Winter Solstice Eclipse

According to astronomers, the eclipse of the moon this week on December 21 (the shortest day of the year) hasn't happened since December 21, 1638... 372 years ago.

Being an astronomy nut, I went out late Monday night and stayed up to see the cloud-veiled moon as it passed through Earth's shadow.

Being a history nut, I mused about the lunar eclipse of December 1638 and how an observer standing on the seashore in Boston or Plymouth at about 8 o'clock at night possibly saw that eclipse of the moon. My forefathers who lived there at the time may have seen it.

The Real Black Friday

It's Report Card Time. (sound cue: electric organ plays dramatic music)

Ranks upon ranks of papers converge upon me, threatening me with choices--A or B? Take off half credit for an incomplete answer? Who didn't put their name on their paper? Where is the missing assignment? Did you really grade this fairly? Like a vast army they lay siege to my weekend... however, I just manage to push off the ladders of deadlines and destroy the catapults of teacher guilt with my secret weapon: repentance & finding my contentment in Christ--not my circumstances. The papers fall down, identified and sorted and sent home with the appropriate markings. The army has been defeated; although it will return twice more this year at the end of each trimester, I will be ready.