John, I believe lunatics haven't yet had their best day of this millennium. -g-
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The Millennium's Last Full Moon
Will Be Big, Bright and up Close
By DANIEL GOLDEN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Forget Y2K. Stephen Shusterman is worried about the super moon.
Every 29 days, the pediatric dentist says, his Needham, Mass., practice turns a trifle lunatic. Docile children bawl when he tries to fill cavities. Parents complain about waiting-room delays or the price of braces. And Dr. Shusterman and his hygienist nod knowingly at each other: Crankiness, he says, always ratchets up with the coming of the full moon.
Next Wednesday, because of celestial coincidences that haven't occurred in 133 years, the last full moon of the millennium will be unusually large and bright -- so bright that, weather permitting, night motorists may not need headlights. If stargazers, pagans and lovers are mooning over the prospect, Dr. Shusterman isn't.
"Maybe I'll call in sick," he says.
Strange Happenings
The full moon has long been said to influence human and animal behavior. In ancient lore, it was associated with sexual potency, epileptic seizures, sleepwalking and werewolves. Police today say that the incidence of murders, suicides and assaults rises with the full moon; hospitals have observed more births and emergency-room visits.
Where proof of such happenings is lacking -- and the data are mixed -- belief persists. On Wednesday afternoon at 4, Eastern time, the moon will reach perigee -- its nearest point of the year to Earth -- making it appear 14% larger than it did on Dec. 8, at its apogee, when it was farthest away (the distance between one and the other being about 30,000 miles). So says Brian Marsden, associate director for planetary sciences at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, Mass. Less than nine hours later, at 10:32 p.m., the moon will be full.
That isn't all. Since the Wednesday moon will also be about as close to the sun as it ever gets (about 91 million miles), sunlight reflected by the moon will be about 7% stronger than in summer. Finally, this coming Wednesday will be the winter solstice -- the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn.
Long, Long Ago
This confluence of events is unusual. Scholars say that the last time a full moon, perigee and solstice overlapped within 24 hours was on Dec. 20 and 21, 1866 -- during what the Lakota Sioux tribe, who base their calendar on the lunar cycle, call the "moon when the deer shed their horns." The solstice and moon celebrations are said to have inspired legendary Sioux warrior Crazy Horse to ambush and kill 80 U.S. soldiers led by Capt. William Fetterman.
"There's lots of Lakota stories that say the moon was a factor" in the noon massacre, says Donovin Sprague, a descendant of Crazy Horse and professor in American Indian Studies at Black Hills State University, in Spearfish, S.D. "The solstices are always important for us."
But that night, when Crazy Horse attacked Fort Phil Kearney, his enemies had the lunar advantage. "Portuguese" Phillips, a Wyoming Paul Revere, sneaked out of the fort and rode by moonlight to Cheyenne for help, according to Mr. Sprague.
Mr. Sprague believes this year's super moon will foster healing, not war. But astrologer Gloria Star, of Clinton, Conn., expects hostilities to heat up Wednesday in Chechnya. "The Russians may very well destroy a lot of property," she says.
So may opossums, according to Mike Rutherford, a police captain in Charleston, W. Va. During full moons, the 27-year veteran of law enforcement says, complaints about animals pick up, along with domestic assaults, drunkenness and car wrecks. "We'll have possums and rats and cattle, all kinds of stuff out roaming," he says. "Sometimes, we'll get possums in people's houses. They'll come up through the commode."
Most scientists say these reports from the front are just so much moonshine. Sure, the moon controls tides and affects weather. A full moon slightly raises the temperature and lowers barometric pressure -- increasing the chance of storms. But most seem to doubt that it alters behavior.
Even Arnold Lieber has recanted. The Florida psychiatrist, who wrote a 1978 book linking the full moon over Miami to higher Dade County murder rates, concedes that later research failed to corroborate his finding. "I actually don't follow what the moon is doing," he says.
According to Mr. Marsden, most astronomers won't be following the super moon, either. He says they find it more rewarding to study the moon in a different phase. Last Nov. 18, for example, flashes of light against the dark side were interpreted as the first evidence that the Leonid meteor shower hit the moon.
Whatever its significance, the super moon won't lack for worshipers. Silver Raven Wolf, a Pennsylvania author and witch, celebrates the winter solstice instead of Christmas anyway. She and her fellows this year plan to combine their usual solstice festivities with full-moon rituals, including a healing ceremony in which they hold candles up toward the moon and then present them to the sick.
"In my mind, the full moon represents the female divine," she says. "We often do healing work on the full moon, and it turns out successful."
Brian Tompkins, a Vermont sculptor and stonemason, will be practicing the same ritual that he has followed every full moon for the past seven years -- sweating with his friends in a hot sauna. They play drums, sing and enjoy "preverbal states," says Mr. Tompkins, also an adviser to undergraduates at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H. Asked whether he will vary his routine Wednesday, he jokes, "Maybe we'll drive to and from without our headlights."
Bob Thompson, president of the Popular Culture Association, says he'll read poetry by moonlight in his Syracuse, N.Y., backyard. "We've annihilated the rhythms of nature entirely through technology and lighting," he says. "The moon is the one thing that is always in our face. Even in modern industrial culture, you simply can't get away from it. And the full moon has a particular glamour." He says it may be "the most basic aesthetic performance, primal play and theatrical event that happens anywhere."
James Marzilli plans to scan the super moon through his binoculars from a meadow in Lexington, Mass. A "Sputnik baby" born the year after the Russian satellite was launched in 1957, Mr. Marzilli once dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Today, he is a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he has sought to safeguard his star-gazing hobby by filing "dark sky" legislation to require nonglare outdoor lighting.
Next week, when the super moon hits your eye like a really big pizza pie, who knows what might happen. Kelley McCormick, a Washington, D.C., public-relations woman and her husband, Brian, who were married Oct. 30, have some idea. On Wednesday evening, the moonstruck newlyweds will take their motorboat onto Chesapeake Bay with their boxer pup, Lulu, open a bottle of champagne they got as a wedding gift, and look up at the sky. They plan to spend the night on the boat.
"We'll make the most of it," Mrs. McCormick says.
Write to Daniel Golden at dan.golden@wsj.com |
