vol. 5 AOS 1
Greetings,
Welcome to the first ever Atlas on Sundays.
I figure it’s like a book of maps of where we’ve been this week.
Firstly, thank you to everyone who wrote me personally about my post confessing my year on the D List. I heard from folks it’s been a while since I’d heard from, and as I know I told each of you individually, it was reassuring and comforting to be in touch again. Thank you.
The myth of democracy
If you haven’t had a chance yet to listen to the podcast with this friendly looking chap here, Dr. Gwilym Morus-Baird, professor of Celtic mythology and Medieval British literature, I hope you will soon. It’s a great conversation that, if I must distill it into one sentence, makes plain how we until we become conscious of the ways in which we daily are indoctrinated through the media, including “news” streams, we will never be free to create the narrative of the life we truly wish to live.
It’s an informative and engaging conversation that will put you in good stead for the podcast with my next guest, novelist, muckraker, and podcaster Greg Olear, who also is the publisher of PREVAIL. We’ll be speaking about poetry and literature as an essential reference point for good policymaking.
Coronation of Charles III
Would it surprise you if I told you that there is a new king of England? And of the rest of the UK, too? Well, there is, and over at News from the Ensouled Universe, my cohost Elisabeth Grace and I do an extremely deep dive into the natal horoscope of Charles III and his immediate family…and make some predictions about how long his reign will be, and what sort of intrigue the rest of the royals might be getting up to.
You can listen to that here. Patron subscribers can access the entire podcast. Free subscribers can access a highlighted version.
Commonwealth trounces Empire
You might also be aware that there was a horse race back here in the great state (despite its dubious leadership) of Kentucky, state of my birth and ancestry. It’s a bittersweet thing. Not the odds on favorite to win, won. Yay!
Kentucky-born and bred Mage, owned by a consortium of normal people who pooled together their resources and went all in under the name Commonwealth (of which Kentucky is one, by the by, but you’d never know it given the folks in charge), winning about $95 per share on their 15 to 1 first-place horsey.
But, sweetest of all to me, in a metaphorical but quite meaningful way, was that Angel of Empire, the favorite, lost to Mage of the Commonwealth, by half a length. Because, you know, empires are not a foregone conclusion…
Meanwhile, imagine being the poor PR sot who has to write this crap about how sad the folks at Churchill Downs are over there being not 1, not 2, not 3, not even 4, 5, or 6, but SEVEN horses involved with the Derby, that have had to be put down this weekend. This weekend. Not all year. This weekend.
Horses are gorgeous, kind, magnificent, friends of humans. Mage ran with all his heart, which was thrilling to watch.
But the business of making him run is gross, crass, and corporate. And no matter what the flak in the front office says about being heartbroken, they’re not heartbroken enough to stop enslaving these animals.
Read my ears…more hay!
This is me with Read, a bay Thoroughbred gelding I help care for a few times a week at a riding academy in East Tennessee. His collection of injuries and sundry mishaps (getting bit by a poisonous spider and swelling up his leg) meant he was retired from racing and now serves humans as a therapeutic horse. I can’t say I think he’s in love with his fate, but I am certain he is treated as well as the new king and certainly loved.
That’s your round up for the week. Next Sunday, I aim to get it to you sooner than I did today. But, life happens. Oh, does it ever.
Peace,
Whitney