The moon is wanning now.  In its fullness it was called the dark moon as the night has taken over all our lives at the moment.  It, itself, was far from dark and in its last moments of fullness it displayed a spectacular optical phenomenon in the form of a moon halo.

My compact camera really does not do it justice.  RJCobain does a much better job with the same moon on the same night. Orion can be seen in the bottom right corner of the picture.  It was said long ago that the moon halo was a sign of rain and that if you count the stars inside the halo that will tell you the days of rain to come.  It was also said that if you rub half a potato on a wort and then bury the potato, the wort will go away.  On a similar note, although not an old story, a friend of mine once had a headache.  He sat for the evening with a cat on his head and his headache went away.  Clearly cats on heads cure headaches.

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