I’m on a layover at Scarlett O’Hara International Airport, long enough to raise a family. The Boingo god smiled at me and I seem to have already paid to use the Internet here. My flights yesterday were canceled due to weather in Chicago, which gave me more time to think about pig flu, in the company of a well-connected doctor who walked me through the medical and political issues that public health officials are facing. There is no easy answer here; but it would seem more difficult to justify under-reacting than overreacting.

er that a few other people have been thinking about it too. I learned, for example, there was a conference in Mexico two weeks ago, and Barack was there, talkin’ drugs and walls and immigration and NAFTA and such, and he shook hands with a guy who spontaneously died, ostensibly of the Tortilla Flu, 24 hours (wait, CNN is reporting that it was one week) later. Here is an article from the Daily Mail, for which I used to write horoscopes (Cainer still writes them, and I can only vouch for their accuracy and for no other part of the newspaper). I think that having Obama at the epicenter just before disaster strikes is, well, interesting.

Cam, who plays shortstop for Planet Waves and who is visiting from Australia, dropped in with this odd fact: a company called Baxter is doing quite well in the midst of this chaos, despite its recent grotesque misdeeds surrounding bird flu. And here is some video that he dug up that will send chills down your spine. It’s as mainstream as it gets — MSNBC.

My mother wrote to me and said she sees “conspiracy under every rock.” My mother; there you have it. What does your mother think?

Tracy, the Astrology Programming Dutchess of Wales, dropped in with one of her perfect Pisces logic comments that summed the whole thing up, when I asked her what she thought: “Most of the cases seem to be mild. America conjunct Hylonome [in the public health emergency chart, suggesting ‘self inflicted situation for the United States and/or the Americas’]. I’ve decided what I think. I think the outbreak in Mexico has been reacted to in this way because it happened under this astrology, not the other way round if you see what I mean. Anything that happens now can get blown out of proportion.”

I see what JUST she means. Fish eye view — chicken? egg? egg carton? Benedict? which came first? I think she’s getting at: we are seeing the astrology of a reaction and not an epidemic. The whole Moon void of course, square Neptune, Chiron and Jupiter, feels like a Jaguar with the clutch down going into a spin. Oh, we also discovered that Hidalgo (all things Mexico) is square the triple conjunction. This is the astrology joking around with us. Cheers to Padre Hidalgo, I love that old troublemaker. Here are Tracy’s asteroids.

Next, Melanie just appeared in my inbox, incredulous as usual. She is questioning how the Moon can be void of course with all these asteroids running around. The answer is that Moon void is an old rule so you use old planets. Astrology is diviniation and you need a framework to operate within and we set this little rule that says that if the Moon is done making aspects to major planets (and I do count the modern outer planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, as well as Chiron, though I will look at the chart both ways — with and without the modern outer planets, as a checkstop), then it’s drifting; it’s ‘void of course’. You have to FEEL the Moon to feel the void. It’s not just an intellectual construction though it clearly is that, among other things.

There are usually minor planets in the vicinity of a void Moon, but like a foul ball in baseball, they don’t quite count — but sometimes they are interesting. Here is a 30 degree sort of that chart so you can get a look at how that works…skip downto the Moon (search ‘moon’ in your browser once you’re on that page and you will see all the minor planets that are in range of the Moon). Don’t let it make your head spin; after a while it’s like eating cupcakes. I am not there yet. It looks like the Moon’s next aspect is a sextile to the asteroid Photographica — a cool asteroid. I am noticing how few photos there are of this situation. I keep seeing the same picture of the Mexican couple making out with blue masks on.

Has anybody mentioned that the masks don’t protect the wearer — the mask over your face protects everyone else, in case you’re infected; it’s the sneeze guard over the salad bar.

Speaking of masks. Mandy in the UK, who is some kind of pedigree detective and the wife of a doctor for the public health service, said in reply to my query about what she wanted to add:

“I’ll tell the world about the UK emergency pack delivered to all family practitioners consists of a white envelope which contained two surgical masks, two pairs of latex gloves and two white plastic aprons….plus a copy of a clinical protocol flow chart…”

Yes! Everything you need to stop an epidemic. Or play doctor…