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.
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.
At the age of 25, Elizabeth found herself reigning head of an empire upon which the sun literally never set, comprising some quarter of the globe. The seventy intervening years have seen much change and turmoil, both for Britain and the world at large, but the Queen has been a rock in the stream of time, a stabilizing influence for her people, and an invaluable source of information and experience for her governments over the decades.
I chose to profile this story, tragic as it is, because it makes an excellent example of how this process unfolds, both celestially and in my own psyche. As a former resident of Philadelphia, and still within that media market, I regularly watch the morning news on 6 ABC, predominantly for weather forecasts. When I heard about a housefire near my old stomping grounds on January 5th which took 12 lives, 8 of them children, I got that familiar tingle at the nape of the neck that tells me to investigate, astrologically.
Just as the year 2021 came to its close, so did the life of Betty White, one of the most beloved entertainers in America. Fate was oftentimes a friend to Betty throughout her long life, but unkind to her at its end – she expired barely two weeks before her 100th birthday. Just days before her passing, she had tweeted her eager anticipation of the star-studded celebrations planned to commemorate her centennial.
White, who enjoyed the longest career of any female entertainer, was an actor and singer noted for her comedic talents. From the sugar-spiked sexpot Sue Ann Nivens in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”, to the naïve sexagenarian ingenue Rose Nylund of “The Golden Girls” and the acerbic house caretaker Elka Ostrovsky on “Hot in Cleveland”, White continued to delight TV audiences for over seven decades with her unique brand of charm and humor.
On October 21, 2021, police were called to the set of “Rust”, a western being filmed in Bonanza City, New Mexico. An accidental shooting with a prop gun, discharged by star Alec Baldwin, had killed the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounded director Joel Souza. The cause of the incident is still under investigation, but somehow, live ammunition was loaded into a real revolver, not blanks in a prop gun. While setting up the next shot, with the gun pointed at the camera and the cinematographer, the weapon discharged; Baldwin’s statement is that he had cocked the gun, based on Hutchins’ instructions, but did not pull the trigger.
