Eclipsed

This is my photo of the view from a cafe attached to a motel in Lincoln, Oregon in 1986.  I'd completed a speaking engagement in Portland and took a bus here to spend my 40th birthday by the ocean, before flying back east.

Today the solar eclipse that has the country in a frenzy will start precisely here, in Lincoln, Oregon.  I won't be there, however.  Motels in Oregon and certainly this one in Lincoln (if it still exists) are not only booked for today--they have been for four years.

Here in Arcata (where I now live), down the coast from Lincoln, the eclipse won't be total.  And forecasts suggest that it will be eclipsed anyway, by a combination of fog, clouds and smoke from fires to our north and east.

I've seen a partial eclipse, in Pittsburgh.  Or at least I saw the eerie reverse shadows on the sidewalk of leaves from the trees near the library on Forbes Ave. in Squirrel Hill.

Time was I might have traveled hundreds of miles to witness such an event as a total solar eclipse.  Not today, though.  In fact, I'll probably be asleep.