9  bar steep fall 30.12  ENE9  windchill 9   Winter

Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

Friend and cyberwizard Bill Schimdt reminded me of a wonderful show the sky put on tonight to celebrate the New Year.  The moon with Venus in its arms.  This is the waxing Wolf Moon, a sliver facing up toward the east with Venus just above and centered over it.  The moon has an immediate tug on my memories, often creating a flood tide of associations from Islam to nursery rhymes to Neil Armstrong and Jules Verne.  It also fires my love of the night, creating a light in the darkness, a light that does not cause the darkness to flee, but makes it more accessible.  And they say lunacy is a bad thing.

This new year’s I plan to celebrate in dreamland.  My new habit of a 10:30 bedtime is too fragile to wreck watching Dick Clark’s face-lift as the ball descends in Time Square.  Windy and -1 there.  Ouch.

The new year comes this time with genuine opportunity for change, change that matters.  I plan to be part of it and hope you do, too.

Sometimes I refer to our property as 7 oaks.  This is a photograph of those seven oaks, white and red.  They grow on a small hill, visible from where I write. They are a grove, a fine companion in all seasons.

-30-  until 2009