Does anyone else think this “Girl Power” thing is sexist? At least they have women,
and women of color, on the front page. You don’t see that often. Photo of Wednesday’s
New York Times cover by Eric.

Dear Friend and Reader:

The political nominating conventions have made for difficult watching. I must admit that I maxed out on the Republican National Convention (RNC) last week, and have only been sampling snippets of the Democratic National Convention (DNC), which climaxes Thursday night with the first major-party female candidate for president accepting her nomination.

If you only watched these conventions, you would think that the United States was two different countries.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

A few years ago during some incident of racial hell popping, I wrote to my American Studies professor at SUNY Buffalo, Dr. Robert Knox Dentan, and asked him what he thought was going on. He wrote back and said that this is all easier to understand if you accept that the South won the Civil War.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Mars has been direct for a little more than a week. This is describing a new phase of astrological life, outside the somewhat contained experience of Mars retrograde from April 17 through June 29.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

What the heck just happened with that Mars retrograde and its station direct yesterday?

No doubt you’ve been trying to notice what you feel, paying especially close attention to what you have and have not wanted to do; maybe you’ve checked back over your journal entries between mid-April and now. But have you reviewed the big news stories since April 17 to see what themes emerge?

Series of images digitally stacked so that all of the star images coincide, but you can see the path of Mars during a previous retrograde in 2009. Photo by Tunc Tezel/APOD.

Although you, personally, might not be directly impacted by a given incident, the ‘big stuff’ that fills the media still shapes our shared awareness of the world, and of our place in it. The micro and the macro often reflect each other.

Events of just the last two-and-a-half weeks alone are enough to make one feel like we’ve witnessed a few lifetimes fly by: the Orlando shooting at Pulse nightclub; the murder of British Labour MP Jo Cox; Representative John Lewis (D-Georgia) leading a sit-in on the floor of the House of Representatives to demand gun control laws; the UK’s vote to leave the European Union; a “once in a thousand years” flood in West Virginia; the US Supreme Court striking down parts of a severely restrictive abortion law; the attack by gunmen with explosives on the Istanbul, Turkey, airport.

I’m serious: all of those things (and more) happened just in the last 17 days or so. It’s enough to give one vertigo. Which, I suppose is a fitting metaphor: feeling as if you (or the world) is spinning or falling, even though you are standing still. Just like Mars is currently, from our perspective.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Have I mentioned that I’ve been trying to figure out the internet?

Mysterious by Charlie Lemay.

I was aware that when you click on something, something new appears on the screen. I knew if you post a naked picture to Facebook they kick you out for a while.

What I’m talking about is the same thing that you worry about: such as how Twitter is dumbing down the whole world. Things like the smartphone contributing to people being less smart and less able to concentrate, and someone crossing four lanes of Sixth Avenue in heavy rush-hour traffic while gazing at the screen (I actually saw that recently; apparently it’s commonplace).

Every time a new breed of communication devices is born, society is reshaped. The mother of all changes was the alphabet. Then came the book. Then came the telegraph, and the pace increased. Every time one of these things happened, society was reinvented in some fundamental way.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been going deep into the work of the first philosopher of media, Marshall McLuhan. With his grandson Andrew as my study buddy and collaborator, and Marshall’s son Eric as my ad-hoc grad school professor, I’ve made some progress that I will summarize for you in this article; but first I want to look at the astrology of the moment, and what it says about the so-called digital revolution.

However, keep this in mind, written by Prof. Eric McLuhan: “The body is everywhere assaulted by all of our new media, a state which has resulted in deep disorientation of intellect and destabilization of culture throughout the world. In the age of disembodied communication, the meaning and significance and experience of the body is utterly transformed and distorted.”

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Recent events have lots of people wanting to retreat into a metaphorical shell of some kind; to protect the tender parts of ourselves with some form of armor, or to turn the hard parts of ourselves toward the world.

Two crabs connecting; photo by Amanda Painter.

Yet what the world needs most is for us to stay present in our sensitivity and our vulnerability. I don’t mean we should offer ourselves to be taken advantage of. Rather, I mean staying in touch with the places within that feel deeply, while still engaging with the world fully, may actually be the strongest way to stay whole.

The world needs our wholeness right now. Even if you feel broken, lost or ‘not quite ready yet’, those feelings are part of the sum of who you are — along with whatever else they might be masking. Your awareness of yourself in whatever form you currently take and your ability to express that awareness are incredibly valuable.

It’s easy to think that only the ‘heroes’ of our world are looked to as shining examples of strength, bravery, problem solving or worth. But if you’ve ever witnessed someone speaking their truth, even if it meant standing in their pain to say, “Here I am, in all my imperfection and unknowingness,” you know how inspiring and empowering that can be to others.

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“When this kind of fire starts, it is very hard to put out. The tender boughs of innocence burn first, and the wind rises, and then all goodness is in jeopardy.”
— The Log Lady speaking to Laura in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

Dear Friend and Reader:

Today is the big day. This morning Uranus aligned in a conjunction with Eris for the first time since 1928. Because Uranus goes retrograde and then direct, there will be three conjunctions in close proximity, just like with any Uranus event. The next two are Sept. 25, 2016 and March 17, 2017.

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