If you live anywhere in the U.S., I’m sure you heard about the solar eclipse that happened yesterday. I decided to not risk the traffic (and risk missing the eclipse), so I stayed home and made my own eclipse viewing contraption because I procrastinated and didn’t buy those nifty eclipse glasses. I honestly didn’t trust them anyway because of all the rumors about fake or faulty ones. So just an hour before the event, I whipped together a mini projector from a piece of cardboard, some tape, and a pair of binoculars. It worked really well, and I got to watch the whole eclipse on a piece of paper. No burnt retinas here!
Several of my neighbors were outside on their balconies and patios as well. One of the families on the building across from mine were really hilarious and kept shouting, which is how I knew the event had started. With a loud “It’s happening! It’s starting!” I knew it was time to head outside. The man who lives next door told me he bought some of those paper glasses for $20 from some girl at a gas station, and we discussed how some (smart? evil genius?) people were probably making some big bucks today. He let me look through his glasses a few times, and he admired my funny binocular contraption saying, “Well that’s cool as hell!”
The last few minutes were the most wicked thing I have ever seen. The streetlights flicked on. The birds began their evening songs. The cicadas’ humming grew loud. The crickets began to chirp. The light peaking through the trees turned into repeating crescents. And the sky got dark as the horizon turned into a 360 sunset. I heard my neighbors shouting about the ring around the run, but since we weren’t directly in the line of totality, it didn’t show up on my paper. I’ve never experienced anything like it.
This whole universe is just amazing, isn’t it?
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