By Linda Tancs

Located in the Historic Landmark District, Massie School was the first free public school in Savannah, Georgia. Opened in 1856, it continues an educational function today as Massie Heritage Center. The kid-friendly exhibits include a photo history of people who attended, visited or taught at Massie School. There’s also an authentic 19th-century classroom where students can engage in authentic grade-level appropriate reading, writing, arithmetic and geography lessons and practice penmanship with quill pens. The facility is named ​for Peter Massie, a Scottish immigrant to Georgia in the late 1700s, who bequeathed a portion of his fortune to the city for the establishment of a free school for the poor. 

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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.