Eclipse and Community

           This Monday started off like any other week, with my yoga class where I encouraged my body to stretch and where I was encouraged to pay attention to the infinitesimal details of how various muscles and ligaments moved (or didn’t).  But afterward, Gary and I drove off to Castleton chasing the sun, or to be more accurate, in search of a way to safely view the imminent solar eclipse.

            We pulled into the parking lot at Castleton University near the small planetarium where there were already at least 100 people gathered.  The Green Mountain Astronomy Club had set up four telescopes with special filtering lenses and already a long line snaked its way across the grass to that particular tent.  As we approached, a couple asked if we would like to use their special eclipse viewing glasses to take a look at the sun.  The astronomy club was urging people to share glasses they said, encouraging newcomers to just tap someone on the shoulder and ask if they could borrow theirs for a moment. 

            Not only did this tactic work, but it helped to create a festive and communal atmosphere among the crowd.  People were smiling, sharing glasses and stories, showing off their homemade devices crafted out of old cereal boxes or colanders or in one case, a pair of binoculars embedded backwards in a large cardboard box lid and held a couple feet above a white sheet of paper where the image of the sun appeared.  We discovered that Gary’s straw hat left perfectly shaped little eclipse light shadows on his shirt, and had fun sharing that with the people waiting in line with us.  Strangers talked and smiled and were at ease with one another.  It was a wonderful gathering, and we left smiling, lighthearted and feeling that we had participated in something very special.

            It seems that we weren’t the only ones to feel this way.  The day after the eclipse I noticed several articles in the New York Times and other news and commentary sources that I regularly follow mused about the sense of community that was a strong thread running through Monday’s eclipse viewing gatherings across the country.  I think we all needed this.  We needed to come together to celebrate and experience something that we all had in common.  We needed to share smiles and stories and eclipse glasses with one another without worrying about the politics or religion of it and whether or not we could agree on it. 

            We all saw the same thing, a very simple image of the bright circle of the sun being swallowed up by the shadow of the moon, and even though it was simple we kept passing the glasses around exclaiming about the changes, asking if the person next to us noticed the difference from just a minute or two ago.  The camaraderie was just what the doctor ordered for what is ailing us, a good dose of community spirit, of shared lighthearted celebration.  In Castleton the crowd cheered at the height of the eclipse, and it felt to me like we just might have been cheering about the shared experience even more than we were cheering for the sun or moon or their beautiful dance in the sky.