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www.eclipse-chasers.com Eclipse Chaser Picture Programmer: Bill Kramer Last update: April 17 2015 |
Eclipse Chaser
(noun) - Anyone that wants to see a total solar eclipse. 
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1991 MEXICO from Glenn Schneider While in Cabo San Lucas I went into a weaving shop that had a fairly old man working on a loom producing tight weaved wall hangings and carpets -- all typically "Mexican" style. Thinking back a few years to my "commissioned batik", I managed to ask if he could make one for me to a design I could sketch -- an eclipse! I only had a pencil and sketched out a corona against a dark sky indicating the local terrain in the foreground. I tried to explain what the horizon colors might be like - thankfully remembering "azul, rojo, amarillo..." from high school Spanish class. I wasn't quite sure I had communicated correctly but he said: "quatro dias" (four days). It was three days before the eclipse.
When I came back four days later he had the 3-ft x 2-1/4 ft wall hanging displayed in his shop window. As I approached the shop I thought "that's beautiful" (in a Mexican cubistic way), I wonder if that is mine? When I went into the shop the weaver I had spoken with wasn't there, but his son (who spoke English) was. He indeed said it was mine adding "do you have any idea how many orders we have taken for ones like this since we hung it up this morning?" Of course, I am sure the influx of umbraphiles into Cabo San Lucas for the eclipse had something to do with that... So, while I may not have the only one, I do have the first!
