AstroChatter Radio Breaks News on Natasha Richardson

This week, when Pamela Cucinell and I did our call-in radio show on BlogTalkRadio, we speculated strongly that the reason why Natasha Richardson was brought from Canada to New York on life support was so that her organs could be donated.

Now, the media is reporting that’s exactly what happened. Check out our broadcast here.

I wish I could take credit for the idea, but it actually came from a photographer friend of mine who is a justice-oriented Libra conjunct visionary Neptune. She had photographed Richardson for the movie Haven, a biopic about Ruth Gruber, who saved 1,000 refugees during World War II.

So let it be known that you never know what you might learn on AstroChatter Radio.

If you want to learn more about how you can save someone’s life by donating your organs when you die, click here.

Happy Birthday, Astrology Mundo!

It was one year ago today that I decided to join the blogosphere by launching Astrology Mundo. Now, 422 posts, 1,353 (approved) comments, and 136,901 hits later, Astrology Mundo is celebrating its first birthday.

My output has varied since I fired up the blog for the first time, courtesy of WordPress, on Mar. 17, 2008, but my love of the astrological and blogging community hasn’t.

There have been two contributors who have kept this blog afloat over the past year when my energy flagged — Regina at Gastriques and Gian Paul, who has given us The View from Brazil. Thanks to both of you!

Also, thanks to the astrobloggers who have taken the time to comment on my posts and to link to them. I can’t name them all, but I’m thinking of Jude Cowell at Stars Over Washington and Jude’s Threshold, Comet at Out the Comet’s Ass, Julie Demboski, Beth Turnage at Astrology Explored, and ElsaElsa of blog aggregator AstroDispatch, to name a few. I couldn’t have done it without you. (More links later!)

Away from the cosmos, SFMike of Civic Center and Susan DeMark of Mindful Walker have helped keep my feet firmly on the ground while I’m looking up at the stars.

Last but not least, a big shout-out to Pamela Cucinell, my roommate at last year’s United Astrology Conference and the host of AstroChatter Radio, where I put my two astro cents in on a (mostly) regular basis.

Thanks everybody! I love all of you, especially my readers!

All Eyes on Oscar

I’m back in California and made the mistake of going to a Trader Joe’s this afternoon in Cathedral City to fill up the refrigerator and the freezer. (My progressed Moon in Taurus is activating my Ceres and all of a sudden I’m eating nothing but fresh produce and fish.)

What was I thinking? Every Baby Boomer in the Coachella Valley had decided to go shopping for his or her Oscar party tonight. As I said to my husband, in California, the Oscars are viewed the way the Super Bowl is in the rest of the country.

I made it back home in one piece. Barely. Meanwhile, here’s a rehash of the Oscar predictions that Pamela Cucinell and I made on AstroChatterRadio a couple of weeks back with some brief astro explanations.

Slumdog Millionaire — Best Picture and a slew of other awards. Why? Look at India’s independence chart. It’s being lit up like a Christmas tree by today’s stellium in Aquarius, which opposes the Independence Sun.

Remember how in the film everyone is watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire on TV, from the slums to the posh skyscrapers of Mumbai? It will be that way with the Oscars. A collective roar will emanate from the Subcontinent when this rags-to-riches tale brings home the gold.

According to the Wiki, Los Angeles is 13.5 hours behind Mumbai. So by my calculations, the cheer will go up around 10:30 a.m. in Bollywood (India’s answer to Hollywood) since Best Picture is usually announced close to midnight Eastern time.

Kate Winslet — Best Actress. The Aquarius stellium trines her natal Libra lineup. I did a double-take in the Houston airport yesterday when I saw Winslet on the cover of Time with the headline “Best Actress.”

Until I read the deck on the headline, which made it clear that the magazine thinks she’s the best actress whether she wins the Oscar or not, I thought I was in some kind of time warp.

Mickey Rourke — Best Actor. I’m going out on a limb here. Everyone thinks Sean Penn is a shoo-in for Milk, a gay-themed picture that is a favorite with the Hollywood crowd. Also boosting Penn’s chances is the fact that the transiting Aquarius stellium opposes his Leo Sun, guaranteeing a high-profile night for the actor.

However, I think dark horse Rourke, who’s getting the Saturn/Uranus opposition in Virgo/Pisces on his Virgo Sun, could walk away with an award for his comeback performance in The Wrestler.

As someone very wise said to me in the past week, 99% of the people in the audience are waiting for their comeback. Aren’t most of us?

Footnote: Slumdog won eight Oscars tonight and the Times of London is crowing “Hail Britannia.” I still think this is a victory for “In-ja,” as the Duke of Windsor referred to the former British colony.

My next prediction? That Bollywood-style dance classes will take the U.S. by storm. It’s already starting to happen, according to this article from an Indian newspaper.

Here’s a fun clip with the stars of Slumdog Millionaire dancing to Oscar-winning song Jai Ho on the set of The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

AstroChatter: MLK Day Edition

Pamela Cucinell and I will be doing our weekly AstroChatter Radio broadcast at BlogTalkRadio on Monday, Jan. 19 at noon EST. We normally burn up the airwaves on Tuesdays at noon, but since the Inauguration is taking place then, we’ll be talking astrology on Martin Luther King Day instead. Give us a call at 646-200-4065 if you’ve got something to say.

Jeffrey Kishner’s Got a Groovy New Pad!

Lots of technical difficulties today on the AstroChatter Radio podcast that I do each Tuesday at noon with Pamela Cucinell on BlogTalkRadio. We started 40 minutes late because Pamela changed her Internet service provider and didn’t get her normal e-mail reminder. I didn’t call her either, the way I normally do because I was afraid I was becoming a pest.

I was scouring my e-mail to see if Pamela had tried to contact me to tell me something was wrong and I discovered an e-mail from Jeffrey Kishner, who used to host Seduction Central.

Kishner recently launched Sassastrology.com, which has a fabulous lineup of articles about sex, relationships, and celebrities, not to mention a knockout design. Kudos to you, Jeffrey. Sorry it took me a while to get to this.

Obama and Biden on Inauguration Day

In light of Barack Obama’s victory last week, I’m repubbing a post I first did on Aug. 23 called “Obama and Biden on Inauguration Day.” It’s below:

So much for Senator Joseph Biden telling the crew from ABC News, “No, no, no, it ain’t me babe, it ain’t me you’re looking for.” Well, the Democratic Senator from Delaware probably didn’t quote Bob Dylan, but you get my drift.

Now that Barack Obama has chosen elder statesman Biden for his vice-presidential candidate, astrologers around the world are slicing and dicing the data. Jude’s Threshold has had a post on Biden since 7:54 a.m. this morning! You have to get up pretty early to beat Jude on breaking news.

I’ve run a progressed composite with transits of Obama’s chart and Biden’s chart (Nov. 20, 1942 in Scranton, Pa. at 8:30 a.m., according to AstroDataBank) for Jan. 20, 2009, Inauguration Day. Assuming the birth times for both charts are correct, the thing to watch in the progressed composite is the moon. In this chart, it’s at 5 degrees of Sagittarius on Inauguration Day.

The progressed Moon is 4 degrees or four months (the progressed Moon moves roughly a degree a month) past a conjunction with progressed Sun. That means roughly four months or so before Jan. 20, a progressed New Moon will have occurred, signifying an important new beginning in the relationship.

Interestingly, the progressed Moon in the composite leaves Scorpio and moves into Sagittarius, the same sign as the Sun, during next week’s convention. But the New Moon doesn’t occur until Sept. 30.

I believe the change of moon signs in the progressed composite and the conjunction of the progressed Moon with the progressed Sun means the duo has a good chance of being elected President and Vice-President, respectively.

One of the most compelling aspects in this composite is the winning trine between Jupiter in Aries and Pluto in Leo, which is also conjunct the public-oriented North Node. I think this team has the power to go the distance. If Obama is elected, he will be our nation’s first President with Pluto in Virgo.

Of course, I haven’t seen the composite between Republican Presidential candidate John McCain and his vice-presidential choice, which he has yet to announce. Now that Obama has made a safe choice that the Establishment can live with, watch Saturn poster boy McCain do something radical. Will he pick a woman, or Joe Lieberman? Who can say?

But mark my words, he will fulfill the destiny of the Saturn/Uranus conjunction that will be exact on Election Day (See “Pamela and Monica Ponder the Vice-Presidency”).

Pamela Cucinell, my BlogTalkRadio collaborator, points out at AstroChatter that it probably won’t be smooth sailing for Obama and Biden, given that the announcement of the vice-presidential candidate took place under today’s Venus/Uranus opposition.

Pamela and Monica Find their Groove: AstroChatter Radio

Each Tuesday at noon, Astro Chatter’s Pamela Cucinell and I take to the airwaves to talk astrology on BlogTalkRadio. This week’s call-in show might be our smoothest effort to date. Check it out.

If you listen, I want to make the point that Barack Obama attended law school at Harvard, not Columbia, where he earned an undergrad degree. When I listened to the podcast, it didn’t seem clear to me.

Monica and Pamela on the Mother of all Bailouts

Pamela Cucinell of AstroChatter and I continue to do our BlogTalkRadio podcasts each Tuesday at noon, but are still hampered by technical difficulties. My Uranus opposes Pamela’s Aquarius Sun, and I think that has something to do with it.

Clearly, Mercury retrograde has been a factor. Last week, I stayed in the chat room because the number “1” was stuck on my cell phone and I couldn’t call into the show.

This week, Pamela was suffering from a sore throat and periodic coughing fits so I ran at the mouth about the $700 billion bailout plan, which was approved by the Senate yesterday, and what I think needs to be done under Pluto in Capricorn.

If you listen to this week’s show, you can see why in my youth my nickname was “Motormouth.” Sometimes it’s hard to shut me up. It’s too bad I didn’t grow up to be a senator. Then I would have the opportunity to engage in a filibuster, where you wear down the opposition by talking for hours on end. Sadly, my husband can attest to what it’s like to be on the receiving end of such an onslaught.

Here’s the link to this week’s AstroChatter podcast, which you can listen to at any time.

If you’d like to put your two cents in, give us a call next Tuesday at (646) 200-4065. We’d love to hear from you.

Every Blogger’s Worst Fear

I started this blog on Mar. 17, 2008 and have been at it a little over six months. At the time, transiting Uranus in Pisces was sextiling Jupiter in Capricorn, which was sitting on my natal Sun. I decided to start writing an astrology blog on a whim. About 24 hours later, my blog was up and running.

One person who gave me a push to start the blog, though she didn’t know it, was Pamela Cucinell at AstroChatter, who later invited me co-host her BlogTalkRadio podcast every Tuesday at noon.

Pamela asked if I wanted to be her roommate at the United Astrology Conference in May, and when she did, I instantly decided I needed an “outlet” to cover the convention. Thus, my blog was born!

Get this: Other than Nancy’s Blog, I wasn’t even aware of astrology blogs. Now, thanks to Elsa P at ElsaElsaAstroNews and Jeffrey Kishner at AstrologyBlogger, I know about a whole universe of stargazing blogs, and many navel-gazing ones (my own included), as well.

As I’ve surfed the Net over the past six months, I’ve discovered really smart astrology blogs that came to a dead end. The blogger got a new job, faced a demanding personal situation, nabbed a book deal, or simply ran out of psychic gas.

That scares me. Will I one day drop the thread of Astrology Mundo as impulsively as I picked it up? I hope not.

In the meantime, I wanted to call readers’ attention to a new book by an erstwhile blogger whose posts I greatly admire, even though I didn’t discover them until the blog ended. The book is Cosmic Trends: Astrology Connects the Dots by Philip Brown.

Brown’s blog was called AstroFutureTrends, and it ended in December 2007 after two and a half years. (Hey, that’s a Progressed Moon cycle or Saturn through one sign.) Brown posted in February, explaining why he decided to leave blogging behind:

“I heard someone say recently that they’d gone beyond their own supply line. That’s a little like I’ve felt. My own supply line has always started from within, and I found I was not spending enough time nurturing my own inner self.”

Nothing wrong with that. It just unsettles me — I guess because I’ve been known to quit jobs after about two-and-a-half or three years.

I do things in threes a lot. So I can safely say I’ll be hanging out here in the blogosphere through 2011.

Inshalla, I want to be online when the Mayan Calendar ends at the Winter Solstice Dec. 21, 2012 to report on the return of Jesus or a visit from the extra-terrestrials or the big letdown if nothing monumental happens.

The chart for that moment has Mercury conjunct Venus in Sagittarius straddling the Ascendant opposing Jupiter in Gemini close to the Seventh House cusp, according to Jude’s Threshold. Maybe some twins are stopping by! Stay tuned.

In Praise of Reinhold Ebertin

I’m in tizzy! I can’t find my trusty copy of Reinhold Ebertin’s The Combination of Stellar Influences. As readers of this column know, I can’t live without this book. I had it out recently when I was doing my BlogTalkRadio broadcast with Pamela Cucinell of AstroChatter, and now it’s gone missing.

I’m hoping it will turn up when Mercury goes retrograde later this month. I know the minute I order it from Amazon.com, I’ll find it. I guess I could give the new copy away as a present.

Labor Day weekend was an emptying of armoires, closets, and drawers and the transfer of seasonal clothing in anticipation of cooler weather. Maybe COSI, as fans call it for short, is stuck in a box of my husband’s golf shorts.

With all the clothes flying around the house, I didn’t keep up with my favorite astrology blogs going into Labor Day weekend. I missed a very important post on my hero over at Chirotic.

I’m linking to the post on “cosmobiologist” Reinhold Ebertin here. This is a dense post, but one well worth reading. Wait until you have a few minutes of quiet time to study it.

Readers and fellow bloggers who have noticed that my links have more words in them: The word has come down at my day job that if you link to someone’s site using the word “here,” the subject matter doesn’t get credited properly in Google’s search machines. We bloggers who love to link are racking up millions and millions of instances of the word “here.”