From Saturn to Jupiter/Uranus: my unexpected afternoon!

My days are unusually disciplined. I walk three or four miles with puppy Shadow and then work on this blog in the morning; on other stuff (errands, (this month) taxes, other writing projects) in the afternoon. Sometimes I go out for lunch, like today, with friend and permaculture teacher and designer Rhonda Baird.

Afterwards I drove home, knowing that a man named Alex Simack had called in the morning, saying that he and his daughter were in town and wondered if they could come for a visit. Well, I hemmed and hawed, so strict is my self-imposed schedule (made more powerful now by the fact that transit of stern Saturn conjuncts both my Ascendant and Sun in Sagittarius, an aspect that is to remain most of the year!

But guess what? Somehow Alex prevailed. I slipped into another astrological feature of this year that also triggers my own chart, the unpredictable, expansive Jupiter/Uranus transit, and its specialty, opening to the wild unknown.

I gave in, told him okay. Come by at 2:30. They did, Alex and his daughter Rosesaria (oops! not sure of the spelling). I asked them if they wanted tea. Yes. We sat down at the kitchen table, drank our tea and talked a bit. I knew Alex had wanted to see this place, just as I want to see his place. He had contacted me on this blog months ago, and told me he lived at an intentional community. Which one, I asked, curious. “Padanaram.” Huh? What’s that?

This community of more or less 150 people has been in existence for 50 years, he told me. A land-based community that has gone through many transformations. In fact, says his daughter, who was born and raised there, home-schooled (they call it “freedom-schooled”), Padanaram seems to undergo transformation every year! She loves the place. “Do you know everybody’s name?” I ask. “Yes. Everyone feels like family.” The bonds of affection are so strong that in fact she is the only one of her generation to ever leave (except to go to college, usually to nearby Indiana University)! Rosesaria got her degree in biology, and just returned from six months on Maui, learning about permaculture. She’s hooked. YES! In fact she wants to move to Bloomington, and join us.

Welcome home! For I do feel I know this beautiful young one already.

Meanwhile, we ended up, after our tour of the decidedly messy three-property Green Acres Village pod (we’re in an uproar, with many projects in various states of being unfinished), back at the kitchen table, with lots of stories, especially going back to the times in the ’70s when both Alex and I were young ones in Cambridge/Boston area, the revolutionary ferment that caught us both then.

Alex and I see eye to eye on most things, both Above and Below. Though we barely touched on that vast landscape of wild conjecture, even so, Rosesaria got an earful.

They’re going to return on February 7th, to be present with us at the public showing  of a slide show in the auditorium of the library, downtown, 7 p.m. This will be an updated version of the one I presented at various places on my five week spiral journey in 2016: “The Evolution of Green Acres Village”  More on that later.

Check out the book Alex brought in with him. Gene Keys: A Voyage of Self-Examination. Alex has promised me a review.