Reader's letter and editorial: Venus, lunacy, and harmony of the spheres

Dear Readers, 

My short articles on the affects of the Transit of Venus have brought a flurry of correspondence and comments on Facebook and email. It seems that many people also experienced unusual affects at that time ranging from migraines that lasted several days to general feelings of inner disturbance in some readers. Others report that it coincided with or was followed by self-perceptions of transitional shifts in identity or actual discoveries that have transformed lives.

I recently received a letter from a reader in the United States, which I am reproducing here because it raises the interesting point of belief systems and affect, and how we define our selves in relation to the physical environment, a subject that I will be discussing in further article on this site. In the reader's letter below, J.H. mentions the term 'lunatic' in relation to the idea of being affected by the movements of planetary bodies, and the 'scientific' rational belief held nowadays by those with 'concrete' belief systems that such an idea of influence by the environment is somehow 'lunatic". Whilst I am sure we all are aware that the term 'lunatic' derives from the Latin for 'moon' and the observation of 19th century inhabitants of asylums increased signs of activity and distress at the time of the monthly full moon, what is not so widely known in our western culture, although it more influentially underpins and sustains our entire system of communications, is that the five principles of rhetoric (and consequently our traditions and conventions of composition in writing and music) are based on the intervals of the planetary movements that Pythagoreans termed the Harmony of the Spheres. 

The aim of the ancients was to imitate and thus achieve the harmony of the spheres or planetary bodies, in our own human communications, which is an analogy of writing surely worth aiming for. This also tacitly and subliminally acknowledges the effect and affect, by analogy, of heavenly bodies, the planets, on our perceptions and feelings and ideas that we express in communication in writing and oratory, and ideas from the classical world that survive in reinvented forms of rhetoric and composition in contemporary digital media writing, such as this blog.

Dear Dr Skilbeck, 
I am just now as a 61 year old granny, so relieved, to learn that such an accomplished academic as yourself, felt, as well, that

very personal, yet, inexplicable effect of that particular celestial event.

I would like to add, that .....I am the mother of three grown children, the middle one is a scientist, and professor, studying chytrid  fungus and amphibian

declines at James Madison University in Virginia, the eldest runs a nature center with her husband, and the youngest is involved in a cross country

marathon...Operation Amerithon.  And my husband is a lawyer.  They are all very concrete in their belief systems, and I have a difficult time, hiding

from them, what seems to be somewhat, sometimes, lunatic behavior on my part.

So, I am so relieved to have found your website, as you are clearly, given your credentials, no lunatic.

Would very much look forward to hearing from you, here in Carlisle, PA....

J. H.

Thank you for your letter J.H. I hope that you will be be able to join in further correspondence on this topic in the Daily Fugue.

Best regards,

Ruth Skilbeck

Trouble from Transit of Venus? or is it Sexism?

So, meanwhile...I am writing from a hotel in Randwick. that I have paid through my eye teeth of the storm for, that is FREEZING cold and that I have been locked into through circumstance...
That being that I am a dedicated Lecturer to the cause of the enlightenment and advancement of humanity around the globe.
Why is this lecturer of Humanity, so stranded right next to her university?
Well because she is a member of the human race and we are all struggling at the moment is the most charitable explanation I can offer, as a Lecturer, Doctor and needing of a bed for the night, booking online and having that torpedoed by the hotel (arriving an hour earlier at the xxxx Lodge  in a storm to hear through a remote intercom that my online booking has been cancelled!!!).

So here I find myself in the Hotel xxxx
And what do I find.
The central heating does not work.
The phone does not work so I can not complain about the central heating not working.

.....content removed to spare offence as this is a family friendly  blog RS .....

I got the heater to work only after a few hours....night from hell. After I find  that what looked like a tv remote or intercom on the wall is for an air con unit. And then the heating system turned itself off  as I tried to sleep- so just as I start to think that I'm over reacting, the room is plunged into morguelike chill again and I am shivering under the one blanket I could find (it keeps going off  and has to be reactivated with the remote every few minutes, it seems)...Meanwhile the wind keeps on literally howling outside and rattling at the windows. And I've used up the two tea bags.

Hope nothing more goes wrong today as very soon, any minute now, Venus starts its transit of the sun.

After word

What troubled me also was how I would be seen as a single woman seeking a hotel room  unexpectedly late in the evening- due to the circumstances of being blocked out of my booking-  which made me remember what Tracey Emin said to me when I interviewed her and she told me about the hotel reviews she did, as a single travelling woman and how in her experience she felt that a single woman seeking a hotel room was sometimes treated as if she were "a prostitute". Unable  to stop thinking about this, did not make my experience any better, and I felt compelled to impress upon the kind young man in the cold hotel with a large pub next door, which did put me up, that "I am a university lecturer",  "a Doctor".