Early in the past century when my father was a boy, there were old wives’ tales that explained everything otherwise inexplicable. One of those tales accounted for birth defects and physical differences among kids. The term eclipsado was used to explain such physical differences – positing that if a child looked funny, it was because child’s mother had been exposed to an eclipse. Unlike portents like comets that were thought to herald great victories in battle, eclipses were more likely to be associated with less-than-optimal outcomes. Sigh.
My older brother Ed, his high-school buddy and fellow Chess enthusiast, Fred Garcia, and I (the third if not fifth wheel) have all had a life-long interest in astronomy. As adolescents, we read astronomy books, attended the Houston Astronomy Club (later Houston Astronomical Society) talks, built telescopes together, and participated in a variety of astronomical events – eclipses among them.
When we three were together in Ed’s home in Corpus for the annular solar eclipse last weekend, Fred reminded us that 60 years ago, we had been together with our friend Kirk Lee (RIP) at our observing site in Houston to photograph the total Lunar Eclipse of 1963. That lunar eclipse was on December 30th, and it was a cold night. The eclipse was in the wee hours of the morning, and we struggled to stay warm. Fred set his camera on a tripod and set the camera to take a delayed shot of our observing session. Below is Fred’s picture from that night.
The telescope on the left was an 8″ Newtonian lent to us by a surgeon friend of our father. The telescope on the right is a longer f-ratio Newtonian that Ed, Fred and I built over the course of a year. I’m 14 in this picture, Ed is 16, and Fred is 18. Kirk was older than all of us. He had come to the US from the then island of Formosa after his family had fled mainland China. He graduated from the same high school as Fred, Ed and I. He obtained a degree in Electrical Engineering from the U of H, and had a successful career at NASA. Kirk was a kind and gentle soul who, like us, loved astronomy.
So, here we are in the present day. We are tres eclipsados – still nerds and still looking to the heavens above to see what the Universe will show us – including eclipses.
I’ve often said that maturity is just a patina on most men including myself. Take a damp cloth and rub gently, and you will find an adolescent boy under almost every old guy.
Of all the things that we acquire in this life, memories are the most durable and the most important. Unlike material things that eventually wear out or obsolesce, memories do not with recounting. As the years pass, the more precious and delightful they seem. I do not think that it is possible to experience enduring happiness without memories.
And that makes diseases that efface cognition that much more tragic. 🙁
Errata: Fred read this essay and commented that he had obtained the photo of the young eclipsados from Kirk Lee’s adult son. So, the camera on the tripod wasn’t Fred’s camera but rather Kirk’s Pentax SLR.