By SAVAS ABADSIDIS

It was my birthday and I decided to see my shrink. I hadn’t seen him in a while and I realized it was probably a good time to restart therapy and maybe address a few things that had been rattling around in my head.

After arriving at his downtown Manhattan office, Carol the receptionist called me into one of the examination rooms to tell me I had an outstanding balance from my previous visit for $340.00. It had been denied by my insurance — she quietly — as not to embarrass me in front of the other patients informed me that the doctor was not going to be able to see me or write me my anti-depressant and benzodiazepines prescriptions unless the bill was taken care of…. I was in complete shock and felt a surge of anger for a moment.

Firstly because I had no idea that I had a bill due, secondly wondering why my insurance had not paid the bill, and thirdly because I couldn’t believe that this doctor who I had been seeing on and off for over 10 years was denying to see me over one bill.

She quickly apologized and explained that so many people had been coming in with canceled insurance and not making payments over the last year that they could not afford to see patients with outstanding bills anymore. After looking at the insurance information, I realized that it was outdated and that I had not provided my new information. I explained this to Carol, but didn’t have the new card on me. She left the examination room to talk to the doctor and returned saying that he would agree to see me if I paid half the bill on the spot. Again I was in shock; there was something dirty about this explicit exchange of money in return for services that I had never experienced at the doctor before. I had already over the past few years been turned off at the idea of having to hand over your co-pay upfront before your visit. Certainly this exchange of money for services not yet rendered was a far cry from the Hippocratic oath. I happened to have $100 on me and she ran back to ask the doctor again and he finally agreed to see me. Needless to say, it was not a very productive session and if I hadn’t been out of my meds I probably would have walked out.

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“Now Mr. Buchanan is right, in a way.В We do live in a world thatВ through rich white men’s largesse we have been allowed to breathe.”

Dear Friend and Reader:

Before we begin, let’s take a few moments to watch this exchange between Rachel Maddow and Pat Buchanan. It comes on right after President Obama’s speech at the NAACP, which is a perfect prelude.

Watching the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor as Associate Justice on the Supreme Court, these lastВ fourВ days have been an exercise in keeping the lidВ on aВ giddiness andВ rage so perfectly blended that the feelings could almost be bottled up and sold as an emulsion. As a woman of color, IВ watched another one rise up to the highest court of the land because she worked hard and deserved it. This was and is the original intent of Affirmative Action, and an original ideal of the founding of this republic — however imperfectly executed.В 

Affirmative Action is at the heart of theВ confirmationВ proceedings that took place this last week in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the exchange of fire between Maddow and Buchanan. I cannot help but think of myself and the millions of other young men, women, boys and girls who walked through the gates of affirmative action in a land that, as Mr. BuchananВ says, “white men built”, and succeeded.

Now Mr. Buchanan is right, in a way.В We do live in a world thatВ through rich white men’s largesse we have been allowed to breathe. ThatВ they canВ let you in and can kick you out inВ a wink and a slap on your cute brown ass.В That has been the way of things since this country began. But Buchanan believes the surface of what we’ve been told about our countryВ and accepts the cartoon of our history,В notВ our history’sВ reality. The real people who built this country are invisible to people like Buchanan. By and large we’ve existed, survived and flourished under, around and in spite of this. And by the “we”, I mean men and women, poor, and from all over the planet. From kidnapped Africans in the 17th century,В impoverished, oppressed Europeans near the end of the 19th century, Asians, Central and Latin Americans in the 20th.

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Selma and me, we first met in a dumpster, but don’t either of us remember it. We was only a day or two old, see. But maybe the memory’s there somewheres, do you think? I don’t know. Anyways, we was almost the last of the AO babies, and now I gotta explain that. No story is ever simple, is it?

Okay. The first AO babies was way before our time, they was babies with cleft palates and no eyes and extra toes or something from Agent Orange that was used to kill plants in war and peace. A lot of babies was born that way until the companies making it went belly up in the peak oil days. Then the second AO babies come along, like us. These AOs was Abstinence Only babies, during the mini dark age when drug stores got burnt for selling condoms and doctors executed other doctors by lethal injection for doing abortions. Well, we all know now how Abstinence Only worked – like, dude, it didn’t – and me and Selma were the result.

By the time me and Selma was born, though, there was so many AO babies and the Great 21st Century Depression was almost into its eighth decade and there was so many people going hungry they began eating the babies. I mean, can you blame them? They’re starving and they can’t feed the kid anyway so they might’s well eat it. But that woke up a few of the fat cats in Washington finally, seeing people roasting babies over trash drums on the tv, and first they just made it illegal to eat babies. Fat lot of good that did. I mean, we look back now and see how dumb they were and can’t believe it: the government makes it illegal not to have a baby even if you can’t afford it or don’t want it, and then makes it illegal to eat it when you’re starving? Well, anyways, that didn’t work, as anyone could’a told �em, �specially after the Papal Bull saying if you have to choose between suicide by starvation or eating your kid, eating the kid is the lesser sin so long as it’s under the age of reason, whatever that is.

Okay, where was I? Oh, yeah. So finally there’s enough women in congress to actually matter, and what they did – the women, I mean, god love �em – they passed this law that sounded so right no one could stand up and say no to it. It was called the Child Responsibility Act – the CRA, or actually the CRA#1, because the second one came so close after. The CRA simply said the government would guarantee a child’s right from birth to age 21 to total health care, 24/7 parenting, lower and higher education, adequate clothing, food, and housing. The idea was to make those babies worth more alive than roasted, but then of course there was the question of where the money would come from, so that’s why they passed the second Child Responsibility Act, or CRA #2, which funded the whole program by a 75 percent tax on any group or individual or institution that impeded or discouraged or prevented access to birth control and abortion.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

I was talking to a Leo reader recently who said she didn’t grasp her July horoscope. This, after years of it fitting perfectly for her, as she described her experience. Because the July horoscope was an interpretation of the total solar eclipse happening on Tuesday, I was curious and took yet another look at this eclipse, this time from the viewpoint of Leo, very close to where the eclipse occurs.

Photo by Eric Francis for Book of Blue.

I’ve said a few times, to friends and in writing, that this is one of the most challenging eclipses I’ve ever worked with, that is, the interpretation of it. I would estimate that I’ve covered about 70 eclipses in my career, and this one stands out. A few weeks ago, I was corresponding with my collaborator Tracy at Serennu.com and she handed me one of her one-line gems when I asked her take on what it was about. She said, “It looks like mother is not available and father hasn’t shown up yet.”

The eclipse takes place in the last degree of the sign Cancer. That implies that it’s ‘between Cancer and Leo’, in as much as there is any space between signs; it’s at the edge of one concept and at the beginning of another. When you interpret this around the signs, it represents a transition from one phase of life to another; the eclipse falls on the cusp of two solar houses for all of us.

Cancer and Leo are signs in a special category in that neither is ruled by a planet. Both are associated with luminaries — the Moon and the Sun, respectively. Ancient astrology gives them a variety of other distinctions, but they are in a sense the ‘master signs’, in that everyone is so affected by the bodies associated with them. And when an eclipse arrives, no matter where it is, these two signs are involved because the Moon and Sun are involved.

For their part (in mundane and psychological astrology) the Moon and the Sun represent mother and father, as well as the two dominant features of the person. The Moon corresponds to mother, the child-self, the personality, and one’s sense of needs and comfort. The Sun corresponds to father, adult self, the experience expressing the personality, and one’s sense of visible presence and glory. In a world chart like an eclipse, however, separated from the trappings of any one personality, the Sun and Moon can look a lot like mom and dad, and in this chart they do. We need to remember that in many biological and physical senses, we are made of mom and dad. So it follows that the luminaries will represent both facets of our parents and facets of ourselves. There is a very close correspondence in real life.

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