One of the things that I love about being alive, is making things.

I think I learned this from my Grandpa Louie. He was a woodworker, a carpenter, and for decades, owned his business Builders Mart, and Tri-State Wood Products.

He would walk into a room and count the corners; he would sit at Country Kitchen and after he finished his runny eggs and two pieces of bacon, he’d grab a napkin and begin sketching out furniture he was gonna make.

Nothing was off-limits. He even made me a UFO out of WOOD one time, out of an old rotisserie, some colored cellophane , a flashing light inside — and the rotated and lit up.

It was pretty dang awesome!!

He had a garage, and in his garage everything was created. I always felt like I lived with Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus, for the time that my mom and I lived with my grandparents. In this north pole located in Billings, Montana, there were band saws, table saws, any kind of saw you could think of. Any kind of tool you could think of, any kind of clamp or screw.

When I was nine years old, grandpa taught me how to use a table saw safely. How to push the wood in, with a 2 x 4, and how to hold your hand away from the blade. (I’m a lot bigger chicken now than I was when I was nine!) The only saw I was forbidden to ever use was the band saw. He said it would take your fingers off faster than you knew what happened. I never touched that thing.

And the best part about this north pole garage in Billings, Montana, besides my grandpa’s fearless willingness to build pretty much everything and anything —was a wall of lumber.

Grandpa would salvage weird pieces of wood from all over the place, and take home orphan boards that were one and two and five-offs, from his lumberyard.

This was a trait I inherited, and carried on, listening to Grandpa time and time again talk about how expensive lumber was, and how people throw away “perfectly good wood”. (In fact, I drove my wife crazy with this trait in our home building process because there was a lot of scrap lumber left over, and much of it we salvaged, and a lot of it just ended up in a pile that warped, that we’re still bringing to the town depository.)

I learned and learned and learned about building and saving materials and then using them, from my Grandpa Louie, and also from my Uncle Mike Cucciardi, who is still an incredible builder to this day. I use “Uncle Mike’s rules of leverage” when I lift things. It’s what enabled me to lift 80 and 100 pound slabs of sandstone up on top of the fountain when Rebecca wasn’t around to help me, and 200 pound steel smokers off the ground.

(My wife sort of thinks I’m a superhero and I’m just letting her believe that, because actually, it’s all about the leverage. Let’s not tell her. )

This is a wildly wide brushstroke explaining why I love to build things. And it’s not just things out of wood.

It could be a global online Academy. A social movement and consciousness movement. It could be a new modality of learning. It could be a new type of music mix or sound canvas.

One of the greatest parts about being alive for me, is discovering new and interesting things to create. To build.

Which is why I posted a picture of this tripod.

Now, I did not start building this tripod. My awesome sister-in-law, Sarah Douglas, also loves to build things out of nothing, and when we were camping, she found this stick, stripped off the bark, grabbed the handsaw, and cut it up.

She had some chain and a couple of small carabiners with her, and she also scavenged a funky piece of bailing wire that was left in the campsite.

I had visited a neighboring campsite to pick up their old wood and some rocks for the fire pit that were scattered around, and I saw that they had left this massive carabiner there.

Sarah was putting together the tripod and asked for some help with how to wrap it with the wire, and that’s where my weird leverage brain was handy with the twists and turns. Then Rebecca had a fantastic idea to take the giant carabiner and attach it to the wire at the bottom so we could hang the chain to hang a pot and cook stuff.

The problem was that each side of the wire wrap was a little too far away from each other to wrap the carabiner through. Again, Uncle Mike’s “school of leverage” came in, and I grabbed a stick, and wedged it in there, and started pressing the edges of the thick wire towards one another until it was close enough, anyway, to get the big carabiner on— with a few creative wiggles.

This thing is so durable that we hung a 5 pound Dutch oven from it and made a meat stew! And we kept it after camping, because it’s really really cool. And we can use it again, later.

But really my musings today are not about the tripod. They are about the process of innovation, and how deeply, DEEPLY important it is, for our brains to stay elastic, and our society to continue to evolve, and for the use of materials that have already been created to have a second life.

And most importantly—about the teamwork and community that innovation inspires.

This tripod took three brains to get finished. It took Sarah’s initiative to get it started, it took my eyeball with the wire leveraging, and it took Rebecca’s eyeball to figure out the anchor point where everything could hang evenly.

And when we got done, it was a super fun project, and we were all pretty proud of it.

Mostly, we had a lot of fun building something together.

Just like I did with my Grandpa Louie out in the garage, or my Bestie Kristen Coyner, building drum coffins (iykyk) out in her parents’ workshop in our 20s and rebuilding her daughter’s bedroom in our 50’s with a “dull hand saw and miter box” (to quote Kristen).

Or just like I did with my wife, when we installed our own cabinets and countertops in our home to save us $16,000 in our budget.

One of the most heartbreaking things that I see, with folks using AI, is that it’s easy *not* to work with others on something.

Sure, AI has its place in our workflow, and it’s not going anywhere. Yet the strange social push that we see in the innovation community, to have every single person be a “self-made millionaire” with this “one app”— well— it takes away some of the greatest opportunities to innovate with more than one mind.

I’ve noted that’s truly where strength lies.

And yes, sometimes something is a one person job. I have a lot of one-person-jobs in my life, like recording, reading for folks, editing tv/film, mixing music, or writing.

And perhaps that’s why I crave the community of innovation. I’ve always preferred playing in a band to playing solo.

Perhaps that’s why I created the Rocky Mountain Academy of Energetic Arts, where multiple instructors can come together and share their genius with the world. None of that was AI. It was just me, wanting to create with others. And it’s others’ involvement that makes it all so cool.

Like with my part of the co-creation of Maurice the Fish Records or Tin Star Records, or Pryor Moon Botanicals — or even as part of the team as sound designer and audio logic systems flow designer for Rocky Mountain Technology Group, developing keno and poker games that are STILL in casinos all over the Rocky Mountain West.

Or my part of the music of Pope Jane. Or Backseat Bordello. Or Into The Plow, or Danielle Egnew and Whiskey Roadshow, or Moonshine Preachers, or Phatt Mama. Or The Road Angel.

So today in my musings, I would offer up to everyone to see what you can create with someone else. Challenge yourself.

We don’t have to do it all, ourselves. That’s the myth of the “self-made man” that was never true in the first place.

We are human, a communal species, made to shine where our little piece of the puzzle is what brings the picture together.

We don’t always have to be the designer of the whole picture. And there is a false narrative rolling around about people like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos—claiming they were the geniuses that made it all happen. And that’s simply not true.

They were the people with the idea, and they surrounded themselves with geniuses, that made it all happen. They worked on portions of their projects, of course. Elon Musk did not design the Tesla. He wanted to make electric cars, and he assembled the people who could design an electric car. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of that.

Where the opportunity for balance lies, is in our perception that it’s “one person” that does all of these things. And that’s never the case.

So be fearless in offering your genius to those around you. Your contribution is never too small.

Look at our tripod: Rebecca’s contribution was figuring out that if we use that super sturdy humongous carabiner to clamp together the really thick wire, it would anchor where the three sticks came together and create a very sturdy, pinched plum line from which to hang a cooking pot.

One could argue that Rebecca’s carabiner idea was only one piece of input in the whole project. Yet it was the piece of input that enabled the thing to stay standing, sturdily, so it could actually be used as intended.

No input in innovation is too small. Ego will state otherwise. But honestly? That’s simply not true.

So collaborate with somebody out there. Build something out of nothing. Maybe it’s an art project for fun. Maybe it’s a walkway in your yard. Maybe it’s a little mobile outdoor library shelf to share books with the neighborhood.

Maybe you’re building a tiny house or a barn, or you’re figuring out how to replicate the stable manufacturing of graphene nano tubes filled with hydrogen gas in order to magnetize them, to create a high-conductivity lightweight super-strong material that can be assembled and printed in space in order to lessen payload launch costs to build satellite harnesses so data centers can float in orbit and remain cool in a -241 degree celestial vacuum. (Oh wait. That’s my latest weirdo late-night project, but have at it. You get my drift.)

As long as we innovate, we are alive.

As long as we create, we are giving back.

As long as we combine our brain with others’ brains, we create something far greater than ourselves, and augment our physical reality in the most beautiful way.

Sure, AI is a tool, like a hammer or anything else. Yet it’s a tool that eats *humongous* amounts of the resources that we actually need to *stay alive*—like water. And I think we’re still trying to figure out how to use it responsibly.

Right now folks are using it to build apps where we can make ourselves look like a giraffe or a guinea pig, for only $.99, and those folks are racking up 1 million users and retiring.

I just read that 47% of all music in the past 12 months that has been uploaded to streamers such as Spotify and Apple Music—are AI created.

Tens of thousands of tracks flooding the streams, that platforms are now identifying and removing. As a lifelong career musician, writer and producer — this breaks my heart.

Why would people do this? Why would these platforms remove the artificially created music?

Because people can crack out songs in a nanosecond, and charge for the streams, and it’s eating all the bandwidth, preventing actual musicians (like myself and so, so many talented others I know) from getting our music posted.

In fact, they found one guy who created over 1000 different artist accounts that he claimed were real people — and flooded it with AI-made Music, and made over $800,000. They sued him to get it back.

Because there’s a difference between using AI to create music—and committing financial fraud.

So my joyful challenge today, to everybody, is to use the “AI server” that sits right between your ears, every day.

It uses only the water in your body.

It processes complex layers of information 1 trillion times faster than 5000 acres of servers.

Sure, it may not research as fast as artificial intelligence, but when you allow that biological intelligence between your ears to research, in the slower, methodical, biological way that we do — it divides information in infinite ways, unlike artificial intelligence, which must be told how to allocate information. Quite often, it gets it wrong.

How many times have you seen at the bottom of Claude or ChatGPT the disclaimer, “Claude/ChatGPT can get things wrong, so please double check your results.”?

We’re still the top of the food chain here, people. And nothing, not one thing on this earth, will ever replace the oxytocin rush of human teamwork, and the sense of accomplishment in human innovation.

We are miracle machines. We’ve just forgotten who we are in the mundanity of supporting the larger machine that supports billionaire consumption.

Innovate. Be alive.

(Nothing says “Hey, here’s some spiritual insight!” like tossing horns in your own bathroom.$

Rock on, everybody, we're SMACK in the middle of the high-point in a SOCIETY-RESETTING astrological alignment called "Barbault's Basket", named after the French astrologer Andre Barbault, who predicted this epic event back in 2011 at nearly 84 years old!

I'm sure you've heard about it by now!  

This event re-sets the way humanity interacts with one another, our commerce, our consciousness, and the world we leave to future generations. It re-sets us altogether, so that the "little guy" is cared for, justice wins, and we learn a deeper, more profound appreciation for one another. We accept that there is enough to go around, and the need to hoard for power looks RIDICULOUS.

We're already seeing it play out in the news.  The Biblical Book of Revelation referred to this timeframe as "The End Times", because it ends an old system that has gotten very dark, unsustainable, and thus--run its course. In the Bible, the story goes in the "I-swear-it-was-mushrooms-induced" Book of Revelation, that Jesus returns to the earth during these "End Times", dumps Evil into a Lake of fire for 1,000 years-- and brings a compassionate and loving way of life to the planet and to humanity.  

It's been my spiritual view of "the second coming" that rather than Jesus whipping out of a cloud on a sled surrounded by lightning with "King of Kings" tattooed on his thigh in swirly Ed Hardy writing--(maybe we're waiting for Ozzy??)-- that this "second coming" would be an awakening and rebirth of kindness, compassion, and fierce love that would flood through the hearts, hands, and minds of each and every one of us. 

That our actions would in fact, be the return of the Christed consciousness. Buddha eluded to this as well. 

I was so sure of this that in 1997, I wrote a song for Pope Jane called "Loopholes" (on our Relief album), telling a story of me happening upon Jesus as an un-homed person and giving him a piece of my mind for leaving me on earth in the middle of such a three-ring sh*t show. One reviewer thought we were a Christian band because of this song (we weren't), however the lyrics still ring true for me to this day.  

In the song, a homeless Jesus (which was actually, historically, a thing) says:  

Why'd you buy all of their lies / saying I'd leave you here behind--

Because you did not tithe? Well-- 

Go and tell all of your friends / the Second Coming will begin / not from fire in the sky--

But from fire within.  

Very few folks "got it" back in 1997, but those that did either thought I was a having some prophetic fugue moment, OR, I was a screeching heretic.

However, it's a killer tune, and you can listen to it on Spotify, Apple Music , or check out the lyrics here.  

The astrological alignment I'm referring to is literally shaped like a basket. Perfect, for carrying and storing what's to come!  

It's all changing RIGHT NOW. (I used those caps on purpose.)  

In fact, this massive boost-to-humanity-alignment peaked on July15th-July 25th, with hot dates being July 19th and 21st. And this alignment is going to continue to carry out rippled for the upcoming year. It's a heavy hitter.

 Now, I'm not an astrologer, yet these angels told me that July was going to be a major turning point for not just the USA, but the shole globe, way back last December of 2025. They showed me that June would be a turning point for finance, and that there would be a wiggle in July but things would start to change dramatically. 

If you noted any stocks moving in June, they had a pretty good run!

Things are plummeting right now on the financial front because of three things: 

1. The Mercury Retrograde always slows commerce and we're done with that bad boy as Mercury goes direct on Thursday July 23rd. (Remember, always give a Mercury Rx at least a few days as a shadow OUT period as well! It all takes a second to recede.)

 2. The USA is fighting with Iran again and military action always slows down the market. 

3. This MASSIVE astrological alignment which is rallying for the "little guy" to have a win. 

(Don't worry you guys, our economic situation is going to rebound wildly in late August September--then sink and go up and down again from about 2027 1/2 until 2030, so just "hold", for those of you who pay attention to this stuff!)  

This basket isn't about money, yet since money is something humans use to connect one another to each other, and unfortunately, to survive with, it becomes a player in a NEW WORLD attempting to birth itself out! 

If you're alive in this timeframe, you can't help notice the words "patriarchy" and "billionaire", and often one goes with the other.

In terms of this basket alignment, the angels have told me that it truly dumps society out squarely into the timeframe of the feminine, or Yin, though we're already there.  

It places us in an OPERATIONAL position within the feminine, not just an intellectualized #MeToo space.

This means we are IN, not moving unto, but IN, a STEWARDSHIP TIME, as humans on the earth.  

It's kind of ironic, how the English Bible was mistranslated to place humans -- men, specifically-- above ALL of creation except for God, in the Book of Genesis.  

Genesis 1:26 states: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

("Creepeth". Heh. Anyway, I'd like to go off topic here for a sec to point out that God didn't call Adam a HE. In the story, God said "them". Yep. But back on topic--)  

This is the King James version of the Bible, and ol' King James LOVED his Western Culture dominance--thus, "dominion" was used in the translation--even though the Hebrew Torah uses the word Hebrew word "yiredu" (the English phonetic spelling.).

This term is derived from the root word "yarad," which means to lower oneself or to tread upon.  

In the context of the Torah, it describes the RULING STYLE of being in charge, which is:  To lower oneself, in service. To tread upon the earth, as all other creatures.  

God wasn't telling Adam that "he was in charge".   God was telling them (heh!) to humble themselves and be of service to the wind, trees, animals-- all of it.  

God was making humanity the janitor on an already-functioning planet. Not the dominating force, but the steward, the care-taker.  

And care-taking is within the Yin attributes, the feminine, though it is also a masculine trait when the masculine is in balance.

So, circling back to this Barbault's Basket astrological configuration, PLUS the angels telling me that this was the timeframe of the "Blank Slate" back at the end of 2025 (many of you listened to the prediction I was given), WE ALL are snapping into the consciousness of the steward, the care-taker.   

Those that just want to stay in the "taker" portion of this program are going to have a really hard time, like trying to swim upstream against the current of the whitewater shoot on the Colorado River. They'll knock themselves out being swept downstream. Some will lose their battles with the currents to simply silently disappear against the roar of evolution.  

And, seeing as that both the identities of "Patriarchy" and "Billionaire" rely only on "control and acquisition" in order to thrive and even exist-- we're going to be seeing a lot of these institutions, systems, and government styles quickly dissolving and becoming something else. 

I'm not saying we won't have billionaires anymore. AND, it's gonna take hot a minute for the "Father Knows Best" (iykyk) section of human consciousness to shake out.

However, the energies that are powering not only the planet, but our third dimension in general, no longer support the TAKE.  They support STEWARDSHIP. They support "the GIVE". Not the toxic give, where we give away everything we are in order to curry favor, but the GIVE because WE have ENOUGH, and someone else doesn't.  

That's what this basket is signaling.  

So if you've been feeling a little spaced out, weird, "off" your game, sleepy, not sure what your next step is -- any of it: That's normal for these energies. Nothing's wrong with you. Give yourself a second to observe what's trying to shift inside of you. Because it's ALL shifting.  

Who we are becoming, and how we've been trained in western culture to be the alpha bully TAKER (and that's supposed to be success...)-- there's a BIG chasm between these operating systems, and where they are being filled in right now.  

Give yourself patience and grace. Everyone's lives and identities are shifting, settling, sometimes even dissolving if they no longer serve us; the world we are going to create looks very little like it does right now, sociologically. Spiritually. Psychologically. So there's a lot of incredibly positive shifts that will encounter incredibly frightened walls of resistance, only to prevail.  

If you're feeling extra strange and off, I'm happy to help you out! Yet for today-- just understand that YOU decided to be alive on this planet during the re-boot of humanity's best attributes--through the demonstration of temporary dominance by humanity's worst attributes.   

Fun Times, right? (LOL!)   

We've got this, together.

So there was a time when I would share my psychic predictions on which stocks and crypto would take off. Some of you may remember that.

I stopped doing it bcause I had a lot of people get REALLY upset at me about it, even though I was telling folks that I was NOT a financial advisor, and NONE of it was financial advice, I was mentioning that I was throwing anywhere from $10-$50 at a time at apps like Robinhood or Coinbase, nothing that was going to bankrupt my bill money — I was basically using pocket change and mentioning, I was doing it if I had a spare 10 bucks — and I was not profiting on anybody’s gains or losses. I was simply sharing what I was seeing.

I was sharing a prediction like I would anything else, whether it was about the weather, or social trends, or who is gonna win the Super Bowl —or who was gonna get fired by the White House—to me, the stocks and crypto moving up or moving down were simply another energy to report on.

Needless to say, I stopped doing it because the blowback was INTENSE. And to be honest, I was really, really surprised by that. I mean, the big joke in the Psychic community is, “Can you tell me the lottery numbers?” Since I’m crappy at numbers, this was the next best thing.

People really, make money “God”, so apparently you’re supposed to predict on everything…except for…money. The one thing that could actually help people out once it makes an upturn.

Oooookay. 😂

Anyway—

—during these Psychic “hits” that I would get about trends and finances, and with different companies, I would talk about certain companies, and just mention that I, myself, had invested in them, and tell folks why I did.

It was a pretty nerdy and boring and transparent process in prediction. However, I thought hey, man, if I could pass on some news that might save some folks financially down the road—why not?

I only shared the stocks that I knew were gonna do really great. I didn’t bother with some of the little Penny stocks I was just having fun with— except for one.

The stocks I shared weren’t Microsoft. They were little weirdo outliers, anywhere from $.70 a share to maybe five bucks a share. We’re talking low-end buys at the time, on the NYSE — Bombardier (that Motley Fool said to sell-off because it was going to go bankrupt, but I disagreed), a couple of bit mining companies — a bunch of them— ended up flying off the hook (bought for $1.50 a share on average, sold for $25 a share when the market came back up and trend shifted), and I did do some cashing out of those stocks to do things like buy a woodstove for our house build, pay closing costs—and other things our home needed.

As we built a house and we needed money for this or that, I cashed out this or that. I learned that that’s what wealthy people do, and it’s called retrieving your gains. When you stock does great, you cash out your profits. Well, I’m not a rich person, so I was just kind of cashing out stuff as we needed it for the house, and accidentally did the correct thing, I guess.

There were a couple of stocks, Rolls-Royce, the airplane engines, and Nokia, that I just sat on back in 2020. When folks were taking stimulus checks and buying big screen TVs, I was taking a portion and tossing it at a tanked-out stock market, viewing all the different stocks that were gonna come back up with vengeance.

The Rolls-Royce stocks were originally around $.70 a share. I “looked forward” and realized that someday they were gonna come out with this incredible green engine, that not only was gonna work with small body planes, but would be used by private jets as well. (Cool! We need to get our airplane emissions down!)

At the time I owned the Bombardier stock (and that company, which again many major professional stock prediction companies were saying was gonna go bankrupt so “dump your stock”)—in 2020, I saw Bombardier reformatting and making private jets down the road, buying a lot of these new green Rolls-Royce engines for smaller body planes—that haven’t been developed yet.

For their private jets that hadn’t been developed yet.

Needless to say, Bombardier went on to develop private jets, the 2000 stocks I bought over time for a piddly $10 here and there at $.25 a share, did a reverse split (which means a lot of stock combined into one stock and each stock is worth the heck of a lot more money, so you don’t lose any money, you just have less stocks) and then shot up to $81 a share by the time I cashed it out.

That prediction is now our wood stove in our house. 😇

Another one of the very low stocks during the pandemic was Nokia, who at the time was sort of an outdated phone manufacturer. All the other phone companies, Verizon, T-Mobile, were five and six times the stock price of Nokia, which was hanging around two and three dollars a share at the time.

I “looked ahead“ and saw Nokia’s technology up in space. I couldn’t quite figure it out, maybe NASA? Something to do with satellites and communications and logistics, and microchips. And their stock was gonna go crazy. So I would throw a little bit of money here and there at those guys. And I waited.

Nokia was sort of unremarkable. For about five years, it stayed at about $5 a share, and once in a while it would go up to $6-ish, which, considering I bought it for maybe two or three was still a little bit of money, but certainly wasn’t installed-wood-stove-worthy! I thought about catching it out when it would make its couple dollar gain just for this or that, but something was like, no, hang on. It hasn’t done its thing in space yet. So I hung onto it.

I believe it was last year or the top of this year, Nokia partnered with the chip company Nvidia, going up into space and communication satellites. And now their stock is climbing. I still have that one. I kept it because I’ve had dividends, which is money that you get based upon how many stocks you own, that sort of a thank you profit from the company. Considering it’s not like I have 100 million stocks, so it’s not like money I could live off of, I just set up my Robinhood app to reinvest the dividends back into the stock.

I maybe have four or five of my original stocks left that I had. A lot of them like I said, were part of our building our home. It wasn’t enough money to retire on, not even close, but it was enough to plug up the holes here and there in the building process. And considering I hadn’t spent that much money on the stocks in the first place, it made me feel pretty good about myself.

Right now I’m pretty excited about the Rolls-Royce stock, because there’s no way I could really afford it at this point. My little stock that I paid on average around $.70 a share for, bounces between $19 a share and $16, depending on what the news is doing.

AND — here’s my nerdy news—

They just unveiled this news on June 27th! Wheeee!!

“The company in March also secured €64mn from the EU’s Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking to support development and testing of the UltraFan 30 demonstrator. The next generation of aircraft will need to consume significantly less fuel if the industry is to meet its target of net zero emissions by 2050.”

I love seeing this stuff come to pass!! Sure, I love it because it’s moving the stock price up, but even more than that, it’s just nice to know that you’re reading the future clearly. If anything, it’s just a really awesome confirmation.

And the confirmation isn’t just about my “psychic capability”. It’s a confirmation on having faith in oneself and that’s really what this post is about.

Many of us that grew up middle class, or even in more financially-challenged environments, never had a background on stocks. Certainly don’t have a background in crypto.

And honestly, I’ve done quite a bit better on the stocks that I’ve picked them my crypto. (I’ve done OK with the crypto. But not any humongous gains like the stocks. Crypto is a whole different bird and operates very differently, energetically. Stocks— you can get a pretty good lock on, according to major future business and global trends, which move at a slower pace; crypto is kind of an impulse buy, by humanity, and you’re basically reading impulses, which can be more tricky.)

The point is that most of us didn’t grow up around portfolios of stocks, talking investments with our grandparents or parents. And the Boomer generation was told talking about money was rude, so GenX came up with a big hole where money education should be, thus all of our tales of us as young kids with insane credit card debt—and all the other things.

Rebecca and I have sat our daughter down and explained in detail to her how stocks work, how crypto works, how savings works, and why they’re all important. Because we didn’t want her to be in the same boat we were in, finally figuring all this stuff out at 50. The ship’s is kind of left the dock at that point, and you’re not even playing catch-up. You’re just waving at the behemoth disappearing into the horizon while you’re gonna be bobbing in the water the rest of your life, hoping you just get waterlogged and sink before before the sharks eat your feet. (Welcome to the retirement plan of being GenX 😂.)

Because most of us didn’t grow up with this education, it takes a lot of deep de-programming of one’s dysfunctional financial belief system to even put $10 into the stock market on a goofy Robinhood app!

When I had nothing to do in 2020, and a little bit of extra pocket change, I decided to give it a try, because the whole world was on fire, so I mean, what could go wrong, right?

And what I learned is that sure, there are some risky stocks you can buy, but if you stick to the major exchanges, like the New York Stock Exchange, which is the exchange broadcast on Robinhood (and no, I’m not sponsored by Robinhood. They’re just an app I found during the pandemic.) those docks are pretty vetted and you can really write out the energies on what’s gonna go and what’s not gonna go.

Fear gets in the way of us doing something new. Especially financially. I wasn’t willing to really risk much. Like I said, I was throwing in 10 and 20 bucks here and there, maybe 100 if I was really feeling confident, but these were just little bits of money at a time, the same money I would spend on a coffee. I was just tossing it at this, or that, as I looked at the future and saw the stock go up.

How many times have we stopped ourselves from doing something because we became afraid?

Maybe we were afraid of looking stupid, or not knowing enough, so it’s easier just to stay in our bubble and not expand our mind, or our faith, or even put $10 somewhere else besides Starbucks. (No shade on Starbucks. I do love my coffee.)

And then, when we didn’t act on our gut feeling that was nagging us to take a chance on something we’ve never done, how many times, five years down the road, did we take a look in that rearview mirror and kick ourselves saying, “That could’ve been my invention, had I finished it?” Or ,” that could’ve been my movie or book or TV series had I just written it instead of letting it live in my head because I wasn’t sure what to do with it.”

OR, in my case— I could’ve left *thousands* of dollars on the table by not tossing in a 10-spot to an app that I opened up and figured out how to use.

And I’m surely not a financial genius. I’m a person who trusts my psychic abilities. And I do have an uncanny trust in the Universe most days, I’ll admit.

PLUS— perhaps it’s just my stubborn Italian and Scot nature, but I really wanted to see if what I was “seeing” would come to pass. (Sort of a self test, where I was putting my money where my mouth was.) perhaps it’s my form of gambling, one latte at a time. Who even knows.

Yet the moral of the story here is not what a phenomenal “stock picker” I am. Although I have to say, I do feel a bit proud of myself overall.

The moral of the story is that we need to start trusting ourselves. And not being afraid to try something a little different, especially if it’s not going to cost us the farm, especially if the only thing that it cost us is getting through some of our fear, lack of self-esteem, or slight hesitation.

Obviously, there’s discernment here. I mean, if you want to bet your life’s savings, go for it. I was never that brave. But I didn’t feel like I needed to be that brave. I didn’t feel that desperate. I felt like I could just keep throwing pocket change on these stocks until the future caught up with what I was seeing, and by God, if that didn’t happen!

Gang, we have a lot of changes coming in our world, and the safety measures, and the back ups, and the guard rails that we have put up, up to this point, aren’t gonna be enough, for the new “building” that we have to do going forward, to support what we’ve already created.

I’m not saying that to freak anybody out.

I’m saying that we either grow, and trust ourselves, and trust our gut, FINALLY, and try something new—or we’re gonna be bobbing in that water forever, waving at the cruise ship as it leaves us in the distance, wondering how the heck we’re gonna crawl out of a very dirty bay at that point.

Maybe stocks aren’t your thing. Maybe crypto isn’t your thing. That’s fine. But whatever is nagging at you to try, just relentlessly, whispering in your ear to do, and you’re putting it off? Especially if it’s not harmful to yourself or others or your family’s budget?

DO IT.

On June 27th, 2026, nearly 6 years after I purchased the stock — a British financial magazine published this about the airplane engine maker Rolls-Royce:

“The company in March also secured €64mn from the EU’s Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking to support development and testing of the UltraFan 30 demonstrator. The next generation of aircraft will need to consume significantly less fuel if the industry is to meet its target of net zero emissions by 2050.”

The UltraFan30 is a small-body aircraft engine. That’s green.

The second part of this story is *patience*.

When fear drives us to second-guess ourselves, (and I’ll use stocks as an example here) and maybe cash-out because the market is looking crappy, or we’re second-guessing our gut and thinking maybe we saw something incorrectly, and we’re just sure we screwed ourselves $10 at a time— we’re losing faith in the universal process.

Fear and panic stomp out opportunity.

And sure, on my journey with this, there’s actually been only two companies, one on the penny stock market that I invested about $70 in, that I should’ve pulled the money out before the company went guts up. But neither one of those were strong Psychic hits. They just looked interesting and semi-related with another hit I was getting — so I thought I’d give them a try. And that too, proved to me how my gut works.

Fear gets us nowhere. It gets us **nowhere**, Trust yourself. Trust your gut, and try something that’s gonna scare you. Not gonna kill you, not gonna bankrupt you, but gonna scare you. I promise, you’ll live.

And heck, you might even end up with a wood stove.😇

https://www.ft.com/content/1d7b80f6-943a-494f-8013-e2b618b5d442?syn-25a6b1a6=1

Those that take action define the moment.

So do those that don’t.

Don’t take action, and the very same timeline’s trajectory develops fully. There are big lessons in this.

Take action to move the timeline into another direction, and the new timeline’s trajectory begins to develop. There are big lessons in this as well.

Once in awhile, human beings play chicken with our race’s destiny. It happened during WWII. It happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And it’s happening again.

On the dirt road of chaos, humanity rides at top speed on a partially rusted-out brown 1974 step-side short bed lifted Chevy (with tan double-pinstriping), straight into the grill of a Universal Mac Truck with loaded down cargo boxes.

The semitruck truck is blasting its horn — demanding, begging the old battered pickup truck to veer off. But the Chevy has 100 yards left, and humanity punches the peddle to the floor.

The semitruck’s diesel engine roars ahead, nowhere for the mammoth vehicle to turn, as the banks of the grated dirt road are well above its wheels.

Humanity lays on its horn too with a big yelp of “Whoo hoo!”, our fist shaking out the manual-crank window that’s splattered with dry mud and consequently permanently stuck halfway down.

50 yards. BLAAAAAAT-BLAT-BLAT-BLAT, the semitruck pleads.

HOOOONK HONK HONK, humanity plays back.

For humanity in the Chevy, it’s a juvenile game of whose-dick-is-bigger, of king-of-the-mountain—an idea that seems great after the liquid courage floods our bloodstream after half a 12-pack of animal beer.

Out of the two vehicles, only one can swerve. If the other one swerves, its mammoth length will catch the road bank, pitching it into the air, as its long bed and cargo box pull it over. It will topple into the road, smashing the cab onto its roof, and creating an impassible steel wall—killing both drivers.

The semitruck is trapped by its size and its momentum. It can’t change course. It’s too big.

The Chevy is not too big. Nor is it trapped. It can take that three foot road embankment with its raised chunky tires and though it may catch some air — it’ll rattle to the ground with a few big bounces, like a commercial airline landing ugly after a rookie pilot’s first takeoff.

The Chevy doesn’t understand the semitruck’s physics, because it’s never been a semi. It only knows Chevy products. And it thinks the whole world operates like a 1974 Chevy. (Manual, by the way.)

The Semi knows that the Chevy is the one who must make the change. It can’t force humanity, the driver, to understand the physics of what it’s up against. Who can talk sense to half a case of animal beer? The semi’s only course of action is to start to slow down — not too quickly, or the mammoth trailer will jam up against the truck, and jackknife, as the huge tires lose their grip on the gravel road.

Humanity punches the gas further, seeing the truck slow—screaming like a fool as if we’ve won the lottery—thinking the semi slowing is a sign of our dominance. Our win.

Yet there’s nowhere for the semi to go, even slowed.

BLAAAT-BLAT-BLAT-BLAT-BLAT screams the semi truck as the Chevy is headed right at its grill, at 70 miles per hour.

25 yards.

We are living this scenario, all of us—right now.

The semi-truck in our story is the earth, whose ocean currents are beginning to slow, whose weather is beginning to panic, whose quakes are rattling as loudly as they can—because the earth cannot veer off its path, a path it’s been spinning on for millennia.

We are driving at high speed and ignorance into the grill of an immovable object, not seeing its attempts to avoid collision with our choices as warning signs — but as our continued dominance.

We are going to kill ourselves on our current trajectory, with data centers sucking our water and no Paris climate accord, with greenhouse gasses we blame on evolution and of course—our own immature lack of understanding of cause and effect.

Humanity, in its current form, is only around 30,000 years old, living in tandem with a planet that’s billions of years our senior.

We are not the adults in the room.

We’re not the teenagers.

We aren’t even children here.

We aren’t even an embryo.

We aren’t event a zygote.

We’re a single cell. A possible thought. An idea. Maybe.

Many of us are stuck in this out-of-control 1974 Chevy, understanding that the semi cannot move. We fully comprehend that it’s simply too big. We are screaming at the crazed drivers from the bed of the truck, through the open back-panel window, to please — please stop!

Slow down! Turn! TURN NOW!

But the drivers. They are drunk on their own power at the wheel. They are high on their own illusion of immortality. They would rather die in a blaze than admit they were wrong. And they still see the whole thing as a game. Because they don’t understand that they are only a one-celled thought — disposable. With trillions of cells behind it, ready to evolve into something that understands that it’s bested by something billions of years older than it is.

To those driving the Chevy: Veer off the road. Now. This is the razor-thin nanosecond where inaction creates a future, or action creates a future. And only one future is favorable to humanity.

Veer, drivers, before we all reach through the back windshield, grab that wide steering wheel wrapped in genuine veneer, and pull that Chevy, Dukes-of-Hazard style, up over the dirt embankment; after we’re done catching air—that same steering wheel will knock out your remaining two front teeth, as the truck slams to the ground.

This isn’t a threat, drivers.

It’s a courtesy notification. Veer.

Veer now.

NOW.

This areas alignment is the turbulence. Our needing to deal with very hard issues in our own lives, is the direction of the airplane.

Many have been avoiding dealing with deep emotional issues within—financial issues, emotional issues —whatever the issues are.

Maybe there’s a transition that needs to happen in one’s life, and it’s scary. Maybe that’s a transition fully in or fully out of a relationship. Maybe it’s a transition to a new town. Maybe it’s a transition to a new identity, a new job. And ALL OF THAT presses our “change” button, and that’s scary for most people.

The truth is, we get mired down in convenience. We get mired in routine. As a species, especially as we get older, we get a little lazy, and we don’t want to have to do the hard things. We want something externally to just make it better so we can wake up the next day and it’ll all be fine. And that’s simply not reality in this third dimension.

So we start fixating on the tiny details of what this transition is going to mean for us, and we get overwhelmed and intimidated and sad or scared, and stay stagnant, throwing the same noodles at the same wall, thinking it’s gonna help, which obviously it’s not helping —because it’s never helped.

Which means that we stay on the flight path *right* towards the turbulence, and then we get angry at the weather, instead of at our own fear of truly doing the hard work that is necessary to get our life aligned with what’s trying to happen around us.

The fact is, if you are fighting against where the universe is trying to push you right now, you will feel enormous, emotional, psychological, and even financial turbulence in your life. Aries energy is relentless. It is a giant tradewind, an enormous ocean current, and it is headed in one direction—and that direction is towards a new beginning.

If our impulse is to throw an anchor in the current and try to slow that, because we cannot control the velocity of the current, or we cannot control the tradewinds, then we will experience a great amount of unhappiness. We will experience a great amount of feeling Hopeless.

We were never going to be able to control the current anyway. The toxic delusion of being able to control our environment and everyone around us, is a distraction from what Aries is attempting to have us focus on, which is the war within the self.

We will continue to think that the winds and the current, the sails on our ship, the rudder, our crew— everything *outside of us* is the problem—instead of understanding that **it is our lack of willingness** to work WITH those winds, and the given current.

WE are the turbulence, because of our fear, our massive inaction, our compartmentalization, our laziness, our horror at looking at our own weaknesses on the inside and seeing them as pitfalls (instead of teachers), our subsequent blame, our constant need to never really look at what’s going on in our life— the uncomfortability that we are re-creating because the devil we know is better than the one that we don’t—or just ourselves as a whole.

Aries, the god of war, says to us, “Your constant war you are waging—is within YOU. So there will never be a victor. You will never feel safe, you will never feel comfortable, because you are your own battlefield. Perhaps it is the war that is your true love.”

In this area timeframe, we have six major planets that are shining a white hot Spotlight on everything that we’re refusing to do because it might be hard, or scary, or challenge our sense of safety.

In mythology, Aries, the great god of war, isn’t concerned with our piddly little feelings. It’s got a job to do, and that is to burn out everything that doesn’t work, and make a clear path for what does.

In this area’s timeframe, if we refuse the push of the tradewinds and the current, we will be drowned swimming against waters that are far greater than us. Our own fuselage is the plane that will break apart in winds that we insist on flying straight through, instead of taking a course that we’ve never been before.

And the astrology simply is not there to support a tidy cleanup of any of that. It’s not going to be there for quite some time.

So if you wanna get through this Aries timeframe, here is a bullet point list for not only survival but how to thrive:

1. Stop blaming people/situations in your life for core issues that belong only to you, and only you can fix.

2. There is no benefit to remaining in personal/work relationships where one or more of the individuals in the relationship are dedicated to a delusion that they are unwilling to confront. Our days of being able to help others who choose to drown in their own turbulent waters are regrettably far over.

3. Sudden financial change is part of this timeframe. Remaining in a job or a relationship or any situation, simply to maintain what is perceived as creature comforts, will result in the loss of ALL creature comforts.

4. This is a timeframe to go tits-up-high for we ladies, and grab your sack, fellas—and do the very scary, very hard things. Because what we perceive is hard, the universe knows is an answer to our petition for peace and ease. We are making it hard by hanging onto that which either we refuse to address, or is simply not working.

Spend some time with yourself and ask yourself, what scares you the very most? Not the surface ridiculous consumerist answers that are going to come back. But the absolute true answers. Is “ dying alone” the scariest thing? Is “risking your heart by trusting someone fully” the scariest thing?

Then ask yourself WHY: is dying alone the scariest thing because you truly don’t actually believe you’re lovable? And that would certainly put an “!” on that belief and make it true. Is opening up your heart to fully trust someone the scariest thing because deep down you don’t trust yourself not to be “had”? So that would surely put an exclamation point on the fact that you can’t trust yourself, in any way— and that’s a terrifying life to live.

Aries is not interested in the small talk answers, which could be a fear of illness, or a fear of losing money, or a fear of getting older. This is the idle prattle of the mind which recycles traumas and dramas just so we have something we can put our fingertips on that we’re comfortable with.

It’s a conscious deflection mechanism because looking at our real issues is very scary and very hard.

Aries wants to know what is at your core, that is rotting right now? What is going to topple the 200 foot cottonwood tree, that no one can see? What poison is in the ground, that is going to kill the farm 20 miles south?

That’s what Aries, the god of war, is interesting in exposing. Because Aries is also all about new beginnings. And a more appropriate ideology for Aries in this time frame would be the goddess Kali, the great destroyer, who burns the old dysfunction to the ground, and also brings great new beginnings.

It’s no surprise that there are many wildfires right now, unseasonably so, out here in the west. That Aries energy, that Kali energy, seeks to burn out that which is no longer is proving to be fruitful, or should have burned a long time ago. And though it is tragic at the time, the forest that grows back is seven times healthier.

Work with the current and the great energy Aries throws at our backs, and the world changes overnight. Resist, and your world falls apart overnight.

There’s a reason the astrology is aligned in this way. Because we humans simply don’t like to evolve when it’s uncomfortable. We don’t like change. We perceived the uncomfortability of change to be hard. We’re taught, in this narcissist bully alpha society of the United States—that if we are the one “at fault”, it is devastatingly horrible—instead of just fixing whatever is that’s not working for us.

So we cover our butts endlessly, we hide from our truths endlessly —fearing being seen for not being perfect— when none of us are.

Yet at the end of the day, it is not change that is hard. It is staying on the same course when the winds are tearing apart, our fuselage, and the current is ripping apart our ship.

In the end, it is much harder to pretend that we are not changing.

I’m for some reason being drawn to really observe humanity right now. Just observing it. I’m not particularly sure why because it’s not exactly the best time to observe humanity in the United States. It’s just sort of happening, however, inside of me—so I’m going with it.

I was raised in a beautiful family full of Italian and Scot men. All of these men were, and are, extraordinary.

I didn’t even know that there could be fellows who were abusive or awful to women, until I went into the world. I mean, I saw it on TV show shows, I heard about it here and there, but I truly thought those men were a tiny minority, and I still feel these men are not the majority.

Yet that type of male certainly is a lot more vocal than they used to be.

I think they used to hide a lot of that anger and rage, embarrassed by it. Yet now it seems to be a banner some folks wave.

I truly don’t understand assigning one’s humanity to that particular identity. I’m truly glad that is not my learning path.

All the guys I know in my life will go out of their way to be amazing human beings, to help, to provide for folks, and of course, in an Italian family, the cooking and dishes are shared in meals with the men.

Really, rage and anger was not a thing in my family. Sure, there might’ve been a family member or two who had a moment (remember, Scot and Italian ) — but that was not how we lived our lives.

Italian Grandpa Louie was treated very poorly as a young man in Billings, Montana. He had very dark skin and dark hair, and he was the son of immigrants who barely spoke English. He worked on their family farm, and he and my Aunt Madge would drive a flatbed truck full of vegetables down into the fancier parts of Billings and sell them.

One day he got out of the truck, thirsty, as a little kid, and knocked on a door belonging to one the big houses on Clark Avenue downtown. He asked the lady who answered the door if she’d like some vegetables, and she declined. He then asked if he could have a drink of water. The woman looked at him and pointed to the dog dish on the patio and said, “There’s water right there.”

Obviously, my grandpa did not drink that water as a little kid. But my Grandpa Louie knew exactly what being discriminated against felt like.

He continually tried to assert himself into the Billings business community, and it was very difficult. A lot of the Caucasian, Protestant and traditional business owners didn’t really want his brown Italian Catholic persona there.

But Grandpa made it happen anyway, donating and installing beautiful solid wood paneling to the original Saint Pius Church (he owned a hardware store and lumberyard), having a team in the bowling league, helping with service organizations— and at the end of the day, people in Billings, Montana really loved my Grandpa Louie. Or, they stayed out of his way, because he would give you an absolute piece of his mind if you crossed him.

And honestly, those folks who did—deserved it.

My grandpa always told us, “If somebody doesn’t like you, tell them to kiss your a**.”

And so I have. For my entire life. In high school, I never did really fit in—it all seemed so “beige” to me at the time. I was the artsy weird kid who was nice to everybody until they weren’t nice to me — who loved having crazy hair and wacky clothes, being in drama and choir. That was legitimately just who I was. And still am, though life has now created too much busy-ness for me to labor over the artsy-gorgeous outfits that I used to put together as a high school teen, who had all the time in the world to sculpt every blade of hair as my daily art project.

I was so lucky to be imbued with such an incredible self-esteem, coming from the family that I came from. Not everybody has that gift in their life.

Sure, I had a lot of adversity too. My brother died when I was four, of SIDS, and that took a toll on my very young folks, as one can expect—kids raising kids—who then got divorced as many 1970s couples did (so I wasn’t very unique as a kid and that respect)— then hey, turns out I was gay in a pre-don’t-ask-don’t-tell world—yep. Crap happened in life. But I was very lucky to have such an incredible group of people who loved me, all throughout it.

Now in my life—I’m gonna be 57 here next month— I’m doing what every other human being my age has probably done before me: I’m observing life.

I’m observing that I have far less life ahead of me than I do behind me.

I’m observing that the world has now officially changed so much, that it feels awkward sometimes to engage with.

And I’m addressing feelings of sadness because when I was a 20-year-old kid looking ahead, I thought that at 57 years old, the world would be a very different place.

I figured we might even have flying cars?

I figured it would be a more kind and loving world, in the future, as folks began to learn that everyone was not their enemy.

A Star Trek world. A Gene Roddenberry world.

Mine was the generation that invented the internet, to “connect the world” and “make it a better place”. To make anything searchable so that everyone would have the knowledge to better their own lives, minds, and themselves.

And though many people use the internet to connect with loved ones, and those that they cannot be with on a regular basis, and many do use it to look cool stuff up —look what a crap show it has become, overall.

Just another poster board for lies and propaganda.

No matter how extraordinary the invention, it is always handled by humans. And it seems we have a way of bringing everything down to its lowest common denominator.

I see a lot of the younger generation giving Gen X hell on social media, blaming us for everything that’s wrong with the world right now. I literally just chuckle when I see these angry young people. Because I get it. I used to be them, saying the same thing—to those a generation before me.

Who said it to the generation before them.

Who fought a world on fire like their grandparents did.

The world has been burning for a long time. Each generation does what they can, to bring change—at the same time that each generation does what they can to resist change.

I would say about Gen X: We were so naïve that we actually believed that people would use the internet for good— a futuristic tool to heal the world. We were optimistic, yet a nagging tug presented itself at our paisley hems. So we cautioned against what it all could become— AI—with movies like “War Games” and “Terminator”.

God bless every one of our “Back to the Future” hearts— we came from a world that no longer exists, and what is commonplace now, socially, would’ve never seen the light of day in our younger years. So it never occurred to us that this is what it would become.

I suppose what I did not factor in as a 20-year-old human being, having been supported and raised in the family that I was— having been molded in the “anything is possible” entrepreneurial 1980s—was the overarching foundation of human nature. Which isn’t always selfless or great.

It’s my very strong belief that all humans crave the same things— love, acceptance, purpose, and safety. As a person who is wired the way I am, spiritually, I see inside of everybody (using that term very loosely, but I’m not here to write War and Peace today ) and I see these four common items in each one of us, no matter who we are. No matter how damaging our childhood, no matter how rough our life—these four needs exist within each one of us. I’ll get to that later.

So every day, for me, is a day of renewed “sticker shock” when I open up the internet; When I see how people treat one another overall, that they’ve never met; When I see what we do with this incredible internet resource to connect with one another, turning it into a fire hose for vitriol, hatred, ridicule, mocking, and shaming.

Sure, people also receive a lot of support online. But truthfully, that’s within small pockets, and usually for a pretty good reason—as in, someone has lost a loved one, or is dealing with the health challenge. It is then that we drop the blustery human pretense, and just be who we are, which are compassionate, loving beings at our core.

I’m going to continue to believe that, the part about compassionate loving beings at our core—even though the evidence is rather contrary.

At 57 years old, I look out and see a world that is obsessed with itself. I see people that are obsessed with their own needs in their own backyard far more than the needs of many, who suffer 200 times worse than they do.

I see people who would trade the rights of those who seek to have the same equal existence in America, just for $.50 off a gallon in gas.

I am hit, every day, with irrefutable evidence that many in America, this far down into our evolution, this far into our own entitlement and privilege at least in the United States— is cripplingly apathetic and selfish.

“If I’ve not experienced it, it doesn’t exist.”

It’s the battle cry of many middle class Americans these days.

Obviously, the world is also full of good people, and I am incredibly blessed to know all of them, at least in my circle. And there are many that I don’t know, and I see evidence of beautiful things people do, every day.

Yet in spiritual physics, there is a tenet that is very important to pay attention to.

That tenet is: “Whatever you bring into the world, you are.”

Words have weight. They shape realities. They create energies. They are not abstract. They are spiritually concrete. Even online.

We often like to use the analogy of the person who is abusing their wife all week long, but sits in the church pew and is a good Christian on Sunday.

They’re still an abuser, because that’s what they bring all week into the world.

That’s extreme, however, we are a bucket of duality, human beings, and as we become emotionally lazy in America, we become uglier, from a societal perspective.

That’s simply the truth. Whether a person believes that an immigrant should be made legal through a process or not, no one deserves to be shot on the street simply for being here without proper paperwork. Yet there is an overwhelming amount of Americans who believe this practice is OK. And that’s the truth.

No one should be abducted in the middle of the night out of their home by people in plain clothes who are wearing masks, and thrown into unmarked cars, and disappeared away from their families with no information on where they’ve been taken, without a warrant, without due process other than word-of-mouth that that person exists in the neighborhood—and a blanket I-200 form. That’s literally insanity. Yet an overwhelming number of Americans think that this is an acceptable practice.

Because they feel it could never happen to them.

And it’s shocking to me how the same Americans cannot fathom putting themselves in the position of that individual, or that individual’s family. It’s been proven to me time and time again, out of the mouths of people themselves, that it’s not their problem, and if people are going to be here “illegally”, they get what they get.

Apathy.

We can likely all agree that there should be a due process for citizenship. We can also likely all agree that our path to citizenship has now been made a bit ridiculous, with the “buy your way in” card. I’m sure most of us could agree that there could be a much better way that people could seek legal citizenship in the United States, especially those who have been living here for years as productive, working members of their community.

Yet, when it comes right down to it, we don’t even talk about these finer points. People just sit there in their bark-a-loungers, eating Pizza Hut, spitting nastiness, pithiness, and apathy.

If the apathy is addressed, they either triple down with a gatling gun armed with insults, or collapse into a victim position and wrap themselves in the American flag. Which, apparently, for some, is the same thing as “home base” when playing tag as kids. (I’m not exactly sure how that works, but again, I seem to not be privy to the same rules most of these folks are playing by.)

It reminds me of the crowds in Rome in the Colosseum, during the gladiator days. Of course, the gladiators were slaves that were forced to fight with each other to the death. The crowds cheered and roared with their favorites, booing the Magistrate’s decision if the thumb went up or down in a way they felt was unearned.

We have not changed. The Internet is the Colosseum. The people who are here without proper paperwork are the contestants against those who come after them in masks, armed, and with tasers. Yet unlike the Colosseum, those without proper paperwork are not armed.

Sure, once in a while, they are armed, and ICE gets the bad guys. And that’s actually what they should be looking for.

But everyone in America is deeply aware of the fact that with these new ICE quotas, created by a Magistrate in the White House who is attempting to gain Rome’s favor as the broken and financially struggling mobs begin to circle with pitchforks and torches waving—ICE is snatching up anybody they can.

Not just for them to keep their jobs, but for the Magistrate to keep his.

We learn nothing from history. We learn nothing.

Mostly, we learn nothing about our human nature, and how easily we are distracted with the suffering of another—to take the focus off of our own.

We learn nothing about how easily we are manipulated when given a proper scapegoat to explain away why we don’t have everything that “the American dream promised”.

We learn nothing about how horrified and frightened we are to look at the fact that our own corporations have poisoned us since the 1950s through our food in America, just to save money on ingredients.

We learn nothing about how our own corporations have ruined food crops in America to the point where Europe won’t even buy certain crops produced here.

We learn nothing about how corporations created the myth of downsizing so that they would not have to pay workers a decent wage for their knowledge and their experience.

We don’t learn any of this because we are too terrified to admit we are trapped in a system that we simply cannot get out of.

So instead, let’s blame people from other places. Let’s blame the brown people. Let’s blame gays and trans people. Especially the trans people. Let’s blame people on social services.

Because if we really look at the culprit, we realize that it is embedded within our very borders, seeking tax shelters, quietly hiding through diversion tactics. And we realize that it is insidiously everywhere here.

Living in America right now is like waking up within the matrix, just as Neo did.

He found himself wired to a terrifying machine, floating in goo, being spit out and hunted once The Machine recognized that he was aware of its presence.

The Matrix was not a sci-fi movie. It was quietly trying to alert Americans to our situation, to the fact that if we break out of the matrix, we are ultimately powerful. But we couldn’t even get our heads around that.

I understand why people stay in their bubbles of denial, thinking that all of our problems are stemming from people from the other countries, or people different from us. I actually understand why. Because to truly open our eyes to see what is ruining our nation, we would have to confront the absolute bedrock upon which the United States was expanded upon: greed.

And we’d have to confront inside of each one of us, individually, that each American is just a little greedy in our own ways.

It’s our culture.

It’s what we’ve been trained to be, under guises of “achievement”; it’s what we’ve been trained to do, to crave that which we cannot have; to be a good consumer, “consuming“ everything in front of us, being greedy after more products, being greedy after houses and cars, being greedy after a spouse that looks a certain way.

Greed.

Not gratitude for what we have. But a burning desire to have what we don’t already possess—more and more and more.

Yet to truly see our economic and sociological station in this country, as a non-millionaire or billionaire, is to truly feel claustrophobic within a matrix and a corporate system from which we simply cannot break free without a complete collapse in our entire current economy.

It is absolutely possible to make a transition from our big corporate controlled America back to our Mom and Pop farms and Mom and Pop shops. But that would require corporations to want to be part of that process, and as we have discussed, greed is the bedrock of American business life.

We have hidden greed behind the cloak of success. They are not synonymous.

We have hidden greed behind the cloak of financial responsibility. They are not synonymous.

We have hidden greed behind manifesting our own destiny. They are not synonymous.

We have woven into the fabric of our country our one true god—Greed—with every conceivable footstep in Capitalist America.

I would like to see us evolve into a capitalist country that is not driven by greed. Yet I’m beginning to believe that greed has perhaps been bred into us, as humans, and perhaps we simply cannot buck our very genetics.

Or perhaps, it is a deep spiritual sickness after thousands of generations who suffered in lack under those who have much, yet simply would not share it.

I understand why people stay in their bubbles of blame and belief. Because to truly see America for what it is now, is to see how we play our role in America, in order to survive.

We are the cattle, with our heads locked into the trough, unable to lay down, unable to bring our head up, our muzzle pressed into the corn and silage —forced to eat every day, so that we, too, will be the great sacrifice—the product sold at market. Bloated on the needs of others, confusing being fattened for being cared for.

That is the reality of being an American in 2026.

So I understand why people keep it all simple, to blame some person who is here without paperwork, maybe cooking or doing laundry or picking produce—for the downfall of an entire superpower.

That particular adversary appears a lot more conquerable than corporate America in the Colosseum. And mobs love a good bloody battle that they can observe, yet never be part of.

In spite of this very hard yet truthful observation that I’ve made about our nation, I still have great hope for us. I have great hope for us because again, inside of every human being are the same four spiritual needs:

Wanting to be loved.

Wanting acceptance.

Wanting safety.

Wanting a purpose.

And though we in America have become the fattened calf, and we don’t even understand that we are the actual sacrifice to the corporate god that this nation currently worships, we can wake up out of the matrix by asking ourselves—

Am I loved? Do I create an environment to love myself and love others?

Am I accepted? Or do I make others feel less accepted in order to be accepted by my own peer group?

Am I truly safe? Not being told by news channels that some distant boogeyman is coming to get me, but every day, when I walk out of my house or my apartment and walk on the back porch, am I safe? What is my actual environment truly like?

Do I feel I have a purpose? Is my purpose bonding together with others in hatred? Is my hatred towards the left? Is my hatred towards the right? Have I made my collective hatred my purpose, because it makes me feel alive for one moment, makes me feel accepted, makes me feel safe with a group of people who think like I think— and do I mistake the common hate-bond as love?

I talk very little about the future anymore. Because there’s no point in talking about the future when we can’t even get it together enough to be kind to people in our own nation.

Yet one of the things we’re going to have to deal with in the future is a changing planet: big earthquakes, big tsunami, floods, interrupted food supply, a shortage of water, all sorts of things that will challenge our idea of being the “safe” and fattened American calf.

And it’s going to be hard to blame all the trans people and the gay people and the brown people from other countries—for that.

The Universe brings us lessons in seeing our own shadows in so many ways. I still very much believe humanity can get it together in the United States. It is my firm belief that far more people here are good people, than damaged, apathetic people.

Yet I cannot escape the fact that so many here simply do not see, or will not see, the truth of our situation in our nation.

It goes far beyond political parties.

And a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

In the days to come, may each one of us work to forge ourselves from the most strong alloys.

America, we’re going to need everyone’s mettle.

It’s December 19th, 2025—Happy 3i/ATLAS Day! This interstellar body will be passing closest to earth at a safe 170 million miles. All telescopes and observational equipment on earth and above our atmosphere will scoop up a flurry of data.

3I/ATLAS splashed onto the scene in July of 2025 and many folks still don’t know what the heck it is. I’ve taken my time in assessing what I believe 3I/ATLAS to be, because I’ve also been amassing large amounts of scientific data. I’m all about the astrophysics as well as the metaphysics (IYKYK), and I’ve compiled a very detailed read here of what I truly posit this interstellar object to be, what it’s doing here, how it operates—and why.

This isn’t a short read because it’s not a simple subject. I will guarantee that it’s not as long as War and Peace, and it most definitely won’t be a boring read, unless you hate learning.

So let’s get to it.

Science began calling 3I/ATLAS a comet and is now referring to it as an interstellar object, because:

1. It has unusual acceleration properties, unlike a comet that travels at a steady speed.

2. It doesn’t behave gravitationally like other objects that travel close to our sun—it’s not bound by the sun’s gravity in the same way other objects are, and actually pushed itself away from the sun as it passed by.

3. It doesn’t sporadically off-gas like a comet but appears to have a steady stream of gasses that are consistent and change to interesting colors.

4. It has an unusually high nickel content rather than the iron-heavy materials found in our solar system.

5. It has a particle and gas tail that is blown away backwards from the solar wind, like a comet, however it also has an anti-tail, a grouping of pebbles and matter that travels in FRONT of the object as it pushes it along.

6. Unlike a comet that is loosely held together by ice and weak gravity, like a jagged snowball packed with gravel, dirt and snow, 3I/ATLAS carries with it all chemical compounds to create life on earth —amino acids, sulfur, carbon, H20, etc, and appears to have a solid and more smooth surface.

7. It is traveling at a very high speed—around 130,000 mph—(58km a SECOND) making it the fastest visitor to our solar system. The speed is also indicative of this object being catapulted from another star system and continuing to accelerate around other celestial objects, for billions of years.

8. 3I/ATLAS is so fast that is on a hyperbolic orbit, which means it’s on an unbound path in space where an object (like a comet or spacecraft) travels fast enough to escape a celestial body’s gravity, passing by once then sling-shotting around, and leaving, with no foreseen trajectory for return.

9. Amongst other things, this hyperbolic orbit is characterized by a hyperbolic shape. NASA uses this shape regularly to catapult probes like Voyager and New Horizons into interstellar space at great speed. This is crucial for deep space travel, enabling “gravity assists” (sling shots) around other celestial bodies that catapult an object further into space for missions to other planets without using additional fuel for propulsion.

10. 3I/ATLAS is traveling against our planetary rotation—retrograde to our solar system’s orbit around the sun. Its orbital inclination is approximately 175 degrees relative to the ecliptic plane, which is essentially 180 degrees, or opposite, to the direction of the “forward” (prograde) orbits of our planets.

11. It’s traveling on the same plane as all of our planets (Near-Ecliptic Alignment). Despite its interstellar origin and retrograde direction, its orbital plane is unusually closely aligned with the ecliptic plane of our solar system—which is nearly mathematically impossible to be accidental—as this is our common plane in which the solar system’s planets orbit the Sun.

12. The inclination is only about 5 degrees from being perfectly in the same plane (co-planar) as all our planets. 5 degrees!

13. This combination of a retrograde path with a near-ecliptic orbital alignment is statistically rare for an interstellar object randomly entering our solar system so it has been a subject of significant scientific interest and some speculation by astrophysicists such as Avi Loeb.

14. 3I/ATLAS used the Sun’s gravity to speed up as it swung past, increasing from about 137,000 mph to 153,000 mph at its closest point (called the perihelion), and scientists observed additional “non-gravitational acceleration” from gas emitted creating “dust jets” as the sun melted ice, releasing gasses.

15. Though 3I/ATLAS increased speed around the sun, the sun’s gravity is slowing it down as it heads out of our solar system, lightly tugging it backwards. However, 3I/ATLAS’ direction was re-oriented by its slight slingshot around the sun, creating a path now directly aimed at Jupiter.

16. 3I/ATLAS will pass Jupiter in March 2026, coming within about 33 million miles (53 million km), a relatively close encounter that will again significantly alter its path as it heads out of our solar system forever. NASA probes like Juno and Juice will be observing this important and dramatic gravitational slingshot interaction.

17. Jupiter’s massive gravity will exert a significant pull, which will alter again 3I/ATLAS’ path and “fling” it into a new outbound trajectory, essentially helping to eject it from our solar system.

18. After its encounter with Jupiter, 3I/ATLAS will continue outward, crossing Saturn’s orbit by the end of July 2026 then crossing the orbits of Uranus and Neptune by 2028 before heading back out into interstellar space.

My personal assessment of 3I/ATLAS is a little different than some other folks’ assessments in my metaphysical field.

I do feel an intelligence behind this interstellar object. I don’t feel beings inside of the interstellar object, such as one would imagine a “spaceship”. Yet I do feel a specific intelligence behind its design as well as its very specific trajectory. And since it’s so close to out earth today, my ears are ringing off the hook—a sign of a vibrational frequency that’s agitating our upper atmosphere. In this vibration is contained much information, and I’ll share that as you read on.

Perhaps my assessment of 3I/ATLAS is slightly different because it’s true that I am a bit of an astrophysics junkie. There’s a name for folks like me now. They call us “citizen scientists”— and we spend a vast amount of our free time studying scientific points of interest in accumulating data to further understand our cosmos.

Certainly, I do apply a great deal of my extra sensory gifts to feel out an unusual object such as our interstellar visitor here. I’ve noted in my work over the years that metaphysical principles often parallel physics. This does not change when we’re talking astrophysics, or quantum physics.

My assessment of this interstellar body is a combination of both my astrophysics knowledge and my extra-sensory perceptions, as well as applying the known physics that are global science community has accrued. As such, here are my personal determinations on “what the heck is 3I/ATLAS” up to this point:

Interstellar body 3I/ATLAS has an intelligence behind its choice-making in trajectory. Because of its great speed, it was always intended to enter and exit our solar system. It’s choice to partially slingshot around our sun, utilizing non-gravitational means to push away from the sun as it did so, just enough to slingshot around our star and aim itself exactly at Jupiter’s orbit—is a bit too specific to be random.

Certainly, comets do off gas when a star heats them up, creating little jets of propulsion and that beautiful tail that we all love to observe as those ice crystals are left behind, sparking in the sunlight through the brilliantly cold vacuum space. However, the precise propulsion needed to push this object just far enough off from the sun—in order to aim it directly at Jupiter—is absolutely uncanny.

I’m further assessing that if not for the continued gravitational pull of the sun slowing down 3I/ATLAS and pulling it slightly backwards as it tries to leave our solar system, this object would be right on top of Jupiter. Adding in the fact that the celestial object is only 5° off of the exact rotational plane of all the planets, I would tell you that it would have a good shot at running right into Jupiter.

Because of the sun’s gravitational pull, 3I/ALTAS is slowing down a touch, allowing it to pass Jupiter at a very close 33 million miles. This interstellar body will reach Jupiter before our Clipper probe which is headed to Jupiter’s Europa to study that potentially life-supporting moon.

Because 3I/ALTAS is passing so close to the Jupiter system, all of the chemicals that support life that this interstellar body is spraying across the universe will be sucked in by Jupiter’s immense gravitational pull, thus sprinkling these life-giving chemicals across its moons.

It’s interesting to note here that the other planet that 3I/ALTAS grazed was Mars, passing the planet at 18.9 million miles. Because Mars is smaller than Jupiter, 3I/ALTAS was not affected by Mars’ lower gravitational field. However, 3I/ATLAS left plenty of life-giving chemicals in space around Mars’ orbit. Given solar winds and time, the potential of these life-giving chemicals, being drawn into Mars’ upper orbit, to engage the weaker Martian gravity to reach the Martian surface at some point, is decent.

Yet let’s pull the focus back to Jupiter because two major probes are heading to one of Jupiter’s moons that we’ve already discussed, Europa—NASA’s Europa Clipper, launched in 2024 to study the moon’s habitability, and ESA’s JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer), launched in 2023 to study Jupiter and its moons, including Europa, arriving in Jupiter‘s neighborhood around 2030.

Clipper is a US-led NASA mission, while JUICE is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission with quite a bit of dedicated European involvement and contribution.

As we can see, the people of earth are very busy studying Europa, for its potential ability to sustain life and civilization.

Now, here comes this interstellar body, flinging around our sun and just pushing off enough through what I believe is intentional, not random, non-gravitational means of off-gassing—in other words, a dedicated push— to head directly to Jupiter, just close enough to be within Jupiter’s gravitational field to drop off life-giving chemicals to a potentially habitable moon, and to then slingshot again, using Jupiter’s vast gravity— out into interstellar space.

All while being slowed just enough by the sun’s gravity to not run smack into Jupiter (because remember, it’s nearly on the exact same orbital rotation of our planets, only going retrograde) so that it passes the mega-giant at just the right distance from the large gravitational field as not to be pulled too close, or too far, for 3I/ATLAS’ life-birthing chemicals to be sprinkled onto its moons.

It appears that 3I/ATLAS is exhibiting Goldilocks behavior after Goldilocks behavior. That of course is a reference to earth being in what science calls the “Goldilocks Zone”, a distance from the sun. 2° closer to the sun, and the Earth would boil. 2° further away from the sun, and the Earth will freeze. 3I/ATLAS appears to be working on the same hairline principle.

For instance, if 3I/ATLAS comes too close to Jupiter, it’s intense velocity will enable it to clear Jupiter’s gravity, however, if it passes too closely, these life-giving chemicals that it’s currently spewing all over our solar system through not only its tail, but it’s anti-tail, which we’ve barely talked about (the odd plume in front of this thing) —could be sucked directly into Jupiter‘s gassy upper surface, as opposed to hanging in Jupiter‘s orbit and heading slowly toward the planet, to be intercepted by orbiting moons.

So to recap, this interstellar object made primarily of a weird nickel alloy that science is still working on determining comes racing through our solar system, gets quite close to Mars, close enough to leave life-giving chemicals in the outer space regions where solar winds could blow it into Mars‘ atmosphere, but far enough away where Mars’ gravity does not interrupt 3I/ATLAS’ trip to the sun—then it slingshots around our sun at just enough of an angle to head straight on to Jupiter, staying at just enough of a distance from Jupiter to sprinkle its life-giving chemicals onto a series of moons, one of which the entire earth is sending probes to study for its habitability.

Then, Jupiter’s immense gravity turns 3I/ATLAS in a different direction, and it slingshots the celestial object out of our solar system, conveniently avoiding the trap of other gravitational wells created by our outer gas giant planets, such as Saturn with its destructive ring of debris, and icy Neptune— a planet on which life-giving chemicals would be of little use because of its great distance from the sun, and it’s thick coat of ice that it wears as armor.

All of this is seeming a little too precise to be random.

In fact, if you study the trajectory maps of launches that NASA has created in order to get our probes such as Voyager and New Horizons into deep space— they use these exact tactics and this exact math.

So I posit that 3I/ATLAS is absolutely not some random “comet”, yet an intelligently directed probe that seeds star systems with the ingredients for life. In fact, physicist are somehow determining that it was around 3 billion years ago that this celestial body passed through our star system. I find that interesting, considering that physicist and geologists estimate that the earth as we know it is between 3 and 4 billion years old.

I posit that this life-giving probe (or perhaps another of the like) has already passed through our solar system 3 or 4 billion years ago, seeding earth with what it needed to jump-start life. This type of probe’s mission is to pass through solar systems and seed potential planets, to enable life to continue on in a given solar system—as one planet fails or ends its lifecycle—another planet then begins developing.

If this were the case, 3I/ATLAS will have seeded Europa and Io with the same chemicals that jumpstarted life on earth.

Planetary scientists say that earth has perhaps another 3 billion years under her belt before our core gives up its rotation, therefore releasing our atmosphere, and creating a Mars like environment. (Without a spinning core, you don’t have a spinning planet, and without a spinning planet, you don’t have an atmosphere.)

So one could look at the timing of our planet going through some pretty hefty shifts for those of us living on the surface, and one could think wow—if 3 billion years ago, 3I/ATLAS was the probe that brought life to earth, and it returns 3 billion years later to seed new moons of Jupiter for life, and possibly re-seed Mars, a planet that was teeming with life but lost its atmosphere— and that life could potentially take 3 billion years to take hold, and earth has roughly 3 billion years left on its dance card — all of that is a little hard to make appear accidental.

That is, if one believes the projections of how long our earth has been around, and how long it may take for earth to poop out as a planet at its core.

So if we hypothetically accept that 3I/ATLAS is a probe that is intelligently launched, and intelligently directed— who created it? Who is controlling it?

Let’s discuss the fact that 3I/ATLAS is made of a great deal of nickel. But not pure nickel. In fact, it looks like some sort of nickel alloy, according to our physicists, who determine these things through light frequencies, which are reflected off of surfaces, as well as infrared imaging. In fact, it’s made of so much of this odd nickel alloy that it’s sort of freaked out astrophysicist as they have recognized that it’s not from anywhere around our galactic neighborhood, which is partial to creating objects full of iron.

Why is this important, when talking about 3I/ATLAS being a long-operating and long-reaching probe?

Because multi-element nickel alloys are highly radiation resistant, often showing significantly less damage than pure nickel. These alloys are widely used as structural materials in nuclear reactors due to their durability and stability under extreme conditions. Deep space is full of wicked intense radiation that is incredibly harmful. We’re protected on earth by that radiation because of our gracious magnetosphere around our planet.

Nickel at its core is a good conductor of electricity and heat, though not as efficient as others like silver and copper. Its conductivity (around 22% of copper’s conductivity) combined with its corrosion resistance, durability, and high melting point makes it useful in electronics, as electrical contacts, and in various plating applications. NASA uses it a lot. Specifically, the Apollo 11 mission utilized a nickel-based superalloy called Inconel X-750, which was designed to withstand extremely high temperatures during reentry.

Nickel and its alloys are known for their high strength, durability, and fatigue resistance which allow them to withstand high stress and most importantly—vibration. Nickel alloys are extensively used in the aerospace industry for really essential components like aircraft turbines, which endure immense stress and vibration during flight, specifically because these nickel alloys then can handle these mechanical challenges without compromising structural integrity.

Nickel is also another versatile metal for EMI shielding. Electromagnetic interference (EMI) is a big problem in space—a nuisance that causes electronic devices to malfunction or even stop working. So, say, if 3I/ATLAS is being “beamed” trajectory directions from an intelligent source, it would be to that source’s best interest to create a probe that would not only withstand space’s harsh environment, but also withstand deep space’s EMI interference which is in part created by stars. And those are everywhere.

Humans use nickel as plating for EMI protection, or we add it to other metals to increase conductivity. The drawback to nickel on earth is that nickel is more effective in lower frequency applications. It doesn’t perform as a well against higher frequency EMI.

However, in deep space, there are far more low frequency EMI emissions then there are high frequency EMI emissions.

The cliff notes on this are that natural phenomena like solar flares, magnetic storms, and plasma waves, plus electrostatic discharge (ESD) and direct current (DC) are low-frequency disturbances, often in the Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) to High Frequency (HF) range. These can cause widespread charging and discharge issues in spacecraft, disrupting sensitive instruments and communication.

Hi frequency EMI emissions are widely related to human-made electronics. If 3I/ATLAS is a non-human made probe that must withstand billions of years in space, it would make more sense to shield against the low frequency EMI emissions, so that “transmissions of mission directives or directions” would not be disturbed through deep space very low frequency broadcast.

Let’s also look at this blue/gold glow that is reported around this interstellar object. Though it’s not entirely unusual, Comet 3I/ATLAS has shown shifting colors, primarily red (from dust/oxidized crust) and then a vivid green glow (diatomic carbon), with sightings of potential temporary blue/gold hues, all caused by solar heating vaporizing different exotic chemicals from its nucleus, revealing its interstellar composition as it heats up and releases gases.

Our physicist are still working on what’s creating the blue or gold hues because there are exotic gas elements in this interstellar object that when excited by heat, react very differently. The red and the green colors are fairly typical of comets. The blue and the gold are a little odd, indicating that 3I/ATLAS isn’t from around here.

We have no idea what is in the core of 3I/ATLAS. Tapping my metaphysical sensitivities, and my vibrational sensitivities, I can tell you that whatever is inside of 3I/ATLAS is very sensitive to magnetic fields and extremely low frequency vibrations. This would make sense, because transmissions through space, especially at very low frequencies, create a longer wave form, which reach greater distances.

An example of this on earth are our radio waves. AM radio waves are broadcast at a slower bandwidth. FM radio waves are broadcast at a higher bandwidth and contain more information. This is why if you’re driving out in the country, and away from broadcast towers, your FM radio station fades out far faster than your AM radio station on the dial.

If you’re still listening to the dial.

Inside of this interstellar object, I sense an incredibly active liquid metal that reacts to not only magnetism, but these low frequency waves, throwing its weight to one side or the other to create a reaction with the gravity well of any given star or planet, as one is neared.

At the risk of sounding like I’m four wheeling into bizarre territory here, the only other time I’ve sensed, and seen, a liquid metal type substance such as this is in the very inside core of OffWorld craft. Over the years I’ve blogged about OffWorld propulsion systems quite a bit, as the physics of them are quite fascinating to me.

In fact, before the G.W. Bush administration made it legal to hide IP addresses for national security reasons, I was able to see that the naval base in Guam had hit my Wordpress blog on OffWorld propulsion systems over 12 times over a series of two days. I’m sure they didn’t find anything there they didn’t already know, as our government has been reverse-engineering this technology for quite some time. And as far as my human former military sources have told me—as well as my OffWorld pals—our best minds on the planet still aren’t sure how to reverse engineer this…liquid-metal-stuff. Or, how to activate it.

Anyway, I’ve been giving OffWorld propulsion blogs a rest for a while, so if this seems odd to some of you—I’m just making a full circle.

Multiple OffWorld cultures use this type of “liquid metal” propulsion—mechanism? Fuel?— in their own vehicles. In a traditional OffWorld craft, this liquid will rotate extremely quickly within the craft, creating an external “hull” made of electromagnetic (and other) energy, which can then “float” against the friction and gravity of any given planet’s atmosphere. (Think of a multi-ton steel oil tanker floating on top of the water, because the way that it is designed, it displaces mass.)

In deep space, this electromagnetic “hull” protects the vehicle from many deep space wavelengths such as radiation and other disruptive things.

If I had to give 3I/ATLAS an equivocation on earth that we could understand, I would most closely equivocate this interstellar object with our old Voyager probes.

Earth communicates with our Voyager probes via radio waves and an old-fashioned but still used VERY mathematical coding language called FORTRAN (and acronym for FORmula TRANslation). Voyager’ computers are 8-bit and 16-bit— they’re tiny. It takes about 22.5 hours one way for earth to communicate with Voyager 1.

Radio waves are slow compared to other bandwidths such as gamma waves, which are remarkably fast. However, humankind doesn’t know how to effectively send messages via Gamma waves quite yet.

Our OffWorld cultures use the fabric of space very differently than we do, because they understand the physics of space much better than we do.

For instance, we’re still beaming radio waves containing data through the static vacuum of space. Our OffWorld cultures surf the quantum through space, sending messages through enormous interruptions in the fabric of space time, such as the center of stars, white holes, or the outer event horizon of black holes. Or, they simply use consciousness itself, depending on the culture

In order to send messages through an “interruption” or wrinkles” or “hole” in space time, one must use a very dense and very low frequency wave.

In order to create a very dense and very low frequency wave, one needs an enormous amount of power. One of the reasons humanity doesn’t utilize this exact technique in space is because we don’t have the capacity to create the energy to create the wave that could travel at these distances that would be at this low frequency.

So, the frequencies that are continually being beamed to 3I/ATLAS to communicate with it it’s very “base programming” (like our old FORTRAN code we’re sending to the very simple Voyager probes) would go wildly undetected by our instruments on earth and likely identified as background space noise.

You might be asking yourself at this point, if you’re a physics minded person, “OK Danielle, let’s just say all this is true—how the heck then does 3I/ATLAS communicate back with whomever is communicating with it, through these deep space waves, if one needs a tremendous amount of power to do so? This interstellar object sort of looks like a rock with escaping gas. That’s not exactly a nuclear reactor.”

That’s a great question! Again, we do need to keep in mind this object’s intense velocity around the sun. Just as our cell phones need to be close to a tower in order to broadcast, 3I/ATLAS needs to be close to a large star in order to utilize the deep space portals that the core of the star creates, in order to “amplify”, or send, the low frequency waves. That spinning metal stuff in the middle I was referring to can create frequency. One small rock, though, wouldn’t be enough to broadcast it by itself.

Stars poke holes in space and time due to their immense gravity. One could easily posit that 3I/ATLAS uses the stars own low frequency EMI emissions to piggyback it’s information back to whatever source is expecting it.

However, as I sense this thing moving in our space above, it doesn’t sound or feel like there’s a whole lot of “reporting back to homebase” going on. In fact, there’s a great deal of familiarity with this particular probe in relationship to our solar system. As if had been pre-programmed a very long time ago to be here, and it’s just making its long return while running its same program it executed 3 billion years ago—just as the Voyager probes are currently doing, with their 8-bit and 16-bit computing systems.

In fact, it’s also very important to recognize that many of our OffWorld cultures have a temporal take to the universe. In other words, space and time, especially time, are not seen as linear by them, but as a sphere. (They’ve shown this to me time and time again, and it’s really fascinating.)

Keeping this in mind, if you are a culture that can surf space and time, you do have a bit of a “cheat” on how things are going to unfold. And, you’d send a “comet” to seed earth with life chemicals 3 billion years ago, fully knowing that that planet may have 3 billion years under its belt—so you’re going to resend that probe around, 3 billion years later to re-seed the same star system to provide a planet that would sustain life, for the life that’s pre-existing there. And perhaps that planet or moon would be ready in 3 billion years.

It’s a way of working backwards in time and setting millions of things in motion—by pushing over one domino.

Perhaps this “Offworld Being” that sent this probe is not alien in nature at all, yet is God Itself, using God’s own physics. (I’ve often noticed that God doesn’t break its own laws when it comes to the physical. I have noticed that humanity has not figured out all these laws yet.)

Perhaps whomever sent the 3I/ATLAS probe is one of the countless Offworld cultures that utilize this liquid metal type stuff as their propulsion system. That trait would tag its architects as our Offworld cousins from the Sirius AB star system, or the star systems far past the Seven Sisters, or the Pleiades. Shoot, even what we humans refer to as “Greys” (the O-Tuh-ran Nahk, as they refer to themselves), have craft utilizing this spinning liquid metal stuff. Which oddly shares a lot of qualities with gold yet is more of a silver-bluish-sheen color, like the playable side of a CD (if you recall those.)

Yet the most fascinating thing about 3I/ATLAS is its function, and its ability to receive and even transmit information. Low frequency EMI transmissions are felt deeply in the human body. In fact, very low frequency (VLF) array emissions are not always that great for the human brain, as they can slow down our brain waves to 6 Hz, from our optimized 7.83 Hz, causing depression and anxiety.

I do find it of note that just a couple of days before this interstellar object made its closest pass across earth, a shooting happened at Brown University, Rob Reiner, and his wife were killed, 11 people were shot and killed on Bondi Beach in Australia, and a church here in Billings, Montana, my hometown, was defected with swastika and hate speech. All in one day.

I’m not necessarily blaming this interstellar object for that. But it is a little weird how low frequency VLF can affect the human brain. Considering that this object is not transmitting that low frequency VLF, but receiving bursts of it, well, I could posit that perhaps it was receiving its last bit of information on its trajectory as it starts heading towards Jupiter. (Do keep in mind that this object contains pockets of ice and gases that can also affect its trajectory, like a thruster puffing in space, gently nudging our spacecraft from dock to dock on the ISS.)

Besides 3I/ATLAS acting as a planet-seeding probe, I believe our OffWorld cousins have been trying to make contact with us for a very long time, and in fact, have—yet we’re not getting the memo.

And I do believe they speak to us in languages that we are not looking for—for instance, 3I/ATLAS is speaking our language of cosmic creation. It is speaking our language of astrophysics with its hyperbolic trajectory and orbit. It is speaking our language of creating life in inhospitable environments.

It may even be speaking our language of compassion, preparing a way for future generations of humans to keep surviving, long after our poor planet just gives up the ghost.

I posit that the front plume (the anti-tail) on this interstellar object is collecting particles and collecting data on that which is present in the outer atmospheres in a star system. It’s likely “scooped up” buckets of micro plastics that have escaped earth’s atmosphere and drifted into space.

Perhaps sampling some of this “space junk” out there gives the architects of this probe an opportunity to see how close a civilization, or how close a planet is, to its own demise.

Just as our astrophysicists read infrared patterns and light refractions to determine which gases exist in far-away worlds, our OffWorld cousins often survey particles collected in star systems peppered with sentient races, to determine outgoing planetary toxicity, planetary decay, star decay, and many other societal and planetary identifying factors.

So today as this interstellar object races by earth and leaves us in the rearview mirror, know that its high velocity does send high frequency waves of particle displacement to our planet. Our sensitive magnetic sphere which affects our sensitive ionosphere may react a bit to that; the plasma in our ionosphere loves to excite itself, and create wind and storms. That’s happening anyway, and I certainly would not solely blame a comet for that, yet everything is connected.

Simply reference mercury retrograde. Who would recognize that that would cause so many energetic hiccups on our planet, so far away?

With today’s new moon, and our solstice occurring in just two days, it goes without saying that 3I/ATLAS’ presence in our solar system, and by earth at this time, is not accidental.

May we open our minds to all possibility in the universe. May we see this universe for the divinely magnificent concoction that it is, and may we acknowledge the higher intelligence that creates a system that works within itself with precision such as this— and becomes the wind in our sails.

2026 is going to be the Year of the Clean Slate. We are society and energetically starting from scratch. We are not rebuilding, we are not we re-concocting, we are not re-birthing or re-composing, or re-anything.

We are starting with a new system.

And perhaps 3I/ATLAS is here to remind us that we should reach higher, open our hearts wider, and think longer, in terms of our place in the Universe.

With many folks losing their minds so easily over politics—I don’t like to mention the subject unless it affects a more pressing collective need, and specifically, I’m not a fan of bringing up politics around the holidays.

However, if you’re interested in where our food comes from—and I suggest we ALL become interested, for multiple reasons—read on.

I live in Montana, an agricultural (Ag) state, in the Clark’s Fork River Valley—a place whose once-colossal river dropped nutrients into the valley soil over thousands of years before time chased away most of the vast waterway, pinning the remaining snake of a tributary against the shadow of the Pryor Mountain foothills.

Due to this rich soil, the Clark’s Fork River Valley is checkered with wheat, alfalfa, sod, and corn farms, all woven between small cattle operations. It’s a snapshot of many Ag states. Often disregarded as “fly-over states”, these vast former-ocean-and-river-bottoms produce beautiful and rich crops, feeding and nourishing not only the USA, but the world.

Americans have more concern over a McDonald’s drive through being shut down than concern for our “fly-over” states’ Ag troubles. Little do most folks recognize that those states are why we eat. Oh—and the great and bountiful state of California, providing America with over 80% of our produce.

The USA is a blessed cornucopia packed with food. We have the land for cattle. We have the land and climate for sprawling winter wheat. We have the land and climate for dizzying fields of corn. As such, access to food is something that a majority of Americans really do take for granted, therefore creating a big disconnect with the reality experienced by millions of Americans whose kids go hungry every day.

I don’t think most people understand that we are ONE BAD DROUGHT, INSECT HATCH, or ONE BAD FLOOD away from the USA having no corn, no wheat, and therefore, a starving and depleted meat supply. (This isn’t Ancient Egypt. The USA doesn’t store 7 years’ worth of grain for the whole country.)

People have gotten way too comfy with just expecting food to be at the grocery store or in the restaurant.

If all US grain and corn production stopped, existing reserves (like stored wheat, corn, soybeans) would likely last a few months at most for our human food, but the impact would be felt much faster as livestock feed would deplete within weeks—causing animal agriculture to collapse, leading to severe shortages. This would lead to a societal breakdown within 6 months to a year, far sooner than what folks would envision—say, complete starvation in the streets—due to our complex supply chain issues and our reliance on grain (and corn) for animal food, ethanol, and of course, America’s staple—processed foods.

Anyway—

I’ve been watching folks praise Trump’s recent executive order to bust up price-fixing in the food chain and I am observing they’re not understanding how our food chain, or food supply, works. Or, not really understanding Trump’s order itself.

Some folks are excited because they think this order is going bring down the cost of groceries – but it likely won’t, and a lot of folks are going to be really disappointed. Here’s why:

Trump said. “However, anti-competitive behavior, especially when carried out by foreign-controlled corporations, threatens the stability and affordability of America’s food supply.”

I’m assuming in an answer to the (especially holiday) heat he’s catching for not “lowering grocery prices”, Trump signed an executive order checking for anti-competitive behavior (price-fixing) in our food chain in the USA—okay, that makes sense with our greed-flation over there--yet his hard focus is on foreign “imports” that could be driving up the cost and price-fixing our…food?

After he promised to buy a bunch of cheap beef from Argentina? (Is anyone in his admin helping him remember the deals he’s brokering?)

Out of the MILLIONS of food items grown and created and consumed by Americans – only around 41,000+ of those are imports.

The rest of the millions are grown, farmed, or created here.

The USA truly helps feed the world.

This executive order he signed appears to be one of those orders that makes it LOOK like the government / the President is trying to do something about high food prices, but it’s rather purposefully not looking in the right place.

In fact, this executive order seems to be, in large part, a smoke-and-mirrors propaganda piece, attempting to blame other “awful foreign sources” for causing US food inflation—which is caused by American corporations.

Because again, go back to the part about the USA creating millions of food items for Americans. 41,000+ imported specialty food items aren’t causing Kellogg’s cereal to jump up $3.00 a box in 18 months, when the corn is grown in Nebraska.

There is no other way to frame this executive order up except to see it as a “false try” to make it appear that Trump is trying to “lower grocery prices”—one of his campaign promises he’s been unable to keep—but he’s not really going to do anything.

In agriculture and ranching, higher food prices are in big part caused by the very high inflated price of feed and other farming and ranching needs—inflation created by U.S. companies jacking up the price for our farmers and ranchers. (And, there’s this whole world-market equation that is a bit mind-boggling also, that has to do with supply and year-to-year buying prices—it’s crazy.) For our discussion, the price-inflation-stuff is the point.

This is the part that folks who are praising Trump’s executive order aren’t likely getting—because they don’t know where our food comes from, or how it is produced. Why would most people? We don’t teach this stuff to our population for a reason—because if we realize as a country how delicate our food supple chain actually is, people will freak out and start hoarding beans and burying wheat bunkers.

Sure, I’m all for watching out for price-fixing by American companies. That’s always a great idea. That’s in big part what the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 is for.

However, I would literally bet a chunk of change on the fact that Trump is going to try and make it look like it’s China, or the EU, that’s causing our high food prices. I hope I’m wrong. Yet his own patterns of deflection would suggest otherwise.

In announcing the executive order, he already indicated that’s where was going with it. “Especially foreign sources.” (I’m not even bringing up his tariffs and what that could do to the price of some foreign imports.)

That’s Trump’s pattern: blame some faceless country or thing and have no data to back up the blame, so the mobs with pitchforks and torches can run in that direction—instead of the direction of Washington DC.

Again, out of the millions of food items consumed by Americans—only around 41,000+ of those are imports.

The rest of the millions are grown, farmed, or created here. One more time for the seats in the back: The USA feeds not only itself, but much of the world.

Our President appears to be wanting to blame “other countries” for USA’s corporate greed and is not even really looking where he needs to (to his own corporate buddies, maybe?) in this “where is the price-fixing coming from” issue.

Again—Argentina beef, anyone?

In the United States, over 400 billion pounds of food are produced each year, with a total value exceeding $1.1 trillion. This includes significant agricultural outputs such as 2.2 billion bushels of corn, 2.1 billion bushels of soybeans, and 2.3 billion bushels of wheat annually. The U.S. is also the world’s largest producer of beef, accounting for over 20% of global production.

I encourage everyone to view this easy-to-read public fact sheet from The University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Studies. It’s not a boring read at all, and it’s got lots of quick bullet points and graphs.

And—it’s a little sobering in many ways, particularly when seeing how much erosion is eating away our US Farmland.

Perhaps paying more attention to our climate, and how much of our farmland is being sold-off to developers (HELLO, BOZEMAN, MT?) would be a better idea.

Perhaps an executive order protecting our farmland, like other administrations issued, would be a good idea, if a current President wants to control the inflation around food production.

It’s important we know where our food comes from (there’s an easy-to read diagram towards the middle of the linked fact sheet), and it’s sickening and heartbreaking to know that food is the main content in landfills, in a country where kids are going hungry at home, and in a world where children literally starve—to death.

Our issue is not just “price-fixing” in this country.

Our issue is sociopathic greed. And apathy.

Price-fixing is an afterthought to the insatiable American “Manifest Destiny” avarice that has long-since run its course, and was never a sustainable idea.

We can have a free market and be responsible about it.

American sociopathic greed. That’s the issue I’d love this President to address, and if Trump stays true to breaking apart American corporate price-fixing, he will partially achieve that end in the food distribution market.

However—I am not hopeful that this is his true goal, based upon his words, his demonstrated character, and his economic, business, and social patterns. Yet it surely is my wish.

If not this President—perhaps the next.

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Hapy Halloween!

Here’s episode 191 of “The inPsight Show with Danielle Egnew”: No tricks here--I prepare an audio canvass treat for listeners as I reads the terrifying first chapter of my book, “True Tales of the Truly Weird”!

Turn off the lights, light a Jack-O-Lantern, crank up the earpods, and immerse yourself into a good old fashioned true ghost story--with some true twisted history included! Tune in and receive Halloween’s best ScarePsight!

Happy halloween, everyone!

True Tales of the Truly Weird hardcopy:
https://www.amazon.com/True-Tales-Truly-Weird-Paranormal/dp/1478181109/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

For Kindle:
https://www.amazon.com/True-Tales-Truly-Weird-ebook/dp/B008G4ORU6

For iBook:
https://books.apple.com/us/book/true-tales-of-the-truly-weird-real-paranormal/id541809656

It’s Halloween, and I forgot to decorate for this season. This is very, very unusual for me, because, though I’m all about Christmas and good will to all mankind—I adore the sliver window of fright that is Halloween.

I was a special effects minor in college, and my Halloween make-up used to strike pure unrest, a complicated pride, and mild horror in my beautiful Italian Catholic mom. I mean, it’s not an exaggeration to say that my Halloween decorations, and costumes, are spooky-fierce.

So I had to think about why I didn’t decorate this year. And what came back to me made me very sad: I’m creeped out enough right now, by the zombies that surround me in real life.

I hope Americans are paying attention to the epidemic that’s spreading from coast to coast in our nation, a spiritual sickness through which events are currently unfolding in the USA. The symptoms of the sickness are apathy, polarization, tribalism, “othering”, blame, denial, cruelty, self-victimization and delusion.

This illness is known to permanently affect the brain over time, distorting concrete and rational thinking. The virus clouds these vital functions so the amygdala is instead triggered — fight or flight.

No wonder the American culture was so obsessed with zombies in the mid 2000’s. We were predicting our own future, as we currently wander about spouting the same bumper-sticker phrases over and over again, trying to pee a verbal circle around our own identities.

I’ve never known Americans to be this insecure, nor this thoughtless; empty-headed, impulsive vessels acting as as independent arms of the virus which seeks to gut its host and create a life-form in its own image.

This illness affects the heart, too. And the eyes. We see narrowly, only through smokey clouds of belief. We feel only what we believe to be true. The heart is numb to that which we cannot fathom, that which we have never personally experienced—therefore, it does not exist.

Like any epidemic, this illness has stages of infection. It first attacks confidence, then strength. When those two backbones of conscience are gone, it then takes out empathy. Once empathy falls, there is no antibody barrier left to stop the insipid virus from infecting every aspect of self in its host. Delusion is one of the last stages of this illness, before the host is lost.

Through this illness of the spirit , life limps on, slowing its pace as more and more succumb to this soul-eating virus. We wander to work, glassy-eyed. We wander home in the same manner. We attempt to govern while this illness spreads. We govern through glassy eyes. We govern with what’s left.

The SNAP program (food for hungry families and school kids) is discontinued because of the government shutdown. SNAP not only provides school lunches for kids who need them, but issues money and vouchers to people who need them, to use them at grocery stores.

Not only will 42 million SNAP recipients not have grocery money come November 1st, the grocery stores that also benefit from the SNAP money will feel the loss of customers through their doors. Grocery chains are going to be OUT billions of dollars.

Because a long-term government shutdown is such a severe outcome, the federal government has set aside 5 to 6 billion dollars to fund SNAP incase a shutdown drags on, to avoid just this catastrophic social and economic scenario. This was a bi-partisan law put in place well before this shutdown ever happened. That’s is enough money to fund SNAP for almost one month. This pre-approved money does not require “congressional re-approval” to release.

Trump and the USDA won’t allow the release of the emergency SNAP money.

We have it, as a country. We’ve all paid into it. The amount in taxes that each one of us provides to SNAP is around $36 per taxed person, per year. The USDA can release it, according to their own provisions.

They simply won’t.

Democrats even implored Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to re-convene Republicans to the House during the shutdown, so that they could all vote to initiate the current approved SNAP and WIC benefits for the American people. Basically, just turn on this limited faucet until they can get it figured out.

Johnson ghosted the Democrat’s request until he couldn’t, then said no.

Trump’s sitting on billions of federal dollars, trying to starve people out right before Thanksgiving, all to attempt to put blame on Democrats for “shutting down the government.”

All while he and his billionaire donor friends are continuing to pay for the tearing down of historic buildings that make up the East Wing of the White House in order to erect the 90,000 sq. foot “golden ballroom”, at a price tag of $300 million dollars. That’s $3333 a square foot. Which, by the way, is a monstrous amount of money.

Architects everywhere are decrying this budget, wondering if indeed, there are solid gold toilets in every bathroom. They are especially decrying the price tag considering there is actually not one consistent blueprint that’s been presented for this structure. Not one. Many have come and gone, as has the size and shape of the building. Yet supposedly, they’re due to break ground on construction.

A handful of people have seen schematics for any practical building of this 90,000 square foot monstrosity, and those plans have been changing. As has the budget.

To make room for the structure that’s almost twice the size of the White House itself, Former First Lady Jackie Kennedy’s garden is almost entirely pulled-up and eradicated, along with two historic magnolia trees that were planted in the 1940s to honor former Presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Both were dozed over.

Not one set of ballroom plans has been finally approved. Yet the East Wing has been hastily razed and the gardens destroyed.

Why the rush? The desperation can be seen from space. Literally. Satellite photos of the demolished East Wing sent shivers through a stunned America, whose sense of self and stability is already teetering on the edge of a windy, crumbly cliff.

The only consistent evidence of Trump’s supposed upcoming ballroom structure is a list of donors and Trump holding an Ai generated image of a Versailles-style great room. (Let us also be known that he sat in the Oval Office—which he literally had gold-leafed—to present the rendering.)

Keep in mind, any other architectural addition to the White House has gone through a rigorous process of Congressional budget approvals which involves many eyes on the project. This project has been impulsive, hasty, poorly thought out, and erratic—just like Trump himself. If ADHD were to build a ballroom, it would be this project.

All during the longest government shutdown on record. All while Americans are being furloughed and air traffic controllers lose their paychecks. In fact, air traffic controllers are being required to work without pay, under “essential employee” status during shutdown. I guess they just get a big wad of back pay once the government opens back up. Yet I’m sure that doesn’t really help their mortgages either, in the meantime.

The government did shut down, in the first place, because of one issue, and one alone. Just ONE THING that the GOP refused to compromise on, in the forging of The Big Beautiful Bill.

According to Republicans, it’s the Democrats who wouldn’t just let this issue go.

The Democrats want the GOP to put back into the Big Beautiful Bill funding for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (that’s the health insurance marketplace) so that a total of 17 million legal citizens of the USA won’t lose their health care coverage.

That’s it.

That’s the only thing the Democrats want. Seriously.

The GOP won’t do it.

Even Louisiana Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene would like to see the ACA, or another plan, outlined for this bill. Her GOP colleagues are ignoring her, too.

This government standoff off has nothing to do with trans rights, “sex changes for 13-year-olds”, “the extremist left’s agenda”, “free abortions for illegal aliens”, “free healthcare for South American drug lords” or any of the other absolutely bizarre and untrue propaganda on the front page of many government websites right now.

The same propaganda that is currently violating The Hatch Act, which doesn’t allow the federal government to create propaganda to support one political party over another (as the government belongs to ALL the people.)

While Trump and the USDA are SITTING on emergency SNAP money, and contributing to food insecurity for millions of Americans as well as taking a chunk of the budget out of grocery stores—he just pledged to raise the Argentina beef imports from 20,000 metric tons to 80,000 metric tons, quadrupling the amount of Argentinian beef (with low tariffs) that can enter the U.S. His logic is his own words:

“It would be nice if they [the cattle ranchers] would understand [that Trump’s tariffs against Brazilian beef are why they’re making more profit], but they also have to get their prices down, because the consumer is a very big factor in my thinking, also!”

Yet It’s not a case of “greedy ranchers” that’s causing high U.S. beef prices.

The U.S. cattle inventory and herd size is at its lowest level in decades because of drought and inflation (which is causing rising operation costs)—so many ranchers have been forced to shrink their herds.

Which all raises the price of beef for consumers.

Now, with a proposed undercutting of American been by 80,000 tons of importing cheap Argentinian beef (who even knows what hormones are in the cattle over there, or what they feed them, with no USDA oversight) — the American ranchers can’t compete.

Instead of fixing inflation or our economy, so the ranchers can fix their costs—Trump just brings in cheap beef, effectively undercutting American ranchers while boosting Argentina’s economy.

This is after Trump’s administration CUT subsidies to funding to American farmers. Then turned around and sunk 40 BILLION dollars into propping up Argentina’s economy—within the past week.

Make Argentina Great Again! (It still works out to “MAGA”, so he can continue to sell his surplus China-produced swag down south.)

While the USA is burning, Trump sets his sites on his next fan base: Argentina. Not so ironically, the Nazis fled to Argentina after World War II. Trump is not only buying more beef from them, and infusing 40 billion dollars into their economy—20 of that 40 billion is to stabilize their currency. That makes sense, considering the financial investments Trump personally has in Argentina. And with the Epstein files ready to drop at any time, he’ll need a soft spot to land.

However, the USA is still financially reeling.

The Department of Government Efficiency, named DOGE by Elon Musk after the popular meme Crypto Currency, created what economists call The Paradox of Thrift, with their slash-and-grab approach.

What is the Paradox of Thrift, you may ask?

Well, for a private individual, saving money and budgeting can balance our own personal books. However, this same principle can be absolutely devastating if it’s applied to what’s called a “macroeconomic basis”.

In other words, the big economy.

When government spending into a local economy suddenly drops out, then there’s less money circulating through the economy. (Reference Trump withholding emergency SNAP money so not only do people go hungry, but grocery stores lose billions).

Without the government money, businesses lose customers, workers get laid off, and the economic decline and slowdown keeps increasing; a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is what’s happened in Argentina, under their new dictator. This is why Trump is taking 40 billion dollars of American taxpayer money and giving it to Argentina, in addition to buying the 80.000 tons of beef, to help jump-start their economy.

I’m not happy that my tax dollars are not going to American farmers and ranchers—but to Argentina’s.

This is not putting “America first”.

Yet it certainly is bolstering his own investments in Argentina. As for the USA, the red-white-and-blue-headed stepchild who has betrayed him by attempting to hold him accountable to the law? He appears to truly care less. He has come through the nation as the wrecking ball he is, taking out the East Wing of the White House, while driving the national debt higher than when Covid-19 was in play, and the government paid 300+ million Americans to stay home.

It doesn’t take an economist to notice that Trump is effectively bankrupting America. Whether he’s doing it because he’s angry and wants revenge for being prosecuted by the USA, or he simply doesn’t know any better, is irrelevant.

Trump has bankrupted every business venture he’s owned—even a Casino. (How does one bankrupt a casino? Where people LITERALLY hand the house money, fistful after fistful?)

He does not know business nor economics. He doesn’t listen to anyone who does. It’s a poor combination in a human being who has been put in charge.

Across the internet, countless people point fingers at the Democratic Party, claiming that the stubborn Dems are why this shutdown is happening. Not a peep out of those same folks about the undercutting of our American ranchers, the reduction of American farm subsidies by the Trump administration, the cutting of food programs for school kids by $186 billion, or the fact that Trump could be releasing billions in emergency SNAP funds, right now, in time for Thanksgiving.

He’s just not doing it, hoping people will forget he has the emergency fund, all while blaming the Democrats for starving kids—on the front of government websites.

I wish I was kidding.

I do wish the extremist MAGA story spinners would keep the narrative more clear. Last extremist MAGA thread I read claimed that elitist Democrats ate babies for Satanic rituals—in pizza parlors. So to now starve said babies, prior to eating them, is a really puzzling nutritional choice on the part of elitist liberals, and it does put a kink in the plot line. Perhaps that branch of MAGA could hire a continuity person?

Speaking of unabashedly ridiculous nonsense, Trump’s plan of deflection and sleight of hand is working well on half of America. Epstein who? In fact, the same people pointing their fingers at the Dems over this shutdown are also saying things like, “Democrats are starving Americans with this shutdown so illegals can get healthcare.”

Folks post this belief even though no one in the USA can receive any social service or financial compensation if they don’t have Social Security number. Period.

People who are here and are not legal citizens— don’t have a social security number.

Yet the folks who are pointing the fingers at the Dems simply don’t believe that people who are here “illegally” are not receiving Medicare.

In fact, they’re having a hard time believing that non-legal migrants are not receiving everything they’re not getting—for free, mind you—to leave them with only the tattered edges of the American Dream.

Even though these migrants are not doing anything of the sort, because they can’t (not without a social security number), this belief is now core doctrine in the New Church of the Oppressed American. Whose congregation, by the way, is resoundingly Caucasian.

The actual legal reality of the “illegal that gets everything” doesn’t matter in the weaving of the Many MAGA Myths that have become the stark and very terrifying reality for so many Americans.

The MAGA Myths run deep, blaming a bevvy of people of color, LGBTQI+ folks, anyone who is “woke”, the financially challenged, and Jewish folks—for the country’s woes. A central figure in this mythology from the original QAnon conspiracy threads is a man named George Soros, a love-to-hate fan-favorite villain of true MAGA devotees.

If you ask these same MAGA hopefuls who Soros is, they will tell you he’s an evil liberal billionaire, and the story may include pedophilia, Satanism, money laundering, having people killed, and usually ends in a hushed mention of him literally eating human infant flesh.

Once again—I truly wish I were kidding.

This is the consciousness and madness of the times we’re in.

All of that strange mythology must be a little alarming for Soros when he reads about himself. As a 90-something-year-old Holocaust survivor who has donated most of his billions to charities and social causes, he’s seen his share of true evil. It must be weird to then be cast as “the devil”.

Soros is the chairman of the Open Society Foundations, which supports civil society groups all around the world that focus on very (previously) American ideas like justice, democracy, and human rights.

He also founded the Central European University in Budapest and is noted for his active part in the transition from communism to capitalism in Hungary. So he isn’t a Communist-Marxist-Socialist, as the MAGA Myths go. He appears to be quite the Capitalist.

This doesn’t stop people from making up crazy stuff about him, much of it anti-Semitic, at the same time they’re blaming the Dems for Trump’s economics, and pretending Trump doesn’t have an emergency SNAP fund he could give to America— all while avoiding commentary on the selling-out of American ranchers and farmers, the razing of the east wing of the White House without an approved plan, and the astronomical escalation of the national debt—in less than one year.

Truly, Trump is excellent at a few things, and spending money is one of them. The country may recall a falling-out Trump had with Elon Musk, over Trump’s insane blowing-out of taxpayer money after he charged Elon with cutting government spending.

In fact, just this month of October, thanks to Trump’s policies (or lack therein), the gross national debt surpassed 38 Trillion dollars, an historical milestone. (Trump does like to be the first to achieve something.)

That’s $38,000,000,000,000. I mean, that number doesn’t even look real. It looks like the zero key is busted. Or that a cat walked across the keyboard.

The USA has never owed this much money to foreign governments, or to itself, ever. Our enormous debt load is tanking our world credit rating because we have no way to pay it back. This is what Musk was upset over.

I’m beginning to understand how Trump bankrupted a casino.

The national debt headline as well as the Trump-Musk spat came and went and is not part of the larger MAGA culture.

The disconnect between what is occurring in our country, and what half of America wishes were happening, is so grievous, so outlandish—that trying to understand the narrow field of vision owned by some of our population is nearly impossible.

Unless.

Unless one assumes that the general die-hard MAGA crowd (not the whole conservative crowd—even Marjorie Taylor Greene is breaking ranks) is surfing only on the surface of their lives, not looking down to see such deep blackened water below—and realizing they’re on a sheet of thin ice that’s ready to break through.

Or, some folks just truly believe Trump’s doing the right thing.

Perhaps they don’t understand global economics. Perhaps they do, and only see their lifespan, not understanding how it will affect generations to come. Perhaps they simply don’t care because they won’t be here. And that could be, with the wild-fire spread of this spiritual sickness zombifying our critical thinking process and paralyzing the empathy in our nation.

After all, one of the late content creator Charlie Kirk’s most famous quotes is:

“I can’t stand the word empathy actually. I think empathy is a made-up, New Age term that — it does a lot of damage, but it is very effective when it comes to politics. Sympathy I prefer more than empathy.”

―Charlie Kirk / “The Charlie Kirk Show”, 2022

Most die-hard MAGA folks that I know believe the stories about what Trump is doing are fake, or exaggerated. This is the hill the will die upon.

In any case, the disconnect between what is occurring in the nation, and what is believed to be occurring, is epic.

One of the big future scenarios I was shown by the Angels and the Universe was the plummeting of the American dollar, globally. This is making sense now, as our credit rating falls, our debt increases, our own people don’t have money to put back into the economy which forces a recession, so no “opening new American manufacturing plants” because nobody’s buying; it makes sense as the Tariffs isolate us in trade and other countries retaliate by not taking our goods, either; it makes sense as our housing market slips because of the lack of folks being able to catch up with inflation that has taken off like a rocket; it makes sense as unemployment rises while federal workers are furloughed, and businesses close because no one is buying.

I was shown our treasury will be encouraged by this administration to lean into crypto as the dollar falters. No shade on crypto, I have a piddly little amount myself (that’s how I scratch my very weak gambling itch) yet it’s a sad statement that the USA will be propping itself up on the blockchain because our real dollar will not be stable and we’ll be seeking something outside of us to hold our investment value.

I was shown a bleak holiday buying season, which, though it will not be stellar for retailers, may be really good for remembering what the holidays are about: moments with each other. Meals. Connection. TIME.

I see folks returning to making baked goods for loved ones, and hand-crafted gifts for the upcoming season. Of course, the powers that be are going to tell us it was a GREAT holiday buying season. HUGE. the GREATEST. Yet it won’t be.

Temu will explode with purchases that have dodged the tariffs. (China will be happy.)

This is all the high cost of illusion, insulation from those who differ from us, insulation from the world economy, and flat-out—selfish, short-sighted, and apathetic bad business.

It is the high toll on individual Americans, when we turn our country into a war of ideologies to the point that even the most common sense and seasoned conservatives cannot see that the person who is representing them in their party—actually isn’t.

What’s occurring in our nation is a spiritual sickness, a great detachment—a crisis of conscience. Much of the population is shaking their fists at the sky and saying “Where is mine?” and then pointing to the most marginalized of us—migrants, trans people, people of color, income-challenged—and saying “YOU took what’s mine!”

The fundamental problem with this entitlement—is that it’s simply not true. In fact, the folks screaming about “people taking their stuff” are not seeing is that they, themselves, are the most entitled of all.

Why is it their opportunity, in a country whose opportunity is supposed to belong to all of us? No matter the skin color, gender, or who we are married to? Methinks they doth protest too much.

What’s ours is ours. What’s not meant for us, is never ours. It’s a Universal Principle that governs spiritual physics and nature. Yet the entitled believe it is ALL theirs.

And, in the case of this Presidential administration, it definitely believes it’s ALL theirs. A top-down mob-style autocracy, whoever pays the government for the most favors, gets them. When you’re running that racket, the people who win have millions and billions of dollars. It reminds me of the Capitol in “Hunger Games”, where everyone else served the big city.

As citizens of this great country, we can boost our local economies by buying local goods and services. Especially during the holidays. We can help our neighbors. We can be wise with our budgets—something that needs to happen anyway as America has made “buying stuff” into a drug. And no one lives a decent life while addicted.

The sociopathic capitalist monster that has demanded we feed it since WWII has now eaten all of its plates and all of its utensils. It’s even eaten the table and the table cloth. A few chairs, too. And no one wants to stick their arm in its gaping, snapping, ever-starving mouth filled with rows of pin sharp back-pointing teeth, made to grab and hold and gulp whatever is in its perimeter.

We are hearing just the beginning moans from this beast, the start of hunger pangs that will twist the insides of this glassy-eyed and insatiable monster so that it wails and fits, lashing and crashing everything around it in its hunger panic.

It’s tantrums will be heard across the globe, the seething desperation with wide-eyed rage and—yes, entitlement because it’s not being fed and not “getting It’s”—will rip through the fabric of the nation like an F200 tornado.

When there is nothing left to eat, the monster will eat what is left: We The People.

It will be so painfully hungry it will snatch and grab those who have faithfully been feeding it all this time, closing its eyes in blissful relief as it chomps down on the flesh and the bones of those who have sustained it.

Yet the people will band together against this Beast of Avarice, the beast we, ourselves, created—the beast that’s been spreading this spiritual sickness with each bite and each slash of its teeth, since 1692.

We will tuck it back into its nest and teach it how to survive without gorging itself. After all, it was brought over here in the belly of a three-masted ship, the carrier of this sickness to a new land, awaiting the promise of endless resources to consume. It’s last command that it remembers?

“Manifest Destiny.”

Old dogs can learn new tricks. So can old monsters. At least, the ones that wish to survive.

We must first wrangle the zombie inside each one of us, the blank automaton that is slowly loping forward on autopilot—in order to heal our hearts. Vanquish this illness of spirit, lest we perish with the Old World, the world of sickness and fear—the world of The Beast.

Because we are here to build something far greater. Let us heal and rise to the challenge.

It is not our destiny that we are here to manifest.

It is our dreams.

I can’t believe I’m in season 8 of my podcast already. Through what wormhole has all the time slipped away?

My latest episide of The InPsight Show (now free to stream and/ or download!) asks what can be done to course-correct where we’re at, in the USA?

Subscribe FREE to the podcast through your favorite streamer and share the message!

“Episode 190 of The inPsight Show with Danielle Egnew: Danielle breaks down the energies in the USA and how to be part of the solution: Is the USA able to correct our course? How can we channel energy that challenges division? What is humanity's greatest strength? How can we over-write stereotypes? Who or what, really, is America's most prominent modern enemy? How does delusion foster division? And what does 200 Newtons of thrust got to do with any of it? Tune in and receive today's best inPsight!”

On Apple Podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inpsight-with-danielle-egnew/id1776324798

On Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/5K9RgYRWRhf0d4qfsruczp?si=vNMJENZRSqqnKOTjwc-N9w

On Podbean:

https://www.podbean.com/pw/pbblog-gtw34-3cfb4d

On Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/141922759?utm_campaign=postshare_creator

On Amazon Music:

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/4178e12f-7812-4b95-ac92-937e32194e60/inpsight-with-danielle-egnew

Happy listening!

Good morning Venus . It’s time to make a shift!

The angels have been chatting about it, other Psychic friends have been picking it up, and I’ve just been observing October as it peels back the curtains on illusion during the thin ether season. I even did a podcast on what we can anticipate seeing this month.

Today is gonna be a hot button kicking off much of it.

In other words, for those that have been hiding their heads in the sand, this is going to be a challenging time in one’s faith in earthly institutions, as well as our own interaction with them, as the sand is jetted away from our ears by a giant universal leaf blower.

Illusion only lasts so long. That’s just the nature of an illusion. A mirage is heavily dependent on many factors. And today marks a really large shift in all of those factors. The angels tell me this because humanity, at least in the United States, cannot continue to sustain this detached level of interaction with the real, actual, physical world.

In other words, I can believe that a chair is an apple, and all my friends can call it an apple, but it’s actually just a chair.

From now till the end of the year, it’s going to be raining chairs.

Best recommendations from the universe now is to just be full of grace with yourself and others, as others realize that what earthly system they put their faith in—is not worthy of it.

The point of this is not to destroy faith in human beings. The point of this is to ask people to stop ignoring red flags that come up in their psyche, and their spiritual field, and to put it plainly, red flags in real life.

Living in an escapist dream scape, where human beings (sometimes ourselves!) are cast as characters that they truly are not, day-to-day —benefits no one.

Have grace with yourself if you find yourself in this position of feeling like your “bubble of identity/reality has been popped“. Life is about learning and growing and expanding, and never being who we were yesterday.

The whole point is not to be who we were yesterday.

Even my astrology pals, who can say it more succinctly, are observing planetary movements that reflect what these angels have been talking to me about over the last several months:

“October 22, 2025, marks the transition from Libra season to Scorpio season, which will influence the week ahead with a focus on introspection, transformation, and emotional depth. The day also features the planet Neptune re-entering Pisces, bringing a focus on refining creative or spiritual projects and clarifying dreams.

This is a time for completing unfinished tasks and understanding what is real beneath the surface of things.

Key astrological events—

Sun enters Scorpio: As the Sun moves from Libra into Scorpio, the focus shifts from balance and relationships to deeper, more intense emotional and psychological themes.

Neptune re-enters Pisces: Neptune retrogrades back into Pisces, prompting a time to revisit and refine themes related to dreams, creativity, and spirituality that first emerged earlier in the year.

What this means for you.

Completion and clarification: This is an opportune time to finish projects, settle important matters, and gain clarity on your emotions and intentions.

Introspection: The Scorpio energy encourages a deep look inward, asking what is real and what is unfinished in your life.

Transformation: Expect a period of renewal, even if it happens subtly. Transformation is a process that happens in the "in-between" moments.

Creativity: With Neptune in Pisces, creative and spiritual work can feel particularly meaningful. However, it's important to stay grounded and not get lost in escapism about it.”

Hubris is the act of thinking me can shape the swirl of the universe, when in fact, the universe was swept us along in its native movement. We like to believe we’re the wind, not the dust particle. And that’s all fine, until the typhoon hits, and in our CosPlay illusion where we’re Superman, we have untethered ourselves from the safety of the reality around us—only to be swept away by the power of what is truly real.

This is an alarming place to be for most folks, sucked up into the funnel of the twister, whipping around at 100 miles an hour, and only then—realizing that one is not actually flying like Superman, but being hurled as a projectile by a dominant energy’s chaos.

So many people are being hurled right now, and so many of them actually believe they, themselves, are flying.

Let’s do our best to avoid being the projectile being chucked at someone else’s barn, and have agency over our own transformations and evolution.

Our personal and collective growth is going to happen anyway. May we go gracefully with it.

The heat on my face at 36,000 feet, through the window, is like a hug from a kind God. It’s -26 degrees outside, but the warmth of creation is upon me. It always is, up here.

I wish I noticed this more often, while on the ground. At times I do. Many times I do. Yet many times, I’m crushed by the weight of what we’ve created as a collective, of what we’re trying to cast off of our consciousness as a species—all that is ugly. The fits and spasms of growth and evolution. These energies shout for attention as they work through their own healing.

Today, in this moment — this is a blessed day. Most of my days are blessed days, to be honest. Yet today, in particular, is standing out.

It’s a familiar day on the airplane, doing a familiar thing—a thing that can’t be touched by the beige hiss of society.

I’m heading out on the plane to Tacoma, WA, where I’ll get a really heart-centered and much-overdue opportunity to play a musical show with my dad, Tom Egnew, in our brand new group—The Jaggy Thistles!

My witty dad named our group. Though I am Italian on my mom’s side—I’m Scottish on my dad’s. And, Welsh on my grandma’s side. So technically, I’ve got far more Celtic blood in me than I have Italian blood. (Though that 1/4th Italian is a pretty dang fierce influence!)

That’s a lot of explanation in order to explain why I fell in love with the name The Jaggy Thistles, which means “craggy, sharp thistles”. I’ve never encountered smooth thistles, but perhaps they exist somewhere, and if that’s the case, it’s very important for a Scot to distinguish between the character of the two. Because a Scot would not abide a soft, squishy thistle, considering a jaggy thistle saved Scotland from a Norse sacking, when a Viking stepped on one.

As the story goes.

Dad had reached out and wanted to know if I wanted to accompany him for a set of Celtic music for his church’s 15th annual Celtic Faire. That was a quick “Heck yeah!” on my end! I grew up going to that “everybody is welcome” Episcopal church, so I was happy to do it.

Plus, I love singing with my dad. I just do. We harmonize like melted caramel being poured over homemade ice cream. It’s that way with my amazing mom, too. My mom plays piano, my dad plays guitar. Between my parents, my grandparents, and my aunts and uncles and cousins—I grew up immersed I music.

I was so lucky. So blessed. I couldn’t have designed a more perfect childhood in that way.

I have 56 years of music and singing with my dad, so this moment is just hitting all the right heartstrings within me, in an era when many of those strings have been worn, and snapped, as I’ve attempted to tune my heart to the key of these very dissonant and inharmonious times.

It’s always fun to travel for music. At least for me, it is! A huge part of my adult life has been, or once was—traveling for music. It was my job for quite a bit of my adult life.

I toured all over the place with Pope Jane from Montana; after Pope Jane when I played solo, I toured from LA to Tacoma, WA, and many surrounding towns in the Pacific Northwest, spending a huge amount of time with my Maurice the Fish Records family; I came up from LA and recorded in Olympia, WA with my dear soul sister, Pope Jane’s Kristen Coyner, when we started our acoustic duo “Backseat Bordello”; I zipped  back to Montana from LA to produce my other Pope Jane bandmate and dear soul-sister’s album, “The Holly Shawver Project” (rock it out in heaven, now, Hol!); I headed from LA to Sheridan, Wyoming, where my long-time pal Roy Pack and I started Tin Star Records and I gigged with our Tin Star family of artists; and of course, traveling around a lot of Southern California for music back then. But that was generally by car.

There was a point in my life that touring became very tiring, as I was on the road for a long time. However, there was always a pride to it.

It was always about the music.

I recorded my last album, “You’ve Got To Go Back the Way That You Came”, in 2017. A solo album full of acoustic textures and harmonies, it was going to re-launch the musical section of my career life. My wife was all for it.

I pressed 1000 CD’s. I was going to tour with that record. I was going to fire up the music machine again, after an abrupt move back to Montana from LA in 2013 that slammed the brakes on my musical art.

Thank God I met my wife in 2014, and my creative fires were re-kindled.

“You’ve Got To Go Back the Way That You Came” was not only a song on the album, and the title of the album, but the truth. I had made a big journey in my life, from a kid in a rising band in South Central Montana to hitting the big scene and screen in LA,  sharing stages with people who were my musical heroes.

My inner seven-year-old was blown away, acting onstage with Jennifer Beals, Ally Sheedy, Kim Rhodes, and so many more great women in The Vagina Monologues; playing music with Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, Joan Jett, Kenny Chesney, all throughout the years; living the life in LA, with the pool and the red carpet parties and everything that a teenage gal growing up in Montana the 80’s reading “Teen Beat” would dream about.

California sunsets with palm trees and beaches. Rooftop parties. Awards. All of it. I’m not kidding when I tell you, my inner child  was thinking I was the shizzle.

Then in 2013, it was done. At least, that particular inner-child-awing chapter.

There I was, post-music-career. Back in a one bedroom apartment. Back in Billings, Montana. The red carpets were in the rear view mirror. The last piece of LA that I drug with me back to Montana was a talk radio show that I co-hosted remotely for a short time after I moved home —until the station owner realized I was no longer one of the cool kids in LA anymore, and passed the job of firing me onto my co-host. A typical LA move.

That was the last of my 12 year LA work connection.

I had grown and changed and evolved. I learned incredibly important things about what I wanted, and what I didn’t want. There was a lot that came into focus in that period of my journey that someday I’ll write about, from coming home to Montana during the worst winter in 40 years after living in a place where the temperature rarely dipped below 35 degrees (that got my full attention!), to hitting the Billings, MT WalMart at 3am because I was literally freezing in -45 degrees while residing in my non-insulated cinder block apartment and I needed to buy a plastic kit—the kind you stick around the windows and hit with a hair drier—to seal out the ice cold that cascaded down the wall through the rotting window frames like razor sharp fingernails in an angry arctic waterfall.

That was the winter the furnace in the little apartment went out, and I turned up my stove to 500 degrees, and opened the door, for heat.

It was a perfect analogy for my life: trying to survive being utterly frozen out.

It was time to reach past the polished gal on the red carpet and grab the girl that tent-camped atop the Bighorn and Beartooth Mountains, and built wooden furniture with her grandpa in the garage.

She knew what to do. But it was like starting up a 1965 Chevy that had been parked in the barn under a tarp.

I still have a 4-inch nail from that period, slightly bent as I attempted to pound it into what I later found out was cinder block —while trying to hang up a curtain rod after said 3am jaunt to WalMart. The nail stayed in the wall until I moved, an awkward and utilitarian bracket for the rod that I didn’t dare pull out of the wall, for fear of not getting anything else into the stubborn cinder block.

l’ve kept the nail as a sign of transformation and resilience. To remind myself of what I am capable of.

So, the title of the album “You’ve Got To Go Back the Way That You Came” meant a great deal to me. So did the album. It was a texturally fantastic album with some pretty terrific songs and lyrics, if I d say so myself — and I was so excited about it; on it I played drums, bass, guitar, cajone, mandolin, banjo, percussion, and dropped in a bunch of vocal tracks.

I REFUSED to over-compress the album and kill the stereo spread in the mix (IYKYK), which means the consumer *may* have to click it up one or two volume notches when listening on their device, before leaving it on autopilot. God forbid. God forbid we let music breathe, instead of smashing every frequency into a crunched-up -6Db hot mix, so no consumer ever has to touch a volume knob from album to album.

I mean, our thumbs can’t be bothered, right?

What an analogy for life. For what our world has become here in the USA—trying to take this gorgeous and complicated sound palate, many of which’s frequencies are *so* close together, but barely separated by just a few Hertz or KiloHertz— and trying to standardize it by crunching our majestic stereo and quad and Dolby seven point surround sound canvas—into ONE SCREAMING CHANNEL, distorting the bass, creating artifacts that muddy the whole mix.

If you didn’t follow any of that, a better analogy might be taking all the colors in the rainbow and insisting they be mixed together, for ease of use.

Because gray is more cost-effective, and convenient, for the paint distributors. And less challenging for people picking colors for their remodel.

Anyway. I never did go on tour with that album, because in 2017, I made a sharp left turn in my life path, so to speak—and ran for mayor in my hometown of Billings, MT. It was a moment that required seizing, something I could feel, something I was compelled to do past my own desire to tour with my music—album be damned.

So 1000 CD’s went into storage, except for the few boxes I sold at a few live shows I did— and into the mayor’s race I went, Leading With Love.

The Billings Gazette called that mayoral race, with all seven of us in the primary—the most “civil” local election ever remembered. They attributed that dynamic to the Lead With Love vibe amongst the candidates.

My mayoral run—it was its own album, its own body of work, its own set of ballads, at the end of the day.

The album I recorded, however, was not damned. It went on to win “Best Country Recording” at the 2017 NAMMY’s.

I applied a normal amount of tasteful  mastering compression on that album, and just like Fleetwood Mac, and Queen — I didn’t squash the mix. So you can stream it on Spotify or Apple Music and crank it up and it will still sound chewy and good.

It’s amazing what happens when we give something a little room to be exactly what it was meant to be.

Which leads me right back to my observation of myself, on this flight, going to see my dad, super excited to play music with him—and just have FUN.

I’m noticing the level of enthusiasm I have, to do this gig with dad. I’m looking at my past path with music. I’m missing the feeling of having this type of anticipation in my routine. I love my spiritual work and the clients I read for. I honestly do. It’s a different kind of fulfillment.

Creating music has its own space within me. It breathes life into a moment, with people in the audience, something you all co-create together.

Something that was expressly lost in many communities across the world, post-Covid.

I’m typing this and my head begins to spin, and so does my stomach. I take a moment to look out the window of the airplane and realize we’re banking hard starboard into Seattle. Oh, the Puget Sound is gorgeous! As my dad would say: “That’s more water than you can see anywhere from Hardin, Montana!”

The point of this musing is: I miss post-Covid culture. I miss being in the moment. In community. Creating something tangible from the intangible, to share with everyone. Being so IN THE NOW, that the troubles of tomorrow seem like a strange outlier on which to decide not to ruminate, in that moment.

I wonder who else feels this way?

So.

Today, create something brilliant for yourself, in the now. Do it with someone else. Push yourself past where you thought your comfort zone would be—create your own bent 4-inch-nail, where you pound a support for something helpful into a seemingly unforgiving surface.

Make a thing that others can interact with, in the real world. Maybe it’s a plate of cookies you give away. Maybe it’s a night out that you invite others to be part of. Maybe it’s a game night at your home, or an event you throw for others. Share energies. Invite people.

Be responsible for establishing a vibe.

Connect. Share dreams. Share talents. Laugh in person with one another. Remember what we have in common. Create color.

Not the gray we’ve been told is the ONLY palate to choose from; the gray we’ve been told to use, and then to hate, from one shade to the other, because it includes all the colors, and we’ve been told that hating certain shades means that we have purpose in this world.

BE everything. Because you are everything.

Let’s all remember that.

Me and my dad, Tom Egnew— the Jaggy Thistles (photo by Halley Egnew)

I just left the Portland area after visiting my bestie in Vancouver. This was during the time when Trump has declared Portland “a war zone” and deployed US National Guard troops into the streets of Portland, purportedly because of an ICE protest.

Interesting that Portland was called a “war zone” by Trump.

We were out with my niece while she ran a track meet called “The Nike Invitational”. This meet invited over 25 schools from three states to come race. The park was full of hundreds of students and parents, and of course—food trucks. No police, no fake terrorist organizations, no tense situations or protestors. Just kid athletes and supporters, in a giant park in Portland.

On the way there we passed two farmer’s markets in differing parts of Portland. Peaceful milling of folks everywhere. Lots of crocheted stuff. No riots. No crazies.

Sure, we didn’t cover every inch of Portland. And Portland, like any city, has the boarded-up parts, and the parts where unhomed folks camp. Spokane has these same areas. So does Billings, MT, and St. Louis, where, north of a particular street, the entire town is literally boarded up and falling into the ground. (Not kidding. A ten story hospital—boarded up. An old Catholic Cathedral reaching into the sky—boarded up.)

So, to hear Portland called “a war zone zone” by the President of the United States was obviously, well—it was ridiculous. No roads blocked off. No traffic re-directs—all the things that happen when there are true disruptive riots. In fact, Portland had nothing unusual at all going on, but blue skies.

The War Zone Proclamation was a running joke at my airport gate. People flying back to Montana were cracking up about the decree, about the clearly ludicrous deploying of troops—all of it. One of these folks was wearing a US Marines shirt. He said his son was serving. He said he was embarrassed that he voted for “the old man who’s got dementia worse than Biden.”

I overheard another woman say, “We were downtown on the waterfront, and it was beautiful. I don’t know what he’s (Trump) talking about.”

More bits of conversation included people verbally rolling their eyes at the war zone thing, and one lady saying, while balancing her toddler, “I didn’t vote for him to police a city I don’t even live in. My gas is still too high.”

The whole War on Portland appears to be a flop.

Even worse, it’s an expensive flop.

When your country’s POTUS is someone who never had to personally run a multi-tiered balance sheet in his life, or regularly shop for his own groceries, or even be accountable for the payroll that he owes people—well, playing pretend with other people’s money is easy.

It’s so easy that he can send the military anywhere, even though it’s not Constitutional. But that’s okay too—because by the time the lawsuits roll in, that someone else will pay for (mostly the tax payers), the headline has moved on.

The awkward fact is that everybody around Trump is so scared of upsetting Trump’s albeit dwindling hardcore base that they simply allow him to operate in an alternate universe. Those that speak out are fired, then replaced.

Trump’s hardcore fans cheer on the firings, just like they’re watching some worn-out reality TV show that got canceled in 2020 then got a re-boot in 2024. (Oh, wait.)

There appears to be a disconnect, from the outside perspective, of what Trump is doing for the country vs the admiration amongst his most loyal fans. Those folks voted for him because he’d make groceries and life more affordable. (That’s clearly not happening.) But that’s another blog.

In this alternate universe playing out in Trump’s mind, Portland is ablaze with Blue Zombies. Or maybe, with the cognitive issues he’s been having, I he still thinks it’s 2021?

I mean, there were problems in Portland in 2021, right? And Portland is a protest-iconic city, the depository for every “America is unraveling” fear of the MAGA base. I’ve even seen the RNC capitalize on the 2021 George Floyd riots in Portland by creating billboards in Montana that say “Don’t let Montana become Portland. Vote Republican.” Not only is this billboard IN MONTANA, yet this billboard in Montana absolutely on-fire ludicrous for a hundred different reasons—and it proves my point in citing the fact that Portland is a MAGA boiler-plate.

Plus—Portland is way, way out there on the west coast. And everybody knows it’s weird. Even Portland knows it’s weird. “Keep Portland Weird”, the bumper stickers say. Who is gonna know what’s actually going on out there in PortWeirdia? Especially if they live in Kansas, or Nebraska? The answer is virtually nobody—unless you live in Portland, or maybe Vancouver, WA.

It seems anymore that Donald J. Trump reacts more like a malfunctioning robot than his usual full-of-bluster self. I’ve never been a Trump fan, yet seeing him like this is hard to watch. Dementia is real, and POTUS is unraveling under the weight of it, in front of the entire world.

Trump just picks a geographical location—like Portland—and spouts off about it. And because he’s been given Carte Blanche by what appears on the outset to be spineless people around him, to do just that—here we are, in the pretend Portland Riots, in the pretend Portland WarZone, to the NON-pretend cost to the American people of billions of dollars, at the end of the escapade. I’m primarily a leftie voter, yet no American wants an enormous national debt.

It’s all theater for his fans. There are ICE protests in every major city. Yet poor Portland, glorious PortWeirdia, gets the troops.

Portlanders just sigh heavily. It’s stupid.

But it’s not, because it’s expensive, and it keeps parts of the country in a state of panic and obsessive news-watching over quite literally—absolutely nothing. Because it’s legal to protest in the USA.

Trump’s vast theater that exists only in his mind—evil Portland, foes that earned his vengeance (he recently went on about how he hates his enemies at Charlie Kirk’s funeral)— the whole charade that has always been Donald Trump—is deconstructing in real time, unraveling in real budgets, in front of the world.

Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Charlie Kirk is shot and killed, Epstein, a War on Portland, Epstein, a Mormon Temple is shot up, Epstein. Still, Epstein can’t be erased. Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Green step up for victims. A bi-partisan panel calls for the release of the Epstein files. Instead, Trump releases on Truth Social a purposefully deep fake video about fake medical beds and fake medical cards everyone will receive. Not just fake beds. Fake beds that diagnose whatever is wrong with you, simply by laying in them. (I’m not making that up. It’s called a MedBed. They’re not real. It’s a QAnon thing. Google it.)

From the Portland War Zone to MedBeds in less than 36 hours. Someone needs to intervene on Trump’s behalf. But they won’t. Not yet. Because watching Trump fall apart in front of the world is part of the plan. (They can’t move JD Vance to the front of the line without support from the base.)

In the months to come, we’ll see more Outrageous Trump Theater as the crumbling deep Religious Right, who chose Trump to be their battering ram to break down the culture wall, fragments into splintered factions—some still fiercely pro-Trump, some migrating off of the violence Trump sells to corral people into his/their camp.

Why the migration?

Because after Charlie Kirk was killed, thousands of men had “come to Jesus” moments that were shared on TikTok and other platforms, talking about how they were putting aside their selfish and violent ways to be better husbands and fathers—just like they perceived Charlie was. They would try and become who they believed Charlie Kirk to be, as a Christian. (There goes Trump’s civilian army he was clamoring for. Maybe the peace-love-harmony message of Jesus will win out in the end, however ironic.)

Other on-the-fence pseudo-far-righters will begin to throw their own leaders under the bus wheels of disapproval, scrambling for the last scraps of waning MAGA-power in a nation that is evolving faster than the Heritage Foundation can craft legislation. This is the toll of time passing. Cultural evolution cannot be stopped in any society. It must run its course, and either pan out—or fail into another path.

Attempting to hold back evolution is a losing battle for whomever takes on that journey. Currently, the MAGA Republicans in DC have taken up that mantle.

We’ll see this administration’s attempt to make Christianity the USA’s “official religion”. (Wait for it. This one’s gonna be a real crap show of gregarious proportions.)

This really is akin to making Hershey Bars “America’s Official Chocolate”, as far as any actual authority granted—but as is designed with all this distractionist garbage, the proclamation sure does ruffle a few feathers. Especially legally. More wasted tax dollars on lawsuits over a topic that goes nowhere, and was never meant to, anyway. Distract, distract, distract. Don’t notice Epstein, or an earth that’s trying to kill us with drought, fire, and depleting ground water, and absolutely DO NOT check your bank balance.

We’ll see Trump’s dementia play out in aggravated ways, demanding that other countries fly an American flag if they receive our aid. There are so many more outlandish and weird plays to be made, and I don’t want to spoil all of the WTF moments for everyone— yet as this nonsensical blather fills the headlines, watch as the Heritage Foundation begins to shove JD Vance forward in a new movement to eclipse MAGA (which is truly a Trump-branded group.) The “Christianity First” movement will be born, with the now-martyred Charlie Kirk taking over the savior role from an aging Trump.

Kirk is younger, cuter (with his once “Superman” hair, square jaw, and looks), and died horribly, leaving a wife and two kids behind—checking all the boxes of a “True American Patriot Hero”. Trump, compared to Kirk, is the bald cartoon guy on the monopoly box, squinting into his monocle, chomping on his cigar, wrapping his fingers in his tuxedo coat lapels, shaking his fist at society and croaking away like Lionel Barrymore’s “Mr. Potter” in It’s a Wonderful Life.

In short, Trump is yesteryear’s cool guy.

The far right Evangelical Conservative movement needs something else, something new, to move on, as Trump gets less culturally relevant. Agism strikes us all in America.

According the ethers, Trump’s health is on the very steep decline. (I don’t believe anyone with any sense of observational prowess needs a psychic to tell them this.) He’s now an old man, struggling with clear cognitive choice-making, wrestling through what appears through the ethers to be prescription-induced dementia, screaming “Get off my lawn!” while deploying the military with pooper-scoopers to follow up. He’s out of tricks.

Trump drives up the deficit; he issues bully-orders from this executive branch with ICE quotas so high that legitimate ICE agents have quit and they’ve hired extremist wanna-be-solider of fortune types; his nonsensical tariffs are passed on to consumers who keep voting for him and wagging their own fists at shadows of Obama and Biden; the cycle continues.

In America, we get to believe whatever we want. Even that Portland is a “war zone” deserving of military occupation. We get to believe anything, as long as we don’t have to look in the mirror and stare into the soul of our lives, so see how empty we’ve left ourselves, and how financially, emotionally, psychologically, and moreover—spiritually broken we really are in this Greed-flation nation, in this me-me-me world—and how it’s all a little bit too much.

The Universe has been attempting to show us our own magnificent power, as a human species, to manifest absolutely anything. And we just keep leaning into the lowest-hanging fruit: Fear. Limitation. Ruination. Lack. More fear. The Universe won’t save us from our choice-making. So perhaps its time that we finally take ownership of our out-of-control monkey minds—and handle this part.

A word of advice to anyone in the Trump power circle, from the woman who actually does see how it all ends: you may want to start to guide Donald gently back to the golf course, for the days he has left (honestly, somebody have some compassion for this guy!)—while someone else takes the joystick and directs the ship. Because we have a lot of game left to play, and the hardcore Evangelical Right won’t be able to hold this attempted legal take-over they launched in 2024. Republicans will get their party back from extremists as America tires of the billions in theatrical displays.

In fact, history will do as it always does—react strongly in the other direction, after this rash display of vulgar power flexes.

We will have legislation that makes it easier for ALL non-felons to come to the USA, legally. We will have legislation that makes it impossible for a felon to be POTUS. We will have protections for LGBTQI+ people, some included in the Constitution, just as women received the right to vote. It won’t be “just the blue people”. It will be a bi-partisan majority of lawmakers who have tired of the constant floorshow, who wish to return to simply running the nation.

Quite literally, 60 years worth of planning by folks who preceded the Heritage Foundation will unravel in the face of the country’s evolution. Just like it unraveled pre-civil war.

That’s right, this is an old play by the Old World Team, who is running the same loser combination that they did back in the mid 1800’s.

If this were a Super Bowl game, fans of The Old World Team would be groaning at the play because everybody knows the play, and knows the team can’t complete the pass this way.

Back then, pre-Civil War, the Democrats were wearing the mantle of racial hatred and greed-flation, advocating for slavery to be enshrined in the Constitution. Cronyism was at an all-time high since the birth of the nation, and dirty money flowed fast between filthy fingers, running the show in DC. It all looked pretty grim, with white southern men buying off Senate and Congress seats, judges, and police officers, wanting to keep their money, their property (which included human beings), and their “way of life”. They even packed the Supreme Court to make sure nothing changed.

Sound like a familiar set-up?

It all pointed to ruinous avarice and Constitutional decline, spiraling out of control with no moral center whatsoever.

Until—this very quiet introvert farm guy poked his head up from poverty, and ran for President—and won, on the ticket of the wild-card, upstart, for-the-people, then-Republican Party.

Abraham Lincoln took office, would not allow the south to succeed—and here we are.

It’s a seven year cycle:

1. The country tiptoes up to the border of absolute Constitutional ruin.

2. The Dark Energy comes forward and tries to rebrand itself, to re-insert itself into our government.

3. The USA comes close to tipping into oblivion—and then snaps back hard the other way as the renewal energy of this North American Continent says, “Yeah—no. Balance out, man. Balance.”

Look what happened after the McCarthyism of the 1950’s—free love, baby.

We have a lot of work ahead of us to clean up the mess left behind by many unfortunate cowards in charge around the outskirts of Donald Trump, supporting a babbling old man who should not be legislating, but sharing his good-ol’-days stories while golfing.

I’d implore The Left to stop using the word “regime” when referring to this Trump presidency. There’s no “regime” here. That’s a bit of an overdramatization. A “regime” would indicate power, reach, and planning. None of that is present in this administration.

The power is a floor show, there is no reach past X and social media (the world has all but left the USA on its own), and there is absolutely no planning on the merry-go-round that is Trump’s mind, at this point.

Sure, he’s following the Heritage Foundation’s playbook, because he owes favors to the folks that kept him out of prison. Yet Trump himself is the textbook case study in The Emperor’s New Clothes through an ADHD lens. And that poor guy is no longer able to wrap up the chaos in his head with a sellable wrapper.

There’s only failing synaptic stabs at old vendettas, nonsensical executive orders between golf games, Ai deep fake videos for fake products, and dozens of people who don’t want to lose their government perks—enabling all of it.

And, let’s not forget, a few planted die-hard Evangelicals who have been working to “take the country back” since black and white people were legally allowed to marry in the early 1960’s.

So again, to the hiney-covering Trump team—if you want to keep your government perks, start course-correcting now. You’ve got less than two years to get people (and yourself) to believe in you, once again — maybe 15 months on the long stretch.

Or — if you choose to keep doubling and tripling and quadrupling down on the leader that even the Extremist Far Right is attempting to replace, you’ll all be shunned faster than Senator McCarthy, who drank himself to death in his forties after being seen for the divisive attention-seeker that he truly was.

Thankfully, I’ve just landed back in Billings, MT, from my perilous trip out to Portland. I’m so relieved to be in my hometown, and out of the “War Zone.”

I feared for my life. Right after I finished my terrorist-crafted Voodoo Donut and my infidel-brewed oat milk chai.

Rejoicing that Trump may die makes zero sense to me, on a number of levels.

First, it’s cringe. Especially en masse. I mean, karma is actually a thing, people. Sure, I’m no fan of his and I’m over the daily chaos, plus many of us privately ponder a “short-cut ending” to this painful lesson in choices and consciousness —but honestly? This public death pool is getting weird.

Second—and even more importantly—that’s like getting excited that the hood ornament is falling off the Mack truck that crashed through your house and took out the kitchen then blasted through the bedroom wall into the cornfield and is mowing down the crop as it runs over a bunny rabbit.

But YAY—the hood ornament has almost fallen off!

Trump is simply a front guy —the ornament on the hood of a much bigger, much more destructive machine.

When his ornament falls off— and yes, it’s bent sideways and hanging on by one flapping, frayed cable—the machine will replace him with another hood ornament, shiny and new.

The machine won’t even miss him.

Once that new hood ornament is knocked off as the machine wreaks havoc and destroys everything in its path—it, too, will be replaced.

So will the next one. And the next one.

Rather than fixating on the rotation of tattered hood ornaments, we should be focusing on the machine’s engine, and how to deprive it of fuel.

Because that’s the swing in the hammer. Trump is just the sound the hammer makes when it hits the nail.

How do we deprive this malevolent Mack truck of fuel?

We don’t spend our money where it can turn those dollars into devious diesel.

We don’t fall into the “rightrous hatred” trap because there’s only one kind of hate. And it feeds this machine.

We don’t give away our humanity wishing someone would die because we can’t stand that he gave away his humanity.

We don’t burn all bridges so this monster Mack truck can’t travel to us. Instead, we build bridges to every town and every city, and we pave them with diamonds, exploding with light and blinding the truck’s drivers— diamonds so sharp they shred the tires and leave the machine crawling to a halt, marooned amidst a sea of refracted rainbows—dancing everywhere.

When Trump passes, the machine will elevate another, then another. So we are much better suited to address the machine. Otherwise, we don’t learn the lesson that the machine is trying to distract us from learning:

That we are far, far more powerful when aligned, than not. Aligned doesn’t mean agreeing. It means working in the same direction.

May we return to a time when our greatest need was not for seething vindication, but smooth vibration.

After all, once the hood ornament falls off and gets lost in the dirt—we still own the farm, with all its damage, and all its promise.

Accepting redirection from the Universe is where our growth continues, the growth we continually ask the Universe for; we balk at the path that attempts to lay itself before us, even as our old path has been dissolving away beneath our feet, perhaps for years.

We watch the path dissapear, and cry to the heavens that we are foresaken, so busy in our fear that we don’t see the new, clear, clovered path right next to us.

We are taught that change is “bad”, because for so many, change has been the side-effect of forced trauma.

We mistake change for the scramble to survive.

Yet change—evolution—is what delivers us to the next version of ourselves. This is what we ask for. This is what we resist.

The resistance has been normalized—even canonized:

“Change is hard”.

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

We have a lifetime of routine and identity that demands sacrifice to maintain it; a god of the most selfish kind, whose worship involves us staying the same, falling into the same patterns, doing the same things, seeking the same approvals.

Perhaps for lifetimes.

We ask the Universe, “Show me the way.” When it does, it often shows us the where the way has ended, or where the way has been trying to take an offramp, sometimes for a long, long time.

We then label these examples of the Universal “wrong way” sign as “missed opportunities”, “near misses”, “almost had-its”.

Yet if we were meant to have it, it wouldn’t keep alluding us, almost mystically, methodically.

We concoct the best plan, lay the best groundwork, hatch the most equisite strategies—yet nothing sticks. It shifts in the wind, as a muscle cracking into place, just one vertibrae off from perfectly comfortable, nearly always.

A sign of smashing the round peg into the hole we refuse to accept is square.

We then decide this incessant shifting must be a Universal timing issue. Because how could our best schemes, our best dreams, our best laid plans—just *not* ever materialize? A vapor, just out of reach, the plans seem to form solidly for only a moment—then the wind, as it does— changes.

This is generally the segment in life where we’re certain the Universe has forsaken us.

Because we’ve forgotten.

We’ve forgotten we asked this same Universe to deliver us to our highest path. That path may be on the fifth floor, yet we refuse to let go of the railing on the third mezzanine.

We want the path, the place, the people, the purpose, to be something we recognize—like that third floor mezzanine we’ve spent years decorating, the bronze plaque on the wall touting us as the biggest donor.

Yet the Universe didn’t hear us say, “Guide me to the place where I recognize myself.” Because we never asked that question.

We asked to be guided to our highest path.

Which means doing away with all modalities that would double back to the path we’ve worn down with repetition; a loop of convenience.

When something isn’t broken, we don’t seek to fix it. We don’t seek to scratch that which does not itch. If we are where we are supposed to be, our needs line up—again, almost magically, mystically—our lessons are championed, and our questions are answered.

Our purpose feels aligned in that moment.

If we are continuing to pound the round peg into the square hole of our perceived purpose, there are only setbacks, shifts, and simply unfulfilled timelines.

Because they are not ours to fulfill.

They never were, in spite of our desires.

Our desires see clearly, right in front of us. Our highest path, we cannot often see, as it contains a joy and a fullness of purpose we’ve not yet encountered.

Our highest path sees around all the corners, not just straight ahead—and it fills us with a yearning for a fulfillment we’ve not yet achieved.

We reach for this yearning in the mist that is shifting in the wind before us. We reach from our seated place on the safe third mezzanine, under our plaque. We do not stand. It must come to us.

Yet the fifth floor cannot come to the third floor lest the building collapse. We would demand a disaster before we’d take to the upstairs.

This is the power of our own self-delusion, of our own fear, a gentle lesson allowed us by a Universe that is obsessed with being our teacher.

Our hubris snubs the gentle lessons, thus we are obsessed with learning the hard way, through polarization, shaming, blaming, self-isolation, and shaking a fist at a Universe that is simply trying to bring us what we asked for, as we cast it in the role of the abuser, or the narcissist.

Our desires are what we’ve labeled as “what we want.” Yet the Universe knows what we need, what we crave, what will lift us.

Our highest path.

Perhaps our desires are part of this highest path.

Or, perhaps they are only the flares, set along a twilight path, leading us forward to the next glowing speck of brilliance in the darkness—a winding road up a murky hill, making its way to the light we actually seek?

Accept redirection from the Universe. It is not failure. It is not “quitting”. It is not “giving up”, though it is surrender.

It is the act of truly listening, of truly receiving that which has always been intended for us.

Not the same shifting mists in the changing wind. But the solid path that leads us high—to where we can truly see all of ourselves.

Accept the beauty of this possibility without fear of loss, and our lives evolve in the most unexectedly stunning ways—

forever.

Two days after setting foot back in North America from Europe, my wife and I were back on an airplane flying once again east, to one of the oldest cities in America, one that pre-dates the founding of our nation: St. Louis.

We were going to visit family for a wedding in my wife’s home state of Missouri, in this most French city.

Life is full of themes.

Our family was kind enough to fly us out to see them, and generous enough to place us in first class because we had a very tight connection in Salt Lake, and of course, when you’re sitting one row back from the front door—you can fly the coop pretty quickly.

As it turns out, that hustle was necessary, as we arrived at our connecting gate a mere two minutes before they started boarding our section on the next flight out.

The big plane to St. Louis floated, thick cream on glass across the icy white clouds, a nearly-full moon illuminating the night sky like a velvet painting from Nogales, Mexico, circa 1974.

It was beautiful.

I’m a window seat person. I love to see the clouds and feel the ground below, and the vast spaces above me. I love to fly for a host of reasons. But that’s another blog post.

Tonight, it’s late—9:21pm, wearing later into the night on our 737 Boeing 900ER which tears east at over 525 mph.

The clock just changed to 10:23pm. We as passengers have already defied this construct of time by not moving at all, sitting still inside the plane in one spot, while the marvel of physics we’re enclosed in is screaming through the high atmosphere—as we erase an hour from the clock.

We cross an invisible line that means everything. The illusion of time is deconstructed by a contrail.

It’s all a weird situation to ponder: I’m not moving, but my chair is. I wonder if my chair feels the pull of 525 mph? I surely don’t. I could be sitting at my desk at home, for all my keister knows.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it make a noise? If a plane moves through the sky yet the butt doesn’t feel it, do you move at all?

According to my screen map—indeed we do.

Thus goes all illusions presented to us in this life. Only the point of impact understands the momentum of any given situation.

For instance, I’m quite sure the nose cone of the plane is highly aware we are traveling at 525 mph, the atmosphere splitting around its snout at -71 degrees outside. When I project my energy into the nose of the plane, I can only stay there for a fraction of a second—the burn of the air and the pressure of the atmosphere feels so hot, so searing, my brain can’t process that it’s cold I’m feeling.

I pull myself back from the nose of the plane to my seat, back to my own clueless keister. It’s warm in here, and my butt doesn’t know where it is anyway, and there’s no searing pain in first class.

The dinner they brought in first class was phenomenal, even for regular everyday food. (There’s usually a grace given to airplane food. But this food didn’t need that grace.)

I’m looking at the beautiful diner being presented to me and I’m noting that humans in the western world are obsessed with aggregating themselves according to financial hierarchy. In this case, first class, or coach. Priority boarding, mileage plus members—then we plebes who are usually in the background of the plane, except for today. It’s fascinating to see how this hierarchy is made manifest.

For instance, it’s really astounding how one or two rows in an airplane can make the difference between receiving yummy Greek salad and hummus, a side of fresh fruit, and this fascinating blueberry mousse that I’m actually eating because it’s the perfect texture (sweet, and tart)—and a one inch by one inch packet of four broken pretzels sprinkled in some kind of Asian-adjacent seasoning that’s so stingy-salty, it will dehydrate your optic nerves.

A mere two rows between free Prosecco and shriveled eyeballs.

Life is rough.

I feel a little bad for the folks two rows behind us, wrestling with infinitesimally tiny and slightly hateful pretzel packs. That’s usually me back there.

Yet rows can’t save you from smell. That’s the great hierarchy-buster.

Someone in first class, in this lovely environment high above the clouds with this gorgeous fluffy blueberry thing and a super good Greek lemon salad—just had a human moment. In more understandable terms, someone up in first class just passed gas— nasty gas. Big gas. And here we fly through the clouds, in an aluminum tube, re-breathing that recycled toot, over and over again.

The irony of being high in the endless air, yet trapped with the worst air, is not lost on me.

I’m drawn to the illusion of safety: How we contain ourselves matters.

I’m now thinking to myself—we’re all human. We’re pressurized to 5000 feet. Somebody’s body expanded and POOF, gas was had, sucked out by sheer physics. It appears to be a lot of gas. A lot.

I’m looking around to see if any of the 12 large men that are sharing first class with us are squirming in their tighter whities. I’m wondering if someone struggled with an incontinence issue. It’s that pungent.

I keep expecting this smell to de-escalate somehow, to wear out eventually as it’s pulled again and again through the air filter —it’s first class, right? Isn’t it smell-resistant up here?

The answer is no.

I understand that the universe is a constant teacher, yet this lesson is getting old. I think to myself at one point—did one of these fellas eat some two-day-old run-over raccoon on the way here? Is someone on this plane dying? This is not a common toot.

I look at my wife, as the thought crossed my head that perhaps she had an awkward moment in the plane. But she’s watching a movie. Had it been Rebecca who created the offending smell, she would’ve looked at me with that Tauresian “sorry not sorry” look and kept watching her movie.

She’s not even blinking. It wasn’t her.

I’m tempted to ask her if she’s smelling this, but all she’ll do is roll her Taurus eyes at me: “Of course I am. I’m going back to my movie.”

That’s not worth it. I know that secretly, she’s gagging on it, too, but just acting like nothing is happening, because as I said, she’s a Taurus, and they can’t be bothered with stupid stuff like noxious human gasses on an airplane, especially during a movie.

It’s not lost on me that this is a fascinating lesson about where we place our focus. What do we choose to allow into our psyche, to derail our current experience? Rebecca is the master of the no-biggie tune-out.

The smell is finally beginning to dissipate, and I’m grateful because my eyes can only water so much. I’m doing my best to allow my mind to go somewhere else. I’m writing this blog post. I’m looking out the window. Yet wave after wave of this smell just keeps coming.

If I were a surfer and this were the ocean, I’d be in heaven, with these consistent waves rolling in again and again. Yet a surfer I am not.

I am also not a Taurus, and therefore, felt that perhaps this would be an easier situation to navigate if I can put a face to the butt.

I look around and scan first class to find the “oops” energy of the hot-coloned culprit, and in doing so—I realized something fascinating.

Every one of the men in first class has their window shade closed, and their back-of-seat display screens on with a show rolling in front of them, while simultaneously noodling on some sort of hand held device.

Two screens, no open window shade.

It’s not like the window shades need to be closed because the glow of the moon is ruining the action film by glaring on the screen. There’s no real functional reason the shades are down. These guys just closed the shades.

Why?

Why bother closing the shades when it’s pitch dark outside? It’s not as if the glare of any of the screens is shot back to anyone from the windows.

It’s beautiful tonight. There’s an incoming-pink-full-moon glowing just out of window range, and the high mist of clouds is only visible because it’s illuminated to look mildly bioluminescent.

The splotches of pitch dark ground below are dotted with small splatters of tiny lights where humans have decided to congregate. I count 15, if I strain to see into the distance. I’m probably looking out 200 miles.

It’s peaceful. It’s lovely. It’s non-distracting.

So why close the shades?

It occurs to me now that I saw the closed shades as soon as the fellas got on the plane. Those shades came down as the men boarded (there was no bright sun at 8:43pm at night). The shade-closing created this tube-cave that we’re currently sitting in.

I recalled that once one man closed the shades, they all started following suit.

Do fellas like dark caves? Is this a cave-man thing I am unaware of, because, well—I’m married to a woman?

The collective male-cave-creation-phenom is interesting. (I’ll have you know that I have access to two windows at my seat and both the shades are up.)

There’s only one fellow up here who left his window shade open. One. He’s across the row from us.

I’m asking myself—what’s this need, to close out the outside world? To limit the field of view only to a screen in the hand, and one playing in the background on the seat in front of them?

Are these fellas so inundated in their lives that indirect moonlight is intrusive?

Are they afraid of heights?

The intention with the window closing was definitely to narrow one’s scope of focus.

Are these guys just tapped-out from life, so the opportunity to be in a dark tube (except for the flashing screens) is welcome?

If that’s true, that makes me sad for these fellas.

One guy has fallen asleep. Another nodded off on his Fox News, the bright large screen flashing silently, lighting up the dark cave.

No one seems to notice.

Now, in fairness, there are two guys behind us, talking up a storm. I peek around and their window shade is open. (Just for the record, I don’t think they’re the gas-passers. One of them most definitely would have commented on it.)

Anyway, score two open window shades for team XY chromosome.

Why is my attention drawn to the windows? (Well, I’m glad it’s off the bad gas, which is now finally blissfully gone, sucked into the frozen outer space somewhere.)

I believe I’m drawn to this shade issue because I’m witnessing a reaction to life-overload; a subtle, almost quietly panicked masculine reaction, a reaction where these fellas are subconsciously understanding that each one of them just needs to cut out the demands of the outside world for a minute—work, spouses, identities—so, time to close the shade. Turn on a screen. Let it run in the background. Scroll sports in front of you while the news barks the trauma of the day over the top of the phone.

Insulate yourself from external demands.

That’s what this felt like.

I happen to notice that outside, through the window, the city light-patches are getting bigger. I’m feeling like we’re getting closer to St. Louis. Rebeca has nodded off. Fox News guy got up to use the restroom then came back to focus on his solitaire game on his phone while Fox flashes “Are Dems Done with Identity Politics?” into first class, as the program cuts to a commercial on how you can get Viagara and Cialis in 10 day doses for only $7.

The lights below are now eating the countryside. We must be getting closer to the city.

My take-away from this experience is that not only is every experience a spiritual teacher, including but not limited to gas in first class—yet I think more fellas need to open their shades, literally and metaphorically.

Take in the beauty of the world.

Put down their screens.

Shoot, put down both screens. I mean, the energetic insulating layer of two screens says it all. Companionship that demands nothing. Companionship that just gives.

I feel like more fellas need to give to themselves, like we women have learned to do, secretly. If we’re on our game, we go to spas. We get massages. And it seems the collective masculine plane-cave-building I witnessed is how fellas maybe give a minute to themselves, and each other.

It’s a bit of mystery. But it was quite a phenomenon.

If you’re a guy and you’re reading this—I hope you take a moment to experience the wonder of an open window shade at night at 36,000. You can tell so much about an area, just vibing how it feels from above. I would think my hunter-gatherer brothers would really dig that.

Fellas, I hope you recognize that not one thing out that window shade can get you up here, and that you have a right to your own peace, and your own thoughts, and your own SPACE.

Because the one thing I found with all the closed shades and double screens was that it felt wildly “tight”. Claustrophobic, almost. Crushed between obsessive and frenetic constant movement and energy, a metal tube—and nothingness.

Perhaps our modern fellas are too ground-down in our society, too stress-riddled, and coming to a full peaceful halt at 36,000 feet would jostle their system too much—so this frenetic multiple-screen companionship levels the equation?

Only these men would know if that were true. And I’m not going to ask them. Because I highly suspect much of what I’ve witnessed between these men is unconscious. Masculine autopilot.

So much autopilot in the USA. But that, too, is another blog

The captain just came on and announced we’re starting our descent into St. Louis. It appears I’ve spent this entire 2+ hour flight writing this blog.

Perhaps like our fellas, I, too, have a hard time simply sinking into the vibe outside, the peace at 36,000, and must create my own frenetic companion, to make sense of it.

Perhaps that’s why my attention was drawn to the guys. Perhaps I could take a lesson in looking out the window more, whose shade I chose to leave open, rather than watching my own thumbs fly in the notes on my iPhone.

Huh.

Observation is a fascinating teacher.

Thus goes all illusions presented to us in this life. Only the point of impact understands the momentum of any situation. Perhaps I share a point of impact with these fellas.

Perhaps it’s the stresses of life.

And, as irony would have it—in a full wrap-around of awareness—the scent-leaking sphincter is back. Another rancid toot is wafting through first class. I’ve only got 20 minutes before we land. I think Rebecca is actually asleep. She’s the queen of being present in her skin. This is one of the many things I admire so much about her.

On that note, I’m choosing to let go of solving the mystery of the high-altitude tooter, and end this blog. Instead, I’m putting my attention outside, where the moon is flashing on lakes below, making them visible for just a moment before the blackness swallows them up. The ground looks like it’s dancing with flashes of light from a moon at high midnight above us. I look to the south, south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and it’s hazy down there.

It feels different.

I plug my nose and blow the pressure out of my ears (I’ve still got the tail end of a head cold I brought back from Cassis, France.)

Time to hand in my Prosecco glass.

Quite a lot happened on this flight, in the space where my keister did not move one bit.

Yet someone’s sure did.

Sorry for the curfuffle with the France-America post—it was full of weirdly broken up paragraphs, typos, erroneous punctuation, wrong words, and other things! I’m not exactly sure how that happened—all of that wasn’t in the draft I pasted in, unless I pasted the wrong draft? Even though there was only one draft?

Maybe?

I dunno. Who knows.

I’ve fixed it, so enjoy at the original link!

Danielle 😇

Anyway—the issues have been corrected

It perhaps was no universal accident that I ended up in France for 8 days, only a little over two months since the new administration took office in Washington DC.

My wife and I are here to visit our magnificent daughter, who is spending a semester studying at the Paris Fashion School. The timing was not only refreshing for both my wife and I, to get a break from the relentless cycle in the USA of negativity and hand-wringing, yet to also be in a place where people take their own political unrest with a far greater stride.

The French have seen it all.

Europe is fascinating. It’s where many of we European-descent folks came from, generations ago, and there is always an interesting “ping” that happens when visiting here— like something one almost recalls—yet doesn’t.

Everything here is vastly different from the USA, though it may seem similar. The French in particular are very aware of how much room they “take up”—space, resources, even loudness in public spaces. They are a more reserved culture—until they’re not! (Nothing like the French on a Friday night!)

Everything is tiny in Europe because space is limited. Tiny bathrooms, tiny showers, tiny sinks, tiny kitchens. Portions are small, cup sizes are normal (no nightmarish super-sized anything here), and people are highly aware of making sure they pick up their trash.

Thousands of years of living right on top of one another has dictated that it’s a better idea to learn to live together, than against each other.

We used to know this lesson in the USA.

Somewhere along the way, starting with the 2016 chant of “F*ck your feelings* that came from avid supporters of Donald Trump, we’ve gone in what I would observe is a regrettable social direction, hissing and pissing at those who don’t act and think like we do.

The same Trump supporters who sported the FYF chant are also the folks who often felt that because they were asked to use certain pronouns when addressing someone, their American right to free speech was taken away. I always found this to be really awkwardly weird. If someone wants to be called he, she , or they—so what? Isn’t that their free speech being exercised?

Since when did we become so fragile in this nation as to actually feel “offended” by what someone else wants to be called? Wouldn’t “f*ck your feelings” be an appropriate response to this uncomfortability, as well?

It would be, if the response was not so abhorrent, and so offensive. Yet in the USA, we are a pit of polarization and hypocrisy.

It’s free speech as long as it’s what the Trump administration approves of. Otherwise it’s struck off the funding dockets and even taken off the playbill at the Kennedy Center, to be replaced with Monster Trucks and professional wrestling.

We are a global embarrassment right now. Thankfully, the people in France are understanding that it is not ALL Americans that wish for this dystopian mess to be upon us.

It’s so refreshing—here, the French openly talk about what a buffoon and a clown Trump is. No one is worried about offending their friends and loved ones. They appeal to the truth—that Trump is a global nightmare, an embarrassment to everything that America is about.

They laugh at his idea of “greatness”. They are appalled at how we are treating our migrants, “accidentally” deporting brown American citizens in the mess. And yes, that’s happening, for those of you who are fans of this deportation policy.

They are astounded that the USA has fallen under the Putin rules of censorship, and are wondering why the American people have not risen up to combat what’s happening.

I explained to them that we are rising up, and that massive protests and boycotts are not being covered on the news. I explained that it’s only been two months since this has been upon us. We’re trying to get it all figured out, yet even we weren’t as prepared as we should have been, socially, for this onslaught of awful.

I explained that many Trump voters cherry-picked Trump’s policies, liking this or that, yet just choosing to believe he wouldn’t do half of what he spouted off about. Even though many of us tried to tell folks that he had to do everything he said he would do, to pay back the people who kept him out of jail.

Those people he is currently pleasing wrote the policies he’s signing. He sure didn’t. He’s been playing golf. Trump’s handlers wanted signed executive orders that were awaiting him on day one, as are often awaiting every incoming POTUS. Trump, the great frontman for whomever’s agenda will serve him, obliged.

Europe sees it clearly. 5/6ths of America sees it clearly. It’s refreshing to be around people who aren’t worried about offending their friends and loved ones with their most very basic observations, only to have those observations instantly decried as “brainwashing”.

This is not the way the USA is supposed to operate. Not according to our founding documents. Yet a minority of people are uncomfortable with the idea of differing gender identities, differing partnership types, differing skin colors, differing religions, as well as being asked to acknowledge these things they are uncomfortable with—so many have taken to declaring patriotism through the restriction of basic American values.

In France, folks just live with their different neighbors. In London, there are posters everywhere that say “The mayor of London welcomes EVERYONE.”

The world’s response to this ghastly Trump administration phenomenon, all of the American exceptionalism, the fight-starting with Canada (a ridiculous stance, in a deeply connected world) is to be more kind.

Most Trump voters held their nose and clicked the box for him—according to them. They felt Biden was too old and feeble after his last debate performance, they didn’t like Kamala Harris (saw her as a desperate shove-in candidate), and didn’t like Trump either. Yet Kamala was a wild card and they knew what they were mostly getting with Trump. They thought.

Many Trump voters I know who have went this route are regretting their votes at this point. They are saying that “he’s not the same President” as he was in 2017. They’re saying that they did not vote for Elon Musk to run the budget of the country.

They have relatives who were fired from jobs. They are deeply confused by what happened, though those of us who have been following Project 2025, and its mandates which Trump has signed into executive orders, are not surprised by any of it.

Still, many die-hard Trumpers are holding the course. “Trust the process” is a favorite mantra amongst this group. Many (not all) of the people I personally know who are deep fans of Trump and what he’s doing in the country have not traveled abroad.

This is really an interesting observation, because those who have never been to Europe or anywhere outside of the North American continent won’t have the same scope of opinion based upon life experience. Europe, or anywhere else, really, would seem abstract—like a “who cares” place, in the enormous scape of the USA.

The USA is HUGE, compared to Europe. We The People are huge. We walk differently, we smile, we are very open, as opposed to our European neighbors, who, due to living in more tight spaces with more tight energies, are more reserved. (Unless you’re in Italy.)

Gas is more expensive here, as are a few tolls on roads. Yet past that, food is cheaper, the ingredients are far better and not full of chemicals because the European Union isn’t run by lobbyists, and the air is cleaner.

It’s as if adults are running Europe, and stinky, giggly teenage boys are running America, replacing our national anthem with fart jokes.

That’s literally how it feels over here; no one would say that. But that’s how it feels.

It draws my attention to how unsustainable this juvenile “my-package-is-bigger-than-your-package” energy is, in the USA. All adolescence is outgrown. And we will outgrow this phase fairly quickly—yet WOW is it a doosie to navigate, in the meantime.

My attention is also drawn to how NOT addicted to their own negativity and their devices that Europeans are. They aren’t glued to their phones like Americans are, who have been promptly programmed since 1940’s with programming that , well—programs U.S. to focus elsewhere—outward—for our perceptions, instead of within.

Europeans go out and laugh and talk with each other, maybe periodically checking their phone for something, then they go back to engaging with their live group. Once Americans get sucked into their phones while out, every American at the table stays focused on the device in their hand.

As I sit on this hi-speed train, whizzing at 149 mph through the French countryside, gliding like butter, I think about how difficult and much more expensive it is in the USA, to do anything—live, eat, go to the doctor— and to travel.

Travel must be by air and road in the United States. Here, you hop on a hi-speed train and you’re anywhere, quickly, for a fraction of the price and a fraction of emissions into the atmosphere.

Our auto lobby in America buys votes to restrict hi-speed rail upgrades by Congress. Biden wanted the upgrades. Those who want to keep power over the money just have to say “higher taxes”, and those not paying attention would vote against a free retirement, if those words were attached.

That’s another thing I’ve noticed about France and England—they pay attention to what’s going on outside of their own country. They don’t have the luxury of millions of square acres in every direction insulating them from another way of life, walling-off their mind to believe only one or two sources that speaks their ideological language.

No matter what Europeans think, they are able to factor in other opinions even if they don’t agree. Just like the USA used to be. There are large factions of people in the USA who are deeply convinced that if you don’t agree with them, then you are a brainwashed sheep following legacy or main stream media outlets to the detriment of reality.

The USA is exercisig the ultimate gaslight:

If you don’t agree with me, you’re brainwashed.

My freedom of speech is the only free speech. If you don’t agree you’re not a patriot.

My freedom to marry whomever is not everyone’s freedom to marry whomever.

Give me your poor, your tired, your hungry, as long as they can buy a five million dollar gold card and aren’t from a country where your skin is brown.

Europe is rightly rolling their eyes at America right now. And Europe is far more American than America, right now.

That should get everyone’s attention. Let me repeat that:

Europe is far more American than America, right now.

I do see that this trial of stinky-teenage-boy governance in the USA will end in a steaming dung pile of chaos and nothingness in about 18 months, with a big bottom-out coming in the next three of four months.

That isn’t a very good return for the 60 years that this coup has been planned, by the Heritage Foundation.

Yet for now, enduring this never-ending “small d*ck” energy in our executive branch is really, really exhausting, not just for the good people of the USA, but for the world at large.

I’ve had French folks ask me how it is that so many Americans are in line with Trump’s policies. I told them that most weren’t, and that Americans were experts and cherry-picking what we wanted to believe and what we didn’t. We do it to the Bible. We do it to our Presidents, in a country where we are conditioned not to believe anything a candidate says they’re going to do.

I told them that for many, Trump seemed like a harmless blow-hard, especially to other white, older Americans who came through the hazing and bullying culture of the boomers.

I told them that older white American males were born into a country of privilege were they never had to struggle for much (compared to women or people of color or anyone else), so when the left was saying “white males are the problem”, it was easy for a right-wing podcast host to pop on and tell those young white males that the right “wanted them,” so vote for Trump.

Both sides of the “we are the victims narrative played into this mess.

I told them that the USA had simultaneously gotten so big that it also got very small, within its regions, believing only what each region believed.

This is why it was easy for Russia to pit Americans against each other in their vast disinformation campaigns now viewed as “alt facts” by those who think vetted media is all propagandist.

All media in the USA besides PBS and AP are a bit propagandist, at least to the point of playing to their base and sponsorship. Some far worse than others. Infowars is a popular right-wing blog that folks see as actual news, when in fact, it’s just a blog of opinions, made to seem like a news site.

There are left-wing blogs that are similar but I’m not familiar with them as I don’t read opinion blogs disguised as “news”.

I barely read the news.

My take-away from being in France and England for eight days is that not only is Europe far more “socially American” now than America, yet they seem much freer over here to speak their mind, as well.

People laugh, they talk, they’re not obsessed with political parties and bull crap propagandist messaging that’s meant to polarize people into camps.

It’s not all about politics over here. It’s also about life.

I understand that we have a pickle to deal with, in the USA. Yet fighting with our neighbors about the Trump flag or Pride flag wont’t solve the problem.

We must decide that diversity and freedom are the most important tenants to our nation. That DEI was put into place because white people wouldn’t give people of color, or women, or differently-abled people a shot at all. In many places, that’s still happening. DEI also means access to wheelchair ramps and braille for those who have limitations in these areas.

We must place our minds, in the USA, outside of our bubbles. All apples are fruits yet not all fruit are apples.

For instance—yes, there is government waste in spending. No, Elon Musk’s DOGE and the erroneous endless firings that result in rehires, is not the answer.

I don’t want a $5000 “rebate check” sent to me because ten million people who didn’t deserve to be fired, were fired.

That’s insane.

There’s nothing in my body that is that selfish. I work for a living. I don’t need a hand-out on the backs of hard-working people who were fired with no cause, just to accumulate that “bonus” money.

We must become far less selfish and entitled in the USA, to thrive. We’re so big, we’ve become tiny, in our minds.

We must remember to have respect for one another. Don’t like how someone is dressing or what they call themselves? Your opinion doesn’t matter. Keep living your life , be a grown-up and be polite, like your grandma taught you to be, and mind your own damn business. Like we used to.

Think your taxes are too high? Europe’s tax rate is over 30% in many places. They also have free healthcare and aren’t drowning in medical debt. So there’s that.

We can do and be anything we want, USA. To all the folks who militantly want everyone to believe what you believe—knock it off. It’s not going to happen. For those who want everyone to be heterosexual and have children—that’s not going to happen. For those who want everyone to be comfortable with calling people “they”, that’s not going to happen.

We need to stop playing the Oppression Olympics in the USA, using our immense wealth and privilege for each political ideology to vie for the gold medal in “who is most wronged”. It’s exhausting and ridiculous.

It’s clear to see who is being wronged, and why.

There are true victims in this world that need our help. It’s a sad grab for attention, those who are not actually oppressed, reaching out for reasons to be martyred.

We must stop victimizing ourselves, just because we have the social privilege to do so, just because we need some sort of attention to ourselves and our own unrealized life paths, or whatever is creating the disconnect in needing attention that could be given to those who are actually victimized and need our assistance in this world—and move forward.

Once again, claiming false victimization takes the real spotlight off of those who truly need our help. And right now, America is full of a lot of (especially) white whiners.

It’s true. I’m white, and the things I whine about are embarrassing. I’m glad mostly my wife is the only one who hears it.

People will never fully understand you. Or me. No matter who you are, what your story is, what you’ve endured, or where you’re from.

We are not required to understand one another.

However, it is in our very best interest as humans, and as a nation—to be okay with not understanding one another.

Be okay to answer questions. Be okay to not feel comfortable around everybody.

Just BE OKAY, in your own skin. And be okay with others being okay on their own skin. And be polite while you’re being okay. (I literally cannot believe we are at a place, sociologically in the USA, where I needed to add that last sentence.)

Don’t require oppressing others in order for you to feel confident in who you are or what you stand for.

Don’t require everyone to see the world in the same way, with the same personal history, as you do—and don’t cancel them when they don’t.

Life is not a zero sum total game. Being an American is all about the randomness of all of our experiences. It’s not about standardization. It’s about coexisting with the randomization and building strength from all of it.

Our lack of ability to coexist would be our demise, as an American culture. And the great nations of Europe would carry on where the American experiment failed.

Yet I believe we are far from failing. My heart is so saddened because I see what small-scope privileged thinking is doing to those who are the least of us, with the least voice—our migrants, our trans communities—as many cherry-pick what is happening to our residents, not wanting to be bothered with details.

Many on the left are decrying what is happening in the USA by saying “we are over”. We are not over, and I’m irritated at the conjecture by journalists and others on the left who histrionically knee-jerk into this fatalist position.

I’m seeing many older white male journalists and pundits in America, on the left, banging the gong of “we’re over already”. The panic is nauseating. The hand-wringing is cringey. No, fellas, we’re not over. I do get that you’ve been on the top of the sociological food chain here for a long time, and hustling to be seen by those in front of the line may not be in your older-guy-white-culture, yet tossing your hands in the air and quitting because it got difficult…is not the way to deal with adversity.

Take it from your gay, female sister—laying down and dying and becoming chicken little claiming the sky of falling just because it got tough—won’t get you anywhere.

So buck up, white fellas. We’re not dead yet.

In fact, we’re far from it. We’re so far from it that in two months, this authoritarian Corporate regime has had to throw every ounce of spaghetti at the wall, to see where the limits are on all of us in the USA accepting this malarkey.

The results are in: the American majority doesn’t accept it. Give it a second. We’ll get it handled.

For now, let’s remember what America means. It means being okay with someone not being you. It means not canceling them because they’re not you. It means being okay with someone who thinks differently than you. It means not oppressing those who disagree with you. It means not victimizing others in order to feel like your rights are safe.

It means being a grown up, while being wild and free to be who you are. It means being okay to disagree on issues that do not threaten another’s safety or well-being.

I love Europe. As much as I love it, I’ll never be a European, though I so enjoy visiting here. I’m an American, through and through. I smile everywhere I go. I have big hair and big cowboy boots and a big personality and I believe anything is possible. I drink way more water than most Europeans do. And I love my vast, wide-open space and driving where there are no people.

All this being true, I thoroughly have appreciated while being in France the reminder of what America is supposed to feel like.

Being here is a stark contrast to how my beloved country feels now. And I’m going to bring home from our wonderful French allies that confident and quietly understated yet defiant nature to continue to advocate for who we are, as Americans, as opposed to who a very small minority wishes we would become.

Because we will never be that nation. Not again, at least. No matter how many executive orders make the decree.

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite—

Viva America!

The most powerful position a human spirit can find themselves in is the position of non-desperation.

When human beings are not desperate, we are capable of truly miraculous steps forward. Though necessity is the mother of invention, temperance is the mother of evolution.

You don’t see evolution happening overnight. It can’t. It must take its time, weeding out all that does not work. At times, evolution accidently tosses in a curve-ball, whether it be genetic or environmental, and all life adapts. And it’s often the curve ball, the destructive force of something different, that branches off to either become great growth, or to become absolutely nothing at all—a sharp right or left turn that crashes into a dead end, due to its non-sustainability.

Not every sudden change works, though humans crave sudden change, because the process of incremental change is uncertain, scary, and sometimes, quite painful.

Right now in the USA, we are witnessing sudden change; the sharp left or right turn that was designed to forge a new path, yet is quickly splatting into dead ends left and right. When a forest is pulled up by the roots with nothing to anchor the soil, it is simply washed away.

There is no example in nature where clear-cutting and letting the exposed ground sit unattended nets favorable results. New trees will grow back, yet those new trees may take 100 years to flourish. Considering 100 years is longer than most human lifecycles, the that’s producing an environment open to harsh weather and devoid of many roaming animals.

The “tear it up by the roots” method is typically brought on by desperation. We are seeing in the USA a power grab of exotic proportions, authored by the Heritage Foundation and Russia, and executed by a front man who wishes to stay out of prison, and owes favors to powerful actors, worse than one of the original members of the Rat Pack.

It’s interesting to watch Trump in his combination of anger and desperation. A clinical narcissist isn’t fond of doing others’ bidding. Yet this individual is now beholden to forces far greater than his small-potatoes ability to charm a rural rally. His face displays the lack of life shared by those who are made prisoner to a routine in which they have no control. The only time Trump has control is on the golf course, where he’s spent a large part of his first month in office, to the tune of 10.7 million dollars of tax-payer money.

Yet this tide of desperation isn’t about one man, specifically. It’s a shared collective desperation in these times, throughout the human condition, matrixed by individuals to focus “cause” on many external forced: politics, the border, Ukraine, Russia, China, LGBTQ people, brown and black people, immigrants—others, doing “other” things that we may not understand.

This desperation felt by many, most in the first world, is a rattle in our DNA, a tiny vibration that is activated not by politics or egg prices, yet by our Great Mother Planet. Our planet is shifting, changing, and we are attached to this great mystery of life, the great Manifestation of the Feminine side of God, by not only the dust in the flesh of which we are made, yet by the very electricity that runs through our bodies.

Earth is alive. Not just in theory or on the surface, yet in spirit. It is conscious. The angels refer to the Earth as an extension of The All, or God—a physical feminine application of God/Goddess/Universe that supports all of us.

The planet is shifting, in large part with a lot of very unfortunate help from the human race. Let it be known that unless humanity sinks multiple nuclear bombs into the center of our planet, and explodes apart the core, affecting its rotation—the planet cannot be destroyed by human beings. We can certainly destroy our ability to live on the planet. Yet this Great Mother? She will keep on trucking, until someday her core runs out of spin, and like any heart giving out—she will go cold and dormant, as did her old friend, Mars.

Yet human beings and the earth? It’s a special relationship, one that those with the sociopathic need to control everything have attempted to sever, for thousands of years.

The early Christian church raged against the Indigenous Earth Spiritual Practices—later to labeled in the 1960’s as “Wiccan”—in an attempt to control the spiritual narrative, and to limit the power of the human spirit to a dolled-out version of god, where one must make a pilgrimage to a church, listen to a sanctioned “holy person” speak for god, then pay a coin and receive a wafer to eat for the purpose of connecting with spirit. Once you leave the building, all connections to god, go cold. At least, in this primitive and controlling model.

Notice I use the word “god” with a small “g”. Because God cannot be limited to a building, a ritual—or a wafer. Though God is in all three.

The earth, in its very Feminine-God-manifestation state, shows us that birth and regeneration are imminent if we simply give things time. Islands rise and falls. Earth show us that even mountains can be carved into dramatic canyons, given persistence and time; that liquid, the flowing state of something mercurial, will eventually wear away the most compact granite as rivers carve away mountains.

Earth demonstrates for us that seasons are normal—that being “on” 100% of the time, like in the industrial-aged consumerist machine—is not sustainable. That every living being must shut down, go quiet, and go withing for a time, to regenerate.

This cycle of going within, and shutting down, is not conducive to the machine that feeds itself through commerce. Resting and regenerating does not serve the needs of those who want their needs served, always.

Therefore—nature must be abhorred. It must be feared. It must be conquered.

Yet the conquering part is a great illusion.

Nature is our ally. It is our teacher. It is us. We die and become dirt. We go back to the earth that formed us, our DNA literally containing elements from the far distant stars.

We are not flesh lumps on repeat, limited to credit checks, taxes, and debt. Yet the sociopathic machine that seeks to serve only itself would convince us otherwise. This sociopathic machine was also created by us, our own manifestation of our darker, more desperate parts. It is a reflection of humanity’s shadow-self, selfish-self. It is a mirror for our lowest common denominator, that which seeks to consume, consume, consume, without thought for either that which we are consuming, nor the effect the consumption has on those who gorge themselves.

It is the living embodiment of desperation, more commonly known as:

Greed.

Greed is the short-form of ultimate spiritual starvation. When we cannot feed our heart chakra and our soul in a spiritually healthy way, we crave more and more and more. Like an empty stomach never able to be filled because its owner binges on empty calories and short-term sugars, greed leaks into every need we have, persistently reminding us that we are starving, starving. That parts of us are empty.

We seek fulfillment in all the wrong places in the modern world. False Connection is the emotional plague of our time, with screens and “likes” and “follows” translated as “relationship”.

Our fingers are drawn to our mobiles devices, as the very minimal EMF given off by the screen is translated by our fingertips as “living touch”. Why? Because human beings also give off a very minimal amount of EMF.

Our brains can’t tell the difference between brushing the cheek of a loved one with our fingertip, or the screen of our phone. Our brain registers the electromagnetic signature read through the nerve endings on the fingertips as “connection”.

We seek more and more virtual bridges, starving for fulfillment, greedy in our starvation for more. Our senses are constantly scanning the online sphere, looking for the one “bit” that may satiate us fully. Yet it never comes.

The earth fulfills our senses. It endlessly gives to us, just when we need it. Touch a boulder embedded in the earth and you will touch the electromagnetic field of this enormous power-generator that we live upon. The earth will feel alive and responsive to us. Because it is.

The pulse of the core of the earth in its rotation, clocks in at 7.83 Hz. This pulse is called the Schumann Resonance, and not ironically, this wavelength is also where the human brainwave is maximized. Our brains are clocked onto the Schumann Resonance for maximum output of chemicals and synaptic thought. The more we disconnect from nature, the more our brain functions suffer. The earth is boundless in what it gives to us, including lessons in survival.

The earth does not need to hoard because it is an endless womb of creation—water, food, elements to utilize for shelter. It periodically takes a wrecking ball to itself, and in its patience, it’s regeneration can bring forth brilliant new life.

The earth, for all the things it is—is not desperate. Which makes sense, considering its manifestation-of-God status. (I don’t think God is chewing off her long nails in worry, either.)

It is no wonder that those who wish humanity to be nothing more than a cog in their agenda wheel, a machine piece, then put extra effort into making sure humanity is staring at the screen in their hands, rather than the stars in the sky. Once we humans connect with our Great Mother—we want to stay there.

Think about it—have you ever gone camping, and after the first day of settling in, you begin to assimilate your surroundings and feel the stress leave your body? No one wants to shove on their shoes on and get back to the daily grind after that. There is always that melancholy moment when camp is broken, where we stand in the middle of the campsite, wistfully taking in the last views of boundless nature, and close our eyes to log the fresh smells before we crush ourselves and our family back into the car--to head back on the whir of the pavement to the frenetic boxed-in world we live in every day. To the world we have normalized as “convenient”.

There are countless studies on how nature regenerate sour minds, cells, and spirit. Google is full of them. Scientific studies show that going barefoot on the bare ground for 20 minutes a day discharges extra electromagnetic energy in the body, ridding the body of up to 45% of its inflammation. Since inflammation is the root of all disease, going barefoot seems like a pretty good idea.

Ancient cultures saw shoes as “hooves”, and were appalled by the European need to cover the feet. Aboriginal culture saw the connectivity of bare feet to the earth necessary to receive spirit gifts.

Dirt is full of natural minerals in trace amounts which when absorbed through the skin make the brain soar with peaceful function, like lithium and magnesium.

Water in mountain streams that is electrolyzed by running over rocks then is full of tiny hydrogen molecules, and can more easily be absorbed by the body.

Storms, with the dynamic and terrifying lightning, brilliant in the night sky, re-set the chemistry of the body with the low pressure, discharging extra EMF loads in the nervous system and bringing peace.

Terpenes in pine trees hit the olfactory center in the brain and the crisp scent releases serotonin and dopamine. The smell of the ionized air after a rain storm hits the olfactory center in the same way.

Nature heals us. It helps us. It rejuvenates us. It does not judge us. It holds us to account, all the things that a truly functional parent would do.

So in this world of spun-up tales surrounding the worst case scenario, and inky-thick narratives so heavy with agenda that they poke a hole into another dimension, remember that though there may be some truth to these stories—they are only one take on the reality we live within. These terror-plays are but a slice of reality, a snapshot in a moment of potential--not the whole.

The whole is outside. The entirety, and the truth therein, lies in the oceans, the forests, the mountains, the wide-spanning plains and sky. Every spiritual teacher that has graced this planet has taken alone time in wilderness to connect to the Divine. Not by petitioning a far-off Being in the sky—yet by connecting with the Great Mother beneath their feet, the great God-Intercessor who sings of ancient remedies and hums the hymns of the stars above.

Unplug.