Eclipse of the Century Part 3 of 3: My First Total Eclipse

I have had several near misses with the Sun. In 1984, I lived beneath an annular eclipse that occurred above rather thick and nasty rain clouds. In 1994 I viewed a partial eclipse from the upper peninsula of Michigan. Total eclipses, however, have always avoided my path. This year I decided to purposely put...

The Eclipse of the Century Part 2 of 3: Nagasaki

Writing this series of blog post got somewhat stalled as I tried to figure out how to explain Nagasaki. Some things are easy to communicate. For instance, I went to breakfast at a diner that had eggs and spent an amusing 3 minutes trying via much pointing and sign language to first understand the question...

The Eclipse of the Century Part 1 of 3: There and back again

Waking up in my own bed today, I felt a little like Alice waking beside the rabbit hole, not sure if the adventure of my last week was real or not. Luckily I have pictures to confirm the reality of the past 10 days. On July 15th, I flew from St Louis, MO (38° 45′ N, 90° 23′ W)...

Getting ready for a Hungry Dragon

I’m currently in Shanghai, China. The city is undergoing a truly amazing amount of construction as it prepares for Expo 2010 (a version of the world’s fair I believe). Everywhere there are young trees and new landscapes growing up along roads still being built and building from ancient times that...