Check Out the Mindful Walker!

Susan DeMark, a friend of mine with a nearly exact opposition of Mercury in Capricorn and Uranus in Cancer, has launched a new Web site called Mindful Walker. I quietly added it to my blogroll about a week ago, but now Susan’s ready to spread the word about her new “baby.”

I think Susan’s timing is perfect. With Pluto about to move into Capricorn, we’ll be taking time to notice and enjoy our surroundings, from Manhattan’s Fred R. French Building to the ‘Gunks of New Paltz, N.Y., to use two examples that are near and dear to Susan’s heart.

Susan has lots of plans for Mindful Walker. She told friends in an e-mail: “I’ll be adding photos within posts, other media and interactivity, Google map links, Google ads, etc… My plan is to expand in Phase 2.0 during the coming year into possibilities like podcasts and/or video. I have different content conceptions that I will build on, like 15-minute walks, “5 Top” this and that, and children’s walks.”

What I’m really excited about, is the section of her Web site called “Mindful Activist,” which she says “will promote various issues and encourage actions people can take (like saving the world from sprawl).” Can you tell that Susan is a community-oriented Aquarian?

Next year, when Jupiter is in Aquarius, Susan plans to introduce Mindful Walker excursions and workshops. Kudos to you, Susan.

Presidential Astrology at HuffPo

I’m going to have put Regina at Gastriques on the payroll here at Astrology Mundo. She was the one who tipped me off to the John McCain Mother’s Day commercial with an 11 a.m. birth time for the candidate and to the post at the Daily Kos with an official birth certificate for Barack Obama.

Here’s Regina’s scoop of the day: The Huffington Post has jumped on the Presidential astrology bandwagon with this column. You read that right, folks: a column dedicated to the candidates based on astrology.

Just the other night before our maiden radio show, my astro-pal Pamela Cucinell from Astro Chatter was predicting that astrology was getting ready to go mainstream. Maybe she’s right.

What’s great about the HuffPo column by astrologer Philip Sedgwick is that it’s funny, it’s smart, it’s accurate, and it’s accessible — all of which are musts for a mainstream astrology column. Kudos to you, Philip!

But back to Regina: How can I ever pay her back for all her scoops? The only way I know how — by clicking on the Google Ads on her Web site. Give it a try. You don’t have to buy anything. All you have to do is click and the money goes into her account at the Googleplex.

I am tempted to go the extra step and buy the Campaign Cola on offer today at Gastriques. I’m not going to link to it here. Check it out yourself. It’s pretty funny. I just hope that the soda is made with sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup, or Regina might boot the ad from her site.

Darn, I should have copied the link for Campaign Cola. Gastriques has been overtaken by a mother lode of kosher food ads in response to one of Regina’s posts. Well, I can always Google Campaign Cola. Where would we be without Google?

Hotter Than July

My laptop seems to be withstanding temperatures of close to 100 degrees (I know that’s cool compared to the temps our troops are facing in Iraq), but my brain has turned to mush. I’ll also admit to being stunned by the events in the financial markets this week — the run on IndyMac Bank, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being bailed out by the Fed, Google missing its earnings forecasts, and General Motors cutting its dividend in half, to name just a few.

Interesting that a bank with “Indy” in its name failed while the asteroid Indiana is traveling close to Neptune, the planet of dissolution. For more about the asteroid Indiana, please see https://astrologymundo.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/bringing-back-the-glory-days-of-the-indy-500/

Closer to home, several tech-savvy colleagues were let go at my day job, while less accomplished performers get to stay on. The unfairness of it floors me.

Being a Cancer Moon, I respond to unsettling news by getting out my well-thumbed Louisana cookbooks and cooking, heat be damned. You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted Cajun deviled eggs, which rely on sweet relish, deviled ham, and mustard instead of mayo, and are topped with a pimiento-stuffed olive and a sprinkling of paprika. The recipe comes from Terry Thompson’s Cajun Creole Cooking.

What I love about cooking is predictability. Sure, there are disasters every now and then, but basically if you follow the directions, you get what is promised in the picture. If only life were so simple!

If you want to get really depressed, read Jim Kunstler’s post on Wile E. Coyote Nation: http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/

Meanwhile, I’m off to the farmers’ market, another cure for anything that ails me. I’m too scared right now to read Ray Merriman’s weekly post.

In GOOG We Trust?

Over the holidays, I went to a friend’s house for dinner and her husband’s cousin was visiting from Denmark. We started talking about the U.S. and whether the country can compete in the face of low-cost wages and formidable brainpower from China and India. He said that even though he grew up drinking Coke and wearing Levi’s, there was just one American company today that he couldn’t live without today: Google.

Ever since its shares began trading publicly on Aug. 19, 2004, Google has been almost a religion with Wall Street investors. I recently talked to an old friend and she tells me the value of her house has declined in the midst of the subprime mortgage crisis. “But that’s O.K.,” she says with a smile. “I’ve got Google in my portfolio.”

I nodded. Even though I don’t own Google, I understand what it’s like to get a warm and fuzzy feeling from a great stock.

Until recently, the search engine giant was a juggernaut, immune to the forces of gravity.But there have been some downbeat reports about Google lately. It seems the search wunderkind is experiencing a slowdown in its paid “click” traffic. That isn’t surprising to me, with Saturn in Virgo hanging around Google’s Mercury/Mars. No matter how great Google is, if the U.S. is going into a recession, Internet ad clicks will decline because people don’t have as much disposable income to shop.

If you want to read more about what’s been ailing Google, here’s a good BusinessWeek story: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_15/b4079021321853.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_top+story

Google may be down, but it’s not out. Google shares rose 4% on Apr. 1, to $465.71, on the news that Goldman Sachs analyst James Mitchell assumed coverage of the search engine giant and issued a “buy” recommendation. I was doing a little research myself on GOOG (its ticker symbol) on Mar. 31. I was trying to figure out why the stock market darling was down about 30% from its high of $747.24, set Nov. 7 last year.

As with most companies, Google has more than one “birth chart.” There’s the chart for when Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the company on Sept. 7, 1998 in Menlo Park, Calif. Incorporation charts are usually set for a noon birthdate. Here’s that chart, courtesy of Astrodienst.

Another chart, which I prefer, is when the stock began trading on Nasdaq, the day after its initial public offering. That Google first-trade chart is set for 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 19, 2004 in New York.

I think this chart is a better reflection of the public company than the incorporation one. The Libra Moon rising in the first trading day chart is an accurate depiction of the partnership between Page and Brin. The Sun in Leo is apt for a stock that has almost a “rock star” status on Wall Street. Furthermore, the Mercury/Mars conjunction in Virgo opposing Uranus in Pisces is a perfect planetary aspect  for an Internet search company.

I’m not a financial analyst, but the good news is that Pluto is going back into Sagittarius on June 14, moving retrograde toward a trine with GOOG’s Sun in Leo. I think that aspect will get Google on the acquisition trail again and will be beneficial for international expansion.

In terms of the stock price, Google has Jupiter at 22 degrees of Virgo in the first trading day chart. Transiting Jupiter in Capricorn will be making a station trining Google’s Jupiter on May 9, a positive aspect, so I’m looking for GOOG to regain some lost ground then.

Transiting Saturn in Virgo will be quite close to Google’s Jupiter toward  the end of December, which could mean some kind of real estate news — perhaps acquiring land for a regional headquarters or announcing a new building or a major expansion of the Googleplex, as the company’s headquarters is known. We’ll see.

The transiting Saturn/Uranus opposition in Virgo/Pisces which is exact on Election Day, suggests sudden separation at Google. Perhaps there will be a management shakeup or the company will be forced to divest part of its operations to obtain regulatory approval for a megamerger of some kind. Something or someone will be leaving the company.

This post on Google does not constitute a buy recommendation for the search engine company. Talk to your investment adviser before loading up on Google.

Happy New Year!

As a Capricorn with Saturn at 10 degrees of Cap, I’ve never been particularly happy on New Year’s, when the Sun is sitting on my Saturn. The stroke of midnight on Dec. 31 usually finds me buried under a down comforter, either sleeping or fending off the flu. Perhaps that’s why I’m so willing to embrace the Spring Equinox, or 0 degrees of Aries, as the “real” New Year. That’s when I feel like kicking up my heels.

Ah, but this blog is called Astrology Mundo, not Astrology Monica. So let’s look at what this year’s Spring Equinox chart indicates for the U.S. during the next six months (until the fall equinox chart takes effect). It’s set for 1:49 a.m. EDT on Mar. 20 in Washington, D.C., our nation’s capital. If you want to look at the chart and check out Barbara Hand Clow’s Web site, you’ll find it here: http://www.handclow2012.com/springequinox.htm

The chart has an optimistic Sagittarius rising, with chart ruler Jupiter in the sign of Capricorn, sitting in the second house of resources and earned income. Think of Jupiter as a big fat guy. He’s probably dressed in a pin-striped suit since he’s in Cap this year.

Everything isn’t exactly hunky-dory, though. Uranus in Pisces in the third house of media and communications squares the Sag ascendant, which suggests the potential for upsetting news. Nevertheless, I suspect those talking heads on TV will tell us that everything is going to be O.K. Uncle Ben Bernanke has it under control at the Federal Reserve Board. Those income-tax rebates will be in mailboxes before you know it and the interest-rate cuts will put a little life into the housing market or at the very least, Weber grill sales. Nobody in the Bush Administration wants the bottom to fall out before the election, and it’s within the government’s power right now to postpone the day of reckoning.

I think the sextile between Jupiter and Uranus gives the green light for mega-mergers in the Internet “space,” to use the jargon of Wall Street. If Yahoo! doesn’t get acquired by Microsoft, it will merge with another big company (News Corp.?)  in the next six months. Google’s got plenty of money; it’s not going to sit by and get outgoogled, so it may make some moves of its own.

That’s the good news. The bad news in this chart is a nasty cardinal T-square created by Pluto in Cap in the first house opposing Mars in Cancer in the seventh house of open enemies, both square the Sun at 0 degrees of Aries in the latter part of the third house. I think the war in Iraq and the one in Afghanistan that everybody forgot about until Prince Harry turned up there are going to both take a turn for the worse.

To me, Mars/Pluto/Sun is a fight for your life and superhuman efforts. As a nation, we’ve got to win the war against terrorism; our national identity and those of our leaders are wrapped up in the idea. I would bet on some kind of escalation under the guise of (what else?) national security since the Sun is close to the fourth-house cusp.

The other big feature of this chart is the Moon/Saturn conjunction in worrywart Virgo in the Ninth House opposing the three planets in go-with-the-flow Pisces in the third — Uranus, Venus, and Mercury. The depressing Moon/Saturn conjunction is too early in Virgo to pick up the good vibes of Jupiter in Cap. I think this picture could signify a legal decision (the ninth house rules law and courts) involving health-care or the purity of food. Perhaps Justice is going to take off her blindfold and notice the 47 million Americans and counting who don’t have health insurance. At the very least, I see government tightening the screws on the medical industry to curb some abuses.

On another front, since the Moon/Saturn conjunction is in Virgo, the sign of work, I think the unemployment picture will continue to get worse as outsourcing accelerates. We might see better unemployment benefits, though, and calls for government-backed retraining programs.

I wish I could be more sanguine about reproductive rights — Saturn/Moon in Virgo could mean the courts make it harder to get the morning-after pill or issue a ruling against abortion. Because this aspect is opposed by Venus/Mercury in Pisces in the third house, I suspect the media will try to put the best face on whatever happens. Quarantine? What a great opportunity to reconnect with the family and watch old movies!

And with that Venus/Merc in Pisces, the sign of self-deception, sextiling Pluto and trining Mars, we can be sure that our latest military adventure is going to be broadcast with a rosy glow.