Blues and the moon

I’ve blogged twice before about the colour blue. I do like blue as a colour, but it depends on the shade of course. With one previous entry I’ve also blogged these blue songs in this entry, Afrikaans and English. I haven’t upgraded my blog as yet, I’m not sure if I still want to stick with WordPress as there are lots of blogging-issues with WP which one doesn’t have with Blogger and I consider moving back to my old Blogger-blog! About two months ago I’ve bought the music of Nanci Griffith – her CD called From a Distance and there’s a track on this album called Once in a very blue moon, which I wanted to upload, but due to upgrading-issues…I can’t do so now, so jump on to Amazon’s site and do take a listen to it. I hope your New Year isn’t too blue! Enjoy this blue poem…I think you’ve noticed Samuel Bak’s art – again –  in this collage-image – or is it more Surreal-art – as my chess-friend Dan calls it.

Blue Winter by Robert Francis

Winter uses all the blues there are.
One shade of blue for water, one for ice,
Another blue for shadows over snow.
The clear or cloudy sky uses blue twice-
Both different blues. And hills row after row
Are colored blue according to how for.
You know the bluejay’s double-blur device
Shows best when there are no green leaves to show.
And Sirius is a winterbluegreen star.

Soms …
voel ek blou
en ek gee voor
om nie raak te sien
die gevoelens in jou oë
ek ignoreer jou
vergrote pupille en jou
stem se sagte toon

of verbeel ek my
dat ek dit ignoreer
probeer ek die verlede
net dalk maar… begrawe
dit sou nie die eerste keer
wees…
‘n siklus van ebb en vloed

‘n lang tyd het verby
gegaan sedert
ek jou naam weer neergeskryf het
ek sal geduldig wag
totdat die aarde oopskeur
31/12/2009

This first track is the same as the second, I was a bit silly with Audacity… Also, the first four tracks are only tasters, but Juanita’s track is full length. I recently blogged about Bloubergstrand which links, of course, also to the colour blue!

Blou….by Laurika Rauch

Neil Diamond’s song…

Vicky Leandros…

Juanita du Plessis…

Image: Nasa Science 2009
This next article is of Nasa. I blogged the 1st  July 2007 about Blue Moons and this link is to be found in my blog-entry of 2007 where Nasa tells us about the Blue Moons.

Dec. 29, 2009: Party planners take note. For the first time in almost twenty years, there’s going to be a Blue Moon on New Year’s Eve.

“I remember the last time this happened,” says professor Philip Hiscock of the Dept. of Folklore at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. “December 1990 ended with a Blue Moon, and many New Year’s Eve parties were themed by the event. It was a lot of fun.”

Don’t expect the Moon to actually turn blue, though. “The ‘Blue Moon’ is a creature of folklore,” he explains. “It’s the second full Moon in a calendar month.”

Top image: The full moon of Dec. 2, 2009, over Turan, Italy. Photographer Stefano De Rosa notes that the blue colors are cast by Christmas lights surrounding the pictured church.

Most months have only one full Moon. The 29.5-day cadence of the lunar cycle matches up almost perfectly with the 28- to 31-day length of calendar months. Indeed, the word “month” comes from “Moon.” Occasionally, however, the one-to-one correspondence breaks down when two full Moons squeeze into a single month. Dec. 2009 is such a month. The first full Moon appeared on Dec. 2nd; the second, a “Blue Moon,” will come on Dec. 31st.

This definition of Blue Moon is relatively new.

If you told a person in Shakespeare’s day that something happens “once in a Blue Moon” they would attach no astronomical meaning to the statement. Blue moon simply meant rare or absurd, like making a date for the Twelfth of Never. “But meaning is a slippery substance,” says Hiscock. “The phrase ‘Blue Moon’ has been around for more than 400 years, and during that time its meaning has shifted.”

The modern definition sprang up in the 1940s. In those days, the Farmer’s Almanac of Maine offered a definition of Blue Moon so convoluted that even professional astronomers struggled to understand it. It involved factors such as the ecclesiastical dates of Easter and Lent, and the timing of seasons according to the dynamical mean sun. Aiming to explain blue moons to the layman, Sky & Telescope published an article in 1946 entitled “Once in a Blue Moon.” The author James Hugh Pruett cited the 1937 Maine almanac and opined that the “second [full moon] in a month, so I interpret it, is called Blue Moon.”
 
That was not correct, but at least it could be understood. And thus the modern Blue Moon was born.

Blue moon has other connotations, too. In music, it’s often a symbol of melancholy. According to one Elvis tune, it means “without a love of my own.” On the bright side, he croons in another song, a simple kiss can turn a Blue Moon pure gold.

Source Nasa Science. The link will open in a new window.

Here are a few pics I’ve taken from the blue moon of 31/12/09.