On Monday, 11 September 2023, the New York Jets pro football franchise saw half of their $75 million investment evaporate when starting quarterback Aaron Rodgers was sacked just minutes into his first game with them, resulting in a torn Achilles tendon and the loss of the entire season. It was just August 1st when the two-year contract was signed, and the injury, coming at age 39 for Rodgers, could well signal the end of his career.
On 1 September 2023, word came of the death of singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who passed away at his Sag Harbor, NY home, surrounded by his family, friends, music, and dogs, after a four-year battle with an aggressive, rare skin cancer. Buffet was best known for his patented brand of “tropical rock,” celebrating a back-to-the-beach, “island escapism” aesthetic, especially epitomized by “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” from the 1970s. But Buffett was also a gifted businessman and entrepreneur, with a net worth at his passing of over a billion dollars, making him one of the richest musicians on the planet, albeit most of his wealth stemmed from these other sidelines, and not record sales.
As the proud owner of a Stationary Direct Mercury, I must say that in general, I’m fairly immune to Merc retro effects. I guess it’s the stalwart, embedded stance of my natal Mercury, which turned direct within ninety minutes of my birth – nothing shakes it. But the recent retrograde period was a notable exception, backed up by unfortunate asteroid placements, resulting in a blown tire the day of the station.
On the evening of Sunday, 6 August 2023, 74-year-old Giacomo Chiapparini entered the storage room of his family-run dairy farm’s cheese factory near Bergamo, Italy, to check the robot used to clean the wheels of Grana Padano as they aged, stacked on floor-to-ceiling shelves. No one knows what went wrong, but one of the metal shelves buckled, spilling its store of hundreds of 40 kg (approximately 88-pound) cheeses and creating a domino effect, whereby the entire stock came crashing down, crushing the septuagenarian.
In late July 2023 a trio of notable performers exited earth with swan songs of their own. American icon Tony Bennett passed on July 21, Irish singer Sinead O’Connor and Eagles founding member and vocalist Randy Meisner both died on the 26th. They were accompanied by a host of lesser-known (to US audiences, anyway) singers cross the globe, with no less than 10 others passing during that five-day period, from lands as disparate as India, Kenya, Brazil, Chile, Greece, Jamaica and the UK.
It has certainly been an odd growing season. In the six weeks from May 1 to mid-June, normally a fairly wet period, we recorded just a quarter inch of rain on the property. The ensuing six weeks, to late July, normally a fairly dry period, saw seventeen inches! About an inch a week is sufficient to keep most plants going without hydration support, but unfortunately the effect isn’t cumulative – those 17” bunched together won’t last 17 weeks, and now, as August begins, it’s looking drier again. But I’ve enjoyed the break from the Gunga Din routine that kept me hopping through last summer’s drought.
