Alex Miller, Author at Alex's Asteroid Astrology - Page 8 of 111

September 9th, 2024 at 09:36am by Alex Miller

Asteroid Sleuth: The Case of the Beleaguered Birch

Sometime during the night of September 4-5, 2024, I lost an old friend, who had been with me most of my life. I refer not to a being of flesh and blood, but one of leaf and bark: one half of a two-trunk birch clump in my front yard came crashing down, which had been on the property since the early ‘60s. Although the trees had been failing since I took over the property in 2019, with large upper branches dying off and rotting out, to fall onto the lawn, I had no idea how truly weak the tree was. No heavy ice storm or blowing hurricane winds heralded its end – my birch simply gave up.

September 7th, 2024 at 10:09am by Alex Miller

The Georgia School Shooting

Ah, back to school! I remember it well – the bookbags and lunchpails that had to conform to what was currently “cool” to avoid merciless taunting; catching up with what friends did over the summer break; the new pens, pencils, notepads and markers; readjusting to subpar school cuisine; the new clothes that were another potential pitfall of derision; and of course, the mass shootings.

No, wait – that one’s new. Well, new-ish; it’s been a quarter century since Columbine inaugurated a whole new rite-of-passage for American schoolchildren, replacing dodgeball with dodgebullet, and each year since, it seems we just keep upping the ante.

September 3rd, 2024 at 04:22pm by Alex Miller

2024 US Election Preview

Perhaps no US election has been more fraught with consequences for the nation and the world than will be the 2024 presidential contest. It’s true that 2020’s election was pivotal as well, but the depths to which Donald Trump was willing to sink to maintain power weren’t apparent until he sent an armed mob to the Capitol to challenge those results, two months later. Now, with full knowledge of his depravity, abuse of power, and contempt for the Constitution, reinstalling this felon in the Oval Office is unthinkable. And yet, here we are.

August 29th, 2024 at 12:32pm by Alex Miller

Garden Glimpses: August Slump

It happens every year, and it’s always a letdown. August. If I could excise it from the calendar, I would. After the floral exuberance of July, August comes as a wet blanket, if anything as drought-inclined as August can be termed “wet” in any sense. Daylilies done, echinacea ended, bee balm bereaved. Rudbeckia straggles on for a few weeks, declining daily, but still providing some pops of brilliant yellow color, until by month’s end it’s just a mass of desiccated brown.

August 23rd, 2024 at 10:10am by Alex Miller

The 2024 Democratic National Convention

The 2024 DNC kicked off in Chicago on 19 August, under very different circumstances than those under which it was conceived and planned. Originally intended as a re-up ceremony for incumbent US President Joe Biden, likely a fairly sedate affair (given his age and the flagging poll numbers in the race against Donald Trump), after the former withdrew from the race and passed the baton to VP Kamala Harris, things changed dramatically.

August 15th, 2024 at 09:46am by Alex Miller

The 2024 Venezuela Election

On 28 July 2024, Venezuela held a national election, voting for a six-year term for president, beginning in January 2025. Nicolas Maduro, the two-term authoritarian president, was running for a third term, and to stack the deck, the administration barred many in the opposition from even running for office, including leading candidate Maria Corina Machado. Edmondo Gonzalez Urrutia ran in her stead, representing the Unitary Platform party, the main opposition political alliance.