Talking to a friend a few nights ago and he asked me if I had seen the full moon. I said that I had and that it was really pretty. He said it was the Harvest Moon. I asked him why it was called that and he said his son had asked him the same thing and he didn’t really know except that maybe it occurred around harvest time.
Of course, I am science challenged. I thought the sun was a planet. LOL Always curious though, I googled Harvest moon and found that the moon he was referring to was not the Harvest Moon. The Harvest moon would have occurred in September this year since it is the “first full moon closest to the autumnal equinox. Whatever the heck that means! It is called the harvest moon because and I quote “the Harvest Moon and Hunter's Moon are special because, around the time of these full moons, the time difference between moonrise on successive evenings is shorter than usual. This means that the moon rises approximately 30 minutes later from one night to the next, as seen from about 40 degrees N. or S. latitude. Thus, there is no long period of darkness between sunset and moonrise around the time following these full moons. In times past this feature of these autumn moons was said to help farmers working to bring in their crops, or in the case of the Hunter's Moon, hunters tracking their prey. They could continue being productive by moonlight even after the sun had set. Hence the name Harvest Moon.”
I had never heard of the Hunters moon either which is the full moon in October. Then I went on to discover that each month the full moon has a different name. For example, this month’s full moon is known as the Full Beaver Moon supposedly because this is the time Beavers are fully preparing for winter. The December moon is the Full Cold Moon or the Moon before Yule for obvious reasons. January brings the Full Wolf Moon because wolf packs were at their hungriest and howled outside Indian Villages way back when. The Full Snow moon in February was called because that was when the heaviest snows usually fell. March brings the full worm moon because earthworms start to appear as the ground warms up but I prefer its alternative name the Full Lenten Moon. April is the full pink moon because of a pink ground covering that is one of the earliest flowers to sprout and May is the Full flower moon. June is the Full strawberry moon because of strawberries relatively short harvest season that month, July is the full buck moon because that’s when the antlers of buck deer push through, August is the Full Sturgeon moon, named by the fishing indian tribes because the sturgeon, the large fish of the Great Lakes and other major bodies of water are most readily caught during this month. I admit I did not know that there is normally only one full moon each month either. I think I must have slept during science classes.
Speaking of moons, when the boys were teenagers and paintball was the rage, they and a bunch of kids decided to head out to Ft. Gibson to the wooded area we had moved from to play paintball. They were in 2 vehicles and as they traveled up York street , one car load decided to shoot paintballs at the other carload. What got reported to the police was that 2 vehicles were shooting at each other on York Street. Someone turned in the tag #’s, one of them was Chris’ truck and the police showed up at my house looking for him. Mike and I were divorcing at the time and since it was his weekend, I had no idea where the kids were. So I called him and we managed to track them down. But not before they had MOONED a car on the way to the paintball woods…and it turned out to be the Ft. Gibson Sheriff’s wife that they mooned. We ended up hauling the whole gang down to the police station to have the officer on duty scare the heck out of them. I think maybe the paintball guns got confiscated for a period of time. Later we would laugh about the whole thing.
I have to admit I have never mooned anyone. Though I have been the one that encouraged a mooning to occur. Once coming back from a birthday party in Tulsa with 2 carloads of boys, my van full mooned Mike’s carload of boys who in turned mooned them back. I remember Mike chiding me for encouraging such behavior. I thought it was pretty funny. We also pulled off a couple of chinese fire drills while we were out and about. And I was guilty of doing donuts in the snowy parking lot at Walmart a few times too. Such scandoulous behavior.!! LOL
Oh, and by the way a Blue moon is when a year has 13 moons and occurs every 2-3 years. Thus the expression “once in a blue moon” is used to indicate that something ocurrs only rarely. It is also rare for the blue moon to appear blue contrary to its name.
I remember as a little girl looking at the moon and seeing the man in the moon. Many of us can remember the tv broadcast of the Neil Armstrong taking his first step onto the moon in 1969.And who can forget the nursery rhyme where the cow jumps over the moon. I also remember being told as a child that the moon was made of cheese. Then there’s Michael Jackson’s moon walk, the moon walk bouncy thing at carnivals. Or moon pies. Or mooning over someone…I did that a lot as a teen. Then there's my current staus of being over the moon about Joe. That means really really really happy. Higher than the moon in the sky happy.
And now I’m craving pizza and humming the Dean Martin tune about when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie that’s amore. Know what I’m having for dinner tonight!
No comments:
Post a Comment