Our Moon

Our Becky wrote a book. It came out yesterday. It’s beautiful. And I got to talk with her about it. * Cameron: Could you tell the story about how this book came to be? Becky: When I started working on this proposal, I imagined it as a sort of appreciation—here’s how cool the Moon is, […]

Rejoice, For Mars Retrograde Is Finally Almost Over

The other day at brunch, as two of my friends and I were commiserating about things varied and universal, we agreed about the sluggish pace of our brains. What an injustice, I ventured, that our sluggishness is so out of sync with the blistering pace of this summer and of 2018. “Someone was telling me […]

To My Companion Who Has Faithfully Returned

Curve of silver, Scythe becoming, Calends pass as you appear Bowing toward Venus. The evening star gleams just beyond your embrace, And you curtsy to it, reaching Like a dancer, arms outstretched and back bent, arching While Jupiter, behind, tries to catch you And in a few nights, will succeed.   Twilight sky full of […]

Powerless And Fully Dark

The hail was the first thing to wake me up. First a light patter, like pennies falling off the counter and onto the floor, but then it got worse. Thunk. It sounded like someone had thrown a rock at my window. For a second I thought it might shatter, spilling wind and rain into my […]

We Did Not Go Back to the Moon, Because It Is Hard

Saturday, March 31, was kind of a big day for the moon. It was full for the second time this month, making it a blue moon — the second of 2018. It was also the first full moon after the spring equinox, what’s known as the Paschal moon. The first Sunday after such a moon […]

Redux: The Mystery of the Ill-Timed Tides

Two years ago this winter, I was trying to figure out why the high tide seems to usually fall on winter mornings where I live, and the low tide on winter evenings. I promised that if I solved this mystery, I’d post an animation about how it worked. But while reader Stephan Zielinski provided plenty […]

The Mystery of the Ill-Timed Tides

This weekend the moon pulled back the curtains on the beach, revealing plenty of sand in the evening hours. I love the beach in the winter, particularly near dusk. The sand seems to go on for miles; when there’s a full moon, it rises from behind the mountains, which are still rosy from alpenglow. I […]

Tonight: Blood Moon

UPDATE:   I woke up, looked at the clock, then looked out the window at the moon — no eclipse.  “They must have gotten it wrong,” I thought.  I looked at the clock again, saw I had misread it, and realized with a little shock of joy, they never get this wrong.  Other phenomena of nature […]