20—The Daily Collegian Friday, Feb. 9,1979
'Total Eclipse' could burn
By the Associated Press
The two Chinese astronomers who got
drunk 4116 years ago and forgot to scare
off the serpent swallowing the sun would
get a kick out of Russ Cox’s knockout
cocktail, the “Total Eclipse.”
They also might enjoy watching the
sun go black on a champagne-sipping
“Flight to Totality” high above the
Columbia River gorge.
If the Chinese astrondmers, named Hi
and Ho, were, still around, they could be
at Cox’s bar in Richland, Wash., on Feb.
26, when this country’s final total eclipse
of the century occurs.
Cox, manager of the Hanover House,
invented the “Total Eclipse,” a mixture
of rum, gin, sloe gin and orange juice,
for armchair astronomers who want to
celebrate the first such eclipse visible in
the United States since March 7,1970.
Hi and Ho won’t be there, of course,
since their names appear in the earliest
surviving written record of a total
eclipse of the sun. It says they lost their
heads to the royal executioner in 2137
B.C. for partaking of strong spirits and
neglecting to bang drums and shoot
arrows at the offending serpent, which
the ancient Chinese blamed for an
eclipse of the sun.
Americans have more scientific ex
planations for an eclipse, but some of
their rituals seem almost as strange.
Indeed, a kind of solar mania grips
humankind when the moon blocks our
view of the sun, and everybody wants a
front-row seat; even if means scores will
permanantly damage their eyesight, as
121 did in 1970, by looking directly at the
sun.
Thousands are jockeying for a good
position when the moon’s shadow
touches land first at 8:12 a.m. at Agate
Beach, Ore., just west of Portland, then
sweeps a path 180 miles wide up the
Columbia River and across much of
Oregon, Washington, northern Idaho and
North Dakota into Canada. In other
areas of the United states, it will be seen
as only a partial eclipse, of varying
degrees.
For those who want a view above the
clouds, the Seattle Science Center has
chartered an Alaska Airlines 727 jetliner
to take observers at $ll5 to $135 each
on a champagne flight 40,000 feet
above the Columbia River gorge.
A tourist agency in Berkeley, Calif.,
has already sold out its “Moonshadow
Expeditions,” which will leave San
Francisco and Los Angeles on Feb. 23 for
a resort on Hecla Island off Canada.
Wendy Weaver, the tour cordinator, said
60 persons have paid $445 to $475.50 for
the trip, but she could have sold many
more tickets.
“The response has been un
believable,” she said. ‘“We are already
making plans for next year’s eclipse in
Africa.”
But the biggest hubbub is in Golden
dale, Wash., a farming community of
about 3,300, which has the only public
observatory in the path of the eclipse.
Thousands of visitors are expected, the
town’s four motels have been booked up
for weeks, and the mayor is allowing
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Not to be outdone, the mayor of
Helena, Mont., is inviting everyone in
the United States to her city, “the Queen
of the Rockies,” to witness the event
which won’t have a rerun until the year
2017.
Mayor Kathleen Ramey said the
eclipse will have its longest duration in
Helena, tossing off the figure 36 minutes
and 8 seconds with a sly smile. Scientists
say, however, it actually will last only 2
minutes, 36 seconds. ,
While Mayor Ramey says she can’t
promise cloudless skies, she said, “I’m
guaranteeing we won’t have smog. ”
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The eclipse will be nothing new to a
few Goldendale residents, who were
there, when it happened the last time, on
June 8,1918.
Wilma Spalding, now 85, is one of
them. She remembers how she smoked
some glass to look through and took a
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chair out on the sidewalk with hei
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“The chickens went to roost and,
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