I was spellbound as only a twelve-year-old could be. We were going to witness a partial solar eclipse--my first. We constructed our own private viewing theaters from old cardboard boxes. I punctured a hole in a new Delmonte's green bean box, pasted a sheet of white paper opposite the hole, and crowded in at the window. A single ray burst through the hole, forming a less magnificent, semi-circular, miniature sun on the paper horizon. The ray's brilliance was a laser capturing dust-angels in its path. It began slowly. At first I thought someone was blocking the hole, but was told that was supposed to happen, so I settled back and strained at the imitation sun across from me. A dark smudge edged across its bright surface, a fingernail of a shadow. It progressed slower than my enthusiasm would permit and, while I could feel something big was happening, I couldn't help but feel cheated.

When I was a freshman at U.M.S.L., I would go to the Hudson Park parking lot at Florissant Valley Community College campus and watch the lunar eclipses. The night skies fascinated me. Usually, alone, I would be entranced by the miracle and majesty of the full moon and its total eclipse. The sheer power of its mystery, primal in urgency, cast me in a perfect spell as the sun gradually, deliberately, inexorably bled across its surface, blotting out all but a ghost of its features. In that bleeding time, I would observe the moon's transformation with ritual intensity and wonder what it must have been like for early man to witness this rare spectacle. Did he see one of his gods in battle? Was it the end of the world? I didn't know, but I thought it must have been almost as overpowering for him to watch as I know it was for me. I felt I was almost able to forge a link with the past, if not actually then at least spiritually.