Big Table #6 -- ⚫️ THE ECLIPSE ⚫️
Welcome to my Eclipse Special. It's my tale of going to see the eclipse. I'll do the art issue next time!
On going to the Eclispse
For the eclipse in 2017, we got pretty good coverage here in Portland. I could have driven down to McMinnville to see totality, but I talked myself out of it for some oh there'll be killer traffic blah blah blah reasons. A bunch of my friends drove out to Idaho to watch the totality in a big field, but I talked myself out of going for some work work obligatons blah blah reasons. They all came back with dark blazing stars in their eyes -- I mean not literally, they used eye protection. They were just all moved by the experience.
I was determined to go this year, but talked myself out of it multiple times over, which was silly since it was passing over my sister-in-law's house in Vermont. The final push was when Case mentioned she was probably going. It was too late to get tickets to anywhere in the path of totality, but Case lives in Albany, NY. I checked that night and realized I could get to NYC for $25 and some miles. As it turned out, Case had no plans but we successfully stone-souped each other into having plans.
My trip was a bit of a parabola, with the eclipse being the vertex. I had a day and a half in NYC, then a night in Albany, then drove to Vermont, saw the eclipse, and then retraced my steps.
Much friends and family helped make it a great time.
Marquina and I found the most advanced e-scooters in all of NYC. Couldn't figure out how to turn them on.
Danny and I went to the Whitney Biennial. More on that next time. It was all over the place!! Hard to know what to say. While we were in our favorite piece we saw someone wearing these honest to goodness rat shoes. You can't see them very well in this photo, but you can see their lightning-print pants.
Later, Danny pointed at the Hudson 30 building and said "that's the building I'm gonna climb to watch the eclipse." Turns out he did that:
I took the train to Albany, and Case showed me around Troy, New York, which has the best hashbrowns I've ever had. Then the next morning we headed out for Vermont. Case's friend Andrew joined us. Andrew's great. He's the producer for PBS Spacetime, and of course they made an episode about the Eclipse:
On the way we stopped at Lake Champlain and found a bridge that played ambient percussion loops.
(Speaking of ambient percussion loops, on the train back to NYC I made a fun lil track.)
The drive was gorgeous, and we really got into a good three-hour, three-person conversation. Case and I took a longer road trip in 2017, and she made this amazing book of notable conversational detritus and visuals from the trip. I revisited it recently and it's just such a fantastic artifact. Case and I have enjoyed an ongoing dialog about archiving throughout our friendship, one that definitely inspired and informed me in making my Memex.
For all the things the internet can do, I really wish it had a button that would turn a Time into a book like this. Maybe I'll work on making one.
On the way to that, I've tried my hand at doing a similar thing for this mini road trip. And, lo, I have excerpted it in this email. It’s still in progress, so here’s a permalink.
Eclipse Trip notes
Works Referenced
Town overrun by bears // This goes places.
Why Handmade Images Matter // We talked a lot about AI and art schtuff. This is the first coherent chunk I've been able to slice out of a big web of writing I've been doing on that.
"Working", by Studs Terkel -- One of those absolute classics that I feel like I've read because I've dipped in and out of it so much. One of these days I should go over to the union bar and read through it in their library. Here's a pretty good sample of Studs doing his thing.
Towards a Theory of the Content Creator // A survey of the 21st century content creator's most important characteristics.
Winooski’s Town Squircle – Winooski, VT is centered on a giant roundabout, like a town square. But it’s neither round nor square. It is a big squircle, and it’s low-key chaotic at all times. Apparently it’s called Rotary Park.
Deja Virtual -- Encountering a real world location that appears to be a memory, but the memory is born from encountering its virtual simulation first. Coined by Andrew
Things seen
Michigans -- We passed some kinda roadhouse / jerky / guns store in upstate New York that was advertising their various and strange wares, some food-like, some not, and in that list was "Michigans". Being from Michigan, I couldn't tell ya what those are.
Here Lies Gabby Dzessou: Always Doing Her Own Thing
The cafe in the Town Squircle featured an art project by local high schoolers which appeared to be interpretive self-portraits. We gave them a close look, and picked our favorite. We were unanimous in picking Gabby Dzessou:
Things Said
"It's like the veggie starts section of the garden center, but for different kinds of cities." -- Ním, On Albany's eclectic and cramped skyline
"Do what you love...and you’ll have to learn quickbooks" -- Andrew, on the terrible truth of life as someone with interests
On the Eclipse itself
Libby and Dennis (and Chloe and Freya) were excellent hosts to not just me and Case and Andrew, but to a truly impressive number of family members under one roof. This was always going to be a shared, social experience rather than a quiet, in-nature one, and the family hubbub was a great version of that.I really appreciated how unifying the celestial event was. It applied to most everyone. Winooski seemed five times the size I had seen it before, people were wearing eclipse t-shirts, and there was a general sense of interest in something bigger than everyone else.
I had been steeling myself for bad weather or the possibility of something unforseen going wrong, so for something so inevitable, and anticipated, I really hadn't engaged in a lot of direct consideration of the actual phenomenon until it started happening. The weather report for that week had an incredible two-day window of sun covering the day before and the day of the eclipse. When it came, the day was rather warm, with a very fine layer of clouds that didn't block anything. In fact, the clouds created a halo while the sun was out before they faded.
By now I'm sure you've seen and read plenty of accounts of the eclipse. I agree with the consensus that it's just something you have to see, that it's not really possible to translate it into words or pictures. There were some fun science moments, like when we realized we could see solar flares in the corona, because they were a bright, distinct red against the white of the corona. The sense of something huge and inevitable happening seemed to settle on all of us.
But when it started to reach totality, I walked out in the yard and looked at the shadows. I'm not even quite sure what it was that, to me, started to suggest what was happening to the light at the moment. But it's somewhere in the shadows.
About this Annie Dillard says:
This color has never been seen on Earth. The hues were metallic; their finish was matte. The hillside was a 19th-century tinted photograph from which the tints had faded.
Later, when she looked at her husband, "I looked at Gary. He was in the film. Everything was lost. He was a platinum print, a dead artist’s version of life." Dillard's thought of film makes sense to me. (Thanks Kirsty for sending the essay to me! It’s very good.) There was a room at the Whitney biennial with giant rolls of exposed (and still-exposing) film. It felt like that film had been pulled over the whole sky like a sheet over our heads.
Standing in the yard, as dusk rolled up around the sky in all directions at once, the light felt like it gained a volumetric quality. It was briefly more like a substance, something you could walk through and feel. It was crisp and strange and everywhere. And everyone else was having their own moment. And then it was done.
Bonus! Timelapse by Josh Daghlian
This Issue’s Songs:
Both of these are by Chloe Rose Kaduru, Libby and Dennis’ eldest and niece to Martha and Me.(you are now all obligated to subscribe to her youtube channel.)
Solar Eclipse Song
Sitting on the Moon