Editor's note 04-04-24

By Fletcher Farrar

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Lately I've been remembering one afternoon horseback riding at the farm with Dad, something we often did on weekends when I was a kid in southern Illinois. The sky got dark. We stopped the horses as a breeze came up, and we experienced what must have been a solar eclipse. We hadn't known it was coming, or rare. Soon we resumed our ride, thinking it was just another miracle of creation, like dawn. Now I learn there was an eclipse on July 20, 1963, that would have been visible partially there. I would have been 14. This year the farm is in the "path of totality," so I'll plan to be there Monday to experience four minutes of afternoon turning to black night. I hope it will be transformative. In his last speech, Martin Luther King Jr. said the nation is sick. "Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. ... But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars." – Fletcher Farrar, editor

About The Author

Fletcher Farrar

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Fletcher Farrar is the editor of Illinois Times .

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