{"id":2178,"date":"2026-05-29T17:56:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T17:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/?p=2178"},"modified":"2026-05-29T17:56:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T17:56:35","slug":"feeling-blewe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/feeling-blewe\/","title":{"rendered":"Feeling Blewe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The latest headlines got you feeling blue? Well, I\u2019ve got a very small bit of good news. It\u2019s astronomical, political, etymological and cultural. Ready?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may recall from a previous post <\/a>the tortured history of what today we call a \u201cBlue Moon,\u201d and it involves at least two definitions of that phrase. The first is the middle English word \u201cblewe\u201d, which is pronounced like \u201cblue\u201d and means \u201cbetrayer.\u201d Evidence of it comes from a medieval pamphlet written by two English friars attacking the Catholic church and the pope\u2019s oversight of the calendar, in which they wrote, \u201c\u201cYf they say the mone is blewe, we must believe that it is true.\u201d Specifically, in the Roman calendar, whenever a quarter contains 4 full moons, the 3rd<\/sup> of them is considered the oddball, the betrayer, the \u201cblewe\u201d one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This definition survived into the 20th<\/sup> century. But then, an article in Sky and Telescope magazine incorrectly explained that a Blue Moon was any second full moon in any given month<\/em>. This definition made its way into the first printing of Trivial Pursuit, and was so widely disseminated that it became today’s standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But before that happened, an island in Indonesia erupted. In 1883, a volcano called Krakatoa spewed so much volcanic ash into the atmosphere that for over a year the full moon appeared around the world in all sorts of funky unnatural colors. Some folks believe this event was so shocking that it is the source of the modern phrase \u201cBlue Moon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Skip to 1934, when songwriters Rodgers and Hart released \u201cBlue Moon,\u201d a song so powerful that it erupted on the pop charts as the #1 tune of that year, was a hit twice more in 1949, and topped the doo-wop charts as late as 1961. It\u2019s been recorded by everyone from Sinatra to Rod Stewart, Dino to Dylan. It\u2019s become such a standard that regardless of whether the title means \u201cBetrayer\u201d or \u201cFunky Color\u201d, today a “Blue Moon” is synonymous with a moment of complete melancholia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is unfortunate, considering that this Sunday, May 31, at 4:45 AM Eastern, we\u2019ll have the second full moon of the month. You may wake up feeling a little Blue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here\u2019s the good news. When the Moon orbits the Earth, it doesn\u2019t go around in a circle. It travels in an ellipse, which brings it as close to us as 363 thousand kilometers away (that\u2019s called the \u201cPerigee\u201d), and as far away from us as 405 thousand kilometers (the \u201cApogee\u201d). That\u2019s a large distance, and that makes a big difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A full moon at Perigee can appear much larger and brighter than on average, so much so that we call that a Supermoon. And a full moon at Apogee is the opposite, it can appear about 15% smaller, and almost 30% dimmer, than a Supermoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This weekend there will be a Blue Moon. Bummer. But the good news is that it will occur with the moon very far away, at its Apogee. Which means your melancholy moment will be minimized. You may be standing alone, without a dream in your heart, without a love of your own. But at least you will be standing under what astronomers call… <\/p>\n\n\n\n

…a Micromoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest headlines got you feeling blue? Well, I\u2019ve got a very small bit of good news. It\u2019s astronomical, political, etymological and cultural. Ready? You may recall from a previous post the tortured history of what today we call a \u201cBlue Moon,\u201d and it involves at least two definitions of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Blue_Moon-580x386.jpg?fit=580%2C386&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2179,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178\/revisions\/2179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}