![Adventures of an eclipse chaser](https://lakevillejournal.com/media-library/image.png?id=51909211&width=1200&height=948)
Joe Rao
‘It is an experience every fiber of you gets involved in,” said Joe Rao of the phenomena of the total eclipse; it has “no rival for sheer drama and excitement.”
Rao has traveled “by land, sea, and air to hunt the total solar eclipse” for more than fifty years, he told attendees at a Zoom lecture hosted by the NorthEast-Millerton Library on Thursday, March 28; the result is that he has witnessed thirteen total eclipses in his life. Rao was chief meteorologist at News 12 in Westchester, New York, for 21 years and writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine and the Farmer’s Almanac and Space.com. He is also an instructor and guest lecturer at Hayden Planetarium in New York.
Rao’s lifelong fascination with the eclipse was inspired by his grandfather, who explained the phenomenon to him when Rao was just 7 years old, using his fist (the sun) and salt shaker (the moon) and pepper grinder (the earth) to show how the moon moves to block the sun. This was in preparation for the 90% partial eclipse of July of 1963; Rao remembers witnessing the crescent image of the sun.
In July of 1972, Joe’s grandfather drove Joe, his grandmother and other family members to a town in Canada called Cap-Chat on the Gaspe Peninsula, to see a total eclipse. Joe was able to see the corona around the moon’s shadow at that eclipse.
He said at that eclipse, “I’ve got to see another one of these.” He says he was “addicted” at that point.
There was a tour in 1977 that he and friend and fellow eclipse fanatic, Glenn Snyder organized to fund their own way to Columbia, South America. Their rickety old tour bus got stuck in mud. All twenty passengers pushed and freed the bus. They backtracked back to the original route and made it in time to see the total eclipse.
In 1979, he and Glenn organized another tour, this time to Lewistown, Montana, and took eighty people. The morning of the eclipse, Joe, now a meteorologist, got word that cloud cover was coming to Lewistown. They all got on the bus, drove an hour to the east, and found a field, free of cloud cover. From there they could view the eclipse.
The year 1990 brought another eclipse. Rao got the idea of viewing it from an airplane. He contacted American Trans Air and asked them if flight 402 from Honolulu to San Francisco could be delayed forty-one minutes in order to intersect with the eclipse. They agreed. A further complication occurred when another plane got in front of them for takeoff. The delay would cost them the view of the eclipse, so the captain lowered the plane to another altitude and sped up. They got to view the eclipse.
In 1991, Rao was hired by a cruise ship to pick the best spot to view the eclipse for an eclipse cruise. The problem this time was that a volcano which had erupted in the Philippines was causing a haze of volcanic ash. They were able to find a hole in the haze and cloud cover forty nautical miles away and the two cruise ships, filled with eclipse seekers, got to it in time.
Joe Rao was hired for another cruise in 1998 to view the eclipse near the island of Monserrat.
An eclipse near the North Pole in 2008 presented the problem of how to get to see it, until his friend Glenn Snyder was hired by the German airline, AirEvents/Deutsche Polarflug. This time it was Snyder who petitioned the airline to intersect the eclipse and got his friend Rao onboard. Rao wrote about the flight for Natural History magazine; “Shades of Glory” later won a prize from the American Astronomical Society.
In 2016, Joe convinced Alaska Airlines to delay a flight for twenty-five minutes to view the eclipse taking place that year seven hundred miles north of Honolulu.
In 2021, he and his wife, Renata journeyed to Antarctica to see the eclipse.
This time, Rao said he might go to Syracuse or Plattsburg for the eclipse of next Monday, April 8. He said this one is “knocking at our back door.” He added, “Get in your car and travel up route I-87 north to Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Saratoga Springs or Montreal.” He said it should be on “everyone’s bucket list.”
Those who do travel north should be aware there could be heavy traffic and delays.
Rao said for those who stay in this area on April 8, there will not be a total eclipse but about a 91 percent eclipse. The corona around the sun will not be visible. The eclipse will begin around 2:12 in Millerton, with the “maximum effect” around 3:26 and it will be over by 4:37 in the afternoon. He said there will be a “counterfeit twilight and the sky will turn a dusky shade of blue.”
To view the eclipse safely eclipse glasses are needed. Regular sunglasses are not safe and will not keep out ultraviolet and infrared light. The glasses should have a tag with an ISO number and be made of polymer or mylar.
Rhiannon Leo-Jameson, director of the North-East Millerton Library, said area residents could stop in the library for a pair of eclipse glasses.
Abstract art display in Wassaic for Upstate Art Weekend, July 18-21.
WASSAIC — Art enthusiasts from all over the country flocked to the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley to participate in Upstate Art Weekend, which ran from July 18 to July 21.
The event, which “celebrates the cultural vibrancy of Upstate New York”, included 145 different locations where visitors could enjoy and interact with art.
On Saturday, July 20, The Wassaic Project hosted numerous community events. Will Hutnick, the director of artistic programming, said “We’ve been a part of it since the beginning, this is the fifth year of UPAW.”
Most of the action was based at Maxon Mills, the seven-floor grain mill located in the heart of Wassaic. On exhibit was work from 30 artists, 18 of whom were past residents of The Wassaic Project. “Artists can come and do a residency here, meaning they live and work with one another for a couple months at a time,” Hutnick stated.
The first floor held work by Petra Szilagyi, who uses dirt and linseed oil to construct images of paranormal concepts, most of which include bats. They reflected that a recent trip to a fifth sense competition in Vietnam was the influence behind the exhibit.
Across the floor was Tiffany Smith’s interactive installation which incorporated plants and wicker chairs, all of which were objects associated with her Carribean upbringing. “The room being filled with plants is symbolic of hurricane prep which often included bringing the plants from outside into the house,” Smith said.
As visitors made their way up the narrow wooden stairs, music could be heard from behind the walls. The echoing music was Daniel Shieh’s installation, entitled Mother’s Anthem, which played a recording of the American Anthem in 30 languages. The languages ranged from Spanish and Italian to Navajo and Bengali.
Each floor was filled with artwork of all mediums, including painting, fibers, collage and photography. Rachel Bussières, who switched her concentration after watching the 2017 solar eclipse, uses varying light sources to produce lumen prints. During the wildfires, she recounted that she “made a new exposure each day to capture the changing air quality”.
Luciana Abait also incorporates the natural world into her pieces, instead using maps. An environmental activist originally from Argentina, Abait’s work highlights “environmental fragility, specifically the impacts it has on immigrants.” Her installation that is currently on display at Maxon Mills, takes the form of a mountain range built solely from maps of the US and Argentina.
Throughout the day, visitors could “Arm Wrestle 4 A Popsicle”. Winners had the choice of 3 playfully flavored trout-inspired popsicles - Nightcrawler, Power Bait, and Salmon Roe. Artist Katie Peck, who spent the day in costume as a rainbow trout, encouraged guests to step up and try their hand at an arm wrestle.
Shibori Indigo dyeing, group meditation, and dance workshops were open for community members of all ages as well.
While the daytime activities fostered appreciation of fixed art, a dance party until midnight at The Lantern Inn offered guests a space for performative art.
When describing the environment of The Wassaic Project, Smith emphasized, “It’s all community, it’s all love.”
A serene scene from the Amenia garden tour.
AMENIA — The much-anticipated annual Amenia Garden Tour drew a steady stream of visitors to admire five local gardens on Saturday, July 13, each one demonstrative of what a green thumb can do. An added advantage was the sense of community as neighbors and friends met along the way.
Each garden selected for the tour presented a different garden vibe. Phantom’s Rock, the garden of Wendy Goidel, offered a rocky terrain and a deep rock pool offering peaceful seclusion and anytime swims. Goidel graciously welcomed visitors and answered questions about the breathtaking setting.
Amenia Finance Director Charlie Miller welcomed visitors to his Bog Hollow Road garden in Wassaic, a manicured expansive yard with well-placed garden beds framing a far-reaching view. He said he plans carefully each winter for the next spring’s improvement.
The organic, environmentally responsible Maitri Farm was next, a lesson in coordinating agriculture with natural balance. The farm stand and a walk among the greenhouses brought visitors together.
Near the center of Amenia was the garden of Polly Pitts-Garvin, offering a chance to visit a robust vegetable garden with raised beds to be envious of and a remarkable absence of any insects or usual vegetable garden problems.
At Chez Cheese, the vast garden acreage surrounding the 1850s historic home of Joan Feeney and Bruce Phillips in Millerton, visitors could begin at refreshment stations where walking tour maps of the 15-acre property were available. There were streams and ponds with docks, and a dozen bridges arranged around the landscape. In the 19th-century, the property had been the home of the Wilson Cheese Factory, inspiring the name of the estate.
The Amenia Garden Tour was supported this year by Paley’s Garden Center in Sharon.
Gary Dodson working a tricky pool on the Schoharie Creek, hoping to lure something other than a rock bass from the depths.
PRATTSVILLE, N.Y. — The Schoharie Creek, a fabled Catskill trout stream, has suffered mightily in recent decades.
Between pressure from human development around the busy and popular Hunter Mountain ski area, serious flooding, and the fact that the stream’s east-west configuration means it gets the maximum amount of sunlight, the cool water required for trout habitat is simply not as available as in the old days.
This is not a new phenomenon. It does seem to be getting worse, though.
Gary Dodson and I convened where the creek makes its final run into the Schoharie reservoir, part of the New York City water supply system, on a semi-broiling Thursday afternoon, July 11.
The goal was simple. Catch smallmouth bass, which abound in the lower section of the river.
This was hot stuff — as in an 80-degree water temperature.
The air temperature was actually slightly less at 77.
After negotiating the intensely slippery rocks, festooned with treacherous algae, the first major pool presented several difficulties, with a back eddy competing with a main flow and several large trees draped about the whole thing.
I hit on the simplest strategy, which was to flip a weighted attractor fly called a Tequilley into the start of the eddy so it would proceed slowly but steadily into the maelstrom, sinking all the while.
This worked. A proper adult smallmouth, with bronze coloring and vertical stripes, took the thing.
The point-and-shoot camera finally died, however, and I was not going to try to fumble my phone out for a nice but routine fish photo.
Why not?
Because I guarantee the fish would have made a sudden, last-moment bolt for freedom, causing me to drop the device into the drink.
Gary moved downstream while I continued trying to annoy the residents of the pool, succeeding a couple of times with different colored Wooly Buggers.
Then we all got bored and I moved off, where Gary was catching rock bass and cussing them out for not being something else.
I have to admit, they are not the most compelling critters. Something about the red eyes.
This latest trip was dominated by extremely tedious and distasteful Harry Homeowner activities, but on both Wednesday and Thursday mornings I prowled Woodland Valley Creek. By “morning” I mean “dawn,” because that was when the water temps were down to a barely acceptable 64.
I made the acquaintance of several stocked browns and of a handful of their wild cousins. The wild fish are smaller and nimbler.
The successful ploy was an Adams wet fly, size 16, drifted behind something big, like a Parachute Adams or Stimulator.