The Blue-Collar Eclipse

You might say I’ve been chasing eclipses my whole life—I just haven’t caught one yet. I’ve been an astronomy enthusiast since my youth in the 1970s, the era of the Apollo program. Along with millions of people across the world, I watched Neil Armstrong take that giant leap onto the moon’s surface in July 1969. After watching the first moon landing, I was eager to see the moon block out the sun during the total solar eclipse of March 7, 1970. But as an 8-year-old in Cleveland, Ohio, there was no way for my single mom to take me to the Deep South in the middle of the school year. So I was a forlorn kid that day, standing in the partially eclipsed sunlight, trying unsuccessfully to observe a projected image with a homemade shoebox camera. I was already disappointed when the TV news announcer that evening really burst my bubble. He said, “If you missed today’s total solar eclipse, you’ll have another