The next one won t happen until I am a very mature 354 years old. The oohs and aaahs echoed around the roof for over four hours as we entertained our visitors with wonderful views of the eclipse through our telescopes and eclipse glasses and tales of mystery and imagination that so often accompany such events. We spoke of how Haitian women who were with child were urged to stay indoors during such an event lest their newborn come into this world blind. To many primitive tribes, the sun and moon were the source of life and order on the planet and anything that might upset them would mean catastrophic disaster. Such an event might drive some people mad.
Eclipses surely bring war, disease and famine.
We indulged our visitors with a couple of homemade pinhole cameras to show the safest way to observe an eclipse. We spent about as much time with the pinhole cameras as with the mighty telescopes. We were visited by about 400 very excited people. The news media was there in force as well. We provided the television crews the opportunity to videotape the eclipse through some of our solar filters.