Nutty Okie Senator ~ & ~ Heading Out

From ghoulies and ghosties and long leggety beasties and things that go bump in the night....and loopy Oklahoma senators, Good Lord, deliver us!

Before we hightail it out of this crackpot state for a few days, this from Huffington Post yesterday:

OKLAHOMA CITY -- A Republican state senator from Oklahoma City introduced a bill Tuesday that would ban the use of aborted human fetuses in food, despite conceding that he's unaware of any company using such a practice.

Freshman Sen. Ralph Shortey said his own Internet research led him to believe such a ban is necessary and prompted him to offer the bill aimed at raising "public awareness" and giving an "ultimatum to companies" that might consider such a policy.
Shortey said he discovered suggestions online that some companies use embryonic stem cells to develop artificial flavors, but added that he is unaware of any Oklahoma companies doing such research.

In an e-mail to The Associated Press, U.S. Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman Pat El-Hinnawy said: "FDA is not aware of this particular concern."

Best comment: by commenter Thaag Tidestalker:

I agree! We also need to work diligently on ensuring that:

1. Horses are permanentl­y banned from driving motorcycle­s
2. Rain is mandated to fall toward the ground, and not any other direction
3. Mongol Hordes respect the borders of the United States and do not plunder here

If we don't make sure all these become law, there could be UTTER CHAOS!!! (hail Eris)

We'll be heading out today....on the road to somewhere. It'll definitely be southward, probably veering west to catch more reliable weather. We considered going east into Louisiana and cajun country, but weather forecast is decidedly damp for that area. Next we considered southwest to Big Bend National Park, skirting the Rio Grande along the Mexico border in Texas -some great scenery there. But daylight is short and motels within 100 miles of the park are few, husband's dislike of night driving caused us to shelve that one for now. So...maybe somewhere in southern New Mexico. There's Spaceport America, in the region, if we manage to hit a convenient time for one of the preview tours; Las Cruces and Silver City are still to explore anyway........ Back in a few.

Image of Aquarius ?

The photograph below is among my husband's collection of vintage and antique photographs. (See Lost Gallery). I liked it at once - it's unintentionally (?) arty as well as being an unintentional representation of the two sides of zodiac sign Aquarius. Note that I say zodiac sign Aquarius - not "an Aquarian".

Aquarius has two planetary rulers: Saturn traditionally, and Uranus in modern astrology. A more different set of characteristics associated with two planets and one zodiac sign would be hard to find in astrology.

The young man at the foot of the steps represents Saturn's input. He's standing in front of rigidly structured lines, conservatively dressed, quietly studying his book. The fellow at top of the steps represents Uranus - a bit wild and woolly, standing with the open sky as background, clothes rumpled, devil-may-care expression...unpredictable - what'll he do next?

Aquarius, Astrologers, Uranus, Urania.

Sun's in Aquarius again, I'll soon need to add another year to my age! I've written more than enough posts about zodiac sign Aquarius over the years - they are easily available via the Label Cloud in the sidebar - click on "Aquarius". I have a special interest in the sign, and its modern ruler Uranus, being a Sun Aquarian-type myself.

Occasionally I ask myself what's the source of my longtime interest in astrology. My parents had no knowledge of the subject, nor did any close relative that I know of. Is Aquarius the source? None of my contemporaries, even among those born within a few days of me, and in the same town as myself, has ever shown the slightest interest in the planets.

There's a list of astrologers at Wikipedia, with handy click-through links to further detail. Many of the names come from eras long gone, many are foreign to me. I found only three astrologers whose names are familiar, with natal Sun in Aquarius. I'll concentrate on two of them initially because of interesting similarities. ~~

The pair: Evangeline Adams (8 February 1868) and Russell Grant (5 February 1951), one from each side of the pond, as it happens. Their natal charts are available at Astrodatabank, and linked to their names above. It was fascinating to compare them. Look at the similarities!

Evangeline Adams had Sun at 19 Aquarius, Mars at 10 Aquarius; Mercury Venus and Jupiter in Pisces; and Uranus (ruler of Aquarius) at 9 Cancer.

Russell Grant has Sun at 16 Aquarius, Moon at 10 Aquarius; Venus, Mars and Jupiter in Pisces; Uranus (ruler of Aquarius) at 5.58 Cancer.

That's pretty amazing! Because they were born 83 years apart, Uranus ruler of their Aquarius Sun had almost completed its 84-year cycle, and was back in the same sign, sensitive, intuitive Cancer - and within a few degrees for Russell Grant as it had been for Evangeline Adams. Both astrologers have two planets in Aquarius (both have one on the 10 degree spot); both have three personal planets in instinctual, ephemeral Pisces, with Venus and Jupiter common to both.

Airy, mentally-oriented Aquarius may not be particularly astrology-oriented without support from Watery signs (Pisces, Cancer, Scorpio).

The third Aquarius-type astrologer I found in Wiki's list: Charles Carter - often referred to as C.E.O. Carter - one of my favourites. Chart available at Astrodatabank. He had three personal planets in Aquarius (Sun, Mercury, Venus) and three in Water signs (Mars, Saturn and Jupiter).

My own natal chart isn't closely comparable with those of Adams, Grant or Carter. I have only Sun in Aquarius, with Watery input from Jupiter in Pisces, Mars in Scorpio and Cancer rising - so I guess it could be said that I have a less intense amount of the same "flavours" they did/do. My natal Uranus is in Earthy Taurus though, and conjoins south node of Moon.

My natal Moon in Aries seems unhelpful in this regard, but Asteroid Urania lies very close to it. This celestial body was named for the Muse of Astronomy, and by association astrology. Astrologically, this may mean nothing at all - but it pleases me!


"In Greek mythology, Urania (Ουρανία), which means "heavenly", was the muse of astronomy and astrology. She is usually depicted as having a globe in her left hand and a peg in the right, and her foot on a turtle, symbol of silence. She is able to foretell the future by the position of the stars. She is often associated with Universal Love and the Holy Spirit. She is dressed in a cloak embroidered with stars and keeps her eyes and attention focused on the Heavens. Those who are most concerned with philosophy and the heavens are dearest to her." (See here)
Illustration from HERE

Last year we found a wee town named after her on our travels in Louisiana:

Movie Monday ~ The Ides of March ~ Ryan Gosling ~ US Politics

I'd been waiting to see The Ides of March since first reading of it months ago. The movie never did reach our local cinema, so we awaited the DVD release, rented it during its first week out. Main reason for being so keen to see the movie: Paul Giamatti is in it. Bored, disgusted and disillusioned as I'm feeling about the whole US political circus, The Ides of March's fictional political scenario wasn't enough to put me off seeing a performance by Giamatti.

Sad to report, though, I was disappointed in the movie, apart from Giamatti's performance. He never disappoints; Philip Seymour Hoffman likewise.

Maybe I was expecting too much. Maybe the travesty that is real-life US politics has by now completely deadened my appetite for more. I've enjoyed every past political movie - seen all the big ones, and a few lesser known. This is the first where my reaction was definitely: "Meh!".

The film is an adaptation of an original stage play, Farragut North, by Beau Willimon who assisted George Clooney and Grant Heslov in writing the screenplay. Strange title - Farragut North; it is, I discovered, a Metro station in Washington DC in the business district. I suspect the story's transition from stage to screen may be where something went wrong. I understand that in the original stage version the candidate character (George Clooney in the movie) never appears, is only referenced. Dialogue is between campaign managers and other "interested parties". I can kind of see how that would have worked. The presentation would have been a more oblique and subtle look at the backroom workings of political power. Simplifying it all, filling in the blanks, joining the dots for a movie audience might have brought the whole thing down a notch or several, caused it to become...I don't know....shallow, facile, comic-bookish?

Cast of the movie at the Venice Film Festival. Photo from HERE.

Clooney isn't the "star" of the film, but plays a key character: one of two Democratic primary candidates duking it out for the nomination. Ryan Gosling is meant to have the star-billing. He plays an up and coming press secretary in Clooney's campaign workforce. It's the first time I've seen him in a movie. He has earned the reputation of being a real hot shot actor, yet I didn't "get" him or believe this characterisation at all. He mumbled much of his dialogue, it was a real effort for me to understand at times, and such a relief when superb actors, Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman delivered their lines. There's also something about Ryan Gosling's face that just doesn't appeal. Eyes too close together?

George Clooney plays George Clooney, pretty much, until the last scenes. Some of his campaign speeches were music to my ears - or would have been if I hadn't lived through our current president's campaign speeches - and what has followed.

The two main female characters, a hard-bitten reporter, Marisa Tomei and a supposedly naive intern played by Evan Rachel Wood, both gave decent performances with the rather clichéd material available. In the case of Wood's character there were several plot loopholes, not her fault, of course.

The movie's title, from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, is the best thing about it. There were "Et tu, Brute?" moments for each of the main characters at some point in the movie. (The biggest real life "E tu, Brute?" nowadays is the 99% shouting it out to all politicians, everywhere.)

Bearing in mind what we all know, now, about a succession of political characters in real life, a medley, mosaic or montage of the sum total of it all might satisfy some viewers. I couldn't find it satisfying, not without seeing a few just deserts being dished out. Real life politics may not dish out just deserts very often these days, but it is within the power of movie makers to depict what is missing.

A peek at Ryan Gosling's natal chart. Maybe I can identify something to account for my apathetic reaction to him and his performance which many critics have praised highly.

Born 12 November 1980 in London Ontario. Chart is set for 12 noon - no time of birth known. Moon would be in Capricorn, but degree uncertain. Rising sign unknown.

All his planets lie in the segment of the zodiac between Libra and Capricorn. Not a lot to dislike there. In spite of the clustered formation there's "a bit of everything" : Air, Water, Fire and Earth; Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable involved. The emphasis on just four of the twelve signs indicates a certain strength of focus in his nature, something which, no doubt, will have energised his zoom to success.

Creative Neptune conjunct dynamic Mars in mutable Sagittarius is an excellent combination for an actor.

Without Gosling's time of birth it's not possible to know which of the planets and signs lie in strong positions, i.e. near chart angles (ascendant, mid-heaven and opposite points). That information would throw a brighter light on his real-life personality.

I don't see any astrological reason why I didn't warm to him. To parody another quote from the same source as the movie's title: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in the movie".

A quote, again from the same source, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and apt in view of the movie's plot and events of the US political scene in 2012:

How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted o'er,
In states unborn, and accents yet unknown!

As Time Goes By~ Time Slips #4 ~ Britain

A final consideration of some reported time slips. These come from the UK - none concerning France at all this time! Unfortunately I have no means of looking at astrological indications as no exact dates are quoted for the time slips, but I've used an historic date for one of the times "slipped-into".

I found these examples to have a rather more authentic feel than those featured in posts from Tuesday to Thursday this week. Lack of fine detail, duration of the events, and the fact there is no contact with people on t'other side of the time slip, renders these more acceptable - to me at least.




From Liverpool - its Bold Street shopping area to be exact, centre city:
Liverpool Confidential.com tells us:

Bold Street's fortunes are a mirror of everything that has ever happened in Liverpool. At the top, St Luke's church, a bombed out monument to the Liverpool Blitz. At the bottom end, The Lyceum housed Europe's first lending library - was also a club for chaps who wanted an alternative meeting place to coffee houses.

The following incident, described at http://uforeview.tripod.com/timeslips.html is often dismissed as urban legend. I consider it more easily believable than some other, more famous, time slip reports.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in July of 1996, Frank, a policeman, and his wife, Carol was visiting Liverpool's Bold Street area for some shopping. At Central Station, the pair split up; Carol went to Dillons Bookshop and Frank went to HMV to look for a CD he wanted. As he walked up the incline near the Lyceum Post Office/Café building that lead onto Bold Street, Frank suddenly noticed he had entered a strange "oasis of quietness."

Suddenly, a small box van that looked like something out of the 1950s sped across his path, honking its horn as it narrowly missed him. Frank noticed the name on the van's side: "Caplan's." When he looked down, the confused policeman saw that he was unexpectedly standing in the road. The off-duty policeman crossed the road and saw that Dillons Book Store now had "Cripps" over its entrances. More confused, he looked in to see not books, but women's handbags and shoes.

Looking around, Frank realized people were dressed in clothes that appeared to be from the 1940s. Suddenly, he spotted a young girl in her early 20's dressed in a lime-colored sleeveless top. The handbag she was carrying had a popular brand name on it, which reassured the policeman that maybe he was still partly in 1996. It was a paradox, but he was relieved, and he followed the girl into Cripps.

As the pair went inside, Frank watched in amazement as the interior of the building completely changed in a flash to that of Dillons Bookshop of 1996. The girl turned to leave and Frank lightly grasped the girl's arm to attract attention and said, "Did you see that?"

She replied, "Yeah! I thought it was a clothes shop. I was going to look around, but it's a bookshop."

It was later determined that Cripps and Caplan's were businesses based in Liverpool during the 1950s. Whether these businesses were based in the locations specified in the story has not been confirmed.

A comment on this incident from David Icke's forum (...I know! but this is interesting):

.... the main area of the (Liverpool) timeslips is next to the railway station exit. The area is built on sandstone with quartz and the city is ringed by the railway lines. Metal lines that are running with electricity when the train goes past. Combined with the quartz in the bedrock could this be the reason for the timeslips?

And

.......had always heard a ley line ran down Bold Street,one possible reason?

I'd just add that if the church at one end of the street was bombed during the World War 2 city blitz, then the street would have been in an area "ripe" for "imprint" of dramatic events.

More strange events around Bold Street described at parascience.org.uk





Another report, this from Uncanny UK

A key event of the First English Civil War, the Battle of Hopton Heath (a small village in south Shropshire) was fought on Sunday, March 19, 1643, between Parliamentarian and Royalist forces.

(Photo shows a memorial plaque erected in 2009, on Ministry of Defence land which now covers much of the battle site).







(Chart is set for Ludlow, nearest place in the general area on my software.
Also, I'm never certain for these older dates whether Old Style or New Style date is being used, and in this case can find no indication....so I've used it as it stands.)

The battle ended at nightfall, with the actual victory and outcome still remaining matters of very much personal opinion: the Royalists, for example, had succeeded in capturing eight enemy-guns; while the Parliamentarians believed that their successful killing of the enemy commander, the Earl of Northampton, was of equal – if not even greater –significance.

More than 300 years later, one night in the winter of 1974, John ‘Davy’ Davis, aged 36, painter-and-decorator of Lichfield in Staffordshire, was driving near Hopton Heath when he began to feel unwell: a tightness developed in his chest, an odd feeling of lightheadedness overcame him, and his ‘left ear hurt and felt hot’.
Pulling over to the side of the road, Davis was amazed to see the night-sky suddenly transform into daylight, while the road in front of him no longer existed: instead, it had been replaced by a mass of fields, heath and tangled trees. Before his unbelieving eyes countless soldiers adorned in Civil War period clothing fought each other savagely. Notably, Davis said that although at one point he was ‘nearly bloody surrounded’ by the soldiers, it seemed as if they could neither see him nor his vehicle. To a degree, at least, this afforded Davis a degree of relief, as he was practically frozen to the spot, unable to drive away if he’d wanted to.

As it transpired, Davis didn’t need to go anywhere: a few seconds later, the bizarre scene suddenly vanished, and he found himself sitting at the side of the road, with his car squashed against a line of hedge. All had returned to normal.

This one "feels right" too. Blog-buddy Gian Paul will be happy to note, in the chart for the date of the battle (provided that I have the date correct for astro purposes)the there's another example of conjoined late and early degree here: Sun 28 Pisces/Jupiter 00 Aries (the powerful "Aries Point").

Several other time slip reports are described at the Uncanny UK link above.




Smithsonian.com carries an article on a time slip report. ~ Briefly: 3 Royal Navy cadets on a map-reading exercise on a Sunday morning in October, 1957 in Suffolk, England may have wandered into a time slip in Kersey, a picturesque village dating from before the 13th century.
A full description of their experience can be read at the link, along with comments, sceptical and otherwise.
(Image of rail poster featuring Kersey comes from HERE)

I haven't formed an opinion, either way, on this one.