7 Words

Posted on December 17, 2017 by Trish and Rob

  • diversity
  • entitlement
  • evidence-based
  • fetus
  • science-based
  • transgender
  • vulnerable

The trump administration has now banned officials at the Center for Disease Control from using these 7 words in official documents. This mandate was issued at a 90-minute meeting on Thursday, December 14. According to CNN, “Alternative word choices reportedly were presented in some cases. For instance, in lieu of “evidence-based” or “science-based,” an analyst might say, ‘CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,’ the source said.”

This mandate created such an uproar that by Saturday afternoon a spokesperson for the HHS, which includes the CDC, said these banned words were “a complete mischaracterization.”

So how far will the trump administration go with censoring science? According to NPR’s Rebecca Hersher, an NPR analysis “found a decline in the number of grants awarded by the National Science Foundation with the phrase “climate change” either in the title or the summary.”

Hersher also reported:

“The change in language appears to be driven in part by the Trump administration’s open hostility to the topic of climate change. Earlier this year, President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, and the president’s 2018 budget proposal singled out climate change research programs for elimination.”

What I find especially alarming about this latest bit of censorship is that it’s similar to what happened in Nazi Germany. According to the website maintained by the Holocaust Museum, “Once they succeeded in ending democracy and turning Germany into a one-party dictatorship, the Nazis orchestrated a massive propaganda campaign to win the loyalty and cooperation of Germans. The Nazi Propaganda Ministry, directed by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, took control of all forms of communication in Germany: newspapers, magazines, books, public meetings, and rallies, art, music, movies, and radio. Viewpoints in any way threatening to Nazi beliefs or to the regime were censored or eliminated from all media.”

Is this where we’re headed?

In the spring of 1933, Nazi student organizations, professors, and librarians created long lists of books they felt shouldn’t be read by Germans. On May 10 of that year, libraries and bookstores across Germany were raided by Nazis and more than 25,000 books were burned in huge bonfires. These included books by Jewish writers like Einstein and Freud, but most were books by non-Jewish writers. Among them were books by Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis and Helen Keller.

Trump is already the least popular first term president in history. His approval rating sits at 32 percent, considered to be terrible. However, the population of the U.S. is 323.1 million. In November 2016, more than 231 million Americans were eligible to vote. Of these, more than 130 million voted for either Clinton or trump. In terms of popular vote, trump won 62,979,879. So let’s play with that number – 32 percent of that figure is 20,153,561.28. That’s the staggering figure of how many still approve of trump’s job as president.

I find that horrifying.

 

 

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The New Pepsi Thing

Posted on December 15, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Karissa Lindstrand works in the Canadian fishing industry on a boat off the coast of New Brunswick. She also happens to be a huge Pepsi fan. She drinks 12 cans a day! Some days she spends hours binding the claws of lobsters, a task that requires sturdy rubber gloves or your hands turns into reddened claws themselves.

So what are the chances that Karissa of all people would find an imprint of a partial Pepsi can on the claw of a lobster? A zillion to one? But that is exactly what happened Nov. 21 on a boat called Honour Bound off Grand Manan.

Because of her Pepsi addiction, she instantly recognized the blue and red logo. At first, when I read about this in a CBS News internet story, I thought maybe it was a mix of algae and her imagination. But then I took a closer look at the image and there it was: the partial side of a can with the logo and the top of the can with even the tab visible on the impression.

“I can’t say how he got it on,” Lindstrand said, who has worked in the Canadian lobster fishing industry for four years. “It seemed more like a tattoo or a drawing on the lobster rather than something growing into it.”

In the days since she found the lobster and snapped photos of the claw, she’d heard a number of theories, even from the Pepsi delivery man who works Grand Manan. Crew members thought that the lobster must’ve somehow been attached to a can in the bottom of the ocean and it grew around the can. Others think part of a label from a Pepsi box stuck to the lobster when it was growing.

For Lindstrand, the incident stamps what she already knew, that there’s a lot of garbage in the ocean that is affecting lobsters and other sea creatures.

From our point of view, the fact that the highly unusual soft drink imprint on the claw was found by someone who says she drinks up to 360 cans of Pepsi a month is a synchronistic warning of what we are all doing to the environment. The claw is a destopian insignia from nature, a warning about the danger of an eventual environmental collapse.

Degradation of our eco-system seems like a gradual process, one that has been underway for decades and increasing exponentially with the growth of world population. However, what seems gradual at some point surely willreach a tipping point when the chain of life is broken and species die en masse. And one of those species is us.

This new Pepsi thing is certainly something the company won’t want to crow about, but it’s something we all should know about and think about.

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Alabama, #25, and Doug Jones

Posted on December 13, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Look at the photos. roy moore, 70, is on the left. He got tossed off the  state supreme court twice and is an  accused pedophile.

Doug Jones, 63, on the right, is a prosecutor who succeeded in prosecuting the people responsible for a heinous crime that killed 4 young black kids in the 60s.

A Republican, a Democrat.

This evening, December 12, Democrat Doug Jones won the hotly contested senate seat again against accused pedophile roy moore. No one expected this to happen. It’s the first time in 25 years that a democrat has won a senate seat in Alabama.

It’s also the 25th wedding anniversary of Doug Jones and his wife. Nice synchro for them!

This win comes in spite of trump’s robocalls for Moore, his and bannon’s appearances in Alabama during moore’s campaign, and in spite of the Republicans throwing millions in support of moore.

When Rob and I sat down to watch the results come in, we did a tarot reading on whether Doug Jones would win. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a photo of the cards we pulled. But I said, “Doug Jones is going to win.”

For awhile there as the results were coming in, the spread was 10 points, and I kept thinking that maybe I’d read the result I wanted into the cards. Then the lead narrowed. Then Jones was ahead.

This win of a democrat in Alabama suggests there’s hope for this country, that we still know right from wrong, that an accused pedophile has no place in politics.

Now it’s nearly midnight on December 12 and moore, not surprisingly, refuses to concede. So, stay tuned. The guy who rode in on a horse to cast his vote for himself – immolating Putin, perhaps? – probably will call for a recount. Good riddance, little man.

The onion has the right take!

Our blogging friend Darren from Australia, uncovered some great synchronicities between the Alabama election and Twin Peaks. Take a look.

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Climate Change

Posted on December 11, 2017 by Trish and Rob

In late November, a storm in the Bering sea brought winds of over 90 mph and wave heights of nearly 53 feet. What was really interesting about this storm is how rapidly it intensified. The intensification met the bombogenesis criteria, an atmospheric drop of 24 millibars in 24 hours. But this storm went beyond that 24 millibar drop.

In just 24 hours, it dropped from 1002 milllibars to 947 millibars, a drop of 55 millibars. Then it dropped another 3 millibars, which made it the strongest storm on the planet at this time. Essentially, this story was the equivalent of a Category 3 hurricane.

The location of this system and its rapid intensification caused me to wonder if this storm was an anomaly, perhaps due to climate change, or if these storms happen every winter around the Aleutians.

According to NASA’s website Earth Observatory, “The Bering Sea area has hosted some notable storms in recent years, such as the low pressure system that slammed into Nome, Alaska, on November 8 and 9, 2011, with wind gusts up to 74 knots (85 miles per hour). Exactly three years later in 2014, Alaskans braced for another storm that was expected to intensify into the strongest low-pressure systems ever recorded in the Bering Sea.”

That storm, the remnants of Category 5 Super Typhoon Nuri, reached 924 millibars, which set a record for an extratropical storm in the Pacific Ocean. For reference, Hurricane Katrina made landfall at 920 millibars.

So has climate change made storms like these more powerful? Sean Sublette, a meteorologist with Climate Central, a nonprofit group that studies climate change, says that climate change makes bad storms like Harvey, Irma, and Maria even worse. “And in the case of a really bad storm, climate change can make it totally disastrous or catastrophic.”

But Scott Pruett, a climate change denier and head of the EPA, didn’t want to talk about climate change in the aftermath of this year’s hurricane season. His mantra – that now wasn’t the time to talk about it – became that of the entire trump administration.

“The most dangerous myth that we have bought into as a society is not the myth that climate isn’t changing or that humans aren’t responsible,” said Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. “It’s the myth that ‘It doesn’t matter to me.’”

So here we are, the hurricane season officially over (on November 30), the ferocity of this year’s hurricanes fading in memory here in Florida – but not in Puerto Rico.  

Nearly two months after Maria slammed into the island with 155 mph winds, about half the island is still without electrical power. Take a look at these statistics to see how 2017’s hurricane season weighed in. Hint: it was the most expensive year ever in terms of damage $202.6 BILLION in damages.

So, the question becomes: what magnitude of a disaster will it take to convince climate change deniers that yes, we humans leave a mighty big footprint.

 

 

 

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Mercury Retro and a New Litany

Posted on December 9, 2017 by Trish and Rob

On December 4, just a day into the Mercury retrograde, I walked out to my leased car, a 2016 Mazda 3, which Rob and I were going to drive to the gym. I noticed that when I pressed my smart key to open the door, it didn’t work. Fortunately, the car was unlocked and I got inside, pressed the start button. Nothing.

Rob’s key didn’t work, either. The fact that neither key worked pointed to a dead battery.

Welcome to Mercury retro, I thought, resigned to the idea that things would now go haywire.

I called AAA and figured I would have a wait for an hour or more. But that really wasn’t acceptable, I had stuff to do that required a car. I felt adamant about this, imagined the AAA truck pulling up in our driveway in minutes.

Five minutes after I placed my call, got a call from the AAA driver, saying he was nearby and would be at our place in 5 minutes. Wow, I thought. About 30 minutes later, he left, my car had a new battery that would be good for three years, and I happily went about my day.

Most of the time, Mercury retrogrades fit Murphy’s Law: if something can go wrong, it will. But on this particular day, I thought of the bumper sticker on the back of our other car: If anything can go well, it will. We bought this sticker in a bookstore in Orlando some years ago and it makes me smile every time I look at it.

I walked out to the other car to take a picture of that bumper sticker this evening so I could use it in this post, but it was too dark. Yeah, I could have waited until morning to take the photo, but figured maybe I could find an image of it online to use. Instead, I found this cool video about the genesis of the sticker, from the man – Gene – who invented it.

So, from now on, before a Mercury retro begins, Gene’s litany will be where I place my focus – on what can go right instead of on what can go wrong.

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When the Dead Influence the Living

Posted on December 7, 2017 by Trish and Rob

While Megan was home for the Thanksgiving weekend, we watched a Netflix documentary called, Jim & Andy. It’s the behind-the-scenes documentary of the making of Man on the Moon, in which Jim Carrey plays the later crazed comedian Andy Kaufman. In the documentary, Carrey says that he channeled Kaufman and was constantly in-character during the time the movie was being filmed.

Many people who knew Kaufman were astonished by how similar Carrey looked and acted to Kaufman. Even Kaufman’s father hugged Carrey, in a behind the scenes clip, as if Carrey was his son. His out-of-wedlock daughter, who Kaufman never met, talked to Carrey for an hour and as if the daughter was meeting her father for the first time.

After watching the documentary, we talked about the idea of spirits of the dead influencing creative efforts of the living. That was when I recalled my own similar experience when I literally ‘ghost-wrote’ a book in 1991 for an author who had died after writing a few short introductory chapters. I later wrote about the experience in a blog post in 2007. Here it is, unedited.
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Years ago, an editor asked me if I would be interested in completing a novel for an author who had died. He was forty and passed on very suddenly of a heart attack. He’d written four chapters and left behind an outline.

Trish and I knew him–though we’d never met in person. He and Trish had the same editor and agent. We’d exchanged e-mails and participated in the same mystery novel blog on GEnie, back in pre-Internet days. (They didn’t call them blogs, though.)

I worked on the novel for a few months, and from time to time I felt the author, Dave Pedneau, standing behind me, watching, and sometimes I thought he was laughing! It was kind of eerie. So I wrote faster. Finally, I finished the novel, but there was one thing I hadn’t figured out. Oddly enough, I didn’t know what the title meant. He used law enforcement acronyms for his novels, like B.O.L.O. (Be On the Lookout), or A.K.A. (Also Known As). But this one just had the letters: N.F.D. with no parenthetical meaning and I had no idea what it meant. I couldn’t tell from the story, either. Finally, just before I turned it in, I asked a cop at the gym if he knew. He frowned, then said: “Oh, that’s easy: No Fricking Deal.” Though ‘fricking’ was not quite the way he put it.

That was the title of the book! Suddenly, I knew why Dave had been laughing.

There is a little synchronicity here, too. A few years ago, I was teaching private yoga lessons to a very well off woman. She was religious, also kind of prim and proper, and always had her housekeeper or cook around when I was there. One day I was waiting for her to get ready and looked at the books on a shelf. There weren’t many, maybe a dozen. Just as she walked in the room, I spotted N.F.D., and blurted, “Hey, I wrote that book.”
She picked it off the shelf, looked at the cover, and asked: “What’s that title mean?”

”Umm, ah…No Fair Deal.  That worked. In fact, that was the name the publisher put in small type right below N.F.D.

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Moore & Franken Meet the Trickster

Posted on December 5, 2017 by Trish and Rob

 

One thing about the trickster god or archetype. The mythical creature shows no political preferences. Take the case of the Alabama candidate for Senate in the upcoming election next Tuesday. The guy should be toast. Nine women (or more since this was written) have come forward with accusations that he pursued them as teens when he was in his thirties. One of them was only 14. Another, who was 17, remembered being called out of her trigonometry class to take a call from Moore, who asked her out on a date. At the time, Moore was an assistant district attorney. Beyond that he was supposedly banned from a mall because of his propensity to go after young girls. There’s another accusation that he was told to stay away from a YMCA for the same reason.

The man, by now, should’ve gotten out of the race, you would think. These are not good attributes for a senator. But Moore resides in Alabama, possibly the most Republican state in the country. Twice Moore was removed from his position as chief justice for refusing to follow federal court orders to remove the Ten Commandments from the court house in the state capital. He was removed because he put his religious beliefs above the constitution. That didn’t bother Alabama voters. They live in the Bible Belt and don’t like being told what to do by Washington lawyers. Moore, who has an array of radical right wing ideas, went on to beat Luther Strange, who is acting senator —filling in for Jeff Session—until the election.

For Democrats, it seemed like a win-win situation, and maybe it still is. If Judge Moore wins, the Senate Republicans will have a probable pedophile in their midst. It’s highly doubtful that all those women were making up their stories. If Moore falls to the Democratic candidate, Doug Jones, then the Republicans lose a seat in the Senate and will hold a frail one-vote majority. That would come into play just as Trump and the Republicans in Congress are trying to push through a partisan tax bill that, by most estimates, will offer little or nothing to the middle class while enriching the wealthy and corporations, who are already holding billions of dollars out of the economy.

But back to the trickster. Along came the allegations about Senate Democrat Al Franken, which even included a photo of him appearing to grope the breasts of a sleeping woman. Looks bad. Who wants a jerk like that in Congress, the trickster seems to ask.

However, at the time, in 2006, Franken was still a comedian and the photo was clearly a prank. The woman, Leeann Tweeden, was wearing a military flak jacket that blocks both bullets and Al Franken’s hands. Tweeden was not working for Franken so it wasn’t a boss harassing a subordinate. She and Franken were on a military entertainment tour in the Mideast and doing skits together. Tweeden took offense at Franken’s behavior and joined the chorus of complainants who are bringing to light the issue of sexual harassment, especially in the workplace.

Other charges of butt grabbing, while a senator, followed against Franken and the Democrats had to deal with sexual harassment involving one of their own. So much for their superior moral position, the trickster shouted.

However, clearly there is a significant difference between the Moore case and Franken’s issues. It’s a prankster with stupid but (so far) fairly innocuous behavior vs a man dealing with pedophile issues in his background.

And another thing: Franken has admitted his guilt and apologized profusely multiple times. Moore just says it never happened and all the women are lying. That, of course, is what Trump said when more than a dozen women complained about him groping them over the years against their wills. “They’re all lying,” he has said repeatedly, usually adding: “Besides, I was elected president.” As if that negates his actions.

How will it all end for Moore, for Franken, for Trump? It’s hard to say at this point. But one thing that is certain: the trickster will win the day, and hopefully politicians and others in powerful positions will learn the foibles of their barbarous and lecherous deeds.

At this writing, Dec. 6, it looks as Roy Moore will be elected next Tuesday and become a Republican senator. Meanwhile, it appears Al Franken will resign this Thursday. That follows the resignation of John Conyers, who resigned yesterday related to sexual harassment.

 

 

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Pledge

Posted on December 4, 2017 by Trish and Rob

So before I leave for the grocery store today, Rob says, “Hey, can you get some Pledge?”

No problem. I jot it down on my list. It’s the same thing I did the other day when I went to our local Publix – and came home without the Pledge. Items like Pledge aren’t on my usual route through Publix, which was altered considerably when they rearranged the store. During the tourist and equestrian season here, the idea is to get the shopping done as quickly as possible.

I was at the deli counter, checking out possible sides dishes for Thanksgiving, and heard someone behind me say, “Excuse me, where can I find the Pledge?”

I glanced around and saw an elderly man talking to a Publix employee. “C’mon,” the employee said. “I’ll show you where it is.”

I watched them, noted which aisle they turned into, and then laughed. Pledge. What are the odds that out of the thousands of items Publix carries, I would overhear someone asking for the very thing I needed and probably would have forgotten to pick up?

Okay, other than the odds on this one, is there a deeper meaning I’m overlooking? The word can be used as both a noun and a verb. As a noun, it means “a solemn promise” or in legal terms, it refers to something given as security “for the fulfillment of a contract or the payment of a debt and is liable to forfeiture in the event of failure.”

As a verb, it means to commit to a person or organization or an idea by a solemn promise or it’s what you do when you give something as security on a loan.

What this may be referring to is an insurance matter. After Hurricane Irma, we discovered we had some leaks in our roof – multiple leaks in 4 rooms.  The insurance company’s adjuster came out, did a detailed report, and the insurance company eventually issued a check. Unfortunately, the amount of the check would pay for patchwork to the roof. In Florida, by law, if 25 percent of your roof is damage, the insurance company has to pay for a new roof – minus whatever your deductible is.

Through a friend, we got the names of two public adjusters. These adjusters do NOT work for insurance companies. They work for you and take a 10 percent fee off whatever new money the insurance company issues for damages. My hope is that one of them will “pledge” to go to bat for us.

These adjusters are so busy now because so many homes sustained hurricane damage, that it won’t be until after Thanksgiving that either of them can come to the house and assess our roof damage. Stay tuned…

P.S. One of them has pledge to go to bat for us. He said the insurance company’s estimate was “a joke.” So, we’ll see!

 

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The Trickster in Politics

Posted on December 2, 2017 by Trish and Rob

 

Several weeks ago, Rob and I sent our agent a new nonfiction proposal: One Nation Under Trump Meets Joseph Campbell’s Trickster Archetype. The idea, the hook, is that trump is the ultimate trickster who is surrounded by tricksters, and one way or another, the trickster will be what brings him and his entire administration down.

But along the way, trump is in good company with the tricksters who have been exposed because of the #Metoo hash tag. Every day on this front, there’s a new revelation, a new name, a new woman reporting what happened to her.

Anyway, we started writing the book and several chapters in, found that we couldn’t keep up with the news. We realized that by the time the book was published, it would be old news, but still interesting in terms of how the trickster archetype has functioned in the U.S. since trump was elected. After all, if you have a trickster in the White House, it sets the tone for the country confronting this archetype within their collective selves.

So: on December 1, Michael Flynn, trump’s loyal – and former – National Security Advisor, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, a federal charge but relatively minor compared to what Mueller’s team could have charged him with. A plea deal. In other words, I have lots more info, Mr. Mueller, if you give me a deal.

 Flynn, if you recall, is the man who, at trump’s campaign rallies, often led the chant, Lock her up! This reference to Clinton became a rallying cry for trump supporters at his campaign rallies.

The trickster, who listens closely, apparently heard this. Today, when Flynn left a federal courthouse where he’d pleaded guilt to lying to the FBI, protesters greeted him with, Lock him up! Rob and I predicted this in our section on Flynn.

 

 Oddly, in this entire nightmare that is the trump presidency, my hope is with the trickster. As Carl Jung said, when an archetype seizes you, it has to play out until you recognize it for what it is and integrate it into who you are.I’m not so sure that we’re at the integration phase yet as a country, but things may come to a head very soon.

On December 3 at 10:47 am ET, 7:47 PT, there’s a super moon in Gemini, trump’s sun sign, and Mercury turns retro in Sagittarius. Full moons bring stuff to an apex, a culmination, and Mercury retros are, in part, about the past. Something is headed trump’s way and he’s going to be fighting it with tweets, which were curiously absent today.

Rob’s take? “He’s going to fire Mueller.” In other words, another Saturday Night Massacre, and back to the Nixon era right before he was impeached.

We can hope, right?

 

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Mercury Retro Alert!

Posted on December 1, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Maybe I’m more aware of Mercury retrogrades because the trickster planet rules my sign, Gemini, and that of Virgo, the sign  of my daughter and some goods friends. It does this little retro routine three times a year, and typically, the areas that Mercury rules go haywire during the three weeks it’s misbehaving.

Which areas? Communication. Contracts. Travel. Your conscious mind, your capacity to learn, relationships with siblings, neighbors, friends. My rule of thumb for these three-week periods is simple: revise, review, reconsider. That means it’s a bad idea to submit manuscripts or book your next trip or sign a contract during a Merc retro. Don’t buy a car or electronics, either.

Christmas shopping? Well, the retro starts in Sagittarius at 11:34 pm Pacific time on December 2 and at 2:34 am ET on December 3. It ends on December 22. I hope you did your shopping before the 3rd, but if not, head out on the 23rd. That date is still cutting it pretty close because Mercury takes a few days to stabilize after a retro.   Then again, you have to live your life regardless of what the stars are doing!

On December 3, Mercury turns retro in fire sign Sagittarius. So if you don’t have a copy of your natal chart – get one here and  look at where Sagittarius is in your chart. It’s represented by an arrow. Café Astrology is a treasure trove of info and here’s their explanation about what the houses mean.

That house is where the retro will impact you personally. But on a broader scale, it impacts all of us regardless of where it falls in our natal charts because it’s the planet of communication, something we do daily in this 24/7 connected world. Cell phones act up, computers often crash, our internet goes down, we have a power blackout. Irritating stuff that tends to slow us down. And maybe that’s really the point. During a Merc retro, you shouldn’t rush or push against anything. Just chill, try to go with the flow. Double check appointments you have scheduled.

Not everything about Merc retro periods is challenging. Sometimes, old lovers and friends show up. Relationships with friends and siblings can be mended because the past is rehashed in a way everyone understands. If your flight is delayed, cancelled, or overbooked, you may end up with a flight voucher worth many times the cost of your original ticket. Some of what happens depends on your intentions, desires, goals.

My astro mentor, Renie Wiley, used to say that the place you traveled to during a Mercury retro was a place to which you would return within a year. I’ve seen this proven out time and again in terms of physical travel. But it may also be true in terms of emotional travel. If you and your partner have issues you’re working on, those issues may become more in your face during a Merc retro. If you receive a health diagnosis during a Merc retro, get a second and third opinion. The same thing goes for insurance claims.

You’ve probably already had some hints about events during this Merc retro. I found that some emails were never received, that I had questions about a contract, that appliances needed repairing – our fridge, the pool vacuum cleaner, our AC.

And, full disclosure here, I still haven’t finished my holiday shopping and will probably end up in that long return line on December 26!

 

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