Goodbye 2009

Cue lights....2009 takes bow....exits stage left.....raise the full moon.....

Yes today is the final day of 2009 and guess what it happens to be a blue moon to boot! Tonight one of those rare events that you can actually see in the sky from anywhere in the world (I hate it when they talk about some rare eclipse that you can only see in one particular part of the world), not only is tonight the final night of 2009 but it is also a new moon. Nothing really peculiar about that other than there was already a new moon this month, which makes tonight's new moon a blue moon! I know everyone has heard of the phrase "once in a blue moon" so I had to give a little history behind this saying (I am already hearing the groans and yes I know I am a nerd).

To begin this lesson we have to go way back to set the stage for the term "blue moon". To understand this meaning we have to look at how the moon aligns itself with the calendar. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII introduces the calendar we currently use to mark our days (hence the name Gregorian calendar). The need for the calendar reform was two fold: one to fix the problem caused by the leap years and for the lunar cycle to determine the date for Easter. The church was responsible for the calendar and used the complex computations to calculate the important date of Easter, which is based on the full moon. Lent falls before Easter, starting at the beginning of the Lent Moon cycle (late winter moon). The next moon is the egg moon (early spring moon), and Easter usually falls on the first Sunday after the full egg moon. Every one to three years, the Lent and egg moons would come too early. The clergy would have to tell people whether the moon was the Lent moon or a false one, which they may have called a "belewe mone" translated "betrayer moon" or "blue moon".

Another explanation that is interesting is one that comes from folklore. Full moons occur every 29.5 days, giving us roughly 12 full moons a year. In folklore each of these full moons had a name:

January - Wolf moon
February - Ice moon
March - Storm moon
April - Growing moon
May - Hare moon
June - Mead moon
July - Hay moon
August - Corn moon
September - Harvest moon
October - Hunter's moon
November - Snow moon
December - Winter moon

Seeing the moons so named we can see how we get our growing and farming seasons in the rural communities. However the years with thirteen full moons the monthly "seasons" would be expected to come too early – for example, hens would not recommence laying their eggs by the fourth full moon since it was still too cold – so the early moon was named a "blue moon". This then re-aligned the rest of the year's moons and "seasons".

The last time there two full moons was in May 2007. New Year's Eve blue moons are rarer, occurring every 19 years. The last time was in 1990; the next one won't come again until 2028. So make sure that this New Years you go outside and enjoy the Blue Moon!

Fort Al Zubarah

Located 110 kilometers from Doha in northern Qatar (25° 58' 60 N, 51° 1' 60 E) lies a small ruin that has a unique and interesting history for the Qatar nation. Built in 1938 by Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani (the third of the Al Thani Shaikh) Fort Al Zubara was actually built on the ruins of an older fort.

The original town of Al Zubarah was founded by two sections of the Bani Utub ( Al Khalifa and Al Jalahima) who migrated from Kuwait. The city became an important trading center focusing on pearling, fishing and breeding of livestock. It is believed that in 1638 the town could have held as many as 700 with more than 150 houses, not an easy feat in the desert region and time period. Due to the insecurity and rivalry between tribes, walls and eventually a fort was built to protect themselves from raiding Bedouins.

Sadly the town and original fort named Murair were destroyed long ago and all that exists is the fort that was rebuilt by Shaikh Abdullah. The current fort (one of only a few left of the rivalry raiding days of a bygone era) was used by the military until the mid 1980s when it was abandoned and restored in 1987 to be used as a the Al Zubarah Regional Museum. Inside you will find a collection of photos of the region and of the some of the pottery and tools that have been excavated from the ruins of the town that once existed there.

It wouldn't be hard for a young boy growing up in the United States watching old westerns to find this place interesting and full of childhood memories (I kept looking around waiting for Clint Eastwood to step around the corner in his poncho). The fort is square with circular towers in three corners and a rectangular tower in the fourth. Entrance to the fort is gained by a single door inset in the larger double door to the fort. Inside the fort is a cistern well that is covered with a rebar metal hatch, as well as many rooms and alcoves to explore and view. Built in the traditional Qatari style of joining coral rock and limestone with mud mortar, a gypsum-based plaster was used to protect the wall from the elements. The outside of the fort even boasts a cannon pointing out seaward toward Bahrain.

This region so famous to have been included in ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy's map of the Arab world (Al Zubarah was Qatar’s main trading port right up until the 19th century) there is little left of it. However the area could soon be as booming as the other petro towns dotting the countryside. The Arab states of Qatar and Bahrain announced in December 2008 that the Qatar-Bahrain Causeway would be built between the two. The distance between the two would be approximately 40 km (5 miles) in length making it the longest fixed link in the world. The Qatar end of the causeway will be located at Ras Ashairij approximately 5 km south of the current city of Zubarah.

Well this concludes my first real entry to this blog! Finally I got started...sorry to those who have been looking for this. Till next time!