Tag archive: Karma

2022 midterms cover

The 2022 Midterm Elections: Expect the Unexpected

Election Day 2022 promises to be quite a stunner, a supercharged day which is, ultimately, unpredictable.  Held November 8, the day features multiple activations of Uranus, the planet of the shocking and unexpected, disruption, turmoil, revolution and change, including a conjunction by the Moon and oppositions from the Sun and Mercury.  As well, it’s the day of the Sun/Mercury conjunction, and the Sun/Moon opposition, which just happens to be a total Lunar Eclipse!

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emmet 2015b

RIP Emmett

On April 4, 2022, a dear feline friend, Emmett, passed away.  Emmett was the daughter of Embers, my cat Ashes’ sister, and thus her niece and a close relation, part of our extended family.  She was fur baby to my longtime friend, former landlord and cat rescue partner John Mignone, and is survived by her sister Maxine.  Emmette passed of complications from failing kidneys due to hyperthyroidism.

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KBJ cover

AAA Profile: Ketanji Brown Jackson

The United States Supreme Court just got a little more diversified, with the history-making confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as its newest Associate Justice, the first black woman to sit on the bench.  Jackson was confirmed by the full Senate on Thursday, April 7, with a bipartisan vote of 53-47, and will replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer when the new session convenes in October.  A native of Washington DC, Jackson was raised in Florida, is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School (where she edited the “Harvard Law Review”), and previously clerked for the Justice she is replacing.

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putin cover

AAA Profile: Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin has dominated Russian politics for almost a quarter century.  A former KGB officer, Putin entered politics after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, an event he describes as the greatest tragedy of the Twentieth Century.  In 1996 he joined Boris Yeltsin’s administration; appointed as prime minister in 1999, he filled the role of acting president when Yeltsin resigned later that year, being elected to the office in 2000.  At the time, Russia had a prohibition on an individual serving more than two consecutive terms as president, so after being reelected in 2004, in 2008 Putin swapped jobs with then prime minister Dmitry Medvedev for a term, only to assume the top spot again in the following election, four years later.  That would have entitled him to two more terms, but Putin changed the law to allow himself to run for an additional two terms uninterrupted, potentially continuing his occupancy of the presidency indefinitely.

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UW explosion

Ukraine: Eight Stations of the Cross of War

On Thursday, 24 February 2022, at approximately 5 AM local time, Vladimir Putin’s Russian Army invaded Ukraine, accelerating a process of intimidation and aggression that had begun eight years before with the illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea, and had continued with support for separatist movements in Ukraine’s easternmost sectors, bordering Russia, specifically portions of the oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, in the Donbass region.  Since the beginning of the year, a series of planetary stations had reflected the inexorable march to war, eight cosmic turning points which built upon each other like tumblers in a lock, eventually unleashing the conflict.

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AAA Profile: Rosa Parks

On December 1, 1955, an African American seamstress named Rosa Parks boarded a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and stepped into history.  At the time, buses were segregated, with “Whites Only” sections up front that were created by movable signs.  If the white section filled up, drivers adjusted the markers and asked already seated black patrons to move further to the back.  Parks, who according to custom paid her fee up front, then exited the bus and re-entered through the rear door, had initially sat in the black section, but when the driver expanded the white area and requested she vacate her seat, she refused.

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