It's Always Darkest Before the Eclipse

I have a terrible track record with solar eclipses.  Today makes 3 out of 4 I could not see.  (That's even worse than my record of voting for winning candidates.)  When I was in elementary school (late 70's/early 80's), I missed the eclipse because it was cloudy in southern N.J.  The same thing happened in junior high (early/mid 80's).  When I was in college (the 90's) in N.M., I finally had the chance to experience an eclipse.  I didn't buy a pair of solar shades to look at the sun; seeing the unusual shadows beneath trees was cool enough for me.

Today was cloudy.  For a state where it "never" rains, it sure has rained a lot this year.  (Well, maybe frequency, if not quantity.)  There was a brief period when the clouds were a little less thick, and our mechanic here at work told us to look at the sun through his welding mask.*  The sun basically looked like a crescent moon.  I think I might've preferred unusual shadows beneath trees, but the clouds were too thick for that.

Not everyone in NM will be sad that they couldn't see it.  According to this news story (and many others available for reading online), the Navajo Nation considers an eclipse a time for "reverence and renewal", so please respect your neighbors and don't turn it into a party.

* Because of the tinting, the sun appeared green.  Aha!  Astronomers have been lying to us all along!  It's isn't the moon that's made of green cheese; it's the sun!