I love magic right up until the moment when I learn how the trick was done. The solutions are always so much less interesting than the mystery: So the ball was in his other hand the whole time? Bleh. Boring. What was, only a moment ago, an impossibility, has now been reduced to a banality. Which is pretty much how I feel about today’s eclipse.
We live an hour south of the path of totality, about 97%. We figured that was good enough until I watched a clip from the Montreal Planetarium saying that even if you view from 99.9% totality it’s 1000x different from the full thing. So, 2 hours before showtime, we headed out thinking there couldn’t possibly be THAT many people in VT for this thing! Wrong. Traffic was stupid and we had a hard time finding a place to watch, eventually cramming into a parking lot at a dinky little general store with other latecomers. The traffic home was even worse but boy o boy, it was so worth it! The best part was experiencing it with our 7 and 9 yr old grandkids… what an incredible, wondrous thing to be part of, all with other humans there for the same thing! Absolutely amazing!
The ride home in backed up traffic with 2 starving, tired kids was hell though.
Honestly northwest Arkansas is pretty nice, and mostly made up of people who are not in Sanders’ base
We live an hour south of the path of totality, about 97%. We figured that was good enough until I watched a clip from the Montreal Planetarium saying that even if you view from 99.9% totality it’s 1000x different from the full thing. So, 2 hours before showtime, we headed out thinking there couldn’t possibly be THAT many people in VT for this thing! Wrong. Traffic was stupid and we had a hard time finding a place to watch, eventually cramming into a parking lot at a dinky little general store with other latecomers. The traffic home was even worse but boy o boy, it was so worth it! The best part was experiencing it with our 7 and 9 yr old grandkids… what an incredible, wondrous thing to be part of, all with other humans there for the same thing! Absolutely amazing!
The ride home in backed up traffic with 2 starving, tired kids was hell though.
Embrace awe.
https://xkcd.com/2914
Excellent piece. Any time someone tells me to Google it I tell them I’d rather not know.
Having seen the 2017 total eclipse, In a state park south of Knoxville, I can attest to its awe-inspiring qualities. Bucket list!