Are there "blue moons" in an Ojibwa calendar?
Photo by J. Harrington
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My morning wasn't quite a trip to Hell, but spending 25 minutes or so in an MRI machine, surrounded by pounding that sounded as if it could have been made by doomed souls trying to escape from the cells of Hell, brought my imagination into play to help me escape my immediate surroundings. I started thinking about Native American phenology and, in particular, what terms were used to name days of the week. I'm still looking for a satisfactory answer, but, in the process, I did finally find an Ojibwe reference to phenology. I also came across several names for September's moon "Waatebagaa giizis is the Leaves Changing Color Moon. Other names for new September moon are Mandaamini giizis (Corn Moon) and Moozo giizis (Moose Moon)." Spot checking several web sites on Ojibwe culture only turned up the single name "Falling Leaves Moon" for October. I'm slowly learning to use Ojibwe or Lakota instead of Native American in Google searches for indigenous cultural information relevant to Minnesota. Since we manage to keep track of several different time zones across the country, I think we might benefit a lot if we could and would superimpose Ojibwe or Lakota or whatever the appropriate cultural moon names and periods would be for where you live on top of our own Gregorian calendar. Is there an app for that?
Zen Living
By Dick Allen
Birdsongs that sound like the steady determined tappingof a shoemaker's hammer,or of a sculptor making tiny ball-peen dents in a silver plate,wake me this morning. Is it possible the world itself can be happy? The calico catstretches her long body out across the top of my computer monitor,yawning, its little primitive head a cave of possibility.And I'm ready againto try and see accidents, the over and over patternsof double-slit experiments a billionfoldrepeated before me. If I had great patience,I could try to count the poplar, birch and oakleaves in their shifting welter outside my bedroom windowor the almost infinitesimal trails of thought that flash and flasheverywhere, as if decaying particles inside a bubble chamber,windshield raindrops, lake ripples. However,instead I go to fry some bacon, crack two eggsinto the cast-iron skillet that's even older than this house,and on the calendar (each month another oriental fanwhere the climbing solitary is dwarfed . . . or on dark blue oceansminuscular fishing boats bob beneath gigantic waves)X out the days, including those I've forgotten.
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