Solar eclipse helps unite a divided nation
For days, weeks, years, we waited. The orb of the moon was set to cross the face of the sun – the rare phenomenon that has captivated human observers since the dawn of time: a total solar eclipse.
Over the course of several hours, millions of people would fall beneath the moon’s shadow as it swept across the continent at some 1,500 mph. At the center of that path, however briefly, the midday sun would vanish entirely – known as “totality.”
The arc of the event was plotted by astronomers years in advance: It would begin over the blue depths of the tropical Pacific and end on the gray swells of the North Atlantic. Most of the route stretched from the flats of the Rio Grande Valley to the woods of northern Maine. The 2024 solar eclipse would be almost singularly American.
This country can often feel as if it is under a shadow.
In Kansas City, Missouri, (89% eclipse) a collegiate athletics body grappled with the politics of who may play men’s and women’s sports. In the nation’s capital (87%), lawmakers wrestled with rules for an online world where eclipse photos and divisive disinformation live side-by-side. Eagle Pass, Texas, (100%) recently hosted both the current and past president as a symbol of the painful reality and fight of border migration.
But in Monday’s lunar shadow, American divides could not cleave one common, powerful experience as faces turned upward.
For a moment, far outside any human control, two celestial lines had intersected. All the experiences beneath them had been part of a shared path.
Then the two orbs in the sky parted ways, each again tracing its own separate arc through space. The darkness ended, leaving each person below to contemplate what remained in the light.
Contributing: Josh Rivera, Deborah Berry and Christopher Cann, USA TODAY; Dave Eminian, Peoria Journal Star; Jon Webb, Evansville Courier & Press