June | 2017 | Chasing Totality

I had fun sharing my eclipse experiences with a couple of good interviewers.

I was on the “Countdown to the 2017 Eclipse” show on Boss Radio 100.7 broadcast from the Oregon Coast—where residents will be the first people to stand in the shadow of the Great American Eclipse on August 21. Here’s a recording of that interview. (You can make a drinking game out of the number of times I say “spectacle”.)

Host of the weekly talk show, Kay Wyatt, is an astronomer who has her very own observatory north of Lincoln City in the coastal mountains. I was honored to be part of the 17-episode program that included interviews with several notable astronomy stars (pun intended)—among them, Fred Espenak (“Mr. Eclipse”) who was recently honored as the astrophotographer whose image was used to make the USPS Total Eclipse stamp.

I also spoke with bubbly Janine Pettit, host of the Girl Camper podcast —as Airstream trailering and eclipse chasing will soon overlap at the Oregon Blackout Rally in August—and with the Technology Reporter for the Bend Bulletin. “Eclipse Chaser Plans Life Around Solar Events” is actually a pretty accurate headline.

Update: I recently enjoyed a conversation with Brian Resnick, a reporter for Vox who interviewed several chasers for this fun and informative article.

Eclipse chasers who also collect stamps. If that isn’t a double nerd alert, what is?

Where my philatellas at, yo? Stamps and first day covers from each eclipse make a fabulous (and flat, lightweight) souvenir. To celebrate a special TSE, local governments often issue a commemorative stamp and/or a first day cover—an envelope affixed with said stamp, postmarked on the first day of its issue, usually imprinted with some kind of illustration.

Today the USPS released their Total Eclipse of the Sun Forever stamp, a first-of-its-kind stamp that transforms the eclipsed sun into an image of the Moon using thermochromic ink.

Make your own philatelic souvenir for the Great American Eclipse: address an envelope to yourself, place a Total Eclipse of the Sun Forever stamp in the usual corner, take it to the post office on the morning of August 21, 2017, and ask a clerk to date stamp the envelope and drop it in their outgoing mail. (Add artwork on the lefthand side for a personal touch; kid’s drawings of their interpretation of the eclipse would be adorable.) Be sure to physically perform this transaction with a postal clerk; you might miss the postmark by a day if you drop it in a mailbox.

Above: Stamps and cover from Bolivia, 1994. Below: Another from Bolivia; Mexico 1991; Aruba 1998; Madagascar stamps and handmade card 2001; souvenirs from Papua New Guinea 2012 (Orion ship stationery and kina bills—folding money is fun to collect, too).