GROVE CITY, Pa. — This Monday afternoon, early in the 3 p.m. EST hour, I joined a throng on the campus of Grove City College to stare upward at the sky. That isn’t something we normally do. We did so in hopes of seeing an eclipsed Sun, estimated to be around 97 percent in our area.
Eclipse mania swept these parts in recent days. On Saturday, I drove I-80 from the Penn State exit to the Grove City exit about 24 miles from Ohio. Much of that route was ideal for eclipse watching today. At one point along that stretch is the highest elevation on I-80 east of the Mississippi River.
Electronic signs along the interstate warned drivers about traffic on this Monday, April 8. The aim was for drivers to keep their eyes on the road rather than the sky. Given the way people drive, that was good advice. A lingering question would be whether drivers would pause to decelerate from their normal obscene speed limits while staring upward. My guess was probably not (just as they don’t slow down for construction workers).
In fact, I read a piece this morning about dramatic spikes in car crashes during eclipses. Does that surprise anyone?
But on the quad of Grove City College’s campus, protected by trees and buildings, we had no fears of getting run over by speeding SUVs. The crowd stood at attention, heads fixed upward.
To be sure, not every student stayed here for the eclipse. Some trekked to places projected to have more totality. One of my students, Mark, bolted to what he judged a better spot in Indiana. That’s quite a distance. I’ll have to ask him if it was worth it. A shorter drive is up Route 79 to Erie, Pennsylvania, about an hour away. Erie hotels were sold out.
There were still other sites for prime viewing. Given certain stark prophecies of Armageddon, I could have gone to Nineveh. Yes, Nineveh. No, no — not the Nineveh of Jonah in modern-day Iraq, but little Nineveh, Pennsylvania.
In fact, if you followed the various forms of eclipse hysteria, there’s an elaborate theory about the eclipse passing along an uncanny route of small American towns named Nineveh. It’s a neat (if not dubious) theory, which my friend John Zmirak wrote about. How accurate is it? One of those “fact-check” dudes seeking to toss water on theory claims there are only two towns named Nineveh in the path of the total eclipse and five others in the path of a partial eclipse, one of them in Pennsylvania.
Actually, I know of two towns named Nineveh near me in western Pennsylvania alone. One is westward in Clarion County. It’s the hometown of a student in my 2 p.m. class. The other is southward in Greene County, about 20 miles from my in-laws. I can report that neither my student nor my in-laws ran through town in recent weeks crying that the end is near and urging Joe Biden to cover himself in sackcloth and repent.
There was nonetheless plenty of speculation that this eclipse signaled that the end is nigh. I might have placed bets on the Three Days of Darkness, given that, well, we were looking at a period of some darkness at the pivotal moment. Alas, I can report with full confidence, dear readers, that three days of darkness have not subsequently enveloped Grove City, Pennsylvania.
If you’re looking for theological insights, a genuinely thoughtful take on this eclipse’s timing was provided by Father Raymond de Souza, who wrote about the striking reality that the eclipse happened to transpire on a uniquely rescheduled Feast of the Annunciation, which on the liturgical calendar usually takes place on March 25. It had to be moved because this year the feast day fell during Holy Week. Even if you’re not Catholic, you might ponder the eloquent observations of de Souza. (For a very level-headed analysis of religious conspiracy theories connected to this eclipse, see the piece by Eric Sammons at Crisis magazine. And I must say, for the record, that I don’t deny that God can and does speak to us through celestial events on occasion.)
And so, what did we see in Grove City?
Clouds, a bunch of damned clouds. The sky was covered with them. Like a giant blanket.
Crawford Hall, Grove City College, Pa., at moment of peak eclipse, 3:13 p.m., April 8, 2024 (Paul Kengor/The American Spectator)
Worse, I can attest that yesterday at this time, Sunday, 3:13 p.m., it was so sunny as I sat outside La Prima Espresso shop in Pittsburgh’s Strip District that I was worried about sunburn. But as for today at 3:13, total cloud cover. The above photo is what the eclipse area looked like above the college’s Crawford Hall at 3:13.
I imagine that at 3:13 tomorrow the sky will be clear as a bell. In fact, writing at this moment, an hour later, 4:13 p.m., the sky is wide open in that spot, and the Sun is beaming like a giant blow torch. As God is my witness, I swear that’s true and have a photo to prove it. Ridiculous, eh? (Update: 4:45, still beaming.)
Sky above Grove City College, Pa., campus an hour after eclipse, 4:13 p.m., April 8, 2024 (Paul Kengor/The American Spectator)
On the plus side, the spectacle was not a complete bust. During the brief, fleeting moments when the Sun poked through momentarily around 3 p.m., the eclipse was partly viewable through our “Eclipse Shades” sunglasses. That was sort of interesting, I suppose.
More intriguing was that the overall sky darkened for about five minutes at the peak of the eclipse. It took on the look of a coming major storm (especially given the massive clouds). I understand that if we had been at a spot with a 100 percent blockage, it would have looked dark as night.
I asked a student of mine, a theology major, what he thought. His mind turned to the original Good Friday. “What must that have been like?” he asked.
Now there’s a thought for this Easter Season, one much more poignant than what I witnessed this afternoon.
