2024: Year in review
The new cycle starts, the promise of this winter’s solstice, finally comes into play.
New Moon, 12/30/24 4:36 PM (local) at 9°43”
Capricorn, New year, beginnings and endings, 2024: Year in review…
2024: Year in review
At the end of the calendar year, I look ahead, and personally, my favorite horoscope to write is the year ahead overview as it gives me a space to look at overall trends. What’s ahead for the year, where the big and little planets will be.
Along with that, I tend to map out the weekly columns for the year ahead, titles, possible Shakespeare quotes, headings, and the start dates.
My weekly started with a Monday publication date, half dozen years later, moved to a Thursday timing thing, then finally, a few years back, I moved it back towards a Tuesday publication date, just because it made sense to me. That’s out ahead of the alt-weeklies and their Thursday date, and supposedly, Tuesday is the slowest business day of the week.
Also: the old title of a favorite book, Two Meat Tuesday, originally named for the Tuesday special at a pleasant dive in old Austin.
Nota Bene: Tuesday is a “Mercury” day,
given to the fleet messenger of the gods.
It’s all about that planning, preparation, and structure for the framework itself. This year, 2024, I kept the files in check, and only worked a few weeks in advance. Next year? The framework itself is already sketched out, ready to go. The bones are there, just need flesh hung on those skeletal outlines.
2024: Year in review
The year ended with a particularly peculiar Mercury in Retrograde as it started at 22° Sagittarius, grinding to a stop at 6° of Sag. Ouch, both personal points for me, in my Sagittarius chart. Compound this with the ongoing Mars in apparent retrograde motion?
Added a certain flavor that is not exactly welcome.
Did I surmount difficulties and professional challenges? “No.”
Did I take care of my own well-being? “No.”
Did I look after my personal health?
“Look, I don’t think you see how this is going.”
2024: Year in review
Baseball liner Notes?
I’ve now been to Fenway, Wrigley, and almost as nice, almost as historic, Camden Yard — in Baltimore. The trip was literary, the modern fiction, murder-mystery-thriller author, Laura Lippman had a character who was a die-hard Orioles fan. Apparently, the author likes them too, but the die-hard fans are always the most fun, fictional or otherwise.
Some years back, an off chance to see a ball game at Ranger Stadium, the vaunted club seats? First pitch, first batter, home run. Orioles won that one. So planning an August respite from the Texas heat, Baltimore, downtown Baltimore looked good. Got seats, tickets, vacation rental, and a chance. The weather, the housing, the transportation, the seafood, all made it that much better.
Two points, one I’ve made time and again, I like the Orioles’ logo. It’s a cartoon oriole. Silly, stupid, just makes me smile. But the other notice, leftover from the trip?
Boston (go Red Sox) beat the Orioles in the first game. That first night, got in early, had some rare first baseline seats, last-minute cheap seats, but acceptable. The sparse crowd, one woman had a special sign, cheering on the O’s — “Make good choices.”
As a reminder, I think I got this from the great author Stephen King, “I want the emotional resilience of a Boston Red Sox fan.”
Or like the O’s fan?
“Make good choices.”
2024: Year in review
Found a new old place to fish. Down along the Gulf Coast, parts of it still hurricane-ravaged, it was an older “motel” that was cleaned up, redone, and the dock partially rebuilt. Great place to stay when fishing, and excellent fishing from the dock itself. Eclipse and hurricane.
Not without precedent, another Xmas, another trip to the ER. Wasn’t family, or even a relative, but yeah, I’m getting to expect this. Looking at an aging neighbor, “I guess we’re not making good choices?”
Pluto entered Aquarius, looking at nearly two decades of future transits.
It was the first year that I recall without the late leader of the UT — Shakespeare at Winedale. The shows were as good as before under the new direction. Some of that is merely the program itself, such an excellent way to explore a text — in performance — like it is supposed to be. I first “read” Shakespeare for classes, but the plays are meant to be acted, played on stage.
Sometimes a movie is a good second choice, but only occasionally.
2024: Year in review
I’ve been writing horoscopes for over three decades, a weekly column for close to thirty years. I adore it. I love it, maybe not always, but I’ve got a grip on the fact that I do mostly enjoy the labor. In the course of that thirty plus years, I’ve done daily, weekly, monthly, and celebrity versions of the astrological interpretations.
In this last year, Substack turned the art of the newsletter back into an email device. Two or three authors I favor use the service, as does one political columnist I find immensely informative, as well as entertaining. It’s that one political — historical — social commentary list that I am on, it’s that one I was thinking about. It comes out almost daily, usually six or seven times a week, delivered overnight, with well-reasoned, thoughtful content invoking history, politics, and lens to see our current state of affairs.
That newsletter arrives almost daily, and it is cogent, artfully argued, makes points, cites references, and is essentially a 1,000 word paper, almost every day. It is excellent, if a little lefty, but then, I lean left, so that’s not a problem, but here were two take-away points.
- Prodigious output, and I can’t always keep up with the latest. I admire it, but there are some days when the daily news is too much.
- I’m really comfortable with just a weekly column, now. Not too much, not initially and small, and also available as a newsletter — the mailing list1.
Besides thoughtful, reasoned, measured rhetoric with historical citations, I got great relief realizing that my weekly is about enough. Don’t need something every day. Anything longer than a phrase and snippet really doesn’t need to be delivered that often, not from me.
2024: Year in review
Politics and sports. I was disappointed by the outcome of the November election; super happy it is all behind us, ready to move forward, and what I found worrisome? The political discourse was elevated to the point of mere sporting events.
Which brings back the idea that I don’t make political prognostications; I haven’t since 1992 — for a reason. When I am emotionally invested in an outcome?
I can’t be thoroughly objective.
I can read the charts, look at the night sky, but I can’t be totally objective if I have a stated emotional investment. Old observation, but my dear Austin leftist friends fear I’m a jackbooted thug while my hard right friends think I’m some kind of leftist commie-pinko. Neither is really true, and I do try to hold my cards close to my vest. Lean left, but that’s about it.
But if politics and the discussion about politics is elevated to the point of a sporting event? Like the baseball I’ve grown to enjoy? There is no way to know for sure. It’s luck, that’s all, pure luck and chance.
2024: Year in review
Left to the whims of the fates and furies.
Or like the O’s fan?
“Make good choices.”
Stay observant. And?
“Make good choices.”
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