Magic Moon
My father is responsible for my interest in the Heavens, both literally and figuratively. He was a minister and to him the vastness of the night sky proved the omnipotence of his God. He found no conflict between science and his beliefs. As humans explored space, he found Biblical references to support their scientific findings.
As an aside, he was a Biblical scholar and could quote large passages of the Bible citing where they could be found. He was my personal source for Biblical references in literature. I never stumped him, no matter how obscure the verse or person.
For example, when I read William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom, I asked my father who Absalom was so I could relate the Biblical significance to the book’s theme. He told me Absalom was King David’s third son, and his favorite, who ultimately betrayed David. Absalom was killed in battle by his father’s troops even though David gave strict orders against killing him. I can still hear the tremor in my father’s voice as he quoted David’s reaction on hearing the news: “O Absalom, my son, my son.”
After my father died and I was sorting through his books, I found his copy of The Stars by H.A. Rey, an astronomy book first published in 1952 and still in publication. In it he had written the following quote from Albert Einstein, “The most beautiful thing we can witness is the mysterious. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
Growing up in a small Texas town, before ambient light obscured the starry skies, my father introduced me to the planets and constellations. He would spread a blanket on our front lawn and we would lie there as he pointed out Rigel, Betelgeuse, Orion, Cassiopeia, and the Milky Way. Then he would ask me to find them. His tutoring developed in me a joy in the stars that remains, even as they become obscured by man’s artificial light.
This explains why I would spend several hours on October 14 watching an annular solar eclipse. Such an eclipse occurs when the moon does not cover 100% of the sun, as it does in a full solar eclipse. For this reason, a “ring of fire” forms around the moon. In the United States, the path of the “ring of fire” was visible in only a narrow corridor of the western states and Texas. Our back yard was in that corridor.
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Friends from Dallas drove down to share the event with us and what an event it was! As the eclipse unfolded, we found ourselves exclaiming in awe. Through our special mylar glasses, we watched the moon inch its way across the sun. Simultaneously, the light in our backyard became more and more muted.
We had other ways to see the effects which could be done with the naked eye. My partner made a pin hole in a piece of paper and holding it over a manila folder a miniature version of the eclipse appeared.
Another member of our group remarked that there would be another effect as the eclipse cast a shadow through the branches of trees or shrubs. We placed a piece of paper under a shrub and suddenly there were more eclipses than we could count. The surreal image was one any artist would envy.
A friend in Austin saw a similar effect as light from the eclipse passed through a tree into his swimming pool.
The poet Robert Bly captures these effects beautifully in his poem “Seeing the Eclipse in Maine.”
It started about noon. On top of Mount Batte,
We were all exclaiming. Someone had a cardboard
And a pin, and we all cried out when the sun
Appeared in tiny form on the notebook cover.
It was hard to believe. The high school teacher
We’d met called it a pinhole camera,
People in the Renaissance loved to do that.
And when the moon had passed partly through
We saw on a rock underneath a fir tree,
Dozens of crescents — made the same way —
Thousands! Even our straw hats produced
A few as we moved them over the bare granite.
We shared chocolate, and one man from Maine
Told a joke. Suns were everywhere — at our feet.
