Tag archive: Osiris

charcoal

RIP Charcoal

On Tuesday 19 January 2021, I lost my dear fur buddy Charcoal to cancer.  What I thought was a respiratory infection, which Charkey got every winter, turned out to be a mass in his mouth.  While waiting for the biopsy appointment, the faint swelling I had observed on his left side blew up dramatically over the weekend, becoming so large it looked like he had a tennis ball in his cheek.  I dropped him off for his appointment that morning, the vet confirmed the diagnosis a few hours later, and shortly after that, I held him as he passed.

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The Political Deathwatch of Donald J. Trump

“That hymn you hear [playing in Congress] is ‘Just as I Am,’ and we’re open for deathbed conversions.” – Joe Scarborough, former Republican Congressman and MSNBC morning show host

Can you feel it?  Impending political mortality is in the air.  Trusted councilors leave the bedside, rats exiting a sinking ship; former shark allies mass in feeding frenzy, smelling blood in the water; media buzzards circle, waiting to pick the bones.  US President Donald J. Trump is in extremis, with scant days to go before the end of his political career.

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AAA Profile: The Biden Administration

By Constitutional fiat, all US administrations begin at 12 Noon on the January 20th following a general election, regardless of when the oath of office is actually sworn.  This provides a celestial continuity from decade to decade, with all administrations having an early Aquarius Sun conjunct a late Capricorn MC, and a mid-Taurus Ascendant (unless begun by the death or resignation of the previous office holder).  But within that rigid framework, the permutations are virtually endless, especially when asteroids are considered.

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betty and me 2011 PN

COVID-19 Comes Home

[Cover Photo: the author with his Aunt Betty, 2011]

I had made it all the way through 2020 without personally knowing anyone infected during the coronavirus pandemic.  Until New Year’s Eve, the last day of the year, when my cousin called to tell me that her 90-year-old mother had been hospitalized with COVID pneumonia.  Aunt Betty was my mother’s sister, and had been a fixture of my childhood and an integral part of my family festivities for decades, until a hip fracture resulted in her moving in with her daughter nine years ago.  This disrupted our seasonal celebratory cycle, and I have only seen her sporadically since then.

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The Nashville Christmas Day Bombing

2020 went out with a bang in Nashville, Tennessee, when on Christmas Day 63-year-old Anthony Quinn Warner self-detonated a bomb in his RV in front of an AT&T network hub, killing himself, devastating the surrounding area and causing communications outages across the state.  No motive for his destructive suicide has yet been established for Warner, a tech specialist conspiracy theorist whose writings express concern with “shape-shifting reptilian creatures that appear in human form and attempt world domination.”  But Warner took pains to prevent additional loss of life, with the RV broadcasting warnings of the pending explosion and urging evacuation for 15 minutes before detonation.  Despite these precautions, eight were injured in the blast.

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Trumping Death

Given Trump’s disdain for science, fact and expertise, coupled with a complete inability to take direction or follow sage advice and a propensity for reckless action, it was perhaps inevitable that he and the coronavirus would become personally acquainted at some point, sooner rather than later.  So Trump’s 12:45 AM EDT Tweet on October 2, 2020 confirming that both he and Melania had been exposed and tested positive, was hardly a shock, but it was a thunderous admission regardless.  With Trump’s age and corpulence, he was a prime candidate for a serious, if not deadly, COVID-19 infection, and with his re-elect pending just a month away, his turbulent campaign was thrown into a tailspin, while a shattered nation waited with bated breath for the outcome.

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