Harvest Moon

          (Photo of 2012 Bay Area Harvest Moon, photographer unknown) 

By Mark W. Danielson

In layman’s terms, the Harvest Moon is the full moon that is closest to the fall equinox.  I have many memories of them.  As a kid, I once pedaled my bike over a hill at sunset and unexpectedly came face-to-face with a huge yellow one that was at least a gazillion miles wide.  Petrified, I raced home and hid under my bed until my heart slowed.  Many moons later at age seventeen, my fifteen year old buddy and I were camping under the wing of my rented airplane at a small airport near Mount Shasta.  Since we had the only airplane on the airfield and it was quite dark, Dan and I swapped lies while star gazing and munching on the Kentucky Fried Chicken Momma June got for us earlier that day.  Suddenly all was quiet as a red glow appeared over the Sierra Nevada, silhouetting the mountains.  As the glow intensified, we anxiously spoke about fire season and how quickly fires spread this time of year.  Just as we were about to slide out of our sleeping bags and notify the authorities, the top of the full moon peeked over the ridge.  Relieved, we laughed and swapped more stories as the moon made its Heavenly ascent.

Like the sun, the moon also has a dark side.  On October 29, 2012, the full moon’s high tide, a cold front, and Hurricane Sandy created a perfect storm that bulldozed New York City and the New Jersey coast.  Soon after Sandy made landfall, the Manhattan skyline went dark, making technology on every level worthless.  Granted, this storm’s path was a fluke, but it should always remind us that our frail existence is far too dependent upon energy and outside help. 

On September 29^th, the east and west coasts both enjoyed the beginning of a Harvest Moon.  This particular moon will forever hold special meaning to my family.  On this night my father and mother admired it from the deck of their Napa, California, apartment.  For two hours they held hands, sharing memories of their sixty-four wonderful years together.  The next morning, the actual date of the 2012 Harvest Moon, Dad was gone.  He passed in seconds and never suffered.  We are all grateful for that.

Four weeks later, we celebrated my father’s life under another near full moon.  As fate would have it, this was the same moon that wreaked havoc on the east coast, yet in Napa, it shined as a beautiful reminder of my father’s life and his last evening with his bride. 

Heaven does not recognize east or west, political boundaries, war, devastation, bloodshed, or sorrow.  It is a peaceful place where Dad now lives.  I feel his presence every day, and in time I hope to join him.  Until then, Dad, God bless you, and thanks for everything.  I miss you dearly.

Chang and Eng In a Jar

By Beth Terrell

A few years ago, four colleagues and I went on a business trip to New Jersey. This was an exceptionally good business trip, because not only were we all friends, we also had similar interests and travel styles. We spent our days doing enjoyable work with good people and our evenings discovering such treasures as The Chocolate Cottage and The Parrot Place and giggling at the unusual business names (Gimpy's Funeral Home), the high number of strip clubs in the vicinity of our hotel, and the apparent inability of New Jersey-ites (New Jerseyans?) to make a left-hand turn. Only one of us had ever heard of, much less seen, a "jug-handle," and the one time we had to make five right-hand turns in order to turn left left us giddy. We loved it, from the 50's-style diners to the treasure trove of magazines on "Weird New Jersey." (We picked up a whole set, on the theory that they were chock-full of story ideas. Hey, maybe I should have written them off on my taxes!) Every night, we went to a different restaurant, each with delicious food and appalling service. Good thing we liked each other; none of our meals was less than an hour and a half long, most of that spent waiting on the server.

All in all, it was a delightful trip. But the high point of it didn't take place in New Jersey. It was on the last day, when we had almost a full day to call our own, and Cindi suggested we spend it in Philadelphia at the Mutter Museum of Medical Oddities. (To say Cindi loves museums would be an understatement; she once refused to enter the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History on the premise that she would never leave it and would have to live the rest of her life on food from the museum cafe.)

The rest of us were equally game, especially after hearing the rumor that the museum had Chang and Eng, history's most famous conjoined twins, in a jar. I have always been intrigued by conjoined twins, and while I realized there was probably something disrespectful about the public exhibition of their preserved body/bodies, if the museum really did have Chang and Eng in a jar, by George, I wanted to see it.

All I can say, is, if you've never been to the Mutter Museum, and if you are interested in the human condition (and what writer isn't?), then you should make it a point to put it on your list of must-sees. We got there early in the afternoon, and they practically had to push us out the door at closing time. This tiny museum was packed with stories, more than 20,000 artifacts, each one a glimpse into the web of life, death, and--if to be remembered is to live forever--immortality.

It is impossible to go through this exhibit without being forever changed by it. We are fearfully and wonderfully made; yet, there are so many ways the human body can go awry. Like the man whose 9-foot colon is one exhibit, looking, as one viewer phrased it, "like a sandworm from Dune." Looking at pictures of his distended belly, one can only imagine how it must have felt to go through life carrying this monstrous impaction.

There were wax models of flayed bodies, jars of miscarried infants at various stages of development and with a variety of medical conditions, a collection of objects (buttons, wedding rings, safety pins) taken from the windpipes of choking people, side-by-side plaster casts of a person with giantism and a person with dwarfism, a collection of medical instruments used throughout history, a collection of tumors and syphlitic organs, the brain of a murderer, and medical photographs taken to show the symptoms of a variety of medical conditions, including a wealth of information on conjoined twins.

Many of these exhibits are disturbing and haunting. The one that left the most lasting impression for me was a wall of skulls. Each was labeled with what was known about the person it had once belonged to. Most of them seemed so small. Some of the labels had only dates. Others had smidgens of personal information, like the thirteen-year-old boy who had killed himself over "a discovered theft" or the soldier found on a Roman battlefield. It struck me as terribly sad that this was all that was left of them. Then I realized that most people never even get this much. Here on this wall, there is some bond forged between me and a man who lived 2,000 years ago.

No, they didn't have Chang and Eng in a jar. They had a plaster cast of the twins and the preserved wedge of flesh, complete with attached livers, that had joined them. But after being immersed in so many stories, how could we have been disappointed?