Those barbarians are fighting their way into Kobani, a Kurdish town on the border with Turkey. Kurdish sources are telling Western media there are 50,000 Kurds, Christians, and Turkmen still in the town, and there is going to be something spectacularly ugly if- or when- it falls.

The Turks has tanks and troops on the border, and it is not clear if they will allow the Kurds to escape into their territory.

Those airstrikes you have heard so much about? It is a joke, a fig leaf. So far we have destroyed two ISIS tanks, which we provided as spoils of war, a bulldozer and another ISIS vehicle. Two airstrikes hit a large ISIS unit and destroyed six firing positions.

That’s it. No shock-and-awe. This is a gesture, and it is clear that our heart- or someone’s heart- is not in this.

It is an appropriate morning for the Blood Moon.

I get up early as it is, since I need to get whatever the bad news of the day out of the way and get on with life. But this was a morning to check the heavens. The full moon was hanging out there, right smack in the middle of the large picture window on the west side of the apartment at Big Pink.

It is the second of a series of rare alignments of the Moon in the Earth’s shadow this morning. It started about a half hour ago, with the cross atop the steeple of the church across the street nearly puncturing the solver orb of the moon.

There is just a sliver left- I can see it from where I am sitting. It was a pretty cool process, and the clouds that cloaked us yesterday have left us with this magnificent display of the orbital mechanics of our whirling world.

The Big Deal will happen once the moon is completely in the shadow of the earth in just a minute or two, and Luna will turn a sort of burnt umber color.

Two more episodes of the phenomenon will occur over the course of the next year. Some prophets are predicting all sorts of extraordinary events based on the portents, and for them, the hue of a desert sunset are really the color of blood. I don’t know about that. Vague copper was all we could get to with the sun coming up and washing it out with the arrival of the day.

You may want to mark your calendar for the last two installments of the apocalypse: the first in the series was tax day, last Spring. Then there is this morning, event in progress, and April 4, 2015, and September 28, 2015.

Lunar eclipses occur in random order, according to the people who follow these things. That includes astronomers as well as lunatics. According to NASA, these linked events are called “tetrads.” Based on the orbital mechanics, this may not happen for centuries at a time.

Propitious? I don’t know, but the eclipse is going to be visible primarily in North and South America. I have not heard the loons connect this particular manifestation with the fall of Kobani.

We appear to be concerned more with the Ebola outbreak, which is now in Europe as well as the United States. The first case was reported ten months ago and we are just coming up with a plan now. We have death and pestilence, and like the tetrad, two horsemen yet to arrive.

It is interesting. It is like our hearts just aren’t in this anymore. It was worth going out in the parking lot and looking up to the heavens. That is something that did not disappoint.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303