Colorful Astronomy; Colorful History

Once in a blue moon, the amazing happens. Thankfully, the marvelous and wonderful and great and exceptional and various other exemplary adjectives occur more frequently, but amazing only once in a blue moon.

Me standing alone? Not amazing. Without a dream in my heart? Not possible. Without a love of my own? Just incredibly sad. But nothing to do with a blue moon.

But this, of course, has me pondering the phrase, 'once in a blue moon'. Is the moon actually blue, but got covered in a layer of dust so it now appears white? Did memories of the blueness of the moon live on through generation after generation, knowledge that when the moon again was blue we would have a new age of properity?

Or does the moon appear to be (without actually being) blue occasionally; say following a volcanic eruption? Or maybe when the weather is just really, really screwed up? The particles in the air reflecting and refracting the light just right that the red and green get bent off into space or into some 'bottomless' trench in the sea, while the blue bends toward any onlookers?

Could it be a mis-pronunciation of a French or German or Albanian word? Or a morphed meaning, meant to be never, but changed as rebelling children refused to use it in the same way their parents did? Language rebels are the worst kind, you know.

Or is it, as is apparently widely believed, because an almanac's second full moon of the month was colored blue, when the first was colored red? Is it amazing that months are spaced that this can happen? Human-created-coincidence is much less interesting an explination and makes the whole 'blue moon' thing rather silly.

No, none of these are true. But nobody would believe that it's because the moon is really sad, so I'll have to go with choice A, the dust and new-age-of-prosperity thing anyway.

I'm a big fan of new ages of prosperity. They're amazing.