— EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK —
                                  TWICE OVER LIGHTLY
                                               by Helen Hayes and Anita Loos

BLOWING OUR MINDS
      The Lynne Palmer School of Astrology is on West 72nd Street in one of those offbeat neighborhoods that look like steel engravings of New York in 1880. Our destination was a ten-story office building which, in its heyday, had been a skyscraper. It frankly shows its age and the elevator wobbles.
      We entered a room so immense that there was space to spare for twenty-five large round tables, each one of which accommodated four armchairs and a sizable ashtray. There was enough wall space for any number of astrological charts representing signs of the zodiac. At the end of the classroom stood an easel on which were placed horoscopes of the famous for study by the class. (Napoleon’s was there that day, with an astrological alibi for Waterloo, no doubt.)
      In no way did Miss Palmer conform to our visions of an astrology teacher. She looked not more than thirty, was feminine, cute, and pretty as a postcard. She wore not a smidgen of batik nor even an amber bead. On the contrary, her pink suit possibly came from Chanel and she sported a few tasteful jewels that looked hot off the workbench of Van Cleef and Arpels. The only manner in which she fitted our idea of an astrologist was that she hails from the capital of the world of whim-wham, Los Angeles. Where else?
      Lynne apologized for her premises, saying that only in an old building could she find a room large enough for her classes. Hers is the only school in our nation, she told us, where astrology is taught en masse. Classes are held all year round with sessions for beginning, intermediate, and advanced students. “I have a special seven-weeks marathon course,” said Lynne, “during which the entire subject is covered in depth and detail. All ages and types attend that class. I have a seventeen-year-old hippie whose special interest is Tarot cards and a professor of psychology from the College of the City of New York.”
      “When could one enroll?” I asked and learned that no enrollment is necessary. “One merely shows up at will and pays six dollars a day.”
      The beginner’s course deals mostly with “chart erection.” The intermediary course features advanced math but also includes a study of special horoscopes of, for instance, twins, psychics, astrologers, dogs, traitors, murderers, homosexuals, transvestites, people who changed their sex, prostitutes, madams, sadists, nymphomaniacs, con artists, liars, drug addicts, movie stars, and writers. Among the last, Lynne’s students learn all about Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Billy Rose, grace Metalious, Hedda Hopper, and Stephen Foster.
      The advanced class studies births, marriages, assassinations, murders, cancer victims, unusual deaths, and presidential elections. The course ends with prognostications of what will happen during the next two years. And,