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Thank You For Coming
Peter Brown Leighton

Here, in Central Texas, a great many have taken the utter predictability of the looming solar eclipse for granted, for better or worse. In my small community, the circus from hell has come to town. Our few hotels, Airbnb’s, and nearby cow pastures are all booked. Churches are renting viewing spaces in their parking lots. Porta-Potties dot the landscape like confessionals. Our county, in advance, has declared itself a disaster zone. One of my neighbors vows he will shoot anyone trespassing on his property – “without asking any questions”. Another tells me her sister in San Saba tells her that the hippies are already encamped everywhere there. An infestation, she declares, as rare as the eclipse itself.

Our country’s fear-based-colliding-with-immediate gratification culture has successfully transformed the awesome nature of a once in a lifetime event into a simmering umbra of anxious, squabbling human emotions.

By the time it’s done, the unsparing gristing of modernity will have reduced a miraculous occurrence – that once upon a time forced our ancestors to turn their attention away from daily petty concerns to confront the inexplicable – into a growing sense of concern over whether or not the clouds will part in time and we will get our money’s worth.

All Copyrights Peter Brown Leighton 

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