ARIES (March 21-April 19): Singer, dancer, and comedian Sammy Davis Jr. didn’t like the song “The Candy Man,” but he recorded it anyway, heeding his advisers. He only spent a brief time in the studio, finishing his vocals in two takes. “The song goes straight to the bathroom,” he complained, “taking my career with it.” Surprise! It became the best-selling song of her career, topping the Billboard charts for three weeks. I suspect there might be a similar phenomenon – or two! – in your life over the next few months, Aries. Don’t be too sure how or where your worthwhile accomplishments will happen.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I love author Maya Angelou’s definition of great achievement, and recommend that you take steps to make it your own in the weeks ahead. She wrote: “Success is loving yourself, loving what you do and loving the way you do it.” Please note that, according to her, success is not primarily about being popular, prestigious, powerful or successful. I’m sure she wouldn’t exclude these qualities from her formula, but the key point is that they are all less crucial than self-love. Please spend quality time refining and improving this aspect of your drive to succeed.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “I’m not fake in any way,” said Gemini actor Courteney Cox. At first glance, this is an amazing statement for a Gemini to make. After all, many of your tribesmen are masters of disguise and shapeshifting. Cox herself has been acclaimed for playing a wide variety of characters over her film and TV career, ranging from comedy to drama to horror. But consider the possibility that, yes, you Gemini can be versatile, mutable, and mercurial, but also genuine and authentic. I think your specialty could and should be more important in the coming weeks.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): “Sometimes I prayed for the Christ Child to make me good, but the Christ Child didn’t,” author Barbara Kingsolver wrote of her childhood approach to self-improvement. Just because this method didn’t work for her doesn’t mean it won’t work for others. By saying this, I do not mean that you should send appeals to the Baby Jesus. But I suggest you use your imagination to help you understand what influences can, in fact, stimulate your goodness. This is an excellent time to ask for help as you elevate your integrity, develop your compassion, and deepen your commitment to ethical behavior. It’s not that you’re deficient in those departments, it’s just that now is your prime time to do what we all need to do periodically: make sure our actual behavior is in alignment with our high ideals.

LEO (July 23-August 22): The classic and author Leo Edith Hamilton specialized in the history of ancient Greece. The poet Homer was one of the most influential voices in this world. Hamilton wrote, “An ancient writer said of Homer that he touched nothing without honoring and glorifying him in some way.” I love that about his work and invite you to match his energy in the weeks to come. I realize that’s a lot to ask. But according to my reading of astrological omens, you will indeed have the gift of honoring and glorifying everything you touch.

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): Starhawk, one of my favorite witches, reminds us that “sexuality is the expression of the creative life force of the universe. It’s not dirty, or just “normal”; It is sacred. And the sacred can also be affectionate, joyful, pleasant, passionate, funny or purely animal. I hope you enjoy such lushness in the weeks to come, Virgo. It is a favorable time in your astrological cycle to synergize eros and spirituality. You have poetic license to express your joy at being alive with imaginative acts of sublime love.

LIBRA (Sep 23-Oct 22): In 1634, the English poet John Milton coined the phrase “silver lining”. It has become an idiom referring to a redeeming aspect of an experience falling short of expectations. Over 350 years later, American author Arthur Yorinks wrote, “Too many people miss the silver lining because they expect gold. Now I bring you his message. Hopefully my disclaimer will ensure that you don’t miss the silver lining for any reason, including the possibility that you’re obsessed with gold.

SCORPIO (23 Oct-21 Nov): “It’s the deepest spiritual truth I know,” says author Anne Lamott. “That even when we are sure that love cannot conquer everything, it seems to do so anyway. He descends with us into the rat hole, in the guise of our friends, and there he swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds. Lamott’s thoughts will be your wisdom for the next eight weeks, Scorpio. Even if you think you already know everything there is to know about the powers of love to heal and transform, I urge you to be open to new powers that you have never seen in action.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22-Dec 21): Witty Sagittarian author Ashleigh Brilliant has created thousands of cheerful but often sardonic epigrams. In keeping with current astrological omens, I have selected six that will be useful for you to process as your own in the weeks to come. 1. “I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are great.” 2. “I gave up my search for the truth and am now looking for a good fantasy.” 3. “All I want is a warm bed, a kind word, and unlimited power.” 4. “Do your best to please me, that’s all I ask of everyone.” 5. “I’m just moving clouds today, tomorrow I’ll try mountains.” 6. “A terrible thing happened. I lost my will to suffer.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): “All experience is an enrichment rather than an impoverishment,” wrote author Eudora Welty. It may seem like a simple and obvious statement, but in my opinion, it is profound and revolutionary. Too often we are inclined to conclude that a relatively unpleasant or embarrassing event has diminished us. And while it did drain some of our vitality or cause us anguish, it almost certainly taught us a lesson or gave us insight that will serve us well in the long run, if only for help us avoid similar depressions in the future. According to my analysis of your current astrological omens, these thoughts are of paramount importance to you at this time.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): “Life is teeming with innocent monsters,” observed the poet Charles Baudelaire. Who are the “innocent monsters”? I will nominate a few candidates. Boring people who waste your time but aren’t inherently evil. Pretty ads that subtly trick you into wanting things you don’t really need. Social media that seems like fun entertainment, except it wastes your time and drains your energy. That’s the bad news, Aquarius. The good news is that the coming weeks will be a good time to eliminate at least some of these innocent monsters from your life. You are entering a period where you will have a strong gift for purging “nice” influences that are not really very nice.

PISCES (February 19-March 20): “Never underestimate the wisdom of being easily satisfied,” wrote aphorist Marty Rubin. If you are open to accepting such a challenge, Pisces, I suggest that you work on being very easily satisfied during the weeks to come. See if you can figure out how to enjoy even the smallest daily events with happy gratitude. Exult in the details that make your daily rhythm so rich. Use your ingenuity to deepen your ability to see life as a continuous miracle. If you do it right, you won’t have to pretend to have fun. You will greatly increase your sensitivity to ordinary glories that we all tend to take for granted.

Homework: What small change could you initiate that will make a big beneficial difference? Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com

I have been a university president for over 20 years and have been teaching students for twice as long. Last semester, however, I had a new experience in the classroom – teaching my first batch of high school students in a program sponsored by the National Educational Equity Lab, in partnership with Wesleyan University.

I had first heard from an undergrad about this non-profit organization, which enables high school students from historically underserved communities to take real college courses taught by college professors. . He was excited about his mission to provide free, college-level, credit-worthy courses to low-income high school students. The Wesleyan student was aware of our efforts to bring high-quality liberal arts education online, and he suggested that we do so in a way that would benefit high school students who did not have the same range of opportunities. to which he had access.

I was excited about Wesleyan partnering with the Ed Equity Lab because our missions are very aligned. We are always looking for highly talented students who may not have had access to educational opportunities, and if we see their potential and enroll them, we will meet all of their financial needs with scholarships and without ready. The Ed Equity Lab’s mantra is “talent is evenly distributed, opportunities are not”. The organization works with Title I high schools, which means at least 40 percent of their students qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch. Principals at these schools join teachers in choosing college-ready students, though sometimes the students themselves don’t realize how ready they are. The partner university chooses a professor and some teaching assistants to work with the high school instructor to deliver a course at the same level that would be found at the university. Howard, Stanford, and Yale universities have become partners, and now Wesleyan joins them and other colleges and universities in offering students the opportunity to earn high school college credit for free.

But the purpose of the Ed Equity Lab’s work is much more important than offering a free credit course. The goal is to give students from underserved high schools a chance to excel in challenging intellectual work and show them that they belong in a top-notch college or university. Many of these students had not considered applying to these types of institutions, and through these courses they learn that they are capable of doing the job. They also learn that attending a top university would be affordable with the need-based scholarships offered by the institutions. Many of these colleges and universities would be free for students.

Although I was excited to partner with Ed Equity Lab, I thought of recruiting a colleague from Wesleyan to teach a course in a high demand area. It turned out that the professors we had in mind already had busy schedules, so I volunteered to offer The Modern and the Post-Modern, a humanities course that I regularly teach in person and that I had already proposed as MOOC with Coursera. We recruited Wesleyan undergraduates who had teaching or classroom experience to be the teaching assistants, while Ed Equity found teachers and dozens of students in about six high schools, and we were on our way.

My course focuses on Western ideas of modernity, progress, artistic experimentation, and the anti-foundationalism of Rousseau and Kant through contemporary pragmatism and critical race theory. This is difficult for many students, as we move quickly from Enlightenment to Romanticism, from radical criticism to art for art’s sake. I’ve taught versions of the class for decades to freshmen and graduate students, but wondered what high school students would make of it.

It turns out that many were intimidated starting with Kant and Rousseau, but gained confidence reading Mary Shelley, Gustave Flaubert and Virginia Woolf. Secondary teachers commented on how the class taught students “how to think more critically and analytically” and that writing and rewriting essays helped them express themselves more clearly and concisely.

The material was ‘provocative’ – we read Charles Baudelaire, Alison Bechdel and Toni Morrison! – and some have even questioned its “relevance”. It was music to my ears. Having discussions about the boundaries of what we can talk about is much more empowering than guarding those boundaries in an effort to “protect” young minds. A student from Kansas said she enjoyed the discussions with the Wesleyan teaching assistants so much because she was not pressured to have strong opinions about the issues. She was able to explore these issues and her own relationship to them by listening to others. Learning to listen to others with whom one might disagree is an essential skill for civic participation, especially today.

As Roberto, a Californian student said before quoting Nietzsche, “I am able, we are able… to succeed, to adapt and evolve to be the best version of ourselves”.

There were bumps along the way. Equipment East hard, and some students found it intimidating. One school had to drop out due to COVID, and several students had life events that prevented them from completing their education. But we’ve all been impressed by the number of students who have earned college credit for successfully mastering the material and improving their writing.

We were also impressed with how the Wesleyan teacher aides connected with the high school students, building trust as well as skills. Isn’t that what we seek in liberal education: learning to talk together about difficult topics and lingering questions, inspired by powerful thinkers and artists? Max, a college student from Florida, put it succinctly: “Incredibly enlightening!

We begin The Modern and the Post-Modern with Kant’s definition of the Enlightenment: leaving self-imposed immaturity behind. That’s what my high school students did last semester. We treated them like adults, and they responded by thinking freely, working hard, and listening to a variety of viewpoints. They earned college credits. By listening to them, I also learned something. I learned on a very granular level the great things that can happen when you distribute opportunities more widely. College and university administrators and professors should create more opportunities to work with high school students. By cultivating pathways to college for students from diverse backgrounds, we become better teachers and better citizens.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Singer, dancer, and comedian Sammy Davis Jr. didn’t like the song “The Candy Man,” but he recorded it anyway, heeding his advisers. He only spent a brief time in the studio, finishing his vocals in two takes. “The song goes straight to the bathroom,” he complained, “taking my career with it.” Surprise! It became the best-selling song of her career, topping the Billboard charts for three weeks. I suspect there could be a similar phenomenon (or two!) in your life over the next few months, Aries. Don’t be too sure how or where your worthwhile accomplishments will happen.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I love author Maya Angelou’s definition of great achievement, and recommend that you take steps to make it your own in the weeks ahead. She wrote: “Success is loving yourself, loving what you do and loving the way you do it.” Please note that, according to her, success is not primarily about being popular, prestigious, powerful or successful. I’m sure she wouldn’t exclude these qualities from her formula, but the key point is that they are all less crucial than self-love. Please spend some quality time refining and improving this aspect of your drive to succeed.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “I’m not fake in any way,” Gemini actor Courteney Cox said. At first glance, this is an amazing statement for a Gemini to make. After all, many of your tribesmen are masters of disguise and shapeshifting. Cox herself has been acclaimed for playing a wide variety of characters over her film and TV career, ranging from comedy to drama to horror. But consider the possibility that, yes, you Gemini can be versatile, mutable, and mercurial, but also genuine and authentic. I think your specialty could and should be more important in the coming weeks.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): “Sometimes I prayed for the Christ Child to make me good, but the Christ Child didn’t,” author Barbara Kingsolver wrote of her childhood approach to self-improvement. Just because this method didn’t work for her doesn’t mean it won’t work for others. By saying this, I do not mean that you should send appeals to the Baby Jesus. But I suggest you use your imagination to help you understand what influences can, in fact, stimulate your goodness. This is an excellent time to ask for help as you elevate your integrity, develop your compassion, and deepen your commitment to ethical behavior. It’s not that you’re deficient in those departments; it’s just that now is your prime time to do what we all need to do periodically: make sure that our actual behavior is in perfect harmony with our high ideals.

LEO (July 23-August 22): The classic and author Leo Edith Hamilton specialized in the history of ancient Greece. The poet Homer was one of the most influential voices in this world. Hamilton wrote, “An ancient writer said of Homer that he touched nothing without somehow honoring and glorifying him.” I love that about his work, and invite you to match his energy in the weeks to come. I realize that’s a lot to ask. But according to my reading of astrological omens, you will indeed have the gift of honoring and glorifying everything you touch.

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): Starhawk, one of my favorite witches, reminds us that “sexuality is the expression of the creative life force of the universe. It’s not dirty, or just “normal”; It is sacred. And the sacred can also be affectionate, joyful, pleasant, passionate, funny or purely animal. I hope you enjoy such lushness in the weeks to come, Virgo. It is a favorable time in your astrological cycle to synergize eros and spirituality. You have poetic license to express your joy at being alive with imaginative acts of sublime love.

LIBRA (Sep 23-Oct 22): In 1634, the English poet John Milton coined the phrase “silver lining”. It has become an idiom referring to a redeeming aspect of an experience falling short of expectations. More than 350 years later, American author Arthur Yorinks wrote, “Too many people miss the silver lining because they expect gold. Now I bring you his message. Hopefully my disclaimer will ensure that you don’t miss the silver lining for any reason, including the possibility that you’re obsessed with gold.

SCORPIO (23 Oct-21 Nov): “It’s the deepest spiritual truth I know,” says author Anne Lamott. “That even when we’re sure that love can’t conquer everything, it seems to anyway. He descends with us into the rat hole, in the guise of our friends, and there he swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds. Lamott’s thoughts will be your wisdom for the next eight weeks, Scorpio. Even if you think you already know everything there is to know about the powers of love to heal and transform, I urge you to be open to new powers that you have never seen in action.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22-Dec 21): Witty Sagittarian author Ashleigh Brilliant has created thousands of cheerful but often sardonic epigrams. In keeping with current astrological omens, I have selected six that will be useful for you to process as your own in the weeks to come. 1. “I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are great.” 2. “I gave up my search for the truth and am now looking for a good fantasy.” 3. “All I want is a warm bed, a kind word, and unlimited power.” 4. “Do your best to please me, that’s all I ask of everyone.” 5. “I’m just moving clouds today, tomorrow I’ll try mountains.” 6. “A terrible thing happened. I lost my will to suffer.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): “All experience is an enrichment rather than an impoverishment,” wrote author Eudora Welty. It may seem like a simple and obvious statement, but in my opinion, it is profound and revolutionary. Too often we are inclined to conclude that a relatively unpleasant or embarrassing event has diminished us. And while it did drain some of our vitality or cause us anguish, it almost certainly taught us a lesson or gave us insight that will serve us well in the long run, if only for help us avoid similar depressions in the future. According to my analysis of your current astrological omens, these thoughts are of paramount importance to you at this time.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18)“Life is teeming with innocent monsters”, said the poet Charles Baudelaire. Who are the “innocent monsters”? I will nominate a few candidates. Boring people who waste your time but aren’t inherently evil. Pretty ads that subtly trick you into wanting things you don’t really need. Social media that seems like fun entertainment, only it wastes your time and drains your energy. That’s the bad news, Aquarius. The good news is that the coming weeks will be a good time to eliminate at least some of these innocent monsters from your life. You are entering a period where you will have a strong gift for purging “nice” influences that are not really very nice.

PISCES (February 19-March 20): “Never underestimate the wisdom of being easily satisfied,” wrote aphorist Marty Rubin. If you are open to accepting such a challenge, Pisces, I suggest that you work on being very easily satisfied during the weeks to come. See if you can figure out how to enjoy even the smallest daily events with blissful gratitude. Exult in the details that make your daily rhythm so rich. Use your ingenuity to deepen your ability to see life as a continuous miracle. If you do it right, you won’t have to pretend to have fun. You will greatly increase your sensitivity to ordinary glories that we all tend to take for granted.

Homework: What small change could you initiate that will make a big beneficial difference? Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com

ARIES (March 21-April 19): “I don’t just bow to the inevitable,” wrote Thornton Wilder, author of Aries. “I am strengthened by it. wow. It was a cheeky statement. Did he sincerely mean it? He stated that he grew stronger through surrender, that he drew energy from willingly yielding to the epic tendencies of his fate. I don’t think that’s always true for everyone. But I suspect it will be a useful prospect for you in the weeks to come, Aries.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Long live difference ! Hooray for how we are not the same! I am all for cultural diversity, neurodiversity, spiritual diversity, and physical diversity. Are you? The weeks ahead will be an excellent time to celebrate the bounties and blessings available to you through the sacred gift of infinite variety. The immediate future will also be a perfect phase to appreciate more that your companions and allies are not the same as you. I encourage you to tell them why you like their difference. Now here is poet Anna Akhmatova to weave it: “I breathe moonlight, and you breathe sunlight, but we live together in the same love.”

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Gemini singer-songwriter Bob Dylan said, “I consider a hero to be someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with their freedom.” I think this will be a key theme for you in the weeks to come. Dylan described the type of hero I hope you aspire to. To be fowarding something! You are at the dawn of an invigorating liberation. To ensure you proceed with maximum grace, take on the increased responsibility that justifies and fortifies your additional freedom.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): “I’d rather be seduced than comforted,” wrote author Judith Rossner. And you, Cancer? Would you rather be lured, invited, pulled out of your shell, and led into interesting temptation? Or are you more likely to thrive when you are nurtured, soothed, supported, and encouraged to relax and cultivate peace? I’m not saying one is better than the other, but I urge you to prioritize the former in the weeks ahead: to be attracted, invited, pulled out of your shell, and drawn into interesting temptation.

LEO (July 23-August 22): A woman from Cornwall, UK named Karen Harris was adopted as a little girl. At 18, she began trying to find her biological parents. Thirty-four years later, she finally finds her father. The Turning Point: He appeared on the “Suggested Friends” feature on his Facebook page. I propose that we make Karen Harris your inspirational role model. Now is a good time to regain what you lost some time ago; to reconnect with a good resource that has disappeared from your life; to retrieve a connection that might be meaningful to you again.

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa told us, “Meditation is not about trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss, or tranquility. Instead, he said meditation is how we “expose and destroy our neurotic games, our delusions about ourselves, our hidden fears and hopes.” Excuse me, Mr. Trungpa, but I don’t allow anyone, not even a holy man like you, to dictate what meditation is and isn’t. Many other spiritual mentors I have enjoyed learning about say that meditation can also be a discipline for achieving ecstasy, spiritual bliss, and tranquility. And I suspect this is what Virgo meditators should be focusing on in the coming weeks. You are in a phase where you can cultivate extraordinary encounters with all these fun things. If you’re not a meditator, now would be a good time to give it a try. I recommend the books meditation for beginnersby Jack Kornfield, and How to meditate by Pema Chödrön.

LIBRA (Sep 23-Oct 22): Comedian Fred Allen observed, “It’s probably not love that makes the world go round, but rather those mutually supportive alliances through which partners recognize their dependence on each other for the achievement of goals. shared and private. That’s an unromantic thing to say, isn’t it? Or maybe it’s not. Perhaps it is very romantic, even enchanting, to rejoice in how our allies help us achieve our dreams and how we help them achieve their dreams. According to my astrological advice, the coming weeks will be an excellent time to focus on the synergies and symbioses that empower you.

SCORPIO (23 Oct-21 Nov): “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood!” say many self-help gurus. “It’s never too early to start channeling the wise elder that is already forming within you,” I declare. Curiously, these two guiding principles will be useful for you to meditate over the next few weeks. According to my analysis of astrological omens, you are exceptionally well placed to resurrect childlike wonder and curiosity. You are also about to learn stellar advice from the Future You who has learned many secrets that the Current You do not yet know. Bonus: your inner child and inner elder could collaborate to create a wonderful breakthrough or two.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22-Dec 21): “A myriad of modest delights make happiness”, wrote the poet Charles Baudelaire. This will be a reliable formula for you in the weeks to come, Sagittarius. You may not reap glorious bursts of happiness, but you will be regularly visited by small enchantments, bountiful details, and helpful tweaks. I hope you don’t miss or ignore some of these nurturing blessings because you’re obsessed with hoping to take big leaps. Be grateful for modest delights.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): I found out some fun facts about famous Capricorn poet Robert Duncan (1919-1988), who was a bohemian socialist and pioneering gay activist. He was adopted by Theosophical parents who chose him because of his astrological constitution. They interpreted Robert’s dreams when he was a child. Later in life, he had an affair with actor father Robert De Niro, also named Robert, who was a famous abstract expressionist painter. Either way, Capricorn, this is the kind of original and fascinating information I hope you’ll be on the lookout for. It’s time to pursue high-level entertainment as you accelerate your learning; change your destiny for the better by collecting interesting clues; be voraciously curious by attracting nurturing influences that inspire you to be innovative.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): “I always strive, when I can, to spread sweetness and light,” said PG Wodehouse. “There have been several complaints about this.” I know what he means. During my own crusade to express shrewd and insightful forms of optimism, I have enraged many people. They don’t like being reminded that thousands of things are going well every day. They would rather simmer in their discontent and cynicism, illusoryly imagining that a dire prospect is the smartest and most realistic position. If you’re one of those types, Aquarius, I have bad news for you: the coming weeks will bring you invitations and opportunities to cultivate a more positive attitude. I don’t mean that you should ignore problems or stop trying to fix what needs to be fixed. Just notice anything that works well and provides you with what you need. For inspiration, read my essay: tinyurl.com/HighestGlory.

PISCES (February 19-March 20): Pastor and activist Charles Henry Parkhurst (1842-1933) said, “All great discoveries are made by people whose feelings go beyond their thoughts. The approach worked well for him. In 1892, he uncovered and exposed monumental corruption within the New York government. His actions led to significant reforms of local police and political organizations. In my astrological opinion, you should incorporate his perspective as you write the next chapter of your life story. You may not have been able to fully conceive your future prospects and labors of love yet, but your feelings can lead you there.

Homework: See if you can forgive yourself for a wrong turn that you couldn’t forgive yourself. Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com.

RAM (March 21-April 19): “I don’t just bow to the inevitable,” wrote Thornton Wilder, author of Aries. “I am strengthened by it. wow. It was a cheeky statement. Did he sincerely mean it? He stated that he grew stronger through surrender, that he drew energy from willingly yielding to the epic tendencies of his fate. I don’t think that’s always true for everyone. But I suspect it will be a useful prospect for you in the weeks to come, Aries.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Long live the difference! Hooray for how we are not the same! I am all for cultural diversity, neurodiversity, spiritual diversity, and physical diversity. Are you? The weeks ahead will be an excellent time to celebrate the bounties and blessings available to you through the sacred gift of infinite variety. The immediate future will also be a perfect phase to appreciate more that your companions and allies are not the same as you. I encourage you to tell them why you like their difference. Now here is poet Anna Akhmatova to weave it: “I breathe moonlight, and you breathe sunlight, but we live together in the same love.”

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Gemini singer-songwriter Bob Dylan said, “I consider a hero to be someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with their freedom.” I think this will be a key theme for you in the weeks to come. Dylan described the type of hero I hope you aspire to. To be fowarding something! You are at the dawn of an invigorating liberation. To ensure you proceed with maximum grace, take on the increased responsibility that justifies and fortifies your additional freedom.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): “I’d rather be seduced than comforted,” wrote author Judith Rossner. And you, Cancer? Would you rather be lured, invited, pulled out of your shell, and drawn into interesting temptation? Or are you more likely to thrive when you are nurtured, soothed, supported, and encouraged to relax and cultivate peace? I’m not saying one is better than the other, but I urge you to prioritize the former in the weeks ahead: to be attracted, invited, pulled out of your shell, and drawn into interesting temptation.

LEO (July 23-August 22): A woman from Cornwall, UK, named Karen Harris was adopted as a little girl. At eighteen, she began trying to find her birth parents. Thirty-four years later, she finally finds her father. The Turning Point: He appeared on the “Suggested Friends” feature on his Facebook page. I propose that we make Karen Harris your inspirational role model. Now is a good time to regain what you lost some time ago; to reconnect with a good resource that has disappeared from your life; to retrieve a connection that might be meaningful to you again.

VIRGIN (August 23-September 22): Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa told us, “Meditation is not about trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss, or tranquility. Instead, he said meditation is how we “expose and destroy our neurotic games, our delusions about ourselves, our hidden fears and hopes.” Excuse me, Mr. Trungpa, but I don’t allow anyone, not even a holy man like you, to dictate what meditation is and isn’t. Many other spiritual mentors I have enjoyed learning about say that meditation can also be a discipline for achieving ecstasy, spiritual bliss, and tranquility. And I suspect this is what Virgo meditators should be focusing on in the coming weeks. You are in a phase where you can cultivate extraordinary encounters with all these fun things. If you’re not a meditator, now would be a good time to give it a try. I recommend the books “Meditation for Beginners” by Jack Kornfield and “How to Meditate” by Pema Chödrön.

BALANCE (September 23-October 22): Comedian Fred Allen observed, “It’s probably not love that makes the world go round, but rather those mutually supportive alliances through which partners acknowledge their dependence on one another. the others for the achievement of shared and private goals. goals.” That’s an unromantic thing to say, isn’t it? Or maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s very romantic, even enchanting, to rejoice in the how our allies help us achieve our dreams and how we help them achieve their dreams.In my astrological advice, the coming weeks will be an excellent time to focus on the synergies and symbioses that empower you.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood!” say many self-help gurus. “It’s never too early to start channeling the wise elder that is already forming within you,” I declare. Curiously, these two guiding principles will be useful for you to meditate over the next few weeks. According to my analysis of astrological omens, you are exceptionally well placed to resurrect childlike wonder and curiosity. You are also about to learn stellar advice from the Future You who has learned many secrets that the Current You do not yet know. Bonus: your inner child and inner elder could collaborate to create a wonderful breakthrough or two.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22-Dec 21): “A myriad of modest delights make happiness”, wrote the poet Charles Baudelaire. This will be a reliable formula for you in the weeks to come, Sagittarius. You may not reap glorious bursts of happiness, but you will be regularly visited by small enchantments, bountiful details, and helpful tweaks. I hope you don’t miss or ignore some of these nurturing blessings because you’re obsessed with hoping to take big leaps. Be grateful for modest delights.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): I discovered some fun facts about famous Capricorn poet Robert Duncan (1919-1988), who was a bohemian socialist and pioneering gay activist. He was adopted by Theosophical parents who chose him because of his astrological constitution. They interpreted Robert’s dreams when he was a child. Later in life, he had an affair with actor father Robert De Niro, also named Robert, who was a famous abstract expressionist painter. Either way, Capricorn, this is the kind of original and fascinating information I hope you’ll be on the lookout for. It’s time to pursue high-level entertainment as you accelerate your learning; change your destiny for the better by collecting interesting clues; be voraciously curious by attracting nurturing influences that inspire you to be innovative.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): “I always strive, when I can, to spread sweetness and light,” said PG Wodehouse. “There have been several complaints about this.” I know what he means. During my own crusade to express shrewd and insightful forms of optimism, I have enraged many people. They don’t like being reminded that thousands of things are going well every day. They would rather simmer in their discontent and cynicism, illusoryly imagining that a dire prospect is the smartest and most realistic position. If you’re one of those types, Aquarius, I have bad news for you: the coming weeks will bring you invitations and opportunities to cultivate a more positive attitude. I don’t mean that you should ignore problems or stop trying to fix what needs to be fixed. Just notice anything that works well and provides you with what you need. For inspiration, read my essay: tinyurl.com/HighestGlory

PISCES (February 19-March 20): Pastor and activist Charles Henry Parkhurst (1842-1933) said, “All great discoveries are made by people whose feelings go beyond thought.” The approach worked well for him. In 1892, he uncovered and exposed monumental corruption within the New York government. His actions led to significant reforms of local police and political organizations. In my astrological opinion, you should incorporate his perspective as you write the next chapter of your life story. You may not have been able to fully conceive your future prospects and labors of love yet, but your feelings can lead you there.

Homework: See if you can forgive yourself for a wrong turn that you couldn’t forgive yourself for. Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com

This week’s poem, “The Father,” comes to us from a beautiful new book by a beloved late Maine poet, Jonathan Aldrich. This poem is of luminous simplicity and grace. I love the wise compassion of its speaker as he sings of age, stories and the way to shore.

Aldrich wrote more than a dozen books during his 40-year career as a poet. He received the Academy of American Poets Award and was a Frost Scholar at the Bread Loaf School of English. His translation of Charles Baudelaire‘s Voyage, illustrated by Allison Hildreth and hand-printed by David Wolfe Productions, won a Baxter Society Award. Aldrich also taught English at several colleges, including 25 years at the Maine College of Art, where he received the Best Teacher Award. A major retrospective of his work, “The Old World in his Arms”, has just been published by Wolfson Press at Indiana University.

The father

By Jonathan Aldrich

Let me take you by the hand, old sir.

There may be some stories we haven’t told

another and the hour is late now.

We’re both getting old

(and you are much older than me).

There’s no other way

on the shore than by the trees.

It’s better than you think to be blind.

Teller of tales, beautiful long stories,

where are you going and how?

Something still asks us to find

my soul again, we have so much to say.

Quieter here, it is a land of water.

Let me take you by the hand.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer living in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in conjunction with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “The Father,” by Jonathan Aldrich, copyright © 2022 by Jonathan Aldrich, appears in “The Old World in His Arms,” published by Wolfson Press at Indiana University.

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I met DEVON Walker-Figueroa in a ghost town. We were both spending part of the summer in Vamvakou – a town with only nine permanent residents in the mountains of Laconia, Greece – on a writing scholarship. As I sweated in the 100 degree heat trying to sort out the sentences, I noticed her immediately befriending the locals, a donkey named Bella, and moving easily through the landscape. She came out every night with stories, beautiful pictures of stone-capped buildings and streets that others might overlook, new poems forming in her hands.

When I opened his first collection, PhilomathI have seen this hunting and empathetic eye in the course of his work. Philomathwinner of the 2020 National Poetry Series selected by Sally Keith, is named after her home, another ghost town, in Oregon’s Coast Range. Philomath offers work that is both precise and expansive, poems that skip across the page, making use of white space and breath, or delivered in dense chunks like certain memories. The result is a lyrical testament to where we grew up and what will never leave us.

The poet brings to the page not only her language training, as a graduate of Bennington College, Iowa Writers’ Workshop and current NYU scholar Jill Davis, but also her training as a harpist and former dancer. ballet. It is a verse steeped in music, movement, sound. Philomath is a song to the Northwest, to self and family, to those places we thought we wanted to escape so badly before realizing they had already shaped us.

“‘Love of learning’ is what / Philomath means,” the book begins. Who leaves, who stays? What is the “sound of becoming” in these spaces?

I recently sat down with Walker-Figueroa at a Brooklyn cafe to recount our summer adventure and delve into the world of her famous collection.

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SARAH HERRINGTON: This is the first time I’ve seen you with Brooklyn around you instead of Greece!

DEVON WALKER-FIGUEROA: Seeing your face brings me straight back to Vamvakou.

I expect Bella the donkey to show up with her bell. Thank you for taking the time to speak and congratulations on Philomath. OWhat inspired you to write for the first time on Philomath? And what about ghost towns?

[Laughs.] Well, I for one feel like ghost towns have a way of finding me and then swallowing me up. They are my Jonah’s whale. But also, I grew up in one. Kings Valley is a literal ghost town, and you feel it when you’re there. It is also known to be haunted. If you ever go to the Philomath Historic Society, you can read all the accounts of people who saw apparitions and wanted it recorded. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, it gets you thinking about what we want to record, to then share with others. I guess I naturally started recording my house, which is something of my own.

Then my best friend who lives in California took me to Bodie, California which is an old ghost town from the gold rush boom days but it was wiped out by fires. Bodie was eventually turned into a state park, so now people pay to walk around looking at houses or the remnants of them. I like this. This idea of ​​something that becomes priceless through disuse.

I remember this story from your poem “Curse of Bodie”, with its grand opening:

Bodie is the first ghost town I’ve come across that makes people want
to visit it.

Yes, and you already know this, but I just spent my whole summer in a ghost town in Greece, Vamvakou. I like calm. I don’t care too much about the feeling of being invisible. And I find how people in such distant places come together and invent a kind of culture of their own endlessly fascinating.

Let’s talk about the form of your work. What is the meaning of space in your poems? What is your process for researching a poem‘the form ?

First of all, I would say spaces have a lot to do with modulating the speed at which the reader moves through the poem. The look that moves over the words and the silences that separate them is a kind of dance, which can be influenced by the use of space. As in, you can use space as a unit of motion and time, speeding up or slowing down the poem and the reader, depending on the poem’s needs.

Can we take one of your poems as an example? I look at “My Materia”:

Every day it opened
with such an inherited blessing it was more
Cadence more than melody, …

The lines seem, somehow, both stretched and jerky.

Thinking about musical notation, you can compare a larger hyphen to a whole rest and a shorter one to a quarter rest, for example. And beyond the use of hyphenations, there are also certain poems, as in “My Materia”, which use blocks of space, allowing the text to press against invisible borders and mark, or to frame, the absence.

You highlight what isn’t there – it’s also a bit ghostly of you.

Yeah, absolutely. And if you want a span, say, but don’t want a full line break, you can use a hyphenation like this. You can add a small successful direction error (or simply, direction) in there by introducing some soft pauses. This absence here (in “My Materia”) relates to the absent mother, but also to the geometries formed by the young virgins of this old religious group, the Daughters of Job. The women arranged themselves in the shape of a cross. If you consider that geometrically, you see that a cross forms a border between four implied voids, shaped like boxes or triangles, depending on how you visually apprehend it.

Thanks for mentioning religion. Can we talk about the role of faith in the book?

Sure. The book makes extensive references to the Bible and Christianity. The Bible says some strange and wonderfully mystical things about scripture itself – speaking of the Word made flesh, or claiming that our immortal souls are in the balance of interpreting a verse. Or tell us that “every note and every little word” that we read in its pages is “inspired by God”. The stakes are pretty high when what you read is supposed to be authored by God, aren’t they? But the pressure and importance it gives to words…even though I’m no longer religious and haven’t been since I was 15, I still carry that sense of the human soul and its destiny linked to language.

That said, religion and faith aren’t the same thing, so I would also argue that there’s a faith in the book, broadly speaking, in the value of lives that unfold largely unseen. There is faith in the obscure, the unacknowledged, the anonymous, even the despised or the abject. And, on the other hand, there is much doubt in Philomath, too. I think it’s probably equal parts faith and doubt.

It’s true, and to my ear, it’s faith and doubt felt through the body. Can we talk about how the body appears in these poems? I especially like these lines:

My body is just the story it tells
To be true.

Thank you. I think a lot about embodiment in the book, with all the sexuality and physicality in there, the dancing. But I am also concerned with disembodiment. There’s a series of poems there called “Out of Body,” which I started writing thinking about my mother’s very compelling description of an out-of-body experience she had when she nearly drown in a canoeing accident. This event happened before I was born, so my future incarnation would never have happened if things had turned out differently. This event is not in the book, but this idea that one can preview one’s own death or somehow observe the spectacle of one’s non-existence without occupying it, that fascinated me.

Speaking of bodies, how does gender appear in these poems?

Oh wow. Alright, let me think about this one. I mean, the truth is, growing up in such a remote place can make someone feel a little sexless, at least for a while. If no one really cares whether you’re alive or dead, they certainly don’t scrutinize your sex much. If the genre is performance like Judith Butler said, then you just don’t have a lot of people to perform for in a setting like that –

wow. I really relate to that. I also grew up in a rural area and spent a lot of time alone growing up – something I wrote about in your book. You are right – as a child in those moments in nature without a human witness, I didn’t really feel gender.

Law. My sister and I were more in a rush to do femininity when my family moved to urban areas. My mother brushed our hair and put us in dresses to go to church – but during the week we were homeschooled most of the time, we lived in handmade overalls from our little cousin in Louisiana. I remember feeling like a tomboy, whatever that means.

I still don’t feel particularly gendered, to be honest, although I guess I’m considered female or female to most people. What I mean, though, is that such a dark life can actually be really liberating. It can give you permission to find out what feels honest to you without too much outside pressure. And I think there’s a bit of that childhood genre amorphity captured in the book.

So a big question – what is the line between prose and poetry for you?

If you ever find out where this division is, let me know!

It may seem like a cop-out, but I think you know, by instinct, when you read poetry, whether it’s prose or lines. For me, personally, this recognition is often linked to, among other things, the writer’s use of music and image, perhaps how indulgent they can be with metaphors and symbols, to how liberal they are with their invitation to the irrational. That said, I don’t know how to answer this question. Not really. I also think our sense of where that boundary existed was blown up by the Symbolists, especially Charles Baudelaire and Aloysius Bertrand, so maybe we could have a seance and ask their ghosts.

What haunts you right now?

Honestly, and it seems so obvious, but the pandemic. All the death and dying and the suffering and the distance around it.

Also, the complication of how the environment thrived the most when we were most crippled as a species – Venice’s canals becoming so clear you could see fish swimming in them, city birds changing their calls, smelling the sea from my balcony in Bushwick.

I also remember the words for death from earlier studies of Old English: wtindordeaÞa wonderful death; bealusíþpath of death; deáþbeám, deáþræsdeath rush; deáþwíc, mansion of death. It’s as if all the best English words for death are already dead. It’s as if our language was not prepared for this pandemic.

It’s intense.

We actually have so few ways to name what we’ve been through. And it haunts me.

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And that is why the Dhaka trails remain the saddest configuration ever suggested for human adaptation. Built primarily to cover sewers, most trails are ironically impassable: they’re split into segments, they’re obscenely high (sometimes requiring steps to get up!), and when they do exist, they’re often taken in charging by electrical transformers, bus ticket vendors and police boxes. There, walkers flip over each other and jump across a motley space no more than 4 feet wide.

No wonder people walk on vehicular roads even at the risk of being run over. With the book “Designing Dhaka”, published in 2012, we were perhaps the first to worry about the poor and shabby sidewalks of Dhaka. We even joked: a trail is exactly that: a wide trail!

Despite heavy investments on the road, we have failed to give it a civic form and standard. Dhaka still has a rudimentary road and transport system. Busy, congested and chaotic, the roads of Dhaka look like scenes from a disaster movie. If after thousands of years of human civilization we crawl our roads in our vehicles at 7 km per hour – the average speed of a motorized vehicle on Dhaka’s roads – and some of us who walk meet untimely deaths by getting run over, there’s something wrong with the development picture.

If we want this megacity of 20 million to be the shining capital of a developed nation, marching forward with its flag of ever-increasing GDP, we should start with the city’s roads. Economic progress must match the quality of urban and physical spaces in cities.

I have pointed out elsewhere that the road in the city is really a public landscape, a space shared by both motor vehicles and humans, one is a mechanized contraption moving with speed, and the other a vulnerable living thing that breathes. The road is not simply a conduit for motor vehicle traffic; it includes passage, movement and crossing for pedestrians. In Dhaka, we forget that the pedestrian is a vulnerable human being, whose stature of one meter seventy provides the fundamental scale and the reference of all spaces.

The city has become incredibly complex and impenetrable, but that’s also a beautiful thing. PHOTO: NILOY BISWAS

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The city has become incredibly complex and impenetrable, but that’s also a beautiful thing. PHOTO: NILOY BISWAS