Lift Up Your Hearts!

Sometimes I don't mind showing my age: When contemplating a post appropriate for both the day of the lunar eclipse and Pi Day, this is what came immediately to mind: Dean Martin's "That's Amore."

I didn't bake a pie for Pi Day this year, but we did watch the eclipse. My cell phone camera is great for most things, but completely failed in capturing anything of the event worth publishing.

The real-life sight, however, was well worth setting my alarm clock for. We had a great view from our front yard, and the weather was perfect, i.e. a cloudless sky, with the temperature cool but pleasant.

I woke up just before midnight for the onset, and watched until I could discern—or at least thought I could discern—a small bite taken out of the moon. At 1:30 a.m., about halfway to totality, the sight was impressive, and we enjoyed the brief moments of totality around 3 a.m. With all the hype about the "blood moon," I expected it to be redder than it was, but that did not detract.

The first lunar eclipse that I remember would have been when I was five years old or so. I recall getting up early in the morning and going with my father to a place where we could watch it in the early dawn. I have one image in my mind: my father crouching beside me as we watched the moon low in the dawning sky. It was cold, but not excessively so. I don't know how aware I was of the significance of the lunar eclipse, but I do remember that I was doing something very special with my father, and that was priceless.