Coprolite Newsletter, January 2007

Just because they see us fumbling for our glasses to read a newspaper (or holding it out at arm’s length), young folks think seniors have vision problems. Nothing could be further from the truth. Oh, we may have eyesight problems. But eyesight and vision are two different things.

Today’s society is obsessed with sights, not vision. On the evening news, the anchor can show us every natural disaster and human atrocity in colorful clarity. The weather person can show us the tiniest clouds that may be heading our way. The sportscaster can show us, over and over, a close-up of a spectacular play. These are, to be sure, amazing sights gathered by an energetic host of reporters and photographers. But vision requires a longer view. And that’s something we seniors are better at.

I must have been prematurely old, because this idea began to impress itself on me way back when I had just finished my sophomore year in college. The year was 1954. At about 5:00 a.m. on June 30th, I stood with my future wife and mother-in-law on a hillside in Minneapolis to watch a total eclipse of the sun.

As we progressed through the stages leading up to the total eclipse, we took all the precautions we were told to. Instead of looking directly at the sun, we projected an image of it onto a sheet of paper. Finally, the total eclipse came. We could turn and look at this remarkable sight.

Now, whenever you see pictures of a total eclipse in a magazine or on TV, you always see a close-up view. It’s interesting. The black orb of the moon covers all of the sun except for flares of the sun’s energy marking a ring around the outside. But these closeup views can’t possibly prepare you for the experience of an actual eclipse.

On that sunny morning in 1954, there was suddenly a wide, dark shadow across the sky. It ran from the blackened sun, crossed directly above us, and continued on to the west. We could see stars overhead; yet to the north and south of us the sky was still bright blue. The birds stopped singing. All was silent. Even the crowd of spectators on that hill stopped their chatter and stood in total awe.

This other-worldly experience lasted just over a minute, and then things slowly returned to normal. But for me, some things were never quite the same again. The closeups of the eclipse that appeared in the next day’s paper were impressive, but didn’t begin to capture the insights and emotions that we got by being there. I’ve never figured out why TV or the print media never show that wonderful long view of an eclipse. Maybe they’re just overly impressed with the capabilities of their telephoto lenses. Or maybe it’s just too hard to capture the subtleties of silence or shadow trails that reach out to you across the sky.

I think the world today could benefit from getting into the habit of taking a longer view—of history, politics, religion; in fact, of everything. The problem today is certainly not the ability to see things clearly. We can see way too much of celebrities as they emerge from a car without benefit of undies. Instead, maybe we need to stand back and look at where our culture is going. We can watch tapes of former dictators on their way to the gallows, but maybe what we really need to do is take a wider view of tyranny and how to deal with it.

Where is this longer view going to come from? Well, it doesn’t seem we’re likely to get it from the youngsters who dominate the media today. Guess it’s up to us seniors. We’ve got to let people know what we’ve learned about life. Help them see more of the subtleties and downplay the overly obvious. Our eyesight may not be as good as theirs, but I think our vision beats theirs to kingdom come.

––Wayne Adams
wayne@coprolites.com
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