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.
Climate change continues apace, and this has been one of the oddest springs in my experience. After a ridiculously warm early winter and the earliest recorded blossoms in my garden, Mother Nature seems to have taken a step back, realized how overextended she was, and called a halt to the whole thing. Weeks of below normal cold punctuated with hot stretches that flirted with the mid-80s created a “two steps forward, one step back” mentality in the garden, with nothing blooming in season, and unique bouquets of cut flowers that would normally never blossom together. Drought vied with torrential downpours, and a late freeze crushed the star magnolia blooms at their peak.
Joe Biden officially threw his hat into the ring for the 2024 US presidential election, announcing his candidacy in an online video that crossed just after 6 AM EDT on 25 April 2023. Hardly shocking news, Biden had been signaling his intention to run for reelection for months. The moment chosen seems to be an auspicious one at the micro astro-level, but its placement in the midst of eclipse season, with a stationary Pluto and a retrograde Mercury, makes it an ill-timed choice over all.
On Monday, 24 April 2023, the cable news universe was rocked by the sudden and unexpected announcement that Fox News had parted ways with Tucker Carlson, who had been anchoring the coveted 8 PM weeknight spot for six years with his eponymous “Tucker Carlson Tonight”, the network’s top-rated news/opinion show. The split came barely a week after a record $787.5 million settlement in the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems, in which Carlson was a scheduled witness, one among several Fox News anchors who promoted the “Big Lie” that Donald Trump had won the 2020 election, but had it stolen from him by rigged Dominion machines. Carlson’s embrace of the stolen election fraud was legendary, as was his attempt to paint the January 6th insurrection as a peaceful protest or conspiracy from the left.
April 25, 2023 witnesses the opening of the first salvo of courtroom dramas involving former US president Donald J. Trump, although as a civil case, he’s not required to attend in person, and likely won’t do so. The case is brought by journalist and author E. Jean Carroll, who alleges Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan in the mid-1990s. No, the charge isn’t rape – it’s defamation of character, following statements Trump made after Carroll publicly accused him in 2019, when he denied ever meeting her, much less assaulting her, in terms peppered with his patented brand of denigration and misogynistic dismissal.
As asteroid Thomas moved toward its retrograde station, a pair of stories erupted into the American consciousness, with yet another mass shooting at a Louisville, Kentucky bank, where five died, including bank VP Thomas “Tommy” Elliot; and allegations of ethics violations in nonreporting of gifts to US Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas emerged. Both stories broke within two weeks of Thomas’ cosmic turnabout on April 20th at 25 Sagittarius, a period fraught with peril for those terrestrial entities associated with this celestial body, provoking a literal “turning point” in their lives. Sagittarius is the sign ruled by Jupiter, which is associated with both banks and the judiciary, making Thomases involved in these fields even more susceptible to asteroid Thomas’ fallout.
