Generally, when one thinks about “labor,” one thinks about having a job, correct?  I am referring to labor in the “Labor Day” sense, not in the sense of an expectant mother pushing new life into the world.  Of course, there are many different kinds of vocations to endeavor in, and labor, generally, refers to a semi-daily set of duties performed within an organization of some kind, an organization run by some hierarchy, and the set of duties serve the hierarchy in a certain way.  Doing your job.  That’s labor.  

In our society, all the descent employment requires a certain course of training to prepare for it, that is, one studies medicine to become a physician, one studies auto technology to become a mechanic, or what-have-you.  After the course of training, generally, one goes and find some organization to “work for:” a company, a school, a hospital, a law-firm, an auto-repair shop, or whatever.

That’s how it works in our society, generally.  However, the coming total solar eclipse is not from our society, nor is it general. The recent solar eclipse of 2017, and the coming eclipse of 2024, did not, and will not, happen on account of an organization or a hierarchy embedded within an organization.  Eclipses happen on account of the physics of our solar system, rather than from our society.  Furthermore, eclipses are rare rather than general events.  They are VERY rare.  As I have noted in other updates, every given patch of real estate receives a total solar eclipse only once every three-to-four centuries.  Whatever opportunities this coming eclipse presents, they will not be repeated for multiple lifetimes.  

Since the eclipse is happening on account of the physics of our solar system, rather than on account of our society, there is no way to change the time it will happen.  The eclipse in Buffalo will begin at 2:04:56 on April 8, 2024, have totality at 3:18:20, and totality will last 3 minutes and 45.2 seconds.  No amount of petitioning, or going on strike, or files for postponement, or protesting will change the time of the eclipse; the solar system has set it.  Furthermore, because eclipses are so rare, there is no pedagogy to prepare for it.  Schools have to have curricula preparing students for regular careers, not for the highly unusual event of a total solar eclipse.  

So, how then, shall we prepare?  Some will readily advise everyone to get eclipse glasses and to be ready to spend some time outside at the right time that day.  Such advice makes sense from a limited, individualistic standpoint.  However, the civic-minded will ask a different question.  How shall our CITY prepare?  We are likely to get a torrent of tourists.  How many?  We can’t know for certain, but 400,000 visited Colombia, S.C. for the 2017 total solar eclipse.  Eclipse-chasers, or so-called “umbraphiles,” will not want to miss the most exquisite sight our solar system presents.  Now, Buffalo only has lodging for about 11,000.  How then, will Buffalo prove hospitable to all the eclipse tourists?  

I would like to be laboring for a company that was preparing Buffalo for the eclipse; I would like to be the P.R. Pooh-Bah for the Eclipse Escapade.  However, no such company exists.  So; I just started promoting the idea, and I hope some company picks it up.  I know this way of going about my labors sounds backwards, but then, an eclipse is backwards.  Yes indeed, an eclipse is basically a big ball of backwardness in the sky.  Generally, the light from the sun reflects off the moon and reaches our eye, and then we behold the moon in the sky.  During a total eclipse, however, the moon actually blocks the light of the sun rather than reflecting it down to us.  Thus at mid-day, we get something around three minutes of darkness.  The stars come out.  Backwardness.  So, if it seems backward to do P.R. labor for a company that does not exist, just ponder the backwardness that is a total solar eclipse.    

I appreciate all of you who have signed.  Please endeavor to labor with me a little longer.  We have seventy-three signatures; once we reach 100, I will send it to the politicians and the media.  I know this is not typical, Labor-Day labor, but there is nothing typical about an eclipse.  Perhaps you could think of it as analogous to the labor that brings a kind of new life into the world, a birth.

A birth is when new life inside comes forth.  So, whatever is inside you that must emerge into the world; let it come out for the sake of the Eclipse Escapade.  If it is within you to ask someone else to sign, let it come forth.  If it is within you to contribute to Change.org so that more people see the petition, let it come forth.   If it is within you to help spearhead an initiative to start housing renewal in anticipate the eclipse, let it come forth.  However backwards your labor might seem; labor on in anticipation of the sun’s abating.