Tag Archives: solar eclipse

local news

Eclipse enthralled us all

Few pictures I have snapped over the years have filled me with the pride of the one I am showing with this brief blog post.

On the Eighth of April, 2024, we in North Texas got a lifetime thrill when the moon traveled in front of the sun and gave us this view. It lasted a little more than four minutes.

To be honest, I awoke that morning dreading what I believed would happen. That we would be blanketed by heavy cloud cover. The weather forecasters were talking the previous night about rain falling on us in the D/FW area.

I looked outside and saw a clear sky with the sun rising in the east … just like it’s supposed to do!

The day progressed and the clouds kinda/sorta rolled in. They were spotty. Plenty of breaks in them as they traveled overhead.

I had my eclipse-viewing glasses at the ready. I looked up and saw the edge of the moon starting its path across the sun.

The rest is history. I was so glad and thrilled to be able to witness it as it occurred.

environmental news, local news, political news

Politics enters eclipse coverage

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Leave it to the TV network talking heads to inject contemporary politics into discussion about the historic wonder of a total solar eclipse.

I was taken aback … but not surprised.

Listening to the eclipse run-up early this afternoon, an MSNBC commentator noted that an eclipse actually prevented a war from erupting in ancient Greece. I didn’t catch the name of the adversary facing down the Greeks.

Then she wondered out loud whether during these contentious times that we could have a similar peace-finding result from the eclipse that swept across the eastern third of the United States.

We all know the answer to that one. No! It won’t end the sniping, the backbiting, the innuendo here at home and the wars that rage in Europe and the Middle East.

It’s kind of a quaint thought, however.

The old-time Greeks didn’t have social media to take their minds away from Mother Nature’s splendor back in the day. Nor did they have cheap tinhorn politicians who play to TV cameras whenever someone — anyone! — turns on the lights; oh sure, they had their tinhorns, but they were motivated by simpler means.

Here’s my immediate takeaway from what we witnessed today in North Texas.

For a few minutes in the early afternoon, I wasn’t worried at all about what mere mortal politicians were doing or saying in the halls of power. Not in Congress, or the White House, or City Hall or the county courthouse. My focus was straight up as I watched the moon block the sunlight shining on Earth.

Nothing else mattered. Nothing!

environmental news, local news

A gigantic event awaits

Epochal events, by definition, don’t come around often, but when they do it is good for the authorities to prepare for them with all the resources they have on hand.

North Texas is about to be the scene of one of those events on Monday. It will occur shortly after 1 p.m. when the moon passes in front of the sun, turning the bright daylight of a mid-spring day into the blackness of night.

The last total solar eclipse I can recall occurred in the early 1980s. On that day the sky was overcast, just as the weather service is predicting for much of Texas on Monday. But the sky over Oregon got dark during that earlier event, as it will on Monday here in Princeton, Texas, where I am hanging my hat these days. I remember then hearing about how zoo animals cowered in the dark, how wolves howled and dogs barked.

The TV stations, plus all the cable networks are planning wall-to-wall “team coverage” of the event beginning around noon. I heard one of the local TV stations is planning to launch drones presumably to get above the cloud cover to take pictures of the moment the moon darkens the sun’s glow.

Police departments and Texas transportation officials are planning to make their presence felt on our streets, roads and highways to ensure motorists are paying attention to the traffic and avoiding the temptation to look skyward, even though the weather guys and gals say there will be nothing to see.

I obtained my eclipse-watching glasses. I am staying home that day. I’m going to look skyward at just the right time … hoping that a break in the clouds might occur in correct spot to get a glimpse of the event.

And no, I will not peer with unprotected eyes at the sun the way the 45th POTUS and his wife did some years ago when they looked at an eclipse that appeared over the East Coast.

However, I am ready to be thrilled by this event that won’t repeat itself in this country until I am long gone.

environmental news, local news

Staying put for this one

Command decision time, which means I have decided to stay home for The Eclipse. There. It’s done and I ain’t moving.

I keep reading in the local newspapers about how the cops are going to be out in force the afternoon of next Monday to make sure everyone’s behaving behind the wheels of their vehicles. They express concern about motorists not paying attention to the traffic while the sky darkens above them.

Fine. Let others hassle with all of that. I am staying put. It’s going to be the kitties — Macy and Marlowe — and me in our house in Princeton, Texas. which is in the middle of Ground Zero of the eclipse event.

My son who lives with me will be at work. So will my other son who lives in nearby Allen. My granddaughter will be in school close to their home and my daughter-in-law will be home, too, presumably staying safe.

The National Weather Service is predicting overcast skies that day. It’ll still get plenty dark for about four minutes sometime after 1 p.m. Eclipse watch parties? Getting together with friends to marvel at the universe? Forget about it!

I am staying where I know I’ll be safe from the nut jobs out there.

environmental news, national news, State news

Hurricane Harvey: the great equalizer

Not too many days ago, the nation rallied and cheered a total solar eclipse that marched the land from sea to shining sea.

We were thrilled and agog at celestial splendor that played out far above us. For the better part of the day, we set aside our political divisions, our angst, our worry and our anger.

That event passed and we returned in short order to our worldly troubles.

Then we had our attention riveted once again to another natural act. Hurricane Harvey has grabbed us all by the throat to remind us yet again that nature’s wrath and rage dwarf anything we can muster up.

The Category 4 storm is continuing to blast South, Southeast and Central Texas. It crashed ashore overnight and it’s going to continuing bringing extreme havoc, misery and more than likely tragedy.

My wife, sons and I used to live on the Texas coast. As I watch the news and try to catch up with events overnight, I keep thinking of — and praying for — our many friends who live along the coast from Beaumont, Houston and down along the Coastal Bend region.

My mind has been yanked away from the political troubles that have occupied me. Indeed, we join our fellow Americans in sending good wishes to our fellow travelers who must endure this destruction this monster storm is delivering.

Think, too, of the extraordinary piece of advice being offered by Texas emergency management officials, who ask folks in the path of the storm to write their Social Security numbers on their arms, just in case.

Mother Nature has this ability to equalize everything. It can “eclipse” our Earthly woes, as we learned just the other day. Those of us who aren’t battered directly by Nature’s wrath are drawn together in a sense of national worry and concern for our fellow Americans.

The rest of it all can wait for Hurricane Harvey to die.

national news

Sun eclipses all our troubles … for one glorious day

I love moments like these, days like these.

Cable and broadcast TV networks have pre-empted all other discussion about things that at the moment seem strangely irrelevant.

That crackpot in North Korea who keeps threatening to hit us with nukes? The aftermath of the Charlottesville riot? The “Russia thing” and the investigation that is under way in D.C.? The president’s idiotic tweet tirades?

They’ve all been, um, eclipsed by the sun and the moon.

Citizens of the world’s most powerful nation have been transfixed by the sight — or the prospect of the sight — of a total solar eclipse. The moon passed in front of the sun and in many places across a large swath of the nation, the sky went dark.

Crowds of thousands cheered. Newsmen and women were acting like children in their excitement as they reported the “totality” of the eclipse. CBS News has been playing The Beatles’ classic, “Here Comes the Sun.” Does it get any cooler than that?

In Amarillo, where we live, we didn’t get the total eclipse. The moon covered a good bit of the sun, but it didn’t get terribly dark here.

It didn’t matter. We waited with breathless anticipation.

I’ve seen one of these eclipses already. I watched the 1979 eclipse from my hometown of Portland, Ore. It was cloudy that day, as I recall, but the sky went black. Zoo animals freaked out.

That was then. Today is a special day.

The sun and the moon allowed many of us to forget temporarily the issues that have caused such concern.

Alas, tomorrow is just around the corner.