A friend of mine wrote this to his local newspaper.
"Yesterday I watched the rise of the super-moon from the heart of “Dumfukland”, which is a pejorative meme that depicts a map of the US with either red states or blue states. The blue states are called “America”, and the red states, well, you know. I watched the moon come up over the Superstition Mountains from a vantage point high on Spook Hill, which is in the NE corner of Mesa, AZ.
The last time the moon was this close to Earth was on January 26, 1948. Harry Truman had been President since 1945, and in 1948 he defeated Thomas Dewey in the Electoral vote 303-189. It was an eventful year: Gandhi was assassinated a few days after the super-moon, the Communists seized power in Czechoslovakia in February, the nation of Israel was proclaimed, and Truman ended racial segregation in the US military. In the World Series, Cleveland beat Boston 4-2, and in the Stanley Cup, Toronto crushed Detroit 4-0. The post-war US federal debt was $252 billion, about 2% of what it is today.
We brought snacks and lawn chairs and climbed the hill around 5:30 PM. When we got to the top there was already a crowd of between 50 and 75 people – everyone from babies to seniors like us. The mood was anticipatory and festive. As the sun set and the city lights came on, you could see a faint glow on the NE horizon, just north of the Superstition range. A collective drawn breath was audible. Somebody had brought a boom-box and started playing the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey as the moon rose. A family beside us set up a telescope on a table and was gladly letting others have a peek. I heard a father patiently explaining to some young girls how the moon orbited the earth and why one side was always dark to us. After his impromptu lecture on cosmic physics, one kid ran off to exclaim to his friends “did you know the stars are big balls of flaming gas?”
People apologized to us if they thought they had stepped into our picture frame, or if their dog came close to us. The ones with flashlights helped show the path for those without. They were so polite, you would almost think they were Canadians. I don’t know how many people were Democrats or Republicans (likely the same proportion as the AZ vote), but there was definitely a sense of community spirit up there. When we walked down the hill a few hours later, I felt like something special had occurred. I sure didn’t feel like I was smack dab in the middle of Dumfukland."
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