“We’re all together” during a total solar eclipse. That was Mike Kentrianakis’s promise.
It was July 2017, just over a month before the moon was due to pass between the sun and the Earth and cast its long shadow across the width of the continental U.S.
Kentrianakis, who had already witnessed 20 solar eclipses, from every continent except Antarctica, was working on behalf of the American Astronomical Society to ensure his fellow citizens saw the next one.
“Everyone is on the same page,” he said, attempting to describe the indescribable. “There’s no differences. There’s no rich guy, there’s no poor guy, there’s none of that. It’s gone. Ripped and stripped away from every single one of us.”
For a few minutes on Aug 21— at the end of a scorching summer marked by the shooting of Republican lawmakers practicing for a charity baseball game, the killing of a counterprotester at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, showdowns over health care, immigration and Russian interference, conflict over who gets to be called “American” — Kentrianakis was proved right.
The nation stood united in the shadow of the moon, and we were transformed. At least a little bit.
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