Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: May 20th through May 26th

May 19, 2018 JanF Community 107

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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– Page One of Comments is HERE!
 
– Page Two of Comments is HERE!
 

 

48 Comments

  1. Wednesday Meese
    58 heading up to 83 here in NY

    Scanning the news – looking at election results.
    PR Roundup

  2. Some morning music

    Indie-folk group Hurray for the Riff Raff has released a new music video for the song “Pa’lante” which comes off their incredible 2017 release The Navigator. While their previous music video looked at life on the streets of New York City, “Pa’lante” is a touching tribute to Puerto Rico. The long-form music video, directed by Kristian Mercado Figueroa, takes a look at the life of a family in post-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico, and the struggles they endure as they attempt to piece their lives back together. The action follows the family as husband and wife try to reconcile their differences and raise their daughter, despite their own shortcomings and difficulties.

    The song, a touching piano-driven ballad, sees bandleader Alynda Segarra at her most beautiful, belting out a series of powerful lyrics that blend perfectly together with the action happening on screen. As Segarra is of Puerto Rican descent, this project holds a great deal of meaning for her. The intersection of great cinematography, great acting, and great music gives the video a unique look and feel, one that holds the viewer’s attention throughout its 8-minute plus run time.

  3. Good morning, Moosekind, and happy Woden’s Day! It’s beautiful here in Ashburn after yesterday’s rain. The current temp. is 64 F., going up to 80 F. We can put the cushions back on the porch furniture now.

    Feeling distinctly under the weather. It began Monday, and at first I attributed the symptoms to eating the strawberries we picked on Sunday. Younger Son has it too. However, Darling Niece hasn’t suffered from the strawberries and my Facebook friend in Pennsylvania didn’t pick or eat any! It must be some tiresome affliction borne by the air.

    Have an unpleasant day coming up, tracking a missing delivery. According to Fed Ex, the package containing the room dividers was in fact delivered to the front door of this building last Saturday. No one bothered to notify me, so now I have to find out whereinell it is. The folding screens cost a pretty penny, so I am quite upset.

    Out in the world, though, I’m happy for the good news about the Democratic women’s wins! That’s impressive. While watching the horrible volcano damage in Hawaii, I wondered how quickly the people in that state are going to get help. Probably faster than the American citizens in Puerto Rico.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond (oh, how I enjoyed the weird story on the news yesterday about the Mama Moose who shooed away a cyclist to protect her two little meese), and a terrible day to the corrupt Rethugs. The Hatchet Man is coming…

  4. Good morning, 62 and sunny in Bellingham. The leaves on my old maple trees are fully formed now and the sunlight shining on them reveals shades of green and shadows. My morning mediation :)

    My knees seem to be less creaky this morning so it’s time to go downstairs, find some coffee, and then sort out my day.

    Take care everyone.

  5. 68 with 100% humidity heading for mid 80s I think. Got 18 KWHs yesterday and m-t-d of 364 – still on track to make 500 for the month, as long as we generate at least 15 a day. It’s overcast at the moment but not so overcast that we shouldn’t make that.

    Trashed my eyes staying up for the elections last night. Some good wins in other states. In AR it was pretty much “well that was as expected” – we shall see what we shall see. Once I’ve managed to RT Denise’s Puerto Rico tweets I’d best get offline. Really messed up my eyes last night. Didn’t realize how badly until I started doing stuff online this morning. So I’ll see about working outside today. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  6. Somehow it became afternoon without me knowing it, but my desk is cleared and I even tackled a few one-of-these-days projects. Another late night/early morning for me, but this time it was an afternoon nap and a frivolous choice that kept me up. I had such a productive day at the sewing machine that any evening sewing was bonus sewing. So when I saw that Turner Classic Movies was showing four Nancy Drew movies from the 1930s, I watched those while pinning garments (and the occasional run into the sewing room). I was a huge Nancy Drew reader when I was a kid and somehow never knew about the movies from the 30s. I’ve also read some of the original Nancy Drew stories from the 30s, in addition to the “updated” versions from my youth or even the current stories; the original Nancy was quite a bit feistier and independent than later versions, so I had high hopes for the movies.

    Sadly, Hollywood gave the audience their own version of Nancy – the one who screamed at seeing a frog, leaned on Ted (their name for Ned) to do all the “manly” or “hard” stuff, and used her “feminine wiles” to
    [be manipulative and] get her way. They also threw in the obligatory shuckin’ and jivin’ black character actors, because apparently River Heights is all-white except when “comic” relief is necessary. I don’t regret staying up, because now my curiosity is assuaged, but it was eye-opening to discover that Original Nancy was too independent for 1930s filmmakers.

    I’m still trying to catch up on all the election news from last night (thanks to all here who provided information), but I followed enough to know that the candidates I liked did well and that there wasn’t a precipitous drop off in turnout. Most of marginally-political friends are way more focused on the arrival of warm weather and their summer plans, but to a person, they are all committed to voting in the primaries and in November. As I said elsewhere, they’ll never register on an excitement meter for politics, but they will grimly, but reliably, enter the voting booths in August and November.

    • This…

      I don’t regret staying up, because now my curiosity is assuaged, but it was eye-opening to discover that Original Nancy was too independent for 1930s filmmakers.

      …is exactly why we need more women film directors, producers, and scriptwriters.

    • {{{DoReMI}}} – the 30s did what our culture always does during Depression/Recession – shoved women and minorities into the most subservient and helpless roles they could invent. And I do mean invent. Stupid and tasteless, too. Check out women’s fashions – including the palette offered – in hard times v. good times. You’ll see longer hemlines, higher necklines, and very muddy colors that nobody can look good in. About the only woman character I can think of who got stronger on the big screen than in the book was Jane in the Tarzan movies. Burroughs’ Jane was beautiful, relatively smart if not particularly logical, but while brave (sort of) she fainted just about every time she was startled! (Of course that could have been the fault of Victorian corsets but he didn’t go into that.) For everyone else, the best you could get was “madcap” or quirky like Nora Charles in the Thin Man series.

      Glad your friends will reliably vote in primaries and general elections. They can be as grim as they like about it as long as they do it. moar {{{HUGS}}}

    • The highlight from the video says it all: “I’d be honored to be the first, but it is more important that I am not the last.”

      This is a winnable race in Texas – the CD went for Hillary and the Republican congressman there only won by 1%. Gina Ortiz Jones is one of the many Obama Administration “alumni” running for public office in 2018.

  8. “Evans focused on the conventional strategy of the Democratic Party: winning back rural white voters who were once party loyalists. Her focus was intentionally on the Hillbilly Elegy set. The Obama-to-Trump crew. Abrams, instead, bucked the party’s big bet, and stitched together a multiracial coalition of voters, and placed her bet on their turnout.”

    • This article in important because it talks about a strategy forward that doesn’t rely on kicking oppressed minorities and women to the curb in order to win elections (p.s. that won’t work). The Abrams plan ties into what a lot of us have been saying for a long time – we outnumber them but we don’t vote! I disagree that the Democratic Party strategy is “winning back rural white voters who were once party loyalists”, though. What I have seen is less Strategy From On High than allowing the people on the ground to formulate a local strategy. That worked in Wisconsin in a state senate seat in northern Wisconsin, it worked in Virginia in their wash-the-Republicans-away wave election. But old formulations die hard (and the freaking DCCC doesn’t do us any favors with their thumbs on the scale) so we have to remind people to look at every race without the blinders.

      p.s. WhiteRevolution taking credit for the Abrams win is one of the funniest things to come out of this primary cycle. That the person who they – along with dozens of Democratic GOTV organizations – endorsed won has nothing to do with their endorsement.

      • Actually we were afraid the WhiteRevolution endorsement was going to hurt her. But Hillz stepped up, as usual, and I’m sure that helped. It usually does.

  9. Good morning, meese! Thursday …

    It is 61 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 82. The heat index will be 93 so air conditioning is in my future. Yesterday it got to the edge of discomfort with just open windows – today I won’t even bother trying to use outside air to cool the house.

    The NFL gave Trump and his base a big win by bowing to the white nationalist pressure to shut down black protests. Someone suggested that instead of kneeling, the players should do the Wakanda greeting as their protest. It would show whether the problem was the “kneeling” or the “being black while protesting.” It is not surprising to me that 53% of Americans think that there should be no kneeling. :(

    By the way, anyone who thought that North Korea was doing anything but playing to the narcissism of Donald J. Trump to expose his ignorance was an idiot. I must say that, like calling Trump a dotard, their attacks on Mike Pence are quite fun!

    See all y’all later!

    • A little closer to home, the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team issued this statement about the treatment of one of their players for “walking to his car while black.“:

      The abuse and intimidation that Sterling experienced at the hands of Milwaukee Police was shameful and inexcusable. Sterling has our full support as he shares his story and takes action to provide accountability. Unfortunately, this isn’t an isolated case. It shouldn’t require an incident involving a professional athlete to draw attention to the fact that vulnerable people in our communities have experienced similar, and even worse, treatment. We are grateful for the service of many good police officers that courageously protect us, our fans and our city, but racial biases and abuses of power must not be ignored. There needs to be more accountability. The Milwaukee Police Department and local officials have acknowledged the challenges they are working to address, and we urge them to enact higher standards and more direct accountability. We all want to be able to trust each and every officer serving to protect us. Incidents like this remind us of the injustices that persist. As an organization, we will support Sterling and build on our work with local leaders and organizations to foster safe neighborhoods and better our community.

      I lived for nearly 30 years in the Milwaukee area – one of the most segregated cities in America – and the police department there has always been a nest of racism. One evening, back in the late 70s, I was leaving a downtown bar and saw the police beating up a black man in the parking lot. That was before every phone was a video camera and certainly before anyone would feel safe reporting an incident like that. Just google “harold breier” who was Milwaukee’s literal “chief for life” during the 60s, 70s and 80s.

    • this makes a good point about the NFL players:

      • Excellent point! Thank you for sharing that. In fact, after every game, there is always a group of players from both teams who gather in a prayer circle – and kneel! – on the field. I don’t see anyone getting bent out of shape about that. Because “God” is okay – protecting black bodies, not so much.

        From what I understand, the players are working on coming up with a different way to protest. In theory, the teams – and the NFL – can set rules for the workplace; for example, your employer can set a dress code and standards of behaviour. Just because the workplace is the public forum doesn’t change that. The kneeling has worked to bring attention to the problem – now it is just a flashpoint for the jingoism of the Trump Administration and the butthurt white people who hate that we had a black president. We shouldn’t give them an easy target for their hatred!

  10. Thursday Meese – just popping in – will bbl after I finish keyboard pounding

  11. Hi! I’m back! I don’t know why I couldn’t sign in while I was away, I know I know my password, but every time I tried to sign in, it said I was wrong.

    Omg, that alarm was so early this morning. Eating breakfast (frozen breakfast bowl I bought before I left — it’s not bad), drinking tea. I have some tumeric pills, tumeric kombucha, and I’m taking tylenol. Hoping that’ll be enough for the muscle aches. I stood for way, way, waaaaaaay too long on Tuesday. First, outside the venue hoping for a glimpse of the band going in. Adam was the only one who stopped & that just for a minute. Then the concert itself. I was at the rail, best possible place, which meant I didn’t dare move. It was amazing.

    As soon as I figure out why I’m having such trouble posting pictures at DK, I’m going to do a diary. It gets stuck about 1/3 of the way through on a lot of them, and it also tries to double-post the comment with the picture. Maybe I should upload them all to my Amazon account? It tells me I have a place to put pictures….

    • Welcome back!

      The problem with the password being denied is that the remembered password gets mixed up in a bunch of other things on your device/computer. At least once a month, I need to go into the settings and clear the password and cookies for the Moose. Then it lets me start over.

    • Hi, another, hope you had a great time!

      Hi! I’m back! I don’t know why I couldn’t sign in while I was away, I know I know my password, but every time I tried to sign in, it said I was wrong.

      I’ve never been able to get the Moose on my iPad, so I’m afraid I’ll be incommunicado for the whole weekend of 1-3 June.

      • I think that is related to the security certificate issue. What browser do you use, Safari? I can test it from my iPad (which I only use for testing) and see if there is a workaround.

        • Yes, Jan, my iPad uses Safari, possibly one of the worst browsers ever invented.

          I’m not technologically “ept,” so I can’t switch browsers and make all the other adjustments I’d need to make to make the iPad usable.

        • Jan – I hadn’t noticed your question yesterday. My phone uses Samsung internet, and my Kindle uses Silk. Both of them told my my password was wrong, even though I know my password. I have a system so I’ll remember them.

    • {{{ad}}} – glad you had a wonderful time, welcome home, and Healing Energy for the muscle aches and stuff. I’m over 6 months gone from DK so things may have changed, but I always had to load my pictures via the Kos Image Library to get them to take. Good luck. moar {{{HUGS}}}

  12. Good moaning, Meese! It’s a beautiful Thor’s Day here in Ashburn. Dearly Beloved, awakening far too early, saw a deer in the woods and heard the three turkeys gobbling. I’m going to have start getting up early. That melatonin cream I bought to rub into the old visage at night works so well I sleep straight through!

    This morning I’m moaning about grizzlies being allowed to be murdered by stupid-ass hunters. What kind of people get a kick out of killing wild animals? Can’t they find something to watch on TV?

    It was interesting to read in the Washington Poop this morning that activists are beginning to push back against the idea of Amazon establishing a second HQ in our area. Apparently the DC-MD-VA area is among the top 10 locations being considered. All those jobs would be a boon, but the rents? Already sky-high in DC. The traffic? Already worse than dismal in Virginia, and probably in Maryland too.

    The lack of affordable housing is a huge problem of our time.

    I need to take that dreadful little dog for a walkies before it gets much hotter. Oh, I forgot, besides being beautiful, this morning it’s 68 F. in Ashburn, going up to 83 F. later. Lovely!

    P.S. The Smell Report. The SMELL is almost gone. Yesterday I bought a spray bottle of Four Monks White Vinegar, soaked a dish towel in it, and laid it over the affected spot. I have to sniff really hard to smell it now but occasionally there seems to be a faint whiff. Hurrah for white vinegar and hurrah for the monks! My husband remarked sourly that monks didn’t have much to do with their time other than thinking up new ways to use vinegar. LOL!

  13. Good morning Meese. I arrived safely in Memphis last night and made the drive to Oxford without any problems. Planning to drive back up to Memphis to check out the Civil Rights Museum and meet a friend over fried chicken.

    • {{{basket}}} – glad you made it safely. Drive carefully and enjoy your museum trip & lunch with friend. Fried chicken sounds lovely – I haven’t had any in years. sigh. moar {{{HUGS}}} & see you Monday evening (when we might have roast chicken but not fried chicken – LOL).

  14. 67, humidity 100%, supposedly heading for 80 and at least it’s sunny at the moment. Rain moved in around lunchtime yesterday, I had to shorten my pre-lunch walk, and so we only got 8 KWHs. The m-t-d is 372 – gonna have to average 16 a day for the rest of the month to reach that 500 goal.

    Election news is at least relatively good – and hopeful in that it seems Team Blue is showing up at the polls in larger numbers than “usual”. If Team Blue continues this, we’ll get Congress back and start blocking and even repairing the damage. Fundraiser news, well the folks I’ve been helping/trying to help, is at least stable. Not so good news about one of the on-going (due to severe health issues) – maureenmower has died. We don’t have details, just that a cousin who knew she was active on DK signed in to let folks know & DoReMI DM’d about her. Apparently she died in the motel she was staying at since being evicted from the boarding house. I’m worried about her cats, too. They’ve been with Maureen since before their eyes were open, she bottle-raised them. Definitely not the resolution we’d all been hoping for.

    Eyes are still bothering me and I’m having trouble focusing so I’d best finish my online check-in routine then get off again. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Oh, how AWFUL! The poor woman! I had thought she was making it OK after the latest fundraiser. Oh, the poor, poor thing. I hope someone will take her cats. What a sad life poor Maureen had. May she rest in peace. She shouldn’t have had to go through what she went through.

      Hope your eyes will get better, bfitz.

      • Diana, there is so much just wrong about Maureen’s situation. Goddess alone knows if she actually could get to a good space from where she was at by the time the bastid landlord threw her out on 5/8 – but there were so many points over the last 20 months that IF the various agencies that are theoretically supposed to help people in trouble actually had our boost would have put her back in a relatively comfortable and sustainable situation. She really shouldn’t have had to live through what she lived through.

        My eyes are at least better enough I can wear my glasses today. {{{HUGS}}}

    • We’re working on the kitties; one of the Villagers will be calling the local SPCA, where they apparently ended up. We just hope it’s not too late, since it’s not clear when they were taken there. I’m also concerned about the cousins, two of whom have dropped in at DK. Maureen was the only child of the youngest of nine sibs, and she was the youngest of 42 cousins. They are clearly very shaken, and I can only hope that seeing the diary on the rec list will give them some peace. I hope one of them gets the quilt that the sisters just completed; someone mentioned that it should be given to the son, but I’m not sure he’d fully understand or appreciate it.

      • {{{DoReMI}}} – last I heard there’d been contact w/ the shelter & the person who responded said she’d look for them this morning. Meowsker is going to take them once they’re confirmed found & DK Peeps are organizing transportation. As to the quilt, it should go to one of the cousins. The son obviously doesn’t understand or he’d have been the one who checked google for Maureen’s friends and let us know. I know the DK response has comforted the 2 cousins who’ve logged in to DK and commented. moar {{{HUGS}}}

  15. Good morning, 57 and raining in Bellingham. I’ve been working away at a more simple gardening plan and yesterday I finally made some progress. I’ve found pot liners for several big pots so I can just take them with me to the garden shop and they will plant them for me. I’ll chose the color scheme and one of two feature plants and they will do the rest. I’ll plant the pots on the back entrance patio, continuing to use ferns and perennials and just a few begonias for color. And I found a bargain priced hanging basket to just set into another large pot….looks like I planted it myself!

    It’s a relief to have a manageable plan and a gardening experience I can enjoy again.

    Best wishes to all.

    • That sounds wonderful, princesspat! I just bought a Boston fern for the screened porch. Trying to think what else would go with the dormant orchid and the little pot of parsley.

      Your potted garden will be glorious!

  16. Friday Meese
    53 going up to 88 here in NY.
    Trying to follow all the revolting at Our Devolution is tiring. Frankly – those who have left and those still staying are all still spouting the Burned ideology and don’t seem to realize that is the foundation of their problems.
    Oh well.

    This creep has got to go

    • I just followed Nancy Soderberg, the garbage human’s opponent, and retweeted her reply to him.

  17. Good Freya’s Day morning, Moose! Truly, it’s as lovely a morning as Freya Herself. There’s a golden glow of sunrise behind the woods and outdoors there is a lovely “summer smell,” composed of thick dew on lush grass, growing things, and flowers. When I smell it every year I know that summer has truly arrived.

    Woke up far too early this morning, but that’s OK. Hoping for a peaceful day both at home and abroad.

    Tonight I’m going to a play performed by the Ashby Ponds players. I hope it’ll be funny. I’m not in the mood for heavy drama.

    A week from today I’ll be flying to Texas, and there’s a lot to do to get ready. Will be back later to say hello. Take care, Moosepeeps!

  18. Good morning, meeses! Friday …

    It is 68 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 84. Sunny this morning with a chance of thunderstorms this afternoon.

    It looks like the immigration discharge petition in the House will get the necessary votes to bring some DACA bills to the floor. The process is a bit odd – there are three bills and each will be voted on. The one that gets the most votes passes and is sent to the Senate. I have to dig into the details but I think that there are two that we could live with. Trump said he won’t sign one without border wall money and for the life of me I can’t understand why Democrats would kill off DACA protections for something that can be so easily undone when we regain power. Yes, the wall sucks but this is life and death – protect DACA now, defund the freaking wall later! One of the bills being voted on is the Goodlatte bill that will protect no one and dramatically alter our immigration system for the worse. A compromise bill will pass the Senate and possibly get signed but the first step is to get a bill out of the House.

    I am trying to ignore the embarrassing spectacle unfolding over the North Korea summit. It was submarined by Bolton and Pence – for Trump to put those two in charge of belligerating and then profess surprise that NK would leave the talks is simply bullshite. The plan under Bolton is to go to war with North Korea to get regime change, period. Our allies, by the way, have every right to never work with us again. We are a terrible partner and deserve nothing but scorn.

    See all y’all later!

  19. I have a diary started at DK, but wrestling with placement of the photos & text. I put in a question to the help desk, nothing I’ve tried will move the text to the right place. I tried typing the text, then putting the pictures in, put the pictures didn’t go where I wanted, and the text is not by the right picture. I’ve tried it on my laptop at home, on my phone with the Samsung browser, and on the desktop at work. I wanted to have it up this morning, but that’s not going to happen. Repeating Lin-Manuel Miranda’s morning tweet from yesterday:

    <blockquote>Gmorning.Sometimes there are garbage trucks blocking every road.
They’re doing their job & so are you.
Peace to the garbage trucks & the folks just doing their job,
Peace to a world that sometimes puts us at cross purposes,
& peace to you, on your way, in as long as it takes.</blockquote>

    Since I discovered his morning & evening tweets, they are something I cling to on days when stuff is going wrong.

    Today’s the vote in Ireland on repealing the abortion ban, hope it goes as well as the gay marriage vote.

    Here’s Lights of Home from the show I was at. Love the line: “hey, I’ve been waiting to get home a long time”

    • The only solution I’ve found at DK that works for me is to click on the photo so it is highlighted, then go up to the toolbar and press the button for centering (as opposed to a flush left or flush right margin). Does my explanation make sense to you?

  20. 70 with 97% humidity and sunny at the moment. Unfortunately we’re getting afternoon rainshowers which means the best of generating time isn’t happening. I got 14 KWHs yesterday which is a lot better than the 8 of the day before but the m-t-d is still under 400 (386.8) and we’re gonna have to get several 20+ days to reach the 500/month goal.

    Yesterday was rough – answering a lot of folks’ questions about Maureen as best as I know the answers. Mostly backstory, how she got into the situation, why she wasn’t getting help (well, everybody knows the answer to that – deplorable govt refusing help to folks who need it). We still don’t know what she died of – there are so many choices considering the situation she was in – or what’s happened with her cats. Or even the exact day she died – her cousin who gave us the word only knows what was sent out to the family which is pretty much just that she died in the motel. Thank Goddess Above and Below she’s out of pain now – 7 on a scale of 10 was a “good” day for her these last several months.

    We’re probably gonna have rain again this afternoon – wish I could send it 500 to 700 miles west where it’s desperately needed – so need to get some yard work done before it hits. Gonna visit the internets and get coffee then get out and about. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

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