Letters to the Moon....

I recently took an online class called “Innovative Thinking.” One lesson in the class examined what it means to be innovative in ones thinking, and how to think innovatively. The class listed several techniques to bring about innovative thinking: Dance as if no one was watching. Play like a child. Experiment. Challenge. Do. Learn. Study. Create. Accept failure. Try new things. Take a different route home from school or work. Go see a movie that you would not normally see. Listen to music that you would not normally listen to. Try to see things from another person’s perspective. Start a dialogue with someone different than yourself. In your dialogue, talk about uncomfortable things.  Learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Dialogue is something I had not thought of as being a tool to thinking innovatively. However, in the current state of things, the onslaught of “fake news” into social media and news outlets, dialogue is just what the w...

Tomorrow night’s full moon is a rare event-it is a blue moon. What is the definition of a blue moon? When a month has two full moons within the same month, the second full moon is called a blue moon. Blue moons are not at all common; the last blue moon occurred in July of 2015. This brings to mind a popular phrase in the English language: “once in a blue moon.” This phrase is used to describe something happens infrequently, not a regular occurrence. Besides the rarity of experiencing a blue moon this month, tomorrow night’s full moon will be a supermoon.  A supermoon or “super moon” is when the moon is the closest to the moon in its orbit. As such the moon appears larger and brighter in the nighttime sky.  https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/BAQb9XwhXnH16WH8GBFIdIRB_5o=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9789047/29_supermoon_size_1280.jpg Tomorrow night’s supermoon completes lunar trilogy -the full moons on December 3, 2017 and Jan...

Another year has come and gone. I had a wonderful Christmas season. I put up my Christmas tree a few days after Halloween, which, believe it or not, is late for me. I have relished in the soft colored Christmas lights on my own tree as well as in light displays near my home. I also marked the holiday season by indulging in my favorite winter treat-hot chocolate. It doesn’t get any better than that. For the Christmas holiday, I took a trip to the East Coast to visit the members of my family that live there. For the family members that weren’t able to attend, we reached out by phone and text. While I had a wonderful Christmas season, it was the high point of the year. So many horrible things happened last year, all around the world. It feels good to stand in the New Year, to have moved on from 2017. Still, I feel it only right to look back on the year, to think about all that happened in the year, to contemplate the lessons I have learned. Here then are the lessons from 2017…....

Around this time of year every year a magical thing happens: the Pantone Color Institute picks a new color for the upcoming year. This choice of color will be seen throughout the world in fashion, home décor, Christmas decorations, cosmetics, jewelry and more. If you have never heard of the Pantone Color Institute, they are all about color. If you have ever seen a color wheel or color chart, chances are it was made by Pantone. http://www.pantone.com/images/products/GG6103N-pantone-graphics-pms-srgb-cmyk-hex-color-bridge-coated-product-2.jpg Every color on the Pantone chart has a number and name. https://images.sampletemplates.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/pantone-colors.jpg The color for 2017 was Greenery, which has been likened to a famous amphibian... https://style.disney.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/43e9156bbe4b11e683ae8bc8f7a150ce.jpg This morning the Pantone Color Institute announced the color for the year of 2018. Drumroll please, the Pantone ...

To continue the “Moons of the Year” series, I now present the final installment, “The Cold Moon.” The name of the full moon for the month of December is the Cold Moon. For those of us who live in the northern part of the United States, the reason for the name is abundantly obvious. December is the first of the winter months, which can be one of the coldest of the season.  Another name for the December moon is the “Long Nights Moon.” The days are shorter, the nights are longer, and light is sparse. Early Christian settlers to the shores of America called this moon “The Moon Before Yule”, or the Christmas holiday. This last full moon of the year does have greater significance in that it will be a Super Moon, the closest one the entire year. What is a Super Moon? It is when the moon appears larger in the nighttime sky.  The website Space.com goes into greater detail on the phenomenon: “Supermoons happen when a full moon approximately coincides with the moon's p...