Blue Moon of Kentucky

Last night was said to be, according to those who say such things, a "blue moon". Whatever that means. There are at least four different competing memes for just what constitutes this "blue moon" they speak of, and none of them are particularly satisfying to me. Apparently much of the misconceptions about it go back to a 1946 article in Sky & Telescope that was utterly, completely wrong - which just goes to show you can't always trust the "experts".


I've already mused on this blog about the various weirdnesses involving blue moons, blue people, aliens, and Elvis, but this latest spate of media attention to the "blue moon" concept has my coffee-oiled gears turning again regarding Kentucky's peculiar obsession with blueness. Of course, what comes to mind first are those ubiquitous Kentucky Wildcats of the University of Kentucky, with their slogans like "Go Big Blue!" and "I Bleed Blue". And much of our state's blue fetish is actually about misplaced blueness - blue moons aren't really blue, and neither is bluegrass.

Blue people seem to be on the rise, culturally, what with Blue Man Group and Avatar. But for over a billion people on Earth, it's nothing new: Krishna has been predominantly portrayed as blue-skinned in the Hindu religion.


But it's the idea of blue light that interests me most, as far as our discussions about Kentucky go. Reported nocturnal sightings of eerie blue lights - sometimes called "ghost lights" - in the Kentucky mountains have been shrugged off mostly as "swamp gas" (what would skeptics do without this crutch?) but on the other hand, it is possible that in earlier times, the many burning springs and natural gas vents dotting our state's landscape burned with a blue flame.

Kentucky's curiously-named "Moonshine" also burns with a blue flame.

Many of the UFOs seen around here are blue in color, such as in this report of blue lights in the sky above Fort Campbell (although the testimony doesn't make a whole lot of sense). Coincidentally, Fort Campbell was once home to an elite corps of secret Special Forces known as Blue Light.

Then there's two different "Lady in Blue" haunting legends - one is said to haunt the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville, and a similar one dwells in the Keen Johnson Ballroom at Eastern Kentucky University (Consult your copy of Weird Kentucky for more info on both). And maybe the "Gray Lady" of Liberty Hall is actually a very pale blue. Perhaps blue just happens to be the basic color of mystical energy, or "life force", or whatever you want to call it if you believe in that sort of thing.


Interestingly, although blue has an extremely short wavelength, the receptors in the human eye are specially geared to detect blue to a greater degree.

Blue Moon

Random disassociated fragments, in search of glue:

1. Elvis Presley, in private moments filtered through his own internal gobo of pills and vodka, often stated that he felt as if he was not of this world.

2. The mysterious term "blue moon" is one whose origin is shrouded in antiquity, and has seemed to have had numerous meanings over time. The first recorded instance of the term was in British in the year 1528. Interestingly, the first recorded instance of the idea of moon being made of green cheese was one year later, in 1529.

3. According to some ancient myths, a blue moon is a rarely occurring magical event during which the moon's cratered face speaks.

4. The term "blue moon" is most commonly used metaphorically to describe a rare event, as in the saying "once in a blue moon".

5. Kentuckian Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass music, wrote "Blue Moon of Kentucky" in 1947.

5. According to Wikipedia: "Most years have twelve full moons which occur approximately monthly, but each calendar year contains those twelve full lunar cycles plus about eleven days to spare. The extra days accumulate, so that every two or three years there is an extra full moon (this happens every 2.72 years). Different definitions place the extra moon at different times - the extra moon is called a blue moon".

6. Many people call a full moon a blue moon if it was the second of two full moons to occur in the same calendar month. However, this definition of "blue moon" originated from a mistake in an article in the March 1946 Sky & Telescope magazine. This mistake has perpetuated and taken on a life of its own since 1946.

7. Elvis Presley had an unusual propensity for recording "blue" songs, and three of them specifically were blue moon songs: "Blue Moon", "Blue Moon of Kentucky", and "When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again".

8. "When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again" was written in 1941 by Kentuckians Wiley Walker and Gene Sullivan.

9. The band R.E.M. featured a blue moon on the cover of their "In Time" compilation CD.

10. One of R.E.M.'s biggest hits was "Man on the Moon", which seems to express doubt that mankind actually went to the moon, and also mentions Elvis.

11. In an early interview, Michael Stipe said that R.E.M. actually stood for Ralph Eugene Meatyard, a Kentuckian best known for his epic photographic work The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater.

12. The blue people of Kentucky were originally believed by some to be aliens, or angels, from another world.

13. The matriarch of the best-known Kentucky blue-people clan was named Luna.