Narcissus Had a Pool, and It Didn’t End Well

I had no idea how much the Sun is going through!

Happiest day, beloved Joy Train Rider! I love you! Bless you. I affirm we are doing well.

The saga of the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall is acutely emblematic of the moment we’re in. It reminds me of the old joke of someone caught in an act of infidelity challenging, “Who you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?”

The Pool screams NARCISSUS! In Greek mythology, he was so self centered that he was cursed to see his own reflection in a pool of water and fall so deeply in love with the image that he could not tear himself away. He eventually withered away by the pool’s edge.”

Oh My! The cascading lies about the Pool reflect that faral fascination.

I feel hurt that my revered National Park Service is being drawn into the subterfuge. The caliber of stewards must have declined precipitously under this administration, because for 30 years I thought highly of them, except for the glacial pace of engaging diverse stakeholders ie Americans of color.

The erosion of trustworthiness in so many of our institutions has sent me looking higher and deeper for incorruptible examples. And lo and behold, this week I learned something about our Sun, our solar star, that I could never have dreamed of, though I have an ongoing relationship with the sun and connect with it daily.

Did you know that,

“When the four giant planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, gather on one side of the Sun, the solar system’s center of mass shifts. NASA calls this the solar system barycenter. It can move more than 800,000 kilometers from the Sun’s center. That is over one solar radius outside the Sun’s surface.”

I’m quoting from this Substack, “The Barbault Basket” having confirmed via NASA site that the barycenter effect is real.

“Our solar system’s barycenter constantly changes position. Its position depends on where the planets are in their orbits. The solar system’s barycenter can range from being near the center of the sun to being outside the surface of the sun. As the sun orbits this moving barycenter, it wobbles around. . .”

I always thought of the Sun as the all-powerful cosmic body in our solar system. Now I find that it can be influenced and even manipulated by its planets working in accord.

THE SUN HAS PLANETS THAT GANG UP AGAINST IT?! sounds like an episode of ‘Mean Girls.’ I definitely want to know about this physical occurrence of the sun’s center of mass being drawn out and above it, and the sun being able to accommodate that while appearing to us unchanged. Wow!!

The writer proposes that such an alignment is fast approaching, and represents the potential emergence of a new level of consciousness. It’s a complex subject and there may be other interpretations. I am sufficiently intrigued to keep searching.

By keeping my thoughts to the heights I want to help shed the light of truth upon the fakery of today. There are multiple noxious proposals on the table that could ruin our National Parks including Trump highway through Yellowstone, I am grateful to More than Just Parks for this, The Words We Reach Far When the Fight Gets Long. I wrote back to say my favorite is Mardy Murie, whose ranch I had the privilege of visiting in Jackson Hole:

I hope the United States of America is not so rich that she can afford to let these wildernesses pass by, or so poor she cannot afford to keep them.

Are we now so poor, beloved Rider that we will allow our treasures to be disposed of?

I salute all of you that shared your thoughts on our last two rides. Responding to “What if the Greatest Chapter . .” Rider Bethany said,

“Quite the challenge, today! But if ever a time felt in need of greatness, it is now. Fascinating to read about the construction of the Washington Monument. I have to confess to being more attracted to the natural than the man-made, but it is important for us to pay attention to all history.

“Thanks for always educating us, as well as enticing us with your calls to action. Ride on, Sis!!”

Rider Pauline wrote,

“Never knew the story of its (Washington Monument) building! Thanks again for teaching me something new.”

Rider Norrie observed,

“The struggle continues…. Good over evil.”

Responding to “Juneteenth Means We Can’t Give Up” Rider Rebecca said,

“. . . today I learned from my Claude query that ‘enslavers in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas took about 150,000 enslaved people to Texas against their will to prevent them from freeing themselves after the Union seized Vicksburg in 1863.

“Historian W. Caleb McDaniel has noted that the exact number is debated, but the broader historical consensus is that large numbers of enslaved people were carried into Texas by slaveholders fleeing Union advances.”

“I regret that my education is so impoverished that this is news to me at age 65. I hope the Park Service disseminates this info somewhere because it deepens our collective memory about the evils of the institution of slavery.”

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