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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Good morning, Motley Meese! The week begins …
It is 68 degrees in Madison WI, on its way up to 83. Scattered thunderstorms are in the forecast.
What are you reading on the Internets these days?
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Good Morning Meese
59 and cloudy here in Saugerties – going up to 85.
Drinking coffee…browsing the news and getting prepared for comments on my orange Sunday morning piece “Menses, periods, and the tampon tax” which should be interesting. At my age – I’ve lived through the time when menstruation was something only discussed in whispers… and was never mentioned on radio or television. I am appalled that women cannot purchase sanitary napkins or other menstrual supplies with EBT cards.
I’d like to see reporters ask all the candidates who are running for office what they think about this.
If EBT is the new “food stamps” I sort of agree, but only sort of because you also can’t buy soap or toilet paper with them. So yes, partly a gender-bias, but mostly a total lack of understanding on the part of the people who write the rules for EBTs.
Not all “necessities” are food. I suspect that men wrote most of the rules for EBTs.
Of course men wrote the rules. Can you imagine ANY woman – even some froot-loop like Sarah Palin – forgetting toilet paper or soap?
Good Morning, Meese. It’s 75 headed up about ten more degrees.
I’ll be back when I’m back! Until then, behave.
Holding the good thought. I was going to light a candle but decided I’d best stick with virtual ones considering how hot and sticky it is right now (with a potential for the power and thus the A/C to go down should we get more storms like yesterday) – so let’s see if Jan’s burning candle code works on the New Moose!
rats, guess not. Oh well – healing energy coming your way even without the virtual candle.
Photos can only be added by a post’s author and by editors. WordPress has some odd rules and I suspect it has to do with it mostly being an open blogging platform. The moose is not an open blogging platform … anyone who wants to post can … but they have to knock on the door first! :)
Here is the candle for Portlaw.
Thanks. I really wanted that since I wasn’t going to do a real one. :)
:(
walked in the rain this morning – here’s me & my group, with a double-rainbow:
https://instagram.com/p/36e0pJTRgg/
Good-looking group :) – I love rainbows and double rainbows doubly so.
Good morning, Meese! Have been out this morning, taking Miss Pink Cheeks to Virginia Kitchen for breakfast, then shopping at Trader Joe’s, but must head right on over to Orange to see Denise’s post on menstruation. Glad I belong to a religion that regards menstruation as a gift of the Goddess rather than as a “curse.”
Speaking of Goddess, she very kindly arranged a thunderstorm at midnight that brought us some rain. Apparently she’s giving us more of the same this afternoon. Right now it’s 83 hot sticky degrees F., going up to 87 or 94, depending whom you believe.
Haven’t had time to look at the news yet—do I want to? Hope everyone will have a peaceful Sunday.
We had to put the air on because the promised 83 degrees appears to be coming with some very steamy air.
This was very difficult to convince my daughter of, Diana: “a gift of the Goddess rather than as a ‘curse.'” I suspect it is because I am not 100% convinced myself. I think it is a design flaw and that there could have been a better way to achieve the same result. :)
The news was not too bad today. The Republican candidates are all in Utah kissing the ring of the Mittster. I was a bit surprised to see that he and Adelson are teaming up to choose the winners and losers. It won’t help because each candidate, except Rand Paul, has his own billionaire and the biggest billionaires of them all, the Kochs, are not interested in anything orderly: they are only interested in finding someone who will do their bidding. It is beyond funny that the RNC is angry at the Kochs because they see their own influence as waning (what idiot there thought that they could control billionaires whose only allegiance is to themselves???).
The Cuyahoga County prosecutor released his preliminary report on the Tamir Rice killing and, SURPRISE!, the cops’ account does not match the videotape or the eyewitnesses. The cops refused to speak to the investigators based on advice from their union. I wonder when police officers will call out their unions for covering for the bad cops who are damaging everyone’s reputations? I suppose when gun owners call out the NRA for enabling dangerous people to acquire weapons … never.
I’m not very good at writing whole stories – LTEs are about what I’m good for – but I periodically try to get a thought or idea out even if I never manage to write the whole story around it. I did one once in where a women’s group welcomed in a young woman when she first started menses by explaining “gender roles” regarding hunting v. gathering. The Elders told the youngster that women shed the blood of Life and therefore gather food while men shed the blood of Death and do the hunting. They are equally important for the good of the tribe/society.
That’s a good thought, bfitz. I like it.
Use it with my blessing. (I like your stories – just don’t make it over there very often to be able to read them. I know if you use this thought, it will be well presented.)
Thank you kindly, bfitz! Appreciate it. :)
Good morning, it’s 62 and sunny in Bellingham today. I hope to take my list to the garden shop, find the plants I need, buy some soil and fertilizer, and start planting the empty pots. I was awake in the night however so my day is off to a slow start.
One bit of good news……we made our own deer repellent, using lots of garlic, red chilies, ammonia and Murphy oil soap and it seems to be working. It hasn’t harmed the leaves of the test plants I’ve put it on, and the deer seem to have stayed away this week. But the plants they like the best are forming new leaves now so next week will be the real test. I won’t be surprised if they decide our spray is just a tasty condiment!
Jan, wish your daughter could read this coming-of-age story about a young girl’s menarche:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/20/1286038/–One-More-and-We-ll-Be-a-Coven
Princesspat, if the deer repellent works next week , please let us know your recipe. They leap into my backyard every July and eat all my pears!
83 feels like 89 and off&on cloudy with a few sprinkles so far this Sun’s Day in Fay., AR. Had heavy rain yesterday – not particularly a lot, less than an inch – but all at once which messed with the power. We’ve got a 50-50 chance for more every single day this week but I hope it holds off for a bit. If it rains tomorrow the blueberry guy won’t be able to pick and I’m supposed to be getting 15 gallons bright an early Tuesday morning (so expect me to be late checking in). Only half are mine (all but one will go into my freezer for next winter) and I’ll be delivering the rest to the various people (all female – surprise) who took me up on my offer to get them some while I was there.
I just watched Hillary’s announcement – thanks for posting it Jan – and am more committed to her than ever. What she has done all her life is work for people – health, well-being, education, etc. – and I want that attitude in the White House. {{{HUGS}}} to all visiting the Purple Pond.
Even some of those ready to pre-hate her are giving her grudging good marks for saying the right things. I was shocked to see Katrina vandenHeuval tweet out a story last night:
The TPP battle is interesting to watch because it appears to be being used as a way to go back in time and vote against NAFTA. But you can’t undo the past … you can only try to impact the future. Congress will get an up or down vote on the final deal, this is just permission to negotiate. I guess I would have preferred that they wait for that. But if Nancy Pelosi gains some leverage to get the highway bill passed or if President Obama can go back to our trading partners and say “we are going to need a better deal”, then the delay can have a benefit. Right now it is only sausage-making.
Right now the TPP is sausage making with American jobs and American sovereignty as the chief ingredients so anything that sends people back to the drawing board has my vote. But I’m glad people are taking another look at Hillary. I’m not going to say she’s perfect – nobody is – but she’s worked all her adult life to make things better for people in general and women & kids in particular. She will bring that attitude to the White House. Whether or not she’ll have a Congress that will allow her to do anything other than what Obama can do (and Bill in his last term could do) is another matter and what we progressives need to be working on.
Good morning, meese! Monday …
It is 69 degrees in Madison on its way up to 78. Thunderstorms are in the forecast.
Today … Jeb! announces.
A few Twitterers had some fun with his logo:
I hope that the Supreme Court releases a blockbuster ruling today and steps all over his news cycle. As always, the Moose News Network will cover SCOTUS … orders at 9:30am Eastern, decisions at 10am. This week decisions will also be released on Thursday.
California wealthy folks who live in the desert say “shut up, people who want to drink water, we have lawns that will turn brown!!!. From David Atkins at WaMo:
Busy day, see all y’alls later!!
That’s what struck me when I read the article, Jan. There was no thought of, “We’re all in this together, let’s conserve or have different ideas about gardens and acreages”—oh, no, it was, “This is very inconvenient to ME.”
So glad I’m not a member of the “Republic” party.
I don’t really know how they can live with themselves. They essentially have to deny their humanity in order to twist themselves into the pretzel that fits that logic.
I don’t doubt that they will find some way to get the water they feel they deserve but I hope the water suppliers stand firm in their decision to turn off their taps. Make them truck it in from Colorado.
Colorado is where a whole lot of it is coming in the first place. When CA first started having water problems their answer was pipe it from the Sierras. When that wasn’t enough it was pipe it from the Rockies. And Southern CA spent years and lots of dollars (annually showed up on the ballot) to steal Northern CA’s water. Now with global warming that “they” deny exists reducing the snowpack and thus the Spring flush from both mountain ranges…
The problem with the entitlement/Republican/1%ers is they have no concept of being a part of anything, that their lives and comforts depend on anything or anybody else much less everybody else. The very idea that everybody has to have enough before they and their wealth can buy up the excess, if there is any excess, seems wrong or even evil to them because they are poorly-brought-up 2 y.o.s having temper tantrums. (And all their kicking and screaming should be done in a “time-out room” while the rest of us get on with taking care of the problem.
I went back to tend comments in the Four Freedoms post and noticed that the video I put there did not play! I had found it and embedded it from my phone Saturday night but apparently it is one of those that was not authorized by the artist. So I found the authorized one and will also put it here for those who missed it:
Thanks for re-posting the video Jan. The images are powerful!
Good morning Meese,
While the Jeb announcement may be in national headlines – folks in my area of NYS are still following the prison break story as the top headline – since it has been 9 days – and seems like police are no closer to finding them
65 here going up to 75 and rain
Will be looking forward to SCOTUS coverage
Seeya latah
No one knows when either of the Big Two (marriage equality and ACA subsidies) will come down. There are probably a lot of different opinions, concurrences and dissents, being written for both. While the marriage equality ruling sounds simply on its face (“is marriage a right?”), it will also, or separately if the right to marry is denied, need to address the recognition of marriages performed in other states, Section 2 of DOMA (Section 3 was already ruled unconstitutional in Windsor).
There are more than just those two cases to be decided, some of which are pretty important.
Three cases ruled on, none of the ones we were specifically watching for. But good news in the orders: the court will not hear the North Carolina ultrasound case. That case was a win for us in the 4th Circuit (a doctor cannot be compelled to tell a woman about the results of the ultrasound using the wording provided by the state) and now it is affirmed. More on that in the comments in the SCOTUS Watch post.
Skipped morning walk today, I think yesterday was too much. Eating breakfast – sweet potatoes, onion, Brussels sprouts, egg. It’s not bad.
Monday. My mind just boggles & stops right there. Though is is being kind & playing Someone New at me, so that’s a win.
77 and muggy as a steam bath this Monday in Fay., AR – “they” say we have 50% or better chances of rain all week but it isn’t raining at the moment and the sun is even peeking out between the clouds. Hold the good thought for the blueberry pickers. The berries need to be dry or they’ll spoil very quickly. I’m still on track for getting the 15 gallons tomorrow – but only if they get enough “dry” to actually pick them. Got bunches of stuff to deal with – many of my emails requesting information I sent out Friday came in over the weekend so I need to get on the Annual Report again. Hope I can check back later. Sending more good thoughts to Portlaw. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, it’s 58 and sunny in Bellingham today. As I suspected my plans for yesterday were a bit to ambitious, so after the pool I’ll try to make some more progress. I suspect my gardening list will last all week!
Portlaw, best wishes for an uneventful surgery and a comfortable recovery.
Good morning, Meese, it’s hot, humid, and horrible here in NoVa: 78 F. going up to 90 F. We have the a.c. on because it’s so sticky and miserable outside, with overcast skies. Like bfitz, I hate gray skies unless they’re willing to produce rain. However, we didn’t get any overnight and I don’t have any great faith that we’ll get any today, so I watered the “crops” this morning. The watermelon plant is sending out little snaky runners in its grow bed.
Will check back when I can for SCOTUS news. Usually I don’t have Babylicious on Mondays but he wasn’t well this weekend, so they switched his day care day to Wednesday. He’s asleep right now, so that’s why I can check in!
I’m thinking of Portlaw this morning, going through knee surgery. Yesterday I finally felt well enough to write my blog and finish the lunchtime story for my Web site—will let you know when they go up. Now starting work on another Fiction Cafe story, the working title of which is “Getting Unhexed.”
Hope it’s a good day for all drinking at the Pond!
mornin, mooserators. Gray in LA: June gloom is back. JebbaDubyaDoo(Doo)!
Bushstones
Meet the Bushstones
They’re the polit stone age family
From Ken–kennabunkport
They’re a way to crush the whole country
Let’s ride with the family down the street
Through the money of Jeb’s donor elite
When you’re with the Bushstones
you’ll have a Jebba Dubya doo time
a Jebba doo time
You’ll have stone-age time.
I saw that Chris Christie was calling for a “coalition of the willing ” to go back into Iraq. Did we enter an alternate universe where the Iraq war was a great success and George W. Bush was hailed as a great liberator? Maybe not Jeb! but wtf … ¿Jeb?
LOVE it, Bubba!
Good morning, meesers! Tuesday …
It is 61 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 77. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
The pope will be releasing his encyclical on Climate Change on Thursday. It is entitled “On the Care of Our Common Home” and one of my Twitter follows posted a screen cap of an announcement from St. Francis Xavier in NYC:
It will be interesting to see how Catholic Republicans distance themselves from the leader of their religion on yet another major issue (trickle down economics being the other big one). Their cherry picking of the teachings of the Church is the height of hypocrisy; the friction between their anti-humanity worldview and the teachings of their Jesus have always been glossed over but Pope Francis has exposed it. They will have to choose between Ayn Rand and their politics of selfishness and Pope Francis and his message of caring. Sucks to be them!
Jeb! makes it 11 (I heard rumblings that The Donald will be entering the race in the next few days.) I followed #NoMoreBushes, the hashtag covering the announcement from our point of view, and some of the Tweets were quite hilarious in a truly sad way. If we as a country are incapable of looking back even 8 years to avoid making the same mistake again, I am not sure there is much hope for us. Who should we “want” to run against our candidate? They are all so awful and to have any of them as president would be devastating. :::shakes off icky feeling:::
Busy day … see all y’alls later!
It’s raining again. 100% chance today & tomorrow & it’s from a tropical storm hitting Houston, so some really strong storms. And Houston. They’re telling people there to stay away from underpasses, which is telling them to stay home because in Houston you can’t go anywhere & not go through an underpass.
This is video of the flash flooding from Memorial Day, inside a business on Shoal Creek: https://youtu.be/t2FqzV9BVxI.
Skipped walking because I want to give my foot more of a break. Will do tomorrow evening’s class (unless it’s still storming).
Very strange earworms this morning, 2 songs, both slow: U2’s One & Van Morrison’s Have I Told You lately. What the heck?
Just what you don’t need there: more rain. Last night weatherdude posted a swirling Bill:
Stay safe and dry!
Thanks for this, another! So worried about my granddaughter in Houston.
73 heading (“they say”) for 76 with 99% humidity and 80% chance of rain in Fay., AR this Tuesday. With flash-flood watch locally and a “tropical storm conditions possible” alert for the region (our “region” goes down to the Gulf of Mexico). I finished dealing with the blueberries earlier than I thought – mostly because I left the house at daylight and was there waiting when the blueberry guy started setting up. Used up every plastic storage bag in the house and still had to bring one gallon to the office in the paper bag I get them in (gonna have to give up and buy some next year) but I’ve got 7 gallons in the freezer for next winter, 1/2 gallon in 14 4-oz containers in the fridge (2 weeks of lunch fruit or 1 week of lunch and bedtime-snack fruit), my friend, neighbor and co-worker Natalia’s got 3 gallons (1 for her mom), the lawn guy has 1 (I had to tell him how to freeze them – men!), and 3 of my faculty people have 2 gallons, 1 gallon, and 1//2 gallon respectively. Oh, and I’m munching on some right now as I type. :) Hope everyone has a good something or other – day/week/work and or play time-space continuum. {{{HUGS}}}
Bfitz, so glad you got your blueberries after all! I fed some to Babylicious yesterday, with um, disastrous results. Think I’ll stick to applesauce today.
Love the thought of your making jam with them for next winter and snacking on them now. Aren’t they good? And nothing is prettier than blueberries in fruit salad.
Jam with some but mostly frozen to eat straight. (Blueberry preservation is the easiest in the world if you have any freezer room at all. While they’re still “field dry” put them in plastic bags and stick them in the freezer. That’s it. Wait to wash them when you get them out again. And blueberries are the only fruit that keeps its shape and color, if not its texture, thawed.) In making my decisions about ethical uses of my limited food dollars, I decided to concentrate on fruit first. So 90% or more of my fruit is local and bought in season from various Market gardeners. And yes, blueberries are wonderful – a blessing to the eye as well as to the palate, and that doesn’t even go into the health/nutrition benefits. But yeah, better wait a year or so before trying them on Babylicious again. Bet Miss Pink Cheeks loves them though. :)