'Romance de la luna, luna'

In honor of the lunar eclipse on the solstice, here is a poem about the moon by Federic García Lorca, "Romance de la luna, luna."

Camarón de la Isla sings, with Tomatito on the guitar:

La luna vino a la fragua
con su polisón de nardos.
El niño la mira mira.
El niño la está mirando.
En el aire conmovido
mueve la luna sus brazos
y enseña, lúbrica y pura,
sus senos de duro estaño.
Huye luna, luna, luna.
Si vinieran los gitanos,
harían con tu corazón
collares y anillos blancos.
Niño, déjame que baile.
Cuando vengan los gitanos,
te encontrarán sobre el yunque
con los ojillos cerrados.

Huye luna, luna, luna,
que ya siento sus caballos.
Níno, déjame, no pises
mi blancor almidonado.

El jinete se acercaba
tocando el tambor del llano
Dentro de la fragua el niño,
tiene los ojos cerrados.

Por el olivar venían,
bronce y sueño, los gitanos.
Las cabezas levantadas
y los ojos entornados.

¡Cómo canta la zumaya,
ay cómo canta en el árbol!
Por el cielo va la luna
con un niño de la mano.

Dentro de la fragua lloran,
dando gritos, los gitanos.
El aire la vela, vela.
El aire la está velando.

Sculpture Garden at the De Young museum 1/3

One of my favorite places to visit in San Franciso is a discreet installation in the sculpture garden of the De Young museum. To find it, you walk down a bamboo-lined path, then turn toward a structure set into the earth. It is called "Three Gems" and is one of the many Sky Space creations of James Turrell.


You enter an open-air pathway that curves around to the entrance into the chamber in the center.

The chamber entrance is arched, the room inside is domed, with a small round opening at the top.


Sunlight through the opening moves across the wall as the day goes by.

Look straight up; the clouds moving across the blue sky look like clouds on the moon.

I have just discovered that Turrell has a similar installation now at the Walker Art Center called "Sky Pesher!" People have made music in it, gotten married in it, made out in it....I will go see it today!

Venus, Jupiter and the Crescent Moon in conjunction tonight!

Thanks to the power of Twitter, (conjunction!) I learned about a rare astronomy event, the "Celestial Frownie Face" explained here at National Geographic: "Planets, Crescent Moon to "Frown" on Skywatchers Dec. 1" Yes, tonight! there will be a relatively rare "planetary convergence", meaning that, if the sky is clear, one will be able to see Jupiter, Venus, and the crescent moon with the naked eye, clustered together. This has nothing to do with their actual distance from each other but rather with what they look like from Earth.

Birdchick has actual photos of this event in the Minnesota sky. Thanks to her tweet, I ran out and was able to see it as well. Bob Collins has posted another photo at MPR's Newscut blog, but from Kenya. So amazing! I hope there are some more photos posted, maybe at NASA's site, Astronomy Picture of the Day.

But never mind the astronomy, what do the astrologists have to say about this important event?

Blue Moon

This Thursday, May 31, there will be a blue moon: a second full moon in a month. This sweet little video in honor of the blue moon uses a recording I love by Billie Holiday of the song "Blue Moon". I

luna lunera, cascabelera

The Moon passed in front of the sun today. This partial solar eclipse was photographed from South America. It wasn't a total eclipse; because the moon was far enough away from the earth that it could not completely block the sun, it looks as if the sun makes a ring around the moon, so it's called an annular eclipse. NASA's "Astronomy Picture of the Day" site has a wonderful photo of a similar event from last year. It's easy to search their archive.

Looking for images of moon goddesses, I came across this post on Moleskinerie with an image of Ixchel, Maya goddess of the moon. The post was actually about a fun site called the Godchecker! ("your guide to the gods"). You can search for gods or goddesses by topic or by pantheon.
Moleskinerie is a treasure trove; it also had a post that led me to the The New York Public Library's Digital Gallery . What a gorgeous collection of hundreds of thousands of images from their holdings, Here are some from a Japanese book called "100 Aspects of the Moon", woodblock prints by the artist Yoshitoshi. .