Incredible. Here I sit at the beginning of the 21st century, talking to people around the country-- around the world-- on a little box that's glowing in my front yard.

I disconnected everything but the phone line, and made a crazy hodge-podge of wires stretch out from the house to the yard so I could be here with you all.

The house I live in was built in 1911, so it has seen many eclipses. Families who have lived here before me have come out onto this porch, sat on this little hill in the front yard and seen the moon disappear in the 50's, the 20's, and before. Maybe somebody stopped a Model T or a horse-drawn carriage one night on my street to point out another eclipse.

The ground I'm sitting on has been overshadowed by hundreds, thousands of these events. But tonight, while I watch the soft pink underbelly of our planet's satellite glow in the sky above the place that is home to me, I share it with people in far away places because of a little glowing screen that lets me know what they are thinking and seeing and feeling while they look up at the same moon I watch here.

I feel small, and cold, and happy. The top of the moon is deep blood red, and I can hear laughter from neighbors down the street. The night air is thick with the smell of rosemary from the bushes in the yard, and in the distance, thousands of lights twinkle in the Oakland Hills and to the west, the San Francisco skyline.

Tell me where you are.

pj