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.)

They don't play baseball at the old field, anymore

I went for a run at the trails in Devou Park in Covington, Ky., tonight, and while the run was pleasant, the sights at the old Ludlow-Bromley Field nearby were depressing.

Instead of Little Leaguers struggling to catch the ball in the sun, weeds and shoots of grass poked from the infield dirt.

Instead of bracing for a collision as a runner rounded third, home plate lay forlorn, cracked and smashed into the dirt, listing to the left. Instead of the cries of parents and coaches telling players to hit it where they ain't, only the humming of cars on the nearby road broke the silence

Clearly, the baseball park no longer gets much use. Even the view from what is left of the mound shows a porta-potty instead of a swinging batter, a crouching catcher, and the umpire behind it all.

Manchester bombing

I suppose this terrorist bombing across the ocean hit closest to home when I read and heard stories about parents coming to pick up their kids as the concert was letting out.

I've been there. Many, many times.

A Black 47 concert in Ireland many years ago

During the years my daughters were concert-going teen-agers, I must have either dropped them off, picked them up, or gone along with them to a hundred concerts or festivals in at least a half-dozen states. I have seen their tired but estactic faces afterward, knowing the anticipation was worthwhile. I have experienced the waits outside the venues for the concerts to end, and then scanning the thousands of joyous smiles for ones that looked familiar.

It sent shivers across my back when I heard a father speaking on NPR about the terror of standing outside the bombed arena in Manchester with hundreds of other parents, frantically searching for his two daughters. I swear I wasn't crying when I learned he found them together, holding on to each other, looking anxious, then breaking into a run and pushing through the crowd when they spotted him.

I know this post isn't book-related. But it's something I had to say