John McLoone

On Monday, April 8, you people are all going to be wearing goofy glasses and staring at the sun for four minutes.

I’m going to be wearing the goofy glasses I wear every single day and keep an eye on things here on earth.

What if the eclipse is just a big something to divert our collective attention? A lot can happen in 4.5 minutes. It’s actually 3 seconds short of that, but I’ve added 1.5 seconds on either side of the event for people to lower their heads back down and get the cardboard off their faces.

Am I paranoid? Probably. But if I had a stack of gold, I’d spend the eclipse sitting on it.

Is it cool that the moon and the sun are crossing paths? Sure. It’s a rare occurrence. It’s the only one we’re going to see in our lifetimes unless you were around in 1918 or intend to be here in 2079. So, I’m going to be missing out on something.

An eclipse itself isn’t that uncommon. There was a big one a few years back. I watched stuff here on earth to make sure no one took off with it then too. Because it’s not just those 4 minutes in reality. A lot of people’s attention is diverted for hours before, looking for that perfect spot to stare directly at the sun.

I’m not anti-eclipse. Maybe I’m just getting to the age where I’ve seen everything I need to see. When I was a kid, we feared the eclipse. “Don’t stare at the sun! You’ll go blind.” Maybe I didn’t listen. I usually didn’t. Maybe I’m wearing these goofy glasses all the time today because I didn’t then. I remember people poking a hole in cardboard boxes to look at the eclipse. I’m not looking for any new arts and crafts projects.

I’ve seen plenty of sunsets and sunrises in my day. That’s my kind of sun viewing. A big full moon lighting up the night is really cool. But we don’t need to cross these things.

We have a fascination with space. We dream about what’s up there. I don’t share it. My belief is we need to take care of things here first. Let’s clean up our house, not wreck it and try to find another place to wreck too.

A lot of our exploration is honestly now for defense, to find a better way to be more powerful than someone else. We’re putting weapons up there. Stargazers look for satellites now instead of the Big Dipper. “Isn’t that cool? That one’s where my internet comes from.”

Think of the billions of dollars wasted by staring at the sky and trying to make a better rocket to get there. What if we used all that money to cure diseases instead? I’d rather we got rid of cancer. Use these resources here, then stare upward.

So, if you’re taking attendance, I’ll be absent for the eclipse. Send me a picture, maybe, from the inside of your cardboard box.