October 15, 1951 saw the premiere of one of the world’s most-beloved TV shows ever, when “I Love lucy” first took to the airwaves. Since that auspicious moment, seventy-five years ago, ILL has never been off the air! Syndicated globally, ILL reruns can still be found multiple times daily on various “nostalgia” cable channels, and available 24/7 on dedicated streaming platforms like Pluto TV. It never lacks an audience.
Although, barring an Act of God or a flagrant abuse of power, a Democrat takeover of the US House of Representatives in the Midterm Elections on November 3rd seems assured, given the mood of the country, control of the Senate is much less certain. That the Upper Chamber is in play at all is due solely to the incompetence, venality, and narcissistic focus of Donald J. Trump, who continues to spread anarchy, instability and failure to any and all who come into contact with him, regardless of Party affiliation.
Frankly, August can be a bummer in the garden. The floral exuberance of high summer is past, and autumn’s bright colors aren’t yet on the horizon. For a more traditional gardener, August presents unique challenges in finding plant material that will offer bloom, without relying on expensive annuals that need to be replaced yearly.
But for yours truly, with 60-70% of the garden populated by native perennials, the situation isn’t quite so dire. It’s taken six years, but my vision of a native meadow with continual revolving bloom is finally taking shape.
The 2026 US midterm elections, to be held on November 3rd, are among the most consequential in the nation’s history. If the slide into autocracy for the US is to be averted, it’s essential that Democrats retake at least one chamber of Congress, since Republicans are apparently unwilling to curb even the worst impulses of the Mad King.
American country music icon Dolly Parton passed away August 25th, 2026, aged 80, after a brief bout with cancer. The singer/songwriter and actress was a globally beloved figure, a noted humanitarian, and a bit of a dichotomy. Although a professed devout Christian, Parton was very accepting of others, particularly the LGBTQ community, whom she counseled her coreligionists not to judge. An acknowledged ‘wholesome sex symbol’ from the ‘70s and ‘80s, Parton nevertheless remained in a faithful exclusive relationship with her husband of almost sixty years, Carl Dean, seemingly never tempted to stray, though she had offers from the likes of Hugh Hefner, fascinated to learn if her outsized feminine endowment was real.
A trio of stories this summer show Donald Trump in his best worst light, from financial disclosure documents that reveal a stunning level of corruption, to a quick-change flight plan that left Cabinet members and reporters hung out as bait, and renewed pressure on NATO allies to cough up territories to which he hasn’t the shadow of a right. It’s the Summer of The Donald – heated, sticky and oppressive.
On 13 July 2026, New Zealand actor Sam Neill passed away, at age 78, from pneumonia. Diagnosed with advanced lymphoma in 2022, Neill had been in remission, but requiring ongoing monthly chemotherapy treatments. A clinical trial with CAR T-cell therapy judged him cancer free in April 2026, but he succumbed to the pneumonia three months later.
For all its heat, humidity, endless days and toasty nights, Floral Summer doesn’t last all that long, nothing like the three-month span we ascribe to the summer season. In June, most plants are still ramping up, not yet in bloom; and by August, things are definitely on the wane. So it’s just July that showcases the floral fireworks we associate with summer, and that’s all too fleeting.
As the United States prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, it’s only fitting we take a closer look at the chart of the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave. This founding document was written in large part by Thomas Jefferson, working on several drafts between June 11th and 28th, 1776. In the midst of this process, on June 18th, a wee bit of space debris, an asteroid that would be named “America” nearly 150 years later, came to a critical stage in its orbit about the sun.
June 2026 saw a bevy of controversies, eccentricities, and record setting. If this is what Uranus in Gemini is going to be like, hold onto your hats for the next seven years! Throughout, referential asteroids in significant placement tell the tales, from an NBA championship to an insulted Italian Prime Minister, a tentative peace deal, a rectified name change, and the world’s first trillionaire.
Somewhere in the midst of all the fireworks and monument upgrades, the competing nonpartisan and partisan 250th birthday celebrations, the gilding and ballroom-building, and the Octagon-style cage matches on the White House lawn, is a weakened, tired, mentally-challenged old man, tuning 80 and facing his mortality. Badly.
The defining feature of the second Trump administration so far has been the Retribution Comeback Tour, with Trump venting his rage on any and all who have ever opposed him, from prosecutors to pundits and politicians, many in his own Party. But providing the backbeat has been an increasingly obvious obsession with gold and gilding. As a metaphor for wealth generally, one of very few things Trump truly seems to care about, gold is certainly apt, but there’s a limit, and Trump doesn’t seem to have found it. From tacky scrollwork embellishments and knickknacks in the Oval Office, to a golden Marie Antoinette-style White House Ballroom, a proposed gold-accented massive Triumphal Arch near Arlington National Cemetery, regilding the equine statues by the Lincoln Memorial, even a larger-than-life gold statue of himself at his Doral golf club, Trump is cranking out more gold than Midas himself would know what to do with.
So little time, so many stories. Once again, AAA plays catch-up with some skipped news over the final weeks of May 2026. Included: a pair of top-level Summit meetings in Beijing; the death of a long-term progressive Congressman, a leading light in the fight for gay rights; and the grand finale of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
On 11 May 2026, Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Blairsville, Alberta, Canada spotted a red fox absconding with a half-dozen hot dogs in its mouth. Although the Mounties always get their man, the clever vulpine eluded them. The out-foxed constable witnessed the animal in a wooded neighborhood, but without a specific complaint, was unable to do more than watch as the fox greedily gulped the evidence against him. Reports do not specify which condiments were preferred for the cookout contraband, stating only that the fox ate them with relish.
On May 13, 2026, 22-year-old neo-Nazi leader Michail Chkhikvishvili was sentenced to 15 years in prison in a Federal District Court in Brooklyn, New York, on one count each of soliciting violent felonies, and distributing instructions to make explosive devices and poison. Chkhikvishvili, known to his followers as “Commander Butcher,” was the leader of Maniac Murder Cult, an international, internet-based extremist group that encouraged people to commit acts of hate and violence.
When will I learn? I should know by now to check the field before the running of the Kentucky Derby, to determine a winner and place a hefty bet. With both Rich Strike, in 2022 (at 80-1 odds) and Mystik Dan, in 2024 (at 18-1), a preliminary peep at the equine charts and Race Day could have netted me a packet! In 2026, the pattern repeated, but I still hadn’t learned my lesson.
So many stories, so little time! In Part Two of this catchall conglomeration, we’re looking at developments in late April, US-based, including a federal reclassification of marijuana, another failed Trump assassination attempt, and a gentle monarchical rebuke.
As ever, stories come whooshing over the transom, and fly right on by, with no time to deal with them properly in these hectic times. We’ll try to play catch-up here, with yet another AAA version of an “omnibus bill,” compiling several small stories (and some big ones) in a comprehensive review of the doings of late. Topics include the Hungarian elections, a shooting at a Mexican archeological site, and a federal investment in a failing airline.
No siree, Spring 2026 will not be one for the books! I suppose, for a gardener, anytime a plant’s performance isn’t quite up to snuff, there’s a bit of a let-down, knowing you’ll have to wait another year in hopes of improvement. But when the plants are spring-bloomers, heralding the return of life after a long, barren winter, the pill is a bitter one to swallow indeed.
It’s been a head-spinning few weeks, with rising gas and energy prices, increased inflation, and the war with Iran, but somehow, America’s sweethearts, Donald and Melania Trump, have managed to keep us entertained.
After a fashion. From threatening genocide to profane tweets on the holiest day of the Christian calendar, ramshackle ceasefires and blaspheming memes, and vigorous denials of accusations of wrongdoing that haven’t been made, the Trumps have outdone themselves in this first half of April 2026. What follows is a barebones overview of the high jinks and shenanigans.
Well, this is one for the books! On March 22, 2026, Dayton Webber of La Plata, Maryland, a quadriplegic amputee and a professional cornhole player, shot and killed his friend Bradrick Wells with a revolver while driving his Tesla, with Wells in the passenger seat and two other friends in the back. The shooting stemmed from a heated argument between the two men, with Webber accusing Wells of having stolen something from his house. After the shooting, Webber asked his remaining passengers to help him dispose of the body, but they refused and fled the scene on foot, alerting police. Wells’ body was recovered from the yard of a private residence some twenty miles away, in Charlotte Hall, Maryland; Webber himself was arrested in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The name may be unfamiliar to many of you, but for fans of the cult horror classic series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Nicholas Brendon’s passing on March 20th left a gaping hole in our collective unbeating hearts. Brendon played wisecracking sidekick Xander Harris for seven seasons of what I still consider one of the best-written shows TV ever produced, in any genre. Clever, witty, groundbreaking (it featured the first long-term LGBTQ relationship between two main characters in TV history, portrayed in a positive light), the millennium-straddling series (1997-2003) is eternally entertaining, chockfull of Easter eggs and grace notes for diehard fans.
We’ve got a fairly full cosmic field in the race for the Best Supporting Actress award, but Wunmi Mosaku (“Sinners”) is scratched at the starting post, with no celestial referent. Of those remaining, there is one referent each, asteroid Ella 435 for Elle Fanning (“Sentimental Value”), asteroid Inge 2494 for Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (“Sentimental Value”), Amy 3375 for Amy Madigan (“Weapons”) and Taylor 2603 for Teyana Taylor (“One Battle After Another”). As with Best Supporting Actor, the circumstance of having two performers nominated in the same category for roles in the same film tends to split the voting and reduce the chances of success.
Mars has been working overtime of late! The planet associated with war, weapons and armed conflict sparked two conflagrations in the Mid-East as it moved to conjoin the degree of the February 17th Solar Eclipse, activating its potential for evoking world-shaking events. On February 26th, long-simmering tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, heated by the unchecked use of Afghanistan as a safe haven for terrorist groups operating in Pakistan, boiled over into cross-border fighting. On the 28th, the US and Israel began joint military operations against Iran, even as ongoing peace talks showed signs of progress in obtaining Iranian assurances that they would not develop nuclear weapons.
In a shocking development, on 19 February 2026, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the Royal formerly known as Prince, was arrested at his home on the Sandringham estate, for suspicion of misconduct in public office. The potential charges stem from Andrew’s time as Britain’s special envoy for international trade, during which he allegedly sent sensitive trade information to noted American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. While not a sex crime per se (of which he has also been accused), the investigation was prompted by information revealed at the latest release of a tranche of three million documents from the Epstein Files, weeks before the arrest.
Like the Best Actor category, not all nominees for Best Supporting Actor have celestial referents to rate. And like Best Actress, there’s no clear frontrunner among those who do. Delroy Lindo (“Sinners”) and Stellan Skarsgard (“Sentimental Value”) have no valid asteroid markers, and so cannot be considered in this analysis. Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn do, but since both are nominated in the same category for work on the same film (“One Battle After Another”), conventional Oscar wisdom says their votes will cancel each other out, leaving each statuette-less (but we’ll take a look at their chances nonetheless).
On 11 February 2026, US Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared before the House Judiciary Committee, ostensibly to answer questions related to the latest document dump of three million pages from the Epstein Files. Bondi, in an erratic, combative performance, did little but harangue her Democratic questioners with insults culled from a binder of opposition research-type non sequiturs, and try to deflect with claims about the magnificence of the recent Dow performance. When asked if she would apologize for the names of Epstein survivors which weren’t redacted from the files released (while the names of many perpetrators were), she refused to so much as acknowledge the presence of many of these women, who were standing behind her.
Unlike the Best Actor race, which shows a clear cosmic frontrunner, Best Actress could turn into a literal celestial catfight, with asteroid Kitty 9563 at 9 Scorpio at station, trine Mars at 10 Pisces, indicating potential feline (Kitty) fisticuffs (Mars) at the 98th Academy Awards, set to commence at 4 PM PDT in Los Angeles on 15 March 2026. Leading the pack are Emma Stone, Kate Hudson and Jessie Buckley, all of whom have impressive resumes for victory.
Two winter-weather-related stories caught my attention in late January and early February 2026, in the form of a paralyzing storm that shut down much of the US; and a beloved folk tradition come to life in a prognosticating rodent.
Asteroid Church, that is, though both stories chronicled below do involve actual physical structures used as houses of worship. Back-to-back displays on January 28th & 29th of asteroid Church, conjoined the manifestation-evoking Quasar at 8 Cancer, pumped up by Jupiter at 17 Cancer, ran the gamut from groundbreaking promotions to Constitution-threatening arrests, as Sarah Mullally was elevated to become the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, and journalist Don Lemon was indicted for reporting on an anti-ICE protest in a St. Paul, Minnesota church.
On Saturday, 24 January 2026, federal ICE agents shot and killed another US citizen in the snowy streets of Minneapolis. And the term ‘agents’ is correct – unlike the killing of Renee Good two weeks previously, where a single agent discharged his weapon, Alex Pretti, 37, was set upon, wrestled to the ground, pepper-sprayed and shot by at least six ICE officers. Pretti, an ICU nurse at a VA hospital, had attempted to help up a woman who had been shoved to the pavement by the same agents; his last words, addressed to her, were “Are you OK?”
Film fanatics, it’s that time again! The nominations for the 98th Academy Awards were announced on January 22nd, and as always, there’s a crop of cosmic contenders for Oscar gold. The awards will be held on Sunday, 15 March 2026 at 4 PM PDT in Los Angles, California, but with celestial foresight we might not have to wait to see who takes home the statuette. But one quick caveat before we start – with asteroid Victoria 12 at 25 Taurus on Awards night, named for the Roman goddess of victory, conjoined Uranus at 28 Taurus, ruling shocks, surprises and upsets, literally anything is possible!
On 13 January 2026, popular cartoonist and “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams passed away from complications of stage IV prostate cancer which had spread to the bone. Adams drew on years of employment as an office worker for “Dilbert,” known for its satirical humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office. The successful comic led to dozens of books, an animated television series, a video game, and hundreds of themed merchandise items.
It’s another catch-up edition of Cosmic Grab Bag, where AAA delves into previously skipped stories, to set the celestial record straight! This issue is all about protest and insanity, with a successful, bloodless revolution in Bulgaria, and an ongoing, bloody protest in Iran; and two Trumpian moments of note.
It was bound to happen, sooner or later. With tensions high, and ill-trained (1), heavily armed, masked ICE agents roaming the country, someone was going to get hurt. That someone was Renee Good of Minneapolis, MN, an American citizen who lost her life on January 7th when an ICE agent shot her in the face three times at point-blank range, as she was attempting to move her vehicle, which she had positioned to partially block the street.
In the wee hours of Saturday, 3 January 2026, US special forces bombed military and power facilities in the Venezuelan capital, raiding the presidential palace in Caracas and abducting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, his wife and son, and transporting them to the US, where they face federal narcotics charges. A build-up of US naval power in the region, as well as frequent strikes at sea on alleged drug-runner boats and the seizure of two tankers supposedly carrying contraband oil, presaged the military operation on the mainland. Trump has been applying increasing pressure on Maduro to leave office, and has now stated that the US will “run” Venezuela while an interim government is established.
2026 got off to a tragic start in Crans-Montana, a Swiss alpine ski resort, where a New Year celebration took a deadly turn, sparking a fire that killed upwards of 40 people, with an additional 115 wounded. At about 1:30 AM CET, patrons at Le Constellation, a popular regional bar in Switzerland’s Sierre district, watched in horror and scrambled for the exits as a champagne bottle, topped with either sparklers or a lit candle (reports vary) was hoisted to the rafters by a staffer resting on another staffer’s shoulders. The wooden ceiling caught fire, with flames spreading rapidly to create an inferno. Pandemonium ensued, with guests smashing windows to make their escape.
The world’s most-visited museum has had a run of bad luck this autumn, with the Louvre in Paris losing some $102 million in royal jewelry after a daring theft in broad daylight in October, and a leaky pipe that flooded an Egyptology reference library in November, damaging hundreds of rare books.
On December 14, 2025, the world was shocked by the news of the brutal stabbing deaths of famed actor/director Robert Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner. Within hours, authorities had arrested the Reiners’ second son, Nick, for the crime. Two days later, he was formally charged with two counts of first-degree murder with the special circumstance of multiple homicides; if found guilty, Nick Reiner could receive the death penalty.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has come under scrutiny for his orders relating to the recent attacks on supposed Venezuelan drug-smuggling ships in the Caribbean, even suffering friendly fire from Republicans. Reportedly, at the first such attack on September 2, 2025, Hegseth gave the order to “Kill them all,” leading to a “double tap,” a second bombardment of the already destroyed vessel, when survivors were seen clinging to the wreckage in the aftermath.
On 10 September 2025, Charlie Kirk, conservative activist, podcaster and founder of Turning Point USA, was killed with a single shot to the neck at an open-air appearance on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, attended by some 3000 people. Close to President Trump, JD Vance, and the next generation of the Trump family, Kirk was instrumental in rallying young men to support Trump in his 2024 electoral victory. He is survived by his wife Erika and two young children.
Swifties the world over were gob smacked by the announcement on 26 August 2025 that pop icon Taylor Swift and her boyfriend, NFL star Travis Kelce, were engaged. The couple had been dating for just under two years, a record for Swift, who is noted for the brevity of her entanglements, and the fodder her failed relationships have been for her music career. No date has yet been set for the wedding, but it is not expected to occur before the 2026 Super Bowl, due to her tour commitments and his playing schedule.
In his new royal biography, “Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York,” released 14 August 2025, author Andrew Lownie thoroughly exposes and consistently trashes HRH Prince Andrew, Duke of York, Queen Elizabeth II’s second son. Andrew is mercilessly depicted as arrogant, self-serving and in denial about his links to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In 2021, one of Epstein’s many victims, Virginia Guiffre, brought a civil suit against Andrew, to whom she alleged Epstein had trafficked her at age 17. The suit was settled out of court in March 2022 for a reported $16 million, with a substantial portion of the award to go to Giuffre’s sex trafficking charity.
US President Kim Jong Don will be celebrating his 79th birthday on Saturday, 14 June, 2025, with a North-Korean-style military parade in the nation’s capital, while simultaneously, 3000 miles away, US National Guard and Marines patrol the country’s largest city, ostensibly to quell “insurrectionists” protesting his administration’s immigration policies. The dual displays of military power, both unprecedented and controversial, well encapsulate the leading feature of Dear Leader’s Solar Return, which occurs the day before: a square between Mars, planet of the military, violence and war, and Uranus, planet of shocks, upsets, controversy, volatility, and extreme reactions.
They said it couldn’t be done, but on May 8th, 2025, a conclave of 133 Catholic Cardinals, largest in history, elected an American as Pope! 80% of those qualified to vote (only Cardinals under age 80 were eligible) had been elevated by Pope Francis, including the Vatican sweepstakes winner, Cardinal Robert Prevost. The conclave was also the most international in composition, with roughly two-thirds drawn from nations outside Europe, and 71 countries represented in total.
On August 3rd, 2024, aspiring Olympian Anthony Ammirati coined a whole new meaning for the term “cockblocked” after failing to qualify for a pole vault event when his penis collided with the bar on the way down, knocking it to the ground (the bar, not his penis). The embarrassing footage of the phallic fail immediately went viral, and though Olympic authorities later confirmed that Ammirati would have been disqualified regardless, as other, less intimate portions of his anatomy had touched the bar prior to its dickish dislodgment, there was no stopping the cock-a-hoop hilarity that ensued. The French athlete, with no apparent irony, later described the incident as “a big disappointment.” Cheer up, Anthony – a manly manhood has its compensations!
Ah, June! That middling month ‘twixt spring and summer, not properly belonging to either, albeit the time when summer officially begins. Spring is a distant memory, but summer’s promise has not yet come to full fruition. As the month commences, there’s a sea of green in the garden, punctuated at odd intervals by a stray splash of color. But as July dawns, more and more of the landscape unfolds into the panoply of tones, both fiery and cooling, which will dominate the next six weeks, until August’s mid-month slump robs us of nature’s palette once again.
On Friday, 21 April 2024, just across the street from the Manhattan courtroom where jury selection in Donald Trump’s hush money trial had recently concluded, a man set himself alight, first dousing himself with a liquid accelerant. Police responded immediately, being onsite for courthouse protection, but were unable to stop the flames for several minutes; the man was later pronounced dead at a local burn center.
Katharine Hepburn is among the most-honored and best-loved American actresses of all time, with 12 Academy Award nominations and 4 wins as Best Actress. Hepburn’s tally of Oscar gold has yet to be surpassed, and is only equaled by Meryl Streep (though one of her four was for Best Supporting Actress, she far eclipses Hepburn in nominations, with 21 to date). Her sixty-plus year career spanned the Great Depression to the edge of the new millennium, with 44 feature films to her credit; she also acted extensively on the stage, in no less than 33 productions (garnering two Tony Award nominations, but no wins). Hepburn didn’t work often in television, but managed six Emmy nominations and one win regardless.
Avid avian admirers worldwide were saddened on February 23, 2024, by the news of the untimely passing of Flaco, a Eurasian eagle owl that had become a celebrity bird-about-town after escaping from New York’s Central Park Zoo a year prior. Concerns that Flaco, who was hatched at a bird park in North Carolina in 2010 and had spent his life in captivity, would not be able to survive in the wild, having never developed hunting skills, prompted various attempts at his recapture, all unsuccessful.
Taylor Swift, in case you’re unfamiliar with the name, is the latest in a string of global female superstars in the music industry. At just 34, Swift has a list of smash hits to rival the best, and is only the third female vocal artist to garner a net worth in excess of a billion dollars. Not just a pretty face and a lilting voice, Swift is a canny businesswoman as well – and she’s got moxie! In 2019, an ownership dispute between Swift and her former label, Big Machine Records, resulted in Swift rerecording her first six albums, to ensure control of her creative output.
When it comes to Old Hollywood glamor, style and chic, nobody does it like Bette Davis. Which is ironic, because, unlike most actresses of her era, Bette never shied away from unglamorous parts, unlikeable characters, and unflattering makeup, even agreeing to aging techniques that had her convincingly playing a 60-year-old Virgin Queen when she was barely 30 herself.
What can be said of Meryl Streep? One of the most talented and versatile actresses of our day, Streep leads the pack in the race for the little gold statuette, with twenty-one Academy Award nominations and three wins. Only Kate Hepburn has more Oscars, with four victories, but considerably less nominations (just twelve). Streep is a skilled character actress, able to don a new guise in every film; a gifted mimic, assuming accents and dialects with ease; noted for dramatic work but able to turn out a good comedic performance when called for. Streep’s honors peak with her Oscar wins, but don’t stop there. Nominated collectively for more than 400 awards, when Emmys, Golden Globes, Grammys, Tonys and SAG awards are factored in, she has won over 200, about as good a batting average as anyone in the business.
Grace Kelly has always been one of my favorite actresses, despite a thin body of work, with just ten films to her credit over her truncated, five-year career. But what credits! “High Noon” with Gary Cooper; “Mogambo” with Clark Gable; “The Country Girl” with Bing Crosby and William Holden (which garnered her an Oscar); and three Hitchcock classics: “Dial M for Murder” with Ray Milland; “To Catch a Thief” with Cary Grant; and “Rear Window” with Jimmy Stewart. Kelly abruptly left show business at the peak of her career for a higher calling: to become a princess as the wife of Prince Rainier III of Monaco. The connection to royalty didn’t hurt one bit in my admiration of her.
Only today’s GOP could take a bad situation and make it worse. After weeks of wrangling following the ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, with multiple abortive attempts to install at least four nominees, the Republican caucus unanimously chose Mike Johnson (R-LA) as their new Speaker on October 25th. Johnson is a MAGA diehard, one of the architects of the attempt to override the 2020 election results; his elevation is a clear signal that the Party has no desire to reform its ways, and is intent more on obstructionism and culture war posing than true governance.
The spectacle of a British royal coronation is something we haven’t seen in 70 years, but there’s one on deck for 6 May 2023, when King Charles III finally comes into his long-awaited inheritance. The United Kingdom may be in financial tatters, made worse by Brexit, but nobody does panoply, pomp and circumstance like the Brits, and the coronation at Westminster Abbey in London promises to be a sight to remember.
At 11:24 AM EDT on March 21, 2023, in Nazareth, PA, my dear girl Ashes passed peacefully into eternity. We had been together 15 years, with never a cross word between us, a wonderfully close and affectionate relationship. I brought Ashes in off the West Philly streets in 2007, along with two of her kittens, one of the first beneficiaries of Leo’s Cat Rescue, which I ran with my friend John Mignone for over ten years.
On November 14, 2022, Charles III of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will celebrate his 74th birthday, the first as King. Having served the longest apprenticeship in British royal history, Charles had been heir apparent for seventy years before his mother passed away in early September and the Prince of Wales finally came into his inheritance. It had been a long road. Once the world’s most eligible bachelor, Charles became half of the fairytale wedding of the 20th century, followed by scandal and divorce, and a second, controversial marriage with the love of his life. While kicking his heels for three-quarters of a century, Charles established The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund, founded in 1979, which awards money to grant applicants in six categories: heritage and conservation, education, health and wellbeing, social inclusion, environment, and countryside. He is also a noted proponent of efforts to combat climate change and species extinction.
On 21 September 2022, New York State Attorney General Letitia James won the race to be the first to charge Donald Trump with a crime. The former US President faces legal jeopardy on a variety of fronts, and the civil suit brought against Trump, his adult children Don Jr, Eric and Ivanka, and the Trump Organization may be the least harrowing, though, if successful, would devastate his business. A civil suit carries no threat of incarceration, but AG James stated in her press conference announcing the indictment that both state and federal laws were broken, and she will be making criminal referrals to both the US Attorney’s office at the Southern District of New York and the IRS.
Although national mourning and celebration of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s life has been protracted for more than ten days after her passing, the official State Funeral ceremony is slated to begin in Westminster Abbey at 11 AM BST on Monday, 19 September 2022. Much of the passing chart remains in effect, but there are significant changes and additions which reflect the funeral itself.
She advised 15 Prime Ministers, interacted with 14 American presidents and 7 popes, but the long life and seventy-year reign of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II came to a peaceful close on 8 September 2022, when the 96-year-old sovereign passed away in her sleep at her private estate of Balmoral Castle in Scotland. Most of the United Kingdom’s population – indeed, most of the world – cannot recall a time when Elizabeth was not Queen; her reign spanned the post-World War II era to our post-Modern society, and her life saw massive technological change, from telegraphs to Twitter.
It didn’t quite make it to fifty, but for almost half a century legal abortion has been the law of the land here in the US. No more.
On June 24, 2022, the gavel fell on Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision guaranteeing reproductive rights, overturned 5-4 by the current US Supreme Court. The test case which led to Roe’s reversal was Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which sought to prevent a Mississippi state law virtually eliminating abortion after 15 weeks from conception. That law was upheld 6-3, but Chief Justice John Roberts joined the progressive minority on the Court when Roe itself became the target of his conservative colleagues.
Vladimir Putin has dominated Russian politics for almost a quarter century. A former KGB officer, Putin entered politics after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, an event he describes as the greatest tragedy of the Twentieth Century. In 1996 he joined Boris Yeltsin’s administration; appointed as prime minister in 1999, he filled the role of acting president when Yeltsin resigned later that year, being elected to the office in 2000. At the time, Russia had a prohibition on an individual serving more than two consecutive terms as president, so after being reelected in 2004, in 2008 Putin swapped jobs with then prime minister Dmitry Medvedev for a term, only to assume the top spot again in the following election, four years later. That would have entitled him to two more terms, but Putin changed the law to allow himself to run for an additional two terms uninterrupted, potentially continuing his occupancy of the presidency indefinitely.
On Thursday, 24 February 2022, at approximately 5 AM local time, Vladimir Putin’s Russian Army invaded Ukraine, accelerating a process of intimidation and aggression that had begun eight years before with the illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea, and had continued with support for separatist movements in Ukraine’s easternmost sectors, bordering Russia, specifically portions of the oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, in the Donbass region. Since the beginning of the year, a series of planetary stations had reflected the inexorable march to war, eight cosmic turning points which built upon each other like tumblers in a lock, eventually unleashing the conflict.
Not since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019 has a freshman congressperson made such a stunning impact in the House of Representatives as Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), quickly emerging as an avatar for the extremist fringe of her Party. Greene latched onto the Trumpist base with all the furor of a Sarah-Palin-inspired “pit bull in lipstick”, hawking every conspiracy theory to come within range while endorsing the lynching of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and the assassination of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Not surprisingly, Donald Trump strongly supported her candidacy, calling her “a future Republican star.” Since his departure from the Oval Office, he and Greene have exchanged phone calls frequently, with the newly minted Representative planning a visit to Mar-a-Lago soon, to kiss the ring: “Great news is, he supports me 100%, and I’ve always supported him,” tweeted Greene.
By Constitutional fiat, all US administrations begin at 12 Noon on the January 20th following a general election, regardless of when the oath of office is actually sworn. This provides a celestial continuity from decade to decade, with all administrations having an early Aquarius Sun conjunct a late Capricorn MC, and a mid-Taurus Ascendant (unless begun by the death or resignation of the previous office holder). But within that rigid framework, the permutations are virtually endless, especially when asteroids are considered.
On Wednesday, January 6th, 2021, the Feast of the Epiphany, Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to prevent Congress’ counting and certification of Joe Biden’s election victory, preparatory to his inauguration two weeks later. Doors were forced, windows broken, as insurrectionists fresh from a Trump rally mere blocks away which featured an in-person address from the President took control from Capitol Police and security, who offered minimal resistance to the crowd, estimated in the tens of thousands. The Senate and House were evacuated, put on lockdown, as legislators cowered in safe spaces or barricaded themselves in their offices to avoid the mob.
On Thursday 25 April 2019 former Vice President Joe Biden entered the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Biden’s Macbeth routine, “letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’,” was wearing thin, and at his announcement Biden joined an already crowded field of some twenty rivals who dove into the political (cess)pool ahead of him. Before officially becoming a candidate, Biden’s name recognition kept him at the top of most polls; now that he’s an actual contender, that may change. Fast.
On Sunday, 27 January 2019, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) officially kicked off her 2020 presidential campaign in her home town of Oakland, California, before a crowd estimated at some 20,000. Harris is the former Attorney General of California, elected to the US Senate in 2016. As a mixed race child of a Jamaican father and a Tamil Indian mother, Harris is the first potentially viable candidate who is a woman of color to run for president. Her candidacy will electrify liberals and promote progressive goals, such as universal pre-K, debt-free college, and Medicare for all, and a long career in law enforcement may help to remove the “soft on crime” sting that many conservatives will attempt to apply.
Hekate was a Greek goddess associated with the wisdom of age, healing, medicinal and herbal knowledge, women’s mysteries, sorcery, witchcraft and necromancy.
