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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54 at dawn and 60 now – another one of those “sunny at dawn but cloudy already” days – at least the sunny at dawn gave me a bit of a lift to start the day with. Concerned about my family in TX. Consoling myself with the thought that if something bad happened, somebody would get around to letting me know.
So damned tired of B.S. crapping on the party that’s giving him money and support to run for president. Yes, he’s trying to destroy us. Like any good little short-sighted revolutionary he apparently thinks all he has to do is tear down the existing order and magically he’ll be in power to make things run “the way they’re ‘spozed to” – and not all the historical evidence to the contrary can ever convince him. And he really doesn’t care about how many people get killed for the “good of the Cause” – collateral damage is only bad when we can blame it on his opponents. Please Goddess – if you give even a small damn for the people of this country and this planet, stop this latest version of the madness!
Bright the day, Meeses. Got hourly payroll to do, so I’d best get on it. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 50 and sunny in Bellingham. Another day of replacing old wires will start soon, and what a mess! I should have realized that taking an old wire out means a new one has to go in….to every plug, switch, and overhead light fixture. So the upstairs looks like the work zone it is this morning. Fortunately our son is working with the electrician so with his help the project is moving along faster.
We enjoyed a lovely birthday dinner with both of our sons last evening. The food was tasty, the sunset over the bay was beautiful, and the moment of well being was deeply appreciated by all of us. I’m feeling my age this morning though……our kids are all in their mid forties now, and the electricians father did the initial re wiring of this house 37 yrs ago.
What a lovely thing, that you’ve lived in one place long enough that the son of your original electrician is doing your current rewiring – to be able to see in human life terms the ebb and flow of the tides, the cycles of the seasons. Glad the birthday party was good.
Wow, princesspat! Well, bfitz said it all. Here’s to a quick finish!
Morning all! My first day post-teaching this semester, and while I have stuff to put on the web site for my students, and an exam to write, I’m taking a break today to obsess over the NY primary. I’ve been composing an essay in my head, which I would not bother to post at GOS because nobody’s mind is being changed there and I’d get HR’d to oblivion, but it’s about “what Bernie Sanders has done for me – he’s turned me into a fierce advocate for Hillary Clinton and rabid protector of the Democratic Party that he’s trying to destroy.” You get the gist of it lol.
All right, time to drink coffee, post one thing for my students and then off to surf the net. have a great day everyone!
You can post that here, Geordie, if you feel the need to get it on “paper”. You saw this one, right? On Becoming Anti-Bernie. Not quite what you are referring to but helpful for processing.
This woman provides a path for people who need to come to grips with the fact that their support of Sanders could damage our chances of winning in November. Time is running out; in my opinion it is better for their mental health to switch because they see the flaws in Sanders as a candidate than to bern all the way to the convention and feel the nomination was stolen. I hope we see more of these.
FYI Moose Peeps: WordPress is pestering me to upgrade to version 4.5. It does not look like a dangerous upgrade so I am going to do it later today, probably mid-afternoon when all y’all are napping. :)
Woohoo!
That is all …
Hillary SMASH!! lol 16 pts spread, over 1 million votes, and a 31 delegate pickup against Bernie – I will take that all night long!
Good morning, meese! Wednesday …
It is 47 degrees in Madison on its way up to 68. Evening showers in the forecast.
The field is set. Thank you, New York! I was not sure I could handle much more of the anger (I am a delicate flower!). I am not going to spike the football because the most important thing is to win in November and we are going to need everyone’s help. The young people who feel disenfranchised – mainly because they were told they were cheated in some way when what they encountered was the awful way the oldest democracy in the world runs its elections – need to be encouraged to stay engaged, to vote in November, to be active in the Democratic Party, to change the Democratic Party if they don’t like it. As for the angry Obama haters, the racists, and the sexists, I am hoping we don’t need them because I don’t particularly want them.
There is other news: the 4th Circuit said that Virginia cannot deny a transgender youth the right to use the bathroom for his gender:
Will this give the governors of the states of North Carolina and Mississippi the opportunity for a do-over as they continue to bleed revenue and goodwill after their discriminatory laws were passed? We shall see.
The Michigan Attorney General will announce criminal charges in the Flint water case. The charges will include felonies but will not be against the governor or the emergency city manager who put the water system changes in place. They will not fix these problems by jailing the lower level bureaucrats who were following the orders of the Republican destroyers of good government … voters in the states need to start turning out the people who choose tax cuts over the health of their citizens, who defund education to line the pockets of the wealthy and corporations who, it turns out, don’t create jobs at all.
See all y’all later!!
Good morning Meese.
My prediction was that Hillary would win by NY by 16 – so I was pretty close. On to more closed primaries!
Yay! You give good predictions, Sister Dee!
Good morning, Meese—Calloo, callay, oh, frabjous day! ‘Tis 44 F. now, going up to 70 F. later on a gloriously sunny, blue-skied morning.
Followed some Hillary-friendly open threads on GOS last night, then went down to join Dearly in the family room. He was watching CNN. When I first saw Stupid Old Wolf saying, “Oh, the exit polls are very close, they show Hillary 52-48,” I almost fell off my chair. Goggle-eyed, I stared at the screen. When it was showing Hillary with a 20-point lead, Wolfy was saying, “Oh, the exit polls show Clinton at 52 and Sanders at 48.” When 40 percent of the vote was in, they finally called it for Clinton. She had a “comfortable lead.” If she were a man, it would have been called a commanding lead.
This morning the WaPo is worrying about her “image problem.” Yes, she has such an image problem that more people have voted for her than for any of the other candidates.
May I say I wish St. Bernard would take his marbles and go home? He’s a bitter, choleric old man who late in life got an enormous ego boost by saying the same thing over and over again. I actively dislike him now.
Well, enough about that! We had Babylicious over here yesterday for a while, morning and evening. After his mom came from work and was buckling him into his car seat, he took the plastic part and snapped it together himself. He also said, “Where Da-Da?,” knowing that it’s usually his father who picks him up from day care. And he won’t even be two until the end of May!
We have a luncheon to attend at the appalling hour of 11 a.m., so I’d better eat breakfast and then go out to get my hair done. This lunch-and-presentation is given by Goodwin House, an organization that helps oldsters stay in their own homes. It’ll be interesting to hear what they have to say, especially since we are more and more convinced that we can never afford to move to one of these nice retirement communities.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond! And as Sister Jan is providing a safe space for us here—go ahead and gloat if you wish. :)
Ha! I did most of my gloating last night. I admit to a bit of nervousness when I saw the exit polls showed a 4-6 point win. I knew that would not be a large enough margin to douse the conflagration, that it would have to be big and involve a significant addition of delegates. The closed primaries next week in Maryland and Pennsylvania should extinguish any dying embers. Charlie Pierce had an important post about coming together that I will share part of as a Moose megaphone post later today or tomorrow. We really cannot have a Trump or Cruz presidency.
I passed my fundraising goal for the Ride!! WooHoo! Such a relief. Now if I could just get on my bike…. Got Democratic club tonight, should get a few more donations there.
Still raining. Glad I’m not in Houston. Death toll there is up to 7 — 5 of them were people who drove into a flooded roadway. Really sad when it’s avoidable like that.
I’ve been trying to remember a tv or movie scene. A man & woman are talking. Maybe about their best Christmas ever or best gift ever… She says to him that it must have been a really awesome computer & he says no. As a kid, he had been hoping for a computer, knew it was beyond the family’s means. What he got was a puppy. And describing getting it, he says something like: there are things you hope for that you know are unlikely but… And then there are things that are so far outside the realm of possibility that you don’t even know to wish/hope for them…. Does this ring any bells for anyone?
Grats on the fund-raising. The grim news flood news is deeply saddening.
A lot of my co-workers are there this week for a conference. Getting around town is pretty interesting. But — seeing water on the road & driving on into it, or driving around barricades……
Congratulations on the fundraising. I’m sorry I couldn’t give any this time. I’m still waiting to hear back from my Houston relatives which is making me nervous. People who deliberately drive into flood waters are nuts mostly. Especially in Houston. I have done it in my life, but not without knowing how deep it is, where it could possibly take me if it was not as safe as it looks, and seeing somebody actually walking in it. And never, ever, ever drove around a barricade. (Movie scene doesn’t ring any bells, but the meme does.)
Woot! Hillary did it by a decent margin. I stayed in El Mito’s live blog until it was called last night so I knew she’d won, but didn’t stay up for the final percentage. Overcast (again) and 60 supposedly going to clear off and get up to 75. I can deal with that :) – if it does I’m going to walk home. I seriously need the exercise – so many things, muscles and internal organs and stuff, just don’t work right if you don’t get exercise.
Bright the Day, Meeses. Things are looking up. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 48 and sunny in Bellingham. Another day of re wiring ahead, and I should go to the pool. But my sewing project isn’t done so I might do that instead. I had time to sew yesterday afternoon, but the power to my sewing room was turned off so I sat in the sun and read instead.
It’s nice to wake up this morning and feel the Bernie Blues I’ve been carrying around start to ease, and to realize that HRC is most likely on her way to the White House. Her campaign , lead by Robbie Mook, has stayed focused on the delegate math and has been careful with their resources. It’s going to be interesting to read the books that will be written when this election is over.
Morning all – as you can tell from my late night ‘woo hoo” post, I was up till the wee hours soaking in the great victory. Hillary gave a terrific victory speech as well. I was in the middle of a raid in WOW (involves 14 other people, we’re in voice chat, using headphones and mics, as well as in game, killing internet dragons together), fortunately during a break in the action, when my friend Amy called me – must have been 9:30 or 9:45 which is very later for her to be up. I picked up the phone and she started “What is this thing running on my TV that says it’s 52-48 in NY!!!” I reasssured her that was just the exit polls which have been notoriously bad all primary season, but not to worry, I was watching my twitter feed and knew the actual numbers were running much higher for Hillary. My raid teammates are mostly Berners, so when one of them mentioned the 52-48 number, I just quietly said, it won’t be that close. Did discover one of them is a closet Hillary supporter like me (Tvath, Denise) and we share some private giggles in chat whisper lol.
I do wonder who is actually in charge in the Sanders campaign – I mean, he stranded his press corps in the State College airport to flee, I mean fly back to Burlington. Seriously, you do not want to piss off your travelling press that way, I wonder what is really up with him? Could he possibly have believed he could win or keep it close in NY, despite all the polls? He’s been watching too much MSNBC, which is still BSNBC as far as I’m concerned, with Matthews going on about how close Bernie is to Hillary in “national polls” – Chris has been in politics almost all his life, I seriously thought he was smarter than that, but guess not.
Jan, I’m going to try to write that essay I was talking about for posting here – “How Bernie Sanders Turned Me into a Fierce Democratic Party Defender”.
Ok, cleaners come today, have to straighten up for them, and post some stuff at my course web site for my students. everyone have a great day!
Charlie Pierce on Tweety (Chris Matthews):
MSNBC has too many Republicans on it for my taste. Didn’t they have Ann Coulter doing election analysis a few weeks ago?? I watched Hillary live on CSPAN and followed the news on Twitter.
someone found it for me — and it’s a short story — weird how I heard and could almost see the characters…. anyway, it’s from Miracle & Other Christmas Stories by Connie Willis – one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors
I LOVE Connie Willis! Can’t count the number of times I’ve read The Doomsday Book. I’ll have to look for that collection.
it is in my “read every Christmas” pile, along with Christopher Moore’s Stupidest Angel, and of course Hogfather. Willis convinced me that Miracle on 34th Street is really a better movie than It’s A Wonderful Life.
And in honor of Harriet Tubman going on the $20 bill, here is the Drunk History version of her Civil War exploits for the Union. In case you’re not familiar with this, it’s a series that’s been on Comedy Central, where the person to tell the history gets slightly drunk, for real, and then narrates while real actors act out the narrator’s words. This one I find hysterically funny, and the great Octavia Spencer plays Harriet Tubman saying words she surely would never have said. Warning – it’s very profane, although lots of bleeps.
Here is the Treasury announcement: Introducing the New $20, $10, and $5! Lots of great information there.
Here is Jack Lew’s Medium. AN OPEN LETTER FROM SECRETARY LEW which included this photo of Harriet Tubman:
Twitter was having fun with it: “I’ll take my reparations in Tubman’s” said one Tweeter. One retired journalist I follow said it was sad that the number one trend on Google was “Harriet Tubman”. Good that they were interested but sad that they did not know who she was. And to all of those Twitterers who don’t know much history, we still have proud slaveholders on our currency – I was thinking, as I was waking up this morning, how ghastly it is that people actually believed that it was okay to own another human being. It boggles my mind.
Good morning, meese! Thursday …
It is 57 degrees in Madison on its way up to 68. Morning sun and afternoon clouds are in the forecast.
I have a pile of early morning projects along with a pile of “wish I had time to post on that” stories. The early morning work projects will win but I hope to come back later to write.
See all y’all later!
Good morning’ Meese
37 here in the Hudson Valley going up to 76.
A lot of really interesting stories in my news feed this morning – but I have a deadline to meet today so have to go back to pounding the keyboard – see ya later
Good morning, Meese! Today is Her Majesty the Queen’s 90th birthday, and judging from the photos on the BBC news site, it’s a nice day in the UK.
Here, it’s 48 F. on a partly cloudy morning, going up to 74 F. Tomorrow we are supposed to get some blessed, blessed rain. We are 3 inches under for the year so far, so I’m getting worried.
The training session on Tuesday left me so sore I’ve hardly been able to move—and I have another one this morning! I bought the “protein drink” I’m supposed to ingest after training sessions but it’s so bloody awful that I’ve had to throw it away after I made it. Now I’m left with a tin of the powder.
Work on the Shakespeare blog is proceeding slowly. Luckily, it’s going to be short. His birthday cake will arrive tomorrow afternoon in time for the photograph. Still have one scene to write for the Fiction Cafe story for April 30.
Hillary is supposed to be on a “Town Hall” on ABC news this morning. I get tired of people asking her impertinent question. Dan Balz of the WaPo, along with all the other aging, overfed, white males sitting in front of their computer screens, is worrying about Hillary’s “image problem.” The only people who think she has an image problem are those who resent the fact that her IQ exceeds their own by approximately 100 points. Misogyny, thy name is legion.
Wishing all at the Pond and Beyond a nice day! Off to yet another retirement community roundup this afternoon. The one yesterday kinda gobsmacked us.
Rain this morning, then it’s supposed to dry out for a day or 2, then more rain. One year it did rain the weekend of the Ride. Some people set up trainers in a parking garage & rode on them. It’s over a week away & I’m already having dreams — woke up at 4 am because I dreamt it was Ride morning & I had overslept. My head is being nice to me & playing Hozier’s Someone New.
Supposed to be in the 40s overnight but didn’t get that low – 50 at dawn and 56 already heading for mid-70s. Also supposed to be sunny and it sort of is. I could use some real sunny after a week of not – yesterday maxed at just under 10 KWHs, haven’t managed over 20 in a day since the 14th. Did ooooooch above 300 for the month though so that’s good.
Hope somebody puts Hillary’s town hall where I can get at it – can’t watch it live, but usually I manage to see things of that nature during lunch (or else when I get home) as long as I can find it. :) Agree with Diana re: people who think Hillary has an image/likeability problem. Goddess knows we’re in for the misogynistic version of the racism we’ve seen with President Obama – and Goddess knows that’s the price we have to pay for any progress – and Goddess bless Hillary Clinton for being willing to be the target so we can get this done.
Gotta get to work. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 57 and partly sunny in Bellingham. My old maple trees are beautiful this morning with lichen covered trunks and new green leaves. I need to call the tree service but I’m procrastinating, hoping to enjoy the changing of the seasons a few more times.
We have a quiet morning today as the electrician will be back on Monday to finish. We do have a dusty cleanup in the upstairs and the basement to do though. But we’ll do that after RonK goes to the gym. I’ve got some desk work and napkin sewing to keep me busy this morning.