Notes From My Knapsack 10-8-06
Jeff Gill

After the Moonrise

Sir Isaac Newton, inventor of calculus and one of the smartest people in recorded history, famously said, "The only mathematical problem which ever gave me a headache was calculating the movements of the moon." And he invented calculus, which has given many of us headaches.
Those irregular, hard-to-predict movements, were mastered by the inhabitants of these valleys around Newark 2,000 years ago. The evidence is encoded in the massive, landscape embracing earthworks shaped as an octagon and circle at the end of 33rd St. and behind Licking Memorial Hospital.
Our fellow citizens, in 1892, voted to tax themselves a bit more to buy and preserve these mounds, the "Great Circle" already in semi-public hands as the county fairground, now Newark Earthworks State Memorial on Rt. 79 by Heath. Octagon Mound, owned along with the Great Circle by the Ohio Historical Society, is leased to Moundbuilders Country Club since their founding in 1911.
If you check out www.moundbuilderscc.com, the folks at the club are working with the hospital to allow the public to come out this Wednesday and see one of the very last "close approximations" of the moonrise along the main axis of the circle and octagon structure, marking the peak of an oscillating 18.6 year cycle. After 9:00 pm, you may walk onto the grounds and join a group that will be escorted to a viewing area for the moonrise which will be visible, weather co-operating, sometime not long after 10:00 pm.
Of course, this being Ohio, weather may not co-operate; for those of us in the community who have been learning about and presenting this story and opportunity to the public, we see why the near-northernmost moonrises had to be as important as the absolute peak of the cycle. Fog, as well as rain or just socked-in cloud cover, means that you need a series of cycles stepping in and the movements walking away to help bracket the precision that allowed these earthen arrangements to work so well.
Some of us have been reading wistfully the last few months about a similar site in the desert southwest of the US, which is a thousand years younger (and so, I’d say, only half as cool as our Newark Earthworks), where the US Forest Service and a community group have hosted moonrise viewings and visitors from around the globe. We hope to do a bit better in 2025!
Many thanks to Moundbuilders Country Club for their invitation this week to see a remarkable sight, and follow the other local media for word of any weather related complications.
If you are intrigued by all this, then you can come to the OSU-Newark campus on Saturday, October 14, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm where a free program at a civil hour is open to all for "Newark Earthworks Day." The Reese Center hosts informational booths, vendors, and guest speakers from around the country on subjects relating to Native American history and activity today (including mound building!), archaeologists and astronomers, and local teachers on a panel about "teaching the earthworks."
An opening procession following Native American practice will open the day, with a moment to honor the now-fifth graders from Miller Elementary when fourth graders who got the Newark Earthworks named the official state pre-historic monument, introduced by Sen. Jay Hottinger. You can come at any point through the day and hear and see what you can.
After the daytime programs a Native feast is offered following 5:00 pm, asking $10 for adults and free to children under 12.
If you want details of the program, click www.octagonmoonrise.org; your faithful scribe will be the MC for the speakers, and I’d love to see you all there!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s been known to MC an event or two as well. Tell him about your interesting local event at knapsack77@gmail.com.