It's only a Paper Moon...

So, the moon. My favorite object in the sky. And October. My favorite month. As a child I told my parents stories about how I was really from the moon, and I went there every night when they thought I was sleeping, and I had a moon-mother who was a cow. As an adult, I fell in love with the month of October. I think I can credit Will for most of the falling. He did, after all, introduce me to A Night In The Lonesome October, and show me an enthusiasm for Hallowe'en that I've only seen briefly before and generally in small children who love candy.

An October Full Moon is called many things. A Blood Moon. A Hunter's Moon. A Harvest Moon. Called so because hunters and farmers have more light to finish preparing for winter.

A Lunar Eclipse is also known as a Red Moon. Called so because the earth casts a reddish shadow on the moon. Well...it's more complicated than that.

I took this picture last night, when the moon was (unbeknownst to me) already in earth's shadow, but the eclipse not fully eclipse-y yet (as always, the thumbnail is a link to a larger version of the picture):

The quality is pretty awful as I took it with a digital camera and I refuse to read the instructional booklet and I only know how to take pictures at night with a 35mm camera, damn it, so I had to lighten it up in Photoshop which distorted the beauty of the moment a little. But it gives you a nice idea, anyway.

Through the course of the evening we watched as the moon's surface began to appear duller and duller, then develop an orange sheen. There were fast-moving fluffy clouds which obscured our view off and on.

It wasn't until the moon began moving out of our shadow that the eclipse was fully visible. The moon looked...backwards. And beautiful. I did not get a picture, and am certain it wouldn't have come out if I did.

Whenever the clouds moved in front of the moon, it cast a reddish circle onto them. It glowed.

If anyone is currently shooting, say, a low-budget horror movie, and did not get good shots of the moon last night, I hope you know what a failure you are. Wait! That was mean. I'm just sorry for you, because special effects don't do that.

Speaking of special effects, Jenn came over yesterday. She brought pumpkins and we watched The Empire Strikes Back. Conclusions reached: Yoda was better as a puppet; Annika's favorite shot in the entire trilogy is still Lando bringing the Millennium Falcon around to rescue Luke.

She made these while she was here:

 

Obviously, the movie was thematic. And yes, they are Jack-O-Lanterns. We had some really amazing patterns, some from a book and some from this site. The first one is of a zombie, and not Star Wars-related at all. I am terribly impressed, though, as it appears to be a Haitian zombie, rather than a Romero zombie.

By the way, here is Will's Hallowe'en costume from the party we attended last week:


Be sure to click this one for full size.

And his secondary prop (filled with bourbon, of course):

It reads:

SECRET RECIPE
Chicken
11 Herbs and spices