Spectators hail from near and far
Californians, French among distant visitors to Arkansas
Jim Rasmussen and his girlfriend Alyse Marlinda did not plan to be in Russellville, let alone Arkansas, on Monday.
Natives of Pleasanton, Calif., an East Bay city, they had originally set their sights on Eagle Pass, a town on the border of Texas and Mexico.
Then the weather forecast for Texas took a turn for the worst.
“With the weather change, with the cloudiness, all the way out in Barstow, California, we hooked up with (Interstate) 40, just kept going east crossing our fingers that something would open up,” Rasmussen said while sitting in a lawn chair in the shade next to the Depot Stage.
Since Friday at 3 p.m., the couple had been eastbound and down in a rented RV, “the smallest one we could get.”
Along for the ride was their dog, Lucy, a white poodle mix.
“Literally one of us was driving and the other person was just reloading weather reports the entire time,” Rasmussen said.
“We knew that we wanted to be on that path of totality. We didn’t think that we’d have to drive this far.”
They arrived in Russellville about 10 a.m., just over 2½ hours before the eclipse would begin to set in.
Why did Rasmussen, who works for a traffic control company, make a trek halfway across the country for a celestial event that would last for only a few hours, with four minutes of totality?
Rasmussen experienced the last total solar eclipse in 2017.
“I find it a profoundly spiritual experience,” Rasmussen explained. “Of all the places in the universe for this to happen, it happens to be the place where
we live, right? Science could probably tell you the probability of being on a planet and witnessing an eclipse. It’s astronomical. … There’s a lot of coincidences, right? This is pretty coincidental.
“It’s the closest thing you’ll ever get to an evidence of a higher power, a creator who wants themselves to be known.”
After a marathon to make it to the path of totality, Rasmussen and Marlinda aren’t in a hurry to make a repeat of their effort.
“I don’t need to be back on the coast until Monday morning,” Rasmussen said. “So we’ll take some time getting back. But I’ve never been in Arkansas. So we’re gonna check it out. It’s a beautiful place.”
— Daniel McFadin
‘PLANETS! WE’VE GOT PLANETS!”
The total eclipse was met with whoops of astonishment, clanging bells and dancing on the hill in Batesville where Lyon College’s physics professor, as well as students and several administrators, set up telescopes to take it all in.
“Planets!” exclaimed one person. “We’ve got planets!”
Stuart Hutton, associate professor of physics, called out that one of the objects clearly visible in the darkened sky was Jupiter.
“Wait, where’s Jupiter?” asked one student, Ryan Schatz, who had been bounding across the lawn in excitement moments earlier. “That big bright thing.” “There’s two bright things now,” Schatz protested.
“I’ve seen a lot of things,” Hutton said after totality passed. “But I think this is the best.”
The associate professor said this was the first total eclipse that he’s witnessed in person. He said he couldn’t imagine that anyone might believe the event wasn’t going to be incredible, or that they would stay inside.
“There’s nothing that comes close to what I’ve just seen,” he said.
The most exciting thing for them came several minutes in, on a livestream showing on a monitor behind them.
“Solar flares,” declared Lyon College President Melissa Taverner, before slapping herself on the leg. “Holy crap.”
“I could see why people thought the world was ending,” said Liam Selhorst, a junior theater and philosophy major.
The clocks began chiming again as the end of totality neared and a phone alarm went off. Cries of “Last look, last look!” went out on the hill as observers stole a final glimpse of the phenomenon and put their eclipse glasses back on.
Cheers could be heard from the quad as totality ended.
After totality, astrophotography senior Blayne Griffin explained what happened. Not only conditions felt like night as soon as the eclipse hit totality. Not only did the skies darken, but the temperature dropped and the world lost much of its color.
“Everything went monochrome,” he said. Pointing to several shirts they had laid out on the ground, he added, “You could barely tell what color they were.”
Griffin won a $500 grant last semester, which paid for a focal reducer and another piece of equipment that enabled the group on the hill to record a livestream of the event.
He said they had been preparing for the event for months, and that he was “very happy with how it went.”
— Josh Snyder
WORLD’S LARGEST ECLIPSE GLASSES
Organizers for an eclipse party in Searcy were waiting shortly before 8:30 a.m. Monday morning for the lenses to what they believe to be the largest pair of eclipse glasses in the Arkansas.
“We’re saying they’re the largest in the world, because we can say that,” said Marka Bennett, a member of the city’s Beat & Eats and Eclipse Steering Committee, before adding that, at least, she believes they’re the largest in the Natural State.
The glasses occupied space at Galaxy Fest, at the Searcy Event Center. The lenses are certified, meaning attendees at the event could safely look through them at the eclipse. Bennett said the committee bought them from a company that specializes in making them.
The glasses frames, made by White County Metal and Fabrication, were originally made as a photo opp, but they wanted people to actually be able look at the sun and witness the eclipse.
As organizers put the finishing touches on the event, setting up band equipment, plugging in the audio system for a silent disco set within a dome of crisscrossing metal bars, Bennett said they were ready for attendees, whatever the number might be.
“We are prepared for however many people come. If 30,000 people show up, we’re ready. If 15,000 people show up, we’re ready.”
— Josh Snyder
READY FOR THE NEXT ONE
In the final moments before the eclipse reached totality in Russellville, the official NASA broadcast was playing on a video board next to the Depot Stage.
While it showed totality taking place over Dallas, one of the announcers remarked that Alaska would be the site of a total eclipse in 2033.
Upon hearing this, a woman in a wheelchair named Sheena Jones turned to the group of women sitting to her left.
“2033!” she exclaimed. Jones, a Russellville resident, had a reason to be excited. “I’m a snowbird,” she said.
If it wasn’t for the eclipse, she’d be spending this time of year in Eagle River, Alaska.
A few minutes later, after a couple moments of the sun and moon illuminating the area like a giant street lamp, totality arrived to cheers and whistles. While some celebrated, others took in the moment in silence. Others became emotional.
Both Lindsey Walsworth, of Atlanta, and Beth Shaddox, of Russellville, were brought to tears.
“I don’t even know why,” said Shaddox.
Shaddox and Walsworth were part of the same group as Jones. Walsworth travelled to experience the eclipse with her aunts.
“I’ve never seen totality,” Walsworth said. “So seeing it and being with people I love in a place that I love, had to do it.”
— Daniel McFadin
HIGH-TECH STAR GAZING
At Lyon College in Batesville, crowds began gathering in the quad in the morning, unfolding lawn chairs and telescopes as the festivities there began. That event was titled “Scots in the Dark,” after the school’s mascots.
Patrick McCourt and his wife were on their way to a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas from Long Beach, N.Y., but
decided to change their itinerary after seeing predictions of cloudy skies in the Lone Star State.
They got into Batesville from St. Louis about 9 a.m., a roughly five-hour drive, and drank soda to keep themselves alert in the hour before totality.
The McCourts had a computer-controlled telescope that uses his phone to control. Once it fixes on the sun, it will follow the star as it moves across the sky.
“It’s brand-new so I’m still kind of a novice with it, but I’m hoping to get something out of it,” he said.
The pair are staying at a hotel in town for the night, but will continue on to Texas before heading to Louisiana and ultimately making their way north, through North Carolina, and eventually back home. While they’re in town, they plan to visit some local shops and restaurants.
— Josh Snyder
NIGHT GAME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY
Just after noon, a couple dozen people had gathered in the upper seats of Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock, where eclipse-themed trivia questions were being broadcast over the loudspeakers.
In addition to being fans of the Arkansas Travelers baseball team, Roger Johnston, 69, of North Little Rock, and girlfriend Terri Emerson, 68, of Mabelvale were there because of family connections.
Johnston’s brother is the ballpark superintendent, and his nephew owns the corn dog stand with his wife, Johnston said.
The eclipse was “a once, or maybe twice, in a lifetime opportunity, so yeah, why not watch it?” he said.
Staring up, a crowd of people gathered in North Little Rock’s Argenta Plaza let out cheers and whoops as the sky darkened.
Among them were Greg Angarella, 33, and Emily McCartney, 33, of North Little Rock.
“It was pretty cool,” McCartney said soon after totality had ended. “I mean, I definitely didn’t expect it to get that dark that quickly, and I hadn’t seen one before, so it was awesome.”
They had expected it to be more crowded in the city as they worried that “everyone was coming here from all over, but it hasn’t been bad,” Angarella said.
With the eclipse over, they planned to hang out by the pool now that it was sunny again, he said.
“It’s a Monday off, so we’re gonna take advantage,” McCartney added.
Earlier, with approximately an hour left until totality, a band called The Six Piece Suits played on stage as many onlookers were clustered under the plaza’s shade structure.
At his tent not far from the stage, Keith Fulks, 58, owner of Mr. Keith’s Gourmet Kettle Corn, said visitors seemed more interested in the eclipse than in buying a lot of items.
“They’re just kind of mingling,” he said, though he expressed hope that sales would get better before the day was over.
Despite the smaller-than-expected crowd, when asked if he was looking forward to the eclipse itself, Fulks said, “Absolutely, yeah.”
— Joe Flaherty
LIMITED TOTALITY STILL DRAWS CROWD
Julie Lacy, who directs Henderson State University’s activities and events, said she didn’t anticipate massive crowds coming for Arkadelphia’s limited totality and advised her staff, food trucks and other vendors to plan as if Eclipse Over Arkadelphia was any normal event.
Dean Shannon Clardy got a NASA grant and telescope to take data for the space agency, and the university broadcast its eclipse programming. In the end, more than 1,500 people showed up to Carpenter-Haygood Stadium, and Lacy said the event went off without a hitch. The food trucks sold out after preparing for the moderate attendance.
“It was fantastic. We had a phenomenal turnout, and it’s everything that we anticipated. I didn’t anticipate that we were going to have droves of people like they said we were going to have on the interstate because we were only going to have 2 minutes and 1 second,” she said.
— Aaron Gettinger
FRENCH ASTRONOMERS TAKE IN THE SHOW
Miguel Montarges was antsy.
The French astronomer was counting down to his first ever total solar eclipse.
“My difficulty is to not keep looking at the clock,” Montarges said. “I’m impatient.”
Montarges was one of three French astronomers from the Paris Observatory, a research institution of the Paris Sciences et Lettres University, who had been invited to Russellville by Philippe Van Houtte, a librarian at Arkansas Tech University.
The others were Mathilde Malin, of Baltimore, and Vincent Coudé du Foresto, a director at the observatory who would be seeing his 10th total solar eclipse.
Like Montarges, Malin would be experiencing her first.
The last one to occur in France was in 1999, when Malin was 2 years old.
The next one won’t be until 2081.
“The people have been so nice, so welcoming,” Malin said of their weekend in the Natural State.
“Very warm welcome,” Montarges said. “Warm like the sun.”
A visit to Arkansas by the astronomers wouldn’t have been complete without a visit to Paris, Ark.
The trio visited the town located almost 40 miles west of Russellville on Sunday.
“We made a picture with the Eiffel Tower” located in the community’s downtown, said Malin.
“Actually our lab, this morning in France, announced that there was a total eclipse in Paris … Arkansas,” Montarges said with a laugh. “With a picture of us in front of the Eiffel Tower.”
— Daniel McFadin