Watching the Eclipse

I lay on the bench beside a pond in a suburban Nashville park. Beside me, the ducks were preening and cleaning their feathers.

I watched as the sun disappeared behind the moon. With my special eclipse glasses, I could see nothing else in the dark sky. The effect was weirdly two-dimensional: The moon, appearing as a black disc, slowly covered up the sun's white-disc appearance, and now, a thin crescent remained. The rest of the sky was a deep gray.

Then everything disappeared.

I took off my glasses and looked up. Two minutes before totality, a cloud had covered the sun and the moon.

But the good news was that it was a single, fluffy cloud crossing an otherwise clear sky. And the park had lots of open ground, so moving uphill a few yards was enough to find a clear spot to view the sun and the moon. I put on my glasses, lay down, and looked up.

I found what I was there for, as the moon's disc now covered most of the sun, which now looked like a crescent sun. Only a small sliver of the sun showed behind the moon. Slowly, that crescent grew thinner and thinner, then became a small white dot. Presently, the dot vanished.

I removed my glasses. What I saw brought on a feeling of awe, and a wide grin, as my exclamations of joy joined those of my fellow eclipse watchers. The dark, almost night sky. The birds flying across the sky, seeming confused. The deep dark black of the moon. The dazzling white corona of the sun, flickering and flashing and showing itself around the rim of the moon. It was spectacular, a sight worth traveling hundreds of miles to see.

(By the way, the photos are from the NASA site.)

Book Review: Minding Frankie

Minding Frankie, by Maeve Binchy

I like Maeve Binchy's books. I like her writing. I like the way she develops characters and brings them together. I generally like her stories.

And I liked this one. Well, kind of. I think I'd like it more if it wasn't so ... so ... so upbeat.

Now, before you reject me as a cranky old man -- OK, I am a cranky old man -- hear me out. This book is too good in the sense that nothing bad really happens. Even the bad things are so obviously meant to challenge the people to be ever better.

Emily Lynch is an American of Irish descent who arrives in Dublin to visit her family and find her roots. She quickly becomes the star of the neighborhood -- helping her cousin Noel with his drinking problem, finding a way to raise money for her aunt and uncle's bizarre plan to fund a statue to an obscure saint, and otherwise to do good for everyone she meets. When Noel discovers he is the father to a dying woman's child -- a one-night stand he had forgotten about, natch -- Emily puts together a plan to have the entire community come together to help out.

Only one person wants to spoil the plan: A social worker who doesn't think Noel is the proper parent for the child, and worries she will get into trouble when the family inevitably falls apart. (This seems to be a trope of Irish fiction -- women who worry what others think of them.)

But don't worry -- spoiler alert here -- everything comes together in the end. The characters find acceptance, love, and live happily ever after.