Chats with Deb

Chat with Deb—Post-Eclipse Wrap-up

Accept nothing but 100% totality

Photo 1: ‎⁨Kershaw Park⁩, ⁨Canandaigua⁩, NY, 15:20:27 EDT — 98% totality, like a very cloudy day. Photo 2: ‎⁨same spot, 15:21:26 EDT — 100% totality, all the lights are on and it is DARK, people! (My phone could see better than I could, my eyes had not had time to adjust so with naked eyeball I only saw what was in the immediate lamplight.) Both photos by author.

Chatting with Deb in the car on our way home from New York state.

ME: I’m sorry Henry was disappointed! His big brother was so excited!

We had experienced the total eclipse — not quite three minutes worth—with some friends who have a house in the Finger Lakes region of New York state. We got to see some of the initial lunar crossing as the clouds got out of the way here and there, but by the time the total eclipse started we were under solid cloud cover. I had set a goal to be in the path of totality, weather be damned, so I was content to be there with just a couple hundred other folks in Kershaw Park in Canandaigua when the sky got dark. And then darker. And then darker.

DEB: It’s hard when you’re in first grade, honey. As far as Henry was concerned, it got dark. Well, it does that every night—what was the big deal?

We had not met Henry until the park. Henry had an astronomy t-shirt and a nebula-style sweatshirt and knew all about the eclipse, because his older brother—who is very smart, Henry let us know—had…