Following up on my article the other day about travel delays corresponding to the retrograde turn of Mars, planet of action and movement, Mercury is now preparing to change direction on Saturday.  When Mercury turns retrograde (planets obviously do not ever move backwards, but occasionally from our perspective on Earth they appear to do so) there are often more incidents of equipment and machinery breakdown as well as communication problems.

Travel difficulties continued yesterday as a big storm in the Mideast knocked out power and caused more delays, and Julie in Boston commented that the public transit system experienced a derailment and weak tunnel wall that caused extensive delays there.  A bridge failure in Florida stranded 800 people yesterday for three hours waiting for a drawbridge to open. 

There have also been train accidents, including two that occurred in the Triangle region of North Carolina where I live and one in Ohio, and several in Europe as the result of icy conditions.  .  

And now the power and communication problems begin.  An electrical problem outside of New York City forced Amtrak to halt all trains coming in and out of Penn Station between Washington and Boston.  And Blackberry users experienced email outages twice in one week.  

Fortunately, the Mars retro effect is diminishing and we should be seeing travel problems ease.  Communication problems, however, are with us for another few weeks.  When we know that Mercury is retrograde we can laugh at communication problems and phone and email failures because we know that Mercury is at work being its old trickster self.  As Julie in Boston wrote in the comments, Mercury has a sense of humor even if Mars doesn’t.