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Thursday, July 6, 2006 | Ace of Cups THE cover is the Ace of Cups from the Jodorowsky Tarot, a restoration of the Tarot de Marseilles published in 1997 and based on a 15th century edition. The Ace of Cups is the root of the powers of love. Feeling, receptivity, clarity and good vibes. The Fountain that was not made by the hands of men. All emotion in the hands of pleasure. Ah yes, the photoblog, it's something different...it's the story of the world told in pictures of you, in memories of things you have not seen, actors reading the script you wrote but don't remember, except that the lines are vaguely familiar. They give you permission, by name, they say fuck and dream, they say dance and break glass gleefully, liberate your spirit from crystal, paint on that mirror, look closely for as long as you can, even if it's just a moment. Time says breathe in the essence of the second world, spin till you see it or till it sees you. Rip down the boards of your room and light a fire, burn your sheets and your diaries, and tell your story next to its heat and light. Weekend, June 24-25, 2006 | Planet Waves Weekly Dear Friends, Far and Near, For the first weekend of summer, I'm posting today's Planet Waves Weekly, the full edition, including the weekly horoscope and birthday report. These are usually available to subscribes only, by clicking any of the "subscribe" links. The horoscope is actually twice weekly. Also a letter follows,. that is something of a vision for Planet Waves, enlisting your support and involvement. New audio on the Cancer New Moon is posted above. Enjoy, and welcome to summer -- or to winter if you're Down Under. Planet Waves Weekly http://planetwavesweekly.com/dadatemp/1634500121.html A Vision... http://planetwavesweekly.com/dadatemp/54050565.html Have the best weekend you can. Yours & truly, e
An oldie...but one made for today...
June 21, 2006 | No Nukes! Donald Rumsfeld is an idiot. True, he is one of a cabal of the most idiotic idiots in the Annals of the Idiotic Idiocy of the Human Race, but this dude stands out like the Eiffel Tower on a clear night. He has other problems, but mainly, he's bloody stupid. Here is Jude's commentary from tonight's Political Waves: Rummy wants to "practice" with nuclear weapons? What, are we all f__k__g nuts??? Call the White House and tell them that waving a nuclear penis at the world is NOT ACCEPTABLE. +1 202 456-1414 [voice; ask for the Comment Line] +1 202 456-2461 [fax] Haven't we had a big enough "wake up" in this country? What Bush is considering would turn everyone's attention to his rash and deadly character, but the after-the-fact cost of nuclear escalation is unthinkable -- a threat of this magnitude is as good as the deed to anyone not brain-dead. On this day of Solstice, WE set the Intention -- picture plans of nuclear retaliation in the dumper, "see it" deflated, KNOW it can't happen. BE the energy of peace and cooperation! Whatever your traditions and rituals, use them now. Send your personal Angels, cover WaDC with thoughts of calm and peace, pray your prayers, count your beads, chant your chants, stand in your Peace and believe for better! Hundredth Monkey awaits! PEACE NOW! Jude U.S. activates missile defense, may intercept N. Korea missile http://snipurl.com/s3cn [thanks, Eileen] WASHINGTON, June 20 - The United States has moved its ground-based missile defense system from test to operational mode and is considering the option of intercepting North Korea's long-range missile if launched, the Washington Times reported Tuesday. Quoting U.S. officials speaking on condition of anonymity, the newspaper said the system was activated within the past two weeks in the wake of North Korea stepping up preparations for launching a Taepodong-2 long-range ballistic missile. Reuters and other media reported U.S. officials as confirming the Washington Times report. The missile shield includes 11 long-range interceptor missiles, including nine deployed at Fort Greeley, Alaska, and two at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the Washington Times said. Two U.S. Navy Aegis warships are patrolling near North Korea as part of the global missile defense system and would be among the first sensors that would trigger the use of interceptors, the newspapers said. One senior administration official was quoted as telling the Washington Times that the U.S. government is considering the option of shooting down the Taepodong missile with responding interceptors. The officials said an immediate launch is unlikely because of poor weather conditions above North Korea's missile site located by U.S. intelligence satellites, according to the newspaper. But it also quoted U.S. intelligence officials as saying preparations have advanced to the point where a launch could take place within "several days to a month." U.S. Northern Command spokesman Michael Kucharek was reported as saying that the command "continues to monitor the situation, and we are prepared to defend the country in any way necessary." ++ U.S. weighs shootdown of N. Korea missile ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer Wed., Jun 21, 2006 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060621/ap_on_go_pr_wh/missile_defense_korea WASHINGTON - If North Korea launches a long-range missile, as some U.S. officials say appears likely, then the Pentagon may get a first chance to use its unproven missile defenses against a real target. Although the North Korean missile most likely would be launched for a flight test or to put a satellite in space, Bush administration officials are considering the possibility of shooting it down, since they cannot rule out in advance that the missile might be fired with hostile intent. "The problem is that no one knows because North Korea doesn't say anything in advance of a test," said Rick Lehner, chief spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency. "So you have no idea what it is." Wednesday, June 21 | Litha Cover Image SINCE not everyone will make the connection between a breast and the summer solstice, it seemed worth a mention. It's a simple enough reference to classical astrology: Cancer is the astrological sign of the breast. Cancer is the sign of nourishment, mother, home, emotions and safety -- so the breast is a perfect body part to assign to the role. But to me, the symbol is one of primal care...the first place we reach for nourishment...the ultimate safety and as Freud said, part of the original landscape. I am aware that for some, there may be a 'shocking' moment when seeing such an image -- but I really do wonder how or why that could be. Here is a link to the cover, for when it changes to something else later today: http://planetwaves.net/home/solstice_moon.html Wednesday, June 21 | Litha WELL we are here. Almost here, anyway: The Sun is about one-half degree from the Cancer ingress, also called Litha. Today's also the fifth anniversary of the June 21, 2001 total solar eclipse -- and this solstice brings the last aspect in a long series of movements that have felt like...well I don't know what the heck they've felt like, but I'm happy I took my own advice and hunkered down for a few days. This was probably a better idea than being in Amsterdam, but who knows. My observation may be highly subjective, but reality currently feels like a piece of Saran Wrap stretched over a football. But it's not snapping, it's just stretching thinner, and growing more compressed. In this state of mind, I have very little to say, actually. Maybe I'll have more in the morning, but meantime, I'd like to point you back to my first writing on the current astrology, a piece called From Beltane to Solstice, which has a couple of charts included: http://cainer.com/ericfrancis/may5.html Take it easy, please. The Sun is still something resembling void of course, but not really, because it's square the lunar nodes, a turning point, and it's tight; it's square the Sept. 22 eclipse, conjunct the 6/21/01 eclipse, and it's about to be square the Aries Point -- astrology so magnifying of reality that you could hear a flea scratch its nose in Carnegie Hall. Tuesday, June 20, 2006 | The Yellow and the Black THE MORNING that I had selected astrologically to incorporate Planet Waves, I woke up early from a dream that gave me some clear directions for what else to do that day -- find a copy of The Powers That Be by David Halberstam. I knew what the book was about, but I had not read it: the story of how the major media outlets of its day (it was published around 1980) had come into being. These included The New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, Time and the Los Angeles Times. I met up with Chelsea and we drove to Olympia, my one and only visit to the state capital, filled in our forms, wrote a check, and were given a fancy certificate signed by the secretary of state. A new 'person' had been born, Planet Waves, Inc., with the job of taking over as publisher of this Website, and becoming the container for our expansion into new projects. Then we visited a local bookshop, but The Powers That Be was nowhere to be found. It took me a few weeks to track down a copy, and about six months to read it (I am a very slow reader) -- after which I had a clear picture: the great media institutions were not beamed down onto the Earth by extraterrestrials, or personally founded by Moses; they were created by people, built up a little bit at a time, one day at a time, with courage and hard work. Just like it's supposed to be in the United States of America. Had I not had this dream the very morning I was incorporating Planet Waves, it might not mean so much to me, but the point was clear: don't worry about how small your organization is today, or how little influence you seem to have; just do the work. From reading, I learned, among other things, that CBS was once a decrepit radio network purchased for something like $80,000 that Bill Paley's dad gave him. Slowly, with the help of ideas, creative people and the ability to understand where he stood in the history of media -- that is, at the dawn of television -- Paley built CBS into a massive national network whose news coverage was second to none. Most of the great news institutions covered in the book have stories similar to this -- and most seem to have forgotten the uncertainty with which they started, and the turning points where they chose to risk everything and earn the reputations on which they stand today. This is why it's particularly disgusting to read about the Washington Post trashing Truthout.org writer Jason Leopold, and Truthout's coverage of the apparent indictment of Karl Rove last month. It is sad that the newspaper at which two young journalists went against all odds and both broke, then developed, the Watergate story using a confidential source would be attacking a Web page that is essentially doing the same thing. Before Watergate, the Post had a laughable reputation as a news organization. Its journalistic reputation rested entirely on its editorials. For many months through 1972 and then as Nixon won 49 states in the election that year, Watergate was simply not taken seriously by the journalism community; it was basically a local story, of doubtful consequence. Then at long last, the story was vindicated and Nixon quit. Then the newspaper was suddenly God's gift to history and the symbol of all that was right in America. That was then. Now, there is something called the Internet. The whole concept of the Internet is dodgy because any 15-year-old can currently purchase a domain and a year of hosting for about $100 -- and, if they are talented enough, get their message out to an extremely wide audience, as did Ava Lowery, creator of http://peacetakescourage.com/ While perhaps it's new for it to be possible for someone so young to reach so many people, without being controlled by an editor, the idea of populist media is not new. But if you listen to the criticism, you would think that the Internet and its traditions are some bizarre new hallucinogenic mushroom that appeared under a tree one day after it rained. Spreading information by pamphlet, booklet, mimeograph, photocopy, megaphone and bathroom wall has a long tradition in the world. While the bigshot press may chide Ava Lowery or Truthout.org for their judgment, taste or supposed inaccuracy, there would be no issue if they were ineffective. There would be no issue if they did not beat the big guys to the story, or touch upon the common, understated truth. There would also be no issue whatsoever if the "real" media did its job. Instead, what we get is the usual yellow journalism phenomenon of major newspapers with sterling reputations (and CNN and Fox and their cousins) goading the country into war, letting a bunch of corporate fruitcakes steal two elections, and so on and on. We find out about their suppressing important stories before a major election with so much at stake (the NSA wiretapping story that the New York Times stuffed for a year), making up many articles, and wheeling and dealing with the masters of war. Now we have them lashing out at people who publish a place where it's actually possible for readers to get a point of view not shaped by the corporate agenda of military giants (GE owns NBC and many other broadcast outlets, for example), or the "insider" views of papers like the Washington Post and the New York Times. The problem with the Internet is not that it lacks credibility; the problem, for The Dinosaurs That Be, is precisely that it not only has credibility, but an audience that needs what it finds online, comes online to seek it out, and often gives it the benefit of the doubt. And where 15-year-olds and freelance investigative reporters and people with something to say can have some freedom speech. The price of freedom, for its practitioners, is responsibility, and that is a learned skill. For readers, the price of having journalists and editors willing to dig out and publish controversial stories is that they may get them wrong, or we may not like what we read. And in a time of such rampant lying, getting at the truth is not exactly an easy job. What that price translates to in practical terms is the necessity for readers to practice discernment and actually use their minds, something that is apparently left at the front door when most people come home from work and flip on CNN. This is a very small price to pay, with a big return. Monday, June 19, 2006 | What Would Jesus Do? From Political Waves - by Judith Gayle I REFUSE to believe that Americans can read things like the articles below and not question what we're doing in Iraq -- I refuse to believe that anyone but the Dittoheads and the US Government are invested in it's continuance and in George Bush's leadership. I believe that if this nation was told the truth by it's government or it's press, it would choose rightly. Yesterday, CNN had a fifteen year-old girl on, a youngster who has gotten a lot of blogger attention. The anchor, a woman who is pretty and vapid, chided her for having created both the following video [and many others, listed on her website]. I urge you to open it ... if you have dial up, it's well worth the few minutes it will take to load -- you will cry, but you will be glad you saw what this young American has done. You'll be proud to pass this one around. WWJD http://www.peacetakescourage.com/wwjd.html "Now, AVA! What were you THINKING when you selected that music to go with those pictures?" the anchor asked. "I was thinking we are all God's children," she replied. This youngster, Ava Lowerey from Alabama, was invited to participate in the Kos convention [a convention of progressive Democrats]. "Do you think they were USING you?" asked the flighty anchor. "Maybe," replied Ava, "but I was using them to get my message out." That's myth-busting, dearhearts -- that children aren't impacted by this war, that young people aren't engaged in political realities, that all kids think about are visits to malls and making calls on their cells, that "values" are the property of the Right. Ava's animation is our sorrowful reality and her conscience, ours -- visit her website after you watch it, see some of the other things she's produced. -- Jude Sunday, June 11, 2006 | The Day the Sun Stands Still (revised) LET'S keep a close watch on the date range 6/17 through 6/23 -- with particular emphasis on the 19th and the 22nd. I say this with some concern that we need to take care when reporting potential global trouble spots, so as not to perpetuate the religion of Fearism. This is the little cousin of a religion with a more authoritative name, but he's a little brat and we need to keep an eye on him. However, it's worth bearing in mind that awareness is usually the one deciding factor on the Earth plane, even where luck is involved. An article has appeared on the front page relating to the upcoming summer solstice, which gives some of the details. I'm now looking at the date range of the Sun's northernmost extreme with new concern, and am corresponding with two of the best mundane astrologers I know and getting back some confirmation. Their methods are a little fancier than mine but we're getting the same basic information: something is up on those dates. Whatever is up involves the supposed killing of al-Zaquawi last week, who has ties to Iran; charts for Iran and Israel are involved. The solstice, as I've been writing here and in other venues (including Astrology Secrets Revealed) is the cosmic trigger. This was covered in an ASR edition called "From Beltane to Solstice" about two months ago; my how spacetime flies. http://cainer.com/ericfrancis/may5.html To sum up: the Sun is about to oppose Pluto, then oppose the Galactic Core, then it will square the degree of the extremely powerful Sept. 22 solar eclipse, then it will square the lunar nodes and finally enter Cancer. This sets off a whole stack of Aries Point charts that have been involved with everything we've witnessed in the world from Sept. 11 onward. The new chart in the mix was for the alleged killing of this guy who is being billed as the leader of "al-Queda in Iraq," al-Zaquawi. The weird thing is that the chart indicated something about to happen -- not something that had already happened. There are two times (because of a time zone discrepancy) and no matter which one you use, you still get a situation where an aspect involving the ruler of the 1st or 7th house is about to make a major aspect. Getting AZ was a big deal, no matter how many veils have been thrown over it -- two versions of the story, did they get him three weeks ago, did he survive for a few moments or not, how did he survive, or how did his corpse survive, an explosion that left a 35 foot deep crater and flung debris more than 600 feet in every direction. On one level, astrology is pretty simple. Charts reveal themselves to be about things that happened or are about to happen. However you slice the AZ chart (Sag rising or Scorpio rising), something is coming. We have known this a while, but now we have an added puzzle piece. That is the AZ-Iran connection. As we know, American and European governments have been selling war with Iran for some time. I have a photo of a French magazine cover from the winter doing just this; the French reads, "Nuclear: Tomorrow, war with Iran." http://planetwaves.info/gallery2006/images/20060510ni_homepix.jpg There are a couple of scenarios and I'll provide details from the astrology as they emerge. But, this June 17-23 range may contain either some kind of large event that sets up the bombing and invasion of Iran, or a military move itself. I've confirmed that June 19 happens to be a day that national FEMA drills are being conducted to make sure that if there's "another Sept. 11" things go more smoothly than they did the first time around; here is a link: http://snipurl.com/re2m What we can do for our society as citizens is a tough call. The best thing, I feel, is to pay attention. Keep your awareness open. Be conscious and stay clear with the ones you love. Keep your personal business up to date. If you're someone who is curious about how the world works, or is in the process of becoming aware how history is being synthesized like so much plastic right now, you can watch the pieces come together. I suggest picking where you want to be that week and potentially a little while longer, and sticking there. It is just basic responsibility as an astrologer to advise not flying inside those dates. I realize that everyone can't avoid that, but if you can, you might want to consider it. The important thing is this, if you choose to fly, or must do so: follow your intuition. If you hear a voice in your mind that says "stay home," then listen to yourself. Very, very often, there is a loud warning sounded on the psychic fields and many people hear it. If you feel safe, if you feel willing, then go where you need to go. And look, I could be wrong and I hope I am. We could be wrong; the astrology could be meaningless or signify something later in the season. But, given that I'm noticing something, that I have been for a while, and that two older, better trained and far more experienced astrologers are noticing something, and have been for a while, it would be really stupid of me not to say something; to just neglect to say anything, or to say it in an encrypted, coded way. I say all of this knowing how precious days off are, how rare travel is for many people, and how on any given day, the vast majority of people are perfectly safe. So, once again, once and for always, follow your intuition on those days; do what you feel safe doing. My sense is, if you FEEL safe, the overwhelming chances are, you are safe. The point of my saying any of this is to both alert people to the astrological weather and to give us a chance to shift the events based on awareness and intention, and we CAN do that if we focus. I'll keep the details coming here and in Planet Waves Weekly. Hey, if you're not a subscriber, please sign up. We run on both love and money. Here is the link. http://www.planetwavesweekly.com/sales/home.html Catch you soon. e in New Paltz... PS http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/7566/bert2b7jz.jpg Thursday, June 1, 2006 | New Paltz ONCE AGAIN sitting on the some steps near Starbucks after closing; fortunately they leave the wireless network on. I'd love to know what kind of router they have; it could probably warm up a croissant. I'm getting a full signal about 35 feet from the counter. There are not a lot of WiFi connections around these parts, and this is the only one I know of that I can access at night without driving about 20 miles north (that would be Natesh's house). My trip here has turned into an unscheduled break from my full-strength writing schedule. I'm also getting a lot of time offline for the first time in ages, and one thing about New Paltz is that there are trees. This is different than where I usually hang out -- European cities. And it's nice. I've been able to spend some time at my two favorite spots up in this part of the world, a waterfall in the Town of Rochester, and a cave called the Chironian in Rosendale. Both one of a kind outside spaces where I have connections with the land that go back many years, where I did a lot of growing up and learning about myself. They have one thing in common, which is that they change very slowly. I can go to these spots and it feels like time has not passed. In the Chironian, the only evidence of time passing was that the Chiron symbol I wrote in charcoal on the altar stone had faded a little. There were not even footprints down there. The other really special part about coming back to this part of the country is that it's a community where people have been reading my column for the entire time it's been published. Writing can be lonely, but on the Internet where you get to meet so few people face to face, it can be especially so. That pretty much evaporates here, where all I need to do is say my name and there is instant familiarity, and the warmth I see in people's faces is real. Nice to soak that in for a while, and the trees and rocks remember me as much as I remember them. == Tonight on Astrology Secrets Revealed I've got a bit about our current path through Gemini, including the Sun's forthcoming opposition to the Great Attractor and the Galactic Core. Check back later on Thursday. Here are some related links. The Great Attractor http://www.ericfrancis.com/sagittarius/sagittarius10.html Sagittarius Secrets Revealed http://cainer.com/ericfrancis/dec9.html Katrina Astrology and the Cardinal Points http://cainer.com/ericfrancis/sept9.html Bridge to the Core, short version http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2005/02/backbone/planetwaves/ Just a reminder to check in with Political Waves for the latest updates. A lot of news is moving with the New Moon in Gemini -- almost faster than anyone can keep up. You can read Pol Waves directly at this link: http://planetwaves.info/polwaves.php See you over the weekend! e PS here is a holiday bonus -- all our birthday reports from 2005. If you like what you read, you can sign up for Planet Waves Weekly at the link below. Really a twice weekly service, you get two horoscopes a week, plus lots else besides. http://www.planetwavesweekly.com/sales/home.html Enron's Prize | from this week's Planet Waves Weekly CHART: http://planetwaves.net/chart.php?c=enron DOES CRIME PAY? Thursday at 11 a.m., the jury in the trial of Kenneth Lay, founder and former CEO of Enron and close compadre of George W. Bush, convicted him of six counts of fraud and conspiracy and four counts of bank fraud. Jeff Skilling, former president of Enron, was convicted of 18 counts of fraud and conspiracy, and one count of insider trading. The two men face sentences that could keep them in jail the rest of their lives. In a synchronicity reeking of irony and almost so glaring it begs to be overlooked, Lay will be sentenced on the 5th anniversary of the the Sept. 11 attacks. Both men are expected to appeal their verdicts. But due to one factor in the chart -- Saturn in Leo, exactly in the ascendant -- I don't suggest they hold their breaths. If Saturn in Leo does one thing, it's stick around for a while. (For the history of this, I suggest looking for my series on Saturn in Leo from last summer -- see Astrology Secrets Revealed archive.) Enron's bosses (including many other people besides Lay and Skilling) not only stole hundreds of millions of dollars from their employees' retirement funds; they also rigged a scheme to systematically gouge the ratepayers of California (remember the famous quote about screwing over Grandma Millie), pushing energy rates through the roof for no good reason, creating shortages and faux blackouts to stir up chaos and push the rates even higher, buying and selling their own energy to drive the price up still more, betraying the public trust and profiting wildly all along. Continued in Planet Waves Weekly, the subscriber edition... Note to readers: I'm in the Hudson Valley these days. If you'd like to get in touch, you may drop me a note at francis@planetwaves.net and I'll get back to you. Please include a phone number or two. Note, I am not doing astrology consultations, I'm just here to see friends and meet readers. Thursday, May 25, 2006 | Another World YESTERDAY I shared a little about the history of Squire Student Union, which had been the heart of the University at Buffalo until it was closed in late 1981. The atmosphere of the building, the way the light poured in through the high windows everywhere, the fireplaces, and the way the space was organized to create both focus and flow, provided an environment where students were self-aware of being a community and a relevant part of the university. Squire Hall (originally called Norton Union) replaced an older union (the old Norton Union, later called Harriman Hall) when the campus outgrew the original, and it was an architectural masterpiece, funded by a special private endowment (not the by state) and was designed to serve its purpose beautifully. One of my favorite details of Squire was the blue tile archway that surrounded the enormous main doors at the two ends of the place. The central corridor through the building was a place thousands of people would walk through on the way to someplace else, just because they could. On the outside, at either end, the bands of royal blue (the school color) that surrounded the doors, were about six feet wide and rose high over the doors to just below the second story windows. About four or five different shades of blue tile were used in a mosaic, composed of one inch squares, with occasional white ones interspersed. When sunlight hit the face of the building, it would reflect a bluer-than-blue color that would vibrate out a peaceful, loving energy you could see glowing a mile away, inviting you nearer and then inviting you in. The union was open to the campus community and was the meeting point where student life and city life merged. I never noticed how the bluer-than-blue effect was created with a mosaic until I had a piece of the edifice on my desk after it had been torn down. When I first visited the campus when I was about 16, Squire was the impression the campus made on me. When I arrived as a first year student a year later, the union would exist for just one more semester. I've always regretted that I had not been at the university longer when there was a true home-space for student life, but visiting this past week, I realized how fortunate I was that I had experienced it at all. Having seen, felt and with the help of mentors, understood the role of the union, I could take a piece of that spirit with me into my own student organizing work and then on what I knew would be a long journey into the future. For years, Generation, the magazine I founded and edited, was located next to Squire, and we slowly watched the building be torn apart and gutted for a new dental school facility. Even though a new campus was being built out in Amherst, I had no desire at all to move the Generation offices out there. Besides the fact that we loved our space, it seemed a betrayal to remove the last really strong student organization from the old campus. I also knew we wouldn't get any decent space on the new campus, particularly since the administration refused to even plan for a new student union, despite the constant pressure that a group of us were exerting on them year after year. Instead, student organizations were being scattered around the new campus in a "non-centralized" arrangement. The term non-centralized was another word for "riot proof." Memories of Squire were still fresh in the institutional memory. The centralized student union had become a kind of fortification against police during antiwar protests, particularly during the tumultuous spring of 1970 -- when students were shot at Kent State, Jackson State, and on our campus as well. The short version of that story is that in April, Richard Nixon announced that he had secretly been bombing Cambodia, a neighbor of Vietnam. This revelation set off a wave of protests that led to nearly a third of campuses in the US being shut down early by their administrations; Buffalo was eventually shut down early and everyone sent home without academic penalty. In the midst of this, National Guardsmen opened fire on students at Kent State University, killing four, who happened to be pedestrians or photographers. The Kent State deaths, memorialized in the Neil Young song "Ohio," set off yet another wave of protests around the country. You know the words. They go: Tin soldiers and Nixons coming We're finally on our own... Next to my office in the basement of Harriman was a weird little room wedged into a corner, and somehow a collection of old copies of Buffalonian, the campus yearbook, had been dumped there when parts of Squire were moved. Among these were dozens of copies of the 1970 edition, which to this day remains one of my favorite printed works ever (and which I just put my hands on tonight -- I had it stashed at a friend's house in New Paltz, my current stop). The yearbook documents much of this history in photographs and long captions describing the scenes. The cover is a stylized image of Prometheus carrying his fire, brilliantly appropriate for the times. In running a student organization on the campus in the 1980s, I was fully aware that I was the inheritor of a legacy. I knew that despite the times having changed and the campus, indeed, all campuses, being extremely quiet at that time, it was my responsibility to keep that flame alive and pass it on. Others had passed the flame to me, including Reg Gilbert, who I mentioned yesterday, as well as my American Studies professor Michael Frisch, who had spent hours showing me photographs and news cuttings he had saved, and explaining the politics of activism and citizen participation in the world. Photos of Squire from that era look like a scene from a war, with police cars and ambulances parked outside, as well as a K-9 corps truck, and riot police standing next to the entrance. The words "Off Themis" are graffitied onto those gorgeous blue tiles -- a reference to an underwater military program that was being developed on the campus at the time. In other photos, hundreds of city riot police are seen parading around like soldiers, with the campus described in the yearbook as an "armed camp." The decision to bring in city police, made by interim president Peter Regan, was a big one -- SUNY has a long tradition of only allowing its own [then unarmed] Public Safety officers on campus. Student Association meetings, held in an enormous lounge or a gymnasium, were packed with participants, and the expressions on students' faces were determined and intense. There was not an inch of space to move. Students voted, on a "polity" basis (that is, everyone participates in the vote -- not just elected student reps) for a university-wide strike, and formed a peace patrol. The yearbook reports that three members of the peace patrol "were beaten by the police and others threatened by more radical factions of the university" and as a result, it was soon disbanded. Around this time, the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) was thrown off campus by the faculty as a protest against the war in Vietnam, and as a statement that the university would be used for peaceful purposes only. In another episode from that spring, 40 young professors took over the office of college president Peter Regan, protesting the police presence, and were arrested. It is difficult to describe the sense of commitment, urgency and passion of the campus community. It is more difficult to understand the energy beneath it, pushing it upwards. But in the dedication to the yearbook, the editors summed it up well. The '70 edition is dedicated to Linda T. Hanley, who was editor of the campus newspaper, The Spectrum, and to Dorothy M. Haas, the student union director and a rather extraordinary member of the administration. "Contemporary reality breeds an atmosphere for crisis," the dedication begins. "It is during these critical times that a whole society becomes a pressurized system of conflicting roles. American culture has, indeed, experienced the full impact of such moments. "One manifestation of modern crisis is the campus riot. The Buffalo campus has crossed the threshold into this relatively new phenomenon. As a result, attention has been focused on the student media and the student union." Referring to Linda Hanley's writing, it says: "It was when the administration's phantom-like authority made Hayes Hall [the admin building] nothing more than a facade, her controversial editorials gave an outraged student community a voice in the affairs of the university. These same editorials proved that today's student realizes that a university is an important instrument for social change; and that requests for change cannot be met with administrative belligerency. Negotiation can hardly be considered an unreasonable demand." What they are saying here is that students, angry at the way the world was going, demanded a role in the governance of the entire university -- not, for example, what was served for lunch or what movies were shown. This participation they viewed as taking a role in the wider world, understanding that universities are institutions that have traditionally been influential in many societies around the world. They continue: "The Spectrum's in-depth analysis and interpretation of the rapidly succeeding events gave an otherwise chaotic situation some kind of direction and coherence. It was this kind of scope that the paper possessed throughout the year...It is during times of crisis that social responsibility of individuals is increased. By placing emerging trends of the university into an understandable social context, Linda Hanley has displayed the new consciousness of the contemporary student. It is this consciousness that will, hopefully, regain the integrity and relevance of the university in America." SO, READERS of Planet Waves: That was then. This is now. The planets have moved. The Uranus-Pluto conjunction is long gone (except in many of our natal charts). Squire Student Union may have been taken from students, plastered over till it was unrecognizable, and its blue edifice torn down and replaced with galvanized aluminum panels. Its enormous welcoming doors may have been blocked, its fireplaces torn down, and its marble floors replaced with synthetic tiles. Maybe there's a sterilization unit where the bowling alley used to be. The University is an idea, not a campus or a building. It is the idea that we are free to think, to gather, to make inquiries, and to form communities that are based on learning, personal growth and exploration. We don't need to be spiritual, only to recognize that we are free to seek understanding, to express ourselves, and to take a role in the way our world is run, because it is our world, if we remember. Or as Jude put it so eloquently yesterday in Political Waves, "Seriously -- if there's a pony in all of this horseshit, somebody better trot him out NOW!" That pony...would be us. Wednesday, May 24, 2006 | Twenty years ago today YESTERDAY was the day I set aside to visit the Amherst Campus of SUNY Buffalo, where I graduated 20 years ago this week. That's the new campus, which has grown up beautifully. I spent the day in Starbucks, writing horoscopes and looking out at the new Student Union building that was built after a long, relentless campaign by a succession of student editors educating the student community that one really did belong there. The evening before, I made a disturbing visit to the Main Street campus, the old campus, where Generation, the student magazine I started in 1984, had its offices when I was editor. Disturbing because any trace of the campus as I knew it had been erased, torn down, renovated, converted, covered over, trees planted, unrecognizable. There was a little lawn where my Service Vehicle parking spot used to be, constantly adorned by my gold 1972 Dodge Dart. I attended UB, as it's called locally, in a time of enormous transition for the university. The original campus, located in the city and more than 100 years old, was being converted to a health sciences center. A new campus was being created three miles away in the town of Amherst on some swamplands. The crux of the transition was around 1982, when Squire Hall, the student union on the old campus, was closed down (amidst a pretty huge controversy) for conversion into a dental school. The closing of Squire was in part a practical move; that really was the place the dental school was planned. But it was also a spiritual gesture, taking out the heart of the campus and the place that had served as the student headquarters during the anti-Vietnam War protests and riots. Some student organizations were moved out to Amherst immediately, and others were moved into an ancient, previous student union called Harriman Hall that was taken out of mothball status put back into service. Gradually, those were moved out as well. Generation was one of the last student organizations in that building since nearly everyone else had been moved out to new space in Amherst. As one organization after another was relocated to the new campus, Generation's suite of offices expanded regularly. I used to have keys to about 14 rooms down there, and in many ways the magazine was the last vestige of student organization life on the Main Street Campus, the last little trace of the Squire Student Union spirit. We shared Harriman Hall with the Theatre and Dance department. It happened, as a result, that I had a lot of occasion to see my dance professor, Tom Ralabate, even after I stopped taking jazz dance classes, because his studios were right upstairs from my offices. When I went back to the Main Street campus Monday night, I saw for the first time where the whole end of the building where my old offices and the dance studios were had been razed and replaced with a few trees. Dreams of the Generation basement suite of offices had haunted me for many years after I'd graduated. I had been aware for years that at some point that side of the building would be removed (to move construction equipment into place, the administration told me). So I was prepared for what I would find, but it was still pretty strange. I went into the remaining part of the building and instinctually walked down to the basement like I had done thousands of times before. Instantly familiar. I was in a maintenance corridor off to the side of the student activity rooms on that level. But all the corridors and rooms where I had worked and in truth lived for years were gone; they had been buried. It was like being in a dream where the adjoining dream was inaccessible. I roamed around, reluctantly took some pictures, then took a tunnel to the old student union, Squire, which was now very much a dental school. The conversion began right when I arrived on the campus, and went on long after I had graduated. But I did have memories of Squire Student Union, including one from when I visited the campus as a high school senior, walked through the building and felt the life and vibrancy pulsing through it, and knew I had to come to that university. That was the deciding moment. Twenty-six years ago. I explored the basement a little, went into one of the pre-clinical labs, took some photos, using a flash -- nobody questioned me...I roamed around with perfect freedom...either security was pretty casual, or some of my old walk-through-walls magic that had taken me through nearly every inch of that campus was still at work. This was the basement that had housed a Rathskeller, bowling alleys, and student organizations, and the last time I had been there it was packed with students, and vibrating with intensity that was really the residue of the student spirit of the 1970s. Now there were things like Central Sterilization and a flammable materials storage room. Enough. I looked for the nearest stairwell and went upstairs. I looked down at the steps. Despite a total renovation, they were the exact same steps. Instant flashback. My feet knew where they were and I could very nearly hear the echoes of so long ago. Finally I headed off campus to Anacone's Inn, looking for Andrew Galarneau, Generation's first writer, who would be there watching the Buffalo Sabres in the playoffs. The walk seemed endless. Neighborhoods that had once been off-campus student housing were now like a slum. Block after block, unrecognizable. I kept reminding myself that everything, all the undergrads, had now moved out to Amherst, that the life and student culture existed somewhere else. But it was like another world with the same layout as the real one. Finally I got to Anacone's. Andrew was there, screaming at the television with a bunch of other Sabres fans. It really had been twenty years since I had seen him. He was a little heavier, a little older, with a picture of his three kids in his wallet, which he showed me 15 seconds after I got there; but still very much the person I knew, the extremely intelligent, cynical, loving, wiseass, not quite a badboy but not quite a good boy, either. Andrew, at age 18 or so when he showed up in my office, was the writer of the column that, from the first issue, guaranteed that there would never be a leftover copy of Generation -- a series that ran for four years consecutively, written anonymously by "Bitter Twisted." Back then, hours before deadline, Andrew would need to be located sleeping and hung over somewhere, dragged in front of the computer, propped up, given coffee and cigarettes, and then he would come out with the most brilliant thing in the magazine every week. He now writes for the Buffalo News. A while later Reg Gilbert, who had been a kind of mentor to Generation, arrived, wearing pajama bottoms because he refused to get dressed at 9 pm. He was one of the people who taught me how to write, in particular, to write persuasively. Then Doug Levere walked in, someone who I was not expecting to see. He was a photographer who joined the magazine shortly after I stepped down as editor. Reg summed up the 32 years it took him to finally get his undergraduate degree. Doug, who had recently moved back from Manhattan, told his story of refusing to photograph the World Trade Center as it was burning. We talked about the world and where it was going, a strange experience considering that I had not hung out with these guys since Ronald Reagan was president. At the table with us was a guy named Chris, who was something like the 22nd editor in chief of the magazine. I kept buying the drinks and nachos. http://planetwaves.net/chart.php?c=andrew Tuesday, May 23 | What We Cannot See I THINK we're in the middle of an invisible turning point right now, going back about two weeks. I say this in the midst of some culture shock, both of plunging back into American society for the first time in nearly a year, and spending time with very old friends whose viewpoint is mainly political and removed from a backdrop or context that has become increasingly meaningful to me, which is astrology. Doing astrology every day it's easy to take it for granted. Writing to an audience that is either familiar with astrology or expects it to be discussed is part of why. What I'm finding interesting is what shaky ground I feel like I'm standing on when that viewpoint is removed from the discussion. It's pretty difficult to explain why an astrological idea matters at all to people completely unfamiliar and uncurioius about the whole field. Tonight in the midst of a discussion, I tried to interject, "Okay, you can say that, but Pluto is going into Capricorn..." and I realized how ridiculous it sounded. But what was stranger was feeling how baseless the whole political discussion is without an astrological context. Not that I could ever prove or even demonstrate that -- but astrology does add a wider view, and a birds-eye view, and a sense of the energy of what it means to be Now. One of my other big culture shocking experiences tonight (after my first full day Stateside) was Fox News. I've read about Fox, I hear about Fox, I know about Fox, but it happens that I've never seen Fox before now; I would know because I would recognize it, and I've never, ever seen anything like this. I happened to doze off on the couch while it was on, so I had the benefit of an hour or so only semi-filtered by my cognitive mind. Then I started to hear stuff that was so weird and so interesting that I had to wake up and pay attention. And I was just as confounded, really, stunned not only by the political perspective that seemed to be no perspective at all, but by the emotional pitch of the commentators and the way they treated their guests. Basically, if you had views they described as "liberal" you would get the snot beat out of you, like it was a sport. Liberal meant dared to have your own opinion, or take a sensitive view, or express an idea that defied doctrine. The segment that stood out was their discussion about protestors at Boston College turning their backs on Condoleeza Rice on Monday, when she received an honorary degree and gave an address at commencement. What I can say is that the people they chose to speak against the war were sincere, intelligent and emotionally grounded -- and these people were then presented as a freak show, almost pornographically. The way Fox handled it was to focus on the protest and the protestors, then to attempt to ridicule them. Anything that raised a question or revealed a viewpoint that went against their idea of "mainstream" was smacked like a pinata. They went so far as to characterize people who voted for John Kerry as radicals, but also hypocrites, because Kerry supported the war. I kept trying to parse out a viewpoint of the network that I could identify. And finally, I could only find it in the emotional tenor of raging contempt for anyone who would dare to question the Fox News version of consensus reality. Oh, and everyone who worked for the station seemed to wear an American flag on their lapel. One thing about those dumb-ass flag pins that Bush, Cheney and apparently the entire Fox "News" team wear that really surprises me is how their attempt (collectively) at branding the Red, White and Blue, is never questioned by anyone. Why does Bush wear the American flag? Are we really supposed to have that big a question of what side he's on? I keep forgetting to ask, so I can't complain. But just imagine for a moment Tony Blair wearing the Union Jack on his suit jacket. It would be ridiculous, like putting American officials on TV with a big yellow finger pointing to them that says "Patriotic!!". The tone of the rhetoric is so desperate as to belie something. It would not even be recognizable as "conservative" in another era -- say for example the Vietnam era, because it's so shrill as to belie its lack of a base in reality. When you have no base in reality, you really need to keep a poker face, but in our era, you just go on the attack. Anyway, about the week we cannot see. I'm getting the information a lot of different ways, but one of them is Dick Cheney's progressed horoscope. I published this chart for the first time when Cheney had his hunting incident, coming within a millimeter of killing one of his friends in a hunting accident in Texas. I noticed that Cheney's progressed Moon was about to progress from Cancer to Leo, and then go over his progressed Pluto on May 11. A progressed hit of the Moon to another planet really goes on for about four weeks as an exact aspect and then functons for a month or so on either side, where the pre- and aftereffects can be seen. The exact contact, to the arc minute, was about 12 days ago, so we're still in the peak. Something has changed or is changing. Something is different and getting more different. We may not see the effects right away, but an aspect like that cannot have no demonstrated expression. The delicacy of this moment is not lost on me. I am as hopeful as anyone that the truth will come out, but I'm also aware enough to know that all I can hear is the thumping on the other side of the wall, and that I get the clearest picture from the planets. Some of that thumping involved the whole Jason Lepold situation. My sense is that there is a desperate struggle for power going on behind the scenes right now. It's not being reported, and we're only getting the public relations screen thrown in our faces. But a lot is moving back there, something is developing, and we're in the middle of a critical moment. It's a feeling like something is about to happen, but in reality something is happening. Here is Cheney's progressed chart, back to 11 May, the exact Moon-Pluto in Leo contact. http://planetwaves.net/chart.php?c=cheney_progr_may11x Monday, May 22, 2006 HERE is the text of a statement released last night by Marc Ash, the executive director of truthout.org. Last weekend, truthout.org writer Jason Leopold broke the story that Karl Rove had been indicted for lying to investigators during the investigation of the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Leopold's story has been mired in controversy because nobody else was able to track down the facts. And because it made the mainstream media look pretty bad, since they didn't have something that in their minds may well have been true, and which they may well have known was true -- but did not report. Here is Marc's statement. Note, Planet Waves is a financial supporter of truthout.org. Information Sharing on the Rove Indictment Story By Marc Ash Sun., May 21st, 2006 at 11:58:26 AM EDT I'd like to break this posting into two categories: What we know, and what we believe. They will be clearly marked. We know that we have now three independent sources confirming that attorneys for Karl Rove were handed an indictment either late in the night of May 12 or early in the morning of May 13. We know that each source was in a position to know what they were talking about. We know that the office of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald will not confirm, will not deny, will not comment on its investigation or on our report. We know that both Rove's attorney Robert Luskin and Rove's spokesman Mark Corallo have categorically denied all key facts we have set forth. We know we have information that directly contradicts Luskin and Corallo's denials. We know that there were two network news crews outside of the building in Washington, DC that houses the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm that represents Karl Rove. We know that the 4th floor of that building (where the Patton Boggs offices are located) was locked down all day Friday and into Saturday night. We know that we have not received a request for a retraction from anyone. And we know that White House spokesman Tony Snow now refuses to discuss Karl Rove -- at all. Further, we know - and we want our readers to know - that we are dependent on confidential sources. We know that a report based solely on information obtained from confidential sources bears some inherent risks. We know that this is -- by far -- the biggest story we have ever covered, and that we are learning some things as we go along. Finally, we know that we have the support of those who have always supported us, and that we must now earn the support of those who have joined us as of late. We now move on to what we believe. (If you are looking for any guarantees, please turn back now.) We believe that we hit a nerve with our report. When I get calls on my cell phone from Karl Rove's attorney and spokesman, I have to wonder what's up. "I" believe -- but cannot confirm -- that Mark Corallo, Karl Rove's spokesman gave Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post my phone number. I believe Howard Kurtz contacted me with the intention of writing a piece critical of our organization. I know that Anne Marie Squeo of the Wall Street Journal attacked us and independent journalism as a whole in her piece titled, "Rove's Camp Takes Center of Web Storm / Bloggers Underscore How Net's Reporting, Dynamics Provide Grist for the Rumor Mill." We believe that rolling out that much conservative journalistic muscle to rebut this story is telling. And we believe that Rove's camp is making a concerted effort to discredit our story and our organization. Further -- and again this is "What We Believe" -- Rove may be turning state's evidence. We suspect that the scope of Fitzgerald's investigation may have broadened -- clearly to Cheney -- and according to one "off the record source" to individuals and events not directly related to the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. We believe that the indictment which does exist against Karl Rove is sealed. Finally, we believe that there is currently a great deal of activity in the Plame investigation. We know that this story is of vital interest to the community, and that providing as much information as we can is very important to our readers. We want you to know that this is challenging territory and that we are proceeding with as much speed as the terrain will allow. Marc Ash, Executive Director - t r u t h o u t director@truthout.org Sunday, May 21 | Gemini Hey there. I've been hanging out in the background while the Sun made it's way through the last degrees of Taurus. The Sun and Mercury are now in Gemini, and we start a new cycle of experience, expression, and movement. We are already in the third sign of the season -- (northern) spring began more than 8 weeks ago and (northern) summer begins in about four weeks. Friday, I published a fairly extensive article on Karl Rove and his astrology. The piece includes a rectification of his natal chart, which should prove to be helpful and provide a reference point for the many people who have written in over the months asking whether I have Rove's data. I think for our next rectification project we had better do Patrick Fitzgerald, who also has a date, a place and no published time. When you read the rove piece, bear in mind that Fitzgerald, his nemesis, was born exactly on the (northern) winter solstice -- with his Sun in the first degree of Capricorn. Here is the link. I'll catch you tomorrow. http://planetwavesweekly.com/dadatemp/716494541.html e Wednesday | Memphis Blues ONE OF my favorite songs in the Dylan-Grateful Dead genre is called Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again. Man, I just googled it and found out this song first came out in 1966, on the album "Blonde on Blonde" -- the last record in the early era of Dylan's career. I fell in love with it after seeing Dylan perform it with the Dead playing backup at Giants Stadium in 1987. My friend JJH gave me a tape of the show...and I was transfixed. I lost the tape, and then a couple of decades later, thanks to one of the editors I write for, a friend of a friend of somebody in San Francisco who knows, well, whatever, I was given some CDs of the Dylan set as well as two Dead sets beforehand. Great stuff. It's the Garcia guitar solos. They are these soaring intricate improvised melodies, and he plays three of them laced between the stanzas. Very difficult to describe, but...he steals the show. Not that this is new. As Mr. Leo with an Aries Moon, Garcia usually was the show, and these three melodies he basically makes up on the spot, in the middle of this long tale of Dylan's about being in the right place at the wrong time, tell the story so vividly. The Dead covered this song hundreds of times. To tell you the truth I've never been a big fan of their cover. But I have this recording called "Nightfall of Diamonds" on my iPod. It's a commercial release of the Oct. 16, 1989 show, again at Giants Stadium. This is a special show because it's one of the later shows where an old, amazing song called Dark Star was played. There are those nights when Garcia was good and nights when he was so far over the top beyond brilliant that I could barely stay in my body. I was not at this 10/16/89 show...but...taking a nap a moment ago, Stuck Inside of Mobile came up on the guitar. This was two years after the Dylan-Dead tour...they had practiced it a lot for that tour two years earlier. Bob Weir did the vocals as usual -- and his voice doesn't quite have that stinging, ironic quality that makes Dylan's so much fun. But, who cares. Garcia's solo came up and...in this state of half sleep, it just exploded into color. One of the reasons he is so amazing is how many notes he plays and how the rhythms all fit together. Another is now he just pulls these sounds you've never heard out of nowhere, out of thin air or the 19th dimension. Another is that he plays on the chromatic scale -- on a piano, that would mean the black notes and the white ones, so he can do nearly anything and still be in key, and he has that many more choices of what notes to play. But then there is the energy, the radiant, exuberant celebration, like a peak moment on an acid trip. Notes and these exotic sounds going off in every direction, but in perfect constellations, bursting into clusters...reforming into new clusters, revealing their otherwise unexpressable idea, and then disappearing. Then there's the story. Here's a little, in Dylan's words. When Ruthie says come see her Yep, right place at the wrong time. Here are the rest of the lyrics. http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/memphis.html The recording is called "Nightfall of Diamonds." Here's a link to the Grateful Dead store's page for the product. The album is amazing from the first note to the last, and has many of the Dead's best songs. http://snipurl.com/qltn Wednesday, May 17, 2006 | How strange it is... (updated) GET THIS. The USA government has released video tape of what it claims is Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. As some of our readers know, my own analysis of crime scene photos has determined that there was no jetliner involved in that incident. That is to say, I don't buy the official story that a jetliner hit the military headquarters of the free world an astonishing one hour after the attacks began at the World Trade Center. Let's forget -- for a moment -- that the tapes were released in our Flea Wagging the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm moment, when any distraction from reality counts for extra. Let's forget that the government claims this is are video of an airplane crash; the fact that Defense Dept. officials are participating in the discussion just begs the question. Finally. From what I can see, the tapes are the same as the security camera footage that came out (in the form of four or five selected frames) shortly after Sept. 11, showing a small, white projectile flying near the ground, and then apparently (judging from the fireball) hitting the building. But it does not look like the tall, elegant, shiny aluminum tail fin of a jetliner going by. It looks like a little missile. Which would be consistent with something, some kind of conventional (that is, not nuclear) bunker buster warhead, puncturing three of the Pentagon's rings. Photos of the puncture holes in brick walls several rings into the Pentagon's structure exist for anyone to see, and they are not in doubt. They are part of the official story. A missile would also be consistent with the lack of skidmarks, the lack of wreckage (such as huge titanium jets or landing gear, which are not destroyed in a crash), the lack of a fuel spill on the lawn (which is green right up to the little road next to the building), the lack of a jet wake flipping cars over, and the fact that the damage to the Pentagon is an exit wound rather than an entrance wound. That is, when you look at a photo, notice which way the debris falls. Imagine 100 tons of aluminum, fuel and titanium slamming into a brick wall. Which way should the bricks go? Um, they should go in the direction of the airplane -- not the opposite direction. There would also be a fuel spill and a big messy fire. Instead, there was a perfect, tight little explosion inside the Pentagon, blowing up through the roof, that destroyed the infrastructure of the building, before the façade fell outward. Note, the front face of the building stood intact as the building burned for 29 minutes before collapsing outward. [Photos below.] That is the really weird part. For half an hour, all that was apparent was a fire. Then, the building fell, outward. Now, you can twist that in your mind into a hijacked jetliner piloted by Arab terrorists with box cutters, angry about our way of life, crashing into the building, but that doesn't make it so. Seeing images of other jetliners hitting the World Trade Center all day long made it easy to fill in the rather large blanks. Let's not forget the fact that Hani Hanjour, the alleged pilot of Flight 77, could barely fly a plane, according to his flight instructors. Let's not forget how whatever hit the Pentagon was maneuvered in a high speed, spiral descent with extreme precision before hitting the building (on the newly renovated side, far away from Donald Rumsfeld) -- not so easy in a very large aircraft with an inexperienced, incompetent pilot. At the beginning of this discussion nearly four years ago, I recall how nobody wanted to believe that anything but Flight 77 could possibly have hit the Pentagon. It felt like standing up in a crowded church service on Easter Sunday and screaming that God is a big hoax. Which is an apt metaphor because 9/11 was quickly made into a god we had to obey at all costs. Sometimes I write for a media criticism journal called Extra!, and when I tried to discuss this in March 2002, my editor there would not even listen to me for 30 seconds. He was incredulous. It HAD to be Flight 77. He looked around the Internet and could find no photos of wreckage, just one little description, sans image to go with it. A spokesman for the Air Traffic Controller's Union in D.C. who I called the same week, to ask him a few basic questions, was so angry, he was screaming at me, and slammed down the phone. Even as late as April 2004, when I was having dinner with a bunch of scientists at Jonathan Cainer's house, I could hardly drag anyone into Jonathan's office to look at the official Department of Defense photo I had put up on his iMac, to get them to show me where they thought the airplane was. One guy sat there on the office couch, refusing to get up and look, saying, "I'm not an expert on airplane crashes." Which is what lots of people were saying at the time. Yes, and if one abandons one's common sense, then anything you hear about on TV becomes the gospel truth. There was one person who would talk to me: Steve Inskeep of NPR. I knew Steve from when we were both on the New York State Capital press corps in the early 1990s. It was Steve's familiar and friendly voice, reporting from the Pentagon, that was the only reassuring thing those first days after 9/11. He was soon assigned to Afghanistan to cover the invasion of that country. When I finally spoke to him six months later, I asked him: If you had arrived at the Pentagon not knowing what happened, not being told it was a plane crash, what would you have thought it was? He said, "That's exactly what happened." He originally got in a taxi that morning, headed for the Pentagon, based on a report of an explosion -- not a plane crash. And he said the scene did not look like a plane crash, but that he had been to others that didn't look like plane crashes, either. Still: as we all know, no obvious wreckage; no obvious airplane crash. He wished me luck on the story, which he thought was worth pursuing. But most people get quite uppity at the suggestion there was no jetliner. We might ask why this kind of defensive reaction, and we might ask what the effects would be of having a situation that nobody will, or would at the time, even consider the possibility of being different than we are told. Here is why, I think. On the eve of my birthday in 2002, six extremely intense months after the 9/11 incident, I decided to take a week off, to pursue my hobby of writing erotic fiction. So much for that plan; that evening, an email came in with a link to the "Find the Boeing" presentation created by http://asile.org/ in France. I did try to Find the Boeing, and I could not. The link is below. This is the first but definitely not the best presentation on this issue. And then I clicked through to the high resolution Department of Defense photos and looked them over carefully, inch by inch, day and night, for a week. At the end of a week, I concluded that it was an obvious lie that a jet liner had hit the Pentagon, but somehow it had been perpetuated. Then I had my second revelation: if that was not true, then everything else was in doubt. For one glorious evening, I felt free. The whole façade of 9/11 crumbled. The problems is this: it is metaphysical. The notion that Nothing Is True pretty much removes the ground of so-called reality that most people stand on. You need some experience to hold that thought in your mind and not be plunged into extreme fear. The bits and pieces of the 9/11 story that we still cling to are like trying to float on a the cork of a champagne bottle after the cruise ship has already sunk. But as it took T.S. Eliot to say, "Human kind cannot bear very much reality." Nobody is doubting that something hit the Pentagon; the question is what. And the question is what this implies, because it points to something much deeper. We do have the question of what happened to Flight 77, and I have personal knowledge of one life that was lost. I think we need to be looking for a fifth crash scene that day on the Kentucky-West Virginia border. - - - Crash scene photos: http://911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/evidence/photos/bluehi.html This is what a 757 hitting the Pentagon would look like, for size comparison. Contrast with recently released security camera image of missile hitting Pentagon. http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/images/sozen.pentagon.jpeg - - - Mandy Hall, our news editor, is hunting the story, and apparently the government producing the video tapes is the result of a long battle under the Freedom of Information Act, a federal law called the FOIA, that requires government disclosure of public information. Under the Cheney-Bush regime, the FOIA has suffered worse abuse than it has at any prior time, but there have been some unusual successes, too. From what I am gathering, after the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui ended, they could no longer claim secrecy on the Pentagon "crash" tapes -- even though they were not used as evidence against Moussaoui. She writes: They've got two clips looks like they're shot from two different cameras but basically at the same place. - Links with interesting visuals: http://www.pentagonresearch.com/scenemap.html http://killtown.911review.org/flight77.html http://killtown.911review.org/flight77/video.html http://www.pentagonresearch.com/029.html Find the Boeing! http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/erreurs_en.htm Were It So by Eric Francis (from March 2002) http://ericfrancis.com/articles/wereitso.html Tuesday, May 16, 2006 | Rove Riddle Answer Coming Soon LET'S see. I once put a quarter in a slot machine and won enough money to buy a Macintosh G4. Later the same day, I was betting in a poker game in a Laundromat (this was in Reno, on the way back from Burning Man 2001) and hit four aces and a queen. On a one penny bet, I won $15! Imagine if I had bet a quarter. I'm going to bet a whole dollar right now. Karl Rove's goose is cooked. He has done nothing but spew lies for the past five years we've had to endure awareness of the unfortunate fact of his existence. But I guess better to have him in front of the scenes than back in the clockwork. The comments of his lawyers and Republican ringers Monday calling Jason Leopold's article on truthout.org a "disgrace" mean nothing [article posted below]. The press getting shaky because such an explosive story could not be confirmed means nothing -- everybody else has to account for NOT having what will be the biggest story so far in the Bush administration's many scandals. Either there is (or will be) an indictment, or not. I think that by Tuesday evening, we will have confirmation. Also, the Grand Jury meets Wednesday, and that may provide a turning point. Last night I reached Marc Ash, the executive director of truthout.org, and he said he was confident that Jason Leopold's story would check out. The way the issue has been skewed is certainly interesting, and typical of Rovian disinfo campaigns of the past. There is some speculation in the blogosphere that the story was "leaked" (falsely, by Rove ringers) in order to damage the reputation of truthout.org, which reaches a quarter million people a day with political news and analysis. The problem of the mainstream media has been solved by corporatizing it, that is, taking it over by big business. This ensures a constant flow of chaos, violence and trivia, all held up by people struggling to keep their jobs, hence, be good. But the Roves of the world have not solved the problem of the Internet. When your Old Uncle Eric was a lad, there was this thing called the 'alternative press', which meant magazines like In These Times that reached at most 50,000 people a week (maybe it was half that, come to think of it). Now we have many outlets like truthout that can reach five times that many in a single day with much more information. This IS a problem for those who thrive on lies. And the best way to undermine this whole process in the long-run is to attack the credibility of journalists and news outlets who dare to dig out the truth, or even to try. Then, in their fantasies, we can go back to having only Fox News and CNN. As for the reality of Rove getting indicted. On one level, it may come as little consolation if the man who engineered the theft of two elections, the Iraq war and, I believe, the impeachment of Bill Clinton, gets fired and prosecuted for much smaller crimes against the people he supposedly represents. But then his absence would leave absolutely no insulation between Bush, Cheney and the truth of what happened. Remember what is at issue. Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons, to convince you, me and conress to go to war. A former ambassador who had been sent to investigate, Joseph Wilson III, after much wrangling behind the scenes, finally went public with the fact that the nuclear program was nonsense; there was no uranium. Then the Bush administration retaliated by exposing that his wife -- Valerie Plame Wilson -- was a deep cover CIA agent (who happened to be working on nuclear weapons issues in Iran of all places). This in turn ruined years of undercover work, and exposed everyone who worked with her to danger or possibly getting killed. This is not chickenshit. This is treason, the real thing. As for Bush sending 6,000 troops to the Mexican border: the flea is wagging the entire Daisy Hill Puppy Farm. I mean good heavens, acting like Mexico is invading the United States? Defending the border against who? The people who...make your dinner or repair your roof in Southern California? Bush said tonight, "We do not yet have full control of the border, and I am determined to change that." He seems to want full control of everything, and fast. But he is right about one thing, they don't control that border; but does anyone have full control of any border? One of my best friends told me about the time he got a motel room in south Texas, crossed over to Mexico, and then successfully, illegally, crossed back over the Rio Grande. He stuck his driver's license in his sock, and, carrying nothing, waded across the river, crossed the field and the berm without being stopped. He said he sat quietly on the bank on the Mexican side studying the patterns of the search lights and the patrols for about three hours, made his plan, and went for it. He made it, returning to his motel room covered in sweat and mud. The kid is a double Scorpio (Sun and Moon), and he's just as gutsy in his other projects, too. Anyway, there's my dollar bet. = PS, check out this link. I'll post an excerpt later, but it's very interesting, courtesy of Pod. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13055.htm Monday, May 15, 2006 | The Rove Indictment Mystery NOTE: SFGate has this update: http://snipurl.com/qi68 Detroit Free Press adds this: http://snipurl.com/qi8o WE ARE in an eerie moment of radio silence relating to the indictment of Karl Rove. For those who have been following this case for nearly three years, this is a tense moment because so much is hanging on its outcome, and on the investigation of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. Fitsgerald is investigating the conduct of White House officials in lieu of the Department of Justice -- which recused itself from the case early on due to conflict of interest. In other words, if the Justice Department handled it, it would basically look bad, so a special prosecutor was named. If you recall, he has secured the indictment of Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney. As the Scorpio Full Moon passed overhead, http://truthout.org published an article by Jason Leopold [see below] reporting that Rove had, in fact, been indicted by the Grand Jury for at least two crimes in connection with the coverup of the leaking of a covert agent's name as political revenge against her husband, Joseph Wilson. But there has been no announcement of the indictment, and no other media (alternative or mainstream) has published these facts, that I have seen. Now articles are beginning to appear questioning whether he really was indicted -- even though the initial news was not published. A reader writes in from Washington State with this excellent analysis, relating to an AP article immediately below: "I hope you enjoy this article as much as I did. There is Rove, at a conservative think tank, actually allowing his words to be recorded and transmitted to the world. Right at Bush's side, his partner, his compadre, there to the bitter end. Now why would Rove appear today, of all days? And which small court are his lawyers appearing in, in an attempt to block the Grand Jury investigation in any way possible. Bush, Cheney and company are pushing forward as if everything is perfecto - no problems. But let us be realistic. How many times has Rove ever appeared in print, making statements - and so very visible and available to the news media. And what is exactly going on in the White House, and how much panic is really whipping around those hallowed corridors? I think fear is probably so thick right now, we could actually smell it if we were there. Or is it just a stick your head in the sand attitude, no one can touch me, I am one of the chosen ones. I don't believe in the absolute premises of karma, but I do believe we have opportunities to make choices in our lives, and the people involved are now going to have to live with the choices they made." Here is the article she is referencing:
Jude from Political Waves adds: David Corn tried to nail him in the q & a at this discussion earlier Monday... http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/15/corn-rove CORN: David Corn from The Nation Magazine on a different subject. Scott McClellan told the White House press corps, many who are here today, that he had spoken to you and you were not involved in the CIA leak. Can you explain why the American public, almost two and a half years later, hasn’t been given an explanation and don’t you think it deserves one for that misinformation because it does seem you were to some degree, though maybe disputed, involved in that leak? ROVE: My attorney Mr. Luskin made a statement on April 26th. I refer to you that statement. I have nothing more to add to it. Nice try, though. Sunday, May 14, 2006 | truthout: Rove will be indicted TRUTHOUT.org is reporting that Karl Rove, also known as "Bush's brain," engineer of stolen elections, bungled wars and many scandals, will be indicted by the grand jury in the Valerie Plame spy outing case. They are reporting that he will be charged with lying to investigators, though it's not known whether obstruction of justice will be among the charges. I am gathering that there will be a news conference by Patrick Fitzgerald Monday. Here is the really weird thing -- none of the mainstream or alternative news outlets are not carrying this story. Even http://RawStory.com is not running this one, and they generally run 24 to 48 hours ahead of the news. It doesn't really matter what Rove is being charged with; this is big news. The next rungs in the chain of accountability are Bush and Cheney themselves. The astrology of this development is, pretty simply, the Scorpio Full Moon. Here is the lead from truthout.org, by Jason Leopold, linked in full below: Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051306W.shtml In other news, it looks like the affair is getting close to Cheney. Details as they are available. This story is all over the mainstream media, including being the front page of both major news portals. It is interesting that the focus has moved to Cheney, but not unexpected. My prediction that Cheney would be out one way or another by mid-May is running a little late, but, let's see. He does seem to be shark chum at the moment. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12774274/site/newsweek/ http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/05/13/cia.leak/index.html Saturday, May 13, 2006 | Full Moon, Toronto THIS is a great conference. First of all, I'm invited as a speaker, which personally adds a lot of fun. I'm not a big "conference guy" (with Aquarius Moon and Aquarius Saturn and a ton of gravel strewn between, I am fussy). It's a small group, about 75 people, which is the perfectly manageable size; you can actually know all the faces. The classes range from being big enough to accommodate the whole group to seminars of 10. I thought both of my presentations so far went just fine, I had a lot of fun and felt the energy flowing. I'm very much looking forward to Arwynne O'Neill's presentation later this morning -- she is doing a talk called Heavy Water, on the Saturn-Neptune cycle, based on work she's published on Planet Waves. She was placed in the prime time Saturday morning time slot to draw the biggest crowd of the event, and I've seen parts of her presentation -- it looks excellent and she's a high-energy, clever and friendly woman devoted to research astrology. Yesterday I warmed up my Chiron talk playing a live version of the Grateful Dead's Terrapin Station, which includes my new key concept for Chiron: "Some rise, some fall and some climb to get to Terrapin." We made some extremely interesting discoveries of tree mythology connected to Chiron, which deserve a much closer look. Chiron's mother asked Zeus to turn her into a tree, a fact which I have not seen the rather rich symbolism of addressed much at all. There was a brilliant synchronicity yesterday. During the discussion of the "Rabbi" Sabian symbol in a remote conference room on the 10th freaking floor of a hotel in Canada, an actual rabbi (guest at the hotel, not part of the conference) walked into the room! Heh. He said, "Well, I guess I belong here" and joined the discussion, bring some excellent info about Kaballa. Somebody wrote to me yesterday and asked if I'm taking a little writing break and the answer is YES. I've actually gone an entire week without writing a horoscope column (whereas I usually write two to six a week). I've written a few short easy blogs like this which take about 15 minutes and just one essay. That's a vacation around here! But I do plan to gradually turn up the gaz next week. I'll catch you soon. == The annotated Terrapin Station http://arts.ucsc.edu/GDead/aGDL/terr.html Deadheads in the reading audience are ALWAYS welcome to contact me, especially if you live in the Hudson Valley! Friday, May 12, 2006 | Chiron THERE are few things I love doing more than teaching astrology. I don't get to do it often but I'm doing it these these days. Yesterday's class, a full day seminar, focused on the Aries Point. We began with the 6/21/01 eclipse, and the personal stories of people's lives that surrounded that event. Then we studied the Sept. 11 chart and then moved onto several charts for Iran. We concluded the day with a long discussion about the summer solstice chart that's linked from the latest edition of Astrology Secrets Revealed. Today's class is a two hour combined lecture/practicum on working with Chiron. It is surprising how little experience many astrologers have working with Chiron, and also how eager people are for a viewpoint, and some experienced discussion. That class starts in about an hour, and then after that I will attend to some scheduled writing that, conveniently, addresses both subjects above. These are some busy days, but the beauty is that I'm spending more time in reality than in virtual reality, doing every trick in the book to keep my writing schedule down to a bare minimum -- heaven knows I've needed a break from that. I must thank so many people on the Planet Waves staff everywhere, as well as here in Toronto and in Brussels who are helping keep me grounded as I move, keeping the Web pages going every night and putting some serious wind under my wings. Back in a bit. May 11, 2006 | Here beside the rising tide THUNDER and rain have visited Toronto the morning of my mentorship intensive here on astrology and activism -- the perfect weather. We have a meeting room on the 10th floor, digital equipment, an Internet connection into the space, and a group of 15 astrologers and astrology students. I've gone through several variations of what to do, and I've decided I'm going to take the morning session, project one chart on the screen (the total solar eclipse of June 21, 2001), and ask people to share the story of their life since that eclipse. How intense the times we live in are entirely unacknowledged. There is so little reflection, so little assessing of the sweeping change, the pressure, the fear and most of all the sense that more is going to change faster. As Bob Dylan said in one of his lesser known songs, there's no time to think. The full-throttle astrology goes back a bit further than the 6/21/01 total solar. There was the Chiron-Pluto conjunction in Sagittarius on New Year's Eve 1999. There was the 8/11/01 total solar eclipse and grand cross ("before 9/11 there was 8/11"). So, I think that a time to reflect would be healthy and teach us a lot. Astrology on one level is about ideas; on another, it's about the positions of the planets; on another it's about these things called archetypes and our relationship to them; and if you jump up one level it's about a lot of mathematical relationships between everyone, everything, and time. But in truth astrology is an experience. It is the flow, the feeling and the events of our lives as we move through the wild cosmos, uncertain of where we are or why we are all here. We are living through dangerous days. For many people, uncertainty is a way of life; for many, fear is a way of life, and not because they want it to be. All day long we are confronted with news of war, of loss and of the threat of worse things. But life goes on, as it always does. Many people feel the potential of our moment in history, the potential for an old way of thinking and existing to be cast off and a new one to be born. The words for this are "paradigm shift." Millions of individuals in our culture have devoted long years of their lives to self-study, spiritual practice, conscious living, personal growth, therapy, meditation and living in greater harmony with the world. But a new frame of reality has yet to take over; our civilization speeds dangerously toward a cliff. We don't know, for example, how long we have before the oil runs out and before clean water will be extremely scarce everywhere, as it already is many places. I think this is an important time to assess reality, and to make decisions. As astrologers and astrology students, we have something rare, which is a cosmic perspective. We can look at longer cycles than a week or a year and explore their meaning, both collectively and in our lives. More than anything, astrology teaches us that we're intricately connected to the whole. If we acknowledge that one fact, what, then, becomes apparent? That's my proposed starting point today. I'll continue blogging on the developments of this discussion through the weekend as I can. == Note, I'll be taking the week off from Astrology Secrets Revealed and will resume next Thursday. Uncle John's Band lyrics http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/AGDL/uncle.html Note to readers in eastern Canada: I'll be presenting a half-day workshop on astrology and activism on Thursday, as well as another on working with Chiron on Friday. This is part of the Astrology Toronto, Inc. mentorship intensive conference. If you're interested, please email me at francis@planetwaves.net and I'll get right back to you. Thank you! Also, from the "Too Rich for Words" file, this just in: http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article362870.ece Tuesday, May 9, 2006 | More on Probability Fields NOW we may ask, what determines whether a probability field comes into play in 3D, that is, physical space and time? This is a big question. I have no certain answers. I have a few ideas, based on what I've lived and observed. Intention is an important factor. If somebody wants something to happen, the probability increases pretty darned fast that it's going to happen, and this may be the single most important factor. This notion may seem to fly in the face of so many people who want so many things to happen, and they don't -- but it's a little like making dinner, you need the ingredients, you need to have a recipe, you need gaz in the stove, and you need to get motivated and like DO it. The ingredients don't just jump into the pan. Those ingredients are resources. There are some things that are more likely to happen the more money you have. But that only goes so far. And plenty of people who don't have two quid to rub together can pull off some prettttty amazing things. There are lots of ways to beat the odds. Casinos have to work very hard to keep people from doing that, and if you win too much, they kick you out. Another thing that helps is cooperation. If you can decide what you need to do, and if you know you need help, asking for help CAN help. There are times when other people can mess with your head, even cooperative ones, so you need to make sure you don't dilute your intentions with those of others. Focus and intention come first, then help. But there does come a point where the more people who support an idea, the more likely it is to happen. That usually works. It does not always work, however. But usually, if you invent a kind of cookie and people start to really get into it, the more people who buy it guarantee that you're going to be the next Fig Newton. Even if you have to flog them into buying it with ads (I'll save the Ivory Soap "we've been around so long, let's stop advertising" experiment for another blog but in short, they stopped selling soap and went back to advertising.) Now, sometimes what you need to get the job done is secrecy. Sometimes, to focus your intentions, you have to make sure that nobody gets in the way. Secrecy just means the people who need to know, know; and the people only know their little part. This is basically how they pulled off 9/11, as only the people who needed to know, got to know. It is true, there were a heck of a lot of people in on Sept. 11, but each knew his or her own little bit. It also worked well for the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. It has worked well a lot of times, and as we've seen a lot of times, when the secrecy is gone, the plan (or that version of it) is screwed up. But, that can work as a diversion, and one makes another plan. Regarding Sept. 11, along the way, somehow, it seems that somebody aligned with some kind of "wider intention" to increase the probability of the event happening. Or they saw an easy opening, and were very good at focusing intentions and having just the right kind of cooperation. They also got very lucky, whatever the heck luck is. They also fucked up (neither Flight 77 nor Flight 93 went off as planned, so far as I can tell). Okay so, skip ahead half a decade (yes, it's been half a decade of this shit). We now have another rather intense chart that looks a little like it's connected to Sept. 11, which is the solstice chart coming up in June. There is only one difference now: a lot of people are talking about it. If the chart represents a high-probability field, why that would or would not work is the question. And right now there are a lot of people who are thinking, "Gee, it seems something big is about to happen soon," which very few people were thinking on Sept. 11. Now, awareness can work a number of ways. It can work to avert one probability and it can work to emphasize another. The chart, any chart you see, is indicative of an energy source; it is a map to the possibilities. The energy can always be worked with and indeed, we always work with it. In this respect, the solstice chart is rather interesting, and it's something we can work with consciously. Oh, it's a big one, and the more consciously we work with it and make decisions, the better. But I'll tell you something right now: thanks to certain factors of linear time, it's not a done deal -- but neither is the amazing grace that can come from working with it consciously. Monday, May 8, 2006 | Probability fields PREDICTIVE astrology is pretty amazing stuff. Imagine the feeling of actually looking at a chart, seeing something in the future and then having it happen. Imagine the sadness or sense of loss of not seeing something critical. As an example, while several astrologers did apparently see the Sept. 11 incident on its way, none that I know of predicted the sweeping global changes that came about as a result or consequence of the event. It's one thing to see terrorism; it's another thing to see the result of an event. As well, I have seen no discussion in advance of event of the extensive fraud and scamming that came about as a result. There have been other times recently when something extremely specific was apparent to someone. For example, an astrologer named Jim Shawvan was able to describe the mess surrounding election of 2000 so precisely the summer before that you would think he had access to future editions of USA Today. And what of the consequences of that? The idea of prediction, though, usually assumes a linear model of time. That model might work like this: You're driving down the highway, you see a sign that says "rest area five miles," you're doing sixty and you know that if you manage to keep going at the same speed, in five minutes you're going to get there and have a coffee. But the universe doesn't really work so simply. Imagine that actually getting to the rest area is one probability. Imagine that getting a flat tire is another. Imagine that there's an exit right before and you can take that exit and go someplace else. Imagine the rest area is closed or out of coffee. You seem to be in control of some of those probabilities becoming real, and maybe not others. Maybe there's a nail on the road that causes a flat. Maybe you just put new tires on your car and it won't happen. Maybe you have really old tires and it does. You had an opportunity for influence -- earlier -- and may or may have not used it. Maybe, in the present, you have certain opportunities to take avertive action later on. Pretty clearly, you have no influence over whether the manager ordered enough coffee to get through the day. When we look at an astrology chart, or hear a description of astrology that's coming in the future, what exactly do we do with it? We can look at it as a linear model and assume "rest area five miles" or as many astrologers will say, "big disaster five miles." Or we can look at the many possibilities that the chart suggests, and begin relationships with them. I call these probability fields. There are many potentials; charts (and the cosmos) work on many levels. The question is tuning into the level we need to and working with the energy in the most constructive way. One thing is pretty much certain: we know the transits are coming. But hey we don't know everything. Astrology now has to deal with the fact that new planets are discovered. A new planet does not necessarily have a "big impact" (such as adding or subtracting Saturn from the situation) BUT it IS a factor and if we ignore it, we're only pretending it's not there. Here's how I put it last night an email to David Roell, my friend and colleague at the Astrology Center of America book store. We have been discussing the solstice chart covered in the article on the Planet Waves front page (from Astrology Secrets Revealed) called From Beltane to Solstice: Part of the issue is understanding how astrology manifests in 3D, how the various potentials associated with given transits or aspects manifest. Since there are a variety of possible outcomes...there needs to be some way that we choose or some determining factor...some path of manifestation...or some way we relate to the energy that makes the difference. It's like waves at the beach. The exact same wave can drown one person, be something another person dives into and is undisturbed by, and which a third person goes surfing on. Much of what makes the difference is awareness...imagine if we could not see these transits coming. == Note: Mandy Hall has sent me a page of supposed predictions of Sept. 11. I can't verify the text, but I can tell you I know Rob Hand, Robert Zoller and Jim Shawvan persnoally -- not well, but I do know these guys. Here is the link, it is interesting. http://www.astrologyweekly.com/astrology-articles/911-prophecy-prediction.php Reach Jim Shawvan http://www.jshawvan.homestead.com/ Reach David Roell http://astroamerica.com/ From Beltane to Solstice http://cainer.com/ericfrancis/eric.html Sept. 11: The One We All Missed http://planetwavesweekly.com/book/chapter17.html May 4, 2006 | Live on C-Span, In Reality... Mandy Hall, UK-based assistant news editor for Planet Waves, sends in this bit of information, email verbatim below. There has been quite a lot of correspondence flying through my inbox the past 24 hours relating to the Sept. 11 chart. Here is the short new interpretation I sent to some of my colleagues a few minutes ago: Mercury, ruler of the 12th house of secrets, is exactly in the ascendant. The truth is right in everybody's face. Note, C-Span is a commercial-free live cable channel in the USA that broadcasts government meetings and some discussion of public affairs. It's a free channel created in 1979 that was enshrined as part of the cable companies' early broadcasting mission. It is not funded by the government but rather by the cable companies themselves. Here is the Wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-SPAN == Mandy writes: A report about a mainstream call in show: Incredible calls on C-Span RIGHT NOW! I'm watching C-Span's Washington Journal right now (7:55 am EST). It's a live call in show, this morning asking for comments on the Moussaoui verdict. At 7:15 woman called from NY saying that the wrong people got blamed for 9/11 and that the real person responsible was "George W. Bush". This woke me up. At 7:24 a guy from Baltimore called saying Moussaoui is a "scapegoat" and that Bush "BOMBED" the WTC. At 7:37 .. another guy said we were lied to about 9/11. And at 7:38 TWO calls in the same minute said the same thing with the woman in the second call saying "WATCH THE MOVIE LOOSE CHANGE AND YOU WILL SEE THE TRUTH ABOUT 9/11". The show is still on for another 2 hrs. We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. == Mandy has assembled this resource area which has just about anything that's been put out there -- but if we missed something please use the feedback form at the bottom and let us know. http://www.planetwavesweekly.com/resources/pworlds911.html May 4 | Excerpt from tonight's Astrology Secrets Revealed (This section is pertaining to the Summer Solstice chart, which is covered along with the Beltane chart for tomorrow...) 5. The lunar nodes are extremely close to the Aries Point. Notice, they are four arc minutes from being at exactly 00 Aries and 00 Libra. The Sun squares them at the same time. The Lunar Nodes reach these degrees once every nine years, but it's extremely rare to have an equinox or solstice that exactly squares the nodes. Looking at this chart, I cannot help but be reminded of all the numerous Aries Point charts stacked beneath this one. One thing we need to remember is that working in the background of both these charts is the 3/29 total solar eclipse, which was just over five weeks ago, which was an Aries Point event to the max. I would like to conclude with a little note on fixed signs -- Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. They are symbolized by the bull, the lion, the eagle and a person. These are symbols that keep popping up everywhere. For example, have a look at this ordinary tarot card: http://www.eosdev.com/Illustrations_Quotes/Cyndi/world.jpg These critters also appear in the Book of Revelation, which is a treasure trove of occult symbolism (but following the advice of Kabbalah teachers, I don't suggest you read it at night). The Fixed Cross is also the home of the four 'cross quarter days' or High Sabbats of which we are now visiting the first: Beltane takes place in Taurus; Lughnasadh in Leo; Samhain in Scorpio and Imbolc in Aquarius. The fixed cross made a stunning appearance in 1999, with a grand cross and total solar eclipse on Aug. 11, covered in my article Thinking of You on Judgment Day. This is still remembered in Europe as "the eclipse." There was a potentially apocalyptic event: the Cassini Space Probe, which has long since reached Saturn, was being lofted past the Earth with its cargo of 72 pounds of plutonium. How quaint that seems in comparison to the current global situation. How nice to risk the end of the world, and at least get back some beautiful pictures of Saturn and data from Titan. http://planetwaves.net/thinking.html http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm And wot have we got these days? I guess we shall soon enough see. May 3 | Kite Pattern, Venus into Aries TODAY'S entry will be brief: in a little while I need to wrap up my stand-in for Jonathan (always a busy week) as well as move the usual planets along -- a short edition of Astrology Secrets as well as Planet Waves Weekly. In Astrology Secrets, I'll be posting the charts for Beltane and then the Cancer ingress of the Sun (solstice) with a brief explanation of the aspects. One of them looks like a grand trine, and includes a grand trine in the water signs: Mars trine Jupiter trine Uranus. I have not measured how tight the aspect is, and I haven't seen the exact chart (I'm looking at a chart animation for right now). But it's pretty tight in the Beltane chart. But the Sun is in mid-Taurus and it's aspecting all the watery planets from an earthy sign, so that you get a triangle with an extra point at one end, making it look like a kite. This provides the ease and flow of a grand trine without the Bermuda Triangle feeling; you get all the water, but with the Sun grounding the experience in an the earthy element. Today we also have Venus transiting into Aries. I touched on this briefly yesterday, but we get Venus beginning a new cycle of the zodiac as well as an Aries Point event that brings in the North Node of the Moon. The Aries Point normally has strong momentum; the node is exaggerating this effect. This will be a very good day to watch the news, and our lives, with an intuitive mirror and see what we notice. My daily horoscope interpretations looking at this astrology are at http://cainer.com/ and the edition has just been mailed to all subscribers. More on grand trines: http://www.planetwaves.net/cainer/archive/001600.php In a natal chart: http://www.planetwaves.net/cainer/archive/001500.php May 2, 2006 | World on the Edge of Time DO YOU EVER just wish there was a big psychic umbrella you could get underneath and get some shelter from the intensity of the world? I sure do. As much as I enjoy and feel privileged to participate in the discussion, to be aware and alert and writing in this time of enormous change...to share ideas with so many people who want the best for the world...well...man, it's intense. And I've never felt the world in such a state as it's in now. Maybe it's just the sweet little Moon-Mars conjunction that's brewing in Cancer (visible now, wherever you can see the Moon), exact early Tuesday in most time zones. That's an apt enough symbol of the emotionally edgy quality of existence, but not the only one. Protests have been erupting everywhere, including many pro-immigration demonstrations in the USA (and in regards to yesterday's edition by Paloma, I've just had a new report from Puerto Rico -- it's quite an astonishing scene there)...situations in many governments seeming incredibly and truly precarious, balanced on a knife edge...and the feeling that I'm hearing from many places that something, something big, is UP. Yeah, something is definitely up. It's not quite Beltane now -- the Sun is not at the Taurus midpoint for a couple of more days, which will I think be telling and start to tip the balance of feelings and events in a more stable direction for a little while. However, I've just finished writing the Inner Space horoscope for June and had a long look at the summer solstice chart, on which I based the column. The solstice is connected with the 3/29 eclipse because both involve the change of seasons and 00 Aries being so electrified. In the solstice chart, this has the lunar nodes coming within a tiny fraction of a degree of the Aries Point exactly on the solstice, so the Sun squares the nodes to 1/15th of a degree as it changes signs. This sets off a whole sequence of extremely sensitive previous charts like a kind of domino effect. And I don't mean just any charts. I mean charts from the summers of (pre 9/11) 2001 and (pre Katrina-Rita) 2005, as well as a very interesting (non eclipse) New Moon exactly on the Aries Point the first day of spring 2004. I have no doubt that there's something brewing in the ethers, and that it's going to affect a lot of people. If you read conspiracy-type websites (a satisfying project because it gives at least half a glimpse behind the veil of the mainstream media, if you don't mind the paranoia backlash) you'll see discussions of unreported troop movements and other events I am pretty sure have some basis in fact. Personally, I am getting the feeling from the astrology and from the news that there's a flea wagging the dog episode in the works. But my intuition says this: there's no telling which way this cookie is going to crumble, or what the little fortune inside says. I don't care what's being proposed, planned, plotted or schemed right now. It's not quite what's going to happen. Even the probability field of a worst-case scenario 'second 9/11' type event is skewed because too many people are expecting it, or feel it would be a logical diversion at this stage. Anyway, the other shoe has yet to fall regarding whoever was responsible for that day in Sept. 2001 and I for one have no doubt at all who it was. Speaking from the best of my spiritual training that I can offer you, what's most likely to screw up any such plan is that there are too many light workers on the case. There are too many people with genuinely strong connections to Source who are tracking, in truth, stalking every move of the black T-shirts and I'm sure the boys feel about as safe as if they were wading across the Rio Grande with 25,000-watt halogen lamps blazing in their squinty eyes. Meantime, we don't have to wait for the solstice to feel those points get hot, and the smaller transits sometimes offer clues as to the bigger ones that are coming. For one thing, right now the Moon is in early Cancer, just having squared its own nodes; it's about to square the 3/29 eclipse and then make a conjunction to Mars -- and today, on this very day, the People are vibrating out a message of peace and tolerance. For another, Venus is just in the last two degrees of Pisces, finishing her long trip around the zodiac and about to move into Aries and walk over the North Node, and we can study her Aries Point/node transit for clues. Remember that the Aries Point exaggerates that sense of one's personal presence in the world. It amplifies the sense of the world's presence in one's inner life, and makes events seem so important. Everything feels so personal. Is it really? Is it a kind of grand illusion? Ah, are we really here, and where is here? Mm, maybe here is the Hyperspeed Digital Sixties without the Beatles reminding us that love is all you need. Quick, somebody write a song. = Archive: The Personal is Political http://planetwaves.net/cainer/archive/003790.php Friday, April 21 | Psyche Speaks NOTE: We've got a new version of the McLellan Quits chart with Psyche depicted in the ascendant, written out "psy". That would be here: Dear Friend and Reader: AS PROMISED, here is the article on this week's shakeup in the White House involving Karl Rove, Scott McLellan and Psyche. This is the subscriber edition to Planet Waves, which we've posted free the past few weeks so you can see what it's like: http://planetwavesweekly.com/dadatemp/1881888065.html Here is a little interesting fact about Planet Waves. For every 1,000 people per day who arrive at our Web site, one subscribes. This may seem astonishingly low, but actually, it's in line with other sites that strive to make a lot of content available to everyone, as we consistently do. (For example, truthout.org is supported by 1% of its total readers; they use a different method of counting than we do.) It is, however, amazing what we do with our relatively modest budget. Everything you see at Planet Waves is paid for by your subscription fees. Our project development, ISP fees, our staff, our toll-free number, our reporting expenses, programming and design -- all of it -- is supported by our subscribers. Indeed, you could say that I work for free, since I put all subscription fees back into Planet Waves, Inc., and support myself other ways (mainly as a freelance writer for other publications, and doing astrology consultations). You thus get a 200% return on your money. Not bad for a buck a week. If you're one of the people in the "I have thought of subscribing for a long time" category, or one of those in the, "I have resisted subscribing (because I think everything should be free)" category, please think again. When you think of how little $54 gets you in the real world, you'll notice how generous Planet Waves Weekly is, and also the free daily site that it supports. Your subscription gets you access to Planet Waves Weekly, Parallel Worlds annual horoscope and the Lemonade horoscope area. You can subscribe monthly, quarterly, for six months or one year. And -- our main page is here around the clock, every day, with a new message and photograph for you, and lots of great pictures by many photographers. And Astrology Secrets Revealed on Jonathan's page is also sponsored by Planet Waves Weekly. We don't mean to take away your incentive to subscribe by being so generous -- but that part is up to you. So, take action. Make a difference. Help save the world and build a forum for great astrology. If you don't like making online purchases, you can call our office toll free and talk to a real person, Chelsea, who will help you. If you live abroad, send her your phone number and she'll call you. The number is (877) 453-8265 and the email is chelsea@planetwaves.net. Here is our subscriber feedback: http://www.planetwavesweekly.com/feedback.html Here is the sign-up link, with all the options. http://planetwavesweekly.com/sales/home.html Thank you! And please pass it on! e April 16 | Feast or Famine? "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." ARTISTS and writers seem to pour through Paris. I didn't meet a lot of writers while I was here; it was easier to find artists, but then, you can find them in art studios (such as 59 Rivoli, well documented in the 2005 galleries), whereas writers tend to work alone in rooms. And art is easier to see than writing; it's often quite large, and hung on the wall and people are invited in. Dead writers were all around me in Paris. Where I sat and wrote hundreds of horoscope columns was on a little plaza, Contrescarpe, situated on the path to where Hemingway and Orwell had lived. I could feel them walking on the paving stones and through the passages. They kept me company far more often than the living ones. Shakespeare & Co. Books, one of my spiritual bases at different times, had not only been home to tens of thousands of writers over the years, for a week or three or a few months, but also the scene of visits from many of the old Beat Generation writers. It was always interesting to be in a place where Allen Ginsberg had read, slept, written and got off. But as a creative hotbed, the place often feels like last night's barbecue. It is difficult to imagine this city as the place where Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Gertrude Stein and William Somerset Maughm found the community, inspiration and intellectual freedom that they did. It was difficult to see this as the place where James Joyce found so much acceptance and respect. I kept asking myself where Simone de Beauvoir would fit in. When you study art and literature, Paris takes on mythical dimensions. Of the 'great names' we know, many were touched in some way by Paris. It's true there's a lot of art here, and people think that means it's a place that 'supports art'. But I've had to give the talk on living vs. dead artists a lot of times. The dudes hanging in the museums, who get most of the attention, are the dead ones, and typically they get all the money. A place that supports art supports its living artists. This is not, of course, exclusively the problem of Paris. When was the last time you heard of a van Gogh sold at Christie's where half the proceeds went to support living painters? You could sell one of those paintings and endow an arts foundation for 25 years. To call the currrent atmosphere of Paris antintellectual is a most courteous understatement. There is still an energy to tap into, this thundering surge of power; and there is a crystallized quality to the environment that focuses the written word, at least in my experience, and according to the librarian. But on the surface, in 3D, in the current here and now, the mental climate verges on banal. I am not speaking for the youth movement. I have no idea what it felt like to be in their planning meetings for the recent Reve General, the most exciting strikes and protests since 1968. I bet it felt pretty good. But I am talking about Paris itself, not the underground. In many ways it's as if anything that matters doesn't matter. I had relatively few discussions oriented on real problems or real solutions; I could rarely talk about what I was doing for more than a few moments. It does not help that most people feel that astrology is a specific area of expertise and out in meatspace, the physical world and not the Net, I don't meet astrology fans, meaning energized students, every day. It's strange, as I'm saying this now to myself for the first time, I actually have felt a bit selfconscious being an astrologer. I also felt pretty selfconscious having any alternative views of sexuality -- alternative as in something besides marry your first boyfriend. Thank the Goddess there are a few people I can really talk to, but let's put it this way: I don't think it's a town where it's easy to be out of the closet. Gay is gay and gay is an accepted part of life. Gay is no longer queer. Swinging is a business (plenty of swing clubs in Paris, too). I mean queer. You might say, well, sex is so taboo, but we need to expect a bit more from our world cosmopolitan centers. In essence, I am talking about the freedom not just to be oneself, but the freedom to express oneself within a contained social environment and actually be accepted. Perhaps I am not the greatest judge of this; and it is also true that the world gets more Disney DNA injected every hour; and that most people don't know how conservative they actually are -- or why. Ah, but where in the world is freedom the community ethos? Where is it really possible? Where do we not have to walk that fine line between prejudice and envy that seems to crowd our originality off of the mental bandwidth? Where isn't Prozac the drug of choice? There must be someplace. Must we always have to make it? Perhaps this is the requirement of creativity, to create the space where it can be itself, and then to bring the energy to keep that expression going. I know there are places where strong cells of affinity foster growth; there are always those who make it a point of holding open a space for creative expression and for the community to interact with it. But I'll tell you one thing about Paris that won't make you faint -- it's bloody expensive. You don't have to be rich to live there, but you also cannot exactly be on an experimental path unless you have some serious means of support. And most of the world doesn't. So the very expense of being in Paris prohibits those who want to experiment from staying there. When I first got to town, I met these youngsters named Heather and James. They were recovered Witnesses and were some of the most enlightened people I've met since, well, high school or summer camp. James had read every word of Wilhelm Reich, and was a kind-hearted, emotionally centered intellectual. He spent something like 25 euros buying me an ancient copy Reich's The Function of the Orgasm while they were staying in my living room, talked me through some of the main points and gave me some helpful advice for studying it: read a page a day if you have to (it took me six months to read). Heather and James really only had one problem in Paris, which is they could not afford to stay. I'm going to guess that scares off 95% of Paris's brightest young recruits. Trust me, you could feel them missing. You know -- thank heaven for the Internet. That is what I say. I know I have not poured out my heart on this subject, but the Net, for all its spam, scams and bullshit, and people who want to charge by the letter, is one of the most extraordinary places in the universe. If you can get here, you can be free here. You can find people here who say,'Yes, I know what you're talking about'. Maybe they're 3000 miles away. But yes is yes, and somehow in our over-the-edge moment of neocannibalistic world politics, where the walls get narrower and a new law against what you do is passed on a daily basis, where you're always on camera and every word you type is recorded in a database somewhere, you can pretty much say what you want and somebody's going to hear you. That is, if you're brave. But that's always the price of admission. Anyway, what does Paris give? I don't know, but it gives something and it gives a lot of it. Oysters are very popular. It may be just one enormous oyster, and when you get trapped inside, you become something else. April 14 | 22 Views of Paris COMMEMORATING my last few days in Paris, we'll be posting a series of 22 images of this city, changing the photos every few hours through the weekend and into next week. The photos will be archived in the cover gallery, linked directly from the caption. Appropriate Wikipedia entries will be included so you know what you're looking at. Some of the photos are new; some are old; all but a few have never been published on Planet Waves. Enjoy. Paris has been a real trip and for me, a lot of it has been about photography. There is something photogenic about this town. It just makes good pictures like no other place I've visited. I am told by those who know more than I do that this was an important town in the development of photography itself. I'll post some information on that if I can put my hands on it. Meanwhile -- enjoy. Here's a tragic story we need to get out there. School officials are going to need to pick up some skills at being chill with students who stand up for their rights. This article is courtesy of Ursula in Toronto. Please spread the link. http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-1/584/584_01_Soltero.shtml Hiya, Today's PWW reminded me of this -- from HST's October 2004 article for Rolling Stone. **** "War is an option whose time has passed. Peace is the only option for the future. At present we occupy a treacherous no-man's-land between peace and war, a time of growing fear that our military might has expanded beyond our capacity to control it and our political differences widened beyond our ability to bridge them... Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war." --RICHARD M. NIXON, "REAL PEACE" (1983) Richard Nixon looks like a flaming liberal today, compared to a golem like George Bush. Indeed. Where is Richard Nixon now that we finally need him? If Nixon were running for president today, he would be seen as a "liberal" candidate, and he would probably win. He was a crook and a bungler, but what the hell? Nixon was a barrel of laughs compared to this gang of thugs from the Halliburton petroleum organization who are running the White House today -- and who will be running it this time next year, if we (the once-proud, once-loved and widely respected "American people") don't rise up like wounded warriors and whack those lying petroleum pimps out of the White House on November 2nd. Nixon hated running for president during football season, but he did it anyway. Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for -- but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him. October 27th, 2004 By DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Rolling Stone **** Arwynne Hunting the Moon I STEP into the snap chill of the April night and before the motion-detectors see me and flood the world with incandescent glare, I see the Moon, in the clouds, in the trees, in the east. Nothing could have prepared me for such a sudden breath: Not spending the better part of three days studying the energetics of the planets, not the secret desire to be here, not anything. I look at her. She looks at me, low and still and large. My mind interjects with a question: What sign is it in? Hmm. I don’t know. I do know there was an eclipse this morning. I know that Saturn conjoining the Moon can thwart the emotions, And some say that Saturn square the Moon, unless 'redeemed', can signify a lifetime of affliction by karma. She disappears into the clouds, and I am safe. One step and I am seen by the floodlights, which burst in and erase the entire sky. Minutes pass as I drive, and I stop at your house. Smeagol is playing Beware of Dog. I say hello but he ignores me, gone wild. Now I step away from the porch, closer to the night time, and she is back, lighting up the world. Alice Bailey says she is dead. Some say she is a lens of consciousness. I say she is silent and listening: listening to the silence. The buzz of a streetlight, some dogs barking, an occasional engine passing on Main Street, only make the silence louder. She is listening to me stand here with nothing to say, struck dumb, moonstruck, my boots solid in my two footprints. The Earth will turn and she will seem to traverse the night, and in the dark of morning she will set against the shadow of the Catskills, and I will watch from the ridge as we disappear.
-- Eric Francis March 5 | Religious Interlude: Marketing Day AS REGULAR readers of this column know, Sunday is held sacred and sanctified for a marketing pitch; the Sabbath of Subscriptions; the day I get to remind you what else we have to offer, and also that Planet Waves and all its related services grow and thrive as a result of our one premium service, Planet Waves Weekly. PWW is the home of my weekly horoscope and birthday report, as well as a Friday series on astrology that ranges from covering your role in world affairs, to my current series on outer planet transits. So far in this series I've covered the Pluto Square, the Uranian opposition and introduced Saturn and Saturn transits, which continues next week. When you subscribe to Planet Waves Weekly, you get the new editions (usually three per week) and you also have instant access to three years of archives with many articles not published on Planet Waves. The outer planet series moves onto Chiron, before taking off in new and exciting directions, particularly as the 3/29 cluster of events unfolds. That series will explore one of the questions we most often hear from our readers about: what should I be doing in the world? In my reading, the events that occur simultaneously with the astrology of 3/29 will focus us on precisely that issue, because it will suddenly become abundantly obvious that our level in the world is shifting; that we need to take involvement to a whole new dimension. A total solar eclipse in Aries, for example, is an ultimate contact point between an individual human consciousness and the world-at-large. Pluto stationing retrograde on the Galactic Core is currently running an intense focus of energy through the planet's consciousness, pushing things toward a potential tipping point. And the progressions in the Cheney/Bush inauguration chart will be making a very loud sound (but hopefully not too loud). These three events happen in the space of about 24 hours and it will be high times for astrojournalism, because we have the angle that you won't read about in Time magazine, the Wall Street Journal, or even the International Quarterly Review of Tap Dancing. Astrology is the place where individual experience and growth, world events, and the collective experience of them all meet. Astrology is where the news of the world, and the news of the cosmos, picks up the thread of your personal story, and you get to weave yourself in. If you are someone who is waking up to your place in the world, or who feels a calling to participate in a greater way, Planet Waves Weekly is for you. You can currently subscribe for just over $1 a week, which is less than the cost of, well, just about anything you might spend money on. For what your monthly cellular bill goes for, we provide you with a full year of service. We do plan to make the maximum subscription term six months shortly, however, so if you would like to subscribe for a year, now is the time. There are two ways to subscribe -- on the Internet, or by calling our office. Both work well; the advantage of using the Net is that you get instant access to the newest materials, and the advantage of calling our office is that you can talk to Chelsea and discover that we are perhaps the ONLY Web site that actually answers the phone; and it's a freephone to boot. If you'd like to call, the number is (877) 453-8265 in the USA or 001 (206) 567-4455 from outside the USA (not a free call). If you would like to sign up on line, you can use this link: http://www.planetwavesweekly.com/sales/home.html And our subscriber feedback is here. No matter what I have to say, when subscribers say it in their own words, it comes out a lot better. http://planetwavesweekly.com/feedback.html I'll be back tomorrow with reader comments in the What To Do series. Thank you for your your subscription, for showing up, for reading my little Sunday sermon and and most of all for doing your part in the world. Yours & truly ERIC FRANCIS Brussels, Belgium PS: Subscriptions are guaranteed. If you EVER feel like it's not worth the money, you can write or call for a refund -- so your investment is a safe one. Also, we do make comp and reduced fee subscriptions available to those who need them, so call Monday if you would like to take advantage of that. And remember, your subscriptions give you access to the weekly (really three times weekly) service, as well as support Astrology Secrets Revealed and the free Planet Waves site. March 4 | What to Do: Copy Edit! I HAVE a really nice collection of 'what to do' letters sitting in a folder that I am sure many people are eager to read, and I would like to ask a reader here to take over cleaning them up and getting them ready for publication. You would need to have some copy editing experience, know your thens from your thans, and be a bit obsessed about consistency. You need to know what I mean when I say em dashes and smart quotes (if you don't please volunteer for another job at Planet Waves! -- we do have a few). You need to know what I mean by HTML mail and Veranda 12. And you would need about three hours on your hands before Sunday morning East Coast time to go over them and get them to me in good form for posting (hence any time Saturday or overnight Saturday). One of my astrology colleagues in the great nation of Canada wrote to me today about the travesty of the destruction of the what is truly sacred ground for astrologers, the band of land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Without disparaging the lives that have been lost and the families that have been destroyed, the Earth and the history of humanity are also being shattered. Most people do not think about this, but when we went to school, that area was called "the cradle of civilization" because that is where all our knowledge was either developed, or imported to from some other place and took the earliest known root on Earth: writing, agriculture, mathematics, astrology and therefore astronomy, and much else that we take for granted today. I wrote about this in the summer of 2003. It is in the subscriber archives somewhere. I contend that this is not an accident. I don't really believe that Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney are space aliens who have come here to destroy the planet -- but that is my working metaphor. In other words, we are not in the midst normal events, but rather we are experiencing a hostile takeover of our resources and weapons systems and they are slowly being turned against, well, against everyone. And it's amazing how difficult it is for most people to distinguish the "normal operation of government" from having this huge federal machine turned into something that does nothing but wreak devastation. It's done a lot of wreaking devastation in the past, as anyone who knows the history of Central America or South America from the 1940s to present can tell you. But it used to do other things occasionally too. Think about it. Seriously. What does the federal government DO? We all pay taxes. Even poor starving artists who never signed a 1040-EZ in their whole entire life can't drink a cup of coffee or dial the phone without paying federal taxes in some form. Okay, where does it all go? What do you GET for your money? In Europe, everyone gets health insurance. I realize that in the UK it kind of sucks, but at least it's there and there is a kind of ultimate safety net, and if you're in the Bahamas and you get sick, as a royal subject, you are taken care of. If you're a woman and you become pregnant, in many European countries you can take care of your baby for three years and not have to worry about work. If you get injured, you really get to go to the hospital without them picking through your walled and looking for every possible source of money. Those are just the health benefits. In Paris, the homeless are not arrested. To the contrary, people come around and give out blankets. In every city I've visited or lived in, the public transport is excellent. In Brussels, the turnstiles are open all the time, nobody checks your ticket. Even in San Fran with its beloved BART system, you still need a car. And you pay for that car; you pay a toll every time you cross a bridge; you pay high taxes when you register; you pay fuel taxes. Is public transportation infrastructure being developed? You tell me. In the US, welfare is cut, social programs are cut, school budgets are cut, city development money is cut, financial aid is cut. What do you get for your rather hefty federal taxes in the United States? I'll tell you. You get HALLIBURTON. You get war. You get these weird camps. You get billions of dollars in contracts for Blackwater Security to try to hold its own against an insurgency somewhere you've never been and will never go. And hey you even get the privilege of Bush flying around in his own private 747! Don't you feel like you live in a great country? Look at that big airplane he gets! My colleague also complained that more astrology Web pages were not speaking up about the war, or on social issues that are connected to it. The only other one at the moment, she said, is that of Philip Sedgwick; and I can tell you that Jonathan Cainer gives me free reign in the Astrology Secrets Revealed column and has many times spoken out. Are there others? Please let me know and we'll pass the information on. What I said to her is: the reason they are not speaking up is probably: business. Saying depressing things to your readers is allegedly bad for sales. Or it's the news, so it's unspiritual. I have thought this through for a second, and have decided to trust my readers. And not only to trust them, but to trust that what I need to say, indeed what my conscience dictates I must say, your are at least willing to consider -- but I know from my email it's much more than that. I can't get around it, anyway, because the job of Planet Waves is to cover news and astrology in an integrated way that opens the door for the personal growth factor in all of it. We do have a big issue on our hands with both the humanist and spiritual aspects of what we are seeing having few clear voices. One of them, however, is a retired investigative reporter named Bill Moyers. Here is something he said recently in one of his talks. "As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers, there is an even harder challenge to pierce the ideology that governs official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts. What can we do? Let's hear from our readers. Those who wish to help pull the copy together may write to me at francis@planetwaves.net. But you have to know about em dashes and smart quotes! Love, e Sunday, Feb. 26 | Holy Spiritual Marketing Day Dear Friend and Reader: MARKETING is a religion, and today is Sunday, so regular readers of this blog, and those who stumble in from the far corners of the ethers, get to experience one of my high-quality solicitations for you to invest in Planet Waves. I would not waste your money, but more to the point, I would never waste your time. This will be yet another superior level advertisement, written personally by me, carefully typed one letter at a time. Think of this letter any way you want: as communicating the mission of Planet Waves and inviting you in; as my contribution to the American Dream (and the economy); as my weekly motivational talk; as evidence of my pure-hearted determination to be a successful writer. As you wish. Your investment would come in the form of subscribing to Planet Waves Weekly, our premium [thrice] weekly service. We call it weekly, but it really comes out three times a week. The world needs more false advertising like this! Normally, when being subjected to a marketing pitch, you're told how much you GET for your money. Since Planet Waves gives you plenty for no fee at all, I'm at a slight disadvantage -- yet it's true that you do get something in PWW that is a more than a little extra -- and that is, a LOT of astrology. The top shelf stuff. The newest stuff -- first and best. You know, Absolut Chiron. Bombay Safire Saturn. Bailey's Irish Jupiter. The very finest Vancouver BC Northern Lights green-bud Venus. Gourmet Centaur planets, sprinkled with bits of the Galactic Core. How to surf your way through the coming Mercury retrograde. And my brilliant forthcoming masterpiece, "What Makes Dorks Tick?" Then there's my weekly horoscope, published every Friday and available only in/on Planet Waves Weekly. You also experience all four monthly horoscopes being emailed to you before they come up on the public web pages. Currently, I am doing a series on outer planet transits (covering transits for people born from the 1950s through the 1960s), which includes great stuff on the history and interpretation of Saturn, Uranus, Pluto, Neptune and Chiron. There are still three more installments to go! And then there is the weekly birthday report, which covers birthdays for the sign the Sun is in -- but which always has something for everyone. There is no sign of the zodiac that you are not at some point trying to figure out, and every year, I once again do my best to figure out every sign; there are four installments to each birthday report. Three years of these articles are archived (and searchable) on our Subscriber Homepage, along with three years of horoscopes, essays, and lots else besides. Astrology is the next best thing to My Book About Me by Dr. Seuss. You will not read any astrology like this anywhere else. Not in books, not on the Internet, not next to the funny pages -- and not even if you subscribe to the very excellent Pleiades Star-Journal, which does not exist on our planet. But even they subscribe to Planet Waves Weekly. Okay, that's what you get. And it's always good to get something for your money. But what you really get is you get to support Planet Waves and all of our projects that you love so much: Astrology Secrets Revealed, for example, and this daily blog, the photo of the day, our 24-hour newswire and so much more that makes Planet Waves your all-purpose vacation spot on the Internet. Plus, you get to forward Planet Waves Weekly to your friends as part of your subscription. Are we the coolest, or what? Plus, we offer you news with the insanity featured out. We are giving Big Brother what-for. You find some of the most fun, slightly outrageous sex-positive writing that you're going to find anywhere -- like my highly entertaining, informative, nutritious and orgasm-inspiring "Cunnilingus and Clover" feature from last week. Seriously, you can click on all 2.6 million astrology sites that come up in Google and you're not going to find anything like that -- except for right here. So, yes, marketing is a religion, but our real mission is having fun, keeping sanity's front porch light on, and making sure you get all the astrology you could ever want. And making sure you can give it away, too. Sign up now by credit card and you get instant access to the newest materials and archives. Catch you soon -- and thanks for reading. Here is the link to subscribe! http://planetwavesweekly.com/sales/home.html Yours truly, ERIC FRANCIS francis@planetwaves.net PS, subscribers will have instant access to Parallel Worlds, our 2006 annual horoscope Website. This features juicy, 2,000+ word horoscope interpretations, magnificent artwork and a lot of excellent articles. PPS, here is how our subscribers feel about Planet Waves Weekly. http://www.planetwavesweekly.com/feedback.html Jan. 30 | Photo Blog Notes! THANK YOU Paloma for a week of magnificent photos. If you'd like to see more of Paloma's work, you can visit her new Web page at http://www.ojoazul.net/ I've posted a few Chinese New Year pictures to the gallery. I'll be taking another week off from cover photos, but wanted to share those. For the rest of this week and through the weekend, Danielle Voirin will be offering her photos for you. If you're a photographer and would like to see your work on Planet Waves covers, drop a note to Anatoly: anatoly@planetwaves.net. Thanks for tuning in. e
Jan. 10 | A bit about the Parallel Worlds cover PARALLEL WORLDS by Deirdre Tanton (shown on main homepage) is a Photoshop collage. We designed it together over the course of about a month; she did the graphic work on a Mac Powerbook. She started with Venus and added the fanned out cards, which are actually playing cards. We then went back and forth, adding and modifying elements from many different sources, until, about 14 editions later, we had the final one. However, we had a resolution problem -- we could not make the piece large (and clear at the same time) because a few of the elements were low-resolution. So she found high-res versions of those bits and basically stared over at the end, using version 14 or so as the model. The finished edition is composed of 34 layers in Photoshop. We'll soon be posting high-resolution copies of this image, as well as the interior contents page image to the Parallel Worlds site, which you'll be able to download. Jan. 9 | Parallel Worlds PARALLEL WORLDS, the 2006 annual edition of Planet Waves, is ready and posted. Please check your inbox for the keyword shortly. This project covers not just astrology, but a number of rather pressing issues of our day: the history and treatment of Avian Influenza, for example, and the political situation in the United States (including astrological). In two different articles, we have taken a look at the state of water on Earth, and the oil supply. Some of these articles have taken the writers months to prepare. There are three additional "resource areas" with dozens of researched links that are designed to facilitate research on several subjects where it's difficult to get a straight story: Avian Influenza, the Sept. 11 attacks, and water safety and environmental concerns. In addition, many of the articles (such as the one on Influenza and Homeopathy) contain additional resources. Additional info above. Thanks for your patience. Jan. 7 | Pause Dear Readers: The Parallel Worlds annual edition project, which has taken about 20 people four months to develop -- is done (except for my horoscopes). I am fairly well along, but there is still some distance to cover. So, I'm going to pause in all other aspects of Planet Waves, including blogging, cover photo changes (so daily visitors will be looking at the piano for a little while), and so on -- until I am finished with this central aspect of the project; and that will happen when it happens. I feel it's necessary to finish at a measured pace, so that's what I'm doing. I recognize there is big world news developing -- and likely to be more on Sunday. Jude will keep Political Waves blogs going (see main cover page, http://PlanetWaves.net ), and Steve is writing Psychsound, ongoing. Parallel Worlds is a subscriber service; everyone who receives Planet Waves Weekly will get the keyword. To find out more, have a look at this link: http://www.planetwaves.net/parallel/ NOTE: For those seeking the free monthly horoscopes, those are suspended until the annual is done -- but they have been posted to the subscriber side of the site. I sincerely invite you to subscribe, or, if you need to, you may sign up for a reduced rate or comp subscription -- contact Chelsea Monday at (206) 567-4455 or troll free at (877) 453-8265. I'll see you when I'm done. Thanks for the space...! Yours & truly ERIC FRANCIS Paris PS, for those who enjoy astrology and not just forecasts, I suggest you explore the Charts & Resources Section. There are some really beautiful charts to look at, as well as notes on the charts and a revised edition of my article on the astrological houses. This is just a tiny little sample of what you get with Parallel Worlds. http://planetwaves.net/charts/parallel_worlds_charts/ The Photoblog AFTER saying so many times how nice it is that pictures free me from words, I'm concerned that having a Photoblog will be a step in the other direction -- but I plan to restrain myself here, in words, anyway. I will write shorter entries than Steve Bergstein -- 2,500 at maximum. However one nice thing about a Photoblog, for example, is that one of the pictures I'm looking at for Tuesday's cover has a lot of French text, which I'm going to get some help translating and tell you what it means. A nice feature that the new gallery has is that it's organized in by calendar months, and thus minimizes the download, so I can post the cover out-takes as well as the final picks. Since the era of the CD and the Boxed Set, the out-takes and extra tracks are usually the more interesting sideshow, or in this case, slideshow. You need to click on the first image and then the whole month will appear. If you've got this far you've noticed that there are many different new formats of the Planet Waves photo galleries in place, kindly powered by PHP -- Pisces Hyperprogramming, otherwise known as Tracy (as was this efficient little text display system). PHP is a form of digital shamanism, including shapeshifting, cats that walk through walls, and providing some proof of quantum mechanics. Thank you Tracy, and welcome readers to the 2006 gallery and 2006 in general. |