Rhode Islanders revel in solar eclipse event
PAWTUCKET – City resident Elissa Leca walked up the slight hill from the Pawtucket Parks & Recreation Department at Slater Park towards the Mike Kenny Tennis Courts, found a comfortable spot and sat to view the solar eclipse on Monday afternoon.
When told it had already started, she quickly donned her special safety classes, looked to the sun and exclaimed, “Wow, that’s crazy! You can see the moon starting to block the lower right part of the sun.”
That was at 3:06 p.m. According to Leca, she was home on her day off and not doing anything special when she got this overwhelming feeling: “Let’s go over to the park and check out the eclipse.
“I thought, ‘This isn’t something you get to every day, so why not?’” she said as she sat alone under some tree branches. “It’s been super-hyped, and I know some people have said they don’t care, but I do. You put together the sun, the moon, the stars, and the fact it’s a beautiful day, this is perfect.
“I’m not heavily into all this stuff, but things that happen out in space, especially once every how many years, they’re amazing,” she added. “Look at all the developments that have been occurring in space over the past several years. I mean, I believe I read somewhere that the moon is going to get it’s own time zone.
Four minutes later, at 3:10, she put on her glasses again and replied, “Now it looks like a crescent sun, not moon. That’s pretty wild.”
Perhaps 20 yards away sat Darlene Goncalves with daughter-in-law Stephanie and her two children, Aria, nine, and Willow, five, reveling in viewing the same phenomenon.
“My mother-in-law called me about noon today and said, ‘Get the kids out of school. We’re going to Slater Park to watch the eclipse,’” Stephanie said with a grin. “I just said, ‘OK, but I’ve got to check with the teachers to
make sure they’re not going to miss anything important.’ They weren’t, so here we are.”
Added Darlene: “I just had to come to this. I want to pass these kinds of expe-riences along to our fam-ily’s future generations; I mean, I may not be here for the next one! I want to watch thi with my grand-children.”
At 2:55 p.m., just about the time Leca arrived, Stephanie put her glass-es back on and said the moon’s formation to the sun looked “like a fat crois-sant.” Aria, meanwhile, did the same and said, “Look, it’s moving! It looks like an upside-down ‘C.’ This is so cool. It’s a 10 out of 10.”
She took them off and explained, ‘This is my first time ever seeing an eclipse, and it’s fun. It’s different.”
In the field behind the park’s Vietnam War Veter-ans Memorial, not far from the Armistice Boulevard entrance/exit, Nicole Silva of Pawtucket relaxed with fiancé Earl, sister Jen of East Providence and Kim of Central Falls, not to mention her niece and nephews.
They included Kim’s own Henry Girard, 13, and Jackson Chica, 6, and Jen’s girl Adrionna, 22.
“As soon as I heard about it, I wanted to come here; it was my idea because I bought the glasses,” Nicole said. “I decided I wanted to make a family event out of this because events like these don’t happen very often, and it’s going to be close to totality – 91 percent – and that’s something else.”
Thee entourage had set up shop early on, and Nicole said at 2:45 p.m., she could already see a difference in the sun’s shape.
“The lower right portion of the sun is dark,” she said. “We were talking just a couple of minutes before and said it was starting to look like ‘Pac Man.’
“Another reason I decided to bring my family is because I’m an educator, too. I’m a teacher’s assistant in an East Providence school, and I’m also going back to school to get my Master’s in Special Education,” she continued. “Things like this, historical events, I believe it’s important to be a part of it, to be an active participant in it, and not just watch it on TV.”
This bunch turned it into a real viewing party, as they brought soda, water, chips and dips, lounge chairs and blankets to pass the time between checking out the sun’s changing shapes.
In the tennis courts’ parking lot stood city father and adult daughter Jonathan and Zoe Williams, 23.
“I really wanted to see this because it’s not going to happen for another 20-30 years,” said Zoe, a Tolman High grad who will attain her Bachelor’s in Surgical Technology from New England Tech next March. “We were here in 2017, and it was cool, but this is better because I’m older and it seems more scientific. This is more of a full eclipse than that one was.”
As only a sliver of sun could be seen just after 3:30 p.m., Zoe remarked “This makes the sun look yellowish/orangy. It’s beautiful.”
Added dad: “This is cool. The last time I was here, I was with my two young kids, Zoe and Zachary, and Zoe’s right; it is better this year. You can feel the difference in temperature; it’s really cooled down. The last time, you couldn’t see as much. We got more action this time.”
Back at the Goncalves’ “camp,” the family couldn’t get over the event.
“This was awesome, just great,” Darlene said. “What a great thing to witness with your family. It got so cold, too.”
Stephanie then spoke up and said, “The temperature dropped five degrees. It was 68 when we got here and now it’s down to 63, though it feels much colder. I won-der if something’s wrong with my cellphone. As for the eclipse, it went from looking like a fat crois-sant to an elbow macaroni.
That’s crazy.”
Added Aria: “This was an 11 out of 10! I loved it!”