ADVANCING AMERICAN INDIAN ART
In North America, February holds the distinction of being the only month in 2018 without a full moon. Given a lunar cycle which takes 29.53 days combined with a peculiarity of the Gregorian calendar, the month of February with only 28 days (or 29 in leap years) will sometimes miss the opportunity to experience a full moon. There will be a moon in the sky in February and it may appear full near month-end, but the moon will not be fullest until the evening of March 1st. With no full moon in February, the months of January and March will each experience two full moons. The second full moon within the same month is commonly referred to as a “Blue Moon”. This occurrence is thought to be unusual; hence the phrase “once in a blue moon” to refer to something rare. Yet, according to the 2018 Farmers’ Almanac, the opportunity for two full moons to occur within the same month happens every 3.5 years. Curiously, no colloquial term has been coined to describe this lack of a full moon in February, a rarer experience by far (the last one happened in 1999; the next one in 2037). So, to put a little more moon into this month, here are four selections from the library collection that share the moon through history, legends, poems, paintings and other art forms. These examples from a variety of American Indian communities are currently on display in the public reading area of the library. Please feel free to visit the library to review these or any other items of interest in the Library and Archives collections. For more details or additional collection information, click on the Search Catalog link located in the pull-down menu of the library tab on the Heard website.
Calla, Susan
Passing the moon through 13 baskets : a guide to the natural year & Native American celebrations on the wild Redwood Coast
Crescent City, Calif. : Redwood Economic Development Institute ; [Oakland, Calif] : Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment, c2005
Heard call number E78.C15 C3 2005
Gansworth, Eric L.
Nickel eclipse : Iroquois moon : poems and paintings
East Lansing : Michigan State University Press, c2000
Heard call number PS3557.A5196 N54 2000
Gwynne, S. C.
Empire of the summer moon : Quanah Parker and the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history
New York : Scribner, [2011]
Heard call number E99.C85 P3835 2011
Simms, Laura
Moon and Otter and Frog
New York : Hyperion Books for Children, 1995
Heard call number E99.M7 S46 1995
Moon and Otter and Frog by Laura Simms with illustrations by Clifford Brycelea
