’80s, and we drank from the hose and didn’t wear seat-belts and wore sun tan lotion instead of sunscreen, so most of us probably just put on some sunglasses and just stared directly at the sun.

Well, fast-forward to today, and here we were in 2024 with another big eclipse on the horizon (metaphorically speaking … the actual eclipse was almost directly overhead). I once wrote a novel about some vampires who were planning a big worldwide takeover during a total eclipse, but I have yet to find a publisher (I did get some very nice rejection letters though). I wasn’t expecting any vampire attacks this past Monday but I was worried the weather would not cooperate.

The forecast was calling for clouds in much of the “totality” viewing area, but here in our corner of the world, the skies were (mostly) clear for the three hours or so that the eclipse would be taking place. In a bit of a funny note, I’m actually kind of shocked that no one was complaining on Facebook about why they would “have an eclipse” while everyone was at work or when the weather was bad, like it was something scheduled like fireworks. Reminds me of an actual complaint I read about once where at a city council meeting, a woman objected to a deer crossing sign being placed on the side of the road on the edge of her property.

“Why don’t you just move the deer crossing somewhere else?” she asked, as though the council could instruct the deer to cross in a different part of the road.

But anyway, around 12:30 Monday afternoon, we started going outside every few minutes to check the scene. It was me, my daughter, her boyfriend, my oldest son and his baby boy. It was “Baby’s First Eclipse” but he actually ended up napping through most of it (which was fine, since the safety glasses were too big for his little 8-month-old head, although I did consider staging a photo for Facebook with him looking up at the sun but he fell asleep, so we’ll just have to tell him about it later when he’s older. There’s supposed to be another one here in 2045, so he’ll be 21 then. Maybe we’ll share a beer and watch the eclipse together?

But as for this one, we had a good time out in the front yard watching as the moon slowly made its way across the sun and the weird “sunny but darker” skies made it look like when you replace a 100 watt lightbulb with a 40 watt one – it’s still light, but it’s just … off somehow.

They say we got a 98 percent totality here in Crittenden County and indeed, the sun got down to just a sliver (a toenail, I said) of light. And I don’t know if you saw the cool “shadow outlines” or the “light ripples” that we did but it was certainly more than just “it got darker,” like my Mom said.

My son explained all the math to us, like how by sheer coincidence the sun is 400 times larger than the moon and the moon is 400 times closer to the Earth than the sun, which makes it possible to have a total solar eclipse.

For my part, I explained how a lunar eclipse works, which meant explaining to my almost-grown daughter that the moon doesn’t actually “glow,” and it’s actually the reflection of the sun’s light on the moon that lights it up, so when the Earth passes between the two, you get a lunar eclipse.

When is the next one of those? Well, it’s March 14, 2025, so go ahead and mark your calendars!