Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: June 7th through June 13th

June 7, 2015 JanF Community 149

Welcome to The Moose Pond! The Welcomings posts give the Moose, old and new, a place to visit and share words about the weather, life, the world at large and the small parts of Moosylvania that we each inhabit.

Welcomings will be posted at the start of each week (every Sunday morning). To find the posts, just bookmark this link and Voila! (which is Moose for “I found everyone!!”).

The format is simple: each day, the first moose to arrive on-line will post a comment welcoming the new day and complaining (or bragging!) about their weather. Or mentioning an interesting or thought provoking news item. Or simply checking in.

So … what’s going on in your part of Moosylvania?

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NOTE: The comments page will now split off after 20 or so left-margin comments with the most recent comments on the current page. To see the older comments, scroll to the bottom of the page and use the link.

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43 Comments

  1. Walked before work. Was in bed last night at 9, still really sleepy this morning, but it could be worse. And we are getting into the really “Texas-y” weather – 74 this morning, headed to the mid-90s.

    Tuesday. The day furthest away from the weekend. (Monday you can still remember last weekend, but Tuesday, that’s gone & next weekend is too far away to see)

  2. Apropos of everything, there was a very interesting column by Charles Blow on black men and black fathers. It’s hard to reproduce the chart but by standards such as eating with kids, washing and diapering them, playing with them, reading to them, they spent MORE time than fathers from other groups, whether married to or living with their children’s mothers. Blow really challenged so many stereotypes.

    . Now to the mythology of the black male dereliction as dads: While it is true that black parents are less likely to marry before a child is born, it is not true that black fathers suffer a pathology of neglect. In fact, a C.D.C. report issued in December 2013 found that black fathers were the most involved with their children daily, on a number of measures, of any other group of fathers — and in many cases, that was among fathers who didn’t live with their children, as well as those who did.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/08/opinion/charles-blow-black-dads-are-doing-the-best-of-all.html

  3. 77 heading for 90 or so – sunny so far. Good thing we got all that rain this Spring. Beaver Lake is full. (Hope Travis managed to trap enough of that flood water to at least hit “normal” – would be a good thing coming out of all that damage and tragedy.) We are now heading into the Summer “drought” but with the reservoirs topped up it should be a good market-garden year.

    Haven’t had time to do the research on Hillary’s SoS tenure yet. Was informed yesterday that most of the students I’ve been paying using units over Summer have to be moved to hourly as of 7/1 – DoL issue. That means redoing all that work I was hyperventilating about some 6 weeks ago. At least I have a couple of weeks to get it done. The McKinney, TX cop thing is dreadful but unfortunately not unusual for TX. I grew up in Houston. Hope all the ailing Meeses get better soon and everybody at the pond has a good Tuesday. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Travis is really close to “normal”, Buchanan not so lucky. Even though it hasn’t rained for over a week, Travis still going up.

      There are still 2 bodies missing, a 6 yr old boy & a 4 yr old girl. Just so heartbreaking. And they keep reminding people who are cleaning up to be careful of heatstroke, because of our mid-90s highs.

      • Heart-breaking is the right word for that – especially when it’s little kids. My Austin grandsons are 6 and 3. Travis will keep filling until the groundwater seeps from the saturated ground level off. I guess the rain didn’t hit the Buchanan watershed area. There’s a benefit to floods – actually several – as long as people manage to stay out of the way (from a human point of view).

  4. Good morning, 60 and sunny in Bellingham today. I’ve got an early Dr’s appointment and then I’m finally free to focus on the garden. I’ve got a plan for the containers so I’m ready to find the plants.

    The vine maples in the back garden have matured so I’ll need to choose plants for deep shade this year. I love how sheltered and cool the trees keep the house, but it does limit the choices for flowering plants. Fortunately I love inpatients and begonias. And plants with variegated and/or light green leaves catch the light in the shady areas so I’ll look for those too.

  5. seems the new moose works a lot better for me than the old one did. Howdy, all!

    • Howdy, bubba!! We have modernized and in the process have a faster and more efficient pipeline. The old moose had to go through Ted Steven’s tubes after sitting for 2 days in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnall’s porch.

      This one uses fiber optics …

  6. funk and wagnall’s: heh. I was just thinking how the GOP primary is shaping up to be a terrible episode of R&M’s Laugh-In.

    • Good, I can show the kids just how smart I am … making allusions to 1970s TV shows. :)

  8. Good morning, meese! Wednesday …

    It is already 75 degrees … on its way up to 83. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Texas is in the news twice: the McKinney hair-pulling-kid-sitting-on cop resigned with a terse two word statement from his attorney: “I resign” (no word on a possible Fox gig); Texas’ Awful 5th Circuit has ruled against women’s reproductive rights and shut down 13 of the state’s abortion clinics. I am sure that Planned Parenthood will ask for a stay and then appeal to the Supreme Court. The high court is already slated to hear the Mississippi case which shut down that state’s last abortion clinic – they will be tasked with deciding whether it is necessary to have at least one clinic in the state or whether abortion rights does not require ever being able to exercise those rights. In Texas, millions of women will live more than 100 miles from the closest clinic and in some parts of the state, 500 miles. :(

    In political news, Lindsey Graham says that all y’all who are worried about electing him because there wouldn’t be a First Lady, put your cares away! He will have “rotating first ladies”!! I am sure that is a relief to the half dozen people who were thinking of voting for him.

    See you later!!

    • The news from Texas is not good. Am sure many have said this but will say it anyway. Can you imagine the uproar if it had been a black cop and a white blonde teen? You could hear that uproar all the way to Jupiter or Mars. I am so disgusted by what is going on in this country. And “they” say the Civil War is over. No way. Sadness and fury mixed.

  9. Good morning Meese

    56 headed up to a cloudy 83 here in Saugerties

    Still reading all the responses to the “get the blacks out of the pool party” news.

    GAH!

    • The frightening responses are those who say that the problem was not law enforcement overreacting to a daylight incident involving a possible pool trespass but that Those Kids (ie black kids) did not listen to law enforcement when they told them to stop doing whatever it was they were doing. But those complaining are missing why people are outraged: Those Kids are getting killed by law enforcement all over the country and, in the case of the pool party, dragged to the ground by the hair, sat on and having guns aimed at. Someone could have been killed by police rage.

      That the cop quit rather than answer for his actions is telling.

  10. Good morning, Meese. It’s heading to the low 80s here.

    I have found some good news! The new poet laureate. Juan Felipe Herrera,
    will also be the first Latino poet laureate!

    he is an unusual laureate, the son of California migrant workers, a man whose poems are filled with hard labor and indeterminate spaces, an awareness of chromosomatic imperialism and of Greyhound Bus stations of the soul. He understands people who are drained from the day’s hassle.

    Mostly, though, you’d like to hear him at the National Mall because his work is built to be spoken aloud. His best poems are polyrhythmic and streaked with a nettling wit. He puts you in mind of something the writer Dagoberto Gilb once said: “My favorite ethnic group is smart.

    Witness Mr. Herrera’s long poem, “187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border (Remix),” for example. In it, he flies a freak flag, in a manner that resembles a blend of Oscar Zeta Acosta and Allen Ginsberg, on behalf of his determined politics.

    Among those reasons Mexicanos can’t cross: “Because it’s better to be rootless, unconscious & rapeable”; “Because the pesticides on our skin are still glowing”; “Because pan dulce feels sexual, especially conchas & the elotes”; “Because we’ll build a sweat lodge in front of Bank of America”; “Because we’re locked into Magical Realism”; and “Because Freddy Fender wasn’t Baldemar Huerta’s real name.”

    .”http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/books/juan-felipe-herrera-poet-laureate-with-a-working-class-voice-meant-to-be-spoken.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

    Hope everyone has a healthy and good day!

    • I saw that on my NPR feed! It pleases me no end that our country even has a poet laureate. Isn’t that one of them thar “fine arts”????

    • Thanks for the news on Juan Felipe Herrera!

      The son of migrant farm workers, Herrera was educated at UCLA and Stanford University, and received his MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His numerous poetry collections include 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971-2007, Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems (2008), and Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream (1999). In addition to publishing more than a dozen collections of poetry, Herrera has written short stories, young adult novels, and children’s literature.

  11. Walked before work – and I have my group after work as well. Still not sleeping well, which seems unfair.

    No thoughts today. Y’all be good. oh – still hot – mud 70s to mid 90s

  12. Was below 70 at 6 am so I opened the house and cooled it down before leaving for work again. Charlie was happy until I closed the windows again. Heading for 92 (or so) today. I walked in. We jumped too quickly from Spring to Summer for me to be comfortable walking home right now. Maybe when I get used to the heat… Good news that the last of the “Angola Three” was finally released but 40 years in solitary! It’s a wonder he still has language! Hurrah for the Latino Poet Laureate even though most Poet Laureates write the stuff I don’t read (enough nightmares already) – it does at least give lip service to America being a civilized nation. Got lots of stuff to do today so I’d best get to it. Half-way to the weekend :) so enjoy it. {{{HUGS}}}

  13. Good morning, 54 and sunny in Bellingham today. I found a few plants to bring home yesterday so now gardening has moved to the top of my list. I must go to the pool, but I want to just go outside. Lucky me to have such a dilemma!

  14. gonna be a hot one here… feels as if LA is shrugging off June gloom.

    It’s good to be back on the Moose. I hope to generate a HAHAHA one of these days. The GOP clown C-5 is overripe with possibility.

    Back to hacking.

    • Looking forward to seeing a HAHAHA! The problem with the current clown vehicle (I am rather fond of clown limousine but they may indeed need a C-5 at this point) is that it is generating a HAHA daily. You would have to quit your day job to keep up with it!

    • Hi bubba – be really nice to see another HAHAHAHA – helps everybody deal with the insanity (by pointing out that it really is insanity if nothing else).

  15. Yikes – my husband was stuck in a bus in the Lincoln Tunnel for hours – still hasn’t made it into Manhattan to work yet

    18 people injured – thankfully no deaths – they had to back cars and buses out

  16. It turns out that paying people better has real and immediate results for the bottom line: Walmart Raised Wages In April. It’s Already Seeing The Benefits.:

    After it raised wages for employees in April, Walmart said on Friday that it’s already seen lower turnover and an increase in job applicants.

    “Our job applications are going up and we are seeing some relief in turnover,” CEO Doug McMillon said at a media briefing after its annual shareholders meeting. The company’s performance has been suffering recently thanks to understaffed stores, among other things.

    The company announced that all workers would make at least $9 an hour this year, a minimum that would increase to $10 an hour in February. The company’s rationale at the time was that it would reap the benefits of its $1 billion investment in higher wages through lower turnover, which is apparently already playing out.

    Turnover can be quite costly: it eats up the equivalent of a fifth of a worker’s salary to replace him.

    You wonder if the resistance to raising wages is simply a knee-jerk right-wing reaction or a certain fear among the Waligarchy that they cannot give an inch for fear that they will only make $899 billion instead of $900 billion and their heirs will be forced to cut back on the number of car elevators they can buy? I hope enough of these success stories hit the mainstream media to change the meme from “Minimum Wages Kill Jobs” to “High Wages Are Good for Workers And Employers”.

  17. Am sure this has been diaried elsewhere but just saw this and was ashamed, shocked, disgusted, and more. The oped gives a shocking historical context for what happened in Texas. Really horrifying for what it says about our fellow citizens and how they think and how little things have changed for the better. What a twisted world view. This from an oped by Brit Bennett.

    IN a 1948 speech to fellow Dixiecrats, Strom Thurmond famously declared that the entire United States Army couldn’t force white Southerners to allow black people “into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.”

    I’m always struck by his invocation of swimming pools as a battleground for racial segregation, although perhaps I shouldn’t be. After all, some of the most potent symbols of Jim Crow involve water, from segregated drinking fountains and toilets to swimming pools and beaches. …

    Water has long been a site of racial anxiety. Integrating city pools has led to riots, such as in 1931, when young black men in Pittsburgh were held underwater, dragged out and beaten by white swimmers while police officers watched. Segregated beaches were an early battleground for integration in Mississippi. When more than 100 black people held a wade-in in 1960, a white mob attacked them with pool sticks, lead pipes and chains. A news account referred to the attack as the “worst racial riot in Mississippi history.”

    Segregating water is not just a Southern tradition. In California, Mexican-Americans were excluded from “whites only” restaurants, schools and of course swimming pools. In a 2010 Los Angeles Times interview, Sandra Robbie, a filmmaker curating a walking tour of Orange County’s civil rights history, described the segregation she saw growing up in the area. “Monday was Mexican Day,” she said. “And the next day they’d drain the pool and clean it so whites could use it the rest of the week.”

    There’s more
    here http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/opinion/who-gets-to-go-to-the-pool.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

    • There are a lot of things embedded in the reptilian brains of the people who embraced the Confederacy, the KKK, and now the modern Republican Party. This is why Chief Justice John Roberts’ declaration that America is now post-racial was so laughable. Maybe to a man who has lived his whole life nurtured by the think tanks of Washington DC, where conservative principles are theories ready to be applied to the masses without any context, really, with no understanding of the blood and tears of those living in segregated America.

      The election of a black president did not end racism, it lifted up a rock and exposed what has been there all along and it is ugly beyond anything most of us could have imagined.

  18. Good morning, meeses! Thursday …

    It is 62 degrees in Madison on its way up to 70. Strong storm with torrential rains are expected to arrive in the early afternoon.

    Ted Cruz has hired a scared-by-sharia-law anti-Islamic wingnut with the unfortunate name of Kevin Kookogey as his Tennessee campaign head. Isn’t it an amazing coincidence that the most staunch teapartiers are also long-time bigots? THAT is the Republican Party’s big tent … come for the anti-TARP faux deficit worrying, stay for the unfiltered bigotry and hatred of The Other. That is why the teaparty has not just survived but thrived: they embraced the tenets of the KKK and discovered that tapping into long simmering racial animosity was a winner at the polls. To those people who are complaining that Hillary Clinton is wrong for not trying to appeal to the white male Southern voter has not been paying attention to politics over the last 5 years. Our tent will never be big enough for those people.

    See all y’alls later!!

    • UGH!

      Right-wing watch has it too:

      Ted Cruz Picks Tennessee Sharia-Hunter As State Campaign Chair

      Last month, we noted that Sen. Ted Cruz had picked Lee Bright, a state senator with a record of stoking fears of a new civil war, to co-chair his presidential campaign in South Carolina. Cruz has now made a similarly revealing choice in Tennessee, according to the AP, picking Tea Party activist and former Williamson Country GOP chairman Kevin Kookogey to lead his campaign in that state.

      Back in 2012, Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Haslam faced a backlash within his own party. His offense? Picking a Muslim American woman who had previously built expertise in Sharia-compliant finance — helping Muslim business owners arrange for loans in ways that don’t run afoul of religious restrictions on paying or collecting interest — to a top economic position in the state.

      Egged on by anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney, who warned that “ the financial jihadists will soon be targeting the Volunteer state for infiltration and influence operations,” a number of county GOP committees passed resolutions condemning Haslam for his hire. One of those resolutions was spearheaded by Kookogey, who told Talking Points Memo that Haslam had neglected to “consider that, perhaps, those bent on destroying Western Civilization might just be infiltrating our institutions.”

      “It is not like this has never happened before,” he continued. “The Muslim Brotherhood is following the blueprint of the Communists, who infiltrated the highest levels of government and society in the 1950’s. Shariah, however, is an even greater threat, because it has cloaked itself under the auspices of a religion, thus confusing the uninformed.”

      Kookogey also used his position as county GOP chairman to warn that Agenda 21 — a nonbinding UN sustainable development resolution signed by President George H.W. Bush — “ is, in fact, an insidious strategy of environmental totalitarianism”:

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  19. Good morning Meese
    68, cloudy and muggy going up to 87 here in the Catskills.

    Update in the tunnel accident hubby was stuck in yesterday – 30 people were injured and they had a heck of a time getting to a woman who went into labor while stuck.

    One day this country is going to have to invest some big bucks into better roads and tunnels (tunnels need to have a safety lane).

    I avoid taking any of the tunnels that get you into NYC or out of Manhattan – prefer the bridges.

    • Glad that Mr Dee is fine. What a nightmare for all but especially for that woman in labor!!!!
      I hate those tunnels. The Holland is the one I usually take. Hate it.

  20. Good Morning, Meese. It’s headed for ninety. Ugh.
    If you don’t see me for a while after this weekend don’t worry. I will not have eloped with Lindsay Graham hoping to become first lady. Will be recovering for a bit from knee repair.
    Now for the news and coffee.
    Will check in later
    Hope it’s a good day for all in the Pond and beYond.

    • Sending good healing vibes for the surgery. Will light a candle when I get home. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Good luck, Portlaw! You will be missed. The new moose does nicely via mobile, by the way; you should power up that iPhone and connect even if you can’t sit at your computer. :)

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