I was honestly pretty blasé about the eclipse itself. Every hundred years? Meh. I was more looking forward to the coming together of strangers over an arbitrary and completely harmless experience. In spirit it reminded me of New Years Eve, the year-ending/beginning festivities which are probably the only holiday in the world that pretty much everybody can agree on. There are no politics involved and, with a few interesting exceptions, pretty much everyone can agree on the date. Its only capacity for discrimination is how the exact moment is transient.
I was not expecting to take pictures of the eclipse but I managed a couple of interesting shots, one of them thanks to a novel way of viewing the event that was randomly discovered by some folks outside the Strand Smokehouse on Broadway.
The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars
The gathering of people in front of a shuttered newsstand caught my attention, but I didn’t understand why they were there until someone told me. Someone had noticed that the eclipse could be safely viewed through an overhead piece of what I am guessing is plexiglass or just heavy, semi-opaque plastic.
The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars
I can’t be sure if staring at the sun through this sheet of plastic really was 100% safe, and on account of that I did not look for very long. It did not hurt my eyes in the slightest to look at it for just a couple of seconds.
Through that improvised filter I got this image of the eclipse at 2:46pm, at which point it was just about as covered as it ever was around here.
The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars
I have a pigment in one of my eyes that I suspect is a result of looking at the sun when I was in grade school. This occurred during the 1979 eclipse, which partially covered the sun over Florida. I can’t say with certainty if that’s what caused it but the presence of that pigment led some eye doctors and retinal specialists to think it might be Macular Degeneration, a degenerative disease which most commonly afflicts the elderly. On account of this possibility I’ve submitted my eyeballs to any number of tests and ocular discomfort at the hands of retinal specialists who doused my orbs with colorifying fluids and picked at them with needles and small metal spoons.
The most memorable experience was “The Pictures”, as one retinal surgeon referred to them. Strangely enough I can’t remember the details of getting The Pictures done but I recall it as being damn uncomfortable if not painful. As if to exacerbate the needlessness of it all the retinal dude lost The Pictures and we had to do them all over again.
A few years of dutifully getting my eyes studied showed no progress in the supposed degeneration. I quit having the tests done. If I ever really did have early stages of Macular Degeneration then the doctors credit its stoppage to the fact that I started taking Ocuvite, a Lutein-rich supplement which is said to promote healthy vision and slow progress of conditions such as Macular Degeneration. It could be a bit of witchcraft, these assumptions that Lutein has stopped progress of the alleged disease, but I’ll keep taking the stuff because it actually seems to have improved my long-range vision.
I went out the day before yesterday’s eclipse looking to get a pair of the eclipse glasses. Someone missed out on a cash cow on this because the few places that carried them sold out 4 or 5 days earlier. One store clerk said I honestly might have been the 200th person to ask about the glasses that day.
It turned I didn’t even need them. Plenty of people out and about were happy to lend me theirs for a few seconds. I should have anticipated that. What did I think people would do if I asked? Would they say “No! Screw you! I paid for these!” No.
On to other things, then. See you.
