“If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed”
Thomas Jefferson

I woke up the other morning with this phrase in my head, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” [1] With this New Moon in Sagittarius, it seems the perfect time to send out a little reminder of how important education is. When I say education, I don’t mean, having to go to college to gain an education, but making sure that each of us study, read, various news items, books, articles, publications, with different viewpoints, while not aligning ourselves with any opinion. One’s opinion evolves from a widespread input of information from various sources in different areas of our lives. It includes incorporating older more historic views along with current views and somehow, in this remarkable thing called the human brain, our own personal computers, has the capacity to produce cogent and well framed, carefully thought-out responses to consider during troubling times requiring fresh solutions.  

Self-educating ourselves is imperative as we move forward in life, and, again, it doesn’t mean you have to have a college education. Sometimes, a college education, is embarked upon at the wrong time of life, when we are too young to know ourselves, and it is never too late to learn new things. Education is our lifelong promise to ourselves and our souls. As we move into a new year, with so much information coming at us 24/7, our brains don’t have the bandwidth to process and regroup. We lose sleep because we are on media much too late, in the hopes of filling a gap of loneliness and the result being that digital interference provides a false state of security while interrupting our precious sleep.

Our deepest sleep patterns don’t get the opportunity to process our lives in our dream states. When our brains are interrupted by too much media input, programming us either left or right or middle, we stop thinking for ourselves and become part of a mass information dump of innocuous chatter frying our brain cells, exhausting us along the way and leaving us even more empty and anxious while needing to press another button for that adrenaline filled information dump – much like addicts who need another fix. This is the ultimate anxiety.

I was talking with a good friend recently, a sharp, elderly woman, well read and educated, who has been experiencing increased anxiety. She is a news person, very self-aware, and always read newspapers and magazines. When she got her phone and started following all the ‘stuff’ that’s on it daily, her anxiety began. She went on a search to reduce the anxiety trying everything from hypnosis to medical intervention, to past life regressions. These approaches all helped a bit, but not until she started reading again – real books and real magazines, did she notice a marked reduction in her anxiety. Hmmm? This might be something to look at in terms of a long-needed respite for the mind.

Remember the old Wendy’s hamburgers tagline “Where’s the beef”? The woman, by the way, who made that famous was Clara Peller in the 1984 commercial. She was 82 at the time and there’s a story. She was married, had a couple children, got divorced and worked as a manicurist in Chicago for 35 years. At age 80 (yes 80 and right before her Uranus return), Pelle was hired as a temporary manicurist for a tv commercial set in a Chicago barbershop[2]. “Impressed by her no-nonsense manners and unique voice, the agency asked her to sign a contract as an actress for the agency”[3]. Though she had emphysema, and was hard of hearing, she still did it, and it was like winning the lottery. Her life changed and in her mid-eighties! Now – that’s interesting...

But lest I digress, the idea of where is the ‘beef’ is the perfect question for what we choose to learn and spend our time on? The real ‘beef’ is in reading biographies, learning about peoples’ lives, what they went through, the challenges they met and how they transformed their lives. The ‘beef’ is in history – the good, the bad and, of course, the ugly. The ‘beef’ is listening to music from other eras and not only the current era. The ‘beef’ is about incorporating all things we read and study forming a kaleidoscope of ideas that our brains need to grow and work most efficiently for our betterment. The ‘beef’ is not found only on that little thing called a phone and instead is much bigger and vaster than that small item. Don’t you have a mind that holds far more data than a phone, so why not encourage its growth and not waste it? This New Moon in Sagittarius (the natural 9th house ruler of education and vision) is a suitable time to think about this, especially as Mercury (the mind) just started its retrograde at 8̊ Capricorn through January 1, 2024. A wonderful time to ‘sort’ out the quality things (Capricorn) in our lives versus the quantity things.

Maybe: As we move into the new year, we might think about committing to a few things that have nothing to do with losing weight, but, instead, feed our minds with new material.

1. Turn off media at least 1 hour a day and read something that’s printed on paper.
2. Commit to talking – to a real person – at least once a day and/or commit to meet friends, once a week on a walk (something I do) or at coffee or for a meal and ‘talk’ to each other about what you read this week. If we can discuss movies, we certainly can include discussions of what we discovered in our reading this week. I walk weekly with one friend who sends me fascinating articles from the New York Times magazine and her marvelous contributions changes things up for me. Include the source of what you read – a good practice. None of this takes much time, just a few moments, even a half hour a day.
3. Commit to reading from all branches of society – history, politics, biographies, the arts, culture, music, from different vantage points and genres. Because ‘the mind is a terrible thing to waste’ and it is hungry—hungry – it needs input – and this is what I call ‘education’ and therein lies the ‘beef.’ Happy holidays and a good new year to all of you. Thank you for all your support throughout the years.

If you haven’t gotten your 2024 Starcycles cheat Sheet with mini forecasts, we still have them available at https://starcycles.com/downloads/2024-starcycles-cheat-sheet/ and watch our events list for 2024 where I will be speaking in a live and online hybrid event in the Fort Lauderdale area in January.

And, finally, thank you for your support and telling friends of our non-profit foundation, the www.alexandriaibase.org project, the foundation I started back in 2015. It is a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Educational foundation and a portion of my income goes to support this foundation regularly. In December, anything you donate will be matched. For everyone that contributes between December 2023 and January 2024, your gift will be matched. $25 pays for one hour of librarian time to find, locate, catalogue and place subjects in the database. Your contributions also support the new Special Collections which has archived historical magazines like the old Mercury Hour. We do not charge for this website, but we sure need the help. So, thank you. “The mind is definitely a terrible thing to waste” and preserving literature is where you’ll find the ‘beef’.

Warm regards,
Georgia Stathis


[1] The phrase, “The mind is a terrible thing to waste” came from Dr. Frederick D. Patterson, one of the first Black scientists to receive a PhD in microbiology (1932-1948), who by the age of 34, had sought and earned 4 degrees, which aided in his significant contributions to not only science but the educational field. In 1923 he earned a Veterinary Medicine degree from the University of Iowa, and accepted a teaching position at Virginia State University where he developed a private veterinary practice and taught a variety of courses, including bacteriology and chemistry.
[2] Clara Peller – www.Wikipedia.org
[3] Ibid.