All across the United States, people stopped whatever they were doing on Monday afternoon and took a few minutes from their busy schedules to turn their gaze to the skies, there to witness a solar eclipse.

This rare celestial phenomenon cut a path across the middle of the country; no part of the U.S. was spared at least a partial eclipse; the path of totality was about 70 miles wide. Here, in our neck of the woods, the moon covered about 85 percent of the light of the sun.

With all the political and social strife surrounding us in recent weeks and months, maybe we all needed a moment to pause, look up to the heavens and gain a bit of perspective. A moment free from talk of neo-Nazis and KKK, from Black Lives Matter and Antifa, from whatever President Trump’s latest Tweet might be, from North Korea and its threats of nuclear annihilation, from all the disunity and discord in the nation and the world. For a few brief minutes, we were all just passengers on the same blue marble, z...