ALL HAIL, Lord Uranus!! Welcome to the house of the First Sign! We honor your creativity and genius! And pray that you will guide and encourage us to envision new enterprises, to launch new initiatives, and to be fully present in our hearts and minds, ready to respond to changing circumstances in support of our collective visions and dreams. All hail Lord Uranus's entry into the First Sign!!

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The cycle of Uranus is 84 years. So unless a person is 84 or older, this is the first time in our lives that Uranus is entering the First sign of the zodiac. It is entering Aries today at 12:04pm PDT, 3:04pm EDT, and 8:04pm GMT, and will remain in Aries until mid-August when it returns to Pisces for several months, then re-enters Aries again next March, in 2011.

The entire astrological community is abuzz with the shift, expectant, excited. But how might regular people approach the energy shift consciously?

Here is one very good idea for the next 2-1/2 months. Meditate on how you, yes you, might become a *sudden pioneer*. Are you ready? Do you have something to offer? Can you respond quickly? What is unique about YOUR offering? And can you be attuned to timing, ...not push, not direct, but be ready at a moment's notice to step into position, should the call come?

For every one of us the answers to these questions will be different, and that's how it should be. After all, astrology is much more about the questions than it is the answers. People have sought answers for millennia, to marginal success. But when we dance with the questions we will always be right.

Remember that Uranus is tilted on is side, so its "revolution" is a little different. Unlike all the other planets, it rolls rather than spins. It's unique in the solar system, just like every one of us. All our unique revolutions are important, essential.

Expect the unexpected! Shout out YOUR revolution. Be a pioneer of YOU!! We need everyone.

When Uranus returns to Aries next March it will remain there until 2018.

If you know me, you know that I don't mean this with a heavy heart. I'm not negative for negativity's sake, merely pragmatic and realistic, which we then roll up our sleeves and get into. We are going to be plunging into poverty soon. It's actually an opportunity, but it will be disruptive and hurt many. The thing to do is hold hands.

I personally have been noticing people squeezing in, making room for each other in ways that are new to many of us. On Craigslist I've noticed people subletting PORTIONS of their living rooms, curtained off. Maybe two in there or three people share the space, like a dorm. You don't see that very often, but it is a way to survive.

The thing to do is be militaristic about it, disciplined. Lay out every possible framework you can, because it *is* stressful to live in close quarters.

Better yet would be to share a principle.

It can be done, and when we admire the Europeans (not make them into Gods, just admire them), it's because they went through this kind of experience, and it did draw them closer.

The hardest journey will be for the people who can't (or won't?) adapt, or use the change as an opportunity to problem-solve and create.

Nobody said living in the military was easy.

Let me tell you a story. It's just my story, there are others.

I stayed in a TINY studio apartment once with a friend of mine who was a struggling actress. A very good actress mind you, with a powerful persona and voice, and commitment, dedication. I was visiting down from art school in Maine.

The room was TINY (I already said that), so camp on the floor, sure. But my friend just felt natural and comfortable suggesting European style, and so we slept in her (double I think) bed together. My reticence wasn't impenetrable obviously, and being an Aquarian I ended up being game, but being lunar also I did hold back at first, wondered about this strange idea. I had never actually slept with anyone before, well, except for boyfriends, but this was a girlfriend, a sister, and I had never even slept with my actual sister!

Anyway, it was fine. And I remember sleeping with another friend another time also, it was simply convenient and cheap.

So! Please don't take this as advocacy of any particular "way" of living, only a story of how when we are pressed, or need to adapt, we can, and the "stress" of it might be optional, depending on how we approach it.

I hope we all get through. I hope flowers grow from this dormant, dark and cold yet fertile time. We simply MUST be warriors, who wear honor on our chests and sleeves, and whose lives are orderly. Laura E. recently committed to decluttering her life and simplifying, it's a fantastic thing to do. Pare down. Help each other, in ALL ways. And if possible, craft a statement about what you're about. Craft a statement of principles. If we find the light again (because you never know), or when we do, it will serve as a ducat, a pressed piece of gold, forged under heat and darkness, to be a treasure.

Blessings be, until we hail yet.

click the image to see a beautiful film

MEXICO CITY – Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.

Or is it?

Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff."

It can only get worse for him. Next month Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.

At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the "Curious? Ask an Astronomer" Web site, says people are scared.

"It's too bad that we're getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they're too young to die," Martin said. "We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn't live to see them grow up."

Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.

read more...

Michael Moore's movie, "Capitalism" A Love Story" was a slow starter, but rose to moments where spontaneous hoots and tears flowed in the audience. It's not a blockbuster, but it's a good film, with takeaway moments that are rich for reflection.

The many previews preceding the film were typically commercial, so I wondered how "Capitalism" would begin. Would it visually and energetically flow, and fit within its context? Or would it have a strange and jarring start, like a dose of cold water? I was pleased that it was the former. It flowed and has a hip, artistic beginning.

And yet initially, the story felt slow and unsupported. Moore starts with intimate and personal stories of people who are being foreclosed on -- heartwrenching stories to be sure -- but he doesn't give the background on those stories, like how the people got into debt to begin with. It's a little fuzzy, and without the background, the people come off as mainly whiney. Of course they hurt, but I wanted to know *why* their particular story was an injustice.

At about the 45 minute mark however, the film starts to warm up and get going, specifically with the story of privatized juvenile detention centers which paid a county and local judiciary per headcount of juveniles incarcerated. The heat starts to rise when you hear the stories of the young people jailed for up to a year for, for example, throwing a piece of cooked meat, or arguing in public (no fisticuffs) -- a YEAR! -- without any review or oversight because somebody was profiting from their presence in the for-profit facility. The trauma of one young man who, now free, prefers being alone where he can avoid anyone controlling him, is palpable.

The film moves from there to show corporations which secretly take out insurance policies on workers, and highlights the families of two who died, and who struggled financially after the deaths while the corporations raked in up to $5 million (!) each on the deceased. The question is clear -- if higher payouts occur when someone is healthy and young yet dies, maybe the corporations prefer people to die young rather than live. And should someone be able to purchase a policy on you without your consent?

Next Moore covers airline pilots and it's appalling to discover that commercial pilots, who are responsible for the safety of hundreds of people daily, TYPICALLY make only $17K per year, while carrying a burden of up to $100K in student loans, plus trying to cover regular living expenses. It's not surprising to learn that many pilots have second jobs, and as a result are dangerously tired and overstressed because of their finances. One pilot interviewed says it's common for pilots to qualify for, and use, food stamps. The airlines simply ask them not to make purchases with food stamps while wearing their uniforms.

Moore then rolls through the stock market crash of last year and highlights how everyone in the Treasury Department was (or is) connected with Goldman Sachs, which conveniently was the only big bank still standing after the bloodbath. He nails Reagan and GW Bush, and Clinton somewhat, for basically swallowing, re-packaging, and re-presenting the slick likes sold them by the financial "experts" who had a direct interest in deconstructing our existing, legal, financial protections, for profit -- like Phil Gramm, Donald Regan and Bernie Madoff.

He also completely obliterates the Christian Right's claim that capitalism is God's chosen form of social and economic exchange. One weakness however is that his personal viewpoint is Catholic, which isn't so bad, but he doesn't cover any other spiritual or religious traditions, so I doubt it will effectively break through the Christian Right's fundamentalist wall.

The movie picks up strength when he runs through some history, for example the fact that in the 1940s and 1950s wealthy people were taxed at a 90% tax rate (indeed!), but they still managed to live very comfortable lives, while the healthy pool of common tax receipts (then) was used to build highways and schools, as well as pay watchdogs and inspectors, to keep E Pluribus Unum safe. Jobs were plentiful, homes were affordable, families could afford one parent staying home to care for children, and people had health coverage and paid vacations.

More could have been made of the leaked Citibank letter, addressed to its elite top investors, boasting about how increasing deregulation had put them on a nearly guaranteed "gravy train", with the only real risk being the people waking up and using their votes (which they gloated was unlikely to happen...). He shows the letter, and it's a smoking gun, but rather than pursue the sick thinking behind it, Moore simply uses it as a subtle theme, as he builds his case for the power to change things being inside *us* (because we vote).

The most powerful, moving moments in the film are related to collective action -- like the very successful, worker-owned businesses he highlights, a robotic invention company and Alvarado Street Bakery -- which show that greed-based corporate models are #1, not the only way to do business, and #2, are not even necessarily the most profitable or healthy.

Tears, hoots and hollers erupted in the audience (in me too) during scenes showing workers getting together and staging a sit-in to force corporate owners to pay them their correct severance amounts, and most movingly, when an organized group of neighbors takes over several abandoned homes and puts people in them, rather than having hundreds of unoccupied, foreclosed homes, and also hundreds of homeless families living out of their cars, together turning their neighborhood into a wasteland. They fight the sheriff and win -- it's quite a moment.

Special mention goes to Marcy Kaptur, Representative of Ohio, for being a true watchdog for the people -- she completely RAKES the criminals in government over the coals. And for the sheriff of Wayne County Michigan who, after a certain point, recognizing that increasingly empty neighborhoods were only increasing crime and blight, refused to continue evicting people.

The conceptual heart of the film is probably the reflection on Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, who had a comfortable enough life, didn't need more, and so gave away his vaccine for free -- no rapacious pharmaceutical corporation patents or profits needed. And the question of how we could be sold the lie, and swallow it, that everybody who tries really hard... can attain an elite life, in mansions with private jets, like the top 0.5% of the population (a small minority). You wonder how "everybody" (or at least the majority) could EVER swallow the lie that they can fit into the top 0.5%.... It may be more proof that we have become hopelessly stupid, because obviously a majority ("everybody") can NEVER become a minority (top 0.5%).

But while we buy the lie, and remain in a trance, we will be milked. It behooves us to wake up. In Moore's vision that means learning to be satisfied with enough, stop indulging in excess and greed, participating in your community, standing up collectively for what's right and best for all, and voting.

Cinemagraphically, as a film, it could be tighter. But Capitalism is still a fine documentary and Moore raises good questions, illuminates viewpoints not normally discussed, and plants the seeds of hope, that real people, not oligarchs or plutocrats, can say "no" to the many lies the pusher pushes and choose a better way. It's not about left or right, it's about regular folks at the ground level vs. the injustices that rain down from greedy powermongers at the top. We *can* overcome.

Fun!! Who knew? Buzz Aldrin, 79, says he only has two passions, space exploration and hip-hop. From USA Today:

He's walked on the moon and shot down Russian fighter jets over Korea. And now, to make his career complete, astronaut Buzz Aldrin has become.... a rapper. The Apollo 11 space hero, the second man to set foot on the moon 40 years ago, has recorded a hip-hop video called "Rocket Experience" produced by rap superstars Snoop Dogg and Talib Kweli, and featuring Snoop Dogg, Soulja Boy and Quincy Jones.

"I'm not too good at carrying a tune, but I do have rhythm," says Aldrin, who got the idea from a family member who felt the genre would have a broad reach. Aldrin's ShareSpace Foundation, which promotes science and exploration, is one of three beneficiaries of the song's iTunes sales. "I want kids interested in space. It's their future."

The track takes listeners back to the first lunar landing 40 years ago in July. Aldrin's autobiography (with Ken Abraham) is also being released today and is called Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home From the Moon (Harmony, $27. The book plumbs Aldrin's alcoholism battles after following in Neil Armstrong's big bootsteps.

Buzz Aldrin's birthchart (click to enlarge)