I've been out of touch for a few days, knew nothing about it. A friend and I stepped out of a restaurant and noticed a bright crescent on what I thought was the wrong side of the Moon and a tan "rest of the moon". He suggested it might be an eclipse. I thought we would have heard of it, it might be a vapor cloud from the satellite.

The point - without knowing what it was it was an mildly frightening experience. We drove off looking at it, and I figured that whatever it might be something else either would happen or not. It was a real "science fiction" few minutes, an experiencing of what folks do in the first page of many novels.

And then forgot. When I went to bed a full moon was visible through the skylight and all seemed normal. Heard about folks watching it the next morning at breakfast, around the table at the local general store, a daily coffee clatch of old geezers (I am usually the youngest at 67) and an occasional wife or girl-friend or two.

After coffee and/or breakfast we break up into each person's days "work". For them it was steelhead fishing, taking a wife to a craft show, remodelling a bathroom, dredging a lake. An active bunch they are.