the weather inside me

a special january eclipse week note to Capricorns/Capricorn Rising

If you're a Capricorn or Cap rising --be kind to yourself right now. Really.

You so easily dog yourself about what you have/have not done on the road to success (whatever that road is to you), but this week don't indulge that stuff. Instead this is a good week to think hard about liking yourself for the right reasons, and deciding what sort of leadership you truly want to give to the world.

You like being seen doing the "right thing," whether that's promptly sending thank you cards or knowing the company vision statement by heart. You don't see yourself as a complete suck-up to the job because like all cardinal signs, you've got an independent, self-starting streak within you. You prefer to think you decided what the right thing is. It just so happens that your version of "right" has an air of long tradition hanging around it, which might sound to some folks an awful like like "status quo". But is it?

Just because something is time-honored doesn't make it bad, you think. You have no problem with time. I am here to ask you about "honor" though. Specifically, I want to ask you "what's worth honoring?"

Now is the time to rethink what the "right thing" is in your life. If you are more honest with yourself, you'll admit you're too often driven by an authority or voice of authority outside yourself. What is this authority you revere --or fear? Your boss, your friends, your perceived reputation, your family faith? Pick one --or two or three. 

You want an accumulation of worth and you definitely want the esteem of others, but someone else seems to be defining that worth. What are you working towards? 10 million frequent flier points on your credit card? Another company recognition plaque on the office wall? An "appropriate" partner for that next marriage/project/committee? What is it? There's some delectable fruit you're after; I know because every Capricorn is always working toward something.

Working towards something implies we're also working away from something. For many of you that something is a fear that keeps you in constant motion toward your goals. Maybe you had a hard childhood; maybe you once knew poverty; maybe you lost a parent at an early age; maybe you grew up in an emotionally hostile/cold/or enmeshed family. Whatever it is, it's the fear that that monstrous memory coming back to you that pushes you out, away and up into some kind of carefully controlled (and I mean controlled) need for civility and accomplishment combined. No more chaos and crazy people, you vow. (Nope, those folks are getting side-lined quicker these days.) Like Scarlett O'Hara, herself, you vow you'll never go hungry again.

And no more fear of rejection. Ah, the fear of rejection: your very painful achilles ouchy spot. You know exactly what I mean.

Perhaps this is an expression of Capricorn's fishy side: the symbol of the climber is also has a tail of a fish. The fish within you vibes more like Pisces: it's the trembling, sensitive, secretive and (potentially) spiritual side of you. Do you remember the last time you stunned a friend who discovered your secret passion for crop circles? That stash of weed --or your tarot collection? "I had no idea you were into this stuff! I mean, I thought you were so straight." Uh, yeah... Your fishy secret self is also the side of you prone to (self) deceptive illusions. Exhibit A: Tiger Woods, the Capricorn of the hour and control freak extraordinaire. If you want to be an illusionist, take care. All Caps have some weird side, and so do you. Pluto, however, has a way of outing your weirdness. Digging in the basement, so to speak. Some honesty may be necessary if you haven't found some peace between your goat (climber) and fish (dreamer) halves.

With Mercury still in retrograde in your sign of Capricorn, take some time right now to think about who --or what- exactly is driving your ambition. And your fears of ambition. What is your ouchy spot, anyway? Are you self-medicating that spot with shopping and power grabs? Or maybe hitting the hooch a little too hard? Or have you buried your brain between the pages of Harlequin Romances?

This week as we prepare for a solar eclipse in your sign, the Sun, Venus and the North Node are clustered together in Capricorn, too. All are pressing you forward toward a more authentic expression of your leadership potential. Which means, you've got a really good opportunity this week --and I mean a really, really good opportunity-- to tune into what's attracting you to your future. With all these signs in your sign (or rising sign) the attraction signals should be coming from you.

Tune into yourself and listen deeply to your own heart. What is the most noble and life-affirming leadership you can offer? --First, to yourself, and then to others. You've got stuff in there that bears no resemblance to the rat-race, corporate/parental authority kow-towing you've known for most of your life.

Capricorn is the sign of revolutionaries. That's an amazing thought because most everyone has written you off as pretty uptight in these tell-all, happy-clappy Facebooking times. But you know, stuff doesn't change without someone with backbone in charge. Real change requires people who commit to long-term visions. That, Cappy, you've got in spades --long term vision.

So be the one with backbone. Be the one with vision for the long-haul. Just make sure the revolution you're starting is your own heart's fire; don't settle for anything less.

The Hammer and the Flame: The New Moon Report of Dec. 27, 2008

from Planet Waves

Dear Friend and Reader:

On Saturday, the Sun and Moon align in early Capricorn and form the New Moon. This is exact Dec. 27, 7:22 AM EST. For many of us, this will be a life-changing New Moon that calls us to a new (and truer) understanding of selfhood and service. This an extraordinary chart, because Pluto is in Capricorn for the first time during the [Northern Hemisphere] winter solstice season. Mars will be right there, in a conjunction. The two are aligned on the Aries Point, which is a kind of cosmic magnifier that will bring whatever unusual news occurs that day or the days surrounding it, into a deeply personal context.

Landscape with Vesta temple in Tivoli, Italy, c. 1600. By Adam Elsheimer.

The most potent aspects of the chart make a close trine to Vesta in Taurus. Vesta, for its part, is precisely on the discovery degree of Chiron. So this chart opens up a flow of energy from that Chiron/Vesta dimension.

Not long ago I read about a French woman (let’s call her Vesta) who, for 30 years, lived with and cared for the people in a Cairo trash dump colony. By choice. The community — men, women and kids– tended the burning piles of trash and raised pigs for their meat. No devout Muslim would touch them because they ate pigs and lived in filth. Their kids climbed mountains of other people’s broken furniture, and the stiffest brush couldn’t scrub the smell of burning refuse and pig shit from their little bodies. Even straight from a bath, they were grimy, as if the soil were part of them.

This amazed me, so much so that she lived in my mind for weeks afterward. Whenever I threw out my own trash, I added some detail of what I imagined her life was like. My potato peelings and the onion skins became her dinner. My snotty tissues, her kindling. My foot-high pile of mail order catalogs, a guilty offering of expiation to the recycling gods. “Please, please forgive me: I signed up because I thought the stuff was pretty; I never had an intention to buy it. So sorry…” I offered them to this woman, too, who once tended the flame and smoke of Cairo’s burning trash heaps.

After her death, Dr. Mounir Neamatalla, a leading Egyptian expert in environmental science and poverty reduction who worked closely with her, marveled that this woman chose “one of the worst qualities of life on the planet… [she] was living right among them, the garbage collectors, the pigs, the whole mess. I had never seen anything like this in my life.” Together they created a composting plant to process the tons of pig manure and sold it as fertilizer. In time, Vesta also brought a school and medical care to these unwanted people.

People like this are unforgettable because they’re so rare. But they are a type of modern day Vesta, the Roman goddess of selfless and devoted service. Traditionally Vesta was the original keeper of Rome’s eternal flame, and her mortal servants, the Vestal Virgins of the Roman Empire, served to keep Rome’s flame alight, night and day. As any camper knows, maintaining a perpetually burning flame requires careful, sustained attention and patience. Call it investing. Today when we invest, we’re likely to think of money instead of attentive service. While there’s nothing wrong with money, it’s a poor substitute for Vesta’s original meaning. We haven’t forgotten Vesta; we just renamed her.

This is because our culture defines us by our spending power. At the bank and in shops, we heap our offerings upon a false Vestal altar hoping that somehow our little flames of self-importance might not go out. With devotion we cultivate our next contract, our next project, our next gig that might lead to the kind of connections and wealth that guarantee our worth to others — and ourselves. It’s so pervasive, it functions like an autonomic response in the body politic. Someone would have to throw us into a burning trash heap of a town to get our attention.

Sacrifice — Janis and the Vestal Virgins stoneware with mixed media. Rebecca Reagan Boatman.

This New Moon we might just get that experience. Right now Vesta is approaching the Chiron discovery degree. This is a degree that functions as if Chiron is always present. Chiron is our astrological marker for the struggle or quest for awareness, and so we’re approaching a moment where lots of us will find ourselves standing, latte in hand, negotiating the next “deal,” more aware that the whole thing’s a sham and uneasy about why.

Excuse Me, But Your Spine Is Ringing: The New Moon Nov. 27 and the Dawn of Pluto in Capricorn

from Planet Waves

Dear Friend and Reader,

Do you feel the shift? The sense of renewal? The sense of arrival?

Do you feel your spine ringing?

New Horizons at Pluto. Artist's concept of the New Horizons spacecraft during a planned encounter with Pluto and its moon, Charon. NASA Images.

If you do, you’re not imagining it. It’s the universe calling you. On November 27th, 11:54 am EST, a New Moon rises in the sign of Saggitarius, asking you to respond. In future editions of Planet Waves, we’ll have a closer look at where this moment places us in history, but for now, I’d like you to remember just three things:

1. Pluto is sitting on an Aries Point.
2. Uranus is finally ready for forward motion.
3. A cluster of planets and asteroids in Saggitarius lets us look back one last time at the past 15 years and take notes.

The simplest message here is “Welcome to your new life.” What will this new life look like? Good question. I’d say this chart is saying your new life will appear like whatever you’d want it to be, as long as you are willing to explore that thing that runs from your brain to your butt — you know, your spine. (Highlight that part, will ya?)

This is because the biggie moment of this New Moon is Pluto’s ingress to Capricorn. We’ll get to the significance of your spine and Capricorn soon, but first let’s put Pluto into context, astrologically.

Is it Uranian enough for you?

from Planet Waves

Nov. 20, 2008

Dear Friend and Reader,

Uranus is getting ready to turn stationary direct, an effect that feels like a Mercury retrograde transition, except bigger and more blitzed-out. Perhaps you’ve noticed an extra shot of “zing” in the air lately.

A fake copy of The New York Times, distributed last week, is a good example of Uranian energy. Photo courtesy of Reuters.

We’re making snap decisions and then snap revisions while sudden revelations are popping to the surface, and, of course, our electronics are playing games with us. The cumulative effect can be a little like massive short circuiting. But then, that kind of buzz is also the brilliance behind genius innovation and bold personal transformation. It’s the juice that gets the job done.

For an idea of how this plays out, here are some fun Uranian-themed news items.

A San Francisco artists wants to replace her one artificial eye with a web-cam.

“There have been all sorts of cyborgs in science fiction for a long time, and I’m sort of a sci-fi geek,” said Vlach, 35. “With the advancement of technology, I thought, ‘Why not?’”

The eye cam could allow her to record her entire life or even shoot a reality TV show from her eye’s perspective. Vlach said she will let inspiration strike once she has the device.

“There are a lot of ideas floating around…nothing too exploitative,” said Vlach. “I don’t want to be a spy and infringe on people’s rights, and at the same time, there are amazing possibilities.”

The new Google iPhone application is baffled by British accents.

When asked to search for “iPhone” the results varied wildly. A user with a Scottish accent found his phone opted to search for the term “sex” instead, and suggested a link to an adult web site. On a second attempt, the search engine looked for “sledding”.

Tom Jones makes a surprise appearance in Southbank, London as part of BBC’s The Culture Show Busking Challenge.

The singer worked the crowd with tricks learned from five decades of performing, entreating his female fans to “wiggle around just a little bit.” One middle-aged woman said that she would have thrown her knickers at him “if only it were a bit warmer.”

Fake edition of New York Times claims “Iraq War Ends.”

More than one million free copies of the 14-page “special edition” newspaper were distributed, mainly in the cities of New York and Los Angeles.

Another bogus story was about all Americans being given free healthcare.

A liberal group called the Yes Men, well known in the US for its practical jokes, claimed responsibility for the elaborate prank.

The fake paper - dated 4 July 2009 - had a motto on its front page which read “all the news we hope to print”.

What’s your Uranian story this week?

Yours and Truly,

Shanna Philipson

The Inauguration Train: Obama and Pluto Pull Into History

from Planet Waves

Dear Friend and Reader:

Jan. 17, 2009 at 7:10 PM EST, the Inauguration Train and President-elect Barack Obama rolled into Union Station in Washington, DC hauling 250 years of history and a whole lot of Pluto in Capricorn along with him.

Two weeks after Americans elected Barack Obama as the their next president, the dwarf planet Pluto returned for a 15-year stay in the sign of Capricorn. This is significant because Pluto has not been in the sign of Capricorn for 247 years. Since the time of America’s Revolutionary War, in fact.

A supporter listens to President-elect Obama at a rally in Wilmington, during his whistle-stop tour Saturday. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Bloomberg News.

In Philadelphia, where Obama began the Inauguration ride, the president-elect reminded his audience of their 18th century origins: “It was here, in this city, that our American journey began…It was here that a group of farmers and lawyers, merchants and soldiers, gathered to declare their independence and lay claim to a destiny that they were being denied.”

Obama continued to invoke the 18th century spirit at each train stop: ” ‘We should never forget that we are the heirs of those early patriots, ordinary men and women who refused to give up when it all seemed so improbable - and who somehow believed that they had the power to make the world anew,’ he told a crowd estimated at 35,000. ‘That is the spirit that we must reclaim today.’ ”

In Next World Stories, we offer a deeper look at the themes and events of Pluto’s last pass through Capricorn 247 years ago. It was an era that birthed the American Experiment — truly worth studying because the return of Pluto to Capricorn will likely force Americans to recreate the government they created 250 years ago.

A last dash grab for the friends of Bush and Co.?

from Planet Waves

Nov. 13, 2008

Dear Friend and Reader,

DO YA’LL REMEMBER those images from the early days of the glorious Iraqi liberation? You know the ones where Iraqis were seen walking into their banks and grabbing anything they could? Or the stories of Saddam Jr. pulling up to the treasury with three tractor trailers to haul off 900 million dollars in tidy stacks of 100 dollar bills?

Iraqi carrying looted money from a Baghdad bank in April 2003. Associated Press photo.

Seems as if the Bush Administration and their friends have taken a page from the Hussein family playbook.

While we all wait to see how the 700 billion dollar bailout package will trickle down to our pocketbooks, the Federal Reserve Bank has been quietly cutting deals to the tune of nearly two trillion dollars with banking groups like Citigroup and Goldman Sachs — twice the size of the better known bailout deal. Who else got this federal money, and what collateral was provided for those loans is what Bloomberg News wants to know.

According to Bloomberg News, the Federal Treasury has been issuing emergency loans to American banks long before Wall Street and AIG bellied up to the cash bar. Since May of this year Bloomberg has sought information about these loans, but the government has disclosed few details of the loans. Until now, the media has given little attention to the Reserve plan, but that should soon change. Reporters are beginning to ask questions about the supposed transparency of the better known bailout, but the opacity of those answers won’t remotely compare to the wall of secrecy they’ll encounter when they begin to ask questions about the larger Reserve handout.

The American taxpayer is entitled to know the risks, costs and methodology associated with the unprecedented government bailout of the U.S. financial industry,” said Matthew Winkler, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, a unit of New York-based Bloomberg LP, in an e-mail.

The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, has for months pleaded “too busy to stop now!” when Bloomberg requested detailed disclosure of the loans. Now the Fed says it’s none of Bloomberg’s business. Or rather, that the documents kept at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York aren’t subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke speaks before a Joint Economic Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Photo by K. Lamarque/Reuters.

Bloomberg disagrees, and this week filed suit to get that information. And it’s not just Bloomberg that wants that information. Biztimes Daily quotes others in the financial community:

‘The collateral is not being adequately disclosed, and that’s a big problem,’ Dan Fuss, vice chairman of Boston-based Loomis Sayles & Co., told Bloomberg. ‘In a liquid market, this wouldn’t matter, but we’re not. The market is very nervous and very thin.’

‘It’s your money; it’s not the Fed’s money,’ billionaire Ted Forstmann, senior partner of Forstmann Little & Co. in New York, told Bloomberg. ‘Of course there should be transparency.’

According to The Small Business Times, eight of the eleven programs loaning these funds were created in the last fifteen months.

Bloomberg’s pursuit of this story since last May and the recent development of the loan programs suggests that many more people in the financial community knew the economy was about to take a seriously negative turn than recent reports would have us believe. Perhaps they didn’t know when the earthquake would hit, but Citigroup and others must have been feeling the tremors for at least a year now.

What remains to be known is who is getting all this money. The feds argue it’s very sensitive information, but the skeptical (not to mention the paranoid) among us can only believe the real sensitivity at stake here is constitutional. Do we have a right to know who’s getting our tax money or not? And to what lengths will the outgoing administration hide who’s getting our compulsory public tithe?

The Aleph Blog suggests the following reasons for hiding information about the transactions:

1. The Fed is breaking its own rules, and lending on collateral that it publicly said that it wouldn’t lend against.
   
2. They are playing favorites with institutions, and don’t want that to be revealed.
   
3. The assets in question are technically in compliance with the rules of the Fed, but are worth far less than the amount loaned against them.
   
4. Certain banks would be embarrassed by revealing what they own.
   
5. It’s just a power game, and the Fed thinks it is above the law, particularly during a crisis (that it helped to cause).

Bloomberg’s suit against the Federal Reserve should test these possibilities, pointedly. Now to see if our judicial system will side with the Reserve Bank or toss this one back on its benumbed citizens…

Suit filed as: Bloomberg LP v. Federal Reserve, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan)

In related economic news:

Paulson “shifting focus” of bailout money. (nytimes.com)

GM asks for a bailout. (nytimes.com).

The government gives AIG $40 billion more (npr.org).

Allen Greenspan’s deathbed admission (npr.org).

Yours & truly,

Shanna Philipson

Brother, beware! Obama wants your closet, too.

from Planet Waves

Election Day, Nov. 4, 2008

Brother, beware! Obama wants your closet, too.

Before you cast your vote for Obama, you may want to consider his views on your pants.

Kevin and Markus Deamus of Dallas, TX. In 2007, Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway sought to ban the low-hanging pants trend. Obama also opposes. Photo by Mei-Chun Jau/DMN.

That’s right: Obama wants you to pull up yo’ pants. In an obvious appeal to the grandmother vote, Obama revealed his true conservative feelings in an interview posted today on MTV.com. Responding to a write-in question from a young man, Obama stated:

…brothers should pull up their pants. You’re walking by your mother, your grandmother, and your underwear is showing. … What’s wrong with that? Come on. There are some issues that we face that you don’t have to pass a law [against], but that doesn’t mean folks can’t have some sense and some respect for other people. And, you know, some people might not want to see your underwear — I’m one of them.

Never has a candidate reached deeper into the collective American closet than now. Pull up my pants? For real? Where will this lead, and more importantly — where could this end? For example, under an Obama administration would we have to tuck in our shirts? Tie our shoes? Slick down our cowlicks and groom our eybrows? Would we have to say “excuse me” after we burp? Or “pardon me” when we step on another’s toes? Will we suddenly need to know which fork to use — or the difference between “who” and “whom”?

Sure he says we don’t need to pass a law to accomplish these reforms, because he knows what you and I know, too: Obama + your grandmama = The Law. Don’t need a silly paper law; some laws are written into every scowl and smirk you’ll face at the breakfast table. Think you’ll be walkin’ out the door with your Roca’s hanging low? No, sir, brother. If Obama becomes our president, every woman in your life will have presidential permission to gut your wardrobe. Before you can say “Salvation Army donation” you’re gonna be in your Sunday School clothes Monday through Saturday. And if you don’t have Sunday School clothes now, you will.

So when you enter that polling booth tomorrow and see the “Obama/Biden” button, sure, push it. Convince yourself you’re doing your thing for “History” and congratulate yourself for overcoming racism in this county. But don’t be fooled about what this man is going to do to your style: A vote for Obama is a vote against sagging.

That’s right. Vote for Obama, and then go buy yourself a small belt. You’re gonna need it.

Yours & truly,
Shanna Philipson

Mal-apropo: Palin finally gets it right

Editor’s note: the following piece is written by Shanna Philipson, a recent addition to the Planet Waves blogging team. Her first piece, Yer-Anus: Astrology Comes Out of the Closet, was published on Monday. –RA

 Nov. 1, 2008

“Just like the lighting and the staging and everything else that the RNC purchased, I’m not taking them with me.” – Sarah Palin, at a Republican rally in Tampa, Florida, regarding the controversy of her campaign wardrobe.

Sarah Palin waves as she arrives in Pennsylvania on Oct. 8, in one of her new expensive outfits paid for by the RNC. Her bag reads: "Real Women Hunt Moose." Photo by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images.

Dear Friend and Reader,

THIS HAS GOT TO BE my favorite moment from this week. When it comes to politics, I’m a bonafide cynic, and for years I’ve maintained that, outside of professional theatre, there’s nothing more staged than a national political convention — or the rallies that follow the nominations. 

I happen to have a BFA, was trained as a costume designer and worked a few years in professional theatre, so I know the score. And I see political campaigns for what they are — theatre.

So when Sarah Palin got up before a campaign rally this past week and declared, in essence, that her clothes were just costumes, and every campaign event was staged like a theatrical performance, I had myself a good, long laugh. Yeah, sister — you preach it! Tell it like it is.

Of course, this totally pissed off the McCain people. The reaction according to Dana Bash on CNN was particularly ugly and personal, the sort of gross generalization and ad hominem attack that typically spikes my cynicism about politics. Bash quotes an “adviser” from the McCain camp about Palin’s independent statements, like the campaign wardrobe defense:

“‘She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone…She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.”

Palin may be a “diva” and America’s next great emerging narcissist of national politics, but she’d only be filling the role of possible Savior that hundreds of politicians before her have also played. So why attack her? Because she dared to breach the fourth wall of political illusion that depends on faith. Yes, faith.

Both religion and politics depend on faith, which in this case I’ll define as a willingness to look beyond material reality to the hope and promise of what might be. Living, as I do, in the south, I see this openly demonstrated by the religious faithful, but (not being especially politically active) I had not encountered it in the politically faithful until about a decade ago, when I returned to Yankee territory to attend a high school reunion.

It was there that I ran into my old ninth grade Physical Science lab partner. She and I weren’t especially chummy back in junior high, but we were all in the advanced track, which meant her primary interest at the lab counter wasn’t blowing up our test tube vials, a fact I appreciated as I frequently watched my classmates try to burn the school down. I don’t remember much about her except her name and that she giggled a lot while I did most of the work as she flirted with the boys next to us and occasionally wrote down necessary data.

Fourteen years later, she was still giggling like a girl totally in love. This time, though, her passion had turned to a career in politics and she gushed like a woman in the throes of a recent religious conversion: John McCain, her Lord and employer, was the promised Messiah. We smiled and listened to her as we stood around, beers in hand, and reaquainted ourselves with one another. But, like most conversations with the recently converted, it was one-sided and awkward. At each turn in the conversations that night she attempted to inject a little of McCain’s aura onto each subject, and it was clear her enthusiasm for the senator dominated her whole life.

I was both annoyed and amused. See, my ninth house (the house of belief) is ruled by discriminating Virgo, a practical earth sign, and it’s there where my Pluto resides; moreover, that Pluto trines my Mercury in Capricorn (another grounded, practical earth sign) in my second house (the home of values and possessions).

This configuration grants me extra sensitivity to the beliefs people value — and I’m particularly attuned to ideas that aren’t grounded by modesty, reason and the intellectual equivalent of “sweat equity.” To put it bluntly, I can smell bullshit from at least fifty paces. And my practical perspective has long seen that no politician is gonna be the Messiah, and anyone who’s got their chips invested on that number is eventually going to lose the bet — or rather, their faith. Sorry.

After reading this recent Palin story, I remembered my old lab partner, the True Believer, and I imagined her still laboring for her beloved Prophet of American Destiny — fuming at the implication that what they were doing was anything less than genuine, derived only from the best notions of what would be good for the country. To suggest artifice would be heresy: how dare anyone doubt The Ascended Master McCain! How dare anyone imply this is just a show.

When December comes around and we’re tallying up the year, I’m going to nominate this moment as one of 2008’s Saturn-Uranus’ Top Twenty Greatest Hits. How else would you attribute this unusually forthright statement about our political traditions? How else would you explain Palin’s Uranian “rogue” outbursts at odds with McCain’s Saturnian (and fearful) control-freaky campaign handlers?

However you think of her, I’m loving the idea that Palin upset the McCain apple cart by stating what everybody knows is obvious, but no one in either campaign was willing to admit aloud: the Emperor just wears costumes.

Yours & truly,
Shanna Philipson

Do we have to save GM, too?

Editor’s note: The following article was written by one of the newer additions to the Planet Waves blogging team: Shanna Philipson. –RA

Nov. 1, 2008

Dear Friend and Reader,

Q: What’s bigger than a breadbox, but smaller than a house?
A: The SUV in your neighbor’s driveway that’s about to get repossessed.

Detroit is the latest to get in line for the $700 billion dollar government bailout package, and unlike Wall Street’s byzantine financial formulations and their equally confusing bailout proposals, this crisis is just the right size and shape for the average American to understand.

The Chevy Avalanche gets between 11 and 20 miles per gallon. Chevrolet's manufacturer, General Motors, is looking for money from the government to buy Chrysler.

For the last fifteen years Detroit has enjoyed an illusion of endlessly profitable SUV sales. Consequently American automakers saw no reason to downsize or resize or rethink its monster car formula–or the way it did business, except to function in Jupiterian terms of escalating scale: Super-size me, baby! Now some domestic car makers are saddled with uncertain energy futures and super-sized debt in the form of unsold inventory and bad auto loans. If you believe their side of the tale, dismal truck and SUV sales are bleeding Detroit dry; at the current rate of loss, General Motors will be bankrupt sometime in 2009.

According to this MSNBC report, General Motors, who lost $18 billion in the first two quarters of 2008, is seeking help from Washington in the form of a $10 billion loan to buy the steadier Chrysler and merge the two companies in the hope that GM won’t go broke. And what’s in that for our folks in DC? Partial ownership in the new, merged entity.

Not surprisingly, the idea is controversial. Do we want the government owning a direct stake in our car manufacturers? Moreover, do we have the means to affect a rescue reminiscent of the 1980 salvaging of Chrysler? MSNBC suggests GM’s offer won’t get far.

Even though the Treasury Dept.’s decision to spend $250 billion to buy stakes in small banks and other financial institutions received general approval from members of Congress, the idea of the government owning a stake in GM is not popular. “I haven’t studied it,” says Representative Barney Frank [D-Mass.] who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, adding that, “We’d all be skeptical of taking equity.”

But some see that GMAC, the debt-ridden financing apparatus (read: bank) of General Motors, may yet get them through the government dole door. Even more frightening to others is the very real threat that the mighty consumer arm of our military-industrial complex would collapse, losing far more than the estimated 35,000 plus auto industry jobs expected to disappear in a GM-Chrysler merger. A government loan, they argue, would be the lesser of two evils.

What’s especially powerful about this news is its concreteness: complex financing schemes that even the financiers don’t understand is beyond most people, but the average American does understand cars. It’s the sort of problem scaled to a size the the average mortal can comprehend. And it doesn’t take much explanation for Americans to understand the implications of Detroit asking for government hand-outs after over a decade of pushing over-priced, over-bearing, over-eating monster cars on an equally greedy American public.

Detroit has had many opportunities to learn the lessons of past challenges, but have they been willing students? No. But, then nor are we. American love their oversized everything, and we gladly scramble for the latest, best and biggest anything our corporations shill because for many, shopping is a national pastime. We are addicted to novelty and we have rewarded Detroit with our short attention spans.

But the past few weeks seem to have curbed our national case of ADD. Bailing out insurance brokers and mortgage lenders may leave our heads spinning, but there’s nothing dizzy about what’s sitting on the curb of our street or adorning our driveway. No, that’s pretty solid. If you want to understand the new political-economic paradigm, consider our fifteen year addiction to the SUV and its multi-faceted consequences. You may have never owned one of those babies, but government bail-out or not, you’re surely going to pay as if you did.

For a full-length discussion of the GM-Chrysler debate, see NPR’s story from Wednesday, Oct. 29.

Yours & truly,

Shanna Philipson

There's a problem with Yer-anus! My one thesis about astrology.

Below is my first contribution to Planet Waves Astrology News, a unique independent journalism project that emphasizes an interplay of art, astrology, and political/cultural commentary and analysis. I am grateful to be invited into the process, and I hope you take a moment to visit PWAN and see what's posted today.

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Editor’s Note: Today we are introducing a new contributor to Daily Astrology & Adventure, named Shanna Philipson. I won’t try to describe her writing; but she is doing something with astrology, casting it in her own unique light. Welcome Shanna. — Eric Francis

Dear Friend and Reader,

There’s a problem with yer-anus!

Sorry to pull out my third grade humor on you, but around here that’s how they say it.

Yer-ayyyyy-nus! None of that dignified Ivy League tea and crumpets ur-ah-nus for us. No, I live in the South and we’re pretty much the anus type in these parts.

Actress Joanna Belloni during the filming of Louis & Anne, a film by Austin Alward. Photo by Danielle Voirin.

We also like our astrology neatly buried in the back of the local indie paper where it’s read in private, in the john, even at the funky independent local coffee house. I know this because, while I never see anyone openly reading the weekly horoscopes, they do keep showing up in the bathroom of my coffee house–always on the little table next to the spare toilet paper rolls.

I don’t know who does this, but I imagine a church-going, middle-aged mother of three who, ashamed of her addiction to Rob Brezney, must satisfy her curiosity about her weekly destiny in the quiet confines of the women’s room. All this sneaking around shouldn’t surprise me. The South, sadly, lives up to its reputation for repressive conservatism: we do a lot of things in bathrooms we would never admit to our coffee buddies. But I got a strong suspicion we’re not much different than most of America.

Which is why there’s still a problem with Ur, uhm…anus. And no one wants to know about it. Or rather, if they did know about it I’m pretty sure they’d get up a petition and campaign to demote Uranus from planet status like poor ol’ Pluto. Why? Because yer-ayyyy-nus is about to start a revolution.

Or rather, a reformation. On the eve of the Saturn-Uranus opposition, it’s important, I think, that we not forget Reformation Day. If you haven’t been to church in a while, or if you come from a non-Protestant background, you may not be familiar with Reformation Day. It comes each Oct. 31st and it marks the day Martin Luther nailed his 99 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Church.

Yes, Oct. 31, 1517 all hell (or heaven, depending on your position) broke loose on the Official Church. And Luther precipitated a true Scorpionic transformation that hinged on death — what later became the 30 Years War and the death of many, but was initially built upon the objection that the Church could buy and sell indulgences like lottery tickets or Get-Out-of-Hell-At-A-Price cards.

All Saints’ Day, as the Roman Catholic Church calls it, was back then a true 8th house head-trip. All Saint’s Day was the one day of the year where, if you could get to a church and press your way past the sea of smelly peasants and then merely glimpse the bones of a dead saint, you could negotiate the terms of your time in purgatory — for free.

Doing business with Death with the relics of death — how much more Scorpionic is that? It was on this day that Luther used this official chaos to declare his objections on the public bulletin boards that were the church doors. Anyone with an basic education in Latin would be free to read his declaration. Turns out, lots of folks had basic Latin.

With a psychologically compelling mess of an election ahead of us (politics is getting out of hell for a price), the unusual Saturn-Uranus opposition beginning, and the once in a lifetime advent of Pluto into Capricorn, I think this Scorpionic Reformation Day is particularly auspicious. So I’m going to propose my own thesis. I don’t have time (and you wouldn’t have the patience) for 95, so I’ll satisfy myself with just one.

So here’s my declaration:

Astrology isn’t sinful — or weird. So stop reading it in the john. Stop reading it on your laptop when you think no one is looking. Stop blushing when you try to share something you read at Planet Waves. Come out, I say! Declare yourself.

It’s just a language, folks. Okay, it may be a lot of other things to other people, but at heart, it’s just a different language we need to express the human experience. Yes, we need it. Just as we need trees, and flowers, and streams and purple mountains’ majesty, we need the planets and the stars and nebulas and a Galactic Center to describe and enjoy our life here on earth.

An old songwriter once said it this way:

The heavens declare the glory of G-d,
The skies proclaim the works of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
Night after night they display their knowledge.
There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world.

The skies speak to everyone — everywhere. But for too long you and I have looked away and buried our noses in the alternate proof-texts of our lives — the statistical data, the spreadsheets, the social-networking pages, the TV docu-dramas, the mail-order catalogues that consume our ideas of what “real.”

It’s time we looked up and out. The heavens declare the glory of God, man.

Happy Reformation Day.

Yours & truly,
Shana Philipson