Eclipse fever

Two years ago today, the moon pulled a photobomb and for a minute, everything stopped.

For every sourpuss insisting, “It’s no different than a cloud crossing over the sun, that happens every day,” there were twenty people excited and having fun with something breathtaking. I wrote a great deal about the eclipse in the weeks leading up to it, as I was working for a newspaper in its direct path. We were expected to have 99.5 percent totality, and for more than a year, “eclipse tourism” was predicted. Hotels filled up, Air BnB’s popped into existence, highways clogged. People came from all over the world to our little slice of flyover country, just to look at the moon.

I was stationed on the campus of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, which would later become my university when I left the newspaper a year later. I was observing the students as much as the eclipse itself, mostly a redundant viewpoint while my colleagues were stationed south, where totality was expected at 100 percent. They got a cloud across the sky at the worst moment, so I think we actually got a better view.

College students gathered on the quad wearing goofy-looking paper glasses, chattering excitedly with their friends as they watched the moon slowly move into position. Astronomy fans clustered around their telescopes as the science departments had a metaphorical field day. College…