Beyond Bones

By Ralph Phillips, HMNS Docent   Our modern concept of time is mainly societal and artificial.  A few of our units of time derive from natural cycles, but many are totally arbitrary.   Our day is defined as one cycle of light and dark … but starting where? Our “official” day goes from midnight to […]

In less than a week, people all over the country, including right here at our museum, will be celebrating Halloween. Perhaps your workplaces and schools are already festooned with ghosts, skeletons, graveyards, and the like.  If you stop and think about it, you may wonder just how it is that we came to celebrate by […]

The New Moon of Monday, September 29, is an important one to many people of the world. In the Hebrew Calendar, it marks Rosh Hashanah (literally, ‘head of the year’) which is the beginning of year 5769. On Tuesday night, September 30, Muslims across the world will see the first slender crescent of this lunar […]

photo credit: glacial23 Why is this month called July? The short answer is that July is named for Julius Caesar. The longer answer involves the ancient Romans’ attempt to keep track of the year. There are two bright lights in the sky which can help us mark the passage of a year: the Sun and […]