Solar Eclipse - a Sunshine Story

If you see someone with squinting eyes today, chances are that he or she has observed this morning’s solar eclipse. In most countries it was only a partial one, but if you e.g. are one of our users on Greenland (yes we do have users there), you had the rare opportunity to observe a total eclipse!

However, this makes me think of one of my family’s stories - you know, that kind of stories that all families have and are told over and over again.

As I said, partial eclipses happen every now and then, but the total are really rare. My grandmother was a primary school teacher in the northern part of Sweden back in the 1950’s. For a long time, newspapers had written about the astronomical sensation that would occur and my grandma had pedagogically prepared her class and told them to bring sooted glass to look through from the school yard.

The other class in the little school had a more old school (ok, sorry for that one) teacher. My grandma, aged 32, tried without any progress to convince her to also let her kids have the chance to observe the phenomenon. It could maybe be regarded as a field study in nature science? The old woman refused - the kids should have their grammary class as normal, there’s a curriculum to follow, right?

- Why would we give them extra break just for something stupid as a total solar eclipse, they can see it next time!

Well, maybe not - the next similar event in Sweden won’t come until the year 2126! In other words, something that makes Halley’s comet look like a yo-yo! Maybe it’s these poor kids that moved to Greenland!

Posted by Morbror Martin in Culture, General | Trackback |