By Linda Tancs

Located on a hillside overlooking the Westfield River Valley, the William Cullen Bryant Homestead is on the site of the original community of Cummington, Massachusetts, founded in 1762. One of America’s foremost 19th-century poets, Bryant’s boyhood home is a National Historic Landmark. In addition to an iconic red barn, the estate features a two-story-farmhouse-turned-three-story Victorian cottage full of colonial and Victorian heirlooms as well as memorabilia from his European and Asian travels. He captured the literary world at the age of 13 with his first major poem, no doubt influenced by the idyllic landscape of pastures, fields and woodlands that surrounded him. Enjoy the grounds year round; guided tours of the house are offered from June through October on selected days.

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Billed as the Great North American Eclipse, a total solar eclipse will cross North America on April 8, 2024, passing over Mexico, the United States and Canada. The path of the eclipse begins in Mexico, entering the United States in Texas, and traveling through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The eclipse will enter Canada in Southern Ontario, and continue through Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton. This will be the last time any solar eclipse will be visible within the United States until 2045. 

Be prepared! So long as supplies last, you can purchase eclipse glasses and other accessories, like a phone app and photo filter, from American Paper Optics, a NASA-approved manufacturer. The link in the preceding sentence is an affiliate link, which means that if you click on the link and purchase merchandise from the page, then I may receive a small commission.