Another rainy day in Rockford, Minnesota. Today is the Eclipse. I am happy that my niece, Courtney, posted a video to Facebook of her four children enjoying the eclipse with her. During the video she posted a shot of the eclipse as well. This is as close as I got to viewing it.

Megan and I were out doing errands, so I missed the window of opportunity to see the eclipse firsthand. Not that I mind. Given a choice of looking at the sky and spending time with Megan, Megan wins.

We were talking about girl scout cookie sales and she finally let me know that Charlotte was not shooting for the President’s Club – she was shooting for and attained Dream Team status. There is no President’s Club with cookies. I am correcting that here and now.

I laughed out loud when I read the following essay by Liza Donnelly. Donnelly is a cartoonist and posts daily about her work and other news happenings. You can subscribe to her on Substack for free or paid.

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Our Eclipse Non-Event

by LIZA DONNELLY Seeing Things is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support her work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at Substack. Click on her name and it will take you to her posts).

APR 08, 2024

My husband and I sat outside at the appointed time this afternoon. He brought our collander, because we read you could see something using a collander. We had no idea how that would work.

Neither of us were that excited about the eclipse, to be honest, but we went into town this morning to get eclipse glasses at CVS, only to be turned away by a rather surly woman who probably had been asked a million times about eclipse glasses. She grumbled to me, “I should put out a sign.”

Returning home, Michael and I went back to work in our respective studios. At 3:03 he texts me, “do you want to be together during the eclipse?” I love my husband, but I was unsure that this was a moment that required togetherness. To be sure, just in case it was, I texted back “sure!”

Together, we sat in yard chairs, and waited.

It got cold, so Michael retrieved some coats. A mosquito tried to bite me, the birds were flittering about—but who’s to say they don’t always do that at 3:16pm. The light got weird, and Michael said in his best Christopher Walken voice, “it’s kinda spooky.” We waiting, I scrolled Instagram.

“Is this it? This must be it, it’s after 3:16.”

“It’s getting darker.”

“Is it? I think its getting lighter.”

“I’m bored.”

Silence. We looked at the collander.

“I think that that was it.”

Our silence continued as we glanced quickly at the cloudy area where the sun was.

“Yeah, that was it.”

“I’m going back to work. See you later.”

And that was it.

We must have experienced it, but we weren’t sure.

The drawings in this post are from when I covered the last eclipse in 2017 for CBS. I was sent to the American Museum of Natural History because my producer could not get me a hotel near the total eclipse area—I forget where that was, maybe Montana? I loved seeing all the people from all ages and races gathered to experience the event, and loved drawing them. I missed watching people watch the eclipse this year, but it was fun to watch Michael and the birds, too.