Lunar Musings
65mm 1/100sec f/4.5 ISO 12800 5:45 a..m. 1/31/2018
As the nuisance known as January comes to a close, a cold Wednesday morning offers up a treat courtesy of the moon. While a glowing full moon as the sun prepares to rise is always worth a lingering viewing, when the heavens decide to align a blue moon with a lunar eclipse, I will put on the layers, and, armed with a travel mug of tea, grab my camera and head out. A total lunar eclipse is not in the cards for the east coast this time around, but braving the cold for the sake of the moon is always worth it. Encroaching clouds be damned, patience and preparedness got the job done, and produced enough shots that I could work with. Shooting the moon is a process, but one that is always worth it for the end results.
From the moment a child is old enough to look to the skies and begin to wonder about the clouds and the sun, the moon and the stars, the moon becomes a special fascination. One of the earliest childhood memories I have is the night in July of 1969 when my parents let me stay up late to watch the moon landing. I don't know that, really, my four-year-old sister was able to appreciate at all what was going on, but I remember looking from the window to the grainy pictures on the little television screen, then back to the window and the moon in the night sky. At six years old I was able to understand what my father was explaining as the astronauts endeavor played out on the screen. They were on the moon, right outside my window, right at that moment, and it had never been done before. And that is one example of how a child that age begins to understand wonder and awe. Curiosity. That is how it begins.
The moon has always held a special fascination for man, and how the moon presented itself was often a source of terrified, uneasy speculation. In late-antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the man in the moon was given other identities such as a cat or a stag. In some writings regarding the moon's appearance, a reclining woman or girl was said to be seen on the face of the moon. And then there was always the supposed power of the moon, its ability to foretell future events. Even though the surface of the moon never changed, of course, there was the practice of reading the light and shadows on the face of the moon. Scrying the Moon meant deciphering those portentous shadows into a sort of fortune telling, a script of things that were to come. One could also use this technique to interpret what one saw in the lunar reflection on a body of water here on earth. Another example of the fearful nature of the full moon was offered in the 1600's. Men of learning advised people to be sure to draw the curtains tightly across the windows on a night filled with moonlight so as not to expose the slumbering brains of the home's inhabitants to the damage the moon's rays could cause. Fast forward to my own world in the early 1980's. I remember sitting in the lab one quiet evening in the hospital I worked at while a coworker and I discussed the imminent full moon and what effect it had (or didn't have) on the violent impulses that exist in man. He was convinced the moon was completely capable of wreaking havoc on the baser instincts of man. This belief stemmed from his year working as a phlebotomist in a hospital in Phoenix. I was less convinced of the violent effects of the full moon. My year's worth of phlebotomy at Utah Valley Hospital just wasn't backing up that idea. I'm going to go with the logic that Phoenix wasn't exactly Provo, as evidenced by the one gunshot victim that came through the ER in all the years I worked there. Same full moon watching the nights in whatever town or city one is doing the graveyard shift in.
55mm 1/25sec f/4.5 ISO 9000 5:50 p.m. 1/30/2018
Of course, the full moon is also perceived as a romantic moon, a benevolent warm summer night moon. A moon that guides you over and through a dark mountain pass very late at night, and a moon that gardeners and farmers plant by and harvest by. But that is a moon for another post, when it is not a full moon that's also a blue moon that's also a blood moon. This moon at the end of January 2018 is an ominous orb, the stuff of legends and lore, a lycanthropic manifestation in the heavens.
In honor of the rare and foreboding arrival of this particular moon, I offer this bizarre, who-the-hell-came-up-with-this-highly-inappropriate ditty about the moon. This was the piece my little brother had to learn for his preschool graduation ceremony in the spring of 1975. It is forever burned into my brain since, along with my two younger sisters, we had to sing it to him over and over until he had it memorized.
Mr. Moon, moon bright and shiny moon won't you please shine down on me?
Oh, Mr. Moon, moon bright and shiny moon won't you come from behind that tree?
My life's in danger but I'm scared to run. There's a man behind me with a big shotgun!
Oh, Mr. Moon, moon bright and shiny moon won't you please shine down on me?
