The old moon is up, a lovely large
crescent still low enough on the eastern horizon that I can see it through the
naked tree limbs. I am washing dishes
now that I am reenergized from an after dinner nap, and my kitchen window faces slightly east of south.
Tonight the lawsuit against teenagers for cyberbullying was up
first on my attention grabbing Yahoo homepage, offering an inspiring example of moon meeting Saturn in Scorpio. The planet associated with responsibility and
consequences has been in the sign of secrets since Oct 2012. By Dec 2014 it will have shed lots of
outgrown skin and be ready for the next step in its 28 year cycle, the Sagittarian
search for ….something. What is the seed
looking for when it travels on the wind?
A better life? Or just a
different one? A fresh start? Anyway, Saturn will still be in Scorpio for
10 more months, so there will be 10 more moments like this where the moon comes
through and brings the protective gravity of nurturing parents into karma’s treatment
of secrets.
I spotted Mercury tonight at
least 20 minutes after sunset. It has
taken me over two years to catch that little bugger at sunset. Earth Sky News had a headline about it being
visible a few days ago so I went out tonight expecting another failure, but
there it was, actually rather high on the western horizon, twinkling faintly
above the lights of South Saunders Street.
Now that I have gotten
familiar with the movements of our neighbors in the solar system I am venturing
a bit further…I studied the maps of our sun in the Orion Spur- and now imagine
us on winter nights not just at the bottom of our daily cycle of revolution,
but also facing away from the center of our galaxy as I look at the sword in
Orion’s belt and recall the pictures of the Horsehead Nebula. It has been a long road from elementary
school wondering how people could possibly see hunters and crabs in the
patterns of the stars to now feeling like I could go back in time and actually
have intelligent questions to ask ancient astronomers about how they perceive the universe.
In my internet surfing this
week I landed for the second time on a wikipedia article ‘The Myth of the Flat Earth’; the article refers to Washington Irving’s ‘A History of the Life and
Voyages Christopher Columbus’ and Thomas Jefferson’s ‘Notes on the State of
Virgina’ as two recent promulgators of the myth. Washington Irving was the author of the
popular ‘Tales of the Alhambra’, ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ and ‘Rip Van Winkle’.
