Mercury + Retrograde = Misalignment

When I started mulling this week’s word, alignment, I went directly to misalignment. I experienced an unusual amount of snafus in a short period of time. My three-month old MacBook Air died (delaying the start of this blog); the weather wreaked havoc on travel, leaving me without several speakers that were to present at panels I was organizing; and my mis-spellings went up beyond even my tolerance level. 

Welcome to mercury in retrograde (MIR), a period when the planet Mercury appears to be in a backwards motion. According to astrologers, it’s also a time when technology and communications are adversely affected. Hence, my three weeks of misalignment. 

I had to go to Google to find out more about this planetary phenomenon. I found a great article and a quirky, yet informative website.   

The Pottstown Herald's great article about this very the busy Roman god Mercury does a great job of explaining this god's role in the universe. He was a god of trade, commerce, profit, abundance and in his free time he escorted souls to the afterlife. No wonder when his planet looks like it is going backwards, things go haywire. He just has too much on his plate!

Urban Dictionary highlights the astrological effects of MIR and notes several major miscommunications over the years during MIR. One of the more times was when the term "hanging chad" became vogue. 

if you read Urban Dictionary's definition, and find yourself curious to see if a particular incident in your life happened during MIR, here is a link to a helpful table: http://www.astropro.com/features/tables/geo/me-sta/me-sta26.html. 

MIR is over for now. My computer is fixed, the panels went well and my mis-spellings, well, I'm only human. 

Alignment. I'm not sure that Dallas, the author of the book “We Need to Have A Word" and the basis for this blog, had MIR in mind when he chose Alignment as his third word. But, he did stimulate my curiosity and I now have a good cocktail party story about the god, the planet and an optical illusion.  

This week's question about Alignment is: How can our government be better aligned?  

Until the next word.  Enjoy.  

p.s. SNAFU stands for: Situation normal, all fouled up.