Monday, August 21, 2017

some eclipse thoughts

Leading up to it, I was kind of like "meh." My main interest was in maybe seeing it get dark in the middle of the day, and cooler (it's been brutally hot here again).

I also got really tired of all the constant hype. One of the things our culture is bad at, I think, is hyping things up to the point where you're sick of them before they even happen (related: they had Hallowe'en and even Thanksgiving decor up at the JoAnn's this weekend).

But I had my dumb little mylar pinhole projector (I saved the Mylar baggie Applejack came in, cut a square of it, mounted it in a cardboard frame and figured I'd project the eclipse). Then the head of Chemistry announced they had glasses to give out at the student union. I decided against hiking over there - it's hot, and anyway, I figured I'd either wait in line for ever or they'd run out. Turns out I didn't need to.

I was using my dumb little projector (which actually works, but you can't see much detail) when my colleague T. stopped me in the hall and said he had a piece of the smoked glass out of a welding helmet that was safe to use - so I got a quick glance at the sun that way (at about 50% coverage). And I was watching the coverage NASA was doing out of Casper, Wyoming.

I have indirect memories of Casper - the name is familiar to me (I think I actually WAS there, once) because my dad, every summer, would lead geology Field Camp there (at Casper College - when I was a kid I think I had a Casper College t-shirt he brought me back). That was 35 or more years ago now.

But the Casper coverage made me happy. It was pretty much the science of it and what was being observed.

I tried some coverage out of Nebraska first, and it was like a giant party and they also had a certain "Science Celebrity" there and frankly, I take a dim view of that sort of thing - where it makes it more about the PERSON than the PHENOMENON. And they had a band playing goofy songs and I thought, "Yeah, they're positioning it as the Nerd Woodstock" and I was immediately turned off because I'm old and grumpy. Also, at one point Science Celebrity lead the crowd in a chant of something like "It's Not Mysticism, It's Science!" and I was like, meh, can we not celebrate BOTH the scientific aspects of this and maybe the mythos/spiritual side? I dislike it when either side is hostile towards the other, as someone whose life straddles the scientific and the spiritual. (Part of it is anyone doing that kind of stuff makes me feel like, "Well, I don't fit in THERE, I guess" and I hate feeling that way). I mean, this isn't like it's some giant celebration of Science defeating Unreason or something - yes, I suppose it's a big world and there are Eclipse Deniers or something out there, but it does feel very much like one particular crowd going "This is ours alone, and we don't want you getting any of your religion cooties on it!" And that actually turns me off of the whole "Science: it works, b*tches" and similar stuff you see. Yes, science is a very useful way of looking at certain things, and scientific research has done stuff like virtually eliminate polio, and all but the most extreme and deluded of religious people look at that and go "That's good! That's the kind of thing people were put here to do!" But there's also a moral/ethical dimension to life and often spirtuality or faith are MORE important than science for informing that dimension. There are things we can do (medically and otherwise) that we should not do, and without that ethical governor on the system, things could spin badly out of control. I tend to see - as someone who is perhaps a bit more religiously liberal (in the sense of not demanding the Bible be taken as literal) and who is a scientist but also a person of faith - that there are ways the two can work together. (But another thing our culture tends to do poorly, I think, is moderation)

There's also something to be said for a simple old-fashioned sense of wonder about things, without having to overexplain it or turn it into a weapon to beat people who are different from you with. I liked the little low-key eclipse-viewing in my department; there was mostly just a lot of "wow, this is cool" and no larger discussion of what it "meant."

I wish there were less hostility between the two and yes I do see it coming from both sides, speaking as someone who's in the middle.

Anyway. Rant mode off.

But the Casper coverage was nice. They had a woman from NASA talking about it and showing the different ways you can quickly make a pinhole projector (you could even use a piece of pegboard!). And there was a guy talking about historical artwork (some scientific, some tribal/spiritual) dealing with eclipses. I thought it was much better coverage - more low-key, more about the event - than the party atmosphere the other place had.

I went back out to look again, and ran into my colleague D. And it turned out he had a bunch of the eclipse glasses that Chemistry was handing out - so I went out and stood in the back parking lot with him and a couple of the students and we passed the glasses around and looked. And T. came out and watched with us.  And I remembered the '79 partial eclipse (D. remembered that eclipse too, he's only a year younger than I am - and T. is maybe 8 years older, so he talked about having been in metals shop and them taking the welding hoods out). And at peak, I remembered something, either from the '79 eclipse or the one I didn't get to see in Hawaii about 25 years ago - that the shadows of the leaves will sort of "project" the eclipse, being like a pinhole. So I pointed that out and D. took a photo, and then T. realized "Hey, you can make a pinhole by curling up your index finger and project the eclipse that way!" and we all had to do that too, and D. took a picture of me (well, my hand) doing it.

So it was fun. I feel almost a little bit about it like I did about the Prince William/Kate Middleton wedding: I was SO eye-rolly about it in the days leading up to it, but when I saw a little of it, and saw how the people watching it were SO happy about it, I changed my mind. I dunno. Something that makes people happy (while doing harm to none) is a good thing. The eclipse was a good thing and I'm happy now I took (a little bit) of a part in it and got to kind of see it.

I don't feel sorry I didn't make the effort to travel to see totality, though that would have been kind of cool (the excitement from the people in Casper when it passed over was great).

And as someone said on Twitter: "I like it when we are all talking about something but it is a fun science thing instead of something terrible." True that, and I wish we had more things like that.

1 comment:

purlewe said...

Sue and I went to SC to see the totality. My best friend lives there and she was all "come down!" and I wasn't interested in it. But then Sue said she really wanted to figure out how to see it so I told her my friend invited us. She was so excited so we went. It was actually way cooler than I remember (I was in school during the eclipse in '79, and I remember having a box over my head to watch it) and I think we had a lovely day in general. Perhaps the next one in 2024 will be closer to you to go see it?