Sometimes you do What you have to do, Even if it Hurts (UPDATED)

Peter put on his sunglasses concealing his eyes and apologized. “I can’t talk about what happened to me without crying and I don’t want you to see me cry.”

We were talking about corporate indifference to worker safety and preventable industrial accidents at USEC, the uranium enrichment plant near Paducah, Kentucky, where we live, and the nearby Union Carbide plant in Calvert City. Peter is not his real name for reasons that will soon become apparent. My wife and I own a beat-up truck and we supplement my meager social security income by hauling junk to a recycling center. We’d met Peter the day before when he asked us to haul away some junk. My wife and I had finished loading our truck and were about to leave when he approached and thanked us. We weren’t in any hurry and he seemed to want to talk.

“How did y’all get into this business?”

“Well, that’s a long story,” I said. “I used to be a lawyer. We moved to Paducah because I was hired to teach at the new law school that went belly-up a little over a year ago. I blew the whistle on the Dean and Assistant Dean because they were stealing student loan money. After they fired me, the deans cleaned out the school’s bank account and left town without ever suffering any consequence. The school fell apart and went bankrupt. I can’t get another teaching job and nobody will hire me because I was a whistleblower. I wasn’t expecting a ticker-tape parade, but this is ridiculous.”

My wife, who is more intuitive than I am, excused herself to retrieve something that she said she left in his back yard where we had been digging up scrap metal and old aluminum siding that a previous owner had buried in a trash pit. She later told me that she thought he had approached us because he had something that he wanted to say to me.

Peter told me that he was between jobs and was having trouble finding another job. Fortunately, his wife had a job, but that wasn’t helping his self-confidence very much. So, I asked him where he used to work and that’s what got him started on USEC and Union Carbide. After quietly raging about management’s indifference to employee safety, he started swallowing hard and put on his sunglasses.

“Did you hear about the accident at the Union Carbide plant in Louisville this morning? Two people got killed,” he said.

“No,” I said.

“I’m sure their deaths were preventable,” he said. “Union Carbide makes acetylene gas and the torches people use to cut metal. Their factory is the most dangerous fucking place I’ve ever been. When I worked there, I told my supervisor about some changes the company should make that would make the job safer and wouldn’t cost them much money. They ignored me and fired me six months later. Refused to tell me why. Said I was an at-will employee and they didn’t have to give me no reason. They don’t give a shit about their workers. If somebody gets hurt or dies on the job, nobody in the company ever goes to jail. The worst thing the company faces is a fine. Paying it is just a cost of doing business to them. That’s all a worker’s life means to them.

“So, they blacklisted you as a troublemaker, right?

“Yes, sir. I’ll be lucky if I ever get another job. I’ve lived here all my life and always tried to speak the truth and do right by people. Sometimes, I think that making that suggestion was the dumbest thing I ever did.”

I think I saw a tear roll down his cheek.

We stood in silence for a minute or so with me struggling for control as I revisited memories of what I’d been through.

“I’d do what I did again, if I had a chance to do it over,” I said.

Peter took a deep breath and shuddered in the warm spring sun. “Me too,” he said, “but sometimes it’s really hard.”

I told him that there are 28.5 million people in this country that are unemployed, underemployed, or can’t find work and the only way We the People are going to change anything is if a million of us sit down, lie down, and clog the streets of Washington, D.C., and Wall Street and refuse to leave until the filthy rich criminal banksters that brought down our economy, every member of Congress and the Supreme Court, the President and the Vice President resign and leave town.

Well, three of us are ready to do it.

How about you?

CORRECTION: The accident that killed two workers in Louisville happened at Carbide Industries, not Union Carbide. They are separate companies. According to its website, Carbide industries LLC “provides high quality products which include plywood and composite cabinets, laminate countertops, granite countertops, cultured marble vanity tops and decorative hardware at a cost effective price for the multi-family market with an added emphasis on quality installation.” I apologize for any confusion my mistake may have caused. (h/t Rayne)

“Who is your Leader?” “No One; We are One.”

Today is the Vernal Equinox, the first day of spring. The Sun, which is the source of all creative energy in our solar system, enters Aries at 7:21 pm EDT.

Aries is a cardinal (initiates) fire (action) sign in which the Sun is exalted (most powerful) because it is most comfortable and at home in fire that creates and leads the way. The Sun, of course rules Leo, the fifth sign. Nevertheless, the Sun is not quite as powerful in Leo because Leo is a fixed (set in its ways) fire (action) sign. The difference between people born with the Sun in Aries and people born with the Sun in Leo is that Sun in Leo acts in a more predictable manner than Sun in Aries. Sun in Leo wants to be appreciated for what it does while Sun in Aries is compelled to continue initiating while Sun in Leo is basking in its own warmth. The third fire sign, by the way, is Sagittarius, the ninth sign of the Zodiac. Sagittarius is a mutable (adaptable) fire (action) sign that is especially well suited to higher learning and travel. All three fire signs are great initiators and leaders, but poor finishers. They need the grounded and practical earth signs to create structure and flesh out their ideas.

Expect everything to speed up as the wheel enters a new phase in which life renews itself through rebirth. We started the year under two extremely powerful influences involving Uranus, the planet best symbolized by the archetype of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. Uranus is associated with sudden and unexpected change that acts like lightning, materializing in the physical dimension of space-time without warning and destroying structure that impedes growth and progress. We associate Uranus with creativity and revolution. Uranus was the dominant astrological influence during the sixties, for example, and we began this year feeling and witnessing that same powerful force in our lives.

At the beginning of the year, Jupiter (expansion) was conjunct Uranus (revolution) in Pisces, the mutable (adaptable) water (unconscious) sign of the Zodiac. We witnessed the awesome power of the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction expressed in human affairs in the events that occurred in Tunisia, Tahrir Square, and the rest of the Middle East, as well as Madison, WI. The urge for freedom and independence, fueled in part by Twitter and the internet, which are associated with Uranus, is literally unquenchable and continuing.

The Jupiter-Uranus conjunction also was in the early stages of an approaching square (90 degrees apart) to Pluto (death and rebirth) in Capricorn, the  cardinal (initiates) earth (practical) sign that creates structure. Although Jupiter, which moves faster than Uranus because it’s much closer to the Sun, is separating from Uranus and the conjunction is weakening, the influence associated with the Uranus-Pluto square is strengthening and will last through 2018.

Pluto, the metaphysical god of the underworld is associated with volcanic activity, nuclear power, rape, war, and willpower. Think of Pluto as the most destructive force in the solar system. Massive destruction and obliteration of structure through war, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and nuclear explosions are associated with Pluto. Suddenly unleashed (think Prometheus unchained) by the lightning-like destructive power of Uranus, Pluto can be associated with unimaginably vast destruction, such as we see in Japan, including the continuing disaster in four of the nuclear reactor buildings at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant.

Y’all may have noticed that events have been accelerating into a blur since the beginning of the year. Well, y’all had better get used to it because sudden death and destruction of all forms of structure, whether physical, ideological, or spiritual, including subconscious patterns of behavior will predominate for the next eight years.

Why is this happening?

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius amid the death throes of the apocalyptic Age of Pisces that began with people waiting for a messiah to deliver them from an evil world. The Messiah was a message delivered by many enlightened souls, including the Buddha, Rabbi Hillel, Jesus, Muhammad, and many others. The message is deceptively simple. Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you and refrain from doing unto others that which you would not want done to you. Yes, it is the Golden Rule.

The Age of Aquarius will be a time when individual desire for freedom and independence will predominate, but it will be expressed ideologically in groups of like-minded people committed to working together in service to the common good. When the protesters who participated in the uprising in Tahrir Square were asked, “Who is your leader?” they responded, “No one; we are One.”

May the record reflect that the message, finally, has been received and all who stand in its way shall perish.

So it shall be written; so it shall be done.