Good News & Bad News from The Sooner State

BAD NEWS:

Oklahoma will be the only state of the 50 United States of America where just two names will appear on the ballot in the presidential election 2012: Barack Obama (incumbent president)- Democrat; and Gov. Mitt Romney (Republican). According to local sources this will be the 3rd consecutive presidential election in which Oklahoma voters will be artificially limited to two choices for President. Oklahoma legislature has denied and blocked all efforts to reform the state's ballot access laws since 1999.

I do not understand how, when a country's citizens have the right to elect a president of the entire nation, all citizens of all 50 states are not entitled to have the same list of candidates from which to make their choice. It makes no sense ! The people of Colorado, for instance have multiple choices (10 or more), while Okies are left with a choice between Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee. Why? Where is the logic, and more importantly where is the justice? I'm beginning to regret having wrangled my way through the tangled (and expensive) route to citizenship so's I'd be able to vote - only to find....what? My choices are unfairly restricted by what smacks of a distinctly fascist-flavoured legislature, intent in keeping a two-headed political monster, whose heads serve the same masters, as the only choice for voters of this state.

Please....anyone....can you explain the reasoning behind this iniquitous electoral system to me ?

Link to a chart showing how various other party representatives have ballot access in the other 49 states. Minor amendments to the details might be needed eventually, as noted HERE.



GOOD NEWS:

$3.5 Billion Wind Power Line Approved for Oklahoma -by Jake Richards, September 14, 2012.
Clip:

The Plains and Eastern Clean Line wind power transmission line in Oklahoma was approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Wednesday to start acquiring customers for its potential 7,000 MW of clean energy.
This line will be approximately 800 miles in length and is a high-voltage direct current transmission project. The new line is being developed in order to send clean energy generated by wind farms in western Oklahoma, southwest Kansas, and the Texas Panhandle to customers in the Mid-South and Southeast.

Back in the cyber saddle again. (No astro today).

This trip wasn't one of our forays into the spectacularly scenic wonders of this land. Our route was more or less dictated by the track of a couple of winter storms.



We headed west, Sunday morning, behind a snowy storm which hit our town the day before. Through the north Texas "boot" into New Mexico as far as Tucumcari we drove, then on to Alberquerque, a town we'd missed on previous New Mexico adventures. Both these names sound more exotic than their towns turned out to be. Albuquerque is nicely situated with the snowy Sandia and Manzano Mountains forming a backdrop. It's New Mexico's biggest city, but seems more like several smaller towns linked together. Traffic systems were, to strangers in town, haphazard. Getting around seemed a little too much like hard work!

Next day, as another winter storm threatened from the north, we decided to head south, and eventually found ourselves in Roswell. We'd visited the UFO museum there on a previous trip, so hit the antique shops, and moved on into Texas next day, keeping ahead of the weather.


Through Brownfield, Snyder and Colorado City we next happened upon "The World's Biggest Windfarm" at Roscoe - it did cover a huge area of land, at one point we could see wind turbines on all sides. There's an article about the project at NPR's website "Winds of Change blow into Roscoe, Texas", by John Burnett.







We later saw another huge windfarm in the same part of Texas. Not bad for a state which prides itself on oil and gas production. The sight of these white turbines serenely turning against a blue sky can easily become soporific. (Photo on left isn't ours - it's from environment-green.com)


Next stop: Abilene.

Abilene, Abilene
Prettiest town I ever seen.
Folks down there don't treat you mean
In Abilene, my Abilene....... says the old song.

Actually it's another big city resembling an overgrown small town - not a lot more to say about it, except that the old song was right - nobody treated us the least bit mean!

Our last overnight stop was in Graham, a town boasting the biggest Town Square in America. These Texans!! Apparently, when the town was built in the late 1800s the town square, measuring a mile round the perimeter, was constructed big enough for a wagon to turn around in it.

Antique stores and malls abound in this part of Texas, even moreso than in neighbouring states, where they are plentiful enough. One wonders where all the "stuff" comes from. We found stores aplenty in Jacksboro, Decatur, Gainesville and Muenster as we journeyed towards the Red River and home. These stores are not just one room jobs, they meander through multiple adjoining buildings, room after room filled with all manner of "stuff": antique, collectible or simply dated. My husband searches for old photographs for his collection on Lost Gallery, and for LP covers by his favourite artists. He had a reasonably good haul from our many stops.

I found some DVDs, CDs and books at bargain prices.
I also bought a curiosity, probably not very old - maybe mid 20th-century: a 100 year calendar. I doubt these are at all rare but I'd not seen one like this before. It was made in India, of brass and enamel. Turning the wheels to the correct year and month brings up the right date and day of the month. Clever stuff!




The trip was just what we needed - a complete change of scene after a long winter of feeling "shut-in".

Random Sunday Rambles.....

Spiritualism: C.E.O. Carter, British astrologer of the mid-20th century, in his Little Green Book, "The Encyclopaedia of Psychological Astrology" defines an attraction to spiritualism thus:

"This is one of the interests usually connected with the watery element and the corresponding planets and houses. The scientific investigator into phenomena will usually have Uranus strong and very likely the Mercurial signs, and Scorpio. Cancer and Pisces are probably the commonest ascendants, both among mediums and the rank and file of their followers, and it is probable that Mercury will often be found in these signs."

In my younger years, in the UK, after losing confidence in the Chruch of England due to the attitudes of our local vicar, I experimented with spiritualism, attended several different spiritualist churches and meetings. I was moderately interested in it all, but not sufficiently so to continue the experiment for more than a year or two.

I suppose natal Cancer ascendant, and Jupiter in Pisces semisextile Aquarius Sun might have had something to do with the initial attraction to the concepts of spiritualism. Mercury in pragmatic Capricorn, close to the descendant might have influenced the fairly quick move away from the spiritualist path. I do understand its attraction, but it just wasn't right for me. One side of me was drawn to it while the other side remained too sceptical to accept it.

I remember one occasion, when working in a previously unvisited part of the UK, I sought out a spiritualist church and attended an evening meeting. Several of the congregation eyed me with suspicion, making me feel decidedly uncomfortable. After the meeting one member approached me and asked if I was representing some monitoring or Watchdog Group. I immediately set them straight. The incident did bring it home to me how insecure the people felt and I thought that was a great pity. I doubt that established traditional churches have watchdogs monitoring their proceedings. It's an example of how those outside the mainstream often feel very vulnerable.

Another sighting

On a trip to a trio of Oklahoma towns which used to stand beside Route 66: Clinton, Weatherford and Elk City this weekend we happened to spot another component of a wind turbine. I mentioned here having encountered a section of the stem of a wind turbine as it was being transported. On Friday we saw one of the blades of a turbine, displayed in Weatherford, Oklahoma with information about a local company's wind farms close to the town - right beside the road, actually. This was the first time I've seen wind turbines in action, close-up.



More power to the element of Air! That blade seemed enormous - in the photo above I'm standing near it to give an idea of just how big these things are. When assembled and in action they don't look anything like as huge and heavy as this, in fact they appear almost delicate!

Energy of the Elements

At a gas station recently we saw this oversized load, stationary, its driver visiting the convenience store. The Husband, ever watchful for a photo opportunity, leapt out of the car, camera in hand for a shot. The truck driver emerged before photography was completed, and asked, "Know what that is?"





"A sewer pipe?"

"An oil pipe?"

"No".

It was part of a wind turbine - a section of the upright "stem", bigger than I'd have expected.

My mind wandered off, pondering energy and the astrological elements: Earth, Air, Water and Fire. All offer opportunities for man to extract energy. The Earth gave us oil and coal - overused through long centuries, to its eventual detriment. Fire gives us heat energy, thermal dynamics, and solar energy, increasingly being harnessed using solar panels.

Water and Air offer some relatively new opportunities to harness their energy on a big scale, both will probably move more to the fore in coming decades. Wind turbines are already showing up, even in supposedly backward Oklahoma. A regiment of these elegant structures can be seen topping a ridge beyond the Wichita Mountains. Water offers hydro-electric power, of which man has already made good use for several decades, and a newly tapped source from the ocean - wave energy.


It's interesting that Neptune and Uranus, outer planets which could be said to rule Water and Air respectively are currently lying in each other's domain or sign of rulership - Uranus in Pisces, Neptune in Aquarius. Their planetary energies combine and gather strength - perhaps heralding an incoming prominence of the energy derived from their elements.

These two artworks illustrate energy from Water and Air rather nicely:

Water: by English Golden Age illustrator Walter Crane



Air: by Russian-born surrealist painter Vladimir Kush