Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Aug. 5th through Aug. 11th

August 4, 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!
 
 

 

58 Comments

  1. Good “morning”, Motley Meese! The week begins …

    Morning low of 72 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 88. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Good morning meese from Kissimmee, FL where it is currently 75 with a projected high of 90, but I don’t quite believe it. Bfitz and I are doing well although we haven’t figured out wifi yet so I’m checking in using my phone.

    • Thanks for checking in! Sunday of Netroot Nation is usually pretty quiet with people sleeping in after a raucous night of partying, up early to get one last event in, or already heading home. But it was a little eerie seeing no one at check-in. :)

  3. Good morning, Moosekind! Got to leave in 40 minutes to go canvassing for Jennifer Wexton. It’s a lovely morning for canvassing, thank Goddess, after the rain we had all week. The current temperature in Ashburn is 66 F., going up to 89 F.

    All is not well at home on the range. We woke up to find that the dog had peed AGAIN, this time on the carpet in the dining area, and my printer won’t work. There is paper in it. It is connected to the Mac and to power. There is no jam. The router is working, flashing merrily in the corner where it lives. It worked just fine yesterday! As you can imagine, I’m feeling a little bitchy this morning.

    On Friday at the Writers’ Group meeting a woman shared a story about her life and it turned out she was born in Bellingham, Washington, in 1944! I must tell her about my friend, princesspat, who lives there.

    Hope all will be well at the Moose Pond today!

    • I hope your day gets better! Maybe when you meet all the wonderful people planning to enthusiastically vote for Jennifer Wexton it will make your day. :)

      For what it is worth, I hate wireless printers. I have spend hours trying to get them successfully connected and their working-notworking seems random. I hope you can figure it out!

    • Hi Diana……we moved to Bellingham in 1970, and our house was built in 1910. We live in the South Hill neighborhood, overlooking Bellingham Bay. We were at a memorial service for one of Ron’s WWU colleagues last weekend and another speaker reminisced about their life long friendship beginning in 1944. Bellingham was a small town then so it’s interesting to share memories.

      • It sounds delightful, princesspat! A house with that long a history would be worth writing a story about. (Ugh, excuse my syntax, I’m tired.)

      • My husband was born in Bellingham (well before 1970!), but he grew up in Mt. Vernon. When he was still in the Navy, we tried desperately to get orders to Whidbey. It was a popular place to request…too popular in our case, because there was never an opening when he was up for orders. We ended up sticking with the Midwest (my stomping grounds) instead, but I would have happily moved to WA if the opportunity had afforded itself.

  4. I’ll help Dee before I go offline for the day:

  5. Checking in using someone’s phone as a “hot spot” until we can get the wifi fixed. basket and I are here and looking forward to spending time together as well as the whole Disney World thing. I gotta find some food though before I get sick. See everybody later. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  6. Had a whole comment typed when my computer decided I had told it to back up to the previous page (narrator voice: “I hadn’t told it any such thing”). Anyway, yesterday’s grocery shopping took longer than it should have. Now, I’m doing laundry & waiting for Joy Reid’s show. Today’s song: sweet, mellow Life On Earth. Love this video, with spacemen and babies. Especially the last moments, with the toddler talking to the one that’s not here yet, saying “come play with me”
    This is not love you had before
    This is something else
    This is something else
    This is not the same as other days
    This is something else
    This is something else
    Shouldn’t need to be so f*cking hard
    This is life on earth
    It’s just life on earth
    It doesn’t need to be the end of you, or me
    This is life on earth It’s just life on earth

  7. Good morning, 64 and mostly sunny in Bellingham. My knees are telling me to take it easy in the garden today so I’ll try to behave! I may move my messy desk stacks to the patio table and see if I can get the work done and still be outside. The wifi connection usually works outdoors but on sunny days the screen is hard to see. I’m also easily distracted :)

    Best Sunday wishes to all.

  8. Good morning, meeses! Monday …

    It is 68 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 77. It is raining now (with occasional lightning and thunder) and could rain off and on all day.

    Here is a pretty good timeline of the “Trump Admits He Lied” story from the New Yorker: The Day Trump Told Us There Was Attempted Collusion with Russia. It ties the story back to August 5, 1974 which was the day that Richard Nixon’s lies unraveled. The difference, of course, between then and now is that now there is no Republican Party that is interested in the protecting the rule of law. There really has not been since the use of impeachment power was perverted by Republicans to become a bludgeon to use against people whose politics they disliked. There is no putting that toothpaste back in the tube. Anyway, the headline from my paper this morning (a right-leaning rag) “Trump Tells A New Story.” Zing!

    Tomorrow is a special election in Ohio that will test Trump coattails and primaries in Kansas and Michigan that will test the strength of the “Identity is Not a Dirty Word” wing of the Democratic Party. Fingers crossed!

    See all y’all later!

  9. Good morning Meese
    Got back really late last night from Netroots Nation
    I’m dragging – so I will talk about it tomorrow – need moar coffee

  10. Ah, Monday morning. Hot & sticky — but by the end of the week, we might get rain! I don’t like my new tea concentrate as well as the old one, but I’ll get used to it. Apparently I was the only one buying the old one so it was discontinued. I may try to start walking before work this week. Maybe. Anyway, here’s You’re The Best Thing About Me, a happy, dance-y song. It comes from someone Bono & Ali (his wife) were having dinner with — he said to B that Ali was the best thing about him.

    • another, it was the FBI who took your tea concentrate away. They follow me around too and take away products I like. Lately I’ve been completely unable to find tiny organic crackers with cheese filling at Trader Joe’s. Little people love them, but now when they visit, Grandma’s cupboard is bare. The FBI has taken away products whose loss I’m still mourning. Sniff. Haven’t they anything better to do?

      • It was locally made, and just delicious. I’m glad their bottled tea is still available, but no commercial tea is ever strong enough for me. I make a big pot of really strong tea – about 12 bags for a 9 cup pot – and put the concentrate in that. On days when I haven’t slept well, I’ll put in a few spoons of instant as well. I like strong tea.

  11. Good morning, Moosekind! It looks like a fair Monday, although it will be very hot. The current temperature is 69 F., going up to 91 F. Early this morning, while taking Monty to his “business meeting” in the courtyard, I saw a sliver of moon for the first time in weeks.

    Yesterday I went to campaign HQ just down the road. A very nice woman who appears to be a full-time community activist agreed to let me go with her to canvass, as I don’t know much about the neighborhood. She knew even less (she lives in DC, for Goddess’ sake!), and Google Maps appeared clueless.

    We finally found the neighborhood, however, and started doing our stuff. Even at 11 a.m. it felt like a million degrees outside, with the heat and humidity. At the risk of sounding like a nasty person (not far from the truth, actually), I was quite glad that most people were either not at home or pretending to be not at home. I’m an introvert who hates talking to people, hates disrupting their at-home time, etc., etc. However, canvassing beats phonebanking, which I loathe even more. We did talk to one Hispanic couple who actually answered the door, were enthusiastic supporters of the Democratic party, willing to volunteer to talk to Spanish-speaking citizens, and wanted a yard sign. That made our day.

    I really do not know the best way to reach voters but I’d go out on a tree limb to say that with all the robocalls, scams, and the fact that the majority of people in this country have cell phones with caller ID, phonebanking is a lousy way to connect. Canvassing is a little better, as it’s face to face interaction if someone actually does answer the door. It’s still intrusive, though. I’ve heard scorn poured on postcards, but I was very touched when I received a handwritten postcard about an upcoming election. I didn’t need the reminder to vote, but appreciated that someone had actually sat down and written to me.

    Was going to go on a bus tour of Ashburn this morning but will have to cancel. I’ve never been to the town. However, I’ve got a tiresome eye checkup that will require an hour of driving there and another hour back. What a nuisance.

    Hoping it’s a good day for all at the Pond and a bad day for everyone at the Kremlin Annex!

    • I know that I don’t answer my phone when I don’t know the number. Actually, with my mom & best friend both gone, I haven’t even looked at the “phone” part of my phone in months. I know it’ll just be bill collectors. The last time I was actually at home when a canvasser knocked, I was in the middle of cooking & had my hands full of food. Awkward conversation when you can’t shake hands or take the brochure.

      • Yes, it’s very awkward being interrupted when you’re right in the middle of something, even if you like what the caller is saying. I wish there were a better way!

    • I agree about phonebanking. I sucked it up and phonebanked in Wisconsin for two days before the general election in 2016 and my 2010 phonebanking PTSD flared up. Most of the numbers were wrong, half the people had moved, and the other ones were irritated that I was calling. I never pick up unknown phone numbers and I am not unique in that.

      I am not sure why people are so against mailings. I like getting a card with the candidates’ positions and a list of their endorsements. I save them and sort through them when it is time to vote – supplementing it with information from the Internet if something isn’t clear. You have to have a mailing address in order to vote so it is much more accurate than long disconnected phone numbers.

      • Lisa and Ryan phone banked from Rep Pramila Jayapal’s Seattle office yesterday, and were impressed how the session was organized. They brought their own phones and computers, were connected to a program giving them names and a call script. The program did the dialing, they completed the report, then another call was dialed. The first hour was in support of local voting, the second for a Dem candidate in Michigan.

        I have a hard time making phone calls because it seems intrusive, but that may be reflective of my age. Lisa noticed younger people were more responsive. We voted last night and I forgot to put my ballot in the security sleeve before sealing the envelope. So I opened it, corrected my error, and included a note as to why the envelope was now taped shut. I hope my ballot will be counted.

      • Yes, mailings contain information for people who aren’t as clued in as we are and either don’t have time to go to the website or have no interest in doing so. I didn’t understand why the brochures we left yesterday weren’t doorhangers! We left them with one corner under the welcome mats so they wouldn’t blow away.

    • I think postcards were once snubbed as too old school, but I think their resurgence (and the creativity that is encouraged) is a good thing. I get at least three calls a day from a DC area code; I assume it’s probably DCCC, but I’m not answering while I’m at work and am giving any funds to individual campaigns anyway. But if I ever received a postcard, it would make my day.

  12. Good morning, 61 and sunny in Bellingham. I lost the battle of replacing the elastic in a fitted sheet yesterday….to much stretch, not enough stretch, lost the end, now it’s twisted, yikes! I really like the sheets so I’ll try again later today.

    Time to find coffee, my swim suit, and my smile! Take care everyone.

    • Have you tried doing it on the outside of the inside (if that makes sense)? It’s not going to be seen anyway, so that may save you a few battles.

      • That’s my fall back plan. I have better control just sewing over the elastic with a wide zig zag stitch but getting the stretch right is the challenge. I was just using pins yesterday (lazy me) but today I’ll stitch both ends and the center first. Then I can stretch the elastic and hopefully keep it in the fold and not twist it or lose it :)

  13. Good morning, Meesefolk! 75 when I got up with a high of 86 today. Severe storms are expected for the western side of the state today, but if things run true to form, they’ll peter out by the time they move to the eastern side. This weekend it was hot and humid enough that I was looking for non-sweat-inducing ways to keep busy; by Sunday, I was reduced to wrapping Christmas presents. Ah well, at least it’s done, and now when the gifts are opened, I’ll be as surprised as the recipients!

    Primary day tomorrow here in MI, and I am so ready! Checked the sample ballot, know who I’m going to vote for, have a plan as to when I’ll vote…I’m rarely this organized, but I’ve been waiting for 2018 since November 9, 2016. Now I just have to hope that MI Dem voters are as smart as me ;D

  14. Gawd, I miss this guy. Do you think we will ever again have a smart eloquent decent person to represent us and our values on the world stage?

    • Sigh. “So clean,” old Uncle Joe Biden once murmured. (I am not a fan of Uncle Joe, people, for several reasons.)

      I miss him too, and his smart, beautiful, health-oriented wife, and his two delightful daughters. I wonder what happened to her organic vegetable garden. Thing does not believe in keeping pets (too lower class, in his opinion), so what happened to the garden? Did he turn it into a miniature golf course?

      • There were some photo ops of Melania in the garden this past week I think wearing shoes that belied her actual “gardening activities.” The garden looked good! It is possible that some of the White House kitchen staff are keeping it tended so that it is available to Nancy Pelosi when she is sworn in as President next year. :)

      • I am not fond of Uncle Joe either. He is permanently tainted by his DudeBro Anita Hill days. Plus, I have no interest in voting for anyone older than me again – it is time to turn the country over to the youngs and take our chances. I think they will do fine.

  15. Tuesday Meese

    71 here in Saugerties NY going up to 90 with rain. I’m still dragging – worn out from the trip to Netroots Nation.

    Will be avidly watching primary results tonight – have been following the Sharice Davids race in KS against the invasion of the Bros. I hope she can pull it off.

    The tone and tenor of a lot of the skimpy coverage of Puerto Rico is now in full blown blame the victim mode – starting with so-called ally David Begnaud.

    What many people forget, or overlook, or don’t understand is that PR is a colony – with all the ills that befall any colony that has no real authority to make sane decisions. Was looking at a piece about heath care on the island which blamed the debt crisis and PR mismanagement.

    This Kaiser piece points out the real problem

    I’m not advocating for statehood – but for equity to citizens

    If Puerto Rico were a state, the federal government would pay 83 percent of Medicaid costs. (It pays upward of 70 percent of Medicaid expenses in 10 states, according to a formula that takes a state’s economy into account.) But because of a 1968 law capping the amount of Medicaid money Washington sends to U.S. territories, the federal government pays only about 19 percent, as a fixed annual payment — a so-called block grant.

    Colonial subjects are inherently second class citizens

    • I saw those Begnaud tweets and was confused! He had been such a staunch ally, getting the word out when no one else was reporting. Discouraging.

      • He has done this before – he gets a lot of applause for being there – the only white face – however he has posted pieces that toe the government line like a stenographer – rather than an investigative journalist.
        People doing investigative journalism – all of whom are Puerto Rican have been pretty much ignored.

    • By the way, the attacks on Emily’s List are berning my last nerve. When no one cared about reproductive rights – when women were told to shut up and vote for the men – they built an organization that found women candidates who would be unflinchingly pro-choice and put in place a way to get money to them to run successful campaigns. In 1996, my first political contribution was to a candidate via Emily’s List, a woman running in Wisconsin CD-01 who was the last Democrat who came close to taking that district back (it has been Republican since Newt’s Contract on America back in 1994 after being Democratic for several decades). She had the money to run a good campaign against an incumbent and came within 2 points. TheirRevolution and the Old White Misogynist can kiss my patootie. I stand with Emily’s List.

      • Yeah – mine too. The Burnouts and their toxic combo of racism/sexism/elitism drive me up a wall – and their new tool Ocasio-Cortez is pissing me off

        • I had high hopes for her because she said all the right things about the Democratic Party and running local campaigns. Then she pivoted to #BernieOrBust and insinuated herself in local campaigns using the same tired rhetoric of the WriteOffTheSouth and WomenCanWaitWhatsTheBigDealAboutForcedBirth and WallStreetSpeechesTrumpHumanLives coming from the Bernie For Bernie Party.

    • Dee, if we get a Democratic house and before too long, a Democratic Senate…

      I want a permanent Democratic majority for the rest of our lives. Can you imagine where we’d be with respect to the environment if the Supremes had ruled in favor of Al Gore, who won the popular vote? We’d be driving electric cars, thousands of people here and in Iraq would still be alive, and so on. Puerto Rico might even have had a renewable energy system that would withstand hurricanes.

      Please take it easy today, Sis! Give yourself a break!

      • Wish I could – today is my BKos day – have to do some writing – and have to have my Sunday headline in

  16. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 63 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 79. Mostly sunny skies and muggy.

    Elections going on today! Thank goodness – it will take peoples attention off the As The Manafort Turns soap opera. Yes, it is good to get criminals indicted and – hopefully – convicted but California is burning up, the United States of America just cancelled their participation in an international agreement that had been negotiated in good faith to curtail the development of nuclear weapons and we are now a rogue nation.

    Michigan, Kansas, Washington State primaries – Ohio special election, Missouri Right-To-Work-For-Less repeal. Winning the Ohio special election would only be a symbolic victory (it fills a seat for 5 months) and not even likely to be a good test of what happens in November. Like Dee, I will be closely watching Kansas CD03. A good candidate there and one who generates enthusiasm can win that seat. The Kansas-side suburbs of Kansas City Missouri are filled with the white college-educated professionals – the demographic that has been unhappy with the Republican Party’s full embrace of nazis and KKK and led by the orange vomitsack in the White House.

    See all y’all later!

  18. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s ‘ot, ‘umid, and ‘orrible here in Ashburn. Last night we had a thunderstorm and shower that took me quite by surprise as I’d missed the weather reports. Thank Goddess I never got around to removing the cover from the porch furniture.

    Anyway, it’s 70 F. right now in Ashburn, on its way up to 90 F. This is a Walking Club morning but I’ve decided not to walk while the weather is so hot and humid. Don’t want to get hot and sweaty as I’ve got to dash over to a friend’s house for a fitting. She’s taking up a dress for me so I can wear it without needing a pageboy to hold up the hem.

    Saw the Lasik doctor yesterday, don’t need to see her again until November. Yay! Today I have to help with a first floor party. The guests will be from all five floors of our building. Dearly Beloved, who has been in a snit ever since I told him the party would be from 5 until 7, has predicted that no one will attend and that he will do so only because he feels sorry for me and the other organizer.

    These affairs are supposed to take place from 2 to 4 or 3 to 5 p.m. but the Russian woman who controls the appointment book wouldn’t give us the time we wanted. Duh. Glad I won’t have to do this again until January. Anyway, I hope this thing will be over by 7 because today happens to be Bobby Three Sticks’ birthday. To celebrate Robert Mueller’s birthday, the protesters at Lafayette Park across from the White House are organizing a big birthday cake and bagpipers! Can’t wait to watch it on line at 7:30.

    Miss Pink Cheeks is in camp this week, which means I won’t have her until next week. Wishing a good day to all meese (saw a video of a moose enjoying an underwater swim on FB yesterday), and a bad day to colluders and conspirators!

  19. Good morning meese. Really late check-in as wifi still isn’t sorted out; it needs the cable company to come in and replace their equipment. 85 feels like 95 now with a possibility of triple digits later. We had a good time yesterday at Leu Gardens and will be checking out Epcot today.

  20. I voted! It’s funny how there was once a time when I dragged myself to the polling place, but ever since 2008, I’ve been excited on voting day. I’d like to think I’m immune from the “a candidate must excite me” mindset, but I do think Obama was the first candidate ever to excite me about being a voter vs voting. It’s a powerful identity that I now embrace.

    The poll workers said numbers were up a bit for the time of day, but not an extraordinary amount. In my very red area, that’s probably good news. I’m hoping it means the closet Dems in my village were turning out. On the other hand, some jackass in line behind me was talking about how glad he was that ID was required so we didn’t end up “with illegal aliens voting like in CA.” I may have rolled my eyes and said, “Oh, brother” quite audibly. I can’t say that he heard, but if the snickers of the folks ahead of me were any indication, a few people did.

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