Did you know the current (?) president’s Quiet Quitting (via Twitter) on this Sunday in July was foretold by an astrologer on Twitter, two weeks prior? That’s no lie, and you can check it for yourself. The same seer predicted, back in August 2020, that the current vice president would be the party’s nominee in 2024, because it coincides with the VP’s Second Saturn Return. Which is also hitting your Desert Oracle Radio host right about now. This is an Emergency Broadcast about Prophecy & Portents, with astrologically appropriate soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver.
What does one do, in these bunker days of summer? Too hot to work, too hot to think, too hot to sleep, and time is running away. When it’s too hot to walk the dog at night, you know you’ve made a tactical error in life: You’re in the Mojave, in July, in yet another historic heat wave.
Well, sit yourself down beneath the swamp cooler vent, and get yourself a cold beverage, and enjoy our July 12 episode about the strange & historic times we are within. Thanks for supporting this program on our Patreon.com/desertoracle page.
Tonight we are celebrating the full moon and summer solstice, because this is all a dream, and this is EPISODE #225: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DESERT. Which means we’re halfway to winter solstice, and only three months & change ’til Halloween. Maybe that’s why we’re talking about Puck of Pook Hill and homemade cranberry sauce. New soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, who has a Bandcamp site worth your attention!
It’s hot as hell and we’re throwing everything in the hobo-stew pot tonight: Desert-animal antics, Wild West extravaganzas, history’s mysteries, William Shatner shot up into space, etc., etc. The soundscapes are by RedBlueBlackSilver and the rest of the program is by your host & underpaid mail-order professional, Ken Layne. This is Episode #224, Slumgullion Stew.
Destruction of High Desert forest on public land has led to a 78% drop in pinyon jay populations over the past 50 years. This is EPISODE #223: THE BLUE CROW.
The pinyon jay is the steward of the pinyon forests, for which the forest feeds and houses this crucial blue crow. Of the thousands of pinyon nuts the blue crow puts away for the winter, usually working with its mate and both returning to the spot throughout the year to store or collect, the few pine nuts left behind grow into new pinyons, expanding the reach of the woodland. More woodland means more wildlife, more carbon-breathing conifers, more precious Western water stored in the ground, more wildlife corridors that connect mule deer and desert bighorn and mountain lions along mountain and valley to vast zones of wilderness. Now this iconic corvid of the West is threatened with extinction, and up for Endangered Species designation. You can take action, and the Pinyon Juniper Alliance and Great Basin Bird Observatory are good places to start.
Listen tonight on KCDZ 107.7 FM in the Mojave High Desert, or on the podcast now, and thanks for supporting DESERT ORACLE via our Patreon page and online store at DesertOracle.com. Back issues, signed hardcover books & our classic yellow-vinyl bumper stickers are currently in stock, as we dig our way out of many mysterious boxes.
Tonight we’re talking ravens, fishes & loaves, and the soul-crushing indoor indoctrination of the Empire’s State Religion. Sir James George Frazer, Pliny the Elder and the Gospel of Mark are all involved, whether they like it or not. (And the “Bible Friends” podcast mentioned on this episode can be found here.)
Dr. John Milton Bigelow did not shy away from hard work or adventure. At the age of 46, he signed on as surgeon and botanist for the Mexican Boundary Survey, following the U.S.-Mexican War that fulfilled the gold-hungry manifest destiny of the Americans.
This expedition of discovery took him through the Chihuahuan, Sonoran and Colorado deserts, where he catalogued the great variety of desert plants along with several other botanists — including C.C. Parry, namesake of Parry’s Nolina. Bigelow has a similar nolina plant to his name, and both are known for their tall, cream-colored plumes of flowers that can reach a dozen feet into the sky.
This is EPISODE #220: STANDING WITH GIANTS, AT MARIPOSA GROVE. Mariposa Grove was a sacred forest for millennia before it became part of the U.S. Yosemite Grant, lovingly tended by Yosemite Guardian Galen Clark for more than a quarter century.
Sacred groves and forests are protected for their spiritual and ecological importance. Such groves are found today throughout India (home of more than a million holy forests), Japan (many thousands of chinju no mori surrounding Shinto temples), and Ethiopia (35,000 primal forests circling Ethiopian Orthodox churches). (more…)
On this Easter weekend, let’s do our best to bring back the ghosts, the supernatural. Let us recognize and respect the mysterious entities that come not from some imagined, distant star system in the cold lifeless vacuum of space, but from right here where we experience them: backroads, mountains, spooky desert trails at dusk. Jesus loved wilderness and often talked to ghosts, after all. And that’s something people of any philosophy can enjoy.
The pyramids of Guinness 12-packs at our High Desert grocery stores reminded us of St. Patrick’s Day coming up, but the grey cloudy skies and green hillsides of the Mojave Desert this month are reminders that the old pagan tales are with us still, wherever the landscape is haunted and strange. And that supernatural entities always gather in their ancient homes: wild forests, dramatic outcroppings of rock, and any lonesome place whipped by the winter winds.
