I have been very focused on getting back to Tanglewood this summer, our first summer living on the opposite coast, and the logical time to return was when our son was performing. As ridiculous as it sounds, considering the buildup, somehow I did not realize that this was the same week as the US total solar eclipse.

Honestly, I probably would have opted for Tanglewood anyway.

In Massachusetts, the eclipse was partial. There was significant cloud cover, but the sun was playing peekaboo, so the three of us went to a viewing event at the Berkshire Athenaeum. The first activity was making a pinhole viewer out of a cereal box. Ours worked well enough, but the crescents were tiny. My son and I chanced a few direct glances, and we aren’t blind, at least not yet. These views were unsatisfactorily quick; it’s hard to look at the sun for long, even if one is willing.

Pairs of eclipse glasses were available for limited-time borrowing on a first-come, first-served basis. There were also many people in the crowd who had brought their own. I was struck by how few of these were sharing: zero would be a very close estimate. So when our turn for a pair came up, about five minutes after maximum coverage, we shared with each other and with strangers.

The view through the glasses was amazing. For those who didn’t try this, eclipse glasses make the entire sky completely dark except for the sun. That is, with regular sunglasses it appeared to be a bright day, with sunlight bouncing through scattered clouds across the sky, but with eclipse glasses it appeared to be nearly night with a single crescent in the sky, quite similar to the appearance of the crescent moon before the stars are out.

A solar eclipse, or really any astronomical event, is always a bit fraught because local cloud cover can completely obscure it. I imagine this happened somewhere today. We missed the Pleiades this year, despite several nights of effort in two states, because we kept encountering cloud cover.

I’m fairly interested in astronomical events, but not enough to make one the center of a major travel event, such as to the South Pacific. I have heard so many arresting descriptions of experiencing a total solar eclipse, however, that I plan to make an effort to see the next convenient one, probably the next American occurrence, in 2024. That is, if I remember.