Hi. My name is Tim.

I’ve written an astrology column since 1977. At first it was a tiny column, in a small newspaper. That grew to include many newspapers and a website called (like this Blog) Astral Reflections.

Not to brag, but I’m a pretty good astrologer, or — more correctly I suspect — merely an average astrologer, but with a psychic gift. I discovered this in university, when I told a female classmate (whom I otherwise had no contact with) something about her relationship with her father, whom I’d never met. I was surprised by her surprise – “How did you know?” It seemed so obvious, so logical to me.

I’ve never developed my psychic side, but I know it exists. For example, when someone was relating a small incident, but forgot the name of the street she was on when it occurred, I said (correctly) “Alder Street.” When I ran into a former co-worker by chance one day, I said, “Have you been to London?” She said, “I just got back. How did you know?” Truth is, I don’t know how.

In my newspaper columns, in April 1981, I predicted the great boom in the Dow, and a decline in interest rates to “below 6 per cent.” In 81, the Dow stood at 700 to 800. Today, it stands at 15,000. The same year, interest rates (fed fund rate) were 19 per cent. They are now about 1%.

I predicted the Challenger space shuttle disaster (about two weeks before it exploded) the first Gulf War – and it’s duration – the economic downfall of Japan (in the early 80’s, when it was buying up all the prestige U.S. golf courses) a “merging” of male/female sexual natures (now called metro-sexualism) and the rise in women committing sexual crimes – but, I wrote, there would occur an overall decline in the North American crime rate. Oh, many things. AIDS. Chernobyl. The turmoil in the Middle East. All in writing, published in my column. More recently, I forecast that late 2012 and 2013 would bring a rise in the U.S. economy and a slow-down in China’s – who woulda thunk?

In the past, some of my predictions were riddles or symbolic. For example, in 1986 I wrote: “a black sun will blossom.” Later that year, Chernobyl’s heat blackened the skies. The “riddle” existed because I didn’t have a clue what this black sun would be.

But bragging is boring, so let’s quit.

The one thing I’m terrible at is predicting election winners. My record there is 50% — or no better than chance – so I leave those alone. I can’t predict elections because I care who wins. The cold truth is, when a diviner cares about a client or a situation, he/she loses the ability to predict. When my prediction that Challenger would “catch fire and fall into the ocean” came true, a reader wrote to criticize me for not alerting NASA. For one thing, NASA would have ignored me. But more essentially, had I cared about this disaster, I could never have predicted it.  Any psychic who cares, is not psychic. I can feel many of you protesting this, but it’s the truth, and I try to deal in the truth.

So the truth is, as I write this I am 64 years old, I live in paradise with my small orchard and garden and brook, surrounded by cedars and firs, visited by deer, coyotes and black bears, roofed by a sky specked with ravens and eagles. I live alone, though my kids visit often. And my sister lives on the property, in another house.

My education: MFA.

My hope: LOVE

May, 2013.