Gay Rights: A Setback in California

Well, the votes have finally been tallied and California’s Proposition 8, a citizens’ referendum banning gay marriage, has been approved.

This is bad news indeed. As readers of this blog may know, I’m not gay, but I believe lesbians and gays deserve the same rights as other Americans. I view their struggle for respect and recognition in our society in the same light that I viewed the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Why the sudden reversal in California, where 18,000 same-sex marriages already have taken place, and where back in May, the California Supreme Court overturned a previous voter-approved ban on gay marriage?

The opposition of Saturn in Virgo and Uranus in Pisces, which was exact yesterday, was tied to the Virgo Sun of the California statehood chart.

On a geographic level, the Saturn/Uranus opposition could also stir up wildfire activity and trigger earthquakes in California. There have been quite a few minor ones in the state lately, as this map shows.

I’m not making any predictions because I don’t have the quantitative chops to do the work required for earthquake forecasting. (In my next life, I’ll go to MIT or Berkeley.) Having said that, I don’t like the early morning of Nov. 9 in Southern California for a variety of reasons. Just be alert, O.K.?

With Saturn on California’s Sun right now, voters are feeling conservative and the state faces a $7 billion budget shortfall. I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t some class antagonism being reflected in the approval of Proposition 8, in addition to far-right religious fervor.

Gays and lesbians are prominent in California’s prosperous entertainment and technology industries, perhaps leading some voters to conclude that all gays are “rich,” a stereotype long associated with Jews because of their success in the creative, legal, and financial professions.

Of course, with Pluto in class-conscious Virgo, I tend to see things through the prism of class. I think gay rights organizations need to broaden their ranks and incorporate lower-middle class voters and Hispanics in their struggle if they are to prevail in the Golden State.

As gays know, there is tremendous resistance against homosexuals, particularly men, within the Latin culture, which celebrates machismo.

Evidently African-Americans, who know what it’s like to face prejudice, were big supporters of Proposal 8, with an overwhelming majority of California’s black voters favoring the discriminatory measure. There’s irony for you!

I don’t know enough about the referendum process in California to know what happens when voters approve a ban that was previously overturned by the State Supreme Court. Can it face legal appeal? SFMike at Civic Center, I’m depending on you to educate me.

Speaking of SFMike, I was just reading his coverage of the election and I was struck by his observation that the Mormons, who have been victims of discrimination because of their belief in polygamy, spent big bucks to get the anti-gay marriage vote out in California.

I still think the better off folks are financially, the more tolerant that they tend to be of lifestyles that differ from their own. When people are struggling to fill their gas tanks, pay their toxic mortgages, and make the minimum credit-card payment on time so their interest rate doesn’t get jacked up to 30%, they are in a bind.

When your mobility is limited, then you want to make sure everybody else is toeing the line and following the rules you believe in, regardless of what “good book” you found them in, whether it be the Talmud, the Bible, or the Koran. Anyway, that’s the way I see it. I’m not saying I believe religion is the opiate of the masses, but I do think money and class figure into this equation.

We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day

California: Buddy, Can You Spare $7 Billion?

There has been so much financial turmoil in so many places, it’s hard to keep up with it all. BusinessWeek, whose cover language this week is the Pluto in Capricorn-inspired “The New Financial Ice Age,” recently ran a story on California’s financial problems. The headline was “California to Feds: Got a Spare $7 Billion?”

What’s going in on the Golden State? Well, transiting Saturn, the stern taskmaster, is conjuncting California’s natal Sun in hard-working, health-conscious Virgo. You don’t have to be a California Psychic to figure out that’s going to result in some belt-tightening around those very toned California abs.

You can look at California’s chart here, courtesy of Astrodienst.

Back in June, I wrote about the imminent conjunction of Saturn in Virgo to the California Sun, which is also being opposed by Uranus in Pisces. I predicted everything from increased wildfire activity to possible unrest among Golden State residents.

This time, though, I have a prescription for Saturn in Virgo. Here’s my solution to California’s fiscal woes. So many people, Americans and Mexicans alike, want to enter the Golden State that I think California should set up toll booths at its borders and collect a fee from everybody who wants to come in.

Why does everybody want to come in? No, it’s not just to enjoy California’s splendid natural beauty and laid-back lifestyle and to catch a glimpse of a movie star or two. (Remember, this is a state where movie stars like Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger have been elected governor.)

With a Virgo Sun, California’s main attraction is work. According to The World Factbook published by the CIA, if California were an independent nation, it would have had the 10th largest economy in the world in 2007.

Before you dismiss the idea of tolls to enter California, consider this: New York City essentially does the same thing by charging fees on tunnels and bridges leading into the Big Apple. For example, it costs $8 to cross the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey into New York. (No toll going out.)

Californians will hate me for my next idea: tolls on highways. I recently drove from New York to Washington D.C. and was astounded at how much the little state of Delaware (represented by Senator Joe Biden) manages to extract from you for driving a few miles on Route 95.

I used to do this drive on a regular basis back in the Eighties. Driving through Delaware was free then. Now, I think it’s $9 or more. Forgive the sloppy reporting here. If I wanted to Google this morning, I’m sure I could find the exact toll and the exact number of miles you’re on Route 95 through Delaware. But I want to help California solve its economic woes instead.

I hope my commenter SFMike, who writes the Civic Center blog, will weigh in on these civic matters. I’m sure there are some highways in California that already have tolls, but I’m thinking of Interstate 10 running from Los Angeles into Arizona.

Maybe “the 10” needs to become a toll road. I know that truckers would be hurt because this is a main thoroughfare for them to transport produce out of California, but desperate times require desperate measures.

I’m sure there are some truckers or libertarians out there who are going to explain why states can’t or shouldn’t be allowed to collect tolls on interstate highways. In advance, I will tell you that it’s done in the Northeast on Interstate 95. Perhaps 95 has been declared a state road for the stretch that runs through New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. I plead ignorance.

That’s what’s great about blogging. Somebody out there who is a taxation or federal highway freak will write in and set me straight.

So to steal a line from that great California film The Graduate: “I just wanna say one word to you. Are you listening? Tolls.”

P.S. If you click on the “plastics” clip from The Graduate, you’ll be amazed that even in the revolutionary times of 1967, people still had manners. When Ben (Dustin Hoffman) turns away from talking to the women, he says, “Excuse me.” When the plastics man says, “Ben,” he replies, “Mr. McGuire.”

How many times have you been at a party when someone you were talking to was whisked away and never bothered to say, “Excuse me” or “I’ll catch up with you later”? Geez, I’m not turning into my mother. I’m turning into my grandmother!

Happy Birthday, Tesla Motors!

Here’s more evidence for the theory that people and places are in the news around the time of their birthday. After writing my post below on New Mexico losing the Tesla Motors sedan factory to California, I decided to run a natal chart for the pioneering electric car company.

Guess what? Tesla was born July 1, 2003 in San Carlos, Calif. (There are actually two towns named San Carlos in California. One is near San Diego and the other is outside of San Francisco. Tesla is based in the latter.)

Today is Tesla Motors’ fifth birthday. We don’t have a time of birth, so the chart has been set for noon. Here’s the link, courtesy of Astrodienst.

It’s noteworthy that Tesla, which is manufacturing a 100% electric sportscar, has an electrical Uranus/Mars conjunction in Pisces. It will be interesting to see what happens when Jupiter conjuncts the Uranus/Mars in late January, 2010. Maybe that’s when the first Teslas will hit the road.

The Sun in Cancer is conjunct Mercury and Saturn, which suggests this is a serious endeavor that will most likely encounter obstacles along the way. That doesn’t mean the company won’t be a success. Indeed, there has been considerable management turnover since the company was founded, but this isn’t unusual in a startup.

The July 2 New Moon at 11 degrees of Cancer symbolizes a new start for Tesla Motors. Maybe this has something to do with the tax breaks that California instituted last week for zero emission vehicle manufacturers such as Tesla Motors. (See “Tesla: California’s Gain is New Mexico’s Loss.”)

Tesla Motors: California’s Gain is New Mexico’s Loss

As readers of this blog know, I’ve been learning about the work of inventor Nikola Tesla and I’m fascinated by his namesake company, Tesla Motors, a California automaker that is working on a 100% electric roadster for 2009 delivery. (See “The Return of Nikola Tesla”).

I’m here in New Mexico visiting my family and the big news here this morning is Tesla Motors’ decision to cancel a production facility in Albuquerque that would have produced a sedan for the 2010 model year. Score one for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and zero for N.M. Governor Bill Richardson (D).

The reason for the shift to the Golden State? Tax incentives that will give the new startup at least $1 million in state funds to train employees. In addition, under a new program adopted by California last week, zero emission vehicle companies will be exempt from paying sales and use taxes on the purchase of manufacturing equipment.

Isn’t it funny how Republicans end up running California and doling out Democrat-style tax incentives? There must be something in the Golden State’s water that turns everyone into a liberal, not that there’s anything wrong with that, as Jerry Seinfeld would say.

Tesla also attributed the decision to scrap the N.M. plant to the greater efficiencies it can gain by having all its production in one place. Both its battery pack and the Tesla Roadster are currently manufactured in California.

What’s the astrological angle on this? Off the top of my head, I will attribute California’s early embrace of revolutionary technologies to the tight Uranus/Pluto conjunction in pioneering Aries in the statehood chart. You can look at it here, courtesy of Astrodienst.

Interestingly, the press release from Tesla was issued June 30, as Mars in Leo was trining Pluto in Sagittarius, forming a grand trine with the natal California Uranus/Pluto conjunction at 29 degrees of Aries.

I’m hitting the road today so I don’t have time to run a statehood chart for cash-poor New Mexico, but you don’t have to be an astrologer to realize that its government resources are a fraction of California’s. In fact, the Land of Enchantment often loses out to neighbor Arizona in bids to lure jobs to the state.

I spent the winter in California so I guess I’m an honorary Golden State resident, but I was sad to see New Mexico get muscled out yet again in the competition for a high-profile manufacturing facility.

More Death Valley Days for California?

I didn’t need California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to tell me the Golden State is in the middle of a drought. You can see it in the California natal chart, set for Sept. 9, 1850 in San Jose, at 9:41 a.m. Here’s the chart, thanks to Astrodienst.

Note that dry, constricting Saturn is heading for fertile California’s 16 degree Virgo Sun. Transiting Uranus is currently past an opposition with the Golden State Sun, but it’s moving retrograde, back to an opposition with Saturn in the sky. This will take place in early November at roughly 19 degrees of Pisces/Virgo.

Mars will also make a passage through Virgo, in August, going over the state’s Sun before it opposes Uranus in the sky, a signature for wildfires if I ever saw one. But this could easily be psychological fires as physical ones.

It looks to me like California’s populace could be angry. That may be due to the strain of higher gas prices on residents of a state that has long had a love affair with driving. Driving the Ventura Highway memorialized in the America tune has gotten a lot more expensive in the last year.

Still, with Virgo involved, the state’s civil servants might be up in arms about something or it could be agricultural workers or the truckers who transport produce who rise up in protest.

Few astrological sites are better than Richard Nolle’s AstroPro for predicting wild weather, which is often triggered by new and full moons. Click on his site on my blogroll and when you get to his home page, click on the label that says “futures.” Be sure and do this in the beginning of August if you live in California.

As California goes, so goes the nation. (Sorry, Maine!) A drought in this agricultural state is more grist for the mill of higher food prices. Here’s the link to a story about the governor’s official declaration: http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/990322.html

At the same time that the Governator is proclaiming a drought, the National Trust for Historic Preservation is sounding the alarm about the vulnerability of California’s state park system, citing “deterioration, neglect, and poor public policy.”

Here’s the link: http://www.preservationnation.org/travel-and-sites/sites/western-region/californias-state-parks.html

Saturn in Virgo could also be interpreted as belt-tightening (Saturn) in public parks (Virgo). Although it’s known for its symbol, the Virgin, Virgo is the sign of the worker. He or she takes the family to the park on weekends because it’s a low-cost form of entertainment, not to mention a way to commune with nature.

Protecting California’s land is an issue that has been close to home for me this winter while my husband has been working at one of the 125 golf courses in the Palm Springs area. Of course, you know how these courses stay green in a region that gets two to four inches of rain a year. They’re watered every day, sometimes twice a day.

In the interest of marital harmony, I’m going to reserve comment on the wisdom of this. Certainly, golf courses bring tourists to the desert and that helps the economy, but…

Given the number of swimming pools in the state, perhaps a daily swim could be a state-mandated substitute for a shower or bath. That’s assuming there’s enough water to fill the pool.

Savoring the Long Days of June

Moving from Southern California to New York State on June 1 does have its benefits. Longer days, to name one: 38 minutes longer, if this Web site is correct: http://www.sunrisesunset.com/

That’s the difference between the length of the day right now in New York City, vs. Los Angeles. I’m using these two cities as surrogates for Palm Springs, Calif., and Beacon, N.Y.

What do you do with 38 minutes of extra daylight? Well, if you’re me, you use it to walk to Ron’s Ice Cream on Fishkill Avenue and buy your first ice cream cone of the season. The rule in our house is that if my husband and I are going to Ron’s, we must walk. The thinking is that we will burn up the calories we consume in the ice cream cone during the walk to and from Ron’s, which is about a half-mile from our house.

I love to go out during the so-called magic hour (a term used by cinematographers, which I first learned about in the 1992 documentary Visions of Light). The magic hour is actually a few minutes before the sun goes down, not a whole hour. This period is prized by photographers because the light is diffuse and everything is bathed in a warm, golden glow. The harshness of daylight has disappeared and the sensuality of dusk is approaching.

Some people get a hopeful feeling at sunrise. Not me. I was born a few minutes before midnight, so I think I’m a night owl by design.

I made my magic hour trek to Ron’s by myself because Jim is still in Palm Springs. I ate my Hershey’s Peanut Butter Cup single cone on a bench where I see a Little League game in progress under the lights. No, not the Friday Night Lights, the Monday ones.

When I turned my head in the other direction, I could see the top of Mount Beacon, where patriots set fires during the Revolutionary War to signal information about British troop movements to George Washington, who was headquartered across the Hudson River in Newburgh.

What’s interesting to me in this old mill town is how many people jump in their Jeep Cherokees and Ford Explorers to travel a mile or less to grab a cone at Ron’s or a six-pack or lottery ticket at the corner deli. What is it going to take to get folks out of their SUVs and on their feet? Gas at $5 a gallon? $10?

There is a strange juxtaposition right now in Beacon and maybe in the U.S. On the one side, the tree huggers are apologizing for their carbon footprints and busily establishing compost piles in the backyards. On the other are those who feel that unlimited gasoline usage is their birthright. Is there an in-between in America?

To my mind, this would involve a sensible approach to conservation without finger-pointing from the Greens and temper tantrums from the gas guzzlers. It might also revive the quaint habit of walking to the store, the library, the ice cream stand. The only people who seem to walk in this town are children and senior citizens, though more bicycles seem to have arrived since I left here on Jan. 30.

Can we find a healthy place between self-flagellation for despoiling the planet and mindless consumption? I hope so.

The Return of Nikola Tesla

I had been thinking about inventor Nikola Tesla even before my weekend visit to the Integratron, an electromagnetically charged chamber in the California desert that was built by engineer George Van Tassel based partly on Tesla’s research (“Getting Charged Up at the Integratron,” May 26, 2008).

Tesla has inspired a cult-like devotion among his followers, many of whom believe his electrical inventions were thwarted by financiers such as Bernard Baruch and J.P. Morgan because they challenged the economics of the utility industry. In light of today’s fear that we are nearing “peak oil” and are running out of fuel to power our autos and other machines, Tesla’s claim to have discovered “free energy” is more intriguing than ever.

In 1933, the inventor told the New York American newspaper: “This new power for the driving of the world’s machinery will be derived from the energy which operates the universe, the cosmic energy, whose central source for the earth is the sun and which is everywhere present in unlimited quantities.”

One reason I got interested in Tesla is that the same day I started Astrology Mundo (Mar. 17, 2008), production began in San Marcos, Calif., on a breakthrough electric vehicle called the Tesla Roadster. The 100% electric car gets the equivalent of 135 miles per gallon, according to Tesla Motors. This electrical marvel costs a pretty penny, though. The base price for the 2009 model is $109,000.

Here’s the link to the company’s Web site: http://www.teslamotors.com/

Tesla the man surfaced as a character in Christopher Nolan’s 2006 film about magicians, The Prestige, and was portrayed by rocker David Bowie. Interestingly, 2006 was also declared the Year of Nikola Tesla by UNESCO. I rented The Prestige not long before visiting Niagara Falls for the first time in October, 2007. While I was at the falls, I saw a statue of Tesla on Goat Island. All roads were leading me to Tesla!

With the mysterious Tesla making cameo appearances in modern-day culture, I started looking into his chart. That’s when the confusion started. There are several charts circulating for the eccentric inventor who emigrated to America and registered 700 patents.

Everyone agrees that Tesla was born close to midnight. Legend has it that his midwife said he was born just as a bolt of lightning struck. This has led many astrologers to conclude that his chart must have the electrical planet Uranus rising.

Astrodatabank says Tesla was born at midnight on July 10, 1856, in Smiljan, a town that was in Austria-Hungary at the time of the inventor’s birth. It was later part of Yugoslavia and is now in Croatia. Here’s the chart: http://www.astrodatabank.com/NM/FeedbackPRT.asp?ChartID=46

If you scroll down the comments below Tesla’s AstroDataBank chart, you’ll find one dated May 15, 2001, that says that Tesla’s father was an orthodox priest who “recorded his birth according to the old calendar,” and that his real date of birth is July 22, 1856. The commenter cites a Serbian astrological magazine. Tesla’s parents were both of Serbian origin.

Given the lore about lightning striking as Tesla was born, here’s the chart I like. It shows a birth time of 11:10 p.m. local time on July 21, 1856. Yes, I know this is July 21, not July 22, like the Serbian astro magazine says, but this one works for me.

In many places, Tesla’s birthday is recorded as July 9/10, so it’s conceivable that he could have been born late on the night of July 21 because of the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars. If you want to read about calendars, click here:
http://www.astro.uu.nl/~strous/AA/en/antwoorden/moderne_kalenders.html

The chart I like has a 25 degree Taurus ascendant with Uranus rising, a Sun/Venus conjunction at 29 degrees of Cancer, and a Moon/Neptune conjunction in Pisces, which could reflect the confusion about Tesla’s birthday. Here’s a link to that chart: http://www.astrology21.co.uk/p1tesla.html

I need to do more reading about Tesla, but everything I’ve perused indicates he was an extremely nervous person, so the Uranus rising chart seems plausible.

It’s worth noting that transits from Uranus to a deceased person’s chart often activate interest in that individual. It is for this reason that I think astrologers should watch the date that the first Tesla electric car hits the road and compare the transits of that day to the various natal charts circulating for the inventor.

Based on the speculation about the development of a new energy source that was circulating at the United Astrology Conference in Denver, I don’t think we’ve heard the last of Tesla. If you want to read more about his life, click here for a Web site that accompanied an excellent PBS series: http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/index.html

All Charged Up at the Integratron

As Neptune stationed near the transiting North Node in Aquarius this weekend, a friend and I traveled about an hour and a half outside of Palm Springs, to Flanders, Calif. Our destination? A public “sound bath” at a building called the Integratron. This is apt because Neptune rules music and it’s in the sign of groups (Aquarius) and with the North Node, another indicator of involvement in a collective endeavor.

As you’ll see from the photo above (the first I’ve ever posted on Astrology Mundo!), the Integratron is a vaulted wooden structure that is painted white. It’s said to be sitting on top of a vortex of electromagnetic energy, which seems plausible given its proximity to the San Andreas Fault.

The Integratron is the creation of aeronautic engineer George Van Tassel, who died in 1978. Its current owners, Nancy and Joanne Karl, bill it as the only all-wood, “acoustically perfect sound chamber in the U.S.”

Van Tassel, who worked for such aerospace contractors as Lockheed, Douglas Aircraft, and Hughes Aviation, built the chamber based on the ideas of inventor Nikola Tesla and information he allegedly gleaned from channeling extraterrestrials. He began building the Integratron in 1954, not far from Giant Rock, a place long considered by Native Americans to be sacred because of its powerful energy.

Asked to describe the Integratron, Van Tassel told people that it was “a machine, a high-voltage electrostatic generator that would supply a broad range of frequencies to recharge the cell structure.”

Nancy Karl facilitates the rejuvenation with public sound baths, where she plays a series of nine quartz crystal bowls designed to activate the chakras in the body. With her radiant appearance and grounded, laid-back manner, Nancy is a walking advertisement for the benefits of the Integratron. It’s definitely working for her.

We mingled with folks before yesterday’s sound bath, many of them repeat customers for the $10, half-hour treatment. “California is wonderful that way — random strange things in the desert,” said one young woman as we prepared to enter the chamber.

The sound of the quartz bowls hurt my ears a little at first, but as the notes changed, I felt more comfortable. Many of the roughly 40 people in our sound bath fell asleep, but I didn’t feel particularly relaxed. In fact, the opposite was true. I felt energized, much the same way I have during acupuncture sessions when the therapist attached wires from the needles to electrodes.

When we left the Integratron, the colors outside seemed more vivid than when we entered the chamber. I was definitely on a high that I can only compare to the way I felt not long after crossing the finish line of the New York City Marathon in 1999. I was also starving, so we stopped at the funky Crossroads Cafe in Joshua Tree for a restorative lunch. Then we made our way to Joshua Tree National Park, which felt like a trip indeed, thanks to my heightened sensitivity to color.

The Astrology of Gay Marriage

As California goes, so goes the nation? The California Supreme Court’s May 15 decision to uphold same-sex marriage could be a harbinger of things to come for the U.S. as a whole, according to astrologer Matt Carnicelli.

Carnicelli sees the current passage of Pluto through Capricorn as leading to the “deconstruction of the tyranny” of governmental and corporate institutions. He says it’s not surprising that the transit ushered in the legalization of gay marriage in the Golden State.

However, Carnicelli isn’t a proponent of marriage per se. He envisions a time in the not too distant future when civil unions will become the norm for couples, regardless of their sexual orientation.

Marriages would still be performed in churches and synagogues, but they would not be the business of the government, the astrologer said.

Carnicelli made his comments in response to a question following his May 18 presentation, “The Unfinished Work: America, A Mercury Retrograde Phenomenon” at the United Astrology Conference in Denver. The talk explored how it took a while for the Founding Fathers’ notion that “all men are created equal” to be extended from white men to black men and then to women of all colors.

He notes that whether astrologers use a July 2 or July 4, 1776 birth chart for the U.S., Mercury is still retrograde in Cancer opposing Pluto in Capricorn. This aspect has often led to a “nativist” way of thinking, where anyone not born in the U.S. or not of a WASP background has faced discrimination, Carnicelli says.

This xenophobia was captured brilliantly in Martin Scorsese’s film Gangs of New York, when New York was inflamed by the Civil War draft riots of 1863 and Irish immigrants were persecuted, he noted.

Carnicelli plans to post his PowerPoint presentation, which includes charts from key events like the inception of the women’s suffrage movement in Seneca Falls, N.Y. on July 20, 1848 at 11 a.m., at www.hpleft.com.