Mind-Blowing Synchronicities
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Hurricane Matthew, a Trickster
As long as we still have electricity, there are some observations I’d like to share about this hurricane.
Matthew is a kind of trickster. None of the meteorological models predicted that it would become a cat 5, as it did last Friday. It’s the longest lived hurricane in the cat 4-5 category in October, in the Atlantic basin.
According to the weather channel, it “may be one of the longest-lived Atlantic major hurricanes – defined as Category 3 or stronger – in the past 50 years of satellite records. Not only did Hurricane Matthew end a nine-year streak without an Atlantic Basin Category 5 hurricane, but it did so at an unusually far south latitude.”
Astrologically, Matthew is also interesting. In October 2005, when Hurricane Wilma roared through our area, Jupiter was in Libra. It was mid-October. On 9/9/16, Jupiter entered Libra once again and today, it’s October 7 and Matthew is headed our way, the first hurricane in 12 years, the timing of the Jupiter cycle.
Most of the eastern coast of Florida is under a hurricane warning. Lake Okeechobee – just west of us – is the second largest fresh water lake in the U.S. and also falls under this warning. The dike around this lake was built in the 1930s and the water level is currently at nearly 16 feet. When it reaches 17 feet, people worry. If it reaches 20 feet, then the dike may fail and the 2000 miles of canals in South Florida flood and so does all the land around it.
Regardless of where Matthew makes landfall in Florida – or whether it simply hugs the coast – we are supposed to get up to ten inches of rain. That means our neighborhood will flood because the drains can’t get rid of the water fast enough. If the city hasn’t released water from the canals into the Atlantic, we’ll have water to our doorstep.
Tonight, though, it’s still outside, warm and humid. We’ve had sporadic showers, nothing more. We’re boarded up with two dogs and three cats and plenty of supplies. We have a generator in the garage that can be turned on once the storm has passed. But we have four skylights in our house that worry me. Our roof is 20 years old. In Wilma in 2005, our fence collapsed, we lost fruit trees, and we didn’t have power for 10 days.
But Matthew is a different sort of creature, I think, the product of climate change, volatile and unpredictable. Regardless of the precautions people take, it’s a force of nature, an irrefutable power, and in the face of it, we’re no more than an army of ants marching toward hope.
Even Orlando in central Florida, 40 miles or so inland from the coast, lies in the hurricane warning area. Will Disney board up Cinderella’s castle? Will the dolphins miraculously escape? Central Florida rarely experiences hurricanes. Most homes don’t have shutters and aren’t built to withstand hurricane force winds. What happens if Matthew makes landfall there?
Well, nothing good.
My sense is that storms like Matthew may be examples of what becomes the norm if we don’t do more to address climate change. Stay tuned. We’ll document this as long as we have electrical power and the internet.
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Then there’s this odd thing the weather channel picked up – an infrared satellite photo of Matthew from last Monday. What’s this look like, anyway? Skull? Alien?
More Stone Balls
While the subject of who has the real stone balls might sound like something out the of jaded 2016 U.S. election campaign, there is actually a debate about the subject among archaeologists. It was instigated by the recent discovery in Bosnia of the above sphere that is estimated to weigh 30 tons.
According to Bosnian archaeologist Semir Osmanagich, the ball is one several that have been found near the town of Zavidovici. He believes the spheres are evidence of an ancient lost culture, and says there used to be about 80 of them. No mention is made of what happened to them, which might be even more interesting than the spheres themselves.
If you’ve heard anything previously about large stone spheres, it’s probably the well known ones in Costa Rica. As the article notes: “The Bosnian sphere invites comparison to stone spheres in Costa Rica, which occupy four sites that were given a UNESCO world heritage designation in 2014 and are said to be the inspiration for a scene in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
But other archaeologists, who refer to Osmanagich as a controversial figure among his peers, say these spheres appear to be natural formations. Archaeologists tend to be protective of their own territory. From the article: John Hoopes, chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Kansas and an expert on the Costa Rican spheres, says the stones looks like a “natural concretion.” Hoopes goes on to say that the Costa Rican spheres – his stone balls – are definitely man-made. However, the purpose of the spheres and how they were made remain a mystery.
Maybe they were made to chase snoopy archaeologist along underground tunnels, as in Raiders.
PS In the event that we lose electrical power in the next few days, this post will stay here until the power is back on.
Guilty of ‘Appropriation’
Lionel Shriver
It disturbs us that those in charge of an Australian writers festival in Brisbane would censor Lionel Shriver, their keynote speaker, and disavow her comments and even removed links to her speech from from their website. What did she say that was so offensive? She defended her right and that of other writers to speak in the voice of someone from another race or culture.
The justification for the negative reaction is known as ‘appropriation,’ a term that the New York Times defines as the objections by members of minority groups to the use of their customs or culture (or even characters of their ethnicity) by writers or other artists who do not belong to those groups. Shriver is guilty, so are we to some extent.
Let’s put it in perspective. Historically, white writers focused on white characters, except for an occasional maid, servant or slave who served as background and were usually portrayed in stereotypical terms. Hence, the root of appropriation. Look at the movies and early television series from before the mid-1960s, and you’ll see such blatant portrayals of minorities by script writers. Then in 1967, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was released, a movie about inter-racial marriage, presenting it in a positive light. Just six months earlier such marriages had been illegal in 17 states, and the subject remained extremely controversial.
We saw much of the story through the eyes of the black man, portrayed by Sidney Poitier. The script was written by a white man and directed by another one. Was that appropriation? Ironically, minorities continue to point out that they are under represented in Hollywood by scriptwriters who write too white. If Hollywood and the Screenwriters Guild, in particular, adopted the anti-appropriation concerns as a rule, there would be even fewer roles.
I understand the concern by blacks and other minorities that white writers might still invoke stereotypes of minority groups and not fully and accurately represent the race or culture of such characters. That would be bad writing. They also think that it’s a written form of ‘black face’ – white actors portraying blacks from the early days of film. In other words, writers from minority races and cultures should be the ones writing these stories. And some do, Walter Moseley has written more than 50 novels, many featuring Easy Rollins, a black private eye.
Having written a mystery series set on the Hopi Indian reservation, I’m well aware of these issues. Here’s how I handled it. I recognized at the outset that my experience has been nothing like that of a Hopi Indian youth. To create a believable character, I chose to make Will Lansa of mixed race, a father who was the first Native American chief of police on the reservation and a white mother, the heir to a silver mining family in Aspen, Colorado who worked several years as a social worker on the reservation. After his parents’ divorce, Will grew up in Aspen. Even though he spent time with his father, including a summer vacation and his senior year of high school at Hopi High, he always felt like an outsider -half Hopi from a white culture. That perspective worked for me.
In my fourth book in the series, TIME CATCHER, Will is a 27-year-old anthropology prof who returns to the rez at the request of his grandmother where he embarks on the adventure of his life. That book just came out as an e-book. You can find a more detailed summary here.
Another novel I wrote took place in 1627 and involved Puritans shipwrecked on the coast of South American, who escape Indian attacks by fleeing in their lifeboats along the Orinoco into the interior. One of the major characters in The Lost Tribe is an Indian shaman, whose life becomes entangled with the Puritans. So I wrote about a white culture, Puritans, that is foreign to me, and a Native American perspective. Appropriation in both cases, I guess.
Many years ago, when Trish and I were first starting out as writers, we discussed the issue of writing from the perspective of another race or culture. As Trish put it, we are all humans, all part of the same larger family, all have similar emotional lives and are interconnected through archetypes that transcend race and culture. That connection is what we try our best to explore in our stories.
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U Я miNe
Just in time for today’s new moon in Libra, a kind of creepy synchro since the killer ties his murders to the cycles of the moon.
A serial killer is stalking blondes in the central Florida city of Oxford and his MO is eerily consistent. On a new or full moon, he sends his target a stalker letter that implies he has been watching her, that he knows her schedule, that she is his. Two weeks later, on a new or full moon, the woman becomes his “lunar kill,” a sacrifice to the Roman goddess Diana that satisfies the dark urge that drives him.
When 27-year-old Laurie Brautigan, a blonde artist and dog walker, receives a stalker letter on the day of a new moon, she initially thinks it’s a cruel joke perpetrated by someone she knows. But Detective Nick Finley, who has been investigating these murders for months, convinces her otherwise, and Laurie’s life is turned inside out by terror and suspicion.
What the killer doesn’t know is that both Laurie and Nick possess rare talents that they struggle to keep secret. She’s a psychic whose specialty is animal communication and Nick, the son of two mediums, talks to the dead. When Laurie reads the only witness to the murders, a dog that belonged to one of the victims, the dead victims begin talking to Nick. Racing against time to find the killer before the full moon, the very talents Laurie and Nick have tried to keep secret not only draw them together, but become their greatest allies.
At Amazon.
Posted in synchronicity
Tagged novel, psychics, serial killer, spirit contact, U R Mine
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Hurricane Matthew, Cat 5
I’ve been watching this system since it was just a blip coming off the coast of Africa. At the time, I was smugly thinking, We’re nearly through hurricane season and it’s all been good for Florida, with hurricanes heading away form the coast and out into the Atlantic. On Wednesday, as the system entered the Caribbean, it was barely a tropical storm. In just 48 hours (I’m writing this on Friday night), it has intensified despite wind shear and become a category 5 hurricane, with winds of 160 MPH.
The National Hurricane Center bases its predictions on a variety of factors and one of them is what storms on this track have done in the past. What worries me is the last sentence in this paragraph from their 11 p.m. advisory Friday night. I’ve highlighted it:
Matthew probably is near its peak intensity and will likely maintain a similar strength during the next 12 hours or so. Data from the reconnaissance plane show an incipient outer band of maximum winds, indicating that an eyewall replacement cycle could occur soon. This should result in fluctuations in intensity, and given that southwesterly shear is still affecting the cyclone, some weakening is anticipated. However, Matthew is forecast to be a category 4 hurricane by the time it moves near Jamaica and eastern Cuba. Some additional weakening is expected over the high terrain of Cuba. It is noted that none the guidance ever indicated the rapid strengthening of Matthew.
In other words, this is the kind of storm that authors Whitley Strieber and Art Bell wrote about in their book The Coming Global Superstorm, the basis for the movie The Day After Tomorrow. It’s an outlier, a rogue that may become the new norm, probably a result of climate change. The past history of storms on similar tracks, the models that show what this storm may do, may not be much help anymore.
During hurricane season, I use a free app called Max Tracker, developed by Max Mayfield, former director of the National Hurricane Center. He was director of the center for years and I always admired his acumen about hurricanes. The app indicates that by Wednesday, as Matthew near the Bahamas, it will be a cat 2 with 110 mph winds. The cone of uncertainty includes part of the east coast of South Florida to around Melbourne and as far west as Lake Okeechobee. The tri-county area – Miami/Dade, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach County fall within the cone. With a slight shift of the track to the west, which depends on several upper level troughs, it hits our area.
We were last hit in 2005, when Wilma swept across the peninsula, a cat 1 that during her travels had the lowest ever recorded barometric pressure – 881 mb. Even though she was fast-moving and greatly diminished when she hit us, she stalled over our area and her back side, which is supposed to be less fierce, was a monster. She left us without power for 10 days. Matthew’s barometric as of tonight is 941 mb. It has dropped from around 1008 to that 941 in about 24 hours.
When I look at the satellite images, my sense is that Matthew, like all hurricanes, perhaps like all weather, is sentient, some form of consciousness that we don’t understand, something that gravitates toward particular areas because it’s drawn by the collective consciousness of the people who live there. You won’t find any reference to that on the National Hurricane Center site or any other weather site. But in studying these systems since my first hurricane in the 60s- Hurricane Cleo – that’s my intuitive impression.
My hope is that this sucker turns out into the Atlantic and hits nothing. The NHC ends their discussion with this:
It is important to remind users that average NHC track forecast errors are around 175 miles at day 4 and 230 miles at day 5. Therefore, it is too soon to rule out possible hurricane impacts from Matthew in Florida.
Maybe by tomorrow, the track has shifted east, away from Florida and the Bahamas.
Body Speak, Politics, and Trump
Forget his silly rhetoric. Forget what he says. Read his body language, his appearance, his expressions.
First, there’s the orange hair, combed weirdly forward so that it always looks disheveled, strange, unnatural. Is it the result of follicle implants? Or does he comb it that way to cover bald spots? Does anyone around him ever tell him he should fix the hair?
“Uh, Dad, you should maybe let it go gray and natural.”
“Uh, honey, it’s looking a bit odd.”
Or, from a trusted advisor: “Uh, dude, you need to do something about the hair.”
Trusted advisor is then fired. It’s not as easy to fire one of your kids or your wife or mistress, so Trump just ignores them and continues to do his hair thing. This is the guy, after all, who during the divorce proceedings from his first wife invoked the fifth amendment 97 times out of a 100 questions about whether he’d been faithful to her. I think he’s claiming the fifth amendment about his hair.
Then there’s the color of his face, this perpetual sunburn from a tanning salon. I mean, hey, we know he can’t be basking on a beach in Florida, so it’s got to be the result of a salon or sun lamps or aliens with really bright, hot lights aimed at his face.
Third item: his mouth. It purses and scowls frequently, the lips sculpting themselves into various weird shapes and designs. It often reaches a point with this mouth where I wish it were in front of me so I could grab it, stretch it, sculpt it into some semblance of a genuine human smile. Not going to happen. This mouth spouts so many lies and so much shit that when it’s resting, it’s perpetually turned down, like a sad face emoticon.
Now, the fourth item in this body language scan: his hands. He claims his only exercise comes from the movement of his hands. Stubby thumb and forefinger rising into the air, forming a nearly perfect ninety degree angle to each other as that pursing mouth announces that he’ll make America great again.
Yeah, okay, orange dude with weird hair. And you say you really want to be president? Well, president of what? The U.S.? Seriously? You’re better suited as prez of the local dog catcher unit. No, on second thought, that would be an insult to dogs, who are way smarter than you.
The other night, when we were watching Trump debate Clinton, our dogs actually jumped down from the couch and left the room. They understood that hate is what fuels you, feeds you, propels you forward in your weird reality bubble.
Oh please, Mr. Orange Man With Weird Hair and Hand Gestures, just go away, okay? Four years of you would do us in as a country, a nation, a collective consciousness that strives to move forward, to move beyond racism, misogyny, zero respect for women, and all the other Neanderthal beliefs you represent. Even the dogs recognize you as worse than Romney, who kept his dog in a crate on top of his car during a trip north. Worse than W Bush who got us embroiled in the Mideast. Even the dogs can’t stand to see you on TV, can’t stand to hear you speak, can’t tolerate your lies.
Unfortunately, dogs can’t vote. But we humans can.
No, Clinton isn’t perfect. Clinton isn’t clean. Clinton doesn’t have the youth vote. But she has my vote because she’s smart and experienced and the alternative is just too gross and depressing to even ponder. I thought W was awful. But you?? There are no adjectives in the English language that can possibly describe the horrors and the damage that you could inflict on the world in just four years.
What Makes a Good Psychic?
My first psychic reading was during my freshman year in college. A friend told me about a tea leaf reader in town, an Italian woman named Rosa with whom she’d had a reading, and suggested we go see her. I was intrigued and said sure, of course, when?
Rosa introduced me to an entirely new world – a place where people with certain abilities could read you inside out, backward and forward, past, present, future. And she did it with nothing more than the patterns formed on the inside walls of a teacup. Those patterns were her focus. Many of the things she told me unfolded well beyond college and into my later years.
In the decades since, I’ve sampled numerous psychics with varied alleged talents. Psychometrists, clairvoyants, card readers, astrologers, remote viewers, palm readers, mediums, numerologists, clairaudients, precognitives. Yeah, it sounds nutty. But I’m fascinated by the process various types of psychics use to do what they do, and how their particular cultures influence that process. Cuban santeros work differently than Guatemalan seers or Chilean clairvoyants. In nearly every country we’ve visited, I’ve sampled a psychic somewhere in that country.
Some of the psychics with whom I’ve had readings over the years were incredible, the real deal, people whose ability was larger than life. What they said resonated. What they predicted panned out – not 100 percent, no psychic is 100 percent – but close enough so their ability earned my quirky five star rating. Other psychics were mediocre, and some were flat-out awful.
With the awfuls, my criteria is simple. Tell me something in 15 minutes that resonates within my own intuitive intelligence, something I can’t read for myself in astrology or the tarot, which I’ve studied and used for decades. Tell me something that is beyond my capacity to see for myself.
So here are my suggestions for the next time you seek out a psychic:
- If possible, go to someone recommended by a friend whose opinion you trust.
- Have your questions in mind. Write them down before you get the reading. At the end of the reading, see how many of the questions the psychic hit. The really good psychics don’t need to hear your questions; they hit them because they pick up on the energy of the questions.
- Be open and receptive during the reading. If the reading is in person, don’t sit there with your arms crossed against your chest, your energy field shut down, your defense mechanism in full mode. No one – not even Nostradamus!- can get through that kind of defense system.
- Don’t provide information about yourself unless the psychic asks if something he or she said resonates for you. Sometimes, especially with mediums, the psychic needs to know if he/she is picking up on your energy field or that of someone in your environment.
- The really good mediums often offer something within the first few minutes of a reading that captures your attention, that tells you that yes, they’re tuning in on you, your life, on people you love who have died. Whose the bald old man who was a really good chess player? Whose the beautiful woman who was community-minded? I see a child who never reached physical life, a miscarriage, a middle sibling…. Like that. The really good mediums are tuned in to those kinds of details.
In 1992, I had one of the best readings ever, from Millie Gemondo, who had been recommended by our long-time accountant, a skeptic who happened to be from the same West Virginia town. Our reading took place on the same day that Hurricane Andrew was headed to South Florida. Hurricane warnings had gone up along the South Florida coast. Our hurricane shutters were up, we had our supplies, we were hunkered down. And Millie said that Andrew wouldn’t touch us, but would obliterate a town well to the south of us. And that’s exactly what happened. We had what amounted to a thunderstorm and Homestead, a hundred miles south of us, was obliterated.
That night, Millie also told me I would end up with a new publisher and a new agent, and both came to pass within the time frame she had seen. Specifics. For someone who is paying for a reading, specifics are vital. Give me something to chew on, record, jot down. If you call yourself a medium or a psychic or something else, you should be able to give your client more than generalities that he or she might hear at a carnival: long life, love, prosperity.
A Canadian psychic who had been recommended by a friend came to our house at some point in the 1990s and read for my friend and co-author, Phyllis Vega (of Power Tarot) and told her that her husband would die within 5 years, that her son-in-law would die within 7 years, and that, she said, was the end of the reading. Both events transpired as predicted, but c’mon, couldn’t this info have been communicated in a gentler, more humane way?
If I come to you for a reading and pay you for telling me something about my life that I don’t know and can’t uncover through my own abilities, then please give me more than hand gestures and vague BS about finding a new path in life. Please give me specifics. I’m easy to read, I’m an open book, I’m eager to hear whatever you have to say. I don’t hurl up walls.
I understand that some psychics are nervous about their ability, but I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, to engage you in conversation outside of the reading. Who are you in the privacy of your own being? In my experience, here are my recommendations. A Google search of these folks usually yields websites and contact info, but when it doesn’t, email us and we’ll provide the info:
Millie Gemondo- psychic & medium
Connie Cannon-psychic
Kathy Adams- psychometrist
Jane Clifford – healer, psychic
Hazel West Burley- medium
Natalie Thomas- medium
Meg Stokes – medium, psychic
Tony Grosso –he has since passed.
Whitley Strieber– doesn’t do readings but is the most knowledgeable person on the planet about ET interaction/encounters
Carol Bowman – your best resource for past life regressions,
Renie Wiley – she has passed, but is probably available in the afterlife for readings!
Adele Aldridge for the I Ching
Mike Perry – great resource on synchronicity
Daz- another good resource on synchronicity
Phyllis Vega – tarot
Dennie Gooding – psychic
Astrology and the 2016 Presidential Election
Part of the problem with predicting this election is that Clinton’s birth time isn’t known. Some astrologers have her time of birth as 8:02 am, others have it as 8 pm.
So I erected two charts – one for election day (ABOVE), set at 9 PM ET when the polls close, and the other for the day that the sun entered Aries, the first sign of the zodiac – March 20, 2016, 12:30:08 am EDT, Washington, DC. The sun’s entry into the first minute of the first sign represents the start of the astrological new year and generally predicts events for that location.
The election day chart has the moon and Neptune (trident symbol) both in Pisces separated by about 7 degrees. This could indicate some confusion about the results. Fortunately, Mercury isn’t retrograde or about to change direction, as it was on election day in 2000.
In the Aries ingress chart(above) the party in power is represented by the 10th house. It has Virgo on the cusp and Virgo is ruled by Mercury, which is at 26 degrees Pisces in the 4th house. The challenging party is represented by the 4th house, which has Pisces on the cusp. Its ruler is Jupiter, because only traditional rulers are used.
Since the ruler of the 4th house – Jupiter – is found in the 10th house, the immediate assumption is that the challenging party – the Republicans – win. However, Jupiter squares Saturn – forms a challenging 90 degree angle to it – but is said to receive Saturn because Saturn is in Sagittarius, the sign that Jupiter rules. Also, Jupiter is retrograde, moving away from the cusp of the tenth house, suggesting that the Republicans may come close to winning, but don’t quite make it.
Regardless of which Clinton natal chart we use, when we make a biwheel with the election day chart in the outer wheel, the transiting sun is conjuncting her natal Venus, an indicator of happiness, joy, an auspicious time.
Then there’s Trump’s chart on election day.
His natal Jupiter is at 17 degrees Libra, in his second house of money and personal values. Transiting Jupiter is at 12 degrees Libra. Trump is entering what’s called a Jupiter return, when Jupiter returns to the position it was when you were born. It happens about every 12 years and his becomes exact in early December. A Jupiter return is always fortunate. New opportunities land in your lap, you get married, land the dream job, travel overseas, luck is your middle name. This Jupiter return doesn’t necessarily promise that Trump wins the election, but it certainly promises that even if he loses, he’ll be able to capitalize big time on all the publicity and exposure he has gotten.
The most recent issue of Mountain Astrologer has a great article on the election by Nina Gryphon. She has studied ingress charts for presidential elections dating back to the 19th century. Her take? The democrats keep the White House in 2016 and if she’s right, then the Republicans take the White House in 2020.
The Hoot-Hoot on UFOs
We haven’t heard much from our fellow blogger Mike McClelland (no relation to Clark) since his book was published, but we did recently stumble across this interesting review of The Messengers: Owls, Synchronicity and the UFO Abductee. It appeared in a Portuguese-language web site mysteriously called, FBI Controle CIA, which translates to FBI Controls (or Monitors) CIA. At least, we think that’s what it means. Fortunately, for multi-lingual deprived English speakers, the review is conveniently in English.
Curiously, the review begins with the reviewer quoting himself from a blurb he wrote for the book cover. Well, we suspect right away that this will be a sympathetic discussion of the book, and the reviewer will probably not be attacked by a crazed owl for his effort.
Here is what he says:
“I get a strong sense that Mike was guided to write this by the UFO intelligence and I think the reader will get that. This is the first time I have seen this level of both a book and its author being inextricably linked to the phenomenon itself since Strieber and Communion. Communion was clearly more than just a book; I believe the phenomenon intended it to be written, published, and read on a large scale. I think Mike’s book is another example of this.”
We haven’t read the book yet, but we’re sure the 400-page tome covers the topic well and in great depth. We know Mike has had his share of strange owl-alien encounters, which puts him in the middle of the complex story. We’ve written about his experiences here on the blog and in Aliens in the Backyard.
When it comes to connecting animals to aliens, the standard link – if you can call it that – is cattle mutilations, aka mutes. Mike’s advantage in the animal-alien realm is that, unlike the mutes, a topic that has produced at least a dozen or so books over the years, his book seems to have a corner on the owl-alien market. It probably will also be better accepted by the UFO enthusiasts/researchers who have tried to distance themselves from the disturbing idea that aliens come here to carve up cattle eyeballs, tongues and anuses.
Good luck, Mike! A few days after I wrote this post, we received an e-mail from Mike inquiring about the mysterious process of producing, distributing and selling audio editions of books. That made my first sentence in the post inaccurate, but it also created a synchronicity of sorts. In other words, he responded to my initial comment before he saw it.
