Haunted by Aliens

Posted on October 22, 2017 by Trish and Rob

It either takes courage or naivete to run for U.S. congress after you’ve  done TV interviews in which you claim to be a life-long alien abductee. That’s the case for Miami’s Bettina Rodriquez Alquilera, who is running for an open seat in the house of representative. Even though those interviews took place several years ago, it was inevitable that someone would remember and bring it up.

That’s how Alquilera’s campaign suddenly attracted a national audience in mid-October when the Miami Herald reported the story. In the original interviews, she said that she was taken aboard an alien ship by three blond, big-bodied beings, two females and one male, when she was seven years old. She went on to say that she has been in occasional contract with the aliens since that time.

Three blond, big-bodied beings — two females, one male — visited her when she was 7 years old and have communicated telepathically with her several times in her life, she says. The Republican candidate recounted her experience for a Miami television station in 2009.

Her description of the abduction probably won’t win her many voters among skeptics. She mentioned seeing round seats on the ship and the craft was controlled by “some quartz rocks.” She also said the alien beings reminded her of the famous statue in Rio de Janeiro – Christ the Redeemer with arms spread out. She also said the aliens told her that there was proof of alien existence in a cave in Malta where 30,000 non-human skulls are hidden.

When the Miami Herald asked her about her experience with the aliens on their ship, Alquilera was ready for them with what sounds like a prepared statement that skirted the issue of her involvement. Here’s what she said:

“For years people, including Presidents like Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter and astronauts, have publicly claimed to have seen unidentified flying objects and scientists like Stephen Hawking and institutions like the Vatican have stated that there are billions of galaxies in the universe and we are probably not alone,” she said. “I personally am a Christian and have a strong belief in God. I join the majority of Americans who believe that there must be intelligent life in the billions of planets and galaxies in the universe.”

We wish Bettina luck. Although she probably has now  been labeled as a candidate outside of the mainstream, it seems that hasn’t stopped numerous candidates from being elected to Congress in recent years. But c’mon, why does she think Repugs will embrace her?

 

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Louise Hay

Posted on October 20, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Yesterday, I did one of my Barnes & Noble trips, where I cruise the aisles and peruse titles. I eventually got back to the New Age section – now broken down into other categories like self-improvement, tarot, divination and magic. I stopped at the self-improvement section, where nearly all the books are published by Hay House.

The only other person in the row was an African-American woman who held one of my favorite books – Ask and It is Given by Esther Hicks. “That’s a great book,” I remarked.

“Really?” Her eyes lit up. “That’s good to know. I was paging through it and was impressed by what I read. It’s the last one here.”

“Here’s another good one.” I plucked out Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life, and showed her the list of ailments at the back, with the probable emotional cause of the ailment and the new thought pattern affirmation to help heal the condition. I explained that Hay was diagnosed with vaginal cancer and cured herself of it. The woman’s eyes widened.

“Wow.”

“She went on to write about it in the book, self-published it, and it sold four million copies. With the money she earned, she went on to establish a publishing company – Hay House – and nearly every book in this section is a Hay House book. It’s probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, New Age publisher in the world now.” I drew my finger across spine after spine that showed the Hay House logo. “She recently died. But what a legacy she left.”

The woman paged through it. “This is so awesome. I’ve got to buy it next week. I’ve been buying so many books lately.” She snapped a photo of the book. “Thank you so much for all the information. I was supposed to meet you. Bless you.”

Afterward, I thought about the weirdness factor. I rarely comment to other browsers about books and I’m still not sure why I said anything to this woman. But here’s the synchro. Today, my friend Julie Scully sent me three ebooks by Louise Hay – Power Thoughts, Everyday Positive Thinking, and I Can Do It Affirmations. I download them to the Kindle app on my phone so I always have them at my fingertips.

After I received the 3 books, I told Julie about my encounter with the woman the day before in the bookstore. Her response nailed the synchro: “Louise heard you.”

 

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Agent 488

Posted on October 18, 2017 by Trish and Rob

In the late 1980s, Trish and I met famed author Charles Berlitz at a writer’s event, and we later interviewed him AT his home in Fort Lauderdale for a magazine article. In my research about Berlitz before the interview, I discovered that he had been an agent in British intelligence during World War II. Considering that Berlitz, whose family found the Berlitz School of Language, spoke a couple of dozen ‘tongues’ himself, he was an ideal person for undercover work. He could move through different countries and cultures and seemingly blend in while gaining information. However, Berlitz was tight-lipped and would reveal nothing about his activities within British intelligence.  He simply said it remained classified…even after more than four decades.

The same is the case for Agent 488 – psychotherapist Carl Jung, who was recruited by Alan Dulles, a former diplomat, who was associated with the U.S. agency that would become the CIA.

In early November 1942, just as Britain and the United States were launching their invasion of North Africa, Dulles traveled to Switzerland for the  Office of Strategic Services. After it evolved into the CIA, Dulles would be the first and longest serving civilian director. Earlier in the war, the Nazis had attempted to recruit Jung as an agent, but he’d declined. However, he had made contact with German plotting to overthrow Hitler, and he would use the information for the benefit of the allies.

Jung saw Hitler as a mystic, a “medicine man,” channeling the unconscious as well as conscious desires of the German people, and saw similarities with some of his patients who heard voices telling them what to do, according to an article, “The Shrink as Secret Agent,” by Christopher Dickey in the Daily Beast. Jung thought of Hitler as a man who listened to a whispered voice from a mysterious source, and ignored his associates and advisors.

Dulles gave Jung the code name Agent 488 and sent a telegram to David Bruce at the operational headquarters of the OSS in London suggesting he pay close attention to Jung was producing. Among other things, Jung predicted Hitler would commit suicide as the end came near.

Shortly after the war, Allen Dulles told one of Agent 488’s longtime disciples, “Nobody will probably ever know how much Professor Jung contributed to the Allied Cause during the war, by seeing people who were connected somehow with the other side.” But Dulles said there was no way to reveal them: Jung’s services were “highly classified,” they “would have to remain undocumented.”

Dickey’s article made an interesting statement about the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, a comment that sounds strikingly similar to our current political situation in the U.S.

“But as happens when any populist demagogue takes power, many people embraced him at first, many others were willing to makes excuses for him, and still others convinced themselves that they could live with him at least. Indeed, over the previous decade the vast majority of Germans were persuaded that Hitler understood them, and they understood him—such was the chemistry between the man and his constituents—even if much of the rest of the world found him appalling.

To that end, Jung told an American reporter in 1938: “He (Hitler) is the loudspeaker which magnifies the inaudible whispers of the German soul.”

 

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Carlos the Frog

Posted on October 16, 2017 by Trish and Rob

 

Over the many years we’ve lived in Florida, we’ve encountered a lot of wildlife in the suburban neighborhoods where we’ve lived. Alligators in a lake we lived on, burrowing owls that had a nest in our backyard, a raccoon that once strolled into our kitchen to help himself to cat food, various types of birds.

Before Hurricane Wilma, we found hordes of fire ants seeking refuge in the aluminum folds of our hurricane shutters. We’ve had spiders, snakes, foxes, and the usual roaches.   Over the years, we’ve also had our share of frogs who appear in odd places in the house. We usually have managed to free them before the cats grab them.

But about a month ago, Rob noticed a little frog living in one of our potted plants on the ledge between the kitchen and the dining room. The pot once held an orchid, too, but only the ivy and the moss it grows in have survived. We tried to free him by picking up the pot to move it outside, but he jumped away. We returned the pot to the ledge and he was back the next morning.

We now leave a shallow container of water next to the plant, but the other morning, Rob found the frog – now named Carlos – in the water in our coffee pot. He has also been spotted on another area of the counter, near the cat food. There are plenty of insects that flit in and out of the house for him to catch, but I’ve been leaving him bits of lettuce and I’ve found it inside the little hole he has dug for himself in the moss.

What’s interesting about this frog is that he’s a totem animal in this house. We have a lot of these metal depictions of frogs:

Frog has often been a messenger for us, a sign that something is on its way into our lives. Whether its appearance is positive or negative depends on the room where the frog is found and its condition. Is it healthy? Sick? Injured? Dead? Hopping around?

Tonight, I placed another plant next to the pot where Carlos has been living and filled a shallow bowl with water so he could sit on the edge of it and drink. And I snapped a photo of him that’s at the top of the post.Look closely to the lower right of the pic. You’ll see one of his eyes.

This weekend when Megan comes home, we’re going to try to free him.

PS Rob freed Carlos several days before Megan got home. He hopped onto the climbing ivy on one of our palm trees in the backyard, where there are plenty of insects!

 

 

 

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A Fitting Name

Posted on October 14, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Sometimes synchronicities are so obvious they’re like the literal elephant in the room. You can’t miss them. But sometimes we do. That was the case in 2014 when an obscure economics professor shocked Washington with a startling upset victory over Eric Cantor, a prominent Republican congressman who was in line to become speaker of the house. The troublemaker’s name: Dave Brat, the perfect surname for the guy who rattled the Republican establishment by bouncing Eric Cantor out of the house. An economics professor, who touted Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman in his classes, Brat said Cantor wasn’t conservative enough for his Virginia district.

The New York Times called Brat’s victory “one of the most stunning primary election upsets in congressional history.” Brat went on to an easy victory in the general election and has remained one of the most conservative and doctrinaire members of congress. In mid-October, Brat showed that he has remained an outsider of sorts on the inside when he welcomed the call by former Trump aide Steve Bannon for conservatives to take on at least a dozen Republican incumbents in next year’s primary election. Brat told MSNBC reporter Katy Tur that he would favor ousting some of his Republican colleagues in favor of more conservative candidates. Apparently, he is still living up to his name as some Republicans fear that Bannon’s divisive efforts will tear apart of the Republican Party.

There’s one other interesting thing about Brat that caught our attention. In one of his academic papers written years ago, he made an interesting prediction about the future of the U.S. He wrote, “…We appear to be a bit passive. Hitler came along and he did not meet with unified resistance. I have the sinking feeling that it could all happen again, quite easily.”

A lot of people now think the same about DJT. But Brat is like most Republicans regarding Trump. He and the rest of them – with one or two exceptions—“appear to be a bit passive,” to quote Brat’s paper. In fact, Brat calls himself a strong Trump supporter and notes that he has voted with him 90 percent of the time. It might be time he read over his old paper!

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A Climate Change Trickster

Posted on October 12, 2017 by Trish and Rob

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05_4Yoduo0w

 

Air. Fire. Water. Earth. Our four elements. Since the beginning of the summer this year, 2017, these elements have driven home the message of climate change.

Air and water, let’s start there, with wind and flooding embodied in Hurricane Harvey, a cat 4 storm that slammed into Texas and made a loop back to Houston, where it dropped a total of 52 inches of rain.

Shortly afterward came Hurricane Irma, definitely an air event, with sustained winds of 185 mph for a record 36 hours. Irma hit Cuba with 155 mph winds, was supposed to hit the east coast of Florida, but stayed longer than expected over the northern coast of Cuba and made that turn later, sending it up Florida’s west coast. Eventually, it turned inland and struck Orlando as a cat 2 storm as well. The entire state of Florida was placed under a hurricane warning, prompting the largest evacuation in that state’s history.

Less than two weeks later, Hurricane Maria, another cat 5 storm, devastated Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Mexico City was struck by a 7.1 quake on September 19 – an earth event, for sure. And now, we have a fire event in northern California, where 22 wildfires are burning out of control.

“By Wednesday morning, at least 3,500 homes and businesses had been destroyed and nearly 170,000 acres burned, according to Daniel Berlant of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.” (Huffington Post)

So what does the Trump administration do with all this climate change evidence? On October 10, Scott Pruitt, head of the EPA and a climate change denier, released a proposal to eliminate the Clean Power Plan – “a set of Obama-era regulations aimed at slashing emissions from coal-fired power plants and boosting renewable energy production ― had yet to go into effect, after being temporarily blocked by the Supreme Court since February 2016.” This leaves the U.S. without any policy that addresses climate change.

The synchronicity, a sad trickster, is that Pruitt announced this in Hazard, Kentucky.

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Jupiter Enters Scorpio

Posted on October 10, 2017 by Trish and Rob

At 9:20 a.m. ET today, the planet Jupiter enters Scorpio and will be in that sign for the next 13 months.

In astrology, Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, represents good fortune, expansion, luck, serendipity, synchronicity, everything we humans equate with those moments when we dance around, shouting with joy, pumping our collective fists into the air. Jupiter rules the higher mind, law, the judicial system, higher education, philosophy, our spiritual beliefs, foreign countries, cultures, travel, and people. It represents good times, optimism, ideas that are larger than life. I think it also rules synchronicity.

Jupiter rules Sagittarius and co-rules Pisces, so its movements are particularly important for these two signs. But we all have Jupiter somewhere in our natal charts and you don’t want to miss out on what this transit may mean for you.

Every 12 years or so – 11.6 years to be exact – Jupiter returns to the place it occupied when you were born. It’s called a Jupiter return and that year in your life is generally a game changer. The last time Jupiter transited Scorpio began October 26, 2005 and lasted until November 24, 2006. This transit was particularly significant for anyone with a Scorpio sun, moon, rising, or natal Jupiter in Scorpio. Other water and earth signs – Cancer, Virgo, Capricorn, Taurus, Pisces – benefited from this transit. But even fire and air signs benefited in some way.

So before we go any farther with this post, think back to that period in your life. What was going on? What were you doing? What were you involved in? Were you happy? In the midst of big, positive changes? Was your life pivoting in some new direction?

An example. I have Scorpio rising at 00 degrees 49 minutes. Less than a month before Jupiter entered Scorpio back in 2005, my dad died shortly before his 92nd birthday. On October 16, 10 days before Jupiter entered Scorpio, we were hit by Hurricane Wilma, our beloved dusky conure, Kali, died in the aftermath of that storm, and we spent 10 days without electricity. In other words, the shit hit the fan. But after that, the ensuing months were great, with multiple publishing contracts, greater financial ease, and a lot of general happiness and satisfaction with life. By October 2006, Jupiter was at 19 degrees Scorpio and I officially entered my Jupiter return year. Doors crashed open, new opportunities poured in.

It’s as if Jupiter,  good guy that he is, speaks to us of  visceral level. The power of Jupiter returns was driven home for me during the election. I had looked at the birth charts and transits for Clinton, a Scorpio, and Trump, a Gemini. I noted that Trump was entering a Jupiter return year in early December 2016. I knew from experience that some of the effects of the return could be felt more than a month before the return actually started. My first thought was: OMG, he’s gonna win the election.

 But because I’m not a mundane astrologer – someone who studies how transits impact world events – I doubted the power of Trump’s Jupiter return. I doubted what I felt about it. On a radio show for The Biggest Book of Horoscopes Ever, the host asked if I would predict who would win.

I had studied up in the days before the show, reading various articles by mundane astrologers who predicted a Clinton win. What they said made sense and I, who found the possibility of a Trump win so repugnant, an idea so emotionally devastating, predicted a Clinton win in spite of Trump’s pending Jupiter return.

And my prediction was,  of course, wrong.

What I learned from this is to trust my intuition, to call it as I see it. Even though there were many astro interpretations of this election, I realized that sometimes the simplest things you see in a chart are what determine an outcome. But hey, guess what. Trump’s Jupiter return year officially ends today. He’s no longer Teflon, no longer protected. And my gut, the thing I didn’t trust last year, now says that trump’s undoing should come fairly quickly.

Then again, this is my fervently desired outcome and maybe I’m reading into things.

But, for you water and earth signs, expect new opportunities, doors that open suddenly, foreign trips and interactions with foreign-born individuals. You may go to college, grad school, workshops and seminars. You may teach, embark on a quest. For you air and fire signs, you may feel overwhelmed at times, but your goals are becoming clearer and the opportunities you encounter should be positive. You need to be ready, though, to seize the opportunity – and run with it.

Click here to see your own natal chart and find out where your natal Jupiter lies.

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Meet Nigel

Posted on October 8, 2017 by Trish and Rob

At the end of August, before Hurricane Irma, I received a text message from a dog park friend asking if I’d like to look at a couple of Golden Retriever puppies. She said they’d been bought by a couple in Boca Raton, who realized they couldn’t care for the pups properly because they worked so many hours. So on a Sunday afternoon, I met Caren Griffin at the home of local woman who was trying to find homes for the dogs.

I was instantly taken by Nigel’s cool, calm demeanor in a household with three rowdy dogs. He climbed into my lap and if he’d been able to purr, he would have. His name then was Winston – didn’t fit him. Caren, who owns three dogs, was looking for a dog for her grandchildren and chose the other dog, now named Sunny.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a puppy. Nika was our last pup. We got her in 2011, when she was just six weeks old. Nigel, as we eventually named him, was 10 weeks when we brought him home. At first, Noah didn’t seem to understand who he was or what he was doing here.

During Nigel’s first week or two with us, we were hit by Hurricane Irma. Rob and I were able to watch some of the hurricane on our back porch, with the dogs. In between train bands, Nigel bounded outside to do his business and collected avocados that had flown off our tree and into the pool and the area around it. The wind scared him, but the rain didn’t bother him.

When we lost power for 36 hours, Noah and Nigel were miserable together. The heat and humidity were extreme and they were constantly panting and looking for cooler spots in the house. Once we got the generator going, they laid in front of the freezer, hoping we’d open the door, or sprawled in front of the floor fan.

In the days since then, Nigel follows Noah around, doing whatever he does. There does seem to be a teaching by example here. When Noah chases the Frisbee, so does Nigel. When Noah pees, Nigel mimics. When Noah follows Rob outside while he’s mending our broken yard fence, Nigel trails after him.

Noah now plays with him, chasing him around the front yard, knocking him down, running his teeth through Nigel’s fur.Here’s Noah, tryingf to tech Nigel about SQUIRRELS.

He’s still not fully house trained, but hey, he’s getting there. Meanwhile, Caren’s grandkids are ecstatic about Sunny coming into their lives and we’re going to get the two bros together for a catch up.

During all of this, we were trying to find a home for a neighbor’s German Shepherd who, for the eight months of his life, had been chained to a tree in her backyard or to an even shorter leash in the garage. The day that Irma approached us, the shepherd escaped and came tearing into our yard, so ecstatic to be free that she ran around in circles, lapped haphazardly at the bowl of water we put out, at the food, and then ran around in more circles. She was so starved for attention and affection that I kind of lost my mind and marched next door and told the owner off. I regret that.

But this was an ongoing issue. Neighbors have called Animal Care and Control on this man, the Humane Society, and he continued to keep this shepherd chained to a tree in his backyard. We threw the dog treats over the fence, she knew our voices, so the day she escaped, she knew where to come.

I’m delighted to say she has now been adopted by a family with two kids and another dog, where she’ll have a yard and the freedom to roam and sniff and be a dog. This evening, Noah and Nigel went outside and up to the fence and barked at the shepherd to respond – and heard only silence.

Look at this face, Nigel damp after getting hosed off at the dog park:

 

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The Emotional Lives of Animals

Posted on October 6, 2017 by Trish and Rob

 

 

There’s something so magnificent about these creatures and I think Megan’s painting captures that mystique in the animal’s eyes.

Years ago, I remember reading When Elephants Weep: the Emotional Lives of Animals.   Published in 1996, the book became a national bestseller and parts of it stick with me even today, more than two decades later. For instance, when an elephant is injured or sick and dying, the herd forms a circle around it, all of them facing outward, as if to say, We’re with you, we have your back.

Any pet owner will tell you about incidents when their dog or cat or bird does something that underscores the premise of this book: that animals feel the same way humans do. They mourn, feel happiness, disappointment, triumph, sadness, joy. They aren’t living separately from these emotions; they are immersed in their emotions. Feelings are a sea in which they swim, float, drown.

Some years ago when our Golden Retriever, Jessie, was on her last legs, our cat, Powder, curled up next to her and spent that night – Jessie’s last – next to her, cuddling with her, comforting her. And when we left the next day to have Jessie put down, Powder seemed to understand what had happened when we returned.

In the late 1980s, Rob and I led tours for writers to the Amazon between Leticia, Colombia, and Iquitos, Peru. On one of those trips, we pulled in at an Indian village and I traded several tubes of lipstick and insect repellent for this beautiful Amazonian owl tethered to a young man’s shoulder.

 

The owl spent the next two days perched on a wooden bar on the main deck of our boat, watching all of us, eating the tidbits of fish we fed him. I was fascinated with this owl, talked to him, and made sure that when we arrived at our destination he would be set free on the animal preserve that was part of where we were staying. I remember that one of the writes, a young guy from New York, laughed at my preoccupation with the owl, and told me I was anthropomorphizing.

“It’s just an owl, Trish. It doesn’t feel anything. No soul there. No comprehension of anything other than anticipation of its next meal.”

“Dude, you need to go live in Central Park. Or in the middle of this jungle.”

Elephants, owls, dogs, cats, birds, any creature great or small, possesses an emotional life. And people who tell you otherwise, who dismiss animals as incapable of anything other than their roles as cogs in a food chain, are to be avoided.

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Las Vegas

Posted on October 4, 2017 by Trish and Rob

 

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