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Astrology has been a major part of my life for 50 years! In 1968 I graduated from college in Boston and drove ‘cross country to California “with a song in my heart and flowers in my hair”. My VW bus broke down in Michigan but through kismet and synchronicities, we arrived safely. One of my traveling buddies, met on the road, was a Berkeley student, hustling back to Campanile for fall semester. He took off alone leaving 2 honeys and a dude to hitchhike about 2,000 miles, beating our lone friend by 2 days. Thus I arrived in California in 1968 and was just settling into life in Berkeley, when “the Hippie Revolution” of 1969 exploded all around me. Telegraph Avenue came under siege when the CU Authorities sent in the Oakland Blue Meanies to kick the Hippies out of Peoples’ Park, a beloved gathering place we had transformed from a mud pit into a beautiful community garden, full of flowers and a pot of stew for whoever was hungry. Chain-link fence reinforced with barbed wire, protected by baby-faced National Guardsmen with bayonets, sparked a protest march down Telegraph Avenue to the UC campus. Chaos erupted when police in riot gear started shooting, blinding one spectator on a roof and killing another. The tear gas spewed from helicopters high over our heads, as the sea breezes off of the Bay blew the tear gas into the homes of the elites who lived in the hills. HA!

Meanwhile, across the country Woodstock rocked upper New York State with peace, love and great music, despite the soggy scene. That summer the Chicago 7 stood UP at the Democratic Convention and all hell broke loose! (See what happened now at your local movie theatre!) Anti-Vietnam War protests frequented the streets of Berkeley and elsewhere as young men burned their draft cards, while bare-breasted young women burned their bras. One day all the people were sucked out of the San Francisco Bay Area, when a clarion call announced that the Rolling Stones would grace Altamont! Strangely-clad youth swarmed across the rolling hills northeast of the Bay, and like an invading army of Misfits, following blindly those ahead. On foot we finally arrived at Altamont, where death and mayhem would soon reign under the roaring motorcycles of drunken Hell’s Angels, shoving people around! I was close enough to the front of the stage to see the shock in Mick Jager’s eyes, before he masterfully took command of the situation with his music, while a man laid dead on the ground in front of the stage, stabbed to death.  

The late ’60’s was an amazing time, Berkeley, California was the place to be and the winds of fate had just blown me there!

“Hippiedom” was in full swing in Berkeley when I discovered the Shambala Bookstore on Telegraph Avenue, a small metaphysical bookstore where I spent hours exploring astrology, numerology, palmistry, hand-writing, tarot, runes, crystal healing, and Alice Bailey’s Ascended Masters. I was drawn inexorably to Astrology above all the rest! I was amazed how transiting planets aspecting my natal chart affected me, but it was about 25 years of study and working with friends’ charts before I began to give professional readings. My website first went up in 1997 and by 2000 I became a certified Astrocartographer. I continue to study and practice Astrology and Astrocartography, and from time to time I offer Astrology classes, when there is enough local interest to warrant the effort.

How I became a writer

My first job at age 15 was as a type setter for a local newspaper. As a youth I published occasional short newspaper articles from time to time, but it wasn’t until I attended a workshop in Bali in 1991 with Barbara Marciniac, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Barbara Hand Clow (“The Three Barbaras”) plus Deepok Chopra that I began journaling regularly and the love of writing was re-activated.

1992 found me in Brazil for Earth Summit Rio, the first international climate gathering of world leaders, also attended by hundreds of NGOs from around the world. Those few weeks activated me deeply to write an 1,000 word article about the spiritual focus of that momentous First Great International Gathering of World leaders and NGOs, which was published in Light of Consciousness Magazine. I also wrote a 1500 word article about my over-all experience of Earth Summit Rio, which was published in Planetary Citizen Magazine upon my return.

Although I lived, worked, and raised my daughter in Boulder, Colorado for 30+ years, I didn’t find an outlet for publishing my writings again until I moved into a spiritual mountain retreat town called Crestone, in southern Colorado. Here I found a local monthly newspaper of surprising quality (The Crestone Eagle) and began writing articles on metaphysical topics, some of which I have included on this website under the menu heading Writings. AND this is my 4th year writing a monthly Astrological Forecast for the Crestone Eagle, called Starr Sightings, which you can access from the main menu above.

During those Crestone years I worked with a “rug maven”, managing her office while she drove her cargo van full of rugs to interior designers throughout the West. Unhappily, 4 years later she died of cancer at the young age of 44. As her only employee, I spent another year wrapping up her business, selling $50,000 of her rug inventory at a Palm Springs, CA trade show and other cross-country sales. The remaining rugs were shipped to her former rug mentors on the East Coast who had a showroom in Delaware.

Being emotionally involved in Carolyn’s death made me want to leave Colorado for awhile (along with some heavy Pluto aspects which ominously coincided with the death of my boss). After an exploratory mission to Mexico in the spring of 2012 to witness the Mayan pyramids first hand, I ended up driving down to San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico in the Fall, just in time to participate in the Winter Solstice Celebrations of December 21, 2012. I drove north, past Palenque, and on to the Mayan Ceremonial Center of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan for a grand Festival and gathering with both old friends and new. Then I returned to Chiapas to open a little multi-language Bookshop and Cafe, one-half block from the tourist-friendly Andador de Guadalupe in San Cristobal, and this is where I lived for several years, in the apartment over Abuelita Books.

When the Bookstore was sold in 2016, I began to make my way homeward (a harrowing drive!) to Puerto Vallarta on Mexico’s West Coast, where I had a friend. I found a nice casita with a gated yard and covered patio in Nayarit and began writing in earnest, composing the first 125 draft pages for a book that had been gestating in my mind for over a decade. But as the heat became too intense for me in Mexico, and I was offered a place to stay near my daughter, who was getting her PhD at UC Berkeley, my old haunting grounds, so I packed up my car once more and continued my journey north to the US border.

Back in the States, after visiting my daughter, I returned to beautiful Crestone where I focused on gardening for a couple of summers. When December’s below-zero cold paralyzed a nerve in my left leg, crippling me for awhile, I fled south to Santa Fe where a friend rented me his spare bedroom. Then tumultuous 2020 hit, and I was forced to move 6 times that year, but by 2021, I found my way back to my friend in Santa Fe, where I intend to stay for awhile.

I invite the Astrologically-curious to check out my Astrology Forecast, published the first of each month. I explain which planets are dominant that month and how we are likely to feel their impact. It’s an over-view report of planetary movements rather than a horoscope-by-sign, which are numerous elsewhere on the web. Blog posts will be entered randomly as I feel inspired to write something, but I am developing a second website and am writing Blog posts there, which you can read at TeenyTinyHome.com. It’s about creating an affordable small home for yourself, which is what I very much desire to do.

Thank you for visiting my website. Enjoy yourself while you are here.

CONSULTATIONS:

If you are interested in an Astrology consultation, we can chat by phone or email about how I can help you understand your natal chart, significant transits, progressions, solar returns, and Astrocartography. Products and Consultations in the menu lists details and prices (which are sliding scale and can be flexible when adjustments are needed).