ARIES (March 21-April 19) Climbing mountains has been a popular adventure since the 19th century, but there are still many peaks around the world that no one has ever ascended. They include the 24,591-foot-high Muchu Chhish in Pakistan, 23,691-foot Karjiang South in Tibet and 12,600-foot Sauyr Zhotasy on the border of China and Kazakhstan. If there are any Aries mountaineers reading this horoscope who have been dreaming about conquering an unclimbed peak, 2019 will be a great time to do it, and now would be a perfect moment to plan or launch your quest. As for the rest of you Aries, what’s your personal equivalent of reaching the top of an unclimbed peak?

TAURUS (April 20–May 20) Eminem’s song “Lose Yourself” was a featured track in the movie 8 Mile, and it won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2003. The creator himself was not present at the Oscar ceremony to accept his award, however. He was so convinced his song would lose that he stayed home. At the moment that presenter Barbra Streisand announced Eminem’s triumph, he was asleep in front of the TV with his daughter, who was watching cartoons. In contrast to him, I hope you will be fully available and on the scene for the recognition or acknowledgment that should be coming your way sometime soon.

GEMINI (May 21–June 20) While enjoying its leisure time, the peregrine falcon glides around at 50 miles per hour. But when it’s motivated by the desire to eat, it may swoop and dart at a velocity of 220 miles per hour. Amazing! In accordance with your astrological omens, Gemini, I propose that we make the peregrine falcon your spirit creature for the next three weeks. I suspect you will have extraordinary speed and agility and focus whenever you’re hunting for exactly what you want. So here’s a crucial question: what exactly do you want?

CANCER (June 21–July 22) Now and then the sun shines and rain falls at the same time. The meteorological name for the phenomenon is “sunshower,” but folklore provides other terms. Hawaiians may call it “liquid sunshine” or “ghost rain.” Speakers of the Tangkhul language in India imagine it as “the wedding of a human and spirit.” Whatever you might prefer to call it, Cancerian, I suspect that the foreseeable future will bring you delightful paradoxes in a similar vein. And in my opinion, that will be very lucky for you, since you’ll be in the right frame of mind and spirit to thrive amidst just such situations.

LEO (July 23–August 22) A study by the Fidelity financial services company revealed that in 43 percent of all couples, neither partner has an accurate knowledge of how much money the other partner earns. Meanwhile, research by the National Institute of Health concludes that among heterosexual couples, 36 percent of husbands misperceive how frequently their wives have orgasms. I bring this to your attention in order to sharpen your focus on how crucial it is to communicate clearly with your closest allies. I mean, it’s rarely a good idea to be ignorant about what’s going on with those close to you, but it’ll be an especially bad idea during the next six weeks.

VIRGO (August 23–September 22) Torre Mayor is one of the tallest skyscrapers in Mexico City. When workers finished its construction in 2003, it was one of the world’s most earthquake-proof buildings, designed to hold steady during an 8.5-level temblor. Over the course of 2019, Virgo, I’d love to see you erect the metaphorical equivalent of that unshakable structure in your own life. The astrological omens suggest that doing so is quite possible. And the coming weeks will be an excellent time to launch that project or intensify your efforts to manifest it.

LIBRA (September 23–October 22) Multitalented Libran singer and actor Donald Glover uses the name of Childish Gambino when he performs his music. How did he select that alias? He used an online random name generator created by the rap group Wu-Tang Clan. I tried the same generator and got “Fearless Warlock” as my new moniker. You might want to try it yourself, Libra. The coming weeks will be an excellent time to add layers to your identity and expand your persona and mutate your self-image. The generator is here: tinyurl.com/yournewname. (P.S.: If you don’t like the first one you’re offered, keep trying until you get one you like.)

SCORPIO (October 23–November 21) Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Salvator Mundi sold for $450 million in 2017. Just 12 years earlier, an art collector had bought it for $10,000. Why did its value increase so extravagantly? Because in 2005, no one was sure it was an authentic da Vinci painting. It was damaged and had been covered with other layers of paint that hid the original image. After extensive efforts at restoration, the truth about it emerged. I foresee the possibility of a comparable, if less dramatic, development in your life during the next ten months, Scorpio. Your work to rehabilitate or renovate an underestimated resource could bring big dividends.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22–December 21) We can behold colors because of specialized cells in our eyes called cones. Most of us have three types of cones, but a few rare people have four. This enables them to see far more hues than the rest of us. Are you a tetrachromat, a person with super-vision? Whether you are or not, I suspect you will have extra powerful perceptual capacities in the coming weeks. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, you will be able to see more than you usually do. The world will seem brighter and deeper and more vivid. I urge you to deploy your temporary superpower to maximum advantage.

CAPRICORN (December 22–January 19) There are two kinds of minor, boring tasks. One is when you’re attending to a detail that’s not in service to a higher purpose, like scouring a permanent stain on a part of the kitchen counter that no one ever sees; the other is when you’re attending to a detail that is a crucial step in the process of fulfilling an important goal, like downloading a software update so your computer works better and you can raise your efficiency levels as you pursue a pet project. The coming weeks will be an excellent time to keep this distinction in mind as you focus on the minor, boring little tasks that are crucial steps in the process of eventually fulfilling an important goal.

AQUARIUS (January 20–February 18) Before comedian Robin Williams was famous, he spontaneously sat on his own head when he auditioned for the role of the extraterrestrial immigrant Mork, the hero of the TV sitcom Mork and Mindy. The casting director was impressed with Williams’ odd but amusing gesture, and hired him immediately. If you’re presented with an opportunity sometime soon, I encourage you to be inspired by the comedian’s ingenuity. What might you do to cinch your audition, to make a splashy first impression, to convince interested parties that you’re the right person?

PISCES (February 19–March 20) Twitter wit Notorious Debi Hope advises us, “Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assho––s.” That’s wise counsel for you to keep in mind during the next three weeks. Let me add a few corollaries. First, stave off any temptation you might have to believe that others know what’s good for you better than you do. Second, figure out what everyone thinks of you and aggressively liberate yourself from their opinions. Third, if anyone even hints at not giving you the respect you deserve, banish them for at least three weeks.

When Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2016, the news was greeted by some with the retort that, if the Swedes were going to go in that direction, they should have given the prize to Joni Mitchell. It would have been both a smart choice and a sentimental one, given the premature report of Joni’s death to a brain aneurysm in 2015. In recent years, she’s suffered other maladies. The cigs caught up with that crystalline voice, and a mysterious skin condition made her shun daylight.

Yet the party for her in Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration shows both the range of her music and the affection that the world of music has for her.

The concert film compiles a two-night-long show last November at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, the city she analyzed in verse for years.

Not everyone gets Joni Mitchell: the strange guitar tunings, the high blue yodel or the throaty intimacy of her confessional mode. Writing about Mitchell, who was one of only two female performers in 1978’s Last Waltz, Roger Ebert said that he didn’t know what her song “Coyote” was supposed to be about. (It’s easy: it’s about Sam Shepard, or somebody like him.)

While Mitchell’s modes changed, from lissome folkie to thick-skinned blueswoman to jazz artist, one point stayed as constant as a northern star: both in age and in youth, Mitchell insisted on a woman’s privilege of traveling alone, sleeping with whom she pleased and holding firm to independence.

Lyrically, Mitchell’s viewpoint changed from hippie naiveté to embittered realist. If once she thought people were made of stardust, she came to fear they’re all just meat in a dog-eat-dog world, where “sex sells everything / and sex kills.” Always in her songs are diagrams of traps waiting for women. One side is the grim one-night-stand in “Down to You”; the other is a different kind of discontent in “Harry’s House/Centerpiece.” There, Mitchell imagines the Scarsdale angst that could have been hers, lolling around waiting for the husband to return from the indelible cityscape she painted (“A helicopter lands on the Pan Am roof / like a dragonfly on a tomb”).

The concert is something for any Mitchell fan, from tricky jazz to the kind of crowd-pleasing material that any semi-competent street busker can make sound good. Glen Hansard, whose busking style was visible in the movie Once, does “Coyote” here. (Maybe the sainted Ebert would have understood the lyrics if a man sang them?)

Graham Nash sings “Our House,” about the Laurel Canyon place he and Joni shared once upon a time. Mitchell’s fellow Canadian Diana Krall covers perhaps the bleakest song Mitchell ever did, “Amelia,” about a woman’s search for freedom, what it costs and what it’s worth. James Taylor and Seal collaborate on a tune I cannot abide, “Woodstock”; if it seems particularly airy-fairy, remember that Mitchell actually didn’t play the Woodstock fest.

The vocally craggy Kris Kristofferson takes on “A Case of You” with Brandi Carlile, right before Carlile solos to cover “Down to You,” a startling sound-alike version of a very complicated song. Emmylou Harris (the other woman in The Last Waltz) covers Mitchell’s terrifying slide-guitar lament about heroin, “Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire.” Los Lobos perform the obscure but fine “Nothing Can Be Done.” The congas in the original must have attracted the Wolves.

Making a rare appearance, but not joining in on the music, is Mitchell herself. Buffeted by the years, she’s still everything Chaka Khan calls her here: a lifesaver.

‘Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration’ screens on Thursday, Feb. 7, and Wednesday, Feb. 13, at the Smith Rafael Film Center, 1114 Fourth St., San Rafael. Feb. 7 is sold-out; Feb. 13, 7pm. $15. 415.454.1222.

Hero

After spending more than eight years apprehending violent felons, locating evidence in crimes and operating with the San Rafael-Novato SWAT team, Lex, a specially trained police dog and respected member of the Novato Police Department, will enjoy a well-deserved retirement. The beloved Belgian Malinois joined the department in 2011, purchased with a donation from Marin County Supervisor Judy Arnold and support from the nonprofit organization Pennies for Police Dogs. The Novato community named him Lex after a military police dog who received a Purple Heart; fittingly, the word lex means “law” in Latin.

During his career, Lex partnered with Officer Kendrick Pilegaard in the patrol division of the Novato PD. The pair frequently battled the drug trade, with Lex using his powerful sense of smell to sniff out illegal narcotics. (A dog’s nose houses 300 million olfactory receptors versus a human’s 6 million.)

Lex was also a champ at interacting with the public, one of the most important aspects of his work as a police canine. Together, Lex and Officer Pilegaard conducted demonstrations to hundreds of people, fostering positive relationships between the police and the community.

The NPD reports that working dogs like Lex aren’t often treated as pets. The next chapter for Lex includes living with Officer Pilegaard and his family, relishing the relaxed life of a treasured pooch. We salute Lex for his loyal service and wish him well in his golden years.