Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: June 16th through June 22nd

June 15, 2019 JanF Community 90

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 (usually Saturday night with a Sunday date). 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!
 

 

45 Comments

  1. Good morning, 61 and mostly cloudy in Bellingham. I was distracted unraveling an online banking snafu yesterday and forgot to check in. My credit union has been very easy to work with, but the move to a new computer system and the decision to push “paperless” banking is creating problems for me. Thank goodness I kept the option to receive paper copies because that’s where the info I needed was found.

    Today is a busy housekeeping/laundry day.. My 2x’s a month housekeeper has been sick and I’ve just sort of kept up. She’ll be here tomorrow but I need to do my part today so she can do hers.

    Best wishes to all.

  2. Wednesday Meese. 69 going up to a rainy 79 here in NYS.

    Excellent interview with Kamala on Lawrence O’Donnell

    • Thanks for that! I have it up in a tab to watch later. I don’t watch cable news because I think it is the destroyer of democracy but when I used to, I think I didn’t mind Lawrence O’Donnell. I guess I will find out!

  3. Puerto Rico

  4. Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …

    It is 63 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 70. It is raining now and will be cloudy all day.

    I guess Donald Trump is running against Hillary Clinton in – checks notes – the 2020 presidential election. “Lock her up” appears to be a generic dog whistle to his misogynistic fans, red meat reminding them that he is their daddy. I closed Twitter after I saw that. I was glad to hear that MSNBC did not show the nazi rally live.

    Iran has been pushed off the front pages which either means that things are settling down or that no one gives a damn if we start another war of choice in the Middle East. Sigh.

    Busy day again as I try to get positioned for a strong push to finish June and get ready to close out the quarter.

    See all y’all later!

  5. I’ve got to stop referring to mornings in the 70s as “hot” because soon (like next week) our lows will be 80, then low 80s for lows till September. Sigh. Anyway, tonight is my Dem club meeting — guest is my state rep, which will be nice. I supposed I should write up minutes from our last meeting….. Listening to Wild Horses.

    What are you holding back?
    I know you’ve wild horses enough, inside of you
    Now’s not the time to learn,
    Serenity, it’s gone to red from blue

  7. So yesterday one of my favorite SF authors wrote a thing about immigration & discrimination that kinda went viral. This morning, her comment about that:

    perfection: You can only be imperfect and win if you’re a Republican.

  8. I don’t know if happy is the correct word but it’s Juneteenth & that deserves recognition as much more truly an “independence day” than the 4th of July which left 90% of the population without the franchise and 50% in slavery. So “Happy Juneteenth” to the Meeses.

    Overcast and upper 60s in Fay., AR. Had a troubled night (nothing like what another or Aji deal with but unhelpful) which has left me groggy. Even though the cats let me “sleep in” until 6:30. Rained early and supposed to rain some more later in the day. Not sounding particularly good for electricity production. Yesterday we got 18.7 KWHs and the m-t-d is 316 – well, we still have 13 production days including today so 500 is still possible. Gonna take some sun to do it though.

    Evil Ones being evil. Taking down the most visible and the loudest mouth is not going to stop them. In fact it would let most of the nation and all of the MSM go back to “business as usual” – think there’s little coverage of serious issues like immigration policy and disaster relief now? It will totally fall off the radar if twitler’s outrageous tweets aren’t out there to call attention to it. We have to take down the whole thing. Like Hercules defeating the hydra that grew a new head for each cut off. He defeated it by cutting off & cauterizing all the heads at once. We have to do the same. Every election. Every level. And once we’ve got the power we’ve got to secure the election process and break up the media consortium to keep it from rising again. (Or at least rising any time soon. Hate in all it’s power-seeking forms will always be around – and will always manage to gain power sooner or later. The best we can do it make it be later.)

    Meanwhile the cocoa hasn’t done anything about the grogginess so I guess I’d best try some coffee. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  9. Good morning, Moosekind! Finally have a chance to pop in here to say hello. Quite cloudy this morning, with rain expected at 3 p.m. Currently the temperature in Ashburn is 72 F., going up to 85 F. today.

    When I picked up Miss Pink Cheeks from Art Camp yesterday, she wanted to come for a sleepover with us. As Grandma is constitutionally unable to say “No” to Miss PC who, like Snow White, grows more beautiful and more brilliant every day, she weakly said yes. We stopped at Miss PC’s house to pick up some extra clothes and the two Sleep Animals, and let the poor dog out for a visit to the backyard. On the road again we chatted so much that Grandma missed the turnoff to Route 28 and had to do a yooey.

    However, we made it through the evening, including dinner, the cocktail party down the hall at 7, and the return here to our flat, where Grandma had to bang out a Kamala diary from 9 to 11 p.m. Trust me, I am tired this morning. Sister Dee helped enormously with tweets and with rearranging the video, which I’d put in quite the wrong place. It is so nice to be surrounded by people who know what to do with computers!

    I’ve missed the chance to go to the Dining Services discussions for June. I’ll have to email the guy in charge about providing vegan options. Even the vegetarian options, which are few and far between, are drenched in heavy cream, butter, and cheese. The hostess of the cocktail party yesterday evening said she’d stopped eating at the restaurants here: she’s a diabetic, and the amount of sodium and sugar in the food kept putting her in the hospital! She’s waiting for a kidney transplant. I’m going to look up a spell for her to get a donor match, no one should have to go through what she’s endured.

    When I think of Big Pharma I get so upset I’d like to spit teeth! By the way, I’m planning to take Miss PC to Montreal next month. Is there anyone here who needs meds that I can buy over the counter in Canada? When Claritin was available only by (expensive) prescription many years ago, I bought some for a friend when I was in Toronto. People, so far from being available only on prescription, the Canadian drugstore was having a “Buy one, get one free” sale! I loaded up as much as I could and brought them back for her.

    Hoping for a quiet day, although there always seems to be loads to do. I kinda hate keeping up with the news, it roils one’s stomach so.

    Wishing a good, productive day to everyone at the Pond!

  10. Good morning, Meesefolk; 63 when I got up this morning with a high of 77. It’s bright and sunny right now, but it looks like rain will be moving in later this afternoon. I really wish I could schedule my work days based on sun v. rain: “I won’t be coming in this morning, but when the clouds move in after lunch, I’ll head in…”

    Leaving two tweets here this morning; one because I hope it will motivate folks to make a call to their House reps, and the second because it just makes me happy.


    This is the House version of the Harris/Booker/Scott anti-lynching Senate bill, which passed in the Senate by unanimous consent. If you follow the links to the NAACP Action Alert, there are suggested talking points for those not familiar with the bill.


    I didn’t know Terry Crews was from Flint, and I’ve never watched the show. I got a little sniffly while enjoying this.

  11. Good morning again, Meesefolk. My initial comment is in moderation, so I was either naughty or broke Word Press. It could be either…;D

    • Sorry! The Moose hates it when you have more than a certain number of links in a comment – it thinks you are a spammer! Some of those tweets included a lot of links.

      I am glad we have a spam filter because the stuff that ends up in the spam list is pretty awful. I have yet to find a setting that allows me to tell it that a person is “safe” regardless of what they post. :(

  12. Good morning, 55 and cloudy in Bellingham. Thanks to tRump angst in the night I’m slow and sleepy this morning. I saw snippets of his Orlando event, but the voice of the woman saying “……he’s the best president of my life time, and he doesn’t lie” got to me. I keep reading that Dems need to have meaningful “conversations” with tRump voters, but how do we do so when truth is no longer true?

    So back to real life and another day of getting this place ready for visiting family. My sister has rented an apartment in the neighborhood for the summer so I’ll meet the owner for a walk through and the key this morning. We’re hosting a family graduation party for Ryan the last weekend in June so all the quest rooms will be full, as well as the extra rooms at our son’s house. And I’m going to check out the sofa at the apartment this morning!

    Best wishes to all.

    • This: “I keep reading that Dems need to have meaningful ‘conversations’ with tRump voters, but how do we do so when truth is no longer true?”

      We can’t and the sooner we give up, the better for all of us. We are truly two Americas and one of them is fact-free. We just have to hope that there are more of us than of them.

  13. Thursday Meese. 74 going up to 79 and raining here in NYS.

    Puerto Rico

    • 21 months – it should embarrass everyone involved. There will be a reckoning and it will be fierce; I just hope it is soon.

  14. This is not going well for Bernard.

    • That tweet went viral and not in a good way. The whiney finger-jabbing butthurt old white guy who lost the nomination in 2016 by 4 million votes – and who expected to be crowned front-runner in 2020 – is getting his ass handed to him, being beaten by both a centrist Democrat and a left-of-the-left Democrat. Maybe he shouldn’t have trashed the party that let him run in their primaries, maybe he shouldn’t have handed the 2016 election to Donald Trump without a smidgen of remorse, maybe he shouldn’t embrace the rabid berners and their toxicity.

        • He sounds like Mitch McConnell: “African Americans got their black president – now they should just get over it.”

        • …this country has overcome racism…

          Dude, we have concentration camps on our borders, Proud Boys marching in our streets without masks, and out of control cops threatening to put a “cap” in the head of a young mother. We haven’t overcome shit.

  15. Good morning, meeses! Thursday …

    It is 57 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 70. Clouds this morning and a chance of showers this afternoon. The Summer Solstice is at 11:54am EDT tomorrow so enjoy the sunlight – it is going to start waning tomorrow.

    Iran shot down a US drone which they said was flying in their airspace and the US said was in international airspace or – as Republicans in Congress believe – any place ‘Murika wants to fly. Will it mean war? Who knows.

    Joe Biden adding segregationists to his “basketful of decent men” (which already included Mike Pence and Dick “Dick” Cheney) appears to be poised to cause a rift in the Democratic Party base. I am not sure how attacking Cory Booker and Kamala Harris will go over but his “Barack Obama cleans up nice for a black guy” comment from 2008 was forgiven so maybe the African American community has an endless well of forgiveness for disrespect. How you can like someone who literally called black people inhuman is beyond me and makes me wonder if Biden really is all that electable. He is the same loose cannon he has always been and his nice Uncle Joe demeanor is getting shredded. I hate this, I just hate this.

    See all y’all later!

  16. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s partly cloudy in Ashburn this morning, with thunderstorms expected this afternoon—just when I have to pick up Miss Pink Cheeks from camp! Currently the temperature is 70 F., going up to 88 F. Yes, as Jan says, tomorrow is summer solstice. I’m going to become nostalgic for the waning light.

    “Uncle Joe” is a schmo who continues to shoot himself in the foot. What kind of dream 1950s world does he live in? The days of “collegial” goodwill on the Hill certainly excluded a large segment of the population, including women, people of color, gay people, and so on. How can he ignore the fact the Rethugs continually obstructed President Obama for eight years?

    As for Bernie, it’s time for him to shut up, sit down, and start knitting.

    Rose at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m., started reading the WaPo, and found to my disgust that on the “Kids’ Page” some anal aperture was chastising the U.S. women’s soccer team AGAIN. Apparently, when women score goals they should look suitably modest with downcast eyes and refrain from celebrating too much. No one would ever say that to a men’s team. I despise patriarchs!

    Have lots of playing catchup today until it’s time to pick up Miss PC. I’m in a mood to cook, so tonight we’ll have vegan Morocco Chickpea Stew. It involves chopped carrot, zucchini, diced apricots, and raisins as well as spices, tomatoes, and chickpeas, and is delicious.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and beyond!

    • RE: Biden “How can he ignore the fact the Rethugs continually obstructed President Obama for eight years?” You wonder where Joe Biden was all those years, he certainly was not paying attention to what was happening in America from 2009 through January 2017. Or maybe filtered through 1950s rose-colored glasses everything looked “just fine.” Joe Biden has no understanding of what it was like to be a woman in America, a person of color in America or a poor person in America in his gauzy memory of that time – and seems to only have empathy for segregationists, war criminals like Dick “Dick” Cheney, and “misunderstood” anti-LGBT politicians like Mike Pence. I will vote for him if he is the Democratic nominee but I will never embrace his candidacy.

  17. Last night at my Democratic club meeting, my state rep gave a report on the legislative session. They actually did a couple of good things, and some of the worst things never made it to the floor. Some really bad things did pass — cities no longer allowed to sign new contracts with Planned Parenthood. (but the effort to make that retroactive and cancel existing contracts failed). Gina said that the relative reasonableness was because the 2018 elections scared our Lt Governor & the Speaker, and they kept the crazier stuff off the floor so we wouldn’t have crazy votes (well, the craziest votes) to use against them. The next session will involve redistricting, so we have to work really hard at keeping the gains we got and maybe picking up some more seats.

    It is 80 degrees already at 6am, won’t technically hit 100 today, but they put out a heat advisory because it’ll feel like 108. Great. So, today’s song: Shut Your Eyes:
    Shut your eyes and think of somewhere
    Somewhere cold and caked in snow
    By the fire we break the quiet
    Learn to wear each other well

    • Another, thanks for your report on the meeting. It’s heartening to know that there is sanity even in red-trending-purple Texas!

      As for the other—as far back as the 1960s my cousin in Dallas told me, “Life in Texas is hell in the summer!”

      Dearly Beloved and Elder Son, after noticing on Boxing Day 1983 that the daytime temperature in Austin was in the 70s and people were wearing Bermudas as they whizzed around on bicycles, wanted to return to NoVa, get the dog, and come back to Austin to live.

      Younger Son and I noticed the lack of pita bread in the grocery stores, the 70-degree temperatures in December, and thought, “No way.”

  19. It’s in the upper 60s at the moment heading for upper 80s – might even hit low 90s today – and sunny so far. All the rain we were supposed to have yesterday happened between 5 and 6 a.m. – clouds cleared off by mid morning and we generated 22.9 KWHs! The m-t-d is 338.75 and if this keeps up we’ll make that 500 for the month goal. Which is good. This month is the highest production month of the year, of course, so it’s not exactly unexpected. But still good. It being coolish this morning I baked some peanut butter muffins. They’re cooling at the moment and I’ll have one with my coffee shortly.

    Evil Ones being evil. I wish people would get it through their heads that the only way we can stop them is vote them out. Even if we could remove twitler from office, which we can’t, it’s not just him. It’s not even mostly him. He’s loud & proud with his deplorability but his policies are R policies from way back. We’re only – sometimes – hearing about them in response to his tweets. Get rid of just him, it all goes back underground. Same evil genocidal crap just no coverage of it. We have to vote the lot out. Or at least enough of them to have control of government again. And Job One will be to fix the voting system so they can’t take it away in the next election cycle. It’s gonna take more than 18 months to deal with this mess – even as efficient as Nancy Pelosi is at getting progressive legislation through the House. We either vote them out or we’ll have to have that revolution the LW fantasizes over and the RW’s stocking up weapons for. Our peaceful revolution every 2 years – so commonplace in our country most people don’t realize it is a revolution – was created to prevent the violent ones. The one time it didn’t work – Civil War – you’d think would be enough evidence for why not to do it again. But as has been pointed out by many of us, the Rs do not deal in facts – fantasy and mythology are their tipple. There is no reaching them. So organize then GOTV for all we’re worth. Or we won’t be worth much and our lives will be worth less/worthless.

    I got a call from my son – they’d received the youngest boy’s birthday card – which was nice. Youngest grandson is now 7 – no more babies even in the younger branch. At least something good going on in the world, right? Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  20. Good morning, Meesefolk; 61 and sunny when I got up this morning, but we’ve reached our high of 63. And it’s raining. ‘Nuf said.

    Jan, I see you got me out of moderation, while simultaneously killing any hopes I had of being declared Resident Bad Girl and instead making me merely Presenter of Link-Filled Tweets. That’s ok…I’m still going to think of myself as badass, and you all should envision me in ripped jeans, black leather jacket and fingerless gloves, Doc Marten’s, and a backpack filled with history books. This fantasy totally authentic picture may or may not have been aided by finally seeing Captain Marvel. Hey, it’s not as if I’m claiming I can shoot photon blasts from my hands, so work with me.

    I tangled a bit with a staffer at my (R) House rep’s local office yesterday, and I’m still a bit irked. I called about the House Emmett Hill anti-lynching bill, and part of my comment was that since one of Michigan’s lynchings happened in our district, it was only just and right that our rep support the bill. The kid (early 20s, so a kid by white standards) tried to deny there was ever a lynching in [now] MI-10. After I picked my jaw off the ground, I told him that it was a verifiable, historical fact, and it really wasn’t a good look to argue with a constituent just because he was ignorant of local history. Also, who the heck makes up a lynching?!!! I ended up calling the DC office and got a better reception, but I’m really wondering what was going on with the local office guy. My best guess is that he’s just sick of hearing from me, but really, he should be used to it by now.

    Anyway, good day to and for all!

    • I had that sort of experience with my reps local office last year. A woman I’d at least respected and could discuss issues with up to that point – when the “kids in cages” first hit the news. I got the patronizing “partisan talking points” crap from her. And don’t bother to call the local office any longer.

    • Ha!! Sorry that your “time-out” in moderation was for a technical reason and not for your being a badass. Which I am sure you are … I suspect the Republican staffer tangling with you over history has an opinion. :)

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