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Background, Part 1 - Eclipses: Somewhere around 2000 or so, I wrote a “life list,” a term I prefer to “bucket list” because I think it has a more positive emphasis. One of the items on it was “see a total solar eclipse.” To be honest, that was an item I had cribbed from the lists several other people had written and was not so much something I felt I had always wanted to do. (I did have a vague memory of seeing a partial solar eclipse, using a pinhole to project the image of the sun on a windowsill in our house, about 1970.)
At any rate, it’s a bit absurd to plan a major trip around an event that lasts just a few minutes, so it made sense to go somewhere that would be interesting for other reasons, too. I don’t remember why I decided that the 2006 eclipse was the one to focus on, but I researched options for it and I found a tour by Tusker Trail that was going to Ghana and would be accompanied by an astronomer. There was also an add-on available to Togo and Benin. Anyway, the eclipse was an amazing experience (as was the rest of the trip.) I was also intrigued by a few people on the trip who had seen several eclipses. What I wrote at the time was “I’m not sure I would become an eclipse groupie, but if another upcoming one is in an otherwise interesting place, it could affect my travel scheduling.”
I don’t remember where, but I saw a blurb about a trip to see the 2009 total solar eclipse from Iwo Jima. That qualified as “otherwise interesting” and I signed up. Unfortunately, the Japanese government withdrew permission for the trip. The company running the trip (Ring of Fire Expeditions) countered with another option - the island of Butaritari in the Republic of Kiribati. (Which is pronounced “kiribass” and no I can’t explain the orthography of the i-kiribati language any more than I can explain why there’s an “n” sound in front of the letters “d” and “g” in the Fijian language.) As one of my friends said, how often was I going to go to a remote part of the South Pacific? Things got more complicated and we couldn’t actually get to Butaritari, but we did see the total eclipse form a lovely islet called Ouba. I also went on the add-on extension to Guadalcanal, by the way.
Since then I saw the 2016 total solar eclipse from a ship in Micronesia, the 2017 “great American eclipse” from Carhenge (a scale model of Stonehenge, built out of used cars) in Alliance, Nebraska, and the July 2019 total eclipse from a ship due south of Tahiti. I also saw (most of) an annular solar eclipse in December 2019 in Oman. (Most of, because who knew it would rain in the desert?) I was more successful for the annular solar eclipse in October 2023, which I saw from San Antonio, Texas.
The bottom line is that, despite my initial intentions, I became a full fledged umbraphile! (Which is a much more polite term than “eclipse chaser.”) So there was no doubt I would try to find something interesting to do for the April 2024 total solar eclipse.
Background, Part 2 - Israeli Folk Dancing: I know we did stuff like square dancing and the Virginia Reel in elementary school gym class, but my major exposure to folk dancing in my youth was Israeli dancing at Camp Ein Harod, a socialist Zionist camp I went to for a couple of summers in the early 1970’s. There were only a handful of dances we learned there - Mayim, Hora Kirkoda, and Erev Ba. Probably the most memorable was Ha’Roah Ha’Ktana, which we called “the bouncing dance”. It was memorable because of a couple of particularly well-developed girls who we joked didn’t have to practice bouncing.
Fast forward to college. MIT has a 4-1-4 calendar. That is, there are two 4 month semesters with a one month term (Independent Activities Period, abbreviated as IAP) which people use to work on various projects and take more offbeat classes - everything from building a hammer dulcimer to welding sculptures to (tada!) Israeli folk dancing. The MIT Folk Dance Club had Israeli dancing on Wednesday nights and international dancing on Sunday nights, each of which drew about 150 or so people every week and the class (taught by George Kirby) provided a good start on learning enough to get me hooked. Not long after, Larry Denberg taught an intermediate class. The key point was that during the rest of my time at MIT, I was either in the Sala de Puerto Rico (a large room in the student center) or Lobby 13 twice a week.
I went off to grad school at Berkeley and found the weekly Israeli dancing at Hillel there. And, when I moved to Los Angeles, I quickly found Cafe Danssa, run by Dani Dassa, a famous Israeli choreographer. (I also went to dancing at UCLA Hillel, which was coordinated by his daughter, Dorit.) I even went to a couple of folk dance camps.
Anyway, Cafe Danssa closed in 2007. I was already going less often for a number of reasons, ranging from a broken ankle sidelining me around 1990 to frequent business travel to having gotten involved in storytelling to an incident involving some semi-stalkerish behavior on the part of a guy I knew. And, oh yeah, I moved to Virginia in 2002. I tried to find folk dancing here but there wasn’t anything especially convenient and compatible with my work hours, so it became a very occasional thing. Driving to and from darkest Maryland on a weeknight - not really going to happen. I did a little dancing at various other folk events (which I was mostly at for storytelling). The pandemic didn’t really help either, of course. (By the way, I did do other dancing, particularly a Bollywood dance class that I only stopped going to when the teacher entered into an arranged marriage and moved to Los Angeles.)
As things have been reopening from the pandemic (not that it is really over), I’ve thought more about dancing and I’ve done some searching a few times, particularly for Israeli dance events. Which led me to find out about Hora Eclipse 2 / Kochavim.
What Exactly Is/Was HEK2/Kochavim? Remember my mention of taking a class years ago from Larry Denenberg? His name was associated with Hora Eclipse and it turns out that he had organized an Israeli dance camp for the 2017 Eclipse, i.e. Hora Eclipse 1. And he was part of a team organizing one for the 2024 Eclipse, being held in conjunction with an annual Israeli dance camp called Kochavim in Texas. That little bell you hear ringing was the idea lighting up in my brain. Texas was a promising place to see the eclipse and it would be a good opportunity to get back into folk dancing. I was a bit apprehensive given how long it had been since I did much dancing, but I told myself I would just do what I could. Oh, yeah, there was also another dance camp (The National Folk Organization, which is oriented towards International folk dance) going on at the same place (the Green Family Camp in Bruceville, Texas, about 2 hours from Dallas), with their events open to us.
So I signed up, which included paying for accommodations in a cabin with 5 other women. There was a form to fill out for sharing a ride from the Dallas airport. I dug out my eclipse gear (which includes solar filtered binoculars and a filter for my iPhone). And I was off to Texas!
So How Did It Go? My flight to DFW was fine, though the WiFi on American Airlines didn’t work. I stayed on Thursday night at the Hampton Inn in Grapevine, which was adequate, though my room could have used better lighting. After breakfast on Friday morning, I took a Lyft to the hotel where one of the other people was staying and all of us who were in the same car met up there for the drive to camp. The traffic wasn’t terrible, the conversation was lively, and there were plenty of wildflowers (bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush) to look at along the way. We stopped in Waco where a couple of us had lunch and some other people went to the Dr. Pepper Museum. ((If I'd had a ton of free time, I might have done that, but it was too pricy for the amount of time we had.) We continued on to camp and checked in and got our housing assignments. Finding our way around camp was a bit confusing. And, since I wanted to unpack and get a bit organized, I ended up missing the NFO workshop on “100 Years of Israeli Dance.” I heard later on that it was mostly lecture and demo and not much actual dancing, but it was still disappointing. I did make it to the opening session and did a little dancing. That was followed by Shabbat Dinner and a welcome dance party, which started out with a lot of easy dances. I was a bit sleep deprived from the travel and the dance floor was rather more crowded than I’d prefer, so I didn’t stay very late. I should mention that I’d brought both my dance paws and a pair of suitable sneakers (no outside shoes allowed on the dance floor) and that first night was good for deciding to use the sneakers the rest of the time because most people were wearing shoes of some sort.
Saturday was chilly and windy. There was a dance workshop and session between breakfast and lunch, which included 4 dances being taught. I managed to absorb about 2 1/2 of those. I particularly liked Simcha, taught by Yaron Carmel, which had a Moroccan beat. After lunch, there was a session of line dances, followed by Larry’s Eclipse 101 lecture. There was another workshop and more dancing after that. I skipped the partner dance session in favor of taking a nap before dinner and a campfire. I particularly enjoyed the Saturday night dance party, partly because they played a few older dances I like a lot, e.g. Joshua, which is one of my favorite dances of all time.
Sunday was similar - meals and dancing. Larry gave an advanced Eclipse lecture. I have to disagree with him on one point. Having seen two eclipses from small cruise ships (under 200 passengers), there are definitely advantages to being able to position a ship for optimal viewing regardless of the weather. (There is also a downside in that high seas can make photography more challenging.) I liked the session on “Debkas and Crazy Rhythms” and quite enjoyed one of the dances that was taught (Ansi Dize) though my knees were not really up to it. Once again, I was reminded of my failure to get an extended warranty on several of my body parts. (By the way, debkas are Arabic-inspired dances, in case you didn’t know.) Later on, there was Texas line dancing (decidedly not my thing) followed by a barbecue dinner. And, of course, more dancing, which I didn’t really try to last very long at. But some people were up pretty much all night.
Here’s an obligatory photo in which I am dancing (in the back, behind the circle).
Finally, Monday was eclipse day. As you may have heard, there were a lot of concerns about the weather in Texas. I’d gotten my money’s worth of fun, so I just had to be philosophical. But, before I get to the eclipse itself, let me mention a surprise sighting of one of my other obsessions - namely the National Puzzlers’ League (NPL)! There was a game called Sound Off, which had apparently been played at an NPL convention before I started going to those! It was basically a “name that tune” type of thing and, of course, the songs were all eclipse themed. The group I ended up with had pretty good teamwork and I was reasonably useful since some of the songs were ones that are on my personal eclipse playlist (e.g. Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.”)
As eclipse time neared, things got cloudier. Still, the early phases of the eclipse had reasonably clear skies. And, where there were clouds, they provided interesting views.
Alas, as totality began, the sky did not look at all good.
One of the dances we had learned had a section which had a step described as “push,” so everyone began calling out “push, push” in an attempt to influence that huge cloud. It sort of worked and we were able to see the last 30 seconds of so of totality. There was a good view of the “diamond ring” but I didn’t get a photo worth sharing.
Bottom line is that I can count this as my sixth total solar eclipse. I have tentative plans for Spain in 2026, Egypt in 2027, and Hora Eclipse 3 in Sydney, Australia in 2028.
We were rather concerned about post-eclipse traffic, but it really wasn’t bad and took us just about 2 hours to get back to the DFW area. I stayed overnight at the Sheraton in Irving, which was fine. I was a bit worried about my trip home since there were forecasts for thunderstorms, but everything went well, despite having a weird routing that involved connecting through Birmingham, Alabama. (The joys of using frequent flyer miles.) Since these were regional jets, American once again failed to have functional wifi, alas. They also annoyed me by having screwed up on which belt the bags would come out on - despite multiple messages and a sign at baggage claim that said it would be baggage claim 10, they were really at baggage claim 7. Still, I got home pretty much on time, so I can’t really complain.
At any rate, it’s a bit absurd to plan a major trip around an event that lasts just a few minutes, so it made sense to go somewhere that would be interesting for other reasons, too. I don’t remember why I decided that the 2006 eclipse was the one to focus on, but I researched options for it and I found a tour by Tusker Trail that was going to Ghana and would be accompanied by an astronomer. There was also an add-on available to Togo and Benin. Anyway, the eclipse was an amazing experience (as was the rest of the trip.) I was also intrigued by a few people on the trip who had seen several eclipses. What I wrote at the time was “I’m not sure I would become an eclipse groupie, but if another upcoming one is in an otherwise interesting place, it could affect my travel scheduling.”
I don’t remember where, but I saw a blurb about a trip to see the 2009 total solar eclipse from Iwo Jima. That qualified as “otherwise interesting” and I signed up. Unfortunately, the Japanese government withdrew permission for the trip. The company running the trip (Ring of Fire Expeditions) countered with another option - the island of Butaritari in the Republic of Kiribati. (Which is pronounced “kiribass” and no I can’t explain the orthography of the i-kiribati language any more than I can explain why there’s an “n” sound in front of the letters “d” and “g” in the Fijian language.) As one of my friends said, how often was I going to go to a remote part of the South Pacific? Things got more complicated and we couldn’t actually get to Butaritari, but we did see the total eclipse form a lovely islet called Ouba. I also went on the add-on extension to Guadalcanal, by the way.
Since then I saw the 2016 total solar eclipse from a ship in Micronesia, the 2017 “great American eclipse” from Carhenge (a scale model of Stonehenge, built out of used cars) in Alliance, Nebraska, and the July 2019 total eclipse from a ship due south of Tahiti. I also saw (most of) an annular solar eclipse in December 2019 in Oman. (Most of, because who knew it would rain in the desert?) I was more successful for the annular solar eclipse in October 2023, which I saw from San Antonio, Texas.
The bottom line is that, despite my initial intentions, I became a full fledged umbraphile! (Which is a much more polite term than “eclipse chaser.”) So there was no doubt I would try to find something interesting to do for the April 2024 total solar eclipse.
Background, Part 2 - Israeli Folk Dancing: I know we did stuff like square dancing and the Virginia Reel in elementary school gym class, but my major exposure to folk dancing in my youth was Israeli dancing at Camp Ein Harod, a socialist Zionist camp I went to for a couple of summers in the early 1970’s. There were only a handful of dances we learned there - Mayim, Hora Kirkoda, and Erev Ba. Probably the most memorable was Ha’Roah Ha’Ktana, which we called “the bouncing dance”. It was memorable because of a couple of particularly well-developed girls who we joked didn’t have to practice bouncing.
Fast forward to college. MIT has a 4-1-4 calendar. That is, there are two 4 month semesters with a one month term (Independent Activities Period, abbreviated as IAP) which people use to work on various projects and take more offbeat classes - everything from building a hammer dulcimer to welding sculptures to (tada!) Israeli folk dancing. The MIT Folk Dance Club had Israeli dancing on Wednesday nights and international dancing on Sunday nights, each of which drew about 150 or so people every week and the class (taught by George Kirby) provided a good start on learning enough to get me hooked. Not long after, Larry Denberg taught an intermediate class. The key point was that during the rest of my time at MIT, I was either in the Sala de Puerto Rico (a large room in the student center) or Lobby 13 twice a week.
I went off to grad school at Berkeley and found the weekly Israeli dancing at Hillel there. And, when I moved to Los Angeles, I quickly found Cafe Danssa, run by Dani Dassa, a famous Israeli choreographer. (I also went to dancing at UCLA Hillel, which was coordinated by his daughter, Dorit.) I even went to a couple of folk dance camps.
Anyway, Cafe Danssa closed in 2007. I was already going less often for a number of reasons, ranging from a broken ankle sidelining me around 1990 to frequent business travel to having gotten involved in storytelling to an incident involving some semi-stalkerish behavior on the part of a guy I knew. And, oh yeah, I moved to Virginia in 2002. I tried to find folk dancing here but there wasn’t anything especially convenient and compatible with my work hours, so it became a very occasional thing. Driving to and from darkest Maryland on a weeknight - not really going to happen. I did a little dancing at various other folk events (which I was mostly at for storytelling). The pandemic didn’t really help either, of course. (By the way, I did do other dancing, particularly a Bollywood dance class that I only stopped going to when the teacher entered into an arranged marriage and moved to Los Angeles.)
As things have been reopening from the pandemic (not that it is really over), I’ve thought more about dancing and I’ve done some searching a few times, particularly for Israeli dance events. Which led me to find out about Hora Eclipse 2 / Kochavim.
What Exactly Is/Was HEK2/Kochavim? Remember my mention of taking a class years ago from Larry Denenberg? His name was associated with Hora Eclipse and it turns out that he had organized an Israeli dance camp for the 2017 Eclipse, i.e. Hora Eclipse 1. And he was part of a team organizing one for the 2024 Eclipse, being held in conjunction with an annual Israeli dance camp called Kochavim in Texas. That little bell you hear ringing was the idea lighting up in my brain. Texas was a promising place to see the eclipse and it would be a good opportunity to get back into folk dancing. I was a bit apprehensive given how long it had been since I did much dancing, but I told myself I would just do what I could. Oh, yeah, there was also another dance camp (The National Folk Organization, which is oriented towards International folk dance) going on at the same place (the Green Family Camp in Bruceville, Texas, about 2 hours from Dallas), with their events open to us.
So I signed up, which included paying for accommodations in a cabin with 5 other women. There was a form to fill out for sharing a ride from the Dallas airport. I dug out my eclipse gear (which includes solar filtered binoculars and a filter for my iPhone). And I was off to Texas!
So How Did It Go? My flight to DFW was fine, though the WiFi on American Airlines didn’t work. I stayed on Thursday night at the Hampton Inn in Grapevine, which was adequate, though my room could have used better lighting. After breakfast on Friday morning, I took a Lyft to the hotel where one of the other people was staying and all of us who were in the same car met up there for the drive to camp. The traffic wasn’t terrible, the conversation was lively, and there were plenty of wildflowers (bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush) to look at along the way. We stopped in Waco where a couple of us had lunch and some other people went to the Dr. Pepper Museum. ((If I'd had a ton of free time, I might have done that, but it was too pricy for the amount of time we had.) We continued on to camp and checked in and got our housing assignments. Finding our way around camp was a bit confusing. And, since I wanted to unpack and get a bit organized, I ended up missing the NFO workshop on “100 Years of Israeli Dance.” I heard later on that it was mostly lecture and demo and not much actual dancing, but it was still disappointing. I did make it to the opening session and did a little dancing. That was followed by Shabbat Dinner and a welcome dance party, which started out with a lot of easy dances. I was a bit sleep deprived from the travel and the dance floor was rather more crowded than I’d prefer, so I didn’t stay very late. I should mention that I’d brought both my dance paws and a pair of suitable sneakers (no outside shoes allowed on the dance floor) and that first night was good for deciding to use the sneakers the rest of the time because most people were wearing shoes of some sort.
Saturday was chilly and windy. There was a dance workshop and session between breakfast and lunch, which included 4 dances being taught. I managed to absorb about 2 1/2 of those. I particularly liked Simcha, taught by Yaron Carmel, which had a Moroccan beat. After lunch, there was a session of line dances, followed by Larry’s Eclipse 101 lecture. There was another workshop and more dancing after that. I skipped the partner dance session in favor of taking a nap before dinner and a campfire. I particularly enjoyed the Saturday night dance party, partly because they played a few older dances I like a lot, e.g. Joshua, which is one of my favorite dances of all time.
Sunday was similar - meals and dancing. Larry gave an advanced Eclipse lecture. I have to disagree with him on one point. Having seen two eclipses from small cruise ships (under 200 passengers), there are definitely advantages to being able to position a ship for optimal viewing regardless of the weather. (There is also a downside in that high seas can make photography more challenging.) I liked the session on “Debkas and Crazy Rhythms” and quite enjoyed one of the dances that was taught (Ansi Dize) though my knees were not really up to it. Once again, I was reminded of my failure to get an extended warranty on several of my body parts. (By the way, debkas are Arabic-inspired dances, in case you didn’t know.) Later on, there was Texas line dancing (decidedly not my thing) followed by a barbecue dinner. And, of course, more dancing, which I didn’t really try to last very long at. But some people were up pretty much all night.
Here’s an obligatory photo in which I am dancing (in the back, behind the circle).
Finally, Monday was eclipse day. As you may have heard, there were a lot of concerns about the weather in Texas. I’d gotten my money’s worth of fun, so I just had to be philosophical. But, before I get to the eclipse itself, let me mention a surprise sighting of one of my other obsessions - namely the National Puzzlers’ League (NPL)! There was a game called Sound Off, which had apparently been played at an NPL convention before I started going to those! It was basically a “name that tune” type of thing and, of course, the songs were all eclipse themed. The group I ended up with had pretty good teamwork and I was reasonably useful since some of the songs were ones that are on my personal eclipse playlist (e.g. Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.”)
As eclipse time neared, things got cloudier. Still, the early phases of the eclipse had reasonably clear skies. And, where there were clouds, they provided interesting views.
Alas, as totality began, the sky did not look at all good.
One of the dances we had learned had a section which had a step described as “push,” so everyone began calling out “push, push” in an attempt to influence that huge cloud. It sort of worked and we were able to see the last 30 seconds of so of totality. There was a good view of the “diamond ring” but I didn’t get a photo worth sharing.
Bottom line is that I can count this as my sixth total solar eclipse. I have tentative plans for Spain in 2026, Egypt in 2027, and Hora Eclipse 3 in Sydney, Australia in 2028.
We were rather concerned about post-eclipse traffic, but it really wasn’t bad and took us just about 2 hours to get back to the DFW area. I stayed overnight at the Sheraton in Irving, which was fine. I was a bit worried about my trip home since there were forecasts for thunderstorms, but everything went well, despite having a weird routing that involved connecting through Birmingham, Alabama. (The joys of using frequent flyer miles.) Since these were regional jets, American once again failed to have functional wifi, alas. They also annoyed me by having screwed up on which belt the bags would come out on - despite multiple messages and a sign at baggage claim that said it would be baggage claim 10, they were really at baggage claim 7. Still, I got home pretty much on time, so I can’t really complain.
