April 3, 2024. All over the Americas, people are anxiously studying weather predictions for this coming Monday, April 8. The “partly cloudy” forecast at my planned eclipse-observing location holds out hope but gives no guarantee. Like every other eclipse-chaser, I can only pray I’ll luck out – and not get “clouded out.” In fact, I want the clouds to part along the entire path of totality, from Mexico through the United States to the Maritime Provinces of Canada, opening a giant swath of clarity that grants all those gaping skyward a vision they’ll remember forever.
Eclipse excitement ends my years-long silence in this blog space. Soon I’ll have more to say about my new book, The Elements of Marie Curie, to be published this fall in the U.S. by Grove Atlantic and the U.K. by Harper Collins, with Italian, German, Polish, and other foreign language editions following in 2025.
Since 1991, I’ve traveled to the vicinity of nine total solar eclipses, and seen eight of them, which is a fortunate track record indeed. On my tenth foray, in Dupont, Indiana, I’ll be surrounded by new friends, an old barn, lots of corn, soybeans, and woods in spring colors. It would be great to see that landscape tinged by the shadow of the Moon.