admin @ Sat, 2006-09-02 11:00
Last week I found myself feeling unhinged. I was discombobulated, not myself, cast adrift, lost in a wilderness, feeling around in the dark -- pick your metaphor, something was amiss. I just couldn't put my finger on what. I opened the paper one morning and there it was, in black and white: The International Astronomical Union had voted the day before to demote Pluto from official planet status.
This is how the solar system was reconfigured: A bunch of suited-up scientists sat in a convention hall in Prague and passed a motion to reduce our solar system from nine planets to eight. Just like that. Pluto was too small, they agreed, to qualify as a major celestial body and had thereby been turfed down a level to "dwarf planet," along with a handful of other lesser known wee, icy bodies including Xena, Ceres and Charon.
I read the story with more than casual interest, for I myself, am a Plutonian. Which is not to say I hail from Pluto, but that Pluto is the dominant planet linked to my Zodiac sign, Scorpio.
For people born between Oct. 23 and Nov. 21, the news that Pluto is effectively off the chart is disturbing to say the least. What does this mean for my love life? My career? My finances?
All over the globe this week, charts were redrawn to reflect the change. Unlike astronomers, astrologers seem to have no problem contradicting each other, so there was no need for a convention.
I was feeling explosive all right. Here I was -- a dark, brooding, creative, overly-romantic, prone-to-paranoia, mysterious, passionate, loyal, secretive, hot-stinging Scorpio -- with no planet to anchor my angst.
When I got her on the phone, Tova (whose brain is currently flooded with calming pregnancy hormones) seemed distinctly unfreaked about pressing the issue of Pluto.
It's not fair. How come my Virgo friends get Venus? It's big and twinkly and gaseous. Or Aries. Aries gets Mars. There's water on Mars. Some day people might build a subdivision there. No one is ever going to build a ranch house on Pluto. I am so jealous -- which, by the way, is a Scorpio trait.
This sounded okay. But being a possessive Scorpio, I wasn't keen on sharing an orb with Aries. Icy hunk or not, I want my own planet back. And it turns out, I'm not alone.
This is cache, read story here