Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Eclipse Watching on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade




First it was supposed to start at 130 and then at 230 PM.
We rode bike bikes to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, where Truman Capote once lived.
And chatted with people on park benches.
Some kids had pieces of paper with a hole in one end that would reflect on the other.
Others had cereal boxes designed with aluminum paper for viewing, low tech NASA design.
You can set your camera to selfie mode and look from there, one woman told me. 
That didn’t work.
Don’t look straight up, it’ll damage your cornea. I don’t want to be too much of a Jewish mom.
But here look in my glasses.  Someone gave them to me.
So we looked and sure enough, there the moon was half concealing the sun, like a harvest moon.
More and more people came out to the promenade, looking at the reflections on the sidewalk, the shadows, and crescent moons.
There it is.
There it is, one person declared in wonderment, as the Promenade became cloudy.
For a moment, everyone took part in a collective awe.
Adults became kids as we all looked and wondered about something larger than all of us together. 








































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