Waxing Moon

I stare at the moon a lot. I am often referring to calenders to follow the nightly transformations of Earth's faithful companion. So I was surprised to learn that there is a simple way to know if that bright sliver of moon is waxing or waning. If the light is on the right, it is waxing or growing toward the full moon. If it's on the left, it is waning, past the full moon. Simple and true. Try this yourself and see if it isn't true. This surprising little tidbit was gleaned from the new Barbara Kingsolver novel, "Lacuna". In this story, the main character learns a simple way to remember this in Spanish. If the crescent is shaped like a "D", as in Dios (God), it is growing. If it is shaped like a "C", as in Cristo (Christ), it is bleeding away like Christ on the cross. It's so quintessentially Mexican to explain the workings of the night sky in poetic, spiritual terms, accessible to noble and peasant alike.