Eclipse Envy

Jim's Musings from Paris April 2024

Total Eclipse, Akron, Ohio 2024. Photo by Chris Hariasz.

I have to admit I was a bit jealous of all our friends across the USA (and especially in Ohio) who were able to experience the total eclipse of the sun this week. However, whenever I show some envy for something happening elsewhere, everyone is quick to remind me, “But Jim, you live in Paris.” And that’s true. But Paris as a home address doesn’t mean that beauty and adventure cease to exist in other places. I was very impressed by the many photos friends posted on Facebook and their reactions to the sun and the moon’s slow dance as the extraordinary natural event made its way across North America. Many people used the word “life-changing” to describe their experience. I was struck by this term, as was Irondale Ensemble’s Artistic Director, Jim Niesen. He writes about his “Eclipse Envy” in his weekly newsletter, “What’s on Jim’s Mind,” that I find particularly compelling.

There will be another total eclipse in August 2026 that will be visible across much of northern Spain—from Valencia to Madrid to Bilbao. I’m already thinking how we might be able to experience this one in person.

Memories of a Past Eclipse

I have a foggy memory of the 20 July 1963 solar eclipse. North Central Wisconsin was not in the path of totality, but there was still a lot of buzz leading up to the predicted time. My brother and I spent the day at Camp Phillips for a one day Cub Scout Camp. Camp Phillips is one of the best Boy Scout facilities in the country. The day was chock full of a variety of “scouting” activities: we shot BB guns, practiced archery, wove little plastic bracelets, learned Native American dances, tried to water ski, and prepared special sunglasses to watch the partial eclipse, about 76% coverage. I recall being very afraid of going blind (I was only eight years old). Come to think of it, I had to start wearing glasses about that time. In any case, I don’t think I really looked at the eclipse when it happened. I remember a much older Eagle scout, who had prepared a viewing helmet fashioned from a number of sunglasses, tried to get me to look through the contraption. He led the different activities throughout the day along with other Eagle scouts, who all seemed to be impersonating members of the Chippewa tribe. In my memory everything is mixed up: the hot, clear July day; handsome, tanned teens dressed in loincloths and feathers; straw bow and arrow targets and little paper BB targets; drums; the cold, lake water; more drums; the cool, handicraft pavilion; the trip on the school bus; dust, heat, blue sky, and drums while waiting for the eclipse to occur. I think I deserve another chance at an eclipse.

The boy who experienced the partial eclipse in Wisconsin 61 years ago had no idea about astronomy. Catholic schools at the time were notoriously lax in teaching any science. The space race had begun, but we Catholic kids were still learning to lace our shoes. I didn’t have my first science class until three years later when we moved to the Chicago suburbs. Even then, my knowledge of science remained on a very elementary level. In high school, I bungled my way through Biology and Chemistry and one of the reasons I chose Macalester College for my undergrad education was its lack of natural science and math requirements. I got by with one semester of a class affectionately called Physics for Poets. In other words, it was physics with no mathematics, theory only. The semester I took the class, the infamous professor, Dr. Kim, had decided to do away with the tests and quizzes and we only had to write one term paper and do a project. I wrote a play about the history of the atom. We all had fun performing the dance of the electrons and enacting theory in other ways. Dr. Kim’s lectures were fascinating, enlightening, and entertaining, and I finally tasted the heady wine of science. But since then, I’ve always stayed on the periphery. Only sipping.

This week, I watched from a distance, as friends and family took part in a primal human experience and wondered openly and communally at the splendor of our universe. Life-changing, they said. Yes, some pangs of jealousy cut through me, I admit it. But, hey, I live in Paris! Nature may be hard to come by here, but humanity’s presence, in all its bliss and all its misery, is on every street corner. Every day is life-changing because life changes every day.

Human Eclipses

Last Saturday, I was scheduled to help at the MéloMen booth at Printemps des Assoces LGBTQ+ 2024, a spring information fair for all Paris-based LGBTQ+ organizations. As I hurried through Paris’ chic neighborhood, le Marais, to get to the exhibition hall on time, I stepped gingerly around several bodies passed out on the sidewalk— not to mention the fellows sleeping in the Métro station or the woman with a very intricate construction of tents and cardboard across the street from our favorite crèperie or the family huddled beneath blankets with their shoes lined up neatly under the eaves of a vacant storefront at a major intersection near our apartment.

Photo by Lizgrin F on Unsplash

I feel that the number of homeless in Paris has been growing since we settled here almost three years ago. For the past seven years, the City of Paris has organized a Nuit de la Solidarité in the month of January when thousands of volunteers descend upon Paris and its suburbs to count the homeless during a short (three hours) window of time. They check streets, parks, alleyways, bridges, anywhere the homeless may be camped. This year they found that the number of homeless had increased significantly—from 3,633 last year to 4,277. My anecdotal perceptions about an increase in homelessness seem to be true.

At the end of last year, Euronews reported on Paris’ homeless situation. They described how the country is rounding up homeless in the capital and sending them to “care centers” in other cities. I’ve read several reports of buses arriving in the night to popular sleeping areas in Paris, especially under the open-air Métro tracks at Stalingrad, and loading numerous people onto the buses to take them to places like Lyons or Marseilles.

Many of these homeless are recent immigrants who are waiting to be processed and receive their official paperwork so they can work and get housing and aid. There are many horror stories connected with the cumbersome French bureaucracy and how people fall through the cracks and fail to ever get some kind of official status.

Meanwhile, the numbers on the street increase. I wonder what will happen in these last months leading up to the Olympics? Will there be a “cleansing” of the city like some people claim? How will the Olympics change our lives here in the City of Light? Will there be a total eclipse? And who will get lost in the shadow? I wonder?

Eclipsing Winter

I mentioned Bilbao earlier. We are in the midst of the two-week spring vacation period for Paris schools and Jairo and I are going with Kena, Raphaël, and Léo to the Basque Country for one week. We will stop in Biarritz and then enter Spain and spend a few days in Bilbao to see the Guggenheim Museum. From there we plan to visit Guernica, the mountain town immortalized by Picasso. There is now a Peace Museum there and a mosaic replica of Picasso’s painting. We saw the original in Madrid last year. Our week-long adventure ends with several days in San Sebastian, a town on the coast famous for its restaurants and beaches. It’s still too cold to swim, I imagine, but we’re hoping for some sun and some relief from this gray and rainy winter.

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Photo by Antonio Gabola on Unsplash

I want to end this month’s missive with a clip from the most recent MéloMen concert. The choir participated in the Franco-Ibérique Festival of LGBTQ+ Choruses held over Easter weekend here in Paris. It was interesting to see and hear the groups from Spain and Portugal and become more familiar with the work of other Parisian LGBTQ choirs—young people, for the most part, with a strong political passion. MéloMen seemed more like the elder statesmen in this gathering. The group has been around for thirty years with a repertoire that tends to be more classical, which projects a more subtle political message. We premiered a number of new songs that are still works in process. One of these, “Locus Iste,” is particularly appropriate for ending this newsletter which seems to be about the natural and human wonders of our world and how we interact with “where we are.”

The words in Latin are:

Locus iste a Deo factus est.

Inaestimabile sacramentum

Irreprehensibilis est.

The translation is:

This place was made by God.

It is a priceless sacrament

And is without reproach.

Have a great month. Like, share, comment. Let us know your thoughts on the eclipse and your own “locus iste.”