blue, blue,blue blue moon

If they say the moon is blue,
We must believe that it is true.
~~~a proverb recorded in1582


The Blue Moon, is it really blue? Well, ,no, not unless volcanic dust or smoke  in the upper layers of the atmosphere  make it appear so. 

To over simplify things. Our current calendars 12 months is out of sync with the 13 full moons of the Lunar year. and so some seasons end up with 4 full moons instead of 3 the 3rd full moon is the Blue Moon, or there is the more modern  more modern definition of 2 full moons in one month.  Not all years have a Blue Moon, and some have 2, usually this rare occurrence, about 4 or 5 times in a century. provides us with a Blue Moon in January and March, and no full moon at all in February; other combinations are possible, though even rarer. double new Moons also occur, but no one seems to pay much attention to that.


One might think that the attention paid to the Blue Moon is in some way related to it's effect on people, well I just don't know.  Certainly the extra light would have been welcomed by hunters , farmers and others in the time before the flood of outdoor electric light that has turned night into  twilight.

~~unknown to me

 

 

Call it the Waning Daylight Moon, the Cricket Moon, Ripening Apple Moon, Ripening Weed Seed, or Spider Web Moon.  Weary Moon, for Dame Summer is getting weary, and the apple trees droop and groan under the weight of fruit in most years, Sunflower Moon, might be another good name for it. or even Summer's End Moon.  It is usually easy for me to find a personal name for the full moon, but not this time. 

sunday

Sunday, the day of rest, you didn't do much but go to church, eat Sunday dinner, may-be go for a drive or play some games.  Sunday was a quiet day, the biggest excitement on Sunday i can remember was going to The Newsstand to get the Sunday paper and if I was lucky some candy , a store that sold books and magazines, newspapers, writing paper, candy and s few gifts items, they closed promptly at noon when I was a kid, and they were pretty much the only store open in town.
The rest of the day, we might go to visit someone or just for a drive, in the summer. In the Fall we would pile into the old green Buick and travel a winding back road to a fruit and vegetable market and buy fresh bread and some produce, and look at the turning leaves. Once in awhile we went on a picnic.  In the winter there was always a game of cards, or checkers, and later Monopoly, while we waited for dinner to be ready.When it was too cold or too rainy to go outside we could always watch the travelogues or "Victory at Sea", the theme song of which I can still hear. The next day was work and school and the weekend always went much too fast.

By the time I got to High School the weekends went by really fast, there was barely time enough to get to and from the mall, and later working on my driving skills before it was time to do homework, if i did it at all and dread going back to school. There was a whole world of ideas and people to explore, the world changed a lot in those few years. I changed alot too, but Sunday remained Sunday, and for a few more years, it was still a quiet day.    Where once there was nothing at all going on a Sunday afternoon, and it might even have been difficult to find a gas station open, there were fair and art shows, flea markets, impromptu and organised activities, many stores and restaurants were open, and you could even go to the movies.  People didn't visit  as much, because so one was ever home, there were still Sunday papers to read, and people usually  still had Sunday dinner at home.but may0be it wasn't such a big deal anymore. and might even be served in front of the TV as folks watched the football games. 

 Sunday is a good day to worship, work, window shop, wander, wish,weep, wash the car and wash the clothes.and a lot of wondering, which lead me to the conclusion that the world had really changed a lot, the once quiet day, that had been dedicated to rest and family had become a hectic rushed almost Monday like day. 

Now all of these new oppotuntiys for entertainment, seem to me to be good things. Work has switched from mainly physical labor to mainly mental labor,but one still needs a break, though an overtired mind has a hard time chiiling out whereas an overtired body will take the first opportunity to do so.  I may be long past the time when I have restless energy to burn i had a few decades ago, when i thought Sunday was the most boring day of the week, but it is still nice to know if i ever do feel that way again, there is something i can do about it.  Progress can be a good thing.

" Bright new star"

"There are no bugs in my house, they all chocked to death on the dust!"

"My best beauty hint. buy 50 bottles of aspirin, take out the cotton and stuff it in your bra."

Phyllis Diller, has died, peacefully in her sleep. And last night there was a bright new star in the sky.  She was a pioneer, she changed the way women thought about themselves, not that at the time many of them would admit to it.  Her humor changed the way women in comedy where viewed, from bumbling to witty,  Phyllis Diller's humor was self deprecating, but it was also witty. 

She was also and advocate for breastfeeding when, it was  still considered old fashioned, and not the modern things to do. 


Though she was a classically trained pianist, she never felt she was good enough to preform. she however loved the arts and was a great supporter of the,. her personal passion was painting,

I was in 5th grade when Phyllis Dill became the talk of the lunch table, her wild hair and raucous laugh, which we all learned to imitate, and of course that cigarette holder, which was a prop, she wasn't a smoker, but we didn't know that.  She was our hero.  She was a secure woman who was actually funnier than the men.  She was obviously not ordinary, and not ordinary, was what we all

very much wanted to be.  Fang , poor old Fang, he was so clueless, and we loved it.

"The Pruitts of South Hampton"  was a very poorly written series, but i watched it anyway, I was very disappointed that  Ms. Diller was not  the eccentric and intelligent woman I thought her to be, the butler on that show had the best lines.

As I watcher her frequent appearance on the talk show circuit i realised she was even more intelligent than I had thought.   She once  brought a large jar of hard candies as a gift to a very well know conductor, who's name escapes me now, and they talked about music, In fact she seemed to have opinions on many subjects, not that I agreed with them all.

We all all much richer, thanks to you.  

clouds

I drove through the woods

fog and mist , ahead the sky

scattered with clouds.

Sand

When I think of sand I think of the ocean's beaches.  but even lakes have beaches and rivers and stream have sandbars. 

There are deposits of sand in places along my favorite woodland path.  Seas covered this land once, the rocks hold a record of that.  
Sand was mainly bits of quartz and garnet, iron and other minerals that did not get swept away in the flowing waters.  At least that is what we learned in Science class,all those years ago.    Then I saw these wonderful pictures by Gary Greenburg.

Shards of coral, and the skeletons and shells of small creatures, tiny wonders the symmetry left behind by those we share this planet with.

I hearby proclaim, it to be art

`

                                                              

Kurt Vonnegut was thinking outside the box, before there was a box to think outside of.  I was sure of that when I began to understand the concept of being "lucky mud", I just didn't know how much that phrase would change my view of the world. 
I like mud, not tracked thru the the house,  but mud as clay, and mud as garden spoil and, mud as a path. 

Eloquently but in plain English,  this is a truth.  Art is for everyone, and art is by everyone, that does not necessary carry with it the burden of someone saying that it is good or bad art, it is only your art.  It is your expression, your joy,  it wells up from your muse....we are all artists, it is the nature of  this tool making creature that we are to try to  create and declare our individuality.  So let no one tell you it isn't art, it is. Even if no one would pay to see or hear or read it.

"What makes good money makes good Art."~~~~Arlo Guthrie
{"so remember what you paid to get in here"}

who's gonna clean up the mess?? what mess??

then there are those days when whimsy abounds, no forget the rules,rules, rules..........

on this August moon

Call it the Blue Moon if you wish, because there are two full moons this month and one of them is the Blue moon, call it the Sturgeon, Grain, Berry, Corn,Gladiola,Joyful or Dogmas Moon,  LadyMoon beams down on us as we start this month. 

~EarthSky.com

It is hot, humid and the tomatoes are dragging the vines down, the weeds have claimed their territory and the night air is thick and heavy.  Here we are at the very height of summer, the lazy afternoons and the haze of heat and dust.  waiting for the relative cool of evening and  the beauty of moonrise.


Sometimes known as the woodcutters moon, I can only guess because the wood was cut  into blocks and split by moonlight, to avoid the heat of the day. Or perhaps this is a romantic notion of mine.  To me there is a touch of romance running through the air on a moon lite August night, all things seem more possible, the stars seem closer and so do ones dreams.
 .
So there is no need to rush, sit on the steps and
watch the moonrise with me, dream of different places, and future things, when the sun comes up there will be plenty to do.  So I will call the first full moon of this August "Awake and Dreaming Moon".

~R. Maloof