I am not going anywhere for the total eclipse of the sun Aug. 21. Totality spans the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters but, for the record, I refuse to visit those states because they voted Trump. Well, not Oregon, but I understand you cannot get a room there at any price. 

But enough about politics. Around here, we’ll be able to see 75 percent of the eclipse around 2:45 p.m., which is nothing to sneeze at. Unless looking at the sun makes you sneeze, but PLEASE DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN. 

If you want to learn more, my favorite eclipse primer is in Vox, which is also one of my favorite online sources of news about politics, which I’m not talking about. So shout out to Vox, and here’s a link to the explainer. It has a nifty animation of what the eclipse will look like in any given zip code. Please look at the animation, NOT DIRECTLY AT THE SUN. 

What does this have to do with Weavers Way? Well, nature. Bringing me around to a recurring theme of this issue of the Shuttle: plastic pollution. 

• We don’t hand out plastic grocery bags at the Co-op (see the Mercantile story) . . . although we do offer plastic produce/bread bags and generate our share of plastic waste, alas. 
• Many of us don’t want you to buy water in plastic bottles. (See Joan Martini’s letter and Sandy Folzer’s column.) Tap water is better regulated, certainly in Philadelphia, and plastic bottles do not get recycled the way you think they do. (I just read a story about MillerCoors canning water in one of its breweries for Red Cross disaster relief work, which I guess is a good reason, and anyway, cans are a lot easier to recycle than plastic bottles.)
• And if you do have plastic bottles, make bottle bricks until you start your boycott. (See Betsy’s Teutsch’s story.)

I just got my eclipse glasses. They are made of plastic, but (like canned water) in service of a higher cause. And I plan to keep them until the next eclipse. See you in Buffalo in 2024!