On Monday, Aug. 21, I will be attending a concert of sorts. While sitting at a vineyard in Wyoming, I will be drinking wine, wearing goofy glasses, and watching a show rapt in what I am sure will be utter amazement. And while I can’t speak for anyone else who might attend, I can tell you in all seriousness that I personally have been waiting for this particular performance for 45 years.

At some time between this 21^st-century age of digital data on demand and the 18^th-century age of Diderot embarking on his ridiculously ambitious project, a seven-year-old me could often be found perusing any volume of my family’s collection of encyclopedias. And while I loved the children’s articles on optical illusions and kite-making, and the color plates of the flags of the world, what drew my interest the most was a 50-year table of future total solar eclipses.

That table vexed me. I returned to it time and again in disbelief that I would have to wait forever, or at least until 2017, for a total solar eclipse to occur in the United States — and by that time, I would be old. Adding to my frustration of such a long wait was the knowledge that the little Connecticut town in which I lived was nowhere remotely close to where the totality of that eclipse would occur. It seemed all but hopeless.