Natori Moore bids farewell to a beloved astrological colleague.

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by Natori Moore, C.A. NCGR

Originally published in The Uranian

It's all over now.  The end is upon us.  The curtain has fallen.  No, I don't mean the Bill Clinton years - who knows when or how he may resurrect himself?  I'm talking about the definitive end of an era - that moment on December 31, 2000 -- when we all turned the last page in Neil Michelsen's American Ephemeris for the 20th Century.

Bear with me while I get a little wistful.  I miss that grand number puzzle of a book.  You could even say I'm verklempt!  So many memories are packed into my first copy of Michelsen's classic red ephemeris, many of which have literally left their mark.  The pages from September 1990-February 1991 are a smudged brown color in most of the columns.  Guess I was eating a little too much chocolate while following retrogrades at that point.  May 1968 is blanketed with pink highlighter and blue ballpoint hearts.  That month includes the birth date of someone I was - shall we say - fond of at one point.  I sorely wish now that I hadn't decorated that page.  Chalk it up to Venusian frenzy.

February of 1998 and the pages thereafter have an interesting bite-shaped piece missing out of the bottom corner.  I don't know what happened there -- maybe a midnight snack by a creepy crawler.  (I can't blame my house pets since there's no Fido or Fidette here.)  Then there are some mighty fascinating doodles circa June 1994, where the page is shredded, unreadable and torn halfway from the binding.  Was there trauma involved?  I don't know whether I was in therapy, but based on the condition of that page, I think I should have been.  Things were better six years later, when the ephemeris traveled regularly in my sunny car and -- after the back cover fell off - the pages containing November and December 2000 got a nice crispy-baked tan.

Each of my subsequently acquired copies of Big Red has had its own lovable peculiarities.  Astro Communication Services'scuffed book sales provided me with plenty of opportunity to add to my ephemeris arsenal.  Soon I had copies of Big Red by my bedside, in the spare room, and in the living room for watching news and getting the launch dates of television shows.  And okay, I'll admit it - I even kept a copy of Big Red in the bathroom for a while. Morbid, maybe, but consider -- what better way to look toward the future while eliminating the past? 

Beyond toilet-based ephemeris checking, here is my most closely guarded secret.  When one of my copies of Big Red started to fall apart, I ripped the last 10 years from the back of the volume and began toting 1990-2000 around like its own little booklet.  Oh, the shame!  I don't know that the benefits of lightweight lifting ever eclipsed the nagging sense of guilt I carried for having defaced Big Red.  (Guilt springs eternal when one has Pisces planets.)  Yet I have now forgiven myself, and I try to keep my chin up.  Balancing a copy of Big Red on my head assists with this.

Despite my angst at the obsolescence of Big Red, good news does temper my grief.  We will still get to dip back into the 20th century planetary placement listing from time to time - for nearly all of us were born there. And - wondrously -- there is a follow up ephemeris for the 21st Century. Hello, Slim Blue!  Yet why is the 21st century volume only half the size of Big Red?  Is this some kind of Nostradamian prediction of a half-life for these next hundred years?  Is it a sign of a sleek new century, slimmed down via personal trainer and wheat grass juice?  Did Neil Michelsen know something we don't?  Only time and ACS Publishing insiders will tell.

In the meantime, here's a fond adieu to the weighty book of planet positions that provided a good coffee coaster, helped tone my upper arms, and sustained me and many friends through the years of learning and beginning to practice astrology.  Hearty thanks to The American Ephemeris for the 20th Century for the days and nights of tracking transits, mining symbols for meaning, conjuring dreams, and courting success.

Good-bye, Big Red. z

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