As a grandstand for today’s eclipse, our Thames-side dock and the steps down to it, facing southeast, might have been grand. But any observing paraphernalia I have, including the No. 14 welder’s glass that has served at many previous solar eclipses, is hidden in storage somewhere while the builders continue to rip our house apart and put it back together.
All I had was the monocular with which we watch passing swans and boats. I practised getting a sun image through it onto paper, but without a tripod the only rig I could make for holding it was a cardboard box, and the image trembled badly. We tried to find a source for welder’s glass, and Paul, the building contractor, called someone in the industry – “I’m trying to help a friend who’s an astrologer,” we heard him say – and on eclipse morning he brought us two pieces of No. 12. This strength is okay for relatively brief looks or if the sun is dimmed; I thought they might be used additively, but they are too strong.
Anyway, the morning sky was entirely cloud.
And there was to be, at eleven o’clock, near mid eclipse time, a birthday party to which everyone in the street was invited, filling the street, which is traffic-free because of planters across it. And by that time the cloud roof had thin places and a few openings.
The eclipse tantalized, as eclipses like to do, but then gratified. The two pieces of black glass became the entertainment of the party. Everyone saw – that shape. The interfered-with sun.
I remembered how I wished I had two pieces, at the total eclipse of 1995 October 24, which I saw from the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri in India. I was in a crowd of many thousands on a huge flight of steps, and I held out my piece of welder’s glass for an hour and a half while Indians queued to look through it. The women and girls tended to get left out, and I would have liked to hold up two pieces and enforce two queues.
Guy,
Why did you edit and change your original post? It makes my first reply look like I’m a crazy person. That was very sneaky of you.
This is my original 6-10-21 quote of your original unedited text:
“the girls as usual got left out, hanging shyly back while the boys gobbled the views of the sun.”
As I presently read this, your edited version as of 6-28-21 reads:”The women and girls tended to get left out, and I would have liked to hold up two pieces and enforce two queues.”
Fortunately, the email you sent me preserves the original story you told. It’s convenient that computers allow you to change the record. From your email:
“I held court with my welder’s glass: for almost the whole hour and a half of the increasing partial eclipse I held it out with my left hand and eager people queued, almost tumbling over each other, to look through it. If I were to relive the scene I would bring at least two pieces. Indeed I had left at home two more of them, besides several more foil spectacles and other devices, which I had laid in after my forgetfulness in Mexico and Texas but thought I would not need. I would hold them out with two hands, or set them up on poles, and make the people form two lines, male and female: the girls as usual got left out, hanging shyly back while the boys gobbled the views of the sun. At a progressing spectacle, one look is not enough; regulars among the crowd came round again and again. Each newcomer grabbed at the glass, but I held onto it, afraid that someone would drop it; except that each time Gopal, to my left, said “Could I, Guy?” I had to let him and his son hold it. I had explained that when totality came I would look through my little binoculars, and Gopal said “Will you let me see through them too, just a quick look?” and I said I would.”
Shame, shame, shame. I’m going to be watching you more closely from now on.
As the note at the end of all my blog posts says:
“Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after publishing it. If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version.”
My edit got close to the original full narrative, which I sent you. Glad you got around to reading it.
Glad also that you’ll be watching my words closely. Not, I hope, out of an emotional need to misconstrue.
Guy,
I don’t care to read an extremely long account of your trip. I simply wanted more clarity than the lucid dream you began to weave. You still do not want to see the fault I’ve found in you.
Quote:
“Why I would have liked to be holding up two pieces of welder’s glass for the people to take turns looking through was that “the girls as usual got left out, hanging shyly back while the boys gobbled the views of the sun.”
Since you have not been clear and I don’t want to go back and forth too long on this, I will assume you are talking about the boys using pieces of exposed film (since you did not have welder’s glass) and that you are speaking of their ACTUAL actions that you observed.
I’d like to know why you think the girls held back and the boys pushed forward?
I offered you the full explanation but you haven’t read it.
Many people were using unsafe ways to look at the sun.
I was offering views through my welder glass to help as many as possible see it safely.
The people who lined up to take this opportunity were of course only a tiny local fraction of the huge crowd.
Girls clearly were being left out of this. As to why, you’d have to ask someone with knowledge of Indian culture.
I would have liked to have a second piece of welder glass so as to let the females have the opportunity too.
If it’s still unclear, I shall only say, please read what I sent you.
Guy,
OK, I looked at your email you sent me and it didn’t clarify what i asked for – it is simply the same story in longer form. You lifted your text for this blog post directly from that story. Your last reply didn’t help much either. Once again, you were WISHING to have 2 pieces of shade 14 glass, and WISHING you had them mounted on poles. You were wishing that 2 lines were to be formed at your command. You were wishing that you held authority to demand only women at one line and men at another line. You were playing God in your head.
Your story was useful in that it contained a closer look into your judgement of others. You gave the pinhole box to the man only because he told you he was going to show it to his wife. Quoting your email:
“I wanted to share it, as well as my welder-glass, as widely as possible, and I suspected he would not be back, but then I thought, if he’s really going to show his wife, what better use for it? and I let him carry it off.”
This Indian man was quite astute. He read you just right. He knew that you were English and he could read your matriarchal frustration. He knew just how to drive you into your head and make you give him what he wanted. Hats off to this man who took advantage of you and didn’t give you back your property.
You’ve not answered any of my questions at all. You tell me to ask Indian culture. Why? Who represents Indian culture? Why not ask the Indian girl why she did demure? I can tell you why: There is a certain pride in judgement. It feels good to play God and to condemn. If you had asked the girls why they fell by the wayside, you may have been afraid of any answer that contradicted your prejudice of Indian men. What if Indian girls simply don’t care about science as much as Indian boys do? Will your fascistic authority force them to care?
Well, it’s too late to say. You’ve let the moment pass. Next time talk to people and ask them why they do what they do. Don’t ask culture. Culture can’t answer for individual people. A man can only answer for himself. Stop judging people, it’s truly ugly.
Have it your own way, Dan.
But try to imagine the scene a little more realistically. Perhaps that’s hard for you without having been in such a place?
If you had a piece of welder’s glass, sympatthized with the multitude of Indians who were dying to look at what was happening up there in the sky but could not because it was in the dangerous glare, held out your glass so that a few of them could take turns looking through it, saw that the women were being left out, you would wish for a second piece so as to let them have a chance. Your feelings would have been the same as mine. I hope.
It’s ridiculous to think that in the midst of this multitude I could have stepped out between other people toward a woman here and a girl there and questioned them about their habits. You don’t go pressing yourself other people’s wives and sisters and daughters. They might have spoken only Hindi.
I didn’t say “Ask Indian culture” (Who he?), I said, Ask someone who knows more about it than I do. The temptation of course is to mention that India is not know for women’s rights. You know that probably as well as I do, especially from recent news stories, but I’d rather not make generalizations about cultures that I know only slightly.
My best eclipse was a partial solar eclipse one afternoon sometime in the late 1980s or 1990s (I was already working as a freelancer, so was at home in the afternoon, and it falls within a 15-year period after my daughter had gone on to university and I took her place with her piano teacher). Not having acquired the proper optical equipment, I made a pinhole camera with a giant shoebox and some cardboard left over from children’s craft projects. It worked, and since I knew my elderly piano teacher was interested in everything (one of those “age cannot wither nor custom stale” ladies), I hauled it over to her house, and was greeted with one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me: “Marcia, I knew you would figure out some way to watch the eclipse!” But the real revelation was walking along tree-lined streets on the way, with the leaves acting as pinholes, and seeing a zillion copies of the eclipsed sun on the sidewalk. Totally beautiful.
Thanks for your constant additions to our enjoyment of cosmic and other events.
Marcia L. Barr
Happy to say that I too managed to follow the complete partial eclipse that was visible from my site in NE England today. There was some hazy, and some thicker, cloud at times, only enough to hide the Sun for four or five minutes at most a couple of times. I was projecting the image through my trusty, if now rather elderly, little refractor (one-inch main lens), which is handily portable, while sitting on the back steps by the door. Nearest mid-eclipse, around 11:15 local time, I was able to let my elderly neighbours have a view of the projected image as well, when they came out to sit in the Sun with their mid-morning coffee; they were impressed, though as the astronomers here will appreciate, I wasn’t doing anything particularly special! Made for a very pleasant morning.
I’m glad you all had good views of the eclipse. Being so brief and local, solar eclipses heighten our awareness of our immediate circumstances — where we are, who we’re with, the weather, where the Sun is in the sky and therefore the time of day and season, etc. I have vivid memories of the few partial solar eclipses, one annular eclipse, and one total solar eclipse I’ve seen. Paying close attention helps get the impressions into long term memory. I’ve seen more lunar eclipses, and overall my memories are less specific. Lunar eclipses last so much longer, and they happen at night, so the memories are less specific, dreamier.
Guy, I love your idea of forming two lines, one for the privileged and entitled, one for those who usually hang back. That inequality often correlates very closely with gender and age.
Our club saw the eclipse from Rye, New York, overlooking Long Island Sound: https://www.facebook.com/WestchesterAstronomers
Guy,
Quote:
“I remembered how I wished I had two pieces, at the total eclipse of 1995 October 24, which I saw from the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri in India. I was in a crowd of many thousands on a huge flight of steps, and I held out my piece of welder’s glass for an hour and a half while Indians queued to look through it. The women and girls tended to get left out, and I would have liked to hold up two pieces and enforce two queues.”
I have a fault with your judging of people and now you’re doing it in your own head. Is this scene a fabrication? Were you there or were you not there? I cannot tell. Are you being poetic? Why? If the city was abandoned, why was there a throng of thousands? Did they all show up for the eclipse? Did you imagine yourself passing out welder’s glass? Why did you pass it only to the men? Why did you imagine an alternative ending (within your imagination) of you standing up with power to enforce some injustice that you fabricated? Why did you make the men in your imagination brush aside the women? Did they brush them aside? Were the women actually as interested as the men? You are guilty of judging people who committed an injustice that you forced upon them within your own imagination! It could lead you, presently, to embolden the hatred of men. Did your mother hate men, perhaps?
I’d encourage you to come out of your head and live in the present moment. Watch the thoughts, hatreds, judgments, resentments, and fantasies. Separate yourself from them. They are not you. In your old age they are beginning to run together to the point that the lies of imagination have combined with some past projected truth and have morphed into one new lie. And then you go and lay it on me and ask me to believe it and make it mine.
Dan, I was there, having bicycled from Delhi by way of Jaipur. What I said in the blog post was an extreme compression, and I can see that it enables your highly interesting misconstruction! I am going to email to you, off-blog, about 1,400 words out of my 14,600-word account of that journey. In brief, for everyone else: Fatehpur Sikri was built by the Mughal emperor Akbar as his capital, abandoned 14 years later, but its palaces and other monumental buildings survive. The mountain-like steps are those leading up to a towering structure called the Buland Darwaza, “tall gate”. There are several villages near and within the bounding walls, including one in which I had spent the night. The people gathering there by thousands were not only from the villages but from all over India (including some from southern India who became my friends) because it was a romantic site for seeing the eclipse – even more romantic might have been the Taj Mahal in Agra (to which I rode next), but it was on the edge of the path of totality. You will see my remarks about the eagerness of Indians to see and understand what was happening (and the contrast with attitudes I had experienced at an eclipse in Indonesia, where the government ordered people to stay indoors), and my worry about the eye safety of people who were proudly brandishing bits of exposed film etc. Why I would have liked to be holding up two pieces of welder’s glass for the people to take turns looking through was that “the girls as usual got left out, hanging shyly back while the boys gobbled the views of the sun.”
What an exotic place to see an eclipse from!I can’t quite beat India but I did see on on Ulitsia Marsall Titov in Skopje,Macedonia (it’s North Macedonia now).took me by suprise as it was before i phones and I don’t think that the internet was common.it was about 25c and I was walking down Marshall Tito Street and it went cold and dark and I realized what it was and the temperature dropped too.very strange when taken unaware.
Guy, interesting how Dan called out your view that “women and girls tended to get left out” yet in your response you indicate it was a “romantic site.” I guess our ideas of what constitutes romance differs.
Nowback on topic. The horizon at sunrise was crystal clear and the orange bitten sun rose slowly and majestically. However a few minutes later it retreated into an upper cloud bank. That’s okay because maximum occurred before sunrise so it was already winding down.
I’m in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, USA. The sun would rise mid-eclipse. There were clouds predicted, but I got out of bed at 5am, grabbed my cardboard eclipse glasses from the 2017 eclipse, and drove to a nearby church parking lot with an eastern view. The view was of low clouds. But after several minutes, a shark fin of a partially eclipsed sun appeared. The light wasn’t strong enough to be able to project an image, so I didn’t try. There was no one to share it with in person, but I have pictures on Twitter and Facebook. And the glasses worked as expected.
Shark fin – that’s a contribution to the descriptive language for eclpses!
I had similar success although often thick clouds moved across but plenty of gaps plus thin clouds too which the Sun could power through. I used my 25mm Pocket Borg refractor,32mm Celestron Possil(I needed the wide field of view given you can’t see a thing until you find the Sun!),Baader Solar Film and my Google Pixel 3a phone on a bracket.i also had a pair of free eclipse glasses from an old Sky at Night magazine.