“I stay awake at night, wondering what kind of world I will leave my granddaughter.”
That’s what my best friend of many years — an African American woman — said to me the other night while sitting together at her kitchen table. It’s a familiar scene of our friendship — laughing, drinking a “couple of fingers” of Knob Creek, pondering the state of the world. Tonight, we hear Sam Cooke singing “What a Wonderful World” on her player. We and many others fought hard for the time that allows us tonight to sit together at that table like we’ve been doing now for close to thirty years.
Time is a river that sometimes lulls, though often moves like white water rapids. We’re from the Pluto in Leo generation, Boomers — highly idealistic, believing we could — and did, change the world. For us, the rivers of time were fast. We drew on the inspiration of students in Paris protesting the French war in Algeria, horrified by the Buddhist monks setting themselves on fire to protest the French regime in Indochina. The years 1965-66, the last time Uranus was exact in its alignment to Pluto, were followed by our own forms of campus unrest in the United States over the war in Vietnam.
Throughout the years 1960 to 1972, the long arc of Uranus-Pluto’s last conjunction revealed itself. It flowed with the breakneck pace of change: pressure by the people created the Civil Rights Movement, the Equal Rights Amendment, the environmental movement, Roe v. Wade, the War on Poverty, Medicare and the Environmental Protection Agency. We know from these efforts — where in some cases lives were sacrificed — what lives were changed and saved, ultimately saving the future. It is now this list of hard-fought accomplishments that form the checklist for everything corporations, religious conservatives and the interests benefiting from the military industrial complex are working tirelessly to erode and dismantle.
In 2008 when I first started writing about election politics for Planet Waves, I began by addressing the first stirrings of the Uranus-Pluto square far off in the distance. Back then, I only had a vague inkling of what kind of revolutionary epoch Uranus-Pluto would bring, imagining that the election of the first African-American president of the United States would mark the start of it. Well it has started, but in a way I thought wouldn’t happen. The middle and working classes of this country are on a long, slow waltz over the cliff. This is a war being waged to divide the working and middle class from each other across the country, regardless of race and gender.
It started slowly, beginning with anti-tax uprisings, the ‘war’ against gays, women’s birth control and the virulent defense of the sanctity of marriage. Look at recent history from Anita Bryant to Phyllis Schafly to Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. There has been a unrelented dismantling of the rights and freedoms gained from the last time Uranus and Pluto met, and a yearning for the racist, mono-cultural, knowledge-refuting and sexually oppressive vision of a world long ago dead.
The Tea Party movement was yet another instance of that conservative wave as ‘revolution’ in packaged form, branded 100% pure grassroots and brought to you by the makers of Dixie Cup. They don’t just want the Sixties over and done with, they want it crushed and removed from our cultural memory.
We should know by now, the louder they shout about homosexuals, Muslims, terrorists and unborn fetuses that some sort of thievery is taking place in the background. It’s no surprise that the economic psy-ops perpetrated on America from 1974 to the present day has successfully insinuated itself into our subconscious, using everyday language, brands and names to create pictures of us and each other that are lies: from Social Security to ‘entitlements’, from the poor to ‘welfare queens’. The face of shame and ridicule was put on those of us who continue to deserve our compassion, who are distanced further and further away from ever being viable in society again. It’s a desire to return to the 1930s. What we thought we worked hard to earn — our retirement and pensions — are belittled as privileges, and are now ripe for the picking.
We’re being asked to serve a moneyed-class few, created by this movement of the last thirty-odd years, who have the largest share of the world’s wealth. Now they want even more: our country. This little rant is not about returning to America of the 1960s. There was relative comfort then. This is about preventing us from becoming a banana republic.
“What world am I leaving my granddaughter when I promised her a new one was coming?” my friend asks.
James Baldwin said, “When they come for us at night, be sure they will be at your door by morning,” Well, morning has come. What place will my friend’s granddaughter and any woman have in the world when an unborn fetus is asked to speak before a state legislature while its mother has to remain silent?
If you think I’m trying to force you into taking up the placard and marching grimly out into the streets to mau-mau the flack catchers, you can tell me to fuck off. Its your right, and frankly I don’t blame you. It’s just that it’s pissing me off that we not only have to reverse the wheels currently in motion, but also rebuild what took so long to gain. This is not what I envisioned my golden years to be. But my friend’s granddaughter, my niece and my nephew deserve this place we call home to be better when we leave it, like my parents did for me during and after World War II.
Being emeritus revolutionaries isn’t a bad path ahead. Keeping with the historical patterns of Uranus-Pluto alignments, the people of my generation who heard the music and the call to walk the revolutionary road during the Sixties are being given this upcoming Uranus-Pluto aspect to finish the job. Just watch for us: the silver and spike-haired gypsies coming at you. We’re here to help advise all those young people willing to listen who are so good at their phone apps, video cameras and tweets. They have seen the writing on the wall and want to do something about it. Maybe we can compare notes, share tips, history, information, and resources. Time is ripe for a little generational mingling of minds.
…but I do know one and one is two, and if this one could be with you, what a wonderful world this would be.”
Yours & truly,
Fe Bongolan
San Francisco
Cheers Fe. It’s hammer to nail for all of us on this planet now, seeing what we can forge anew to sustain us.
btw, that sentence I wrote: “Our own story will provide you with the tools.” is meant to read YOUR own story……. I mention the distinction here as I feel strongly that we’re each to mine our own stories to this point, to learn from them and to find some way to get out to greet this new dawn. The planets are aligning for us to meet them halfway. It’s an auspicious time.
Shebear shebear shebear:
Nail meet hammer.
cmassy:
You’re more than right. The example of the kids in Madison and I think across the country — these kids are wondering what’s what with their parents. Maybe its time for the hippie grandparents to nudge the kids along to wake up their parents if they too have been deadened by the noise.
Len:
Thank you for forwarding me this email from Suzette, which reads:
Dear Fe,
I enjoyed your article so much, being a fellow Pluto in Leo, although probably
rather an older version than you.
It does make it special to see a repeat of the Uranus-Pluto constellation, even though
it is a more mature version than the one we experienced during the 6os.
I happened to be at University in California at the time, and came back to wild uproar
in Europe. California being more stoned and flower-power and Europe more Liberty for All.
I enjoy your writings very much,
From an admirer in Spain,
Suzette
——-
Suzette:
Were you in Berkeley? I live there now. Thanks so much and send this motherland the energy needed to overcome the forces fighting against us. — con mucho amor, Fe
Fe –
I agree with you on this: “I think this crop of kids have been brought up to be compliant and distracted, which is what the economic “Psy-ops” of the last 30 years has produced. This is a generational attempt to deaden the spirit and promote conformity.” However, I disagree that the most recent generation coming of age has had “comfortable thoughts” at all. If anything, they seem angry and restless, needing to lash out but without an internal ability to address it directly. I think they DO have the “ideas that move them” but because of the route our society has taken the past decades, it’s like they’re lost on a fog on the water sensing that there’s land ahead but questioning all the while about the how, when, where and why.
“Will these kids be willing and strong enough to debate, let alone protest?” I’ve seen quite a few young people at the WI protest rallies. I don’t think it’s an issue of IF they can protest. They can and do. However, I also think they look to THEIR PARENTS and wonder about many things.
The fight is not just in your country. It has come north to Canada to our three levels of government. Our recently elected major has just this week ousted the members of our social community housing board this week, with the view to privatizing it. Privatizing that board, along with our garbage pickup and our transit system, etc etc etc.
You say you worry about what world we are *leaving* our children. I worry about what world we are in, right this very minute. As Naomi Klein said in her interview with Rachel Maddow on Tuesday, effective resistance will be to “name” the issue *while it is happening.* Scott Walker said to the fake David Koch “This is our moment to change the course of history”. Well we know that power does not belong to just him.
The cracks in the institutions brought about by the work of Pluto in Capricorn is ready for the Uranus in Aries shake up. It’s not just the young ones who have been numbed into apathy, it’s those lawyers and teachers and bankers and all who make up our institutions that must wake up to the immediacy of the situation as it is today and meet the issues as they come at them. We cannot be allowed to be disoriented here. We must each of us learn to plant our two feet on the ground, cut through the chaotic BS that they will “attempt” to hurl at us and call it like it is. Our own story will provide you with the tools. They are there. Learn to recognize them and use them. Create a forceful, intelligent resistance and if you have a lawyer, teacher, doctor, banker in your midst who has a spark of resistance in them, help fuel it to a flame and support them. The laws are what has to be challenged. Fight them on their field and don’t let them move the goal posts around. Call them out at every opportunity. Let it begin with YOU.
Thank you, Fe. A wonderful and moving piece. You are absolutely correct.
Stormi:
I think this crop of kids have been brought up to be compliant and distracted, which is what the economic “Psy-ops” of the last 30 years has produced. This is a generational attempt to deaden the spirit and promote conformity. I think of it as a Henry Ford plant for human thought. Mass produce thought as a product for people to buy.
I think our challenge is to get kids to bypass the “comfortable thoughts” and explore ideas that move them. This may be hard hard because unless parents are well-versed in history and encourage debate, will these kids be willing and strong enough to debate, let alone protest?
The time supports moving on out. We have been here before and we can support their going through it as well. Uranus and Pluto are no small joke.
Well done Fe. As always, your words are stirring us now, and I wonder about your friend’s grandaughter, your niece and nephew, and more important even, their children. Someday they will read your words and those of others who write so well about the specifics of these battles between factions of society. Students of astrology will be provided the flesh to go over the bones of the aspects formed during the years you speak of.
For example, you say “thoughout the years 1960-1972.. .” and astrology will give us this for February 1961; between the 10th and 20th, there was a New Moon conjunct the U.S. Sibly Moon; Pluto was conjunct the north node; the Sun would conjunct Chiron; Jupiter would conjunct Saturn; and the 4 goddesses, Ceres, Pallas-Athene, Juno and Vesta would be in either Aquarius or Pisces. Students will wonder, what did that mean? In some old tome or scrapbook or whatever marvel of technology they will be using by then, they will read the REAL history of those years.
I think now that the whole clockwork-like magic of the cycles as they combine and/or trigger each other are only understandable through time or the distance of space. Timing is everything; a time for revolution, or white water rapids, a time for maintaining and a time for reflection among others. Some time is in your face. . the time is NOW, and other times it is seen coming and we must study history.
When you speak of the Uranus-Pluto cycle, within it are the many other cycles that will determine the more specific nuances of the historical outcomes these distant planetary relationships create. I think certain people are affected more by some of those, while others embody other cyclic forces. Though the inner cycles will have a gravitational effect, like Jupiter-Saturn re-arranging societies: Saturn maintaining structure while Jupiter reaches out for change, Uranus and Pluto energies will reach a smaller percentage of us and come from what is at the moment, unknown. Together they form us anew, they expand us in some ways and demolish us in other ways. Sometimes they are so subtle (Neptune?) we don’t even notice the changes until we look back at history, over time, and realize we are no longer the same.
So while your words are important today for giving us pictures of ourselves, they are also important for the pictures that future generations will see formed within the context of where they are. Recycled over time.
be
i’m not sure if Fe is shortened, but you quite appropriately represent either way with your faith. thank you. we’ve been talking about classism this week, and after watching “Class Dismissed” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVu6ojB-cMg) with them, i admit to some extreme frustration with the overwhelming apathy of some students to question these institutions, much less be moved to action. perhaps i live in an area so internally oppressed that the struggle has become completely disconnected from their everyday lives and foreseeable futures? after watching the first half of the show, thoughts were basically “we’re worried about getting paid” – as they should be considering they’re studying in a field (education) that’s been foil and fodder against liberation and consciousness for awhile now. after all, how did we get this way? i dare to remind them that even with a phd, there are no guarantees. i tell them one of the most important thing you must ask yourself consistently, is why you do what you do – especially as people responsible for shaping minds and lives and possibilities – for if money is your only motivation, the cycles of social reproduction and socialization continue, and the systems of oppression get stronger. ok, like Brendan, so much to say, not sure it comes out clear, so i will stop the babble-on. grateful to stand strong beside “the silver and spike-haired gypsies coming at you”!
Beautiful and moving piece, Fe.
Good morning, Fe.
Thank you. I agree, it’s time to stop the putsch, for that is what happened yesterday in Madison. The sheer arrogance of Walker and his cronies is beyond rational comprehension.
I have so many things to say about all this that I can’t yet begin to put those thoughts into words, much less coherent paragraphs.