Welcome to Saturday.
Travelers in the Moonlight by Hiroshige (mid 1800's)
wikimedia commons
We have a Blue Moon tonight which is also the Hunter's moon and it falls on Halloween.
Our Moon inspires awe. Look up. Catch a glimpse of the Moon.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCrJ3NflOpE]
Our October sky is interesting, if you have clear skies you can see Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter as well. Saturday’s blue moon will peak at 10:49 a.m. ET, but will look full the night before and the night after.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaSyuJPJfGM]
A Blue Moon is by definition a second full moon that occurs within the same month.
The moon as a symbol of romance:
A Full Moon on Halloween occurs roughly only every 18-19 years.
According to NASA, the next time a full moon falls on Halloween isn’t expected until 2039. I wonder if we will hold elections that year. It's getting spookier all the time.
Halloween has its roots in the Celtic celebration called Samhain. According to the Farmer's Almanac, "the ancient Celts believed that the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was at its thinnest during Samhain".
Carl Gustav Carus: Klosterruine im Mondlicht (1818)
Wikimedia Commons
Eartha Kitt's interpretation:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-sfFwAQZJg&feature=emb_logo[video:https... width:200 height:100]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS02GeKuWQ4[video:https://www.youtube.co... width:200 height:100]
The full moon at the end of October is known as the Hunter’s Moon, (aka the Blood Moon) because it marked the time when the harvest was finished and the hunting season began. It is the first full moon to follow the harvest moon.
Sappho fragment #34, translated by Anne Carson, from If Not, Winter , 2002.
The moon as a companion:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLKPXkUBfiQ&feature=emb_logo[video:https... width:200 height:100]
Fellow travelers:
Near Hackness, a moonlit scene with pine trees. John Atkinson Grimshaw (1875)
Wikimedia Commons
Comments
Good morning all.
I had to add this video. I think Galileo would have approved. He was partial to measuring things.
Really wonderful. Thank you.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
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So glad you liked it.
Happy all hallows' eve
Great stuff on the moon Rand. After our first blizzard of the season, the skies cleared and tricked or treated us to a cold, clear view of the blue hunters moon. Perhaps we could call this a CIA holiday,
all spooks day?
Fun fact: there are more pagans than Presbyterians in the US.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/10/how-wiccans-and-witches-mark-hal...
Wishing all a powerful Sabbat!
Couldn't resist this one
fun with pumpkins...
https://youtu.be/VMmR5g7gU0c
I'm glad you couldn't resist QMS
The eel weaving it's way through the pumpkin was a treat, thank you!
Well, Magic is real.
Thanks for the Wiccan article, very nice.
Someone at the Chester Zoo likes animals and photography, I'm glad.
Thanks for stopping by, have a good one.
Well, let's just say
I was able to experience nature in all her glorious fury.
Wrestling the bobbing boats trying to get free
in a horizontal snow gale with nothing but sheer
determination to wrest control. No casualties but my
waning energy. It is all gone now. A couple of whispers
of snow crust on the shaded northern edges of ground.
Haven't had a trick or treater here for years.
Good thing, as I'm plum out of razor blades.
Simmering down braised red cabbage with the neighbors' apples --
chicken bone stock, yellow onions, a touch of sausage and apple cider.
Fire in the wood stove burning away the blues.
Doesn't get much better than this.
Ok,
Have a good one.
Funny
I saw you had your first blizzard of the season. I miss blizzards, especially when followed with a calm, quiet morning and deep powdery snow. Hope it's enjoyable for you and not the other way around.
once in a blue moon
https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/when-is-the-next-blue-moon
https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/celestial-objects-to-watch/once-in...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeDEz_HRd_s]
Have a wonderful Halloween blue moon!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Good afternoon
Here is a bit about tonight's sky:
For the night sky for the week:
https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/this-weeks-sky-at-a-glance-october...
Thanks for the Nanci Griffith Blue Moon tune and for the new folklore vs the old folklore info.
Have a good all-hallow's eve.
Good morning rand, Thanks, a really wonderful column.
I especially liked the Hiroshige.
The moon and its cycles was the base of many early calendrical systems, or its intersection with the cycles caused by the earth's passage around the sun. Your vdeo of the solar system model calls to mind all of the cycles upon cycles upon cycles, and the one calendrical system that came closest to accounting for them all. Happy 13 baktun, 0 katun, 7 tun, 17 uinal, 11 kin day.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
'Afternoon
Glad you liked the column, and you are right, Hiroshige was amazing. It seems he was pretty prolific. I had a hard time deciding which of his pieces of work I wanted to use. They are all captivating.
Hope you have a very good Halloween evening.
I once had a large page format collection of
Hokusai's work. All those guys did great stuff.
The 13 baktun, etc. is today's date according to the Mayan calendar
I almost posted a highly topical wake-me-up to the column this morning, but it was just too tranquil. In honor of all the trick-or-treaters, or whose who wanted to but either held back or were held back, I give you a paen to trick or treating:
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Funny
The millennials I know, really enjoy the Halloween festivities so I feel for them that we have had to put a kibosh on all of that. The younger set who still are at the age for trick-or-treating are going to have to be creative to have fun. I'm sorry for them all.
Way back when, when I was reading about the Impressionist painters, I remember reading that many of them were inspired by certain Japanese artists. Even Van Gogh looked to them for some insights. I didn't know then that it was these guys, Hokusai and Hiroshige, that they were referencing. Funny how things that you didn't pay much attention to initially, show up again and make you notice.
afternoon randtntx
and everyone
Just got this in my inbox. In case anyone is interested.
Q&A with Rupert Read, Spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, hosted by Jem Bendell
https://deepadaptation.ning.com/events/qa-rupert-read-extinction-rebellion
Long early hard day of gardening. Tired now. Thanks for all the info on the blue moon / blood moon. Love all if it.
Be well. Be safe.
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
Evening
Thanks for the link, R. Read sounds like an interesting guy. I have not come across any of his work before, I will check it out. TY.
Thanks for stopping by, take care.
Hollow weenie
Great yard sign QMS, thanks.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
That
Thank you randtntx, beautiful.
A view of the moon - "oh my god - holy shit - wow … a great reminder that we should look up more often”.
A Halloween musical playlist cultivated from a four hour ride home yesterday, including NZ musicians ...
[video:https://youtu.be/9ynd2A91cXA]
[video:https://youtu.be/eKX8ntjWeas]
[video:https://youtu.be/LoMldQoxnqY]
[video:https://youtu.be/pDzY36FnTRY]
[video:https://youtu.be/YmQlBfxh4Us]
Hi Janis
I have never been to the McDonald Observatory but it is on my list to visit. Here is a piece of Texas you may not have heard about.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkF5OmPZ74]
Thanks for the list of tunes. On a quick glance, I don't think I've heard any of them. I'm looking forward to sitting down for a listen later on this evening.
One think I truly enjoy about road trips is listening to music along the way. We have been known to sing along at the top of our lungs (and quite a few in my family cannot carry a tune). Our road trips are identified by the music we listened to along the way, like the time I made everyone listen to too much Edith Piaf or too much Johnny Cash. I don't get to hear the end of that.
Glad you enjoyed the column. Hope you are doing well, take care.
Thank you randtntx, for the McDonald observatory video.
It’s good to know that people are working toward less light pollution. Even though I’ve noticed a decrease in city office-lighting over the years I wonder why there is still so much of it. It doesn’t make sense to me. I hope you get to the observatory.
Your family memories of singing out of tune on road trips is a treasure, and the teasing will always be a pleasure of sorts, I’m sure.
Be well and full of wonder.
The Republican Party is waging a war
against humor as we know it.
They don't know how to laugh.
They don't know how to cry.
They don't know how to feel anything beyond what Rush tells them.
#sad
"The enemy is anybody who is going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on." Yossarian
You could be right.
I guess my interest is to claim that space that celebrates what is best about people. Some of those things are the very things you listed above.
Thanks for stopping by, have a good one.