THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 28, 1996 TAG: 9609280243
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 52 lines
Before Thursday night's lunar eclipse, we heard there wouldn't be another one until nearly the next century, which startled me until I realized the new century and another eclipse are only four or so years away.
Three events were impending for me Thursday: the eclipse; a call important to nobody but me; and the showing of ``First Blood,'' Sylvester Stallone's first Rambo movie, on TV.
A decade or so ago, arriving at 2 a.m. in a motel at Lexington, I'd watched the Rambo film - except for its first 20 minutes. My duty, back then, was to speak next day to the Keydets at VMI. I got a lot more from Rambo than they got from me.
Thursday night was a chance for me to pick up the bit that had been missed a decade ago and learn why Rambo destroyed a mountain town. Turned out the sheriff hassled him.
Enlightened as to Rambo, I went out and looked up into the dark sky at the orange pumpkin harvest moon, out of which the Great Black Bear, having taken a bite, was now bent on swallowing whole.
At least that is what the Indians' sachem had informed them during eclipses, and if it was good enough for the tribe, it suited me more than some mumbo jumbo that science cooks up about the earth passing between the moon and the sun, which is mundane nonsense.
The shadow was moving ever so slowly across the moon's face - a measured, slow wink at us below on Earth. As the dark continued creeping, the moon turned into a golden rind of some fabulous fruit.
With me, the Labrador retriever, restless at my standing and looking up, found a beat-up tennis ball he had stashed in the field and came running to drop at my feet an orb that meant more to him that any old moon climbing the sky.
```Look down, not up,'' he begged, barking, ``Just one throw.''
But for me to do so would mean that if, pursuing the ball, he picked up the trace of a rabbit or even the Great Black Bear, the Lab would be gone until dawn. So we watched the encroaching shadow.
As the rind shrank, it turned into a glowing yellow, mellow bar, the kind of bandeau that women fit across the middle of the head to hold their hair.
Steadily diminishing, the hair band next became a sliver, a delicate strand of gold, the barest, thinnest coronet that adorns a queen's brow.
Even as the shadow covered the moon entirely, its face shone, pale andpinkish behind the veil, and then the shadow continued its slow passage, the perturbation of the spheres ceased and the moon stood forth once more in all its bright glory.
We went inside. I found a voice recording of the call, and, while Boomer snored at my feet, I watched Rambo once again destroy the mountain town. by CNB