By Len Wallick
As if on cue, Luna switched gears late yesterday. From an emotional weekend of Pisces conjunctions the Moon made its transit into Aries, setting us up for today, Monday. Mercury is in its last full day of retrograde. Its apparent motion slower than an arc minute per day. Venus continues its nightly climb into the twilight, still faster than anything but the Moon. By now, most of us have had a chance to see it in the western sky after sunset. It’s unmistakable, a bright and steady diamond. Mars has one more week before it emerges from the echo phase of a retrograde that seems long ago and far away.
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The Sun also has some interesting aspects today as well but first the big picture. Over the weekend we were humbled by eruptions from the Earth. Ash from the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokul once again shut down air traffic in much of Europe, including flights across the Atlantic. There is no end in sight and the disruption comes at a time when the economies of Europe are already under a great deal of stress. In the case of both the volcanic ash and the threat of monetary collapse, there seems to be no quick solution. We are in this for a long, precarious haul.
Also over the last few days our best hope for quickly stemming the hemorrhage of oil into the Gulf of Mexico was dashed. The much-ballyhooed containment structure was lowered over the main wellhead and quickly rendered useless. The high pressure and low temperature prevalent at the bottom of the sea quickly combined to form a volatile ice that filled the dome and clogged the opening through which the petroleum was to be siphoned off. Now we are left with alternatives that will take longer, much longer, with no promise of success. In the meantime, the flow continues. Mitigation by burning is severely limited in its effectiveness and only serves to transfer pollutants from the water into the atmosphere. Dispersants are cosmetic at best, being toxic in and of themselves and accelerating the damage to any life on the sea floor. Just as with the volcano, we are in for a long and painful experience.