Our school district decided to give the kids the day off for the solar eclipse on April 9, trading it for some other previously-scheduled teacher workday. I was glad for that, since the timing of totality in Northwest Ohio would have put the the big event happening near the end of his bus ride home from school.
I work from home, and Aaron works nights, and the path of totality was such that we could get a minute or so of Total Eclipse action right in our back yard, so there was no need for us to fight traffic and crowds.
I didn’t even need to dig out the eclipse glasses I saved from the partial eclipse in 2017, since Connor’s school sent home a few pairs with each student. Funny… that eclipse happened on Connor’s last day of pre-Kindergarten, and the idea of watching the next eclipse with a 12-year-old Connor in 6th grade was just mind-boggling.
But here we are.
The darkness that falls during a solar eclipse is so fascinatingly still. The weird lighting before and after totality reminds me of summer thunderstorms, in a way. Totality, though — seeing the sun’s corona shine through the black of night at 3:15 in the afternoon was amazing. I absolutely understand why some people become eclipse-chasers after experiencing totality in person.
My iPhone 12, of course, wasn’t equipped to photograph the eclipse in any sort of meaningful way… but that didn’t stop me from making the attempt. It’s just my knee-jerk reaction to these kinds of experiences in nature — I want to document it so I remember it forever, even if the documentation is a blurry, blown-out similitude of what I saw with my own eyes.
The solar eclipse was amazing. A+ would watch again.