Solar Eclipse
1:05pm: Since we were out patrolling the grounds anyway, it seemed a good opportunity to stage a time lapse of the ground level effects of the scheduled solar eclipse. Why not?
You are looking generally NE toward Jack’s Mountain in the background. Since your perspective is seeing the terminus of the ridge (end on) the remaining 45mi or so of it is not in view.
2:01pm: More or less the same perspective. The stick has a shadow, hence Shadow Stick, likely among the earliest efforts at time keeping.
2:03pm: Working the sun as directly behind me since there are no plans of looking at it; seems a thing we learn at an early age without having to be taught.
2:05pm: Are we having fun watching a shadow move? Keep watching.
2:06pm: The sun is directly behind me, and the shadow is eclipsed by the stick, in opposition to the sun being eclipsed by the moon. Follow? What happens next is even stranger.
2:08pm: The shadow is now on the other side of the stick. Are you beginning to get the idea something is about to happen as the eclipse moment arrives? Are you feeling the same anticipation so many people felt? Were you watching the shadow from our moon at the moment we were watching the shadow from a stick?
2:10pm: Time can move slowly or swiftly with a lot of variables. The Shadow Stick will never deceive, it only knows the moment. The myths and the spells are of our design.
2:11pm: The time is near. Do you recall the exact moment? Did you record the time? Did life intervene? Were you tempted to peer at a perilous wonder, unprotected like the Madusa?
2:13pm: Oops! Bruno entered, tilting the Earth on its axis and throwing time out of kilter. Thing is, the solar eclipse became a media frenzy complete with dire expectations of burned-out retinas and hyper-ventilating commentary.
There doesn’t seem much to be learned from stories of gloom and doom or over consumption plied by a parasitic media machine. Not when life is so much simpler without it.
If you’re thinking we have no regard for the beauty and pure mathematical perfection of colossal cosmic events; a reminder that you are reading from the guy who witnessed The Great Fireball of 1966, up close and personal. Takes a lot to rattle these nerves. Lunar and solar eclipses are routine, that’s the beauty of it. There is a special kind of wonder in the unexpected.
We were an hour too early for this solar eclipse, so what happened was nothing out of the ordinary. Reports were so dizzyingly inept, solid information was only available by confronting paywalls everywhere. When the actual event occurred, it was obscured by cloud cover at our location and so there were no shadows anyway - our timing was perfect as it turned out.
Hype and superstition are married to these events historically. Hysteria and sacrificial offerings are par for the course when the ends justify the means. Question everything. Doubt the Spellbinders and trust your stick.
Country Wit and Wisdom
Nature is a vast and glorious marvel, but even a dog knows better than to stare at the Sun.
