our new year, new decade, new era, was started on the note of natural anomaly that some interpret as relating to absurdities and impossibilities. are we finally entering ‘the future’? i hope so.

a blue moon is a full moon that is not timed to the regular monthly pattern. most years have twelve full moons which occur approximately monthly, but in addition to those twelve full lunar cycles, each solar calendar year contains an excess of roughly eleven days compared to the lunar year. the extra days accumulate, so that every two or three years (7 times in the 19-year metonic cycle), there is an extra full moon, called a “blue moon.”

the earliest recorded english usage of the term “blue moon” was in a 1528 pamphlet violently attacking the english clergy, entitled “Rede Me and Be Not Wrothe” (read me and be not angry): “Yf they say the mone is belewe / We must believe that it is true” (if they say the moon is blue, we must believe that it is true). by kl