My View For Awhile: Post Syzygy

MCI is a madhouse.  Many people have some sort of eclipse commemorating shirt.


I was supposed to do a radio slot with Drew Mariani but in the chaos it didn’t work.

We had some clouds but mangaged to see some of the totality.

Beforehand, however, i picked up some crescents through the leaves.

They are announcing to the LGA folks that they are stuck here for several more hours while they get a new plane for them.  And they even said the only reason they are bringing another plane is because there are no hotels for 100 miles due to the eclipse.

UPDATE

Boarded.  

UPDATE:

We made it to DTW with just enough time for me to grab a kind of sandwich.  I didn’t check a bag so I have no concerns in that department.  Will I do the same the day after tomorrow?


My next gate.  Will there be an upgrade?  The mysteries of Delta continue.

Meanwhile the pilots are here.

UPDATE

I got the upgrade.

In the cockpit they are working on something.  Voice messages are cycling: TERRAIN … TERRAIN… PULL UP… PULL UP… OBSTACLE… PULL UP…. 

The techy said “Okay it’s started to work now.  Let’s leave it alone.  We’re outa here.”

And so they closed the doors and I turned my phone to Airplane Mode.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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12 Comments

  1. robtbrown says:

    One of your KC visits must include Joe’s BBQ and Chappell’s.

    http://www.chappellsrestaurant.com/

  2. Gregg the Obscure says:

    Safe and happy travels, Father

  3. JohnE says:

    Crescents was about all I caught where I was, but still pretty cool:
    https://1drv.ms/i/s!AqmD3NjZaudAgbJw6_SQMwFSlP0lqA

  4. JustaSinner says:

    I never worry about those pesky on-board talking computers until they start playing taps…

  5. guans says:

    Loved the leaves!
    There were little crescents all over our sidewalk and streets.
    Looked like our oak trees had turned into palm trees.

  6. KateD says:

    Nothing I’ve seen online captures what we saw at the point of totality. Specifically, my children kept nudging me, insisting, “Mom! Mom! Stop! You HAVE to look at this!” I looked up from my work in setting up the table for the kids to sell t-shirts and glasses from, and it was absolutely breath taking! I think people refered to it as a diamond? But it didn’t look anything like a diamond or the glint off of one. It looked like some artist’s rendition of fine white lines in various defined patterns, it did not seem like something one should actually be able to see with the naked eye….lol…maybe it was just my retina burning up!

    I’ve been searching around to see what exactly that’s called, there must be a more specific term. Are there some good images published/websites online that capture this phenomenon?

    Oh! And a guy from NOAA stopped by and said they were doing research on the eclipse using radar!?! He said short wave radio people are familiar with how that would be used to study the eclipse……I’m still kind of baffled and straining to pull the threads of those concepts close enough to tie them together.

  7. ajf1984 says:

    It’s a pity the confab with Drew didn’t work out yesterday, Padre! I was listening to Relevant on my way home from work and when he dropped the “We’re talking with Fr. Z” teaser before a station break, I was so excited! Ah, but that’s the way of things in live radio I suppose! Glad to find out you were safe and sound :-)

  8. Suburbanbanshee says:

    The “diamond ring” comes a tiny bit before totality. Sunlight gleams through one of the lunar valleys, making it a lot brighter than the ring of corona sun seen around the bulk of the moon.

  9. un-ionized says:

    KateD, baby cataracts would make a flare.

  10. bobbird says:

    The Eclipse
    The eclipse unites all humanity, if only briefly, to the beauty of Silence, a humbling cessation to the Kingdom of Noise, and a chance to share our mutual smallness and sense of wonder.

    To those who possess Faith, it is a confirmation of Truth, that we must accept our limitations that we are only permitted to study and predict the immutable laws of the universe, but we cannot create or equal them. We may surgically explore the tissues of Nature, but we cannot alter them. Instead, we are meant to bless, praise and glorify the Author of Truth.

    To the Agnostic, it is a moment when doubt might dare to surrender to Faith, an invitation to explore more deeply what has only been dimly suspected, and to embark with baby steps on a joyous journey towards joy, peace and Truth.

    To the Atheist, it must be an attempt to square a circle, to reconcile an imaginative chimera that preposterously advances the notion that supreme order is the natural result of random chaos.

    In our age, it is fashionable and polite to believe that there can be more than one truth, that there are endless flavors of reality. An eclipse shatters that premise, and leaves the spiritually impoverished to stew in their own juices of a broth that appears to them a lovely aroma, but to others has the obnoxious odor of skull and bones, of aimless, random and feckless ricochets, a broth that invites … nay, demands us … to be happy with hopelessness.

    To those with Faith, the eclipse is both a reminder and a warning. A reminder that recalls that once there was a similar and universal darkness, not limited to a narrow band of the moon’s shadow, and recorded in Biblical and secular histories. It was when the human nature of God was put to death, and a frightening darkness pervaded the earth, not for two minutes but for three hours.

    And the warning: that we must prepare for a certain and ultimate permanence … “that thou are dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.”

    “In the beginning was The Word, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.”

    And under similar dark circumstances, someday Time will cease … and the world shall be Judged.

    “The heavens and the earth shall pass away, but the Word of God shall never pass away.”

  11. Kathleen10 says:

    That is not what one would want to hear from the cockpit, and I might jump out if I heard that type of thing, good grief.
    We were in the 98% area, and the crescents, I doubt we will forget the crescents. What really impressed me though, was the light at 98%. It was a bit darker, but not at all like dawn nor dusk, nor a cloudy day, or a rainy day, but completely different, something we’d never seen. The light was not golden at all, it was kind of without golden tones. The lights came on, and the cicadas, that are just so loud at sunset, starting playing their metal violins, that’s what I call them. They hushed up when the sun came back out. After the disappointing and cloudy Perseids, this was a delight. It does give one a sense of the majesty of God. I wish it made more people aware of how very small we actually are in the cosmos.

  12. KateD says:

    So, to follow up, it was the solar corona that was so incredible at totality, but I still have not seen a single picture that captures it’s full magnificence, nothing even approaches an inkling of it. Many of the pictures even on the NASA website look exactly like photos I took with my phone….none of them got it. Someone said its not possible to record the phenomenon accurately in a photograph. That’s kind of interesting. It’s as if it’s a gift to be enjoyed in the moment by the viewer alone….so grateful to have been able to witness it….I think we are hooked, now.

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