Oceansiders gathered for eclipse event despite cancelation

“Usually, you’d have to go somewhere far away, like the grand canyon, to see awesome displays of nature,” Jeff Resnick said, sitting in a lawnchair on the grass at Schoolhouse Green on Foxhurst Road in Oceanside. “How often does one of those come to you?”

Schoolhouse Green was originally supposed to be the site of an eclipse viewing party organized by the library. The event had to be canceled after Amazon told the library by email that a large portion of the safety eclipse glasses it had ordered were not, in fact, safe to use. Still, the Green became the site of a gathering, if not a party, for those who were able to get working eclipse glasses.

Resnick and a group of friends were gathered in the shadow of a tree. Intermittently, they would put their safety glasses on, step forward into the light, and face the eclipsing sun. They had been discussing the Judaic interpretation of such celestial events.

“I mean, it’s a mystery.” Resnick said. “You go back and you think about early civilization. When this happened people got really scared. ‘What was happening to their world?’ That’s part of the fascination.”

Jeff Allen, one of Resnick’s friends added, “I bet they thought God was punishing them.”

Just to be sure, the group of five recited the Shehecheyanu, a Jewish prayer of thanksgiving. After they finished, Allen quipped, “Would you have to say a total prayer for the total eclipse and a partial prayer for the partial eclipse?”

Farther back on the Green, Lauren McNichols stood near a tripod. “When it’s as good as it’s gonna get, at 2:45,” she said, “I’m going to sacrifice my camera and take at least a couple of shots with my giant zoom lens.”

McNichols, an amateur photographer, who referred to her camera as her “trusty steed,” had just returned from the Galapagos, where she had been photographing wildlife. “I just love all things nature,” she said, adding that she wasn’t really worried about damaging her camera, because “I read that if you do it right when it’s almost at full eclipse, you’re not gonna blow your lens out.”

She said she came out to Schoolhouse Green because the solar eclipse was a unifying event. “We knew we’d be surrounded by fellow Oceansiders,” she said. “It’s very, very exciting.”

Jill Eddy, 67, was seated near McNichols’ tripod with her husband, Ray, who said “It’s weird, seeing the sun disappear like that.”

Jill said that it wasn’t her first solar eclipse, “But it will probably be my last.”

She added, looking up at the sky, “It makes you feel young again.”