blue moon tomorrow

‘once in a blue moon’ is a common way of saying ‘not very often’, but what exactly is a blue moon?

according to the popular definition, it is the second full moon to occur in a single calendar month.

the average interval between full moons is about 29.5 days, while the length of an average month is roughly 30.5 days. this makes it very unlikely that any given month will contain two full moons, though it does sometimes happen.

on average, there will be 41 months that have two full moons in every century, so you could say that ‘once in a blue moon’ actually means ‘once every two-and-a-half years’.

tomorrow night, the moon will be full for the second time in this month of june.

june 26

Perhaps more than you wanted to know about June 26th, but interesting nevertheless…

June 26 is the 177th day of the year (178th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar.

• 684 - Benedict II becomes Pope.
• 1284 - According to legend, the Pied Piper lures 130 children of Hamelin away.
• 1483 - Richard III becomes king of England.
• 1718 - Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich of Russia, Peter the Great’s son, mysteriously dies after being sentenced to death by his father for plotting against him.
• 1807 - Lightning hits a warehouse in Luxembourg, killing 230 people.
• 1819 - The bicycle is patented.
• 1870 - The Christian holiday of Christmas is declared a federal holiday in the United States.
• 1934 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Federal Credit Union Act, which establishes credit unions.
• 1934 - Initial flight of the Focke-Wulf Fw 61, the first practical helicopter.
• 1945 - The United Nations Charter is signed in San Francisco.
• 1963 - John F. Kennedy speaks the famous words “Ich bin ein Berliner” on a visit to West Berlin.
• 1974 - The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio
• 1975 - Two FBI agents and a member of the American Indian Movement are killed in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota; Leonard Peltier is later convicted of the murders in a controversial trial.
• 1976 - The CN Tower, the tallest free-standing structure on land in the world, was opened.
• 1978 - Air Canada Flight 189 to Toronto overran the runway and crashed into the Etobicoke Creek ravine. Two of 107 passengers onboard died.
• 1993 - The U.S. launches a missile attack targeting Baghdad intelligence headquarters in retaliation for a thwarted assassination attempt against former President George H.W. Bush in April in Kuwait.
• 1996 - Irish Journalist Veronica Guerin is shot in her car while in traffic in the outskirts of Dublin
• 1997 - The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the Communications Decency Act violates the First Amendment.

U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department
Sun and Moon Data for One Day

The following information is provided for Baltimore, Maryland (longitude W76.6, latitude N39.3):

Thursday 26 June 1975 Eastern Daylight Time

SUN
Begin civil twilight 5:09 a.m.
Sunrise 5:41 a.m.
Sun transit 1:09 p.m.
Sunset 8:37 p.m.
End civil twilight 9:09 p.m.

MOON
Moonrise 9:56 p.m. on preceding day
Moon transit 3:14 a.m.
Moonset 8:37 a.m.
Moonrise 10:29 p.m.
Moonset 9:36 a.m. on following day

Phase of the Moon on 26 June 1975: waning gibbous with 91% of the Moon’s visible disk illuminated.

addresses

“home. not the place where you live, but the place where you belong.” (glen phillips)

not really sure why, but today i was thinking of all the different places i’ve lived. some with my family, some with friends, some for years, some for months, but each place, in its own way, was my shelter for a time.

i had to see if i could remember them all…

102 shawnee lane, waldorf
3685 red bud court, waldorf
608 E (4641) duley drive, white plains
1600 patrick henry drive, blacksburg
935 lora lane, blacksburg
1706 grayland street, blacksburg
972 spa road, annapolis
1810 aberdeen circle, crofton
501 slaters lane, alexandria

despite time and distance, the numbers and street names came back to me easily, carrying with them a flood of memories. a different place, a different time, and me, a different person with the change of each scene.

a moment

“we do not remember days… we remember moments.” (cesare pavese)

i often wonder if you remember.

soon after we started dating, we used to spend hours on the phone talking. one particular day, i hung up the phone after a long phone exchange. as i turned to leave the room, the phone rang. it was you.

“say my name,” you said.

perplexed by the request, i paused for a moment. then i said your name.

“thanks,” you continued, “i love the way you say my name.”

and you hung up the phone. and i smiled.

since then you’ve come and gone, but that memory remains.

a sweet reminder of times past.

i often wonder if you remember.

headlines

i don’t know if anyone notices, or much less cares, but for the past two weeks, i’ve been changing my myspace headline on a daily basis. i’m a bit of a wordsmith, a connoisseur of words, a collector of sayings and lyrics. in fact, for as long as i can remember i’ve been jotting these things down on random pieces of paper – the lyric from a song, a line from a book or poem or speech, anything that catches my attention as particularly clever or transcendent or true.

i’ve never known quite what to do with these little pieces of genius, but now i’ve decided to share them, one at a time, each for a day and then never again.

each morning, as i’m driving north, over the potomac and the monocacy rivers, i choose my headline for the day. sometimes it’s a reflection of how i’m feeling or what’s going on in the world, other times it’s a completely arbitrary selection, but always it’s a way to share some words that mean something to me.

it is interesting to note that the last three headlines have been about endings. i didn’t even realize the connection until this morning, but, not surprisingly, that ties directly into a strong current in my life right now.

perhaps these words, written by various and sundry others, will ultimately and collectively say something about me that just i couldn’t say myself.

full moon

“i have loved the stars too well to be frightened of the night.”

full moon tonight.

the english name for the june full moon is the ‘flower moon’. by lunar accounts, june is unique this year in that it has two full moons, the second of which, on june 30th, will be called a ‘blue moon’.

i have always harbored a special fascination with the night sky, the moon in particular. so if you look for me, you’ll find me outside tonight, after darkness falls, watching the full moon rise and gazing at its reflection dancing along the river’s surface.

beautiful beyond words.