Letters from Josh
The Blood Moon Letter 82 5/16/22
Howdy, folks! My phone just rang - it was Darnell, a buddy and reader of these letters. “You get any pictures??”
He was asking about…THE BLOOD MOON. In short…No. But I found you some neat things. First off, the blood moon? Yeah, it’s a catchy name for a lunar eclipse. This is when the moon passes through the shadow of the Earth. As the sunlight “refracts” (bends) through our atmosphere, some of it hits the moon in our shadow, so instead of it being totally black, it glows a dim reddish orange, an evil pumpkin floating in a sparkling sky of stars. The glare from a regular full moon washes out the faint stars, but when the moon is eclipsed (in the shadow of the Earth), the dim stars shine. I set up the telescope, ready for the 11:30 pm event.
Darkness fell, and I took to prowling the fields. A Chuck-Will’s-Widow began to sing. He’s related to the Whip-Poor-Will, another night bird (technically a nightjar), but says chuck will’s widow in a similar voice. Early fireflies dotted the rainy fields, stars on a cloudy night. Oh, how they danced and twinkled magically, winking to each other, tiny yellow beacons in the gloom. My flashlight shone on a crayfish in the stream, grumpy that his night hunt was suddenly in the spotlight. The eclipse was starting, but remained unseen. As Elmore James sang once “The sky is crying…can’t you see the tears roll down the street?” The showers let up after a bit. Stars started to peep through the gauzy sky. A dim blood moon! THERE! The ghost of a pumpkin, a faint star hanging off the edge of it…more clouds. A siren in Rustburg set off the Mockingbird to singing, which encouraged the Chuck Will’s Widow to lend his voice to the night. Occasional glimpses of the Blood Moon were seen as the clouds blew from the mountains in the west. Carpenter frogs croaked down in the horse pond as our beautiful planet cast a long shadow into space.
I woke at 2 am, and looked outside. The moon was still obscured, by was mostly back to her brilliant self. A soft glow shone down on the landscape as the clouds were backlit by moonlight, and off in the distance, another bird called. It sure is nice to have an excuse to look, to notice, and to marvel. No telling what we’ll see.
Reminds me of that Louie Armstrong song… “And I think to myself…what a wonderful world.”
- Josh