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!
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Good morning, Moosekind! It’s gloriously sunny now, but we must have had rain before dawn because there were still raindrops spattered against the windowpanes at 6 a.m. The temp. at the moment is 69 F., going up to 82 F. Must get out for a walk before the day gets much hotter. Dearly Beloved intends to drive to the British Consulate in DC to see about getting his British passport renewed. Although he’s American now, from the point of view of Her Majesty’s government, once a Brit, always a Brit.
Yesterday was so exhausting, what with the news, the long drive to and from Greenspring, and spending time with my friend, that I developed a headache and eye-twitch, so had to go to bed early. Jan’s advice about paying attention to PR and the border crisis is good.
Oh, before I forget—a blessed summer solstice to all here! It’s hard to believe that after today we’ll gradually start losing the light.
My friend Elizabeth Cunningham, author of the Maeve Chronicles, is sending a teddy bear to be given to an incarcerated child. I’m going to see about doing that today. If anyone wants to know the address, I’ll post it here.
Wishing a better day to all at the Pond and beyond except for the evil ones.
A Blessed Summer Solstice to you, too! I admit to being sad as I think about the light waning but every day marks being closer to the end of the Trump Era. May the Winter Solstice in December – and the return of the light – be celebrated for ushering in Democratic Party majorities in Congress in January 2019. I am fairly certain that the goddess would approve!
Well, here it is—I just lifted this from her Facebook post:
Maeve Rhuad
15 hrs ·
#meltICE With a return address of “Compassion and Mercy, Planet Earth,” Eliz mailed a Teddy Bear to:
An Immigrant Child Now Detained
c/o ICE 1777 NE Loop 410 Floor 15
San Antonio, Texas 78217
United States
The USPO official did not bat an eye.
Good morning, Meese. I’m up bright and early (?!) to wake my sister up in a few minutes so that we can head to the airport for our flight to Seattle. We’ll be staying there a day before going to Canada tomorrow!
{{{basket}}} have fun and safe travels. moar {{{HUGS}}}
69 with 100% humidity, cloudy and a breeze that’s making things feel chilly. At least to me. Hands aren’t happy but that’s normal. Rained yesterday & was cloudy most of the day. Only got 7 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 363.8 – definitely not going to get 600 for the month but at least have generated more than we did last year with all the system problems. So far the hardware and “firmware” fixes are holding. Meanwhile, I just got back from the Farmers Market. There are 6 gallons of blueberries in the freezer for next winter and another half gallon in the fridge for eating over the next 10 days. ????????????
Still devastated by what’s going on with the children. Aji’s been posting what this is really about underneath the sociopathic love of hurting people, especially brown people – genocide of the People, of the culture. Especially the babies and toddlers but also most of the girls and some of the boys are/were destined for adoption into RW fundie “Xtian” families to “save their souls” – just like “Xtians” have been doing to Natives for over 5 centuries now. The old “kill the Indian, save the man” routine that allows RW WASPs to get the sanctimonious self-righteousness of “saving a heathen soul” while at the same time getting free labor from the kid who by virtue of skin color will never actually be a full member of the family. (They used to do that to the Irish as well – it’s where the term “treated like a red-headed step-child” comes from.) But she also pointed out that ICE having gone full Nazi and numbered the kids combined with modern DNA tests mean we can return those kids. They aren’t lost. What we must do is keep the pressure up. Every single way we can put pressure on the Genocidal Old Party, including reminding hopefully thanking our Dems for keeping the pressure up, we need to do that until every last kid is restored, every last family is reunited.
So I’m not going to gratify Tom Cotton by calling his office, anything I’m upset about he rubs his hands in glee. I am about to call Boozman’s office and Womack’s office. Then get a walk in just in case it decides to rain again today. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 60 and raining in Bellingham. Our grand girls will be with today, so we’ll go to lunch at the bookstore because that’s what we do! If the rain continues we’ll need to be indoors the rest of the afternoon so I think I’ll ask them to help me sort family photos. I have my mother’s and grandmother’s photos stored in various boxes and suitcases so it would be good to have them more readily accessible. It’s a good way to share family history too.
Best wishes to all.
Friday Meese
51 going up to 81 here in NY
Puerto Rico
I saw the Puerto Rican governor meeting with the destroyers of democracy in the Oval Office! Does he think that sucking up to the Orange Orshole along with the awful Republican governors will help him? It created terrible optics – is he a Republican governor? Does he want the Medicaid repeal that Gov. Matt Bevins wants for Kentuckians to be part of a Puerto Rican recovery? The last-in-the-Midwest job growth that Gov. Scott Walker has in Wisconsin to be a path to the future? The blatant discrimination against people of color by every single man and woman in that room to be embraced by Puerto Ricans? What a tone deaf self-owning tool.
Ricky Rossello will probably get voted out of office in 2020
His suck up to Trump routine is not going over well
Good morning, meeses! Friday …
It is 61 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 66. Cloudy with rain is the forecast for a second day. Tomorrow it will clear up and we will have three lovely mid-70s days in a row.
There is no more clarity today than there was yesterday or earlier in the week related to what is going on at the border right now. I read a disturbing news story in USA Today that said that illegally crossing the border is a misdemeanor and results in a $10 fine and an escort back across the border. So we have a billion dollar enterprise to capture and house people and rip apart their families for that. It is no different than what they call “capture and release” except that now, between the capture and the release, the private prison business and grifting “social service” agencies make a ton of money and tRump gets his visuals of anguished brown people to feed his ravenous base. I was glad to see that the focus is still on finding the kids and reuniting them with their parents. That has to take priority.
The Republican’s hardline “immigration” bill failed to gain the votes of Republicans in the House and did not pass. Next they will try to pass the so-called compromise bill – compromising between conservative Republicans and less-conservative Republicans, Democrats have not been asked to participate – and it will also fail. The Republicans have shown that they cannot govern and hopefully, they will soon be shown the door.
See all y’all later!
Good morning, Moosekind! Dark and rainy this Friday morning in Ashburn, which is fine as long as some of the rain falls on my porch plants. Rain was falling lightly at half-past five this morning when I took the Badly Behaved Beagle out to the courtyard for a “business” meeting.
Must say that Ashby Ponds tries hard to please its residents. Yesterday one of the restaurants put on a “Hawaiian Luau Buffet,” complete with entertainment, fake leis for the dinner guests, and a Hawaiian-themed menu. It was rather fun.
Today will be busy with a visit to the post office, grocery store, and hairdresser. The Progressives’ Lunch is at high noon, and the Writers’ Group meets at three.
I hope the $14 million raised by the couple I read about will be spent on establishing a nationwide database and clearinghouse for matching DNA of the kidnapped children with the DNA of their parents. This isn’t the 19th century, for Goddess’ sake! We have the way, we just need the will.
Please, Goddess, let there be a blue tsunami in November! Let people not forget Puerto Rico’s plight, the plight of the children, the tax cuts for billionaires, and all the rest of it.
Can’t shake the uneasy feeling about a recession or worse happening next year, along with potential cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Those of us who depend on those things are going to be up a creek.
Wishing a peaceful Friday to all, with no 5 p.m. news dumps!
P.S. “Melanie” T—p is almost as ghastly as her spouse. Imagine wearing a jacket with a message like that to visit the border babies! On the other hand, the message might have been intended for him.
it was 102 in El Paso yesterday. Wearing any kind of jacket was definitely a choice.
I saw some murmurings from business analysts about the R word. If we do have a recession, it will be self-inflicted by rising gas prices (catering to the oil barons) and tariffs on imported goods (catering to the NAFTA-Is-Slavery crowd).
I think the jacket dust-up was a planned troll of libruls. People on the left are conflicted about Melania – torn between sympathy for Melania for being married to Trump and anger when we are reminded that she is a birther and probably has her husband’s hatred for The Other.
I think the Jacket was a deliberate attempt to get the focus off the kids with another OMGHOF about how crass, evil, thoughtless, etc flotus is. It worked too. The number of outraged “respectability politics” tweets from supposed progressives covered the twittersphere and those of us trying to keep the focus on the children had to fight them instead of the people who are actually doing it to the kids just to get the children back in the twitter streams.
Hot & sticky already at 6am. Thinking about people who walked 2,000 miles to get here & never got to be in an airconditioned building while doing so. This country isn’t worthy of such people. Before I get too dreary, here’s some Lin-Manuel for you:
found this gorgeous fan made video of Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way – they used clips from other things, I really like it, even having to look around the Spanish subtitles
this is wishful thinking, but it did my heart a lot of good
{{{ad}}} Well, there’s a reason W doesn’t travel abroad. It will at least be the same for the even more Deplorable twitler.
64, humidity at 98%, sunny but that breeze is still chilly enough I had to close the window by my computer. Got 22 KWHs yesterday, 2nd highest for the month, and the m-t-d is 385.8 so a good day today will take us over 400. Got more rain in the future so while I think we’ll get over 500, I’m not sure by how much. Highest I’ve gotten since I’ve had the system is 568 in June 2015.
The PC Left (to be polite about them) has the attention span of a puppy at a squirrel convention when it comes to anything except their talking points. Deplorable flotus wears a deplorable jacket with a deplorable message on it while doing a deplorable photo op visit to a deplorably fake child concentration camp and the twitterverse lights up with outrage. Pushing the tweets regarding actual kids in deplorable conditions at the real child concentration camps off the radar. I thinks we’re got it back – Goddess, I hope so. Those kids need to be reunited with their families. Period. I’ve just discovered the Friends are doing a 1-hour protest at the Courthouse today at noon. I’m going to check it out and see if it’s something I can do (and feel it’s worth doing). They plan on doing this weekly until the children are returned. We shall see what we shall see.
I need to do my internet rounds and get my walk in. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 60 and cloudy in Bellingham. The girls, my son and I enjoyed our day unpacking and sorting family photos and books yesterday, and my mind is still full of family memories this morning. It was good to be with the girls. I’m going to the pool this morning and then I’d best work at my desk, or else!
Best wishes to all.
Good afternoon, Meesefolk; 60 when I got up this morning, with an expected high of 72. The whole weekend is supposed to be that way, which is good news since I’ll finally be getting out to my gardens. I loved sewing costumes for the show in OH, but in retrospect, the timing was awful. I lost the entire month of May (and then some), and my gardens are showing the results of all that neglect. I’m hoping that by the end of the weekend, I’ll be able to see my perennials again, rather than just weeds. I may have to take a break long enough to either buy or build another compost bin, because yes, it’s really that bad. But now it’s time to get back to work…
:(
Saturday Meese
61 going up to 63 and raining here in NYS
Trump stages a press conference with families to continue to paint undocumented immigrants as murderers.
That “secure our borders” press conference was ghastly. I did not watch it (I can’t watch him – it is too soul crushing) but I caught the tweets recapping the events. How can it be comforting to have a person autograph the photo of your dead family member and then say “he certainly was handsome!”? I weep for our country that we have no consoler-in-chief, a position President Obama took seriously and executed with grace and dignity. For Trump there is no tragedy unless it injures his fragile ego and no bounds to his use of other people’s pain to promote his inhumane policies.
Charlie Pierce: “This Nation Is Beginning to Realize the Full Extent of What It Did to Itself in November 2016”
We can hope that the awakening at the border will make people more willing to advocate strongly for the other humanitarian crises this administration has created including the abandonment of Puerto Rico.
Thanks, Jan. I love Charlie Pierce!
However, I’m reading remarks here and there to the effect that all this makes the Rethugs love Thing more than ever and they’ll all be motivated to go to the polls because they hate little brown babies.
Jesus, what a country. I just hope there are more of OUR voters than there are of theirs at the polls. I learned at the Progressives’ Luncheon yesterday that the Dems considerably outnumbered Rethugs at the primary on June 12.
We have always outnumbered them but we don’t vote – or our side demands the purity candidate or else they will stay home!! Part of our “not voting” is that we are families with young children and people working two jobs and people who are infirm and can’t get to the polls or don’t have access to early voting. And of course our “not voting” is often because of onerous photo id requirements that people can’t meet. When we get power back, if our party does not spend every bit of political capital it has on protecting the right to vote, we will be guilty of political malpractice. The states cannot be left in charge of this most important right in a democracy, the right to choose our representatives.
Yes, his deplorable base is more motivated than ever but for every newly motivated Republican there will be a newly awakened Democratic Party voter. We can do this!!
Good morning, meeses! Saturday …
It is 59 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 79. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast.
Trump teed up immigration as his midterm campaign issue (“a red wave!”) daring Republicans to not run with him on it. Please proceed, Republican Party. It is a loser because the country has amnesia about a lot of terrible things that Republicans have done since they switched sides in the fight for human rights but there is no Vulcan mind meld that can clear out the images from the past week – including the massive flip flip of the bloated dotard in the White House – by November 6th. The election is in 135 days and it is our job to remind everyone that when they vote for Republicans, they vote to enable and encourage Trump.
The Democratic Party Weekly Address was by Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, an immigrant to our country and one who felt the heartache of family separation personally. I will get the Fighting Back post done later this morning or tomorrow.
Today I need to put my nose to the grindstone and get delayed projects completed or at least shaped into a realistic to-do list. Next week is the last week of June and I still have a stack of projects promised for April!
See all y’all later!
Good morning, Meese. Gray and rainy this morning in Ashburn, with a current temp. of 61 F. Our high will be 80 F. (with rain) today. Yesterday the high was 68 F.!
Younger Son and family decided not to go to the beach this weekend, so we are going to pick up the kids in a little while and take them out to breakfast. Then we’ll stop by Trader Joe’s.
I wish PR’s election were earlier so the Rethug-loving Rossello could be voted out. Even if we vote the Dems back in, there won’t be enough votes to help PR before the new lot is sworn in next January.
Not much going on today on the home front. Hope it will be a good day for all. Here it will be very moist. (Read that “moist” is the most hated word in the English language.)
Good morning meese. 53 going up to 72 in Vancouver, Canada. It was really hot in the PNW before we arrived in Seattle on Thursday but the weather seems to have wanted to cooperate to give my sister and I a break from the heat in Sacramento. Today should be mostly sightseeing and spending time with relatives.
{{{basket}}} – hope you and your sister have a fun time sightseeing and visiting relatives today. Enjoy the coolth while you’ve got it. moar {{{HUGS}}}
I love sleeping in on Saturdays. Got my grocery list together & coupons. I only need 4 lunches next week, they’re buying us pizza on Friday. Buying groceries is the only thing on the list for today. I have breakfast & beans thawing, will need to put the oatmeal in containers for next week, but that’s all. This Snow Patrol song was playing in my head when I woke up — which was confusing when my alarm went off, since it’s a U2 song.
68, 90% humidity, chilly breeze. The day broke to a beautiful azure sky but the clouds moved in by 8. Sigh. Did get 20 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 406 – we’ve got 8 days left in the month, counting today, to get it over 500. Very possible but not if the sky doesn’t clear – it takes sunshine to generate electricity.
Some progress on the kids – Border Patrol said (not sure I believe them but they said it) that all the kids in their custody would be reunited with family by yesterday evening. What they sort of forgot to mention is that would be the most recent 400 or so kids taken. After 3 days Border Patrol hands them off to other agencies and therefore well over 2000 kids are no longer in their custody. But we’ve got folks trying to force ICE & other agencies to give us the information needed to restore the kids to their folks. ICE has that information. Just not in the format it’s being asked for. We’re treating the children and families like human beings. We’re asking for names. ICE is treating them like commodities – using numbers. They have the records that this number kid goes with that number parent. Until they are forced to, they will not give up that information – hoping the interest will pass, a new OMGHOF will take our attention away from them and the kids – and then ICE will continue its child theft ring for the benefit of RW Xtian “placement” groups like the Devos-connected Bethany in Michigan. Evil, evil people. But we aren’t going to forget. We aren’t going to let the next Deplorable thing take our attention from the kids. Yes, we’ll deal with the next Deplorable thing as best we can. But we will keep after ICE until every kid is reunite with family.
They say it’s gonna rain today. I’d best get my walk in before it does. Bright the Day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}