I'm sitting in Newberg,OR at my sister-in-law's house, just ten miles from the edge of totality. It is nearly 8:30 am and as soon as breakfast is over we will, perhaps, drive a little further south so as to catch the "full" effect. That effect, of course, is a darkening of this part of the Earth for several minutes.
The path of the eclipse across the US reminds me of those international "NO" signs, the circle with a diagonal bar put in front of some other symbol, telling you not to do whatever that other symbol stands for. I imagine such a circle-bar overlaying the US as the path of totality runs from the Northwest to the Southeast across this country. It seems, somehow, appropriate for the times we are in that the Cosmos is telling us and the world "Do Not - US". Under Trump our country has become the number one pariah state in the world. It is such a contrast to the feelings about the US after WWII. Our country didn't just save the world from fascism and dictators, it turned around and pumped resources into the defeated enemies to help them recover. There was a real sense of nobility about the US.
Then, of course, we started playing god with the rest of the underdeveloped world. We, along with our allies, in the west, and the Russians in the east, started carving up the spoils, creating nations out of tribalistic states, and getting a lock on resources. We became social dictators and the world we live in today has been the result. Personally, I am sorry rest of the world. I'd like to think I would have done things very differently, but that experiment will never be run.
The darkening won't last long. I had the pleasure of seeing the total eclipse over Belgium in the late 1990s. It is a weird sort of darkness, accompanied by the silencing of birds and other beasts. The sky color reminded be of that under a tornado cell (which I saw several times during my stay in North Texas while studying computer science). A purple-greenish hue to my eyes. I'm anxious to see if that holds for this one.
The light will return. The bar painted across the continent will disappear as quick as it came. But the image of "Do Not - US" will continue to haunt.