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 (and calendar year!) begins …
Morning low of 27 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 36. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Good morning Meese on the first day of 2017 – it’s 40 degrees here. Happy New Year!
I managed to wake up to watch the ball drop – neither hubby or I have ever gone to Time Square for that ritual – most NY’ers don’t – it is a tourist thing.
As I get older I realize that I have no clue who most of the featured entertainers are. I miss Dick Clark hosting the TV party with groups like Gladys Knight and the Pips.
I am so culturally unaware I did not know 95% of the people whose deaths in 2016 caused such angst. I have no idea who is popular!
I was in bed by 8pm – I am on winter hours. This morning, when I went out with the dog at 6am, I heard owls in the woodland behind my house. They are mating and soon will be nesting and then teaching their babies how to fly and hunt. The cycle of the earth continues – we put up our new calendars, marking a moment that is not really important except for accounting purposes. For those who need a mental reset, it is nice to have that marker but the owls just “know” when it is January.
It is 18 degrees here (my weather widget, consulted when I posted the welcomings last nigh) was wrong!!
Happy New Year to you all! I’m so glad I have this place and you guys. It is warm here today — I might not even be able to wear the long-sleeved shirt I planned to for church. We’re supposed to have thunderstorms later, but I really will get in a walk this afternoon. Peace & health to you all this year!
Neil Gaiman did a beautiful New Year’s thing — he used Leonard Cohen’s words, and there are his past years things at the link. I love the 17 years ago one & the half a decade ago one.
Thanks for sharing that post anotherdem…….wise, hopeful words.
Good morning and happy new year (I hope)! It’s partly cloudy here in NoVa. Right now the temp. is 39 F., going up to 51 F. We did manage to stay up, blearily, to watch the stupid ball descend. We went to bed at 11:30 p.m. We mostly tune out the hoopla in Times Square because, like Jan, we’ve never heard of those cats either. I’m mostly bored by popular music—my interest in it ended in 1980.
Looking forward to a quiet day of catching up with things, putting the silver coffee pot and its accompaniments away, and so forth. Hope to get hold of a “Happiness Engineer” from WordPress later. I want to clear out all of last year’s pictures and stories.
In the meantime, I’m continuing to ponder the new book. It’s kind of hard to plot a novel when you have no idea what’s going to happen until you write it. At least I’ve boiled down the theme to one sentence, delineated major and minor characters, and planned the conclusion. I think a little more reading of Eloise J. McGraw’s Techniques of Fiction Writing is in order.
Wishing a good day to all!
Hello Meeses – it will be a sad day when we cannot wish each other happiness no matter what we fear and today is not that sad day – HAPPY NEW YEAR! And next up is to do what we can to make it so. :)
40 going to 50 again with some clouds. Dec 2016 rang out with 149.15 KWHs and 2016 itself rang out with 4.43 MWHs. Here’s to 2017 being sunnier (but with enough snowpack/rain to break droughts) and more productive (on all fronts). Got my Sunday stuff done except vacuuming (because I need to borrow my friend’s vacuum cleaner first) – peanut butter-cranberry muffins for this week and a pork sirloin roast in the crock pot. Need to do my end of month/first of month financial stuff but it can wait. Not like the mail will be going out today or tomorrow.
The Moose Pond is an oasis of quiet and reflection with good companions. I know I am blessed to have been invited to join. I will be a part of the Meeses as long as I breathe and have internet access (and Jan keeps it going). Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
A quick visit to the Pond to wish the Meese the best for the coming year.
Portlaw!!
I hope you will join us this year as we hunker down in survival mode and plot our path out of the electoral desert.
Happy New Year to you, as well!!
So nice to see your name on my screen this morning Portlaw! My very best wishes to you as well.
{{{Portlaw}}} – so great to see you. Hope you can visit more often in 2017. We’ve missed you.
Hi!!! Happy New Year! Hugs!
Hello, Portlaw, happy new year!
Good morning, 31, cloudy and a light dusting of snow in Bellingham. We’ve been celebrating New Years with a group of friends for nearly 20 yrs…..made us all pause to realize that. It was good to be together, and even better to be on east coast time so we were home and in bed early!
Danny Westneat, at the Seattle Times……
Word of the year? It should have been ‘demagoguery’
My sincere thanks to Jan for hosting and maintaining the Motley Moose, and to all of you for being here. You all enrich my life and I’m very grateful.
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is 27 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 36. Cloudy skies and light rain are in the forecast.
Interesting stories yesterday about how difficult Republicans might find governing with a giant toddler as their president. I am sure that his announcement that he expects to work more closely with Chuck Schumer than Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell did not make the destroyers happy. I don’t trust Chuck Schumer as far as I can throw him but any port in a storm … I am also cheering on John McCain in his pushback against tRump’s foreign policies.
It is also starting to dawn on red state citizens that the only thing protecting them in their workplaces was the Obama Labor Department holding states to federal standards. States can now do whatever they want – the headline in my newspaper this morning: “Walker: Future ‘exciting’ for state”. Indeed. Much like a sudden heart attack or ripping away someone’s oxygen mask.
I am trying to get some projects done so that I can take today off. I have one client who is working today and they need something set up before they start work.
See all y’alls later!
Very loud thunderstorms this morning. But it’s supposed to clear out later & be gorgeous. Feels weird being up this early. One full 5-day workweek, then I’m off for a week till Tuesday the 17th. So — 5 days, I can do that. Yesterday, I had Beautiful Day on, on repeat in the car. I wanted something hopeful to be my first music of 2017.
Good morning, Meese! It is a good morning, too, it’s raining gently. Current temp. is 40 F., going up to—whoopee—44 F. today. If I sound paranoid, it’s because I am. We finished 2016 five inches under for rainfall, so today’s rain and tomorrow’s alleged rain are most welcome.
Like everyone else here, I commend Jan for providing access to the calm and quiet of the Moose Pond. Here we can say what we like (within the normal rules of courtesy and decency), so it’s a haven for which we are all most thankful.
After breakfast and gym I need to consult a “Happiness Engineer” and then do some more thinking about my new book. I can see I’ll have to add another character, a Chief of Staff. That’ll be fun to think about.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and beyond!
This: “rules of courtesy and decency”
There are rules and they are internally enforced by the part of us that is decent, the part that respects civility, that thinks that being polite is not Out-of-Control Political Correctness but a crucial part of what a society needs to function. Many years ago, when I was first learning about Wicca, I asked a friend to teach me in a more formal way what it entailed. One thing she did was give me a book by Miss Manners and pointed out the role of politeness. We do no harm, we do not wish for our enemies to die but to see the error or their ways. We always speak to them in a civil manner and adhere to the norms of polite society.
As we approach the Year of the Yam and our country is immersed in unfiltered anger, we need to redouble our efforts to not add to it from the left. The Pond is a good place to practice what we preach.
50 heading for 59 maybe a 20% chance of rain but cloudy. sigh. Did get over 5 KWHs yesterday. Sort of like I expect 2017 to play out – not good but could be a lot worse. This time tomorrow I’ll be at work. Now the countdown is starting. I am going to plan on Social Security being as much a 3rd rail as ever (we only need 3 sane Republicans in the Senate and I think Boozman is one) and say this will be my last January at work.
I’ve got 3 postcards written to go out tomorrow. I may do a 4th although I usually call Boozman’s office on safety net stuff – his staffers are sane, knowledgeable, and caring at least on that. To Womack I’m saying “I paid into it since I was 15. It’s MY money. Don’t touch it.” To Cotton I’m saying “Say NO to anybody with connections to Russian.” And to the Rabbi and B’nai Shalom community in Whitefish, MT I’m saying “This Christian stands with you.” (Even though I’m not a Christian, I was baptized RC and they always count you even when you don’t. :) Besides – it’s a postcard. I want that message to get to the neo-nazis harassing the Jewish community as much as I want it to get to the community itself.)
Heading to GOS. Community Fundraiser stuff. I have unfortunately given all I have to give over the last 6 months – freely and wouldn’t take it back – and now can only help folks with my get-the-word-out lists in comments and Street Prophets diaries. Gotta couple that are either urgent or about to be. James has got to get a new transmission or soon he’s not going to be able to get to work (substitute teaching) and snoopydawg finally let me know that it’s not just her dogs with vet care – she’s dealing with acute neuropathy pain (instead of her “normal” chronic) they need to do some tests for and she’s behind on her mortgage (trying to refinance). I will do what I can and Hold the Good Thought.
A lot of people have a lot of ideas toward how we get out of the mess we’re in. Now that the shock of us actually being in it – and the greater shock of just how much Hate/racism/sexism there still is in America – is wearing off, we’re coming out of panic mode and starting to plan. This is good. As long as we stay together, share ideas and plans to make them better, and work together on implementing them, we will not only survive, we will win. Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Bfitz, welcome to the countdown! What a lovely feeling to cross off the months one by one.
Take it from one who knows: there is nothing more wonderful than retirement!
Good morning, 29 and a sunny in Bellingham. The sky is a mix of grey, pink and blue outside my window this morning. Yesterday was an actual day of rest for me……time with family, a nap, and reading my book.
We’re meeting our sons and the grand girls for lunch at the bookstore today. The girls are looking forward to using their book cards and it’s fun for me to see what they choose and to just be there with them.
Then I will check in with my injured friend. She is in severe pain from the fall on Christmas Eve that compressed and fractured a disk in her back so I’m very concerned for her. She has a long recovery ahead.
One of our friends shared this poem at our New Years Eve gathering. I find solace in nature, so the words resonate with me.
THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS from “The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry”
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Very nice, princesspat. My problem with nature right now is that I am concerned that it will be destroyed by the Republican’s Unified Government. I need to find a way to stop my thoughts from going from “this is nice” to “it’s all going to be ruined” and enjoy what we have.
“The peace of wild things”—that’s beautiful! Thank you for the poem, princesspat.
Good morning, meese! Tuesday …
It is 34 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 34. It is foggy now and will be mostly cloudy today. Tonight we drop into the deep freeze with lows in the below zeros and highs in the single digits.
The president is home – he returned yesterday afternoon from his Hawaiian vacation. He formally announced that his Farewell Address will be Tuesday, January 10th, in Chicago.
(Click for link to White House page)
DC pundits immediately complained that the speech would NOT be in DC. Sigh. I love President Obama and will miss him and his steady presence but I will be glad when he is officially done with the ignorant and disrespectful pundit class.
See all y’all later!
Jan, part of me wishes that, following the In-Hog-Uration, our calm, dignified, intellectual President would thunder forth from his private house like a twenty-first century Jeremiah at the vileness of Trumpelstiltskin and his minions. The other part of me knows as well as you do what kind of excoriation he’d receive from the stenographers of the MSM.
But he can write books! The stupids don’t buy books, nor could they read them if they did buy them, so he can say whatever he likes (short of libel) in print. Hah!
Good Tuesday Morning Meese
35 degrees here in the Catskills and raining.
The damp is making my aging aches and pains evident – will go back and get under a heated blanket and laze around today.
Not listening to any news – have a new novel to read
Which novel is that, Denise? Do tell! :) And enjoy your comfy day in bed.
One more gorgeous day then 2 cold fronts — and highs this weekend in the 30s. Got to walk after work today — ‘cause I sure ain’t gonna when it’s maybe as “warm” as 40 on Thursday. My brain is playing Ultraviolet for me, no idea why — haven’t heard it in weeks. I like the guitar, it’s pretty. But it’s not a happy song, not something I’ve been listening to lately….
Good morning, Meese! We have blissful gray skies and rain again. (If I sound like a broken record, please bear with me. We don’t see rain often enough here in NoVa to take it for granted.) Current temp. is 41 F., aiming for 48 F. today.
At 10 a.m. I’ll start trying to get through to the local offices of my U. S. senators (both Democrats) and my Congress critter, who is one of THEM. She hates women.
Speaking as one who can always find an excuse not to exercise, let me remark that the rain, cold, and gloom are not conducive to leaving the house. Perhaps I’ll just stay in and work on my book. It’s so much fun to think about I can hardly wait to start writing!
Goodness knows why, but I feel more hopeful and quite a lot perkier than I have in ages. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!
50 and overcast – slowly dropping temps through the day. Should be in the upper 30s when I leave work. Definitely counting down to retirement. I just don’t do multitasking well any longer and if there is anything this job requires, it’s multitasking. Not sure what I’ll do in retirement, but at least most of the time I’ll be able to do one thing at a time. :)
The last couple of days in the Village Under the Bus community at DK (gonna quit using GOS – as a quip way back when it was funny, with the orange hitler wannabe in the WH it’s not) we’ve been talking about what each of us plans to do as part of The Resistance. Some very good ideas are coming out of this. The first is basically do something. The second is don’t try to do everything. Stay focused on your issues and trust that your secondary issues are somebody else’s primary issues and they’ll focus on them. (Now if we could just stop re-fighting the primaries outside the Village community. sigh. Rox/sux all over again – in spades since “they” hated Hillary long before they loved Bernie. And since Bernie didn’t win, there will be no disillusion with him actually being a, you know, politician. He’ll always be St. Bernie. double sigh. Thank goddess – and jan – for the Moose Pond!)
Now I have a couple hundred work emails still to get through so I’m gonna be focused on the work I get paid to most of today. heh. Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Called Senator Warner’s office. Could not get through to Kaine, even the voicemail was full for the number given on the website. Will steel myself to call The Woman Comstock later, and try Kaine’s office later as well.
Don’t give up! I need to go hunt down the numbers and paste them on my monitor. I am thinking of calling Ron Freaking Johnson’s office every week on the same day and time so that I don’t forget. My other Senator is a Democrat and my congresscritter is a progressive Democrat – I will call them too.
Good morning, 28 and mostly sunny in Bellingham today. I’m feeling the weight of a worried mind this morning…..my friend’s injury has triggered deep thoughts of vulnerability. I know how important it is to find acceptance and to cope with the reality of the moment, so I will. But today seems difficult.
Our lunch and time with the grand girls at the bookstore was very fun yesterday. They were excited to chose their own books and to pay for them with their gift cards. Being with a carefree 9 yr old is good for all of us!
All the grand kids go back to school today so it really is time to take down the Christmas tree and toss the increasingly smelly flower arrangements. Busy work is a good antidote for my worries.