Culling Images

Posted on January 22, 2019 by Trish and Rob

I recently discovered a great site called Canva, which enables you to cull images – photos, art, book covers! – for a variety of social media. It provides the template for posts on Facebook, Instagram,  and other social media and it’s free! That’s the poster I put together on our books that deal with synchronicity. Soon, there will be another – Visions: A Thoughtful Guide to Common Paranormal Phenomena.

In this poster, the first one I tried, I combined some of our fiction and non-fiction books. At this point, I hadn’t figured out how to add text to the poster:

Part of what triggered this was a realization that some of the Instagram posts I see are rather elaborate depictions of an individual’s skills and talents. I previously had downloaded several free apps that enabled me to include text about a photo. But I found these apps complicated or too limited. Canva, though, is easy to use, offers many free templates, and you can upload your own photos or designs to create interesting backgrounds as well as content.

As we move more and more into a digital world, we have burgeoning possibilities about how to visually organize and present our own lives, truths, discoveries, and passions. I initially kept my backgrounds simple, as in these two posters, and in the one below, on Indiana Jones:

The challenge though, is that when I make this poster too large, the covers ad texts are blurred. But if you notice, the the central book cover is entitled Indiana Jones and  the Staff of Kings.  Rob was hired to write this novel as a game, the editor dropped the ball, and it was never published. However, a European artist and Indy fan created the cover for Rob and he now refers to it as the lost Indiana Jones novel.

I think my next attempt at Canva will be of foreign places we’ve seen and loved or of, well, pets, which seem to comprise most of the photos on my phone except for those of family. Canva is fun and reminds me of the importance of finding your own truth, whatever it is, and sharing it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Total Lunar Eclipse in Leo

Posted on January 20, 2019 by Trish and Rob

On January 20-21, the total lunar eclipse in Leo will be visible in North and South American, Hawaii, and parts of Europe.

Full moons typically bring news, harvest, culmination. Because the moon represents our inner lives – emotions, intuition, are most intimate relationships- full moons can illuminate the dark pockets of these relationships and create tension and mood swings. With this eclipse, there’s a Mars/Saturn square. Mars is the warrior, Saturn is the disciplinarian, the authority figure, and squares create tension.  Troubling news of some kind may arrive. Don’t panic. Just ride the tide and let things shake out.

Be measured in your communication with others. If someone pushes your buttons, just laugh. Laughter mitigates tension.

That said, though, Jupiter and Venus in Sagittarius are conjunct, commiserating, expanding artistic talents, and our larger view of the world and the the reality we create day to ay through the choices we make and the thoughts we think.

This lunar eclipse is conjunct within 4 degrees of the North Node in Cancer and generally, eclipses close to the North Node like this tend to be positive overall. My advice? Find a comfortable spot in your house – or outside if you live in a temperate climate – around 11:30 pm on January 20 and watch the moon as that shadow moves across it for the total eclipse at 12:12 a.m. on January 21. Some sites are placing the full eclipse at 12:16. But whether it’s 12:12 or 12:16, we won’t be able to see another total eclipse in North America until May 26, 2021.

Treat yourself to this:

 

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Another WALL

Posted on January 19, 2019 by Trish and Rob

I’m planning an off-road mountain bike ride with a long-time friend who is a Trumpie, and  very much in favor of Trump’s wall. So I e-mailed him and said, “The only WALL  we should talk about is the one by Pink Floyd.”

Out of curiosity, I Googled that Wall, and the above pic popped up. Am I imagining things, or does that screaming loud-mouth look like Trump? That’s a synchro, at least for me.

Also, the song, Another Brick in the Wall,  itself is quite stupid basically telling kids to rebel against their teachers. I guess the assumption by Pink Floyd is that all teachers are authoritarian fascists.

We don’t need no education.                                                                                                             We don’t need no thought-control                                                                                                    No dark sarcasm in the classroom                                                                                       Teacher, leave those kids alone…

The problem with that scenario is that not all teachers, of course, are hard-nosed dictatorial types lecturing kids with false information with the intent of turning them into societal automatons. I think that was what PF was implying in the song.

The irony is that lack of education,  which the song seemingly favors, gets us people like Trump in power, elected because folks were watching boss-man for years on television firing people. He must be a strong leader. 

I remember a clip of Trump at one of his rallies saying: “I love the under-educated.”

That says it all.

 

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The Wacky Moon

Posted on January 16, 2019 by Trish and Rob

Whenever I’m preparing to pitch an idea or submit a manuscript or anything else, the first thing I do is check to see if the moon is void of course. This means that the moon has made its last aspect to other planets and won’t make any more aspects before it changes signs. Since the moon changes signs every two and a half days, the void occurs beforehand and can last from a few minutes to ore than a day. The idea is here is that the moon has lost its power, has become inert. I think of it as the wacky moon.

The moon rules our inner lives, emotions, intuition, mom, instinct, the collective. When the moon is VC, we may feel out of sorts. We should avoid making important decisions – I’m going to quit my job, get divorced, end this relationship, sell my house – and do something to distract ourselves. Take a walk. Do some yoga. Listen to music that transports us. Meditate. Cook up a storm. Eat some chocolate chip cookies. Take a nap.

The VC moon is used mostly in horoary astrology – a type of astrology where a chart is erected for the date, time, and place that you ask a specific question. In the rules of horoary astrology- and there are a lot of rules – a VC moon is what you look for first. If the moon in the chart is VC, you don’t even bother reading the chart.

If you take the initiative for something during a VC moon, it may not turn out the way you planned and hoped it would – or nothing at all may come of it. If you make appointments when the moon is VC, you’ll probably have to re-schedule. Rather than buying a high price tag item during at this time, research prices. Travel can be interesting during a VC moon, with synchronicities popping up, almost as if to compensate for the moon’s inertia. If you move under a VC moon, you may experience chaos. We made that mistake during a move – two closings within a few hours of each other, our Realtor siding with the buyer on some minor sticking point, the deal nearly falling apart.

I don’t advocate being compulsive about the VC moon – it’s not like 3 weeks of a Mercury retrograde. But be aware of it when you’re in the throes of making important decisions. What prompted this post was that I was looking for a good time to upload my script for Skin Shifters. Typically, I aim for a new moon. But the Capricorn new moon on January 5 was also a solar eclipse and I shy away from submissions during eclipses. So I started looking for dates before the lunar eclipse on January 20-21 (depending on where you live), while the new moon energy was still operative. I’m aiming for January 15, when the moon is in Taurus, where my natal Venus and Mars are, or on the 17th, when the moon is solidly in Gemini, my sun sign. The 16th after 8 pm, when the VC moon ends as it enters Gemini, is also a possibility.

Here’s a link to a site where the VC moon dates and times are listed monthly in ET. Each year, I buy a pocket astrological calendar that includes all the important astro stuff I use. But everything is also online now.

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Republicans, trump, the stupid wall

Posted on January 14, 2019 by Trish and Rob

wall in Game of Thrones

My dad was born in 1913, in a small town in Illinois. There were 5 kids – the oldest sister, Barbara, then brother Joe, my dad, Bill who was killed in WWII, then baby sister Margaret. The family was poor. At some point, my dad and Joe moved to Oklahoma, both of them got accounting degrees, and were hired by Standard Oil and  sent to Venezuela in 1937.

He was a Republican for most of his life. And yet, in 2000 when the fate of the presidency went to the Supreme Court, there were cracks in his Republican beliefs. He grew to detest Bush and the war in Iraq. He felt the Republican Party was falling apart. He died in 2005. If he were alive today, he wouldn’t recognize what the Republicans have become, the party that:

snatches children from their mothers at the borders
gives massive tax cuts to the the rich
supports dictators & a man like trump
gerrymanders
disenfranchises voters
seeks to dismantle health care for women
Keeps the government shut down so that: 800,000 federal workers are furloughed; TSA employees are expected to work without pay so many of them are calling in sick because they’ve taken part-time jobs or have quit; 80 percent of the IRS is furloughed, which means that tax refunds will be delayed; human excrement is piling up in national parks, creating a health hazard…the list goes on.

Google it. All of of this for trump’s $5 billion plus  wall at the southern border, which he promised Mexico would pay for.

Republicans care about one thing: getting re-elected. They’re scared of trump’s fabled base so they bow before him. Mitch McDonnell, the Reptilian from Kentucky, won’t even bring this wall issue to a vote in senate, which is supposed to be a separate entity from the executive branch.

Now trump is threatening to declare a national emergency, as Bush did in the wake of 9-11. If he does this, 136 statutory powers are at his disposal.  I find many of these troubling because they are authoritarian. But don’t take my word for it. Click that link. You decide.

Trump won’t waste your time writing long posts defending himself and ‘correcting’ us with more lies, half-truths and ignorance of the facts. Just as MSNBC no longer broadcasts Sarah Sanders press conferences because they are filled with so many inaccuracies and outright lies, we are no longer posting comments by Trump apologists. We believe he should be removed from office ASAP for the good of the country and the world. Posting  comments here in his defense would be counterproductive, like allowing Trump to edit Mueller’s upcoming report on his actions related to the Russian investigation. In fact, that is precisely what the administration wants to do in order to hide the truth.

In the past, we’ve published defenses of trump. But because these defenses are as specious as the reality/fact manipulations engineered by the administration and their cheering media at Fox News, we’ve changed course. If this is offensive to the apologists, well, go start your own blog on how wonderful a job trump is doing.

 

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Synchros greet the New Year

Posted on January 12, 2019 by Trish and Rob

Here are a couple of celebrity-related synchronicities that I heard as the new year began. Anderson Cooper told this one while he hosted CNN’s New Year’s Eve party at Times Square with comedian Andy Cohen. At an earlier appearance with Cohen, the comedian has surprised Anderson by putting up a photo of Anderson from his boyhood modeling days. That’s 10-year-old Anderson on the left above.

That photo appearing on the television screen at that moment was a very meaningful coincidence for a couple watching the show. So meaningful that they wrote Cooper who was so stunned by the story that he related it somewhat awkwardly at the New Year’s Eve, and showed the photo again.

The couple had been talking about their son, who had died exactly one year earlier. I don’t recall if Anderson mentioned the cause of death. The couple turned on the television to see  Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen and suddenly the old modeling photo flashed on the screen. There in the middle was their deceased son, who had been a child model. It almost appears as if he’s waving and greeting parents across time.

For us, it was an example of spirit contact, which happens in many unusual ways, including such “media appearances.” . It was similar to a story we had recently heard of a deceased loved one appearing on a History Channel World War II documentary at a significant moment related to his life. Trish has written about this story.

Here’s the second celebrity synchro. I heard this one on NPR while driving at the noon hour on January 3. It was told in an interview with Adam McKay, the writer and director of the movie VICE about Dick Cheney. Part of the story about Cheney’s life dealt with his numerous (at least five) heart attacks prior to receiving a new heart. A few days after filming was completed and the editing process was beginning, McKay not only had his own heart attack, but a comment about heart attacks made during the filming by Christian Bale, who played Cheney, might’ve save his life. Here’s how McKay related the story on NPR:

“We had just finished filming, I think we had wrapped for about a week, and … I just realized I was not in the best shape. I put on weight during the movie. I was foolish enough to continue smoking … and I didn’t feel good. …

“I was working out [with] my trainer and in the middle of it my hands started tingling and my stomach felt queasy. Those aren’t normally symptoms you think of with a heart attack. You usually think of pain in the chest, in the arm. So I told my trainer, ‘I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m just tired. This is just weird.’ And he left, and as soon as he left I remembered the heart attack scene we shot with Bale when Cheney was running for Congress in Wyoming in the late ’70s and Bale asked me, ‘How do you want to do the heart attack? Do you want it to be a pain in the arm? The chest?” He goes, ‘I could also do the queasy stomach. That’s really common.’

“And so that moment just flashback to me while I was sitting on the couch and I went, ‘Holy Lord!’ and I ran upstairs … and I just downed four baby aspirin and called 911. … The doctor said, “Because you acted so quickly you have no damage to your heart.” … So I called Christian Bale a week later and I said, “Either you or Dick Cheney just saved my life.”

 

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Trumpeting his businesses

Posted on January 9, 2019 by Trish and Rob

Over the past two to three years, we’ve heard a lot about Donald Trump’s various business forays that extended beyond his real estate domain. Among the enterprises: Trump steaks (tough like the boss with fat around the edges), Trump wine (not prized on the grapevine), Trump Shuttle (barely took off before it was financially grounded), Trump University ($25 million in court-ordered refunds).

But there’s one venture that hasn’t gotten much publicity. Trump took part in a video-phone business for a few years before it collapsed. We know about this one because in 2008 we were invited to a party in which about 40 people attended. We were provided with food and a business pitch. You could get in on the ground floor and then talk others into getting involved and they would work for you. In other words, a typical pyramid scheme.

The evening included a video presentation by Trump. I remember it was the first time I’d ever heard Trump give any kind of business pitch, and I was shocked by how much he sounded like a crass carnie barker.

The person who invited us is a long-time friend and she knew we probably wouldn’t be interested, but she was trying to impress her mentor by getting lots of people to show up at her condo for the presentation. The idea was that extended families and friends would all buy the machine and you could see the person you’re conversing with. Sound familiar?

If it was 1985, it might’ve been an interesting venture. But by 2008, Skype had been around for five years and was free. Why, we wondered, would anyone buy into this business much less the machine itself. Maybe the answer to that question is that Trump was promoting it. After all, as we know, about a third of the country is buying into the current scam that he’s running out of the White House.

Here are the first couple of paragraphs of an article about Trump’s involvement in the video-phone con that appeared on a web site called PyramidSchemeAlert.org. on August 10, 2011. It was headlined: Hyped by Donald Trump, ACN Video phone Business may be Collapsing.

“Donald Trump tells Americans that it is a technology breakthrough, a wave of the future; everybody will own one; better get in now! He is personally endorsing and hyping the “revolutionary IRIS V Video Phone”, the flagship product and the new icon of the multi-level marketing company, ACN, for which Donald Trump serves as pitchman-in-chief. He trumpets the video phone on Celebrity Apprentice. ACN, for its part, promotes Donald Trump all over its website and at all its recruitment meetings. “If Donald Trump says this phone is a hot new item, who can doubt it?” is the message ACN sends to hundreds of thousands of consumers.

“But the latest disclosures to the SEC by the video phone’s manufacturer, WorldGate Communications, indicate the market for this device has collapsed. Demand for this product – if it ever existed in the real marketplace – is vanishing. The top management of the company has resigned. Orders from ACN have been drastically cut back. The value of the stock of the phone manufacturer has been virtually wiped out. The company reported to the SEC that it may seek bankruptcy protection very soon.”

Maybe it’s an overstatement to say that everything and everyone who come into contact with Donald Trump eventually ends up in a bad place. But, hey, there’s a lot of evidence to support that contention, and unfortunately for all of us, we are likely to see much more in the new year.

And that certainly is true. He has shutdown a sizable portion of the government going on three weeks, soon to be the longest ever shutdown. Everything he touches…

+++

Postscript

A wall synchro, you gotta love this one unearthed by the Daily Show

Trump in a 2004 speech to students: “Never, ever give up. Don’t give up. Don’t allow it to happen. If there’s a concrete wall in front of you, go through it. Go over it. Go around it. But get to the other side of that wall.”

See it here:

https://slate.com/culture/2019/01/trevor-noah-trump-commencement-address-daily-show-walls.html

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Gratitude Overcomes Forgetfulness

Posted on January 8, 2019 by Trish and Rob

Back in the mid-1980s, Trish and I used to lead adventure tours for freelance writers to South America. The trips were sponsored by Avianca Airlines, a Colombian hotel chain, and others. We made multiple trips to the Upper Amazon cruising between Leticia, Colombia and Iquitos, Peru, and also led trips to Cartagena, Bogota, Santa Marta, the Lost City of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Santa Marta, and the Colombian Andes, a region known as Boyaca. We also made a couple of trips to two lesser known Caribbean islands—San Andres and Providencia—that featured scuba diving in a blue hole and lobster dinners.

On one of the latter trips, a freelance writer from Kansas City joined us and she eventually sold a couple of travel articles. Her name is Pam Grout and now she’s a very successful author of self-help books. They include, among others: E-Squared: Nine-Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality; E-Cubed: Nine More Energy Experiments That Prove Manifesting Magic and Miracles is You Full-Time Gig; and most recently, THANK & GROW RICH: A 30-day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy.

After E-Squared became a best-seller, I e-mailed Pam to congratulate her. I had not been in touch with her since she sent me the articles she published on San Andres and Providencia, but she recalled the trip fondly. She also remembered there were two Robs in the group, one was the organizer (me) and the other one was quite interested in her. In fact, they stayed in touch for some time afterwards. Pam wanted to know which one I was and, alas, maybe she was a bit disappointed to find out I was the organizer and not the long-ago love interest. Whatever, she told me she was e-mailing me from Istanbul, Turkey, where she was off on another journey, and that was that.

Pam writes with a good deal of wit, and her self-help tomes are definitely good reads. I picked up Thank & Grow Rich the other day and happened to open it to a story that turned out to be a multi-pronged synchronicity. Of course that’s the point of the post.

A friend of hers, Jay, turned in a rental car and forgot his garage-door opener in it. He went back to the rental agency and found out the car had been rented already and no one had noticed the opener. Meanwhile, Jay was supposed to meet someone for lunch that day and realized that he’d forgotten his credit card in a bar the night before. (And I thought I was forgetful.) He needed the card to pay for lunch and the bar wouldn’t open for another three hours. What was he to do? In spite of the annoyances, he stayed calm and expressed gratitude, trusting that things would work out.

As Pam tells the story: He went to his bank to withdraw some cash for lunch, and was surprised to see his former rental car in the parking lot. He walked over to the man who was standing next to the car talking on his cell phone and told him about the lost garage-door opener. He asked to take a look inside, and sure enough, there it was.

Jay figured he was on a roll and decided on a hunch to drop by the bar where he’d left his card, even though it wouldn’t open for hours. When he arrived, the owner of the bar was sitting outside, also talking on his cell phone. After Jay explained about the card, the man said, “You’re really lucky, I usually don’t get here until three. But I came early today to meet my carpet cleaner.”

Pam concludes: Jay, of course, knew it wasn’t luck. Just further proof that magic is always afoot as long as we don’t create ‘problems’ to block it.”

Good story; good synchro.

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A WOW!

Posted on January 6, 2019 by Trish and Rob

F/L Steve Straub [left- American] cleans his German Luger pistol as P/O Whitehead
and F/L Dagwood Phillips take instructions, late October 1944.

Here’s another story from the dog park – and it’s not about dogs.

Several days after Judy’s husband passed on, her mother, Margaret, also died. But the synchronicity/spirit contact  connected to her death is one of the most powerful I’ve ever heard.

Margaret was in a nursing home in Canada, where both Judy and her niece, Jennifer, were. Jennifer was at home, preparing to return to the facility to be with her grandmother, Judy’s mom. Her TV was on, tuned to HBO, which was showing a documentary about WWII. Suddenly, on the screen, Jennifer saw her grandfather, Robert Dulmage Phillip, walking across the screen in uniform, waving at the cameraman. That’s him on the right side of the photo. (He died in 2011)

Shocked, she realized – at some level – that her grandmother was about to pass and that her husband was coming for her. She and Judy quickly returned to the facility and were there when Margaret died less than an hour later.

Judy’s dad flew for the RCAF in WWII. His nickname was Dagwood and he flew a Spitfire called Blondie. But no one in the family knew he’d been in a documentary. They wrote to HBO and asked for that particular clip of the documentary and received it.

This sort of spirit contact really illustrates synchronicity in action. What are the odds that within an hour or less of when Judy’s mom would pass, her niece would happen to see her grandfather in a documentary no one knew he’d been in? These kinds of synchronicities and spirit contact, the ones you understand viscerally and immediately, usually involve staggering odds.

I did some research, searching for RCAF pilots named Dagwood Phillip, and found a treasure trove of photos and facts here. He’s usually identified as R.D. Phillip.

The site also included Dagwood’s obituary. Fascinating man.

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A weird little synchro – that may not be so little

Posted on January 5, 2019 by Trish and Rob

 

Sometimes, synchros are small and seemingly insignificant, and if you notice them at all, they leave you scratching your head. Huh? What does that mean? I had one of those today.

I was on the way back from a visit to the hair stylist I’ve known for many years. My friend Arlene called and asked if I was free for lunch and a visit to Bealls, a department store with great discounts on women’s clothing. I told her I was in the car, on my way home from the hair salon. We chatted briefly about getting together at some point this week.

About 30 seconds after we disconnected, I was looking to see what the next street sign was and spotted a Bealls on the right side of the road. I’d never noticed it before and my first thought was, Hey, synchro. My second thought was: what the hell does THIS mean? It seemed so random, so small, that I didn’t mention it to Rob until later that day.

When I got home, I Googled Bealls to see if there was anything in its history that might hold a clue to what the synchro meant. Now I realize this sounds like a foolish waste of time for such a small synchro, but honestly, I was curious. I’ve been curious about smaller synchros in the past and have unearthed some interesting connections to events that later transpired.

So, Bealls has been around since 1915, when it was founded in Bradenton, Florida, on the west coast. There was 500 locations around the country. The history of the store and its founder was interesting , but nothing leaped out at me.

Over dinner, I told Rob about it and asked him the same question I’d asked myself: what’s it mean? But at this point, I was thinking, Does it mean anything? Have I encountered a coincidence that really IS random?

He thought about it in that way he has, like he’s distracted, then said, “Maybe it’s really simple. What does Bealls rhyme with? Deals!”

Now that one felt right. Tonight, he received an email from his agent about a summary he’d sent her about his new novel, OOBE. She said she’d loved to see it. Here was his summary:

When the president is informed that a secret government program to fight terrorism involves a team of out-of-body travelers, he learns they possess not only the ability to spy, but to manipulate matter- even to kill – and decides to use the team to destroy his political opponents, Now it’s up to a recently fired parapsychology professor and a documentary film producers with psychic talents to save the life of a candidate in the upcoming presidential race.

And we received confirmation that on the weekend of August 30-31, Bill Holman, caretaker of the Mitchell-Hedges  crystal skull will be spending the evening with us and a group of interested friends. And yes, the crystal skull will be our special guest. A “deal” of a different sort, as in BIG DEAL.

Read about the history of this skull. It recently was featured on Unknown Expedition, the same show Rob was filmed for several weeks ago. I’m  psyched. Years ago, we meditated with with the crystal skull known as Max. I’m eager to know what this skull has to say.

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