Santa Cruz Good Times

Saturday
May 25th
Text size
  • Increase font size
  • Default font size
  • Decrease font size

Saturn Square Pluto, Transformation Continues

RisaNewSAfter Saturday’s first full moon of 2010, (10 degrees Aquarius/Leo) the second Saturn square Pluto occurs, Sunday, Jan. 31. This transit creates a continual series of changes and transformations that, by the 2012 winter solstice, ends materialism as we have known it. Materialism (the involutionary cycle, Spirit into matter) has been a purposeful and needed developmental stage for humanity since our first protoplasmic presence on Earth 21 million years ago. This end of materialism the indigenous people have spoken of.

Within the breakdown phase (Shiva) a new creative effort is a complete reorganization of humanity’s endeavors. The United States is particularly vulnerable because she is to “lead humanity toward the Light.” And there are powerful forces attempting to block that spiritual task. Many ask, “What must we do now? How do we prepare?” First we must begin to ponder upon how to build new communities and life foundations, not based upon the past. For all of us the first step is the intention for purification (of purpose, actions, thinking, relating, etc.) leading to revelation leading to understanding leading to revolution. Eventually we understand that, together, we are the ones who must build the new civilization. The changes we are experiencing are the evolutionary forces within us (humanity and the Earth) being activated.The destruction phase continues till 2012. The realized creation phase begins 2012, winter solstice.

Esoteric Astrology as News for the week of Jan 28–Feb 3, 2010 For Sun and Rising Signs

Aries March 21–April 20
Experiences and thoughts, dreams and visions are beginning to define you. It’s as if your visions make up your daily reality. You are being called to study and research, discover, create and/or find groups that belong to you, create a template for community, and negotiate fear because you know it’s no longer your partner. Wisdom’s coming. It would be good to study astrology.

Tarus April 21–May 21
Your future is being placed in front of you. It’s asking you to create a large portion of everyone else’s future, asking you to lead with others in partnership and create the visions others will uphold and bring into form and matter. Careful if you carry too many illusions or a Pollyanna-ish idea of reality. Take care of your health. Do you need someone by your side? Call them.

Gemini May 22–June 20
You might need (want) to return to school, learn another profession, travel far away and/or ask for an expanded job description. It seems as if you’ll travel to one or more communities in order to visit friends, assess living there and review their spiritual emphasis and orientation. Work is challenging and money may become more of an issue. Judge its (your, their) worth carefully.


Cancer
Nov 22–Dec 20
Great benefits, at first very subtly, begin to fall into your life. Later you realize a joy has quietly entered your life as if on little cat’s feet. You find your thinking is reshaping itself. Intuition, perception and visions become more and more available. Allow nothing to stress or impose demands upon you. Your fear could do this. Love neutralizes fear.

Leo July 21–August 22
You become more and more aware that you’re working with powerful forces this week. They’re not only cosmic forces but people around you will be acting them out. This is an extraordinary piece of information … to know that people in our environments act out planetary motion. Observe all work realities this especially this week. Remember also that from loss comes profound new life.

Virgo August 23–September 22
Take hold of the family’s resources and begin to restructure them, making changes, rearranging all financial comings and goings. Place more into savings; use the money for tangible goods. Use it also to prepare for the future when goods may not be as available. Who in your daily life, including your work world, would you consider your community? If no one, then begin developing one.

Libra September 23–October 22
Some shift and/or transformation in your domestic world are creating changes in your self-identity. Perhaps there is an illness or a death (physically, emotionally, mentally) that is creating more discipline in your life. Perhaps there is a distance or a withholding or an absence or a task needing to be completed that will bring depth of feeling to your personal world. Think good fortune.

Scorpio October 23–November 21
The message for you and your personal seed thought is “creativity.” I suggest you study this word from all levels, and then list for yourself all the ways you are creative. Then list all the ways you wish you were creative. Then list all those you think are creative. Then define the word creative. From these exercises create an art piece that is an expression of your joys and sorrows, enjoyments, talents and abilities.

Sagittarius November 22–December 20
Everything about you now is very personal, very inner, and the nature of your potential opens in direct relation to your spiritual endeavors. Everything domestic is very, very good. And if you think not, then make it so through gratitude (for everything), which then brings upon you blessings and grace. Grace is an esoteric word for Initiation, a change in consciousness, which you’re going through. You laugh.

Capricorn December 21–January 20
You’re inspired to study family and relatives seeking your history so you can have a realistic (building to compassionate) view of where you came from and who you are. This gives you stability and a sense of self within a cycle of history. There can be great misunderstanding in communication, a cross between idealism and freedom. However, the reality somehow got lost. And you, too.

Aquarius January 21–February 18
Take tender care with your personal resources, with what you consider of value. Realize that things in matter, although they have monetary value, are not the same as people with feelings, hopes and needs. Try not to overspend, don’t loan money to friends, know there are financial benefits coming your way. Also realize when you help others, your well-being and self-identity grow exponentially.

Pisces February 19–March 20
You will day by day begin to experience a greater freedom of identity, much of which had been lost in a cloud of unknowing for the past several years. You will experience a new destiny, a celebration, a bit of self-indulgence, horizons widening, opportunities appearing and expanding, projects initiated and the arts (call to them!) incorporated in your daily life. You had almost given up.

 


More at nightlightnews.com.
Comments (0)Add Comment

Write comment
smaller | bigger

busy
 

Share this on your social networks

Bookmark and Share

Share this

Bookmark and Share

  • Search
  •  

    Free Angela

    Political activist and UC Santa Cruz Professor Emerita Angela Davis commands the spotlight in a riveting new documentary. PLUS:  UCSC’s Bettina Aptheker opens up about the political upheavals of the ’60s and ’70s—and today. Angela Davis is not a human being who can be easily summed up in several sentences or paragraphs—books maybe, but, even then, capturing the political activist, scholar and author in the most comprehensive light is downright complex. That’s because Davis is an undeniably unique political creature, one who should be seen and heard to be fully absorbed and downloaded. Which is what makes Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, the new documentary about Davis and the turbulent political upheavals she faced during the late-1960s and ’70s, so inviting. In it, filmmaker Shola Lynch marks the 40th anniversary of Davis’ acquittal on charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy with a historical vérité style of filmmaking to illuminate a side of Davis few may have seen (or can recall), and captures the events that thrust the woman into one of the most fascinating orbits of notoriety and political intrigue of the 20th century.

     

    No Big Surprises

    The highly anticipated draft Environmental Impact Report for desal is finally out. Will it change anything? When scwd2, the group pursuing the proposed joint desalination plant for the Santa Cruz Water Department and Soquel Creek Water District, set up a booth at the Santa Cruz Earth Day festival in 2012, its reception was less than warm. Signature gathering for Measure P, the “right to vote” on desal ballot measure, was in full swing, as were tensions over the controversial project, which would produce up to 2.5 million gallons per day of desalinated water and cost an estimated $100 million. What were representatives of an energy-intensive desal plant doing among the recycling and conservation booths? That was the attitude Melanie Mow Schumacher, public outreach coordinator for scwd2 (pronounced “squid squared”), remembers sensing.

     

    The Maya-Ixil Move Forward

    Local nonprofit works to educate and create opportunity for indigenous communities in Guatemala In an isolated region of the Guatemala mountains called Ixil, the indigenous Maya population was devastated by a civil war between the government and leftist guerrilla factions that spanned 1960 to 1996. During that 36-year war, the Guatemalan military eradicated entire Mayan communities. In what amounted to genocide, soldiers burned Mayan farmlands and homes, raped and tortured the people, and scattered families. By the end of the war, 200,000 Mayans had been killed, 7,000 of whom were Maya-Ixil.

     

    Public Thinking

    Watsonville teens host TEDx event Santa Cruz County is no stranger to the TED brand. TED—which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design—talks have come to the area through independently organized events 10 times since 2011. This month, the gathering returns to the county with a new twist, thanks to the Watsonville Youth City Council. TEDxYouth@Watsonville, which will take place Sunday, May 19 at the Henry J. Mello Center for the Performing Arts in Watsonville, will feature only speakers younger than 19 years old and will traverse topics from racial stereotypes and renewable energy to traditional Mexican dance.

     

    Transoceana

    Danny Moriarty’s musical influences have been known to impact his life beyond his local rock band, Transoceana. “I went through two periods,” confesses the singer, guitarist and songwriter. “I borrowed Bono’s mullet look from the ’80s for a while, and then I dressed like I was from the ’70s and had big hair like Jimmy Page.” Bono and Page are also symbolic of Transoceana’s evolution as a band during their three years together.

     

    Cruzin’ for Inspiration

    Former resident pays homage to Santa Cruz with locally shot thesis film When he left Santa Cruz for the University of Southern California’s graduate film program in 2010, Christopher Guerrero had completed the film major at UC Santa Cruz in 2008 and worked on campus in the film and digital media department. It wasn’t until he headed south, that Guerrero began to reminisce about the coastal town. “It was really really hard when I moved to L.A., to acclimate and find friends,” he says, adding that—counter to the philosophical, conversational culture of Santa Cruz—he found nowhere in his new town where he could simply sit and talk about life with someone. “I didn’t really realize why I love [Santa Cruz] so much until it was gone.”

     

    Beck to the Future

    In celebration of Beck’s solo acoustic show at The Rio, GT explores Song Reader, the alternative rock icon’s most ambitious interactive art piece yet. Here’s an odd little paradox of the digital revolution: The more sophisticated our technology gets, the more our musical milieu begins to resemble that of a bygone era, when song ideas were passed around from musician to musician, perpetually taking on new twists. Dozens of different YouTube users might try their hand at setting somebody’s rant about cats or double rainbows to music, or you might hear the Belgian musician Gotye turning the many and varied covers of his song “Somebody That I Used to Know” into a virtual orchestra (see below).

     

    Growing Berries Without Bromide

    Researchers test a new alternative to a controversial chemical The scarecrows perched in Santa Cruz strawberry fields do little to scare away the birds, much less the insects and fungi harbored in the soil. Everything likes to eat strawberries, which makes growing them a risky business. This predicament led UC Santa Cruz professor Carol Shennan to take an unconventional approach to pest management. Nine years ago, the fatal plant disease Verticillium wilt was wiping out strawberry plants at the university farm. Chemicals hardly phase the pathogen, and Shennan saw little improvement with crop rotation, which is typically used to treat infested fields. A visiting plant pathologist from the Netherlands recommended a little-known organic technique called anaerobic soil disinfestation, and, with so few other options, Shennan decided to give it a try. 

     

    Uniting All That Has Been Separated

     

    Legal Battles Drag On

    More than a year after the 75 River St. occupation, four defendants remain embroiled in ongoing case  More than a year and a half since a group occupied the former Wells Fargo building on River Street in an act of protest, felony charges linger on for four of the original defendants and a trial may be imminent. Gabriella Ripley-Phipps, Brent Adams, Cameron Laurendeau and Franklin Alcantara were scheduled to begin trial May 13 in connection with the late 2011 protest. That trial now has been pushed back to September due to scheduling conflicts. The four face a felony charge of vandalism and a misdemeanor for trespassing.
    Sign up for Tomorrow's Good Times Today
    Upcoming arts & events

    Latest Comments

     

    The Pleasure of Süda

    Süda is a happening place. As my friend Jan and I were enjoying dinner, every table in the restaurant filled up and nearly all the outdoor seating was occupied as well. Located in the Pleasure Point area, Süda is a magnet for just about everybody hanging out in that neck of the woods.

     

    The Power of Conversation

    Local author Cecile Andrews emphasizes importance of community engagement in newest book Cecile Andrews, author of the new book “Living Room Revolution: A Handbook for Conversation, Community and the Common Good,” probably wouldn’t get along too well with Larry David’s character from HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, known for hiding his face and avoiding communication with anyone he runs into on the street. Andrews is a longstanding part-time Santa Cruz (part-time Seattle) resident who says something that’s struck her about this town over the years is people's willingness to participate in a practice she’s dubbed the “Stop and Chat”—which is exactly what it sounds like.

     

    What do you know about Monsanto?

    Santa Cruz | Self Employed  

     

    Best of Santa Cruz County

    The 2013 Santa Cruz County Readers' Poll and Critics’ Picks It’s our biggest issue of the year, and in it, your votes—more than 6,500 of them—determined the winners of The Best of Santa Cruz County Readers’ Poll. New to the long list of local restaurants, shops and other notables that captured your interest: Best Beer Selection, Best Locally Owned Business, Best Customer Service and Best Marijuana Dispensary. In the meantime, many readers were ever so chatty online about potential new categories. Some of the suggestions that stood out: Best Teen Program and Best Web Design/Designer. But what about: Dog Park, Church, Hotel, Local Farm, Therapist (I second that!) or Sports Bar—not to be confused with Bra. Our favorite suggestion: Best Act of Kindness—one reader noted Café Gratitude and the free meals it offered to the Santa Cruz Police Department in the aftermath of recent crimes. Perhaps some of these can be woven into next year’s ballot, so stay tuned. In the meantime, enjoy the following pages and take note of our Critics’ Picks, too, beginning on page 91. A big thanks for voting—and for reading—and an even bigger congratulations to all of the winners. Enjoy.  -Greg Archer, EditorBest of Santa Cruz County Readers’ Poll INDEX | Shops | Food & Drink | Arts & Entertainment | Health & Fitness | Professionals | The Rest |

     

    Poetic Cellars

    Poetic Cellars makes the most romantic wines. With a verse or two of beautiful poetry on every label, mostly poems of love and romance, this is the perfect wine to open up over dinner with your sweetheart. I particularly love winemaker Katy Lovell’s Syrah ($28) with its voluptuous velvety textures and dark fruit flavors.

     

    The Gypsy

    French-born jazz vocalist Cyrille Aimée lives for musical freedom and improvisation Cyrille Aimée is a musical gypsy. Her sound incorporates elements of Latin American, American, Brazilian and other styles of jazz, she has recorded albums as a duet with Diego Figueiredo, she currently performs with the Surreal (same pronunciation as her first name) Band, and she is working on a new album with yet another band. As it happens, Aimée can actually blame gypsies for her love of jazz. “I grew up in Samois-sur-Seine, which is a little town in France where Django Reinhardt used to live,” she says. “Every year they have the Django Festival in his honor, and so gypsies from all parts of Europe come and honor him and play guitar. I started hanging out with the gypsies and became obsessed with their music, their way of living, their freedom. What drew me to jazz music was the freedom of it, all the improvisation, and the fact that it’s a style of music that is constantly changing.”

     

    May Day in the Alps

    When my daughter returns to Santa Cruz from her new home in Los Angeles, she comments on how quiet it is here. It was even more so during a trip to Ben Lomond, when we set out for a sample of her second favorite macaroni and cheese. Sitting at the front of the Tyrolean Inn restaurant, the green tarp with plastic windows kept out the chill as well as the noise of an occasional passing car. A new draft beer celebrating the German spring, Maibok ($6) was refreshing, served in a hefty glass stein, but specialty cocktails are unique as well.

     

    Exposed

    David Cay Johnston’s new book explains how big companies rob us blind In his late teens David Cay Johnston started to ask questions. “Why do we have these guys in uniforms with guns driving around in cars all day?” “Why is the Santa Cruz County Courthouse being built in such an unusual shape?” He wrote an article, while still living in his hometown of Santa Cruz, proving that the off-kilter courthouse building, which officials had promised would save money, actually cost more than a conventional building.

     

    What are you a total sucker for?

    A cold beer after a long bike ride, gossip, and fighting over politics. Kyle McKinley Santa Cruz | Lecturer