July 8, 2016 – ASTRO-WEATHER – Look west toward the sun set, for the waxing crescent moon in evening twilight. As night falls, a bright planet – Jupiter – will pop into view, close to the moon, a beautiful sight as dusk gives way to darkness. There are three other planets in the evening sky right now, two of which are easy to spot – and one that is not.
The two easy ones are Mars & Saturn. They form a noticeable triangle with the bright star Antares. Look southward as darkness falls.
Mars is the brightest of the three. Antares twinkles the most. Mars & Antares are reddish, while Saturn exhibits a golden hue. If you have difficulty discerning these objects’ colors, try using binoculars. The fourth evening planet – Venus – is very low in the west after sunset now & soon follows the sun below the horizon.
Notice that the bright portion of the crescent moon points toward Venus. Night by night, Venus – the brightest planet – will climb away from the sunset glare, while Jupiter – the second-brightest planet – will be sinking towards it. These dazzling two worlds will pass each other, on our sky’s dome.
Their rendezvous will be on August 27, 2016. It’ll be the closest conjunction of two planets for all of 2016.
Feast day of Aquila & Priscilla, Companions of the Apostle Paul
When Paul came to Corinth (probably in the year 50), he met them as tentmakers who had just arrived from Rome, because the Emperor Claudius had recently expelled the Jewish community. They all went together to Ephesus.
Aquila & Priscilla are mentioned six times in the New Testament (Acts 18:2,18,26; Romans 16:3; 1 Corinthians 16:19; 2 Timothy 4:19), & the reader will note that in the odd-numbered mentions, Aquila’s name comes first, while in the even-numbered mentions, Priscilla’s comes first, as if to emphasize that they are being mentioned on equal terms.
Feast day of Saint Kilian an Irish missionary bishop & the Apostle of Bavaria. He was beheaded with 2 of his companions. Their skulls, inlaid with precious stones, have been preserved to this day. On St Kilian’s day, a glass case containing the three skulls is removed from a crypt, paraded through the streets before large crowds, & put on display in Würzburg Cathedral (dedicated to Kilian).
1099 – Some 15,000 starving Christian soldiers begin the siege of Jerusalem which took place from June 7 to July 15, 1099 during the First Crusade
1579 – Our Lady of Kazan, a holy icon of the Russian Orthodox Church, is discovered underground in the city of Kazan, Tatarstan
1730 – A magnitude 8.7 earthquake causes a tsunami that damages more than 1,000 of Chile’s coastline, death toll unknown
1831 – Birthday of John Pemberton, chemist & pharmacist, invented Coca-Cola
1838 – Birthday of Eli Lilly, chemist, & businessman, founded Eli Lilly a global pharmaceutical company
1838 – Birthday of Ferdinand von Zeppelin German general & businessman, founded the Zeppelin Airship Company
1839 – Birthday of John D. Rockefeller, founded the Standard Oil Company
1876 – White supremacists kill five Black Republicans in Hamburg, South Carolina
1908 – Birthday of Nelson Rockefeller, 41st Vice President of the United States
1926 – Birthday of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross a Swiss-American psychiatrist, pioneer in near-death studies & the author of the groundbreaking book ‘On Death & Dying’ where she first discussed her theory of the five stages of grief
1932 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22
1968 – The Chrysler wildcat strike begins in Detroit, Michigan.
2010 – The Solar Impulse completed the first 24-hour flight by a solar powered plane
2014 – Israel launches an offensive on Gaza
***
Kari Olson
~I stand before the mirror looking back in time
Gazing into unbornness – the other side of eternity
I am roused
To walk the circuitous path of the unseen
From no-thing – I come to thought
To birth
A-become
~hag
***
Agostino-Arrivabene
A few last thought from The “School of the Sounds”:
Remembrance, Memory, Commemoration, Thought, Reflection, Recollection…
I am a feeling type, so I can say from experience that a strong feeling life is the humus for the development of memory. To active the will we must imbue ourselves with feeling. Then the soul is more easily impressed, like wax warmed & ready to receive a seal. Even experiences that come toward us in various ways from the assorted happenings in the world -pictures & symbols that the eye takes in, tones, noises, & words that impress themselves upon the ear -what we take into our soul life thru the gate of the senses continues to have its effect within us, imprints itself in us, building memory.
Yet the past does not want to be merely preserved; it also wants to be recalled & communicated. The strength of memory & enlivened speech forces requires an activity of will. Conscious speaking is an artistic achievement, demanding conscious presence of mind, skill & patience.
A practice of artistic speech, whatever that is for us, develops a stronger ‘I’-presence, which allows a differentiated activity to take place in deeper layers of our soul life. In speech practice we can learn to free language from being tethered to the world of dead concepts, we can lift it to the spiritual-artistic spaces.
For the human being to be ‘capable of the future’ – even for the possibility of our continued existence – broadened consciousness, strength of memory & LOVE will be of decisive importance. These forces need to be strengthened in order to reach greater insight into our own biography, & this gives us the ability to understand the meaning of life as a whole.
Tomorrow, in anticipation of my upcoming natal return, I will begin a short series on Biography Work
Until soon
Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg
