99% is not Totality

August 24, 2017

This past weekend, my 16-year-old daughter Ella and I drove 900 miles to St. Louis to experience the Great American Eclipse.

Correction: We drove 900 miles to St. Louis PLUS another 25 miles south to Kimmswick, MO. See, St. Louis was not, strictly speaking, in the Path of Totality, though they had lots of great events to explain and celebrate the eclipse. We spent all day Sunday at the Saint Louis Science Center getting educated and psyched. Then it came time to decide where to go on Monday. Lots of eclipse activities were planned right in the city, so I asked Ella if the 99% covering we'd see in St. Louis would be good enough, or if we should drive the extra distance to be right in Totality.

She looked at me incredulously and said, "We've come all this way. Are we doing this, or not?" 

Of course, Ella was absolutely correct (trust our kids to pass the facts bluntly!): If you're going to do something, it's worth doing it full-on. But I didn't really understand how right she was until 1:17 pm Central Time on Monday, standing next to the car there in Kimmswick (where they sent teenagers through the town on bicycles with free extra eclipse glasses just in case someone was not adequately protected). We watched for an hour and a half as the moon slowly crept over the face of the sun. But even at 99% coverage, when the glasses told us that only a tiny sliver remained uncovered, the world around us was as bright and sunny as ever.

And then it was dark. Stars-suddenly-visible dark. Dark enough that I could only see a gray shadow where Ella was on the other side of the car. The temperature dropped 10 degrees. The birds were silent. Crickets started rasping. The horizon in every direction glowed red and orange and taupe, like the aftereffect of a sunset everywhere. We could see Venus. I became acutely aware of four celestial bodies and their relationship to each other hanging there in space: The sun, the moon, the earth, and me. My brain seized up. All it could manage was: "Oh. This is Totality. I had no idea." It lasted for a minute and a half, but really, it lasted for my whole life.

99% is not the same as Totality. 

You've come all this way. Are you doing this, or not? 

Make it 100%.

—Deb