July 13 Weekly Astrology

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July 13 Weekly Astrology

ARIES (March 21-April 19): With a fanciful flourish, Aries poet Seamus Heaney wrote, “I ate the day/Deliberately, that its tang/Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.” I’d love for you to be a pure verb for a while, Aries. Doing so would put you in robust rapport with astrological rhythms. As a pure verb, you’ll never be static. Flowing and transformation will be your specialties. A steady stream of fresh inspiration and new meanings will come your way. You already have an abundance of raw potential for living like a verb—more than all the other signs of the zodiac. And in the coming weeks, your aptitude for that fluidic state will be even stronger than usual.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): According to Arthurian myth, the Holy Grail is a cup that confers magical powers. Among them are eternal youth, miraculous healing, the restoration of hope, the resurrection of the dead, and an unending supply of healthy and delicious food and drink. Did the Grail ever exist as a material object? Some believe so. After 34 years of research, historian David Adkins thinks he’s close to finding it. He says it’s buried beneath an old house in Burton-on-Trent, a town in central England. I propose we make this tantalizing prospect your metaphor of power during the coming weeks. Why? I suspect there’s a chance you will discover a treasure or precious source of vitality. It may be partially hidden in plain sight or barely disguised in a mundane setting.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): I’m pleased to authorize you to be extra vast and extensive in the coming weeks. Like Gemini poet Walt Whitman, you should never apologize and always be proud of the fact that you contain multitudes. Your multivalent, wide-ranging outlook will be an asset, not a liability. We should all thank you for being a grand compendium of different selves. Your versatility and elasticity will enhance the well-being of all of us whose lives you touch.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Your memory is SUBSTANTIAL. Your sensitivity is MONUMENTAL. Your urge to nurture is DEEP. Your complexity is EPIC. Your feelings are BOTTOMLESS. Your imagination is PRODIGIOUS. Because of all these aptitudes and capacities, you are TOO MUCH for some people. Not everyone can handle your intricate and sometimes puzzling BEAUTY. But there are enough folks out there who do appreciate and thrive on your gifts. In the coming weeks and months, make it your quest to focus your urge to merge on them.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): I love these lines by Leo poet Conrad Aiken: “Remember (when time comes) how chaos died to shape the shining leaf.” I hope this lyrical thought will help you understand the transformation you’re going through. The time has come for some of your chaos to expire—and in doing so, generate your personal equivalent of shining leaves. Can you imagine what the process would look and feel like? How might it unfold? Your homework is to ponder these wonders.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): A British woman named Andie Holman calls herself the Scar Queen. She says, “Tight scar tissue creates pain, impacts mobility, affects your posture and usually looks bad.” Her specialty is to diminish the limiting effects of scars, restoring flexibility and decreasing aches. Of course, she works with actual physical wounds, not the psychological kind. I wish I could refer you to healers who would help you with the latter, Virgo. Do you know any? If not, seek one out. The good news is that you now have more personal power than usual to recover from your old traumas and diminish your scars. I urge you to make such work a priority in the coming weeks.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Ancient Roman philosopher Seneca wrote, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” But a Spanish proverb suggests a different element may be necessary: “Good luck comes by elbowing.” (Elbowing refers to the gesture you use as you push your way through a crowd, nudging people away from the path you want to take.) A Danish proverb says that preparation and elbowing aren’t enough: “Luck will carry someone across the brook if they are not too lazy to leap.” Modern author Wendy Walker has the last word: “Fortune adores audacity.” I hope I’ve inspired you to be alert to the possibility that extra luck is now available to you. And I hope I’ve convinced you to be audacious, energetic, well-prepared and willing to engage in elbowing. Take maximum advantage of this opportunity.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Many Scorpios imagine sex to be a magnificent devotion, a quintessential mode of worship, an unparalleled celebration of sacred earthiness. I endorse and admire this perspective. If our culture had more of it, the art and entertainment industries would offer far less of the demeaning, superficial versions of sexuality that are so rampant. Here’s another thing I love about Scorpios: So many of you grasp the value of sublimating lust into other fun and constructive accomplishments. You’re skilled at channeling your high-powered libido into practical actions that may have no apparent erotic element. The coming weeks will be an excellent time for you to do a lot of that.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): A Sagittarius reader named Jenny-Sue asked, “What are actions I could take to make my life more magical?” I’m glad she asked. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to raise your delight and enchantment levels, to bask in the blessed glories of alluring mysteries and uncanny synchronicities. Here are a few tips: 1. Learn the moon’s phases and keep track of them. 2. Acquire a new sacred treasure and keep it under your pillow or in your bed. 3. Before sleep, ask your deep mind to provide you with dreams that help generate creative answers to a specific question. 4. Go on walks at night or at dawn. 5. Compose a wild or funny prayer and shout it aloud it as you run through a field. 6. Sing a soulful song to yourself as you gaze into a mirror.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Being able to receive love doesn’t come easy for some Capricorns. You may also not be adept at making yourself fully available for gifts and blessings. But you can learn these things. You can practice. With enough mindful attention, you might eventually become skilled at the art of getting a lot of what you need and knowing what to do with it. And I believe the coming weeks will be a marvelous time to increase your mastery.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “If I don’t practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.” This quote is variously attributed to violinist Jascha Heifetz, trumpeter Louis Armstrong and violinist Isaac Stern. It’s a fundamental principle for everyone who wants to get skilled at any task, not just for musicians. To become a master of what you love to do, you must work on it with extreme regularity. This is always true, of course. But according to my astrological analysis, it will be even more intensely true and desirable for you during the coming months. Life is inviting you to raise your expertise to a higher level. I hope you’ll respond!

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In May 2021, Jessica and Ben Laws got married on their dairy farm. The ceremony unfolded smoothly, but an unforeseen event interrupted the reception party. A friend who had been monitoring their herd came to tell the happy couple that their pregnant cow had gone into labor and was experiencing difficulties. Jessica ran to the barn and plunged into active assistance, still clad in her lovely floor-length bridal gown and silver tiara. The dress got muddy and trashed, but the birth was successful. The new bride had no regrets. I propose making her your role model for now. Put practicality over idealism. Opt for raw and gritty necessities instead of neat formalities. Serve what’s soulful, even if it’s messy.

Strategists Need to Rethink Policy

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Strategists Need to Rethink Policy

A number of nuclear strategy experts have agreed that the only sensible response to China’s alarming new buildup of nuclear weapons is for the U.S. itself to build more and better weapons. 

The apparent purpose of this buildup on our part is first to ensure that our deterrent is ironclad, and second it is argued as the only viable way to force the Chinese (and perhaps even the Russians, eventually) to the arms control table. After all, it worked before, when President Ronald Reagan outspent the Russians and helped end the first cold war.

There are three factors suggesting that this supposedly thoughtful establishment policy is performatively contradictory and growing more so.

First, there is the dark paradox of having the weapons at the ready on hair-trigger precisely so that they will never be used. It is already a kind of miracle that we have been able to make it through decades of nuclear confrontation without making a fatal mistake (though the catalog of known near-misses is profoundly sobering).

Second, nuclear winter. Carefully designed computer models predict that it would only take about a hundred detonations over large cities to raise tons of soot into the upper atmosphere sufficient to cause a global freeze that would destroy most agriculture for a decade.

And third, opportunity costs. Together, the three superpowers are planning trillions in spending to upgrade their arsenals both in terms of quantity and “quality” when the world is crying out for funds for a variety of issues, from Covid to climate.

If nuclear weapons could resolve the present tensions over Taiwan and in Ukraine, someone would presumably already have used them. 

The nuclear nations are stuck in a system which has no exit, no good outcome—unless they realize their common interest in change. But someone must make the first move that initiates a possible virtuous circle. Why not the U.S.?

Once strategists disenthrall themselves of the supposed necessities of deterrence, a new picture of a shared self-interest in moving beyond the nuclear age may come into focus. 

—Winslow Myers

Winslow Myers is author of ‘Living Beyond War: A Citizen’s Guide.’

Water Concerns in Marin City

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Water Concerns in Marin City

Following up on the article “Don’t Drink the Water,” residents concerned by the quality of drinking water in our Marin City community may want to take a deeper dive into the current state of drinking water regulations under our federal Safe Drinking Water Act. The law, enacted in 1974, currently regulates just a small fraction of the contaminants we find in our environment. The challenge is to rapidly expand the list of pollutants for which the federal Environmental Protection Agency establishes Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs). In the absence of such action, members of our community are left unaware and unprotected.

Seeking a way forward through other federal environmental laws, an environmental public interest group for which I serve as co-counsel attempted an innovative strategy by employing the federal hazardous waste law to halt the delivery by the City of Vacaville of drinking water contaminated with hexavalent chromium (the toxic waste at the center of the movie Erin Brockovich). Hexavalent chromium is inexcusably not regulated under the federal drinking water law. Our federal courts struck down this effort, leaving residents in continued peril.

The goal in our community, and for too many others across the nation, is to heighten awareness of the everyday threat of drinking water that poses a danger to health and to press our federal and state governments to establish and impose drinking water standards that reflect the significant number of pollutants in our environment, ensuring every tap in every home delivers water that is safe and secure.

David Weinsoff

Fairfax

Culture Crush—Environment Art in Marin, Bastille Day in Larkspur, and More

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Culture Crush—Environment Art in Marin, Bastille Day in Larkspur, and More

Larkspur

Bastille Day Celebration 

Vive la France! Join the celebrations at Left Bank Brasserie this Thursday through Sunday, in the spirit of Bastille Day. The celebratory vibes will be in full swing with rustic, authentic French additions to the restaurant’s lunch, dinner and beverage menus, plus festive bleu, blanc and rouge decorations. There will be live music, a stilt walker, a mime, a magician, and staff ensembles and costumes. Francophiles seeking food, Champagne and an all-around entertaining time need look no further. Bastille Day is hosted at Left Bank Brasserie, 507 Magnolia Ave., Larkspur. Visit www.leftbank.com for more information. 

Santa Rosa

Wreckless Strangers on Tour 

The Krush 95.9 Backyard Concerts are in full swing. This Thursday, see Wreckless Strangers and check out their new album, When the Sun and a Blue Star Collide, produced by Grammy Award-winner Colin Linden, who has produced such names as Bruce Cockburn, Alison Krauss and Bob Dylan. The first single, “Sun State,” is currently making waves on AAA and Americana Radio and stars blues legend Charlie Musselwhite on harmonica. The band features Amber Morris (premier vocal coach noted for her work with members of Journey and Mr. Big) on vocals; David Noble (Poor Man’s Whiskey, Pardon the Interruption) on lead guitar and vocals; Joshua Zucker (The Jones Gang, Rowan Brothers) on bass; Austin de Lone (Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, The Fabulous Thunderbirds) on keys; Mick Hellman (The Go to Hell Man Band) on drums and vocals; and Rob Anderson (repeat world champion cyclist) on guitar. Wreckless Strangers is playing Thursday, July 14 at 3565 Standish Ave., Santa Rosa. Doors at 5:30pm; music starts at 6pm. Free. 

Marin

Reflections on Climate Change 

Join the Marin Art and Garden Center for Confluence: Reflections on Our Shifting Environment. In this climate-focused exhibition, artist Laura Corallo-Titus presents multi-media paintings addressing how the historic expectations of landscape painting have been hijacked by a more chaotic and disrupted visual conclusion. Cindy Stokes’ installation and wall sculpture urge one to contemplate the now ever-present threat of wildfire while acknowledging our dependence on and enjoyment of fire’s domesticated form. Arminée Chahbazian creates large multi-media imagery on paper to explore how recent environmental shifts modulate our desires for nature’s beauty and drama, leading to a sense of displacement. The thread tying these artists’ work together is an intentional examination of humankind’s evolving perceptions about our responsibility to care for the planet. Confluence: Reflections on our Shifting Environment is at Marin Art and Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd, Ross. The opening reception is Sunday, July 24, 1pm-3pm. Free. Registration required. www.maringarden.org 

Sebastopol

Jerry’s Middle Finger 

Step out this Saturday for a night of rocking rock and roll at Hopmonk Tavern in Sebastopol with Jerry’s Middle Finger (JMF).  It’s generally undisputed that JMF delivers the best Jerry Garcia Band tribute experience in the world. Conceived in 2015 by a group of professional musicians passionate about Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, JMF has graced Los Angeles speakeasies and beachside dive bars for the last seven years, honing their signature sound and getting the party started. JMF has played all along the West Coast, packing legendary venues like Sweetwater Music Hall, Terrapin Crossroads and Pappy & Harriet’s—dazzling new fans on the scene and pulling even the most discerning Jerry fanatics out of their seats for the first time in decades. Come rock out this Saturday night! JMF plays at Hopmonk Tavern, 230 Petaluma Ave., Sebastopol. Doors 8pm; show starts at 9pm. Tickets $30. www.hopmonk.com 

—Jane Vick

Helina Metaferia’s Boston Show Comes to Bolinas Museum

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Helina Metaferia’s Boston Show Comes to Bolinas Museum

The Bolinas Museum, a staple of Marin art curation since 1987, has opened a new exhibition. Helina Metaferia: All Put Together, curated by Bolinas Museum director Louisa Gloger, runs through Aug. 11.

Artist Helina Metaferia, based in New York City and assistant professor at Brown University, is a first generation Ethiopian-American who grew up in a very politically active family. Her father is a teacher of political science, and her mother, Dr. Maigenet Shifferraw, was president of the Center for the Rights of Ethiopian Women.

Metaferia received her B.A. in painting from Morgan State University, and her M.F.A. in interdisciplinary arts from Tufts University. This combination of the study of different media, an American upbringing by an Ethiopian family, and lifelong political involvement is the framework of Metaferia’s productions, which range from video to collage to live performances.

All Put Together is a multi-dimensional and cross-media show, including collage, tapestry and video, all of which Metaferia uses to express the ongoing project of social progress, and to communicate underrepresented social engagement narratives.

The exhibition’s work is rooted in the history of activism in the United States, particularly through the lens of contemporary BIPOC women.

Among the works displayed in the exhibition are six collages from Metaferia’s Headdress series, each of which is built upon a photograph of a BIPOC, female-identifying individual.

These photos were taken following several performance-as-activism workshops facilitated with students, faculty and staff of Tufts, MassArt, Northeastern and Emerson College in 2021, and atop each portrait sits a headdress, collaged from archived materials of Boston’s activism history.

The resulting images are a masterful integration of the past with the present day. Within the headdress, the viewer moves through years undulating with the liveliness of activism and the power of BIPOC women.

As one would with a historical timeline, the viewer follows the momentum along the headdress, finishing the visual journey at the focal point of the present-day sitter. Nestled below this panoply of power is the individual who now takes up the torch of BIPOC progress.

In an interview with Surface in April, Metaferia explained one of the pieces from the series, Headdress 34, in three words: “regal, heavy, grace.” The piece’s headdress is reminiscent of the 1345 BCE Nefertiti bust, with its signature blue headpiece and golden diadem. The steady, forward gaze of the sitter, upon closer inspection, is the cutout face of an archived activist. The tilt of the chin and the soft yet set expression read profound capacity and grace.

The size and weight of the headdress feels evident but not oppressive. This is not regal in a traditional monarchical sense of the word; it is the regality born from strength in the face of injustice. Persistence through both failure and victory.

Raising awareness around the history behind the piece is part of the artwork. Each of the six pieces from Headdress is carefully accompanied by descriptions, outlining both the work of the individual activist and going into meticulous detail about the source materials for the collage.

“I don’t use Photoshop to make my collages,” said Metaferia in her interview with Surface. “I’m very tactile and am always printing and cutting them by hand in my studio. That’s not easy to tell when looking at a JPG. Also, I don’t use images from the internet in my collages. All the archives come from extensive library research, where librarians are my collaborators… Each collage comes from a meaningful exchange with another human.”

The exhibition also contains a video entitled The Response, which features some of the same BIPOC women represented in Headdress. In Response, an edited video recorded during a Zoom workshop, tribute is paid to the current moment of social justice. Three minutes long, the video includes footage of marching and protests, with low audio through which snippets of declaration begin to be heard.

All Put Together in its entirety reminds that progress, or the labor in pushing for progress, is never linear. The work of change requires both power and vulnerability, and is an ever-evolving process. It pays homage to the culmination of this work in the current landscape, as fraught as it may still be.

“As an artist who works very interdisciplinary, I’m attracted to certain mediums that speak to legacies of resistance. Performance is the language of activism, social practice is the langauge of community organizing, and collage has been used for decades in feminist resistence and critiques on media cutlure. I am interested in the ways activists reclaim the spectacle of the image, especially when the media and propaganda use images against them. I am curious about what gets archived in repositories, and how that process reveals biases.”

See ‘Helina Metaferia: All Put Together’ at the Bolinas Museum Friday between 1pm and 5pm, and Saturday through Sunday from 12pm-5pm. For more information, visit www.bolinasmuseum.org

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Astrology – Week of 07/06/22

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ARIES (March 21-April 19): My readers and I have collaborated to provide insights and inspirations about the topic “How to Be an Aries.” Below is an amalgam of my thoughts and theirs—advice that will especially apply to your life in the coming days. 1. If it’s easy, it’s boring.—Beth Prouty. 2. If it isn’t challenging, do something else.—Jennifer Blackmon Guevara. 3. Be confident of your ability to gather the energy to get unstuck, to instigate, to rouse—for others as well as yourself. 4. You are a great initiator of ideas, and you are also willing to let go of them in their pure and perfect forms so as to help them come to fruition. 5. When people don’t get things done fast enough for you, be ready and able to DO IT YOURSELF.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I know three people who have told me, “I don’t like needing anyone for anything.” They fancy themselves to be rugged individualists with impeccable self-sufficiency. They imagine they can live without the help or support of other humans. I don’t argue with them; it’s impossible to dissuade anyone with such a high level of delusion. The fact is, we are all needy beings who depend on a vast array of benefactors. Who built our houses, grew our food, sewed our clothes, built the roads, and created the art and entertainment we love? I bring this up, Taurus, because now is an excellent time for you to celebrate your own neediness. Be wildly grateful for all the things you need and all the people who provide them. Regard your vigorous interdependence as a strength, not a weakness.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Bounce up and down when you walk. Express 11 different kinds of laughs. Be impossible to pin down or figure out. Relish the openings that your restlessness spawns. Keep changing the way you change. Be easily swayed and sway others easily. Let the words flowing out of your mouth reveal to you what you think. Live a dangerous life in your daydreams, but not in real life. Don’t be everyone’s messenger, but be the messenger for as many people as is fun for you. If you have turned out to be the kind of Gemini who is both saintly and satanic, remember that God made you that way—so let God worry about it.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): As a child, Cancerian author June Jordan said, “I used to laugh all the time. I used to laugh so much and so hard in church, in school, at the kitchen table, on the subway! I used to laugh so much my nose would run and my eyes would tear and I just couldn’t stop.” That’s an ideal I invite you to aspire to in the coming days. You probably can’t match Jordan’s plenitude, but do your best. Why? The astrological omens suggest three reasons: 1. The world will seem funnier to you than it has in a long time. 2. Laughing freely and easily is the most healing action you can take right now. 3. It’s in the interests of everyone you know to have routines interrupted and disrupted by amusement, delight and hilarity.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In accordance with the astrological omens, here’s your assignment for the next three weeks: Love yourself more and more each day. Unleash your imagination to come up with new reasons to adore and revere your unique genius. Have fun doing it. Laugh about how easy and how hard it is to love yourself so well. Make it into a game that brings you an endless stream of amusement. P.S.: Yes, you really are a genius—by which I mean you are an intriguing blend of talents and specialties that is unprecedented in the history of the human race.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Novelist Lydia Peelle writes, “The trouble was, I knew exactly what I wasn’t. I just didn’t know who I was.” We all go through similar phases, in which we are highly aware of what we don’t want, don’t like and don’t seek to become. They are like negative grace periods that provide us with valuable knowledge. But it’s crucial for us to also enjoy periods of intensive self-revelation about what we do want, what we do like, and what we do seek to become. In my astrological estimation, you Virgos are finished learning who you’re not, at least for now. You’re ready to begin an era of finding out much, much more about who you are.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): You need the following experiences at least once every other day during the next 15 days: a rapturous burst of unexpected grace, a gentle eruption of your strong willpower, an encounter with inspiration that propels you to make some practical improvement in your life, a brave adjustment in your understanding of how the world works, a sacrifice of an OK thing that gives you more time and energy to cultivate a really good thing.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): This might sound like an unusual assignment, but I swear it’s based on two unimpeachable sources: research by scientists and my many years of analyzing astrological data. Here’s my recommendation, Scorpio: In the coming weeks, spend extra time watching and listening to wild birds. Place yourself in locations where many birds fly and perch. Read stories about birds and talk about birds. Use your imagination to conjure up fantasies in which you soar alongside birds. Now read this story about how birds are linked to happiness levels: tinyurl.com/BirdBliss.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In accordance with current astrological omens, I have four related suggestions for you. 1. Begin three new projects that are seemingly beyond your capacity and impossible to achieve with your current levels of intelligence, skill and experience—and then, in the coming months, accomplish them anyway. 2. Embrace optimism for both its beauty and its tactical advantages. 3. Keep uppermost in mind that you are a teacher who loves to teach and you are a student who loves to learn. 4. Be amazingly wise, be surprisingly brave, be expansively visionary—and always forgive yourself for not remembering where you left your house keys.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): If you ever wanted to use the Urdu language to advance your agendas for love and romance, here’s a list of endearments you could use: 1 jaan-e-man (heart’s beloved); 2. humraaz (secret-sharer, confidante); 3. pritam (beloved); 4. sona (golden one); 5. bulbul (nightingale); 6. yaar (friend/lover); 7. natkhat (mischievous one). Even if you’re not inclined to experiment with Urdu terms, I urge you to try innovations in the way you use language with your beloved allies. It’s a favorable time to be more imaginative in how you communicate your affections.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Author John Berger described birch trees as “pliant” and “slender.” He said that “if they promise a kind of permanence, it has nothing to do with solidity or longevity—as with an oak or a linden—but only with the fact that they seed and spread quickly. They are ephemeral and recurring—like a conversation between earth and sky.” I propose we regard the birch tree as your personal power symbol in the coming months. When you are in closest alignment with cosmic rhythms, you will express its spirit. You will be adaptable, flexible, resourceful and highly communicative. You will serve as an intermediary, a broker and a go-between.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): People who don’t know much about astrology sometimes say that Pisceans are wishy-washy. That’s a lie. The truth is, Pisceans are not habitually lukewarm about chaotic jumbles of possibilities. They are routinely in love with the world and its interwoven mysteries. On a regular basis, they feel tender fervor and poignant awe. They see and feel how all life’s apparent fragments knit together into a luminous bundle of amazement. I bring these thoughts to your attention because the coming weeks will be an excellent time to relish these superpowers of yours—and express them to the max.

Great Divides – Different worlds, same universe

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By Winslow Myers

Eight days of rafting down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon with my daughter promised to be an exceptional experience. Introducing myself to a fellow voyager, a Texan, I joked that surely Texas wasn’t really planning to secede, because it would be a pain to have to obtain a visa to visit Austin. This didn’t seem to go over very well. 

We had little in common except perhaps the experience of the river and the canyon. Sleeping outside in the dry 90 degree heat at night, we shared the closeness of the stars ringed by looming black towers of stone, stars that included a spiral arm of the Milky Way, a faint mist of light that feathered across the more familiar constellations.

Later, after a short hike up through narrowing walls of smooth stone, with no advance warning, we came upon a string quartet playing Elgar! Waterproofing their instruments, the musicians had arrived safely by raft to concertize in this most wildly improbable of venues.

The music drew us into the larger conversation of the universe with itself: an enigmatically self-organizing system had crushed and melted and swirled titanic masses of rock, which over hundreds of millions of years sank below and rose again above great seas, leaching out elements that combined into the first forms of cellular life—life that became self-sentient and sawed down other woody forms of life to fashion cellos to play notes derived from harmonies already built into the cosmos, harmonies drawn forth into distinct combinations by the mind of Bach or Elgar, now conveyed to insect-bitten, sweaty river voyagers by these generous performers.

Call this unfolding creative process God or evolution or what you will; we were in it together, regardless of the lack of a conversation that might have led to some affirmation of our group’s interdependence as citizens of one country, or at least as humans on one planet. Secession from the universe is not an option—even for Texas.

Winslow Myers, syndicated by PeaceVoice, author of ‘Living Beyond War: A Citizen’s Guide,’ serves on the advisory board of the War Preventive Initiative.

Depth Charge – Swimming With Poseidon

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Depth Charge – Swimming With Poseidon

By Christian Chensvold

Let’s skip—for a moment—whether or not the gods exist. That is, whether the seven “planetary governors” known to the ancients (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), and the 12 “fixed stars” (the wheel in the sky, or zodiac), have supernatural powers—as in “a higher kind of natural”—that human beings can invoke and channel.

Let’s skip for now, in other words, the scenario in which you’re cornered by ruffians and have no choice but to fight for survival. You invoke the planet Mars, the god of war, which happens to be perfectly placed in Aries in your natal chart. Your whole being instantly changes, you go into “rage mode” as if in a video game, and fight off three bad guys.

Let’s also skip the seduction scene you’ve planned of your new infatuation, who’s coming over on Friday night, the day of the week named for Venus. You prepare your home with flowers and fragrance, music and wine, and pray to Venus for a night of passion leading to an everlasting love, and sure enough it actually happens.

Yes, to placate followers of modern science, we will not try to prove that in these scenarios actual divine intervention has occurred simply because of the invocation and the positive outcome, foregoing all claims to objectivity and simply looking at what happens to the person who dares invoke the gods.

At the commencement of my awakening five years ago, I found myself staring at the Atlantic Ocean on a desolate stretch of beach. The sun was setting, the wind was picking up and the water was cold. I stood for ages trying to come up with a reason why I should enter the sea. Then my mind’s eye began to see images of ancient Greece drawn from a lifetime of movie-watching, and strange energies began coursing through me.

Suddenly, I shouted, “Alright Poseidon, show me what you’ve got!” I leapt into the brisk waters, swam as hard as I could, dove under waves, pulled up shells from the bottom and created a spontaneous ocean adventure, never for a moment letting go of the invocation I’d made. I exited the water in a state of exhilaration, and here I am years later writing about it.

Today it’s clear what happened. In summoning “the gods,” I made profane life suddenly sacred, magically conferring metaphysical meaning to otherwise meaningless action. The medium through which this took place was the imagination, which is not a faculty for envisioning material things that don’t really exist, but for connecting with immaterial things that actually do.

Burn This: Archival survival

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Burn This: Archival survival

I went to my safe deposit box in search of a backup hard drive that contained material I needed to share with a business associate. I turned the key and I pulled the box from the wall. Inside? Redundant copies of some legal papers and an allegedly rare Star Wars action figure with a snaggle-toothed grin—so happy he was to be liberated from this high-security sarcophagus.

I had never bothered to stash the hard drive in the box as planned. Instead, I found it under my desk, under a sheaf of unfiled, “important” papers. This baleful state of affairs is not unique to me; this is the way of the world, particularly when it comes to the fate of our cultural artifacts and, you know, the end of the world.

Attempts have been made. There are salt mines in Hutchinson, KS, where reels of studio-made celluloid are stowed in perfect atmospheric conditions. It’s a seed bank of cinema and it’s comforting to think that when the planet finally explodes, at least a few frames of Casablanca might someday rain upon another celestial body (“We will always have Venus”).

A Noah’s Ark chock-a-block with all of our art rocketed off this crowded little heat trap appeals to me. I’m sure I have some extraterrestrial colleagues that would get a kick out of what’s happened since Roswell. Otherwise, they’ve only had our broadcast TV waves, and those take a while to reach deep space. We’ve basically been sending Nick at Nite reruns into space. That and the Arecibo message make early Atari look like Da Vinci. 

I often think of the Voyager-1 satellite leaving our solar system as its 12-inch Golden Record crammed with Earth’s greatest hits played Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark is the Night.” Good for Blind Willie. I know I have no purchase on posterity. A wiser person might dwell on the evanescent ever-present and not the far-off future, but that’s not me. Instead, I embrace the inevitable bonfire of my vanities. And everyone else’s too. Destroy the evidence while we can because, frankly, our story has never been that great. You can’t paper over what we’ve done to each other and our world with Hamlet. So, let it burn.

Prior to the advent of fire season, I would recommend tearing out this page, folding it into a paper airplane and flicking your Bic to really send a message. But times have (climate) changed, so instead, fold one sheet into a paper hat and roll another into a “telescope” so you can peer into the starry heavens and hope the future both forgives and forget us.

Trivia – Week of 07/06/2022

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QUESTIONS:

1 The national headquarters of the Guide Dogs for the Blind is located where in Marin County?

2 Abe Lincoln said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you” … what …?

3a. The leading Tour de France bicyclist, the one with the lowest overall time, rides with a jersey of what color?

3b. This year’s Tour began in what capital city whose name begins with C, more than 700 miles from Paris?

4 The six strongest earthquakes in the U.S. all occurred in what state?

5 Each of these tennis tournaments is played on a different kind of surface (grass, clay, etc.). Identify each one:

a. Wimbledon b. U.S. Open c. French Open

6 The Gobi Desert stretches primarily through what two countries?

7a. What 33-year-old man wrote the original draft of America’s historic Declaration of Independence?

7b. In what city was this document signed?

8 What German automotive engineer, who worked on the original Volkswagen Beetle, later established a line of very expensive cars that he named after himself, and still exists today?

9 Give the titles of these biographical movies about the lives of these musical super performers:

a. Queen, 2018 

b. Elton John, 2019

c. Elvis Presley, 2022

10 Try to name four four-letter words that start with “F,” have only one vowel and contain a double consonant.

BONUS QUESTION: Walt Disney once said, “I loved ______ more than any woman I’ve ever known.” Fill in the blank with a name.

Want more live trivia?  You’re invited to the next Trivia Cafe team contest at the Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley on Sunday, July 24 at 5pm, hosted by Howard Rachelson. Free admission, and food and drinks are available. ho*****@********fe.com

ANSWERS:

1 In San Rafael, Terra Linda

2 “… can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

3 Yellow/Copenhagen, Denmark

4 Alaska

5a. Grass 5b. Acrylic hard court  5c. Clay

6 China and Mongolia

7a. Thomas Jefferson 

7b. Philadelphia

8 Dr. Ferdinand Porsche

9a. Bohemian Rhapsody 5b. Rocketman  5c. Elvis

10 Fall, fess, full, fuss… (others?)

BONUS ANSWER:

Mickey Mouse

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QUESTIONS: 1 The national headquarters of the Guide Dogs for the Blind is located where in Marin County? 2 Abe Lincoln said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you” ... what ...? 3a. The leading Tour de France bicyclist, the one with the lowest overall time, rides...
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