HUNTER'S MOON 2020

Halloween Special

Dear Seekers after Truth,

Tonight is:

A Hunter’s moon.

A micro-moon (the opposite of a super moon).

A blue moon.

A blood moon.

The beginning of daylight saving time.

The first full moon visible in all time zones on Halloween since 1944.

And, at least in Boston, it will shine down on a coating of record-breaking October snow.

In all my many years as a joke astrologist, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Tonight, the ghosts will burst through the veil like a football team through a breakaway banner.

After that, who can say?

What spikes of pestilence will cripple the globe over the next month?

What tides of madness will surge through the electorate this week?

My crystal ball has gone haywire.

So instead of horoscopes, I want to talk about the Moon itself, which is having an incredible week.

NASA made a big announcement on Monday: the Moon is damp.

Or at least damper than we previously thought.

Scientists speculate that water, deposited on the lunar surface by comets and asteroids, becomes trapped in glass formed by the impact of micrometeorites or else lingers in the lunar valleys where sunlight never reaches and temperatures hover around -300℉.

These valleys are known as PSRs (permanently shadowed regions)—a good description of New England after daylight saving time.

If I were president, my day one legislation would be to outlaw daylight saving time.

Then I’d focus the rest of my term on the Moon.

As you may know, one of my abiding obsessions is lunar governance.

According to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, no country can claim sovereignty over the moon and any activity the conduct on said heavenly body shall be reserved for peaceful purposes.

Can you spot the loophole?

The Treaty prevents nations from drinking the Moon’s milkshake.

It says nothing about private entities.

This month, NASA awarded $370 million to private companies to help mine the moon.

One of the recipients, Nokia, has been contracted to install a 4G network up there (5G upgrade to follow).

We’re about six years from the Sea of Tranquility becoming a strip mall.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk has declared that his planned colony on Mars will follow no Earth-based government.

Instead, Mars will be “settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”

A shining city on a crater.

Meanwhile, Musk has proposed exploding 10,000 nuclear missiles over Mars’ surface to release the carbon dioxide held within its ice reserves.

According to him, this bombardment would render the planet more habitable.

If elected president (and feel free to write me in), I would push to designate the Moon an UNESCO Off-World Heritage Site.

Elon can have Mars.

I really don’t care.

But the Moon should be off-limits to the geodesic dreams of cosmic developers.

In the history of our species, the Moon is the single most gazed upon object.

It’s heard all our prayers.

It knows all our secrets.

And at four-and-a-half billion years old, the Moon is still capable of surprising us.

A blue blood micro Hunter’s moon on Halloween?

I couldn’t be more proud of it.

—WD