Reece's Pieces: A Skeptic Converted - Totality is Worth the Trip!

In November of 1972 Carly Simon released a recording titled You're So Vain, a song that still gets airtime 45 years later. Some of the lyrics were cryptic. Like, "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you". Who she was singing about was a mystery until she spilled the beans in her memoir "Boys in the Trees". It was Warren Beatty, who surely got a little humility after being a key player in the most famous screw-up in Oscar ceremony history. The song included the lyric "You flew your Learjet up to Nova Scotia to see a total eclipse of the sun". Why anyone would do that was a mystery to me as well, but that mystery was solved in my own backyard on August 21, 2017.

That's the day a total eclipse occurred at our house. And unless you were in the 70-mile-wide "path of totality", why anyone would travel to see one is probably still a mystery.

I was a skeptic. But one website that had great info on the eclipse compared a seeing total eclipse versus even a 99% eclipse to walking by a steak house and smelling the steak vs. going inside the steakhouse and having one for dinner (Note to vegetarians: Please insert your favorite veggie in place of the word "steak").

I am no longer a skeptic.

On Monday, August 21, 2017, my wife and I were joined by our son, our 3 grandkids, and 3 good friends, eclipse glasses at the ready, to witness a total eclipse in the heart of rural Cole County, Mo. The last eclipse to occur where our house now stands was on July 7, 1442. The next one will be June 3, 2505. If only the clouds would cooperate and stay away, we were set to take it all in.

The week before the eclipse a friend of mine had told me about an iPhone app - "Solar Eclipse Timer" - that would maximize our viewing pleasure. It cost $1.99, normally a no-no for me, but what the heck - I sprang for it! With a mere press of a button, this app located our deck on its GPS, filled in our latitude and longitude, pre-programmed the exact times of the four stages of contact, and alerted us each time a critical time was approaching, both verbally and with a tornado warning type alarm.

As the time of the first contact approached, the excitement grew. But it really wasn't too exciting as we all looked for the dot where the moon was encroaching on the sun's surface. As the moon continued to block more and more of the sun, the sun began to look like an orange moon going through all the lunar phases. The big excitement was the second contact, that moment when the moon, 400 times smaller than the sun but also 400 times closer to earth than the sun, completely obscured the sun!

The landscape darkened and the air cooled as the moon slowly covered the sun. With 10 minutes to go, our dog felt compelled to go jump in the lake. Twice. Area roosters crowed as the landscape darkened. That's not all that remarkable for us or unusual for them to crow at odd hours. Slowly, but surely, the surface of the sun disappeared, down to just a tiny sliver. Then, momentarily, the sun disappeared and our eclipse glasses went black. "You may remove your glasses" advised the Solar Eclipse Timer. And then we saw why Warren Beatty flew to Nova Scotia to see a total eclipse of the sun.

In the sky was the most magnificent sight I could imagine. The moon had a diamond ring around it! Ooh's and Ah's and cheers went up from our deck. And we could hear our neighbors cheering a half-mile away! Staring at the sky, eclipse glasses in his hand, my 10-year-old grandson just kept exclaiming "THAT'S SO AWESOME! THAT'S SO AWESOME! THAT'S SO AWESOME!" In the woods just south of our home, every owl in the forest began to hoot! I suspect they were hooting "THAT'S SO AWESOME!" but I can't be sure. Along the tree line, either a large hawk or a smallish eagle flew through the semi-darkness. Surprisingly, the normally vocal coyotes were silent.

I searched high and low for a video that even semi-captures the magnificence of the moment and found this video taken by Lauren Pointer. It does a good job other than the moment when she apparently got so excited she fell out of her chair. Take a look:

Lauren Pointer eclipse video

If you weren't in the "path of totality" - that 70-mile wide swath of land from Oregon to South Carolina which included our home, you never got to take your glasses off and marvel at that amazing spectacle in the heavens because the sun never went totally dark. After about 2 1/2 minutes of trying to absorb and observe as much as possible, the warning came to put our glasses back on and the moon began to slowly leave the sun in it's wake.

The skeptic was converted!

On April 8, 2024, another total eclipse will occur within easy driving distance of our home. It's path, from southwest to northeast across the U.S., will cross the path of this eclipse over the New Madrid fault in the bootheel of Missouri.

God willing & assuming Kim Jung-un hasn't started WWIII, I plan to be somewhere in the "path of totality" on April 8, 2024. I am currently working on the lyrics of a song about my exploits to send to Carly Simon. The tentative title of the song about my eclipse exploits is "You're So Old!" ("He drove his pick-up to Cape Girardeau to see a total eclipse of the sun! He's so old, he probably forgot this song is about him, about him.")

If it sells well, I'll take along a group of friends and relatives in my new Learjet.

Here are some pics from our deck as from August 21, 2017, the day I was converted to a "totality" believer.