Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 9, 1993 TAG: 9303090174
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
MOONLIGHT MISALIGNED, OR MALIGNED
It was told to me once that florists flourish the day after a full moon. The theory went that the silver nighttime light brought out the wolf in humans. We quarreled. We struck one another. Moonbeams somehow rendered us irrational powder kegs itching for a tussle.The bright sunlight of a new day brought us back. To apologize for our lunacy, we bought flowers.
Monday, if this theory is true, should have been a career day for florists.
The moon was in perigee and at syzygy on Sunday night. It was also full.
If you have noticed people slobbering or eating raw meat recently, it is likely on account of the moon being closer to the Earth than usual and in perfect alignment with the sun and the Earth.
The proximity (216,546 miles from Earth to moon) is called perigee (usually, we're 240,000 miles away). It happens because the moon's orbit of the Earth is egg-shaped, and in some places the eggshell is closer to the yolk than others.
The alignment is called syzygy (pronounced ZIS-ih-gee). It happens because while the Earth and the moon dance around one another, we both dance around the sun, and three balls on a billiard table are bound to fall eventually in a line.
The importance of this rare phenomenon is not lost on John Broderick, a Virginia Tech astronomer. After all, it happened last more than 30 years ago and our moon will not again be in simultaneous perigee and syzygy for a dozen more years.
Broderick saw far-reaching significance for the syzygy.
"It is going to be in every crossword puzzle for a couple of months," he said. "And it's got to be at least 50 points in Scrabble."
Actually, further research shows that syzygy on a triple-word score would net 93 points.
The perigee and the syzygy do combine to pull the tide higher along coastlines worldwide, because of what Broderick calls "the inverse cube of the distance," which is the way physicists talk.
That condominium you rent at Myrtle Beach is now being swept by powerful ocean currents toward Portugal.
And the florists? How's their business? If the moon theory is right, the syzygy and the perigee should be a real windfall.
By midday Monday, Karen Peery had six customers in her Fincastle shop, Cahoon's Florist & Gifts. They bought stuff off the shelves - trolls, stuffed animals, that kind of stuff.
Karen was watching a TV screen the size of a slice of white bread, making silk flower arrangements. She laughed off the suggestion that the moon played a role in her business, but did suggest that I go check at a well-recognized grocery store, "where all the men go to buy cheap, half-dead flowers."
At Botetourt Flower Shop in Daleville, Violet Keith said she's heard that diamond cutters occasionally set down their tools and go outside in an alley to scream and let off their frustrations. She doesn't know about the moon.
And at Stritesky's Flower Shop in Roanoke County, there's no lunar rush of business. But 27 people did die in Roanoke city on one day last weekend. That took up a lot of flowers.
There you have it. Perigee. Syzygy. Flowers.