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Sponsored Post: Meet The Artist: Andy Reddout | Genny The Cow - Book & Poster Signing on April 5th

By Lisa Ace
Remote video URL


Meet The Artist: Andy Reddout | Genny The Cow -Book and Poster Signing

Friday, April 5th: 4:30-6:30pm

Join us as we kick off our GeneSEEtheEclipse festivities! Andy Reddout, illustrator of our Genny Sees The Eclipse original children's book and Genesee County's commemorative eclipse poster will be at the Genesee County Visitor Center located at 8276 Park Rd. in Batavia.

Stop in for a free, signed commemorative poster, to have Andy sign your purchased Genny Sees The Eclipse books, or purchase a book when you get here!  We'll also have our Genny cow-print solar glasses for sale and photo ops with life-size Genny The Cow!  Check out the quick video to see how Andy made Genny come to life over the pages of the book!

 

Event Details here: https://visitgeneseeny.com/events/andy-reddout-geneseetheeclipse-artist-book-and-poster-signing-genesee-county-visitor-center

 

Pavilion schools host 'Eclipse Learning Night' for community

By Pavilion Journalism Class
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By Darrell Upright and the PCS Introduction Journalism Class

Tuesday night, Pavilion Central School hosted its first-ever full-district community event, “Eclipse Learning Night,” in preparation for the  April 8 total solar eclipse. 

Hosted nearly two weeks before the celestial occurrence, 400 students and their families mobbed the Middle-High school’s gymnasium, auditorium, and library and visited participating classrooms that sponsored eclipse-related activities.  All told, more than 600 people attended the event, held from 5 to 7:30 p.m. 

Planned by the science department staff and an ad hoc committee that started preparations in October, the event was a success for the school. 

“This exceeded expectations for attendance and involvement,” said Mr. Brian Mullin, English 12 teacher. 

Among the activities visited by students on Tuesday night were two presentations by Dr. Aaron Steinhauer, professor of Astronomy at SUNY Geneseo; the Star Lab, a portable planetarium in the school’s auditorium; readings by PCS staff of Colleen Onuffer’s “Genny Sees the Eclipse” (illustrated by Andy Reddout); the Middle-High School Book Fair; Trivia Night; concessions from Papa Roni’s and Yummie’s Ice Cream from Warsaw – who sold a special flavor created for the event, Gopher Galaxy;  and teacher-and-student-created presentations and displays to inform the public about the eclipse featuring work from students in grades Kindergarten to 12.

Students and family members also received eclipse glasses at the event. 

“We’re doing this prior to the eclipse for the community,” said Dr. Amanda Cook, the Director of Curriculum and Instruction, who planned the event with the Science Department and committee members. “From a safety standpoint, there was a concern that the public may not be familiar with” some of the dangers associated with a full solar eclipse: severe injury to the retina if viewers don’t use filtered glasses. 

“We want to share the significance of a very rare event,” she added. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon.” 

Many of the students’ projects capitalized on the eclipse's importance.

According to “GeneSEE the Eclipse,” the Genesee County web page (https://visitgeneseeny.com/2024-eclipse) informing residents about it, the last full solar eclipse visible in our area was in 1925, and the next will take place in 2144.

Attendees were enthused by the event.  “I like science personally, so I like it so far.  It’s great for us (in the PCS district) because we don’t have to go anywhere” to learn about the eclipse, said 10th grader Jackson True while doing the PCS English Department’s “blackout poetry” exercise, one of numerous activities planned by school staff. 

According to the “GeneSEE the Eclipse” web page, the Monday, April 8th event will darken the sky in Genesee County, which is directly in the “path of totality.” People will experience 3 minutes and 42 seconds of full eclipse beginning at 3:19 p.m. and a partial eclipse for nearly two and a half hours. 

Photos by Darrell Upright

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Introduction to Journalism class at Pavilion Central Schools is taught by Michael Iten and is, as far as we know, the only Intro to Journalism class in Genesee County.

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Need another reason to go view the eclipse? How about feeling some awe

By Joanne Beck
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Paul Piff

Of the reasons given to take some time and watch the upcoming total solar eclipse next month, Paul Piff, associate professor of psychological science at the University of California, offers one that has nothing to do with atmospheric science, nostalgia, community, commerce or capture the once-in-a-lifetime moment that it’s likely to be for so many folks in Genesee County and beyond.

Piff’s focus was on one magical word: awe and how that emotional experience can actually begin to transform a person’s outlook and treatment of the world.

“In the West, we find it’s predominantly brought about due to encounters that one has with nature or powerful natural phenomena such as the Eclipse. We define, or very broadly define it an emotion, or emotional experience that really arises out of two different, or the configuration of two different factors, as brought about by experience,” Piff said during an online panel presentation about the upcoming total solar eclipse. “It could be something you perceive or something you recognize in other ways, but when you experience or perceive something that's so fast, so complicated, so powerful, that it makes you feel like you need to reconfigure, readjust or update your mental schema, your understanding of the world, to accommodate the experience.

“And so, as kind of described by people, often as a mind-blowing experience of the people, they're just trying to describe that feeling of, well, I can't really make sense of, at least right now, the thing that I've just experienced, we find, as have others and other psychological laboratories across the globe, that all has a lot of really interesting effects on people,” he said. “Our experiences are described by people with some of the most meaningful in their lives, those individuals that experience improved health outcomes, greater or better well-being, they report more humble or somewhat insignificant views of the self. And we find somewhat interestingly, it seems to trigger more kind, compassionate, empathic behavior among people.” 

One of his studies situated participants in a towering growth of eucalyptus trees among the tallest and oldest stands of eucalyptus trees in North America. They spent either 60 seconds looking up at those tall trees, or with their backs to the trees; they looked up at a comparably tall, but far less awe-inspiring, big building. They were then approached by an experimenter who gave them a questionnaire to complete.

Scenarios were posed to them, such as “If I were on the Titanic, I would deserve to be on the first lifeboat,” and “we imagined how much participants wanted to be paid for their participation in the experiment,” he said. 

“And we measured their levels of ethical decision-making by giving them different moral decision-making scenarios … they would indicate what they would do in these ambiguous situations,” he said. “What we found… They reported less entitlements, so they felt less deserving of the things in life relative to others. They wanted to be paid about half as much for their participation in the study as the participants who looked up at the big building, so maybe all seems to bring about less materialism, and they made more ethical decisions.”

Does this relate to the total solar eclipse? They did a study on one of those too. In a paper published a couple of years ago from the 2000 solar eclipse, his team conducted a study on the social and psychological impacts of those who participated in some way. 

That eclipse had a path of totality that reached across North America, “and we had about 3 million participants in this across the studies in this paper, when we compared residents within the path of totality to residents outside the path of totality, looking at spontaneous shifts in how people talked about themselves and talked about their motivations towards one another surrounding their experience of the eclipse,” he said. “What we found is that individuals who resided within the path of totality, who experienced the Eclipse and its fullness and its, you might say, its full awesomeness, or its full power, exhibited more often. And as a result of that increased experience, they became less self-focused, less likely to talk about themselves, individuated or eccentric ways.”

Those participants used language that reflected a collective focus — we and us — and expressed more desire for affiliation to connect with others, he said. They became more pro-social, exhibiting tendencies to be kind and care for others.

“In broad strokes, what we're finding is that experiences that bring about all and most predominantly really powerful feeling experiences, like the solar eclipse, seem to attune people and connect us to one another, to connect us to entities that are ourselves,” Piff said. “And that's how the experience of all might have evolved. It's the conduit to things bigger than ourselves and motivates us to care for others.”

Shannon Schmoll

Will stopping to watch the eclipse change your life? Maybe not. But participating in an event that Shannon Schmoll said will not happen again until 2045 might just help rally friends, family, and co-workers together for a special moment.  

Schmoll is an expert on basic astronomy, naked-eye astronomy, eclipses, constellations and the night sky. She is director of the Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University and has a doctorate in astronomy and science education. 

She spoke about the 2017 partial eclipse and how it offered all sorts of experiences, from good to bad. 

“It gets a little eerie and strange, and temperatures will change. And it is a really breathtaking sight,” she said. “On the not so good part do be prepared for traffic, there is going to be a lot of people who want to see this. And so I ended up stuck in traffic for about 13 and a half hours during the 2017 Eclipse. So just be prepared for that. But really, this is a wonderful, beautiful sight in order to see that corona. And so, if you can go to totality and are able to, we highly encourage it. And it is. The next time this will happen across a large portion of the United States like this is 2045. So it is definitely worth it if you can go see this.”

And the last bit, she said, there is a lot of science that can be done around the solar eclipse. One is studying the sun itself. And the Corona—that outermost atmosphere — is a really hot region of the sun. 

But we don't fully know why it's super hot. And we can't see the most lowest part of that corona very well most of the time, even with some of our spacecraft that we have. And so this is a great time to study this region of the sun at the base of the corona,” she said. “And also, right now, the sun is nearing its peak of solar maximum. It's this 11-year cycle with a lot more activity and sunspots happening, solar flares and prominences and solar storms, there's a lot going on, and it was near minimum during the last Eclipse. So we're heading towards maximum, which will hopefully give us a lot more to look at. And this is also a great time to study the earth and the effects of the sun on the earth in particular, the uppermost level of the atmosphere called the ionosphere.”

The total solar eclipse is set to arrive on April 8 in the afternoon, beginning at about 2 p.m. and ending around 4:30 p.m., depending on one's viewing location. For more information about the eclipse and a countdown and viewing time clock, go HERE

GC government offices to close early April 8 for solar eclipse activities

By Press Release

Press Release:

In preparation for the upcoming 2024 Solar Eclipse, Genesee County Government will implement a temporary closure for all County Offices and non-emergency services, effective from noon on Monday, April 8 until 8:30 a.m. on April 9.

This decision reflects the county's proactive approach to eclipse readiness. By suspending county operations during the eclipse, the county aims to reduce traffic congestion, enhance public safety, and enable residents and visitors to partake in this extraordinary event. County offices will remain open in the morning on April 8th to accommodate residents who need to conduct business that day. 

"Ensuring the safety of our community is our top priority, and the closure of County Offices during the eclipse will contribute to ensuring a safe environment for all to enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime event," stated County Manager Matt Landers.

To learn about the eclipse in Genesee County, visit: www.geneseetheeclipse.com For important safety information on the eclipse, visit: www.iloveny.com/events/eclipse-2024/safety/

Preparing for eclipse visitors with ramped up staffing, new parking fee at county park

By Joanne Beck
Paul Osborn and Laura Wadhams
Genesee County Deputy Highway Superintendent Paul Osborn and Assistant Engineer Laura Wadhams discuss plans to deal with an expected surge in traffic and visitors for the April 8 eclipse. 
Photo by Joanne Beck

If you’re planning to visit Genesee County Park to see the total solar eclipse on April 8, you might want to take some refreshments, a blanket, and for certain — Alexander Hamilton.

County Highway officials have suggested charging $10 per vehicle for parking that day due to the expected surge in visitors and the need for additional staffing, overtime, traffic control, and related additional expenses. 

“So we're on the list with the Chamber of Commerce. We're also on the list with Rochester Museum and Science Center. We received a telescope from them, and then we also received eclipse glasses, 1,000 eclipse glasses to hand out, so we'll be doing that at the gate when we collect the fee to park,” Deputy Highway Superintendent Paul Osborn said during Tuesday’s Public Service meeting. “Since it's April 8, it's a month earlier than we normally would open the park, so we have to turn the water on ahead of time. Plus, we're going to have it at three o'clock when the actual event takes place. So we have staff that has to do traffic control and whatnot, so we're gonna have additional overtime.”

Parking will be directed to fill several lots, he said, and on Memory Lane, with no clearcut way to know just how many visitors will actually come to the park that day.

“There’s no perfect thing. I mean, we’re anticipating a quarter of a million people added to the county area, so we’re hoping that it could be less, it could be more,” he said. 

Assistant County Engineer Laura Wadhams added that the Chamber of Commerce staff has said to expect the day to be busy.

“The Chamber of Commerce is telling us they are expected to come to this region that day, they’ll be split up between Rochester and Buffalo and all those places, but Genesee County is in the path of totality,” she said.

The path of totality — when the moon completely covers the sun, creating a total eclipse -- will provide a few minutes of eerie and atypical darkness for the region, given it will be around 3 p.m. in the afternoon. 

The park’s path will be one-way in and out, from Bethany Center Road in and out the Raymond Road entrance, Osborn said. The parking fee is to generate $14,000 of revenue for the county park, which would offset that extra staffing expense, he said.

“So there has been a lengthy process with the Rochester Museum and Science Center and the Transportation Authority, looking at how many cars came into the one out west in 2017. And the traffic patterns in and the traffic patterns out, along with the fact that we are a day trip from the greatest population centers, and all of the hotels in Rochester and Buffalo are already booked out,” Legislative Chairwoman Shelley Stein said. “That kind of supports the math that has gone into their estimates.”

If you check out most charts of the path of totality for the impending eclipse, it travels from the southwest United States and hits nearby locales of Rochester and Buffalo, though Genesee County Chamber staffers have listed several local sites for viewing, including Alexander, Batavia, Bergen, Corfu, East Bethany, Oakfield, Pembroke and Stafford.

For more information about the eclipse, additional viewing locations and related events, go HERE.

Reader Photos: Solar eclipse

By Howard B. Owens

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Here's three shots of the eclipse by Doug Yeomans. If you got shots of the eclipse or shots of Genesee County residents taking it in, email them to howard@thebatavian.com.

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Photo submitted by Bob:

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Photo submitted by Elizabeth Murphy:

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Though not in path of totality, eclipse captures attention of Batavia

By Howard B. Owens

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For a couple of hours this afternoon, the whole nation, it seemed, was thinking about only one thing: the eclipse -- the first total solar eclipse viewable for any portion of the continental United States in 40 years, and pretty much, you weren't seeing that one unless you were in the Southwest.

Batavia was no exception to the eclipse mania that swept the nation with the Richmond Memorial Library handing out 1,000 eclipse viewing glasses and several hundred people sticking around the library for the viewing party. There was a long line for glasses at the library before the eclipse even started. 

The common comment among eclipse viewers, "I'll probably never see another one in my lifetime," even from people clearly young enough to look forward to the 2024 total eclipse when WNY will be directly in the path of totality.

Today, in Batavia, we only got to see about 76 percent of the sun blocked by the moon.

In 2024, it will be 100 percent, and because it's an early spring eclipse with the Earth closer to the sun, it will last twice as long.

There was a great community spirit at the library today, which people commented on.

"With everything going on in the world today, I thought it was kind of nice that people are getting together for something positive and fun," said Greg Ireland, who was sat on the grass outside the library with his family, including his two young children, whom he gave a small lesson in how the solar system works.

"I think it's very nice," Ireland said. "There's a lot of people having fun, families, activities for the kids. It's a good, positive thing for Batavia."

Debbie Wynn-Dunn said she came out because it was a chance to enjoy an extraordinary event with her family.

The rareness of the event also brought out Kathy Starkweather.

"I think anything that happens in our lifetime, that is unusual or not a very common event, is worth seeing," Starkweather said. "I love seeing all the families out here, parents with their kids experiencing something rare."

Nancy Gerspacher praised the library for putting the event together.

"It’s just something that happens that is phenomenal that you want to see, and it was very good of them to bring glasses and let people do this here," Gerspacher said.  "The library is a very good format to help everybody."

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The path of totality for the eclipse in April 2024.

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