Dear Readers:
 
Today's edition of Planet Waves is a milestone: ten years since I began the project. The first edition of this column was published on May 1, 1995 in a newspaper called Free Time in Poughkeepsie, New York, covering the first two weeks of May. If you had told me then that a decade later, I would be sitting in a Paris café putting another edition together, I might have actually believed you. Once I knew that was my agenda, going into astrology felt right from the first moment.
 
I was introduced to astrology in 1987 by somebody named Flo Higgins, but pretty much tuned it out (when I could) until five years later, when I discovered the daily horoscope in The New York Post. That got my attention. Up till that point, I thought horoscopes were silly and astrology was too complicated to be of much use. It did, however, feel quite poetic, and the planets had a majestic and mysterious quality which many have noticed.

I had worked with runes, tarot cards and A Course in Miracles. But this horoscope in the Post showing up in my life all of a sudden -- hmm. It was sensible, shrewd, and serious. The writer made astute observations at very specific moments (some call this 'accuracy'). He had a voice, like he was right there talking to you. His name was Patric Walker (hi Patric!!).
 
I followed his column for two years, through the twists and turns of my investigative reporting career. Then, on my birthday in 1994, after the third day of depositions in my federal civil rights lawsuit against the great State of New York, I walked into Esoterica Books in New Paltz and bought something called an ephemeris -- a thick blue book that tells you where the planets are. I had just one motivation: I had to figure out how Patric Walker did it. Ambitious? Well, at the time I was very good at figuring out how corporations and governments lied. The other side of the coin was figuring out how Patric told the truth.
 
This was in the years I spent poring through documents dug from the files of Monsanto, Westinghouse and General Electric, and from the State of New York's files. I had, by that time, proven that New York State was poisoning students with dioxin and PCBs in its dormitories (Bliss, Capen, Gage and Scudder halls at SUNY New Paltz) -- at the same time administrators were telling students that everything was fine, as they continue to do to this day. The state retaliated by banning me from the campus. An excellent lawyer named Allan Sussman, and a federal district court judge, the Hon. Con Cholakis, straightened that little problem out. The state issued an official apology and paid me $20,000 for violating my civil rights. Mike Winerip of The New York Times did the story.
 
Cool and exciting as all that was, astrology was infinitely more interesting, and so night after night, I would analyze Patric's columns, learning the basic moves, the basic language, and how to spin the aspects in the most positive way. About a year later, I began my own column in Free Time. I'll be sending the first column in a separate mailing shortly.
 
If I were to roll the credits on the past decade, acknowledging every person who has helped me, it would be a wonderfully long list. First, I offer a bow to Joseph Trusso, who helped me begin the process of learning how to be myself, and how to relate to others as that person. I'm still learning today, and it's not always easy. But it's necessary, and that is the basic theme of Planet Waves.
 
I gratefully and joyfully thank and acknowledge the people around me today, whose love, friendship, support, constant work and wisdom ensure that you and I are in touch. They helped me bring Planet Waves from a quirky one-guy operation to a real publishing company. They are the answer to the riddle: how do you move to Europe? You may know their names: Chelsea Bottinelli, Tracy Delaney and Pam Purdy. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
 
Along the way, many astrologers helped me. Three really, truly, really helped me learn astrology: Laurie Burnett, David R. Roell and David Arner. Talk about getting lucky right away. Laurie knew something about Pluto. The Davids made sure I had a foundation in traditional astrology. Two astrologers taught me about Chiron: Melanie Reinhart and Barbara Hand Clow. Melanie and Robert von Heeren introduced me to the other centaur planets. This is how it works. Astrology is an unbroken chain of tradition that goes back thousands of years, preserving something beautiful and true about the world in which we live, and the people who we are: a tradition that keeps us tuned to ourselves, to one another, and to the Divine Spirit of Earth and sky. Then, astrologers and others who indulge in folklore, storytelling and healing practice, pass the information on.

Several of my colleagues made sure that you know who I am -- ensuring that I have a wide audience.
 
Rob Brezsny began by publishing an article I wrote called "Astrology As the Art of Bullshit," a blazing rant that, incredibly, appeared on page one of RealAstrology.com for nearly a year. Then, he ran my 12 article series (with a focus on the presidential impeachment) in which I really developed the Planet Waves style, writing mostly from Germany in the summer of 1998. Thank you Rob, and for the zillions of client referrals, and for arranging my first weekly horoscope gig in The Colorado Daily.
 
Rick Levine and Jeff Jawer put my work on page one of StarIQ.com many times, inviting me to write about all kinds of subjects near to my heart. I wrote articles; they wrote checks. Rick, Jeff: thank you. I am still working with the material I developed working with you (case in point, next week's Beltane article).
 
Then one interesting day when I was living on Vashon Island, Jonathan Cainer did something kind of shocking -- he emailed me from his daughter's Yahoo! account and invited me to stand in for his horoscope in a London tabloid called The Daily Mirror. I've now done around 30 stand-ins for Jonathan in both the Mirror and the Daily Mail. This is called hitting the big-time; it's called fun. But this merely scratches the surface of the ways Jonathan, and many people on his staff, have helped out.
 
So there you have it. A lot of people are involved in this little newsletter and a couple of web pages. Life is a network. Community is a great web. Consciousness is tantra: the web of life. Every person I've named here is committed to doing their part in holding the world together in our challenging, dangerous, beautiful time in history.
 
Then there's you and me. I get up every morning, clear my head, and start writing. This has been my grounding, my sanity, my main healing process, and my way of standing on equal footing with the world. You, my readers, clients, subscribers, and friends, make sure that my work is appreciated, and that I have enough money to live as a writer, doing the work that I do, which allows me to keep the commitments I have made. Thank you for that.