JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

It was quite an eclipse, wasn’t it?

No, don’t tell me you missed it…and don’t tell me you weren’t interested. It was a wonder of nature so rare it comes around only about once every other papal visit.

…Speaking of which, I was just as mesmerized by the pope’s departure as I was by just about everything he did in the U.S. the last several days.  I watched intently as his Boeing 777 and  crawled along the taxiways at Philadelphia International Airport and then began accelerating and finally lifted off and quickly disappeared into the night-time sky.

Patty and I have joked for years about post-Derby Depression — the feeling we, particularly I, get the day after each Kentucky Derby. And tonight I’ve got a bit of post-papal depression. Nothing clinical, you know, just situational. But enough that the eclipse seemed a bit anticlimactic compared with the vivid memories of the pope’s radiating presence.

But anyway, I pulled myself out of the dumps to try to get some memorable eclipse photos.

I have to admit, I failed miserably. When I pointed my glorified Panasonic point-and-shoot at the sky and “zoomed” in the maximum of four times normal, all I got were images of a small white blob, with a tinge of red…For some reason, my camera refused to acknowledge the eclipse; it was looking more like moon over Miami, and by Miami I mean it looked on the camera display like the moon was a long, long way off — even father than Miami.

However, I know you’ll just be thrilled that I did, in fact, get some excellent eclipse-related photos. Here are the three best, and you’ll note, I’m sure, that in each of these three striking images, something looks like it’s in a state of eclipse.

Here we go…

Here are a couple of ladies in the Romanelli West neighborhood who pulled up chairs to watch the grand event. (That shadowy looking thing in the left foreground is a Black Lab/German Shepherd who wanted in on the fun.)

A man at the same household strained to see the shrouded “supermoon.”

Since I couldn’t get the moon, I focused on a streetlight that was in nearly total eclipse. (You can see these just about every night if you position yourself right.)

Well, there it is. The pope is gone, and so is the eclipse. Now, off to bed and back to workin’ in the coal mine bright and early tomorrow.