Eclipse

I piled the children and the dogs into the car and rushed up to Mulholland to watch the eclipse. The oldest child was, of course, grumpy about the whole thing, but came begrudgingly as he didn't want to miss out. Other people had the same idea and we all hung over the edge of a wooden fence between Laurel & Coldwater pointing our miserably small cameras towards the east where the moon appeared to be wearing a rather jaunty French beret. "Oh God, let's go now" said Noony after we'd been there for all of about a minute. "My darling, you really are turning into a curmudgeon," I said. "Molly-coddled, curmudgeon - why do you always use words that you KNOW I don't know" he says. "No-one uses those words here. It's not Elizabethan England, you know." I have learned to hold my tongue. I'm not terribly good at it but I hold it nonetheless. "What is a lunar eclipse exactly?" he says a moment later. Minks and I both struggle with an explanation. I am scientifically challenged at the best of times and I'm trying to figure out why if the sun has already set in the west, it's somehow now blocking the moon in the east. Minks bravely tries to explain. "You're both just WRONG" he says. We get home and realize that the eclipse is perfectly visible from our driveway, hanging gently above Mount Olympus. I rush over to my neighbor's house and drag her outside "Did you get a new car?" she says sweetly. "No! Look, it's the eclipse!" A tall blonde woman with a small child follows her out of the house and explains that the earth is blocking the sun and that casts the shadow on the moon. The total eclipse is a result of the perfect alignment of three celestial bodies (also called syzygy I believe). Apparently a bright star, Regulus, could also be seen, and Saturn, complete with rings, but try as we might, Saturn didn't reveal itself. This is from Jessica Damiano's blog in Newsday:

It's going to be extra special because Saturn and the bright star Regulus will line up to form a perfect triangle with the moon. Jack Horkheimer, of PBS' "Star Gazer," called it "the moon, the lord of the rings and heart of the lion eclipse," so I'm hoping the snow flurries in the forecast don't interfere with my view of the big event.

That's so romantic, isn't it? Click here for more "Star Gazer."