My Solar Experience

“Dear God, if you want America to impeach Trump, please give us a sign…like blot out the sun from one end of the Country to the other”…

…so someone had posted on Facebook. I swear that was not the reason I decided to head off to South Carolina on Sunday (8/20) just to see if God was listening.  It would have been reason enough. However, I went as a pilgrimage, to view a solar eclipse in its totality…and I wasn’t alone.

I am not a devotee of astronomical physics, even as I am in awe of it. How individuals, even thousands of years ago, could figure these things out is beyond my sixty-seven year old, twenty-first century brain. I am, though, deep into the metaphysics of the Universe, which includes both heavenly phenomenon and loads of people traveling to and congregating at unremarkable places in the pursuit of celestial wonders.

I had made my hotel reservations a month before and picked a final destination which looked to me to be remote yet picturesque.  I thought I could end up being by myself, or nearly so, perfect for a contemplative experience. A small state park on Lake Greenwood, a lake manufactured under Roosevelt’s New Deal, located far away from urban centers, seemed just right.

Figuring on some heavier than usual traffic on major highways, I packed up the Prius (including a disassembled bicycle in the back) and headed off early at a leisurely pace.

My first stop was Charlotte, NC, which was a straight shot down Interstate 85. I think I understand now why they gave that particular name to this highway as there are probably 85 reasons not to travel it during periods of congestion. In the event of an alien attack I suggest you forgo I-85 as an escape route and view it more as a cemetery.

Even after a couple of attempts at detouring I eventually succumbed to my participation in the parade until it mercifully released me at my assigned exit. Giving into my “what…it’s only 7:45” exhaustion, I hit the pillow figuring I’d at least get a really early start in morning, which I did.

Unfortunately, the I-85 parade was still in active celebration.  I don’t believe a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Balloon would have had any problem keeping up with the pack.  I opted out almost immediately and decided to go rogue on country roads. Smart choice…I think.

There is no telling whether traveling the back roads of South Carolina was economical on time or not (probably not), but it was cathartic.  The landscape was strikingly beautiful at times yet peppered with the decay of long standing poverty.  It revealed stories that interstate highways don’t allow you to hear.  Thinking about what had been there before made me wonder what kind of eclipse my memory would retain from this trip.

I made it to the State Park later than I had planned.  I thought it okay as it only meant less waiting time for the eclipse. However, the waiting time I first experienced was a line cars stretching all the way down to the entrance, a distance of three quarters of a mile.  My concern wasn’t so much the line as it was the snail’s pace by which it moved. The participants could have gone green and simply pushed their cars without consequence.

Thank goodness for alternatives.  I decided to simply pull over onto the large shoulder, take out my bike and power past the line, feeling smug and elated, yet still wondering (in the words of the Donald) what the hell is going on?.

The small park was filled, in fact before the eclipse began they would shut down the entrance.  I stopped a man, in his thirties, and asked where he was from. “Oh, from Tampa”, I said, “And why did you decided to come here?” He said CNN had broadcast it as a great place with only $2 parking. What?? What happened to fake news? Thousands and thousands of places along the path of Totality and I pick a CNN promo spot?

I got there at 11am while many of the people had staked out their spaces since 6:00 in the morning! At first glance it had the appearance and energy as one might anticipate from an evangelist floating in on a carnation enveloped barge with a promise to walk on water. I didn’t know what to expect.

It turned out to be just perfect.  The well disbursed participants were spirited and joyful.  Virtually everyone there had a common purpose. Even though they were all sure the eclipse was going to happen, they still held out the slight uncertainty that comes from never having had the experience before. I was one of them.

Many were colorful in their anticipation, with all kinds of paraphernalia for solar watching. There were boxes of all sizes, tripods, duck tape, Pringles cans…you name it.  Sun viewing glasses in every description, many modified with cameras and binoculars. It was wonderful. Everyone was happy to talk about their preparations. This was absolutely not Trump’s America.

The eclipse itself did not fail to meet expectations. In fact, for me and probably most others it exceeded those expectations considerably. The blue skies blessed us all.

You have probably already heard all kinds of descriptions similar to how I might describe the eclipse; the changes the fading light made to the surroundings, the hushed almost reverent sounds (or lack thereof) from the throngs, the pop of the corona at sudden full totality and the flashbulb flash when it ended, and the breathtaking  corona itself. 

I will say only this: I went onto Google Images to find a picture for this essay of the eclipse at totality that only a special lens can take. Out of the hundreds provided I couldn’t find one that showed what I saw. I had viewed it at both normal distance and up close with my binoculars.  That I could see something that appears to defy reproduction was and is quite special, indeed. Enough said.

The trip back was made almost entirely without use of interstate highways. Even then I chose certain routes that turned simple stoplights into mile long backups. It didn’t matter much. If that occurred I took even more remote paths to cross the Carolinas and had plenty to see along the way.

The two and a half minute totality of the eclipse and the anticipation that preceded it paid for the journey and more. However, I didn’t expect the dividends of sharing something which all were involuntarily and jointly part of.  I got to see a slice of America in distress and feel a touch of hope at the same time.  Not bad, not bad at all.

I Tried

Once again the focus is on D. Trump. Too bad. His public pronouncement of moral equivalency between neo-Nazis, et al, and those protesting against them says less about his ethics and more about his profound ignorance and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).  He really thinks, I believe, the real issue regarding Charlottesville was about violence, which was the core of his statement after the incident on Saturday. Perhaps he thinks the only problem with cancer is the weight loss.

His unassisted “press conference” on Tuesday (8/15) was a narcissistic defense of his Saturday statement, where he felt violated by reading his scripted pronouncement on Monday. For someone with NPD his capitulation on Monday, probably at the direction of John Kelly, had to be intolerable.

I truly doubt Trump is a racist or bigot on any kind of cerebral level. That would assume he believes there is a right or wrong. I think it likely his discrimination years ago against non-whites in his real estate holdings was nothing more than projected figures on a ledger. To his mind, they were simply rational choices.  Bigotry and racism to everyone else…but to him: the business of being Trump.

That he is the leader of this country is basically the convergence of Shakespearian comedy and tragedy on a grand world stage.

Even though Trump’s candidacy and Presidency has emboldened extreme Conservatism (lovingly expressed as the Alt-Right) to become more visible and seek avenues of power, the elements that seduce these white, gun-toting, under educated males to congregate can be found floating about like ether among the general conservative/Christian  community.  It is rhetoric of exclusivity.  It can be heard every day on talk radio, alluded to on Fox & Friends (which I watch nearly every weekday), and (between requests for money and injections of fear) on pulpits around the Country.

It is the reason, as Trump proclaimed, that individuals would continue to support the Donald if he pulled out a gun and shot someone on 7^th Avenue (provided he shot the right kind of person).

Now the conversation (or lack thereof) is centered on symbolism, in the existence of monuments, often old enough to rightly deserve the adjective historic.  Trump is making it his tweet-du-jour.

These monuments, mostly to Civil War Confederate military leaders or Confederate military in general, are the focus of the confrontation.  No doubt Richmond will become a major center of the controversy.

They are monuments that predate my life, many predating my father’s.  I have always looked upon them with…well, respect. My first reaction to any monument is that it was placed there by people who felt it had meaning for them, in their time.  For me it is simply education.

The exceptions to the rule are those statues erected in between 1920 and 1970 as a racist reaction to improving civil rights.  Their fate needs no debate and should have been gone years ago.

I also grew up learning of the Civil War as it related to military engagements, like most American Wars. Even now I can quote military facts on the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, and the Mexican-American War, e.g. but would need to refresh on the causes behind them.  A New Yorker by birth, I remember playing soldiers with a Civil War theme and favoring the Southerners as they were the eternal underdogs. I didn’t absorb the greater conflict until much later in life.

I have felt these post Civil War monuments in the South (there are also countless Civil War monuments in Northern States) were granite and marble testimonials to the dedication and sacrifice of people in the military and their loved ones.  Doubtless there are dedications sprinkled about the Country to those Soldiers who fought and died in the many godless “Indian Wars” that took place over a hundred years. 20 Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to soldiers who participated in the massacre of Sioux families at Wounded Knee in 1890. As a nation we revere our military without much worry about the reasons for their sacrifice.

I tried.  I tried to grab a hold of this view of military monuments knowing that once war begins it has its own momentum, the origins sometimes lost altogether (think WWI). Soldiers rarely consider the politics of what put them in harm’s way. It would be salt into the wounds they endure.

As the rage over these historic dedications placed amid the public has reached a level of intolerable conflict, I find I can no longer rationalize. The monuments have to go. There are plenty of Civil War battlefields where every one of them can find an appropriate home. There is at least one good reason why I feel this should happen and it is not for the reasons that caused the great American schism and bloody conflagration (which I understand is reason enough for some).

I have lived in the South for three-quarters of my adult life. In all that time I have never lost the wish that native Southerners would stop fighting the Civil War. There are roots of that conflict that are still in Southern ground. For some it might be rooted in racism and bigotry, as we saw congregating in Charlottesville last week, but for many more it has to do with their identification with a fanciful culture that no longer exists. More importantly they view this “culture” as forever in some kind of chivalrous opposition to the rest of the nation.

In most of the South this identification has stunted its moral growth, restricted its education, and undermined its welfare.  It has created an environment in which a cesspool of human constraints finds ground to fester (constraining voting rights, woman’s rights, African-American rights, Education, Environmental protection, religious and secular diversity, medical care, e.g.). It has harmed the Nation as a whole.

Frankly, I’m tired of the fookin’ Civil War and I’d like it to end. If moving all Civil War statues (South and North) out of public spaces would help…then it’s just fine with me, indeed.