Reflections on the day after New Years Day . . . Rose Bowl, Nancy, Saturn/Neptune, Bread and Circuses?

January 2, 2026

My paralyzed, nerve-damaged, nearly-60-year-old son Colin Cudmore held his second holiday event — the first was on Christmas Day— yesterday, New Year’s Day, starting at 3 PM, in his new apartment (since August, after two years in a horrible nursing home); unfortunately, his nerve pain, always 24×7, and unpredictable, was elevated the entire time. However, we soldiered on. Here’s the relevant post, which I published this morning on caringbridge.org.

Look there for the whole story, especially of why he thinks the pain had elevated this time.

I’ll show some of the photos here, with a few comments.

 

Colin’s view of the screen, where four of us were present for the Rose Bowl game featuring IU football, an historic occasion.

Colin’s pain level made him want to not talk (since that ramps up the pain). But he couldn’t help himself, since he’s such an extravert. Here he is with his feet elevated, in the hallway across from his kitchen. Artist Sal on the couch, totally absorbed in the drama.

Also, Colin had rolled from the living room into that position in the hall across from the kitchen so that he could co-direct with Marita the preparation of the barbequed wings for which he had created three fabulous sauces beforehand.

Me? I was folded into the other end of the couch, in part, as always with me and football, wondering what all the fuss was about, though I have always recognized that my “problem” is both the incredible speed and complexity of the game and not knowing the rules! And yet, due to Sal’s tutelege, I was beginning to get an overall sense, and especially to pick up on the extraordinary power and precision of this year’s IU football team. The other team seemed lost in comparison. Final score: IU 38, Alabama 3.

Inside me however, another observation constantly threatened to blur what was going on in the Pasedena Rose Bowl stadium . . .

 

Yes, Bread and Circuses. Is that where we are now, again, and always? on planet Earth?

Oh Ann, forget your paranoid? preoccupations; let go for once! Stop noticing, for example, how criss-crossing chemtrails completely obliterated the sky yesterday morning, and again, even worse, this morning. Forget how the human race is catapulting into a brand-new reality, with its outlines, and scope likely emerging  over the next two years: 2026 to feature mostly breakdown of existing financial, educational, medical, business, media, and other top-down structures, and 2027 featuring breakthrough into brand new — hopefully decentralized, local local local! focus for everyone on planet Earth. Though breakdown and breakthrough will both contribute in both years, 2026 will feature more of the former, and 2027 more of the latter.

See Clif High’s new post, HOLDFAST!, for more on this way of thinking, which to me, feels basically correct, especially when I consider the astrology of what we’re in now, and what’s ahead.

It’s either that, folks, or technocracy, hive mind, transhumanism. The choice between these extremes is utterly inevitable, and if we are to successfully move into the former, at least a certain percentage of us will have to get and remain utterly centered, grounded, and conscious. What percentage? No idea. At least 20%, likely.

Meanwhile, there’s still somewhat of a backwards slog ongoing. A slog that, however, can yield precious gifts of reconnection with others. For example:

On the day before yesterday, New Year’s Eve, I got a phone call from my dear old friend Nancy, whom I’ve known since we were in our 20s, though we haven’t spoken since she visited here from Massachusetts, what was it, ten years ago? Not that we’ve cancelled each other. Far from it. As with other dear old female friends with whom I have spoken at length for the first time during the 2025 Christmas vacation, it was time for Nancy and me, once again, to check in!

And here’s the odd part. The night before I had been awakened from a dream of being with Nancy. I noted then that I would need to call her in the morning. But then dreamy Neptune dissolved that Saturn decision. Not only that, but I didn’t even remember the dream when she was the one to call me the next day! In fact, I only remembered the dream that evening, after we had spoken for 90 minutes.

So interesting, how this ongoing Saturn/Neptune situation in Pisces, working with Uranus in Taurus, is still finding me looping back, and resonating with extremely valuable and impactful personal relationships of the deep past, how they have shaped my body/mind/soul in this long long 83 years of living on planet Earth.

Not much time left before Saturn/Neptune both go into Aries, folks, and begin the ignition process to completely transform life on earth.

Oh, and BTW, I’ve already pointed out that 23-year old Fernando Mendoza, the IU QB, functions as a living archetype for his generation. Beautiful soul, works extremely hard at all that he does, and totally devoted as an individual, to both the divine and to all those with whom he comes in contact. Their “team spirit,” is truly that.

Another living archetype for this new generation is 23 year old Nick Shirley, the independent journalist who just lit up the internet with his investigation into the Somali fraud in Minnesota, that then sent sparks into investigating corruption in other states — Ohio, New York, Washington, among them.

So grateful for these magnificent young ones!

P.S. Just realized that because IU won the game with Alabama, it’s now been catapulted to semi-finals, to play Oregon. Oh geez, when?

Only eight days from now! I guess I’ll have to show up at Colin’s place for that one too. Who knows, if Indiana continues on its meteoric rise, I may have to watch so much football that I’ll actually learn something.

 

 

 

At 83, Older and Wiser: but for WHAT?

December 31, 2025

Note: See the many recent posts. They all tie together in subtle and not so subtle ways.

Yesterday’s post was an attempt to invoke the actual felt sense of the mucky yucky gathering maelstrom humanity is seemingly drowning within. This maelstrom in me, too. Yes indeedy. I too, on the inside, have been suffering; and must re-member, moment by moment, to actually, consciously NOTICE this foul mood so that I don’t energetically spray it all over others.

And so I want to say here, today, that at this point in our common phenomenological voyage through the misty dystopian/utopian waters of “Avalon,” that the urge to vomit all over people is actually rare, within me. I DO manage to “hold it in,” though still experiencing it, nonetheless. It’s not that getting older and wiser prevents all the earlier sturm and drang of Life on Earth in a body, but that Older and — if conscious — Wiser opens space within to experience everything without being overwhelmed by it; or if overwhelmed, then just barely, and just for a second or two, or an hour, or even an afternoon. And I am extremely aware of the difference between this very temporary black mood and the lightness, the Love the fills and fuels the universe, endlessly coursing through my own all-too-human heart, radiating to one and all as I walk down the street and greet, though the eyes, the tender, suffering soul of every passing stranger. This soul-to-soul greeting almost never fails to lift BOTH our hearts — the energy between us sparking inexorably flowing aliveness.

The ignition between two strangers who pass each other on the street is the real deal, FREE ENERGY. It’s filling space and time, coursing through our radiant hearts, IF we but just move down into our souls, and rise up into our spirits, and remain there, in both places at once: the first uniting us with the in-and-out breath of the entire material realm, the second uniting us with the mysterious cosmic infinity.

Even this integration can be seen from within an even larger infinite space. Because ultimately, of course, as with any polarity, the Two are One.

Higher mathematics: 1 plus 1 is 1.

 

Last night, I became particularly cognizant of the utterly amazing fact that all the longer cycled planets are active in my chart during this time. And I mean all of them:

Natal Jupiter at 23° Cancer (12 year cycle), returning for the 7th time.

Natal Saturn (30 year cycle) at 7° Gemini, and widely conjunct natal Uranus at 1° Gemini, which itself is undergoing a prolonged first and last (because 84 year cycle) Uranus return.

(And what I notice about these two planets especially, right now, is their natal house position, 6th house of daily habits, among other things. And my daily habits (Saturn) are being decidedly and voluntarily disturbed (Uranus), due to the new dental regimen. “No sipping between meals?” WHAT?)

Natal Neptune (165 year cycle) at 2° Libra and at the Midheaven, now opposing itself by transit while also conjuncting the root of my chart, while accompanied by transit Saturn conjunct!

And one more: mighty Pluto (248 year cycle), at 6° Leo, moving into position in the 2nd house of self-valuation where (like Neptune) it also opposes itself for the very first time. Coming wealth. For seven years now, I’ve owned some physical silver. Which means that at some point within the next few years, I’m going to have to decide how to leverage it into the material world for the most energetic benefit to the whole.

Question: how could the half cycles of Neptune and Pluto occur during the same year(s) when their cycles are so different? Answer: it’s because the cycle of Pluto is highly eccentric and elliptic, so that it moves faster through some signs than others.

Ye gods! I just put in google search bar this question:

How often does the half-cycle of Pluto occur during the same year(s) as the half-cycle of Neptune when Pluto’s cycle is 248 earth years and Neptune’s cycle is 165 earth years?

 

And the AI spit back at me this . . . ( There’s more if you care to look.)

 

So yeah, we are inside a truly historical time on planet Earth, and for some strange, still perplexing purpose, my soul chose to re-incarnate at the point in history (late 1942,  a war baby) when, during this epochal chaotic change-over we are already beginning to undergo, I would be 83 years old.

Too old to make a difference? By what measure?

Is that why getting my mouth working at least better, since all the cells in my mouth are interwoven with all the cells in my entire body, I only now consciously recognize (me, who prides herself as a permaculturist, with a holistic understanding of the all in all, the One in the Many), and so almost obsessively choose to do everything I can to encourage this body to continue, not just intact, but full of energy, for as long as possible?