 |
|
If you or a loved one is struggling with life challenges-a career change, divorce, grief, addictions or compulsions-give us a call and let the Sedona Intensive give you the help you need. Don't face these problems alone. Let our support team of professional therapists help you today. (800) 647-0732 www.sedonaintensive.com.
Andrew Bell
 As a 19 year old freshman at Trinity College, I have been fascinated and motivated by the recent caucus in Iowa, and have decided to put my two cents in on an election that is shaping up to be monumental.
I haven’t always been a Barack Obama supporter, yet I believe that the recent Caucus was inspiring. Unlike any other candidate in recent years, Obama was able to tap into young people’s consciousness and carry their support to victory. My generation has been accused of being lazy, unaware and generally ignorant, both in regards to politics, and on the world around them. Growing up today, and experiencing firsthand college life, I guess that most of these assessments are fair. However in a year shaped by war, a rapidly decreasing economy, and a general atmosphere of fear, we have begun to stand up strongly for change.
Today, on facebook.com, a website where college students spend idle time chatting with friends, playing games and gossiping and looking at each other’s latest photos, Obama, and the positive role young people played in winning the Caucus, filled the site, and students everywhere voiced their support. I received tons of emails from students, who I barely knew, begging me to vote. Politics, a system we usually disregard, was at the forefront of all of our minds.
Although, I have yet to decide who I’ll vote for, Obama and his movement have brightened my outlook on politics. Something about a black man winning in a primarily white state, led by my generation, gave myself and a lot of other apathetic young people hope, that our voices do matter, and we will raise them louder to try and shape a better future.
 After having read Glenn Beck, who anchors “Glenn Beck” on Headline News nightly at 7pm and 9pm ET and his tales of woe in the hospital, “Glenn Beck: Put the 'care' back in health care” it reaffirmed that I need to share my experience on healthcare with a great physician in a tiny town in Alabama.
Through the years I have said that I am proud to have been born a Southerner but now much happier as an Arizonan for more than 25 years. Civil Rights and all the dirt and shame that went along with it soured me from wanting to spend any more time in the South. If my family and friends wanted to stay that was their business. I wanted to live where I could breathe and not stay stuck from the cradle to the grave being someone others needed for me to be. After all, I wrote a book titled, You Are Not Who You Think You Are, and I certainly am not who my background says I am or should be. My Dixie roots are gone with the wind; or at least I thought they were until I found myself back in Alabama a few weeks ago under strange and painful circumstances.
I was lying in a hospital bed on December 5th, 2007 awaiting laser surgery on uric acid stones in my bladder. My urologist had remarried and moved from Sedona to Dothan, Alabama two and a half years ago. So I called Dr. Mark Byard who said, “Come on down,” so I flew to Flowers Hospital for the procedure. I should mention that I have had 20 kidney stone attacks in 20 years but bladder surgery was a first, and I hope the last time.
Most of you know that I have always said that when I got out of Alabama alive I would never go back—and I don’t go home very often. I have oftentimes made fun of the dialect of the South like, “How ya’ll doin’?” “Ya’ll come back to see us, ya heah?” And when inquiring how someone is as part of a good manners greeting, the answer, “Fine, hi you?” always rankled me.
But the warm reception and best hospital care I have ever had anywhere quickly changed my mind about the South. I was about to eat the proverbial crow as I signed in with a staff of Southerners who give below the Mason-Dixon line hospitality the good name that it has.
Dr. Byard’s wife, Kristy, is a nurse and cared for me in their home for four days and nights. I got in line at Mark Byard’s office with Nadine Smith, surgery coordinator, who is “sweet as pie but all bidness (sic).” She was so user- friendly that I gave her some astro-intuitive insights which both scared and pleased her. There was a darling black beauty, Kim Dean, whose rambling rose tale of love amidst the bramble bushes was stream of consciousness discourse as she reassured me that “everthing (sic) is gonna be alright.” And the Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton rolled into one (there was no Nurse Ratchett in sight), Nurse Connie Lashley was the most straight-forward but kind nurse I ever encountered. When I returned home and would call with pain complaints she always called back. No one there ever belittled me, ignored me or caused me to feel stranded and alone with my illness. This is precisely why I fled Sedona and Flagstaff for kinder and more communicative care. I love a doctor and staff with a good bedside manner.
As I lay holed up in a cubicle with those famous drawn curtains awaiting whatever was just around the corner in OR, a Dothan beauty, Jeannine Blackorby, came and went and left behind reassurance in a lilting and kind voice: “Honey, are ya’ll allergic to any medications?” “Did your Daddy ever have this bladder condition?” Ordinarily I would have given my spiel that ‘all of this information should have been put in an international computer data gathering place to spare us this droll inquiry,’ until I remembered that we live in a paranoid society that thinks Big Brother is out to get us, spy on us and use all of this kind of information against us. I answered, “no, ma’am,” Yes, ma’am.” She would reply, “Thank you, Mr. Albert.” (This is one of the many forgotten charms about the South: politeness that trickles down past the caste system of ‘haves and have-nots.’: Good Manners). No matter what they asked and the pre-surgery meds spewed out oftentimes incoherent answers, these loveliest ladies in South Alabama got their information and I was bolstered and comforted with each one who came and went.
While in recovery, I had a very compassionate and understanding male nurse, John Neal. Thank God when pain got too severe, John was there with just the right medication.
Dr. Byard’s anesthesiologist gave me a spinal—you know, dead from the waist down—and he went about his work lasering, and cleaning up after his procedure. I was on meds which I still take weeks later. But I have the confidence and faith that Dr. Mark Byard was the one to trust with my large stones-in-the-bladder surgery, and his competent, loving and kind support team taught me to whistle Dixie again and to thank God that wherever I roam or live, I “come from Alabama, with a banjo on my knee.”
Thank you, Mark and comforting ladies from Dothan, Alabama. You make my recuperation bearable because I know I started my journey in the right neighborhood.
  Happy New Year one and all! Now that we have been through two major and oftentimes stressful holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas (or Hanukkah), we are now moving into very distinctly different times of the year. Welcome to your world of reality.
Soon after you get this Aquarius cycle newsletter Pluto will go into Capricorn. Although astronomy authorities declassified Pluto as a planet a year or so ago, I consider their declassification meaningless for what astrology tells us is true and what we can expect from Pluto in Capricorn.
Pluto has been around for billions of years and the meaning of its movement through the signs can be measured and verified. So don’t join the bandwagon of those quick to throw out some powerful force that has been with us for so long. You and the world you live in will change and will endure or perish from non-change, trying to maintain the status quo, before Pluto ends its reign in Capricorn.
Pluto in Capricorn is momentous and life-changing because it represents the urge to (and I quote here from Jim Maynard’s Celestial Influences 2008) “transform and to regenerate—bringing rebirth. It is a symbol of contamination, infection, destruction, desire, obsessions, disintegration, decay and elimination, as well as a symbol of a cleansing, healing catharsis.”
Most of you are familiar with the end of the Mayan Calendar 2012: Consciousness raising and major planetary shifts, which fall under the timeline of Pluto in Capricorn, where it will stay well into 2023. If we change how we view the world—as guardians of truth, love, beauty and peace, balance and harmony by caring for the disadvantaged and sharing our wealth with the poor and developing a live and let live attitude about how one worships God—when we ask those in need, “What can I do for you?”, the redistribution of wealth and natural resources will be Capricorn at work. Resist and you will create calamity like you have never seen it.
If Wall Street continues to allow greed to permeate its infrastructure and more of us look the other way when we see a need to be met, we will all pay. And you might make a smart start by turning away from the trance state with movie stars and famous people who seem to be poster children for all that is wrong in society.
There will be a Full Moon at 01 degree of Leo on January 22nd, which will affect early degree Leos, Aquarians, Taureans and Scorpions. Full Moons are demarcations of endings and starting over with a fresh approach—changing jobs, moving residences, reviewing finances and retooling life’s roadmap.
There will be a Solar Eclipse New Moon at 17 degrees of Aquarius on February 6th. Solar Eclipses are powerful changes and can take those with personal planets into new opportunities in career and personal life, with relationships and other areas of one’s life.
Mercury will go retrograde at 23 degrees of Aquarius on January 28th, so you know the drill: don’t sign legal contracts and be careful of delays in travel and problems with mechanical things, like computers, telephones, faxes and automobiles. Mercury goes direct on February 18th. Be patient but be cautious with committing to things that could come back to haunt you later.
We are entering a period of the year where we need to be sensitive to the needs of others. Those of us who draw up birth and event charts refer to Aquarius as the Water Bearer. Aquarians are known to be the champion of the underdog and concerned for the welfare of others. Join the rhythm of this cosmic cycle and see what you can do for someone else. |
|
|
|
|
|
Recently I found myself being emotionally disconnected from those closest to me. I was not feeling my usual vibrant and fun-loving self. I was more irritable and discontented. It was as if I were just going through the motions of life. Then screech, skid, bam! I was jolted out of my unusually remote and removed state of mind by a minor car accident in which I was at fault. And I was not asleep behind the wheel.