Eclipse
It was August 21, 2017 and Taylor had made his way over to Federal Hill Park near his home in Baltimore; he had camera in hand and was going to view the eclipse from there. Colby and I were in Vermont and had set up a "viewing box" with a tiny hole poked through the top; we did not have eclipse glasses, so this was the make-shift way we came up with to view it. Taylor also had no glasses but got lucky with how Goldilocks-overcast the day was in B'more: cloudy enough to allow for an amateur to take a picture of the eclipse, not so cloudy you would miss the entire event. See the Ambassador's page on this website for one of his shots that day...
🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘
He was now enamored of all things eclipse. He went home to research when it would be that he could view another. He discovered that the next total solar eclipse (in the USA, anyway) was to occur in April of 2024. Then he located a map of the 'path of totality' and Baltimore was not on it. During our next phone call, he reported that one of his good friends lived within the 'path' and he intended to watch the next eclipse with her, in her hometown. I do so wish he was actually heading there on April 8th for the show!
🐧Crosby 🐶 Kells and Jax 🐎 Gemini 🦦 Swimmy 🦭 Aurora 🐱 Mittens 🦇 Silverwing
He always loved naming things; he wrote many books as a child (yes, books that were 100s of pages long!), I think primarily so that he could keep introducing characters he could anoint with newly minted names! In 2017, he was on the cusp of buying a new desktop computer, but its name would matter...Colby helped him set the specifications he would actually require for his uses...but its name? He bought an Eclipse, of course! And after he passed away, we found at least one of his 'password hints' to be: Look up!
🐾🦦🐢🐭🪺🐞🐸🦫🐈🦆🐻🐾
In 2020, we sold the beautiful farm where our boys grew up, where Taylor had his horses and other wildlife all around him. Now we live in Charlotte, Vermont and within the path of totality! A nearby town, Saint Albans, is hosting an eclipse watch party on its central green:
Taylor Park!
I imagine there will be thousands of people there looking up...
🐾🦆🐝🦨🦉🦊🐇🫎🐍🦃🐾
Absolutely adorable story about 2-year-old Taylor, looking up:
We were in our backyard; we had a swingset with a toddler swing on it. I was pushing Taylor, standing in front of the swing, as I always did when the boys were small. It was a beautiful, sunny spring day. I pointed up and said, "Look, you can see the moon today." Taylor looked up, pointed at it, and surely smiled.
The next day we drove to a nearby park, in Brattleboro, and enjoyed the playground there. It was extremely windy! The park also had toddler swings and Taylor stood in front of one and said, "Up!" So I did as he commanded (no small task, as he was a 40+pound 2-year-old), and then started pushing him. I looked up and could not find the moon today, so I commented to him that I couldn't see it and asked, "Where did it go?" Taylor looked up and didn't miss a beat, "Moon blew away." The most logical explanation ever!
Slightly less adorable story about Taylor looking up, but entertaining nonetheless:
We were in the front yard, this time, and Taylor was about 12 or 13 years old. We were playing badminton; not exactly an extreme sport, on most occasions, though it should be mentioned here that I lived with two soccer goalies, Taylor and his father, so the game definitely could involve sailing through the air at any moment.
I believe I first saw this behavior on PBS's Nature: an entire colony of penguins, standing on a large ice shelf, watching a plane approach, following it as it flew overhead, and keep watching it until they ALL (to a bird) fall over backwards together! Well I do not remember who was the source of the pop fly birdie (pun intended), and Taylor was probably blinded by staring up into the sun, but he ended up falling over straight backwards, exactly like one of those penguins!
So, he had that nickname for a while which he didn't mind at all, as penguins were some of his favorite wildlife and, later, as a Pittsburgh resident, hockey players too. He never did get the pet penguin he wanted, but he had, of course, already named him: Crosby.
Our Lovering Farm was often blessed with double rainbows to amaze, when we looked up...
even more so during the summer of 2019, after we lost Taylor