What manner of wondrous experience will it be? A miracle? Or more of a spectacle? A spectacle bordering on the miraculous? Or when all is said and done, just another cheap thrill, though maybe the grandest cheap thrill of them all? Of course there’s always the possibility that it’ll just be one of life’s bigger disappointments. Life can be risky like that, and we wouldn’t have it any other way, if you can believe that.
One can only do what one can to enhance the odds for success. Like travel away from a place where cloudy weather in early April is all too likely, such as the American northeast, to a place where the sun always shines, or almost always shines, like the American southwest. Even there, of course, anything is possible and clouds still might get in the way, obscuring the sun. Or if not clouds, something else, like the moon, which in this case is much more than a possibility but an astronomical certainty. The thought of desperately seeking one kind of obscuration only to worry about another obscuration might sound a bit odd, but there you are. Total solar eclipses can be like that.
The decision to travel is a pretty easy call, what with the trend towards wetter and cloudier spring weather in the northeast, aided and abetted by epic global climatic changes. As of this final week of March, Boston has seen almost ten inches of rain for the month, more than double historic norms. This might be great if you’re an amphibian, not so great if you’re a fan of extraordinary sky phenomena, kind of a mixed bag for those frogs and salamanders who love things like meteor showers. Or solar eclipses.
The end result of all this is a planned trip to Austin TX, self-proclaimed “Live Music Capital of the World,” whatever that means. Austin is also a home to the U of Texas and Longhorn football, and has the reputation of being a lonely outpost of liberal politics (whatever that means) in the primitive gunslinging wilderness of the right-wing Lone Star State. Austin also happens to be the state capital, which you no doubt knew once but might have forgotten. Or maybe you thought it was San Antonio.
The erstwhile tourist, curious about the history of that capital city, soon learns that Austin has been the capital since Texas joined the US union in 1848. Ah, but it’s not that simple: prior to that time, in the glorious days of the independent Republic of Texas, Austin was preceded by five other locales that were briefly “the capital.” Most of these enjoyed their fifteen minutes of fame in 1836. Do Texas school kids have to remember Houston, Velasco, Columbia, Harrisburg, and Washington-on-the-Brazos to pass a certain history exam at some point in their grammar school career? Did you?
We’ve a friend who drove to Nebraska back in 2017 for the previous cosmic N American totality-happening. She took the big chance and it paid off big time, and do you know how long it takes to drive to Nebraska from Boston? “Totally worth it” was her assessment upon her return. Do you happen to know the capital of Nebraska? If you said “Omaha” you’d be wrong. North Platt and Kearney don’t cut it, either, in case you were wondering.
Texas will not be a new experience for us. With its Gulf coast and desert and hill country environments, there’s a ton of different bird species to sample, not to mention the gorgeous landscapes and the abundance of excellent reptile and insect species that live there, and let us not forget the wildflowers and the cactus (Texas bluebonnets and prickly-pears!). The hill country is where we watched Mexican free-tailed bats streaming out of a limestone cave for hours at twilight, evidently on their way to dinner in the local sky teeming with insects. They were still pouring out by the time we got tired of watching and went home, and maybe that gusher of tiny flying mammals never stopped. It was a grand spectacle, for sure, maybe miraculous if you’ve a certain sense of wonder towards the natural world.
It was on that same trip that we traveled south to the border to sample wildlife of the northern Chihuahuan desert (Pyrrhuloxias! Phainopeplas! Greater Kiskadees!), which led us to travel through a busy farming community, where we stopped for ice cream. The town was Uvalde, a few years before it became famous for all the wrong reasons. For the human species to lose its alarming propensity to violence would be a true miracle, with no doubt spectacular results, but don’t hold your breath.
Is the spectacle/miracle distinction really that tough to make? Can one consult an expert on these matters? A good start would be with the Catholic Church, where miracles have always been a pretty big deal. They specify a miracle as “a sign or wonder such as a healing, or control of nature, which can only be attributed to divine power.” If that’s not enough, how about “an extraordinary sensible effect wrought by God that surpasses the power and order of created nature”? Does that exclude things like solar eclipses and a zillion bats flying out of a cave for hours?
They break it down even further: Healings, Exorcisms, and Restoration, as in raising the dead. Jesus met the “surpassing the power of nature” criteria when he calmed that storm on the Sea of Galilee, fed the multitudes with the five loaves and the two fish, and walked on the water.
Is a specific conjunction of circumstances due to the mechanical workings of the structure of the cosmos – which is a total solar eclipse without any of the poetry and wonder of it, when all is said and done – a miracle by any measure, when seen in this way? It actually kind of depends.
Christopher Columbus, whom one might assume was a good Catholic boy, played with this distinction to his advantage, back in 1504. It seems Chris and his boys had landed in Jamaica, where they did their usual plundering and exploiting of the locals, while also trying to maintain good relations, at least to the point where good relations were useful. This evidently got to be a heavy lift, just as one might expect, until at some point our clever explorer, using the European science available to him, noted an upcoming total solar eclipse due on March first of that year.
One can assume the man knew his Bible and the power of a miracle in impressing the multitudes, so what did he do? You guessed it: he let it be known that unless the recalcitrant natives got their minds right and submitted to his bidding, he’d mess with the sun up there in the sky in a way they’d never forget, testimony to his miraculous and awesome and not-to-be-messed-with power. And it worked like a charm. If señor Columbus had any reservations about what Jesus might think of such an action, they were only passing. Hell, the man probably had such an ego he probably figure Jesus would totally approve, for what were heathens to either of them? But this is idle speculation.
This same scenario played out in similar fashion, only in a much more entertaining and wonderfully expressed iteration, when Mark Twain used it as a plot device in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. In one of the first time travel books, whereby the hero didn’t need no stinkin’ machine to pull it off but managed with a simple blow to the head by a crowbar, Hank Morgan of current-day (19th century) Hartford CT finds himself in the year 528 in England. The book is a great read if you’re a fan of Mark Twain (if you’re not, what’s the problem?) but what matters is that Hank saves his ass from burning up at the stake with a similar prediction in the manner of the great Italian explorer.
The book is very specific about how the total solar eclipse occurred on the 21st of June, and its readers probably assumed that the author had done his homework on this, or they just didn’t care. At any rate, it turns out the only events of this nature that happened on the planet in that year were on March and August first, and even those were in the southern hemisphere. Whoops, and does it matter? At any rate, Hank’s “miracle” works as intended, and he is not only spared but given respect and power, afterwards known by all as The Boss. Is it farfetched to assume that many years later, a talented rock star from New Jersey adopted this name for himself because he was a big fan of Twain and that book? Don’t count on it, but all things are possible in this best of all possible worlds.
What matters is that there is an emotional quality to “miracle” that lends it a level of power way beyond its being something super extraordinary. We’re talking beyond supercalifragisiticexpialodocious here, a place in the human psyche that is rarely visited, perhaps never for many of us. This can get kind of fuzzy if the “power and order of created nature” behind the spectacle is unknown to the beholder, for whom it is then a miracle for them but probably not for those in the know, kind of a variation on how ignorance is bliss (which it is). Hank Morgan and Chris Columbus knew all about this. Did Jesus?
Then there’s that Course in Miracles, written in 1976 by Helen Schucman and given a huge boost in popularity by Marianne Williamson (currently running for the Presidency of the United States) on Oprah in 1992. It is billed as a “study program designed to awaken us to the truth of our oneness with God and Love” by emphasizing “the healing of all our relationships through inspired forgiveness.” The author claims the whole thing was dictated to her, word for word, by Jesus Christ. If you’re a fan, and the Course has brought you wholly better life, one couldn’t ask for a better miracle than that, with no spectacle needed.
And what about the 1961 movie, Pocketful of Miracles? Frank Capra’s last movie, which was actually a remake of one he’d directed in 1933, Lady for a Day, which should tell you something. It’s a classic and fun comedy (Glenn Ford! Peter Falk! Betty Davis!) but a student of miracles will find little of substance in the film’s charming plot or characters. To add to any confusion, there was a song by Frank Sinatra with the same title around the same time, which tells us about how “one little miracle a day is all I need” and “I hear sleigh bells ringing, smack, in the middle of May” which suggests psychosis can be a kind of miracle, at least from a personal standpoint. The punchline of the song is how “my favorite miracle of all is you and me” which makes it the corniest of corny love songs. The combined punch of romance and sentimentality is one that songwriters have exploited since forever, with usually excellent results. The incredible staying power of this phenomenon certainly borders on the miraculous, wouldn’t you say?
Curiously, there is one rather downbeat line in the song, about how “troubles more or less bother me, I guess, when the sun doesn’t shine.”
Whoa! Is that some kind of veiled reference to the awesome emotional power of a solar eclipse? Come to your own conclusions, and keep Columbus and Hank Morgan in mind, as Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen might have done when they wrote that line into their hit. Admittedly, assuming it is referring to a solar eclipse might seem like a bit of a stretch.
Slightly less of a stretch is the possibility that Joni Mitchell contemplated Cahn’s and Van Heusen’s line when she wrote her famous song, which is of course about the usual mundane obscuration linked with gloom or other downbeat emotions. Joni’s genius turned it into a much more complex reflection than that, which might explain how Both Sides Now has caught the public imagination far more than Pocketful of Miracles ever did, something even Sinatra fans must admit. Ol’ Blue Eyes includes both songs in his catalogue, by the way, but you probably already knew that.
It is probably going out on a limb to claim the great solar eclipse song has yet to be written, though some might claim Manfred Mann’s Blinded by the Light comes close, which is just going out on another limb. It might even be safe to say the task is impossible, and maybe that’s a good thing. The same might be said of miracles, where Pocketful kind of diminishes the awesomeness of the concept.
It seems pretty clear by this point that the question of what constitutes a miracle can easily be beaten to death for many more paragraphs, so somewhat arbitrarily and mercifully the final whistle will be blown after a brief rundown of the event known to sports fans everywhere as the Miracle on Ice. The scene was the 1980 Winter Olympics held in Lake Placid NY, there at the edge of the lovely Adirondacks. The event was hockey. In specific, we’re talking about the semifinal match between the Soviet Union powerhouse and the pipsqueak United States teams. The Russkies were winners of the previous four gold medals and five of the past six in that event at the Games, with a 27-1-1 record in Olympic play since 1960. Are we impressed yet? Also, that 1980 team was comprised of experienced veterans of international play. They were the heavy favorites to win it all again.
Their opponents on the US team checked all the boxes for “very unlikely winners”: they were not only the youngest team playing in that event, but even better, the youngest in national team history. Only a few had any minor-league experience, and the rest were college players. A hockey fan might be able to pile on even more details as to why the pitiful Americans had no chance in hell to pull off a victory over the Communist juggernaut, but as you’ve surely guessed by now that is exactly what happened, 4-3.
By any measure, it was basically your usual fabulous “upset,” which happens in sports from time to time. Except in this case you’ve also got Al Michaels of ABC Sports proclaiming at the moment of victory: “Do you believe in miracles? YES!”
Sports Illustrated later named it the top sports moment of the 20th century. An upset is always a great moment in sports, and some upsets are more epic than others. Can an upset of truly epic proportions elevate to the status of miracle, if a hyperbolic (and probably very patriotic) sports caster says it is? Was David’s “win” over Goliath in the Bible a miracle? What would the Catholic church say? Or Al Michaels, if he’d been announcing that event?
This gets us back to the power of human emotions. Chances are Mr. Michaels didn’t know that much about Catholic doctrine when he broadcast his joy and surprise to the world. Or even if he happened to be a devout Catholic and could quote the rules, what matters is he knew in his heart and soul at that moment that for him it was exactly what he declared it to be, and that he was not alone in this conclusion. The “miracles” wrought by the explorer and the time traveler were just clever and effective manipulations for them, but their audiences were also on the money with their reactions of fear and awe. Ignorance in the service of miracles does not detract from the power of the miracle one bit, especially for the believers.
At this moment great numbers of people are making whatever effort is required to be present at what they hope to be a moment of extraordinary spectacle. Chances are that few will be ignorant of the cosmic mechanism at work. Some have witnessed it before and are seeking it out again, as it’s that great an experience. Expectations are running very very high, and part of this is not knowing what the final effect will be, both in the senses and the heart. Will it be the greatest spectacle ever seen in their lives? Will it be profoundly moving, in a wonderful and/or terrible way, and have the emotional power to feel like a miracle, an assessment that in the end is totally personal and not to be debated? You’ll know it in your heart, as corny as that sounds. Or maybe for some it’ll just be the greatest cheap thrill they could’ve imagined, which is still not too shabby.
And there is always the possibility of disappointment lurking in the shadows – a solar eclipse, subject to vagaries of the local weather, is that kind of thing – which might have similar deep and profound effects if that comes to pass. Then we’ll all just be left with sober reflection, which in itself might not be all that bad. But a miracle it ain’t, which will be kind of terrible, unless you’re one of those philosophical “I see miracles every day” kind of people, for whom the disappointment might be no big deal. Such is a benefit of having the corniest approach to life there is, but then again they might have a point.
