Look up, Hannah! The moon!

I can't help myself. Whenever I hear interesting news about the moon, I get into full romantic mode, remembering my courtship with my dear mate--I'll never forget our first spring flight together, with a balmy southern breeze pushing us northward as we winged beneath a full moon, all the promise of spring and love and eggs and new life coming closer with every wingbeat. Every year around our anniversary we get back into that whole romantic thing, but during the rest of the year, when he's being a little too, well, goosey, all I need is a full moon to remind me why I've put up with him day in and day out for all these years. And wow--I just read that this week the full moon is going to be the closest and largest it's ever been during my lifetime! Not since March, 1993, has it been this close! Ah, it makes me think of Romeo and Juliet, though really, we geese are far more faithful than mere humans--we'd never find ourselves saying Juliet's lines:

O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

We geese are nothing if not faithful. So when it comes down to it, Dean Martin says it best:

When the moon hits your eye
Like a big pizza pie
That's amore!

It's lovely that this full moon filled with promise is coming right now, in anticipation of the Inauguration (we geese don't like politics and refuse to be partisan, but we can't help but feel a wee bit hopeful about more and better habitat protection and better restrictions on pesticides again!) Naturally, looking up at the moon makes me think of Charlie Chaplin's immortal, Look up, Hannah!:

Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up, Hannah. The clouds are lifting. The sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world, a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed and brutality.

Look up, Hannah. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow -- into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me, and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up."

(Thanks, Wikipedia--we geese can never remember such long things by heart.)