Many Moons

New Year's Eve was quite boisterous around this part of Chicagoland. Apparently, amateur pyrotechnics is the new thing for ringing in the new year. I recall some of it happening last year, but not nearly as intense. Perhaps it's going to replace firing a shotgun into the air, but I'm not sure that it's going to reduce any ER visits! I used to like these things, and fired off plenty of them as a teen, but I eventually grew up. (Some folks never do.) Now they just annoy me and unnerve my dog!

There was something else in the sky that night. Was it clear enough where you were? Yup...a "blue moon". The second full moon in December, and it was crystal clear here and gorgeous. I love a big full moon on a clear night and it made me stop and think.

The fact is, I love the full moon enough to know that in 2009 I had seen at least nine of them in a row, ending with that one on the last day of the year. How do I remember? Well, here's the deal: When we're up at the northern compound in Michigan, I keep a daily journal, and since I'm a night-sky geek, I always made note of the fantastic full moon nights we had over the lake. Sometime towards the end of the season up there, I think it was the September moon, I made a note about it and thought that I'd noted this several times over the spring and summer. When I checked back through the journal, sure enough, there had been a clear night on every full moon since our first visit in May! That's definitely an oddity in a state where clouds always outnumber clear skies, and that little oddity stuck with me through the remainder of the year. The November and both December moons were all seen in Illinois, but the unbroken string of clear nights continued even here, and thus my nine straight!

So on New Years Eve, I look up to see fireworks from my dopey neighbors exploding right next to nature's own beautiful show with that big blue moon. And on the last day of the year, when the mind inevitably drifts back over the year gone by, I'm looking up and thinking how I had that same view way back on the Fourth of July, on a beach in Northport, Michigan, with our good friends from camp (and The Study), watching fireworks explode over the full moon. I would call that serendipitous. Nine moons (blue and otherwise), holidays, and fireworks, all culminating on the last day of the year. Maybe 2009 wasn't so forgettable after all, and maybe there's a good omen hidden in that cold, white sphere, and it's string of visits.