A family holiday party in Tores, Brazil on December 23, 2024, turned fatal, resulting in the deaths of three members, and the hospitalization of three others, from arsenic poisoning. Dead are sisters Maida da Silva, 58, and Neuza Silva Dos Anjos, 65; and Neuza’s daughter Tatiana, 43; a third sister, Zeli Silva, 60, Maida’s husband Jefferson, and Tatiana’s son Matheus, 10, were hospitalized with severe injuries but survived.
On Monday, 16 December 2024, shooting suspect Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow, 15, discharged a 9mm handgun in a study hall at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, killing two and wounding six others, before turning the gun on herself. The incident, sadly, is hardly isolated, but it is unusual. The vast number of mass shootings are perpetrated by males, using assault-style rifles; women constitute only 5% of mass shooters, and with both victims also female, this becomes an “all-female” cast of characters.
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.
The Republican National Convention begins on July 15th in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect. That date just happens to coincide with the precise triple conjunction of Mars, Uranus and Fixed Star Algol, all at 26 Taurus, conjoined the 24 Taurus Midheaven of Donald J. Trump, who will accept the GOP 2024 presidential nomination during the convention. Mars denotes resentment, anger, hatred and violence; Uranus suggests volatility, controversy, iconoclasm, fanaticism and insurrection; Algol forms the severed head of Medusa in the constellation Perseus, denoting both literal decapitation and metaphorically “losing one’s head.” If you can think of a better celestial thumbnail sketch of the modern GOP and its felon champion, I’d like to hear it.
On 10 April 2024, news came of the death of sports legend O.J. Simpson, once known as one of the greatest running backs in NFL history. The Buffalo Bills star, a celebrity on and off the field, was the first player to rush for more than 2000 yards in a single season, winning the NFL MVP award in 1973. Known as “the Juice” in reference to his OJ initials, after retirement in 1979, Simpson went on to a marginally successful acting career, appearing in “Roots,” “The Towering Inferno,” “The Cassandra Crossing” and three films in “The Naked Gun” series, as well as several dozen film and TV roles.
Of course these accomplishments, noteworthy as they are, were totally eclipsed by the real-life drama Simpson became embroiled in after he was arrested and tried for the brutal murder by stabbing of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman at her home in 1994. The case, which began with a ten-hour-long slow-motion pursuit by police viewed by 95 million people, as Simpson attempted to avoid arrest for the crime, brought out the ever-present racial divide in America, with many black people thinking he was being framed, and white people assuming he was guilty.
Almost four years ago, an infant newborn was found abandoned in a wooded area of Forsyth County Georgia, near Cumming, left in a plastic shopping bag. Alerted by cries initially thought to be those of a cat, police were called to the scene when teenager Kayla Ragatz and her sisters investigated the sounds, finding the squalling baby, just hours old, with umbilical cord still attached. Nicknamed “Baby India” for her apparent ethnic heritage, the girl was put into foster care and eventually adopted. Forsyth County Sheriff Ron Freeman promised justice for the foundling, and more than three years later was able to identify the child’s father, based on advanced DNA investigative processes.
