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Crowson: Thanks, Moon.

nasa.gov

I hate to play the “age card” again (who am I kidding – I love playing the age card), but I am old enough to remember a time when the moon didn’t do tricks. 

That’s right. There was a time when we weren’t entertained by a “super moon.” Heck, there wasn’t even a “Spidey” moon or a “Bat” moon. For the most part, the moon used to be content to just go through its normal routine: a quarter moon, a half moon and a full moon. That was it. Sure, now and then there was a “Harvest Moon.” And we thought that was a pretty good treat.

Nowadays? Forget about it. The moon is entertaining us with all sorts of pyrotechnics. You’d think it was a stage prop for a rock concert, the way it cavorts about – inflating itself to gigantic sizes, lighting itself in weird, psychedelic ways, calling itself by all sorts of bizarre, non sequitur names. Even teasing us by playing peek-a-boo games that it claims are lunar eclipses.

I guess it was the recent Super-Blood-Wolf Blitzer-Hyper-Doppler-Cirque du Soleil-Very Stable Genius Moon that finally made me realize that something weird is going on. Our old calm and placid moon is a thing of the past. The question is, why? Why now?

I think I know. We all need a distraction. Our world of politics has gone, well, over the moon with its lunacy. All our normal outlets for entertainment distraction have joined in. Sports, movies, music, they’re all hyper-politicized these days. The moon knows this and is trying its best to provide us with some new wondrous entertainment that we can all look up to for a few moments of respite from the nastiness.

Thanks, moon. I just hope things down here improve before the sun starts getting into the act. Climate change is disastrous enough as it is.

Richard Crowson is not only a editorial commentator for KMUW. He's also a cartoonist, an artist and a banjo player.