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Eclipse folk tales show different relationships between people and the sun

Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth remembers exactly where he was during the 2017 solar eclipse: on a pontoon boat on the Tennessee River.

“At the moment of totality, there were several other pontoon boats nearby,” he said. “We all independently put on Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ at the same moment. That’s a pop culture song but it becomes folklore in the sense that this was something spontaneous. We didn’t have CB radio between all of the different groups. … Each group decided to do this on their own.”