Full Moon

Last night the moon was full. Now it will be slowly waning down to the new moon that will come on June 25th, four days after the summer solstice on June 21st. This moon, pictured above as taken from my back deck, is a strawberry moon, according the traditional farmer's almanac.

Now, after spending the better part of an hour reading about lunar cycles, solar calendars, and the mythologies and folklore around each, I found some not-so-interesting information: "some people" believe that all the connections between crazy events and full moons are nonsense. (See the Skeptic's Dictionary). Okay, so I am usually a skeptic, but this one I have to disagree with.

C and I took a short road trip on Saturday and Sunday. We drove four hours each way, mostly on interstate highways. We saw three MAJOR wrecks (several ambulances, destroyed vehicles, and traffic backed up for miles and miles), and we actually witnessed one of the three: a Jeep Cherokee flipping five or six times before it came to rest right-side-up in the grass (no other car was involved that we could see). While this seemed unusual for such a short trip, I did not think anything about the moon during the trip itself.

But as I stepped out onto the deck last night, and I saw that moon, I thought back to all of my years of waiting tables. I believe those writers at the Skeptic's Dictionary need to do some restaurant work, because it would change their minds. I can't count the number of times that the place would be crazy (everything from burnt food to dropped glasses, from customer's irrationality to servers crying in the bathroom) and I would find myself wondering what in the world was going on; then someone would say, "Oh, it's a full moon." The general consensus was life was more crazy during a full moon.

If there is not statistical evidence to support the correlation between human insanity or stupidity and the full moon, I find myself wondering about the reliability of such evidence. People go crazy when the moon is full.

Anyone have anything crazy happy yesterday?