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Solar Eclipse, southwestern United States: photo by photo61guy, 20 May 2012
I saw a fishpond all on fire
I saw a house bow to a squire
I saw a parson twelve feet high
I saw a cottage near the sky
I saw a balloon made of lead
I saw a coffin drop down dead
I saw two sparrows run a race
I saw two horses making lace
I saw a girl just like a cat
I saw a kitten wear a hat
I saw a man who saw these too,
And said though strange they all were true.
I saw a fishpond all on fire: nursery rhyme, c.18th c.
Solar Eclipse, San Francisco: photo by Matthew Almon Roth, 20 May 2012
Solar Eclipse, San Francisco: photo by Matthew Almon Roth, 20 May 2012
Partial Solar Eclipse, Norman, Oklahoma: photo by Cory Futrell, 20 May 2012
'Ring of fire': rare annular solar eclipse crossing the Pacific: photo by Reuters, 20 May 2012
An annular eclipse appears at a waterfront park in Yokohama, near Tokyo: photo by Shuji Kajiyama/AP, 20 May 2012
An annular solar eclipse is seen in the sky over Tokyo. Millions of Asians watched as a rare "ring of
fire" eclipse crossed their skies early Monday. The annular eclipse, in
which the moon passes in front of the sun leaving only a golden ring
around its edges, was visible to wide areas across the continent: photo by Toru Takahashi/AP, 20 May 2012
Many in Tokyo got a spectacular sight of the "ring of fire" created by the solar eclipse: photo by Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP, 20 May 2012
"Ring of fire" solar eclipse: photo by Los Angeles Times, 20 May 2012
Partial Solar Eclipse, Phoenix, Arizona: photo by Dean Terasaki, 20 May 2012
11 comments:
Tom,
reminded me of the time when i was a kid and would watched a couple of eclipses through the corner of an x-ray print of either of my grandparents..Life was a simple thrill...My mother would tell me not to stare at the sun until three..I didn't believe her for another 5 years i guess...Dicovering was believing...Now it has become the opposite...A very sweet post nonetheless..
Manik,
I think perhaps the sun looked more kindly upon us all back in that golden day before evolution (with all its attendant bother) set in.
A parson twelve feet high would be a useful fellow to have around the premises of your cottage near the sky, in case your kitten, in trying on its hat, got caught stuck up in a tree, above your burning fishpond.
So... test question for the day, what was it, then, that caused the curious conflagration?
Had the reactor overheated?
Or was the fishpond on fire because the haunted-house pet scorpions, in a test of the new waterproof sacred underwear, had doused themselves with lighter fluid and somebody had thrown in a match?
Oh but the fire went wild!
Tom, We missed this one on this side of the continent. Great pictures though. Wall of Voodoo has some good instrumental riffs on the Ring Of Fire but Mr. Cash remains my fave.
Celestial fire, burning water . . . (Well, the Detroit River once caught on fire).
Hazen,
It seemed weirdly almost... sacrilegious? to put up Johnny next to Stan Ridgway.
The early live versions by JC are consistently lip-synched, alack-a-day.
But imagining the burning fishpond to be brimming with radioactive magenta dye might help out with
this 1994 live version from Montreux.
(4862 years old by then, right up there with Prometheus.)
The eclipse coverage is SO much better here than it was on the evening news. Curtis
Tom,
Great "eclipse coverage" as Curtis says.
Here's my "coverage" (in words at least, photos not included). I took a hike up the ridge above Stinson in the late afternoon, looking out across the bright blue sea w/ sky above it, all so blue and when I got to the top there was two people sitting in the tall grass, their glasses of white wine in their hands, bottle in ice bucket beside them, and the man sd "the first bite!" and when I came back by them they said they were eclipse followers, had seen them all over the world, and they had a "17x welder's glass" (something like that) and when I took a look there it was, a little black shadow of moon in lower right quadrant of the circle of the sun (took a photo through the glass, but the "bite" didn't show up). Then I ran back down (the ocean and sky getting strangely darker blue, midnight blue, very strange, almost not true but it WAS true) and drove back to Bolinas to watch it from Mesa Park, w/ my pin hole in cardboard -- and when I got there there were a few people standing around looking at what was going on, and they had 'solar glasses' (made out of cardboard) and you could look at the sun through them & see half the 'ring of fire' -- and as the sun went further down the moon appeared to climb higher across it -- the little pin hole cardboard didn't showed it on my hand but the glasses showed it to the eye, and camera too.
5.21
light coming into fog against invisible
plane of ridge, blue jay on pine branch
in foreground, wave sounding in channel
seems evident, relationship
made in blue and pink
not having been, think what
becomes, through this
silver edge of sun rising above ridge,
line of pelicans gliding toward point
I didn't get any good photos of the eclipse, as I lack even the most basic planning skills. But I did enjoy watching the faces made by the shadow of my spoon.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/--b5cBlynMok/T7remZnk9mI/AAAAAAAAFwg/xsfz7anIIMI/s806/20120520_184203.jpg
This is, I think, my favorite video of the eclipse. The A's game put me to such a sound sleep that I missed the event entirely. My wife said it was quite something, but that I looked far too peaceful to rouse.
I thought we'd missed this ring of fire but then you came along and tossed us into it! Sizzling--especially that wall of voodoo but for me, there was nobody like John--what's his name? Cash?
After looking at very many pictures of this eclipse, the judges have ruled that the #1 prize in the Uniqueness category (not to mention the Aesthetic as well) has to go to Nora's genius shot, notable for its chromatic spookiness, weird comedy and above all -- taken on a boat!
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