Asteroid Astrology: Page 6

litha garden18

Garden Glimpses: The Middling Time

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.

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tony cakes cover

Asteroid Sleuth: The Case of the Downsized Don

At 3:30 PM EDT on the afternoon of 12 June 2024, 86-year-old Anthony “Tony Cakes” Conigliaro walked into the crossing at 92nd Street and Dahlgren Place in Brooklyn, NY, against a “Do Not Walk” sign.  He never made it across.  At least, parts of him did, but Tony Cakes was struck by a local Department of Transportation truck turning the corner, crushed and decapitated, with his severed head lying several yards away from his crumpled body.

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Aster-Obit: Willie Mays

On 18 June 2024, baseball legend Willie Mays passed away, at age 93.  Mays’ pro sports career began in high school with the Birmingham Black Barons, a local Negro League team, but he was picked up by the New York Giants upon graduation, spending 23 seasons in the MLB before retiring in 1973.  Mays was the 1951 Rookie of the Year, and MVP for the 1954 season which brought the Giants their last World Series win before moving to San Francisco.  MVP again in 1965, Mays played in two more World Series, and was chosen as an All-Star 24 times, tying the record set by Stan Musial, exceeded only by Hank Aaron.  Mays spent most of his career with the Giants, but was traded to the NY Mets in 1972; he retired the following year, but continued with the organization as a coach until 1980.

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manure victims

Asteroid Sleuth: The Case of the Man-Killing Manure

Folks, this story is the shit!  Literally.  In the late morning of 13 June 2024, two men died in a manure tanker accident at Champion Dairy Farm in Kirkland, NY; both were volunteer firefighters.  Nathan Doody, 33, was attempting to retrieve a piece of equipment that had fallen into the tanker, became overcome with fumes from the fermenting feces, and fell into the tank.  Coworker Tyler Memory, 29, tried to assist, but also swooned and fell.  Farm personnel called 911, the pair were recovered and medevacked to Wynn Hospital in nearby Utica, where they were pronounced dead.

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foul cover

Asteroid Sleuth: The Case of the Shameless Shove

It was the shove watched ‘round the world.  On Saturday, 1 June 2024, at a WNBA contest between the Chicago Sky and the Indiana Fever, Sky guard Chennedy Carter gave a superfluous shoulder shove to Fever rookie phenom Caitlin Clark, knocking her to the floor.   Clark was not in possession of the ball at the time, and the foul, later upgraded to “flagrant-1,” made local and national news across the country.  Carter’s teammate Angel Reese, a former college rival of Clark’s, was seen to leap off the bench and clap at the infraction; later, she decked Clark herself with an illegal elbow move that wasn’t called by the refs.  After the game, Reese was fined $1000 for failing to make herself available to the media.  Despite the interference, the Indiana Fever came out on top, 71-70, with Clark adding eleven points to the scoreboard.

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pope francis cover

Asteroid Sleuth: The Case of the Potty-Mouthed Pope

On May 20, 2024, Pope Francis was speaking in camera to a meeting of Italian bishops, following the creation of a new document outlining training for Italian seminarians, not yet released pending review by the Holy See.  The document is reported to include an attempt to soften the current ban on openly gay men entering the Catholic priesthood, by focusing instead on the need for celibacy by priests, whatever their private sexual inclinations.

But the Pontiff was having none of this, despite garnering a reputation for promoting openness and inclusivity for the gays in his flock, and, in what has been describe as a “joking” tone, His Holiness averred that “there is already an air of faggotness” in seminaries.  The Pope, speaking in Italian, used the term “frociaggine,” a slur against gay people that roughly equates to “faggot.”

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