I have long admired the way Garrison Keillor and Molly Ivins use humor to poke fun at "uppity" people, including the Bushes, so I was saddened by her death a few days before writing this column. I decided to show you a few things that you can do with astrology by taking a good look at her birth chart. Even though I do not have a time, there is plenty to see.

She had the Moon in Capricorn. In Mapping Your Birthchart we find this: "Find a profession you truly enjoy. It can be ambitious in scope as long as it really satisfies your inner emotional needs." I believe her career in journalism was immensely satisfying.

From Buddhist Astrology I extracted the following: "Conservative views and the spiritual pole are stressed." Molly Ivins grew up in an extremely conservative household. But Shaneman and Angel go on to state, "This aspect can manifest as a skeptical and judgmental point of view. … A positive environment can produce an astute investigative quality." Ah, that's the Molly I came to enjoy so much!

The Complete Node Book mentions this about the North Node in Cancer: this placement "will encourage you to knock down some of your walls and open your heart to emotional connections. … The South Node in Capricorn gives you the ability to understand your role and responsibility in society, and to plan and execute long-range goals efficiently." Molly Ivins surely felt a responsibility to use her talents to inform us of what she felt were serious wrongs in the functioning of our government.

"Venus in Virgo can readily fall in love with a calling or opt for a working relationship. This is an analytical placement." She [Venus in Virgo] likes simplicity …She is devoted, loyal, and yes, sensual. "It is not that something needs to be better, but that it can be, which titillates the Virgo," (from Venus).

Ivins also had Chiron in Virgo, along with Mercury and Jupiter. According to Chiron, by Martin Lass, "Chiron in Virgo can feel incomplete, fragmented, scattered, disconnected." It's as though something within the person needs fixing. "The healing path consists of gradually putting together the pieces of our lives into an integrated picture. The more pieces we collect and integrate, the more the picture is revealed to us."

From Aspects, we learn that Molly Ivins had a Fan pattern in her chart (all the planets bundled closely together with one on the opposite side of the chart). Ivins had the Moon as the handle planet. In many ways, the Moon in Capricorn was a distraction from the main focus of her life, which was her work. She may have enjoyed the fame she achieved, but her writing, I feel, was always her main focus. Her style was highly creative and transformative, as indicated by the placement of Pluto in her chart.

I know I will miss hearing her words about Texas politics in particular, and President Bush too. She had such a wonderful way of dotting her Is and crossing her Ts in politics.