The Editorial Board: Three views of Monday's beclouded but thrilling solar eclipse

I’d been waiting for this day since Buffalo’s partial eclipse several years ago. I had it marked on the calendar: Eclipse 2024, April 8. But how to celebrate? By taking the day off work, of course. And finding a place to be – for the BIG moment. The obvious choice came down to Buffalo State University’s Coyer Field. My husband and I had attended programs at the Whitworth Ferguson Planetarium and, so, Buffalo State seemed fitting.

Would the weather cooperate and keep the clouds away? Not really, but no matter. We were among newfound friends, some who asked my husband to snap their photo after the group donned eclipse glasses provided at the Sports Arena, where 1,300 eclipse visitors checked in.

There were speakers: SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. and Interim President Bonita R. Durand. Visit Buffalo Niagara President Patrick Kaler spoke to a reporter about the significance of the event. We spotted State Sen. Sean Ryan walking around the field. But it was the “oohs” and “ahs” once the moon ran across the sun that provided the most excitement.

The moment the sky went dark provided that supremely profound experience. Kevin Williams, an organizer for Eclipse Fest, admitted to shedding tears. So did some attendees. For good reason.

—Dawn Marie Bracely

We take the sun for granted. Sometimes it’s even an annoyance – too hot and I forgot my hat. Or it’s behind a cloud on the only day I can get to the beach.

This was a day devoted to watching the sun and contemplating its relationship to other astral bodies. Our eyes were on the sky and the passing clouds made glimpses of partiality that much more exciting. The brief flash of totality I was able to see from my home in Allentown was a fleeting thrill, but the quick and extraordinary plunge into darkness was even more impressive.

My husband and I finished our eclipse-viewing experience as satisfied customers, but we had to laugh – scanning social media later – when we saw all the griping from our fellow Buffalonians. Even more bizarre, some friends were posting obvious AI-generated views of ideal eclipses over the Peace Bridge and Niagara Falls that had clearly never occurred in reality.

It’s human to want to improve on reality, I suppose. But this experience needed to be in the moment of reality, of what was actually happening – clouds and all. It’s just as well we didn’t take pictures; they wouldn’t have been able to capture what we saw and felt.

On Tuesday morning, I looked at the sun in a different way.

—Elizabeth Licata

With a small group of family and friends, we watched from a backyard in Niagara Falls. After anticipating this moment for years, the long-awaited celestial phenomenon seemed to be shaping up as a disappointment (anybody else here been let down by unmet predictions of visible Northern Lights?). But it turned thrilling as breaks in the clouds intermittently revealed the moon sliding in front of the sun and then moving on. Photo-bombing on a grand scale.

And although clouds hid the moment of maximum eclipse from us, the big surprise didn’t rely on cloudlessness – the startling, even unnerving speed at which the light was snuffed out. As darkness swept through, a pair of birds streaked low and fast across the driveway to … where? Porch lights spontaneously came to life as an unnatural dusk overtook us – and then just as suddenly relented.

And a thought took hold: In a swath that cut across the nation’s deepest red and brightest blue states, Americans shared a reaction: wonder and maybe even a little disorientation at the evidence of our smallness, at how subject we are to the whims of the universe. It was a potent reminder of all that we have in common. And, so, the thought: Is it possible now that we could all be a little kinder to one another?

- Kevin Walter