New beginnings in 2012

By S. Derrickson Moore
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Hello, 2012. 
I’ve read the book. (Or, at least, one of the most famous of the books devoted to themes of this year, Daniel Pinchbeck’s bestseller spiritual quest book, “2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl,” which was loaned to me shortly after its publication in 2006 by Las Cruces philosopher Corie Lane.)
I’ve seen the movie — the dumb 2009 disaster flick starring John Cusack. It’s been a while, and all I can remember is that John issued a warning that was ignored, but he was rewarded by impossibly surviving all kinds of natural disasters with his kids in tow … a marathon of family fun featuring the greatest hits of our solar system. (Solar storms! Floods! Volcanoes! Earthquakes! Crumbling/exploding/burning Los Angeles!)
When I finally got around to touring Spaceport America in 2011, I tried to recall if John and his kids finally escaped to outer space, but I think the giant vehicles (secretly built by the 1 percent to keep the 99 percent out of any long-term survival deals) turned out to be arks.
I’ve seen several TV documentaries on various and sundry 2012 prognostications.
Maybe, I’ve even been singing the song since 1967. I’ve talked to astrologers who opine that this period merely signifies the end of the age of Pisces. Good news for me: At long last it might finally be the dawning of my age: I’m Aquarius.
And now that I’ve confessed to warbling “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” for more than four decades (and I’ve seen the original cast perform it in “Hair” and watched The Fifth Dimension sing their hit live in concert ... twice), I’ve officially dated myself.
So I might as well confess that I’ve long been familiar with most of the theories, history and prognostications and prognosticators Pincebeck wrote about in what seems like a rather belated quest to kids of the spiritual, mystical and sometimes downright spacey ’60s.
I’ve been hearing about those Mayan prophecies since my teen years. I spent almost two decades in Oregon, followed by two years in Santa Fe. (Parts of the Pacific Northwest and northern New Mexico have retained the largest, most persistent patches of the dedicated hippie culture, long after most of the rest of us cut our hair, institutionalized recycling and other green policies and procedures, and took to wearing dye-tie only as an occasional, retro-ironic or wearable art fashion statement.)
I met, worked with, investigated and wrote about many of the sages, and, as it turned out, not-so-sage souls, that Pincebeck discovered in the new millennium.
As a reporter and city editor in Portland, Ore., I covered and later wrote a book and documentary about the most accurate prophetic person I’ve encountered, Tenny Hale, whose hit predictions included the Watergate scandal, by name, before the break-ins, the exact day of the Three-Mile Island accident, and thousands of other very specific forecasts, documented and verified over decades, with a nearly perfect accuracy rate. And even a few predictions Hale counted as “misses” have been revealed as “hits,” after her death in 1981.
Her track record remains the best I’ve seen, and she didn’t predict that the world would end in 2012. So it’s not something I’m planning on. But I have been keeping tabs on warnings she gave for this era: major earth and climate changes, nuclear accidents, crumbling infrastructure, dam breaks, floods, resulting pollution and weakened immune systems that would leave us more vulnerable to fierce epidemics and viral diseases that could dramatically decimate the population.
There’s lots more on the downside, but not a final ending, and an upside the includes the possibility for brilliant new beginnings, spiritual and intellectual awakenings and a global renaissance that would inspire us to get technology right, this time around, and maybe even muster a divine global evolutionary leap that would have us finally recognize that we’re all in this together, that sharing, helping, healing, cleaning, nurturing and working to understand one another will make life better, richer — and more fun, even — for us all.
There will be some rough patches, but it’s a future we can choose, work toward and enjoy right now. Many of us already live this way and will continue in 2012. The signs are here. It’s an exciting and promising time to be alive. Happy New Year.

S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450