Forecast for Feb. 17, '10

02-17-10
Forecast and Faery Finder
By Janice Scott-Reeder and the Bitwit


According to Llewellyn’s Magical Almanac, today’s color is topaz and the incense is lilac.
Today is Ash Wednesday.

FORECASTS:

Astrologically, new methods and alternative healing practices now come into focus. Psychic energies are very high for well over a month. Things are changing and there is a ripple in the fabric of the Universe.
You may have had a really restless night making getting up a hard thing to do. Thankfully, you have a lot of people ready to call you and drag you out of bed. Elders and authorities seems to be immune to the restless night or they spent all night thinking up new things for you to do. Try not to kill anyone this morning. By evening there is enough chatter to make you want to remove your hearing aids. Listen because some really good ideas are being bounced around.

Deck: Navigators Tarot of the Mystic Sea.

Today’s Tarot Card is the Suspension: inversion. It is time to work on understanding how your own psyche works. Knowing what motivates you leads you toward the answer you seek but it is still out of reach.

Deck: Healing with the Fairies.
The Faeries say:
Family harmony provides you with the support you need today.
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Today’s Cat Comfort Card is:
Alley Cat: “ Be adventurous. Everything will go your way.”

Deck: The Fairies’ Oracle by Brian Froud & Jessica MacBeth
Today’s Faery Finder is on the lookout for:
The Lady of the Harvest greets us and inspires fear in many. Although the Fae do not age, don’t let her fool you. She is the Crone or the Old Woman. She comes at the end of a cycle to take our hand and lead us to the phase of life. She brings grief, loss and release. Move on to the next phase of your with dignity and joy. Embrace the adventure rather than cowering in fear.

Today’s Lo Shu Number is 8 and the Element is Earth. The Dragon finds conflict today. This is not an auspicious day for a haircuts, medical procedures, signing contracts, gambling, starting construction or births.

Today’s Message from the Universe is: “Every time a door closes, another one opens up toward wider and more beautiful horizons. The space naturally created in my life now brings me even greater possibilities for growth. I welcome any change in my life with confidence and joy.” Annie Marquier creating a world of peace one thought at a time.

COMMENTARIES BY JANICE SCOTT-REEDER

Folks, I do not know what is wrong with me, but I am permanently exhausted. I hope my blood tests on Thursday have an answer because I am barely managing to get anything done. It has become a test of my will to write the forecast every night.
Coincidences are funny, often in the literal sense. As I was checking Facebook, up pops an ad for yet another Republican (Want to know what they do with YOUR money? check Facebook some day. You’ll find a lot of it.). It said simply, “Want smaller government?”. Then you should sign this guy’s petition, send money and get him re-elected. Sounds great but I have few questions. The first one is really simple. What exactly do you mean by smaller government?
Now most of the people in Pompano Beach would like their money back from the governmental Taj Mahal their elected officials built themselves. In Broward County, we have voted them down so many times on the new county office building that they decided to bypass the voters and just do it with our money. Why won’t we let them out of the fungus, rat infested building with a leaky roof they now inhabit besides the fact that it really is poetic justice if you think about it? It goes like this. They have fought us for 15 years to incorporate all the county lands into cities and this year is the deadline for every piece of county to be incorporated into a city. So, I asked, what exactly are you going to do after this happens? You are county government and you are eliminating the county and turning it into a bunch of cities, who have their own governments. The answer I got was oversee the library system. Note, the library system has its own professional manager and building. Another person got: oversee the county parks. The Parks department has a lovely building on Dixie Highway and their own professional managers. The bottom line on this, is all they are planning on doing for their 100,000.00 a year part time job is rubber stamp papers from these departments that function just fine on their own and attend social events designed to get them re-elected and for that purpose, we all think they can rent a room at the local hot sheet motel by the hour and that, too, would be poetic justice. A new courthouse, we are willing to build. However, if they had spent half the budget they spent on redecorating on repairs and maintenance, the building wouldn’t be in its current condition. My house is older and it is just fine. So if you want to eliminate the Broward County Commission, I’ll vote for you.
The second half of this coincidence was a cartoon in the paper with a line from an old song I had forgotten. “Move 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.” This song refers to a now glossed over part of American history worshiped by the Republicans, where our government was small, capitalism was unfettered and the individual ruled (providing he was wealthy, white and male. Women could not vote.). This is the origin of big government but few people know what it refers to in reality. This was a period just before the Civil War and a long time afterwards when factories began to spring up in the Midwest and North. They were not just factories, they were known as Factory Towns. The factory owned everything in the town. Children as young as 4 years old were put to work in the factory and it was a rare person who managed to survive past 16 with all their fingers and toes, often hands, arms, legs and/or life. There were no worker safety laws. There were no child labor laws. Both husband and wife usually worked for the factory, bought their food from the factory, rented their cubby hole from the factory, bought their clothes from the factory and there really wasn’t much more to life except alcohol which they also bought from the factory. In England alcohol was cheaper than food and people drank themselves to death because they could not afford food. Now you understand the origins of socialism in Europe. Life was really bad for the poor and “middle” class if there was one.
Life wasn’t that much better in this country, except we had more land and could farm. However, people running away from the factory and their debt, were more often than not found in the west, drug back and thrown in debtor prisons. There were no laws preventing monopolies, preventing companies from unfettered price fixing, from strip mining the countryside, polluting every stream and pond or generally from killing you if they wanted to do so. They owned you without actually owning you because once you were incapable of working, you were shown the gate. Since most factories and factory towns were fenced in, that is where the expression came from. They literally threw you out of town or in jail if you owed too much. It has nothing to do with horse racing. Debt was inherited. Thus, your children had no chance of escaping the factory town. You just went deeper into debt and passed it on to your children.
So, is this what you meant by eliminating big government? You might want to rethink your position. Corporations have, since their inception, not had your best interests at heart. Are you certain you want to give them free reign because I sure don’t?