wordsfromanneli

Thoughts, ideas, photos, and stories.

Tag Archives: moon


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Shapes

The crescent moon hovered over the hills across the bay last night.

 

The moon was only partially visible last night because of the angle of the sun shining on it, as seen from our perspective. I originally had the information wrong, about why we only see part of the moon, and Thomas kindly corrected it. Please see his comment below and the link to a well-illustrated diagram.

Anyway, I began to think of geometric shapes and their occurrences and practical applications.

First the circle, the general shape of our planets and their moons. Round, like apple pie, chocolate cookies, and coins….

Then the partial circle, such as the crescent. I’ll come back to that.

The lumpy rest of the moon when it’s not quite full is not such an interesting shape, but maybe it has a special name. I’m not sure.

Then we have ovals, squares, rectangles (and their many variations), and triangles.

Ovals, so named because of the shape of eggs, I suppose.

Squares? Very useful for so many things; the town market place for one. Almond squares for a treat with coffee.

Rectangles. Squares that are adjusted to fit if the sides are not equal all the way around, only those across from each other. Placemats.

Triangles. For Napoleon’s hat, and in the old days, the class dunce hat  (really cruel custom)!

But somehow, I am most impressed by the crescent shape of the moon.

Crescent, or croissant, is one of my favourite shapes, especially when it comes in the form of a shrimp croissant with a cup of Wicked Thai Soup at my local lunch place.

Do you have a favourite crescent shape?

 

 


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The Man in the Moon

When we see the shadows on the moon, we are probably looking at craters, or so we’ve been told.

Sometimes when we look, we see eyes and a mouth that looks like a big O! Last night I couldn’t see the big O but I thought I saw eyes and a nose. Maybe he was wearing a Covid mask. Moments later the man in the moon was gone. But who was that masked man?

Well, we know he arrived in the spaceship Apollo 11.

I tried to make the face a likeness of Neil Armstrong, but I’m not much of an artist.

But sometimes, when I look at the moon, I see “el conejo en la luna,” the rabbit in the moon. Aztec legends tell several versions of the story of their god, Quetzalcoatl, who was responsible for the rabbit ending up in the moon.

In one version Quetzalcoatl is still a man on Earth. He is tired and hungry from wandering and a rabbit offers himself up as food for him. Quetzalcoatl lifts him up to the moon and then brings him down again, thanking the rabbit for his noble offer and saying that for this generosity his shadow will be displayed on the moon forever to remind people of the rabbit’s goodness.

(We don’t know if he ate the rabbit.)

 


My apologies to all the bunnies out there for the lumpy, bumpy image I’ve posted. I’m sure the earthly rabbits look much better than el conejo en la luna.