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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Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …
It is 55 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 72. Sunny skies in the morning and showers in the afternoon.
The Texas governor is shocked SHOCKED that people wandering around unmasked and unfettered during a global pandemic would get – and spread – the disease! JHC, we need to run the anti-science Republicans out of office and restore sanity. You. Cannot. Safely. “Reopen”. The. Economy. During. A. Pandemic. The sooner the red state governors figure this out, the better off we will all be. Telling people to stay home is not going to cut it – you have to shut down the businesses and gatherings.
Last night in Madison, protestors tore down the statue of Forward, a woman who symbolized progress and promise – the iconic image from the daily resistance to Scott Walker during the 2010s. They also tore down the statue of a Union officer who died from wounds suffered in the Civil War fighting to preserve the union and, ostensibly, to end slavery. I guess I don’t get it – if the goal is to piss off everyone who wants to support the cause of cleaning up policing and achieving racial justice, I am not sure how tearing down these statues help. Maybe the protesters are anarchists, maybe they are misguided – but if they have a leader, they need to figure this out.
I have been up since 2am, unable to sleep probably because I have a half dozen projects that have to be completed before the sun rises. Time to get back to it.
See all y’all later!
Sigh – anarchists aren’t helping. Which is – I guess – the point
I see no virtue in pulling down a statue representing progress and promise and wasn’t a specific human being. But I do understand the pulling down of Union soldier statues especially from the Indigenous POV. Even as the Civil War was raging, the much longer “Indian Wars” was still in progress. Union/U.S. soldiers were responding as if attacked to Natives leaving the Reservation to hunt when the promised treaty-rights food didn’t show up. And hanging the survivors as war criminals the same time they were treating actual CSA traitors as prisoners of war. And that’s not even going into various folks’ religious beliefs about making statues deifying humans in the first place.
But yeah, anarchists have never helped any situation do anything except get worse.
The statue was of a guy who died from battle wounds. Was he in Indian Country before he went into the war? I suppose he could have been but dollars to donuts they didn’t Google him before they tore his statue down.
No of course they didn’t check before they tore it down. So from just about any POV except Indigenous, they shouldn’t have. As to the Indigenous folks, it’s kinda like arguing there were honorable Germans wearing the Nazi uniform who didn’t personally commit any atrocities against them – he was wearing the uniform of those who did. But yeah, of all the statues around to tear down, that shouldn’t have been one of them
I have to disagree with the Indigenous people then. If they are going to hate the honorable men and women who served in wars that protected our nation and our world, they are not going to have many people buying what they are selling.
They’ve enlisted in our armies to protect the nation and world in higher numbers than their percent of the population. But they’ve also had their villages wiped out, their people hanged when not shot, and treaties dishonored in every imaginable way. It’s hard to fault them for looking at the uniform rather than the man in it. Especially since many of their cultures don’t “do” statues of humans as leading to idolatry in the first place.
Colonel Hans Christian Heg, was not regular army, was recruited to lead a Civil War command.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Christian_Heg
Wednesday Meese. 69 here in the Hudson Valley of NY going up to 87 with rain.
Warren supporter is not helping her with this – I have to admit this pissed me off
This
Puerto Rico
The Utier (Electrical Industry and Irrigation Workers Union) denounces “secret process” to privatize PREPA
Got in a walk/run this morning, not up to my best day last week but still something. Going in to the office this morning to drop off done applications and pick up new ones. Have a good day, everyone!
Good Wednesday morning, Moosekind! It’s a lovely day in Ashburn, a little breezy, with a current temp. of 73 F., going up to 84 F. A perfect day for being outdoors!
Grandma heroically prepared three different breakfasts for four people and is now relaxing with covfefe while Grandpa does the dishes. After we’re all washed and brushed we’ll visit the community garden to pick a zucchini or two, then go to the dog park further up the hill. Mr. First Grader and Miss Pink Cheeks are enjoying their stay, even though I warned them they’d be bored to death. Apparently they’re just happy to hang out with their grandparents after a four-month hiatus.
A little while ago I asked Miss PC to cut some parsley to garnish the cooked breakfasts, so we both went out to the screened porch. Her sharp eyes and ears detected two turkeys rummaging around near the fence in search of tasty insects. It’s been more than a year since we’ve seen the resident turkeys! The big black male and his admiring three-member harem have evidently been keeping well into the thick of the woods. It was fun to see them this morning.
Must get started with out day. Wishing a nice Wednesday to all at the Pond.
Sounds delightful Diana. So glad you can be with your grand kids again.
It was 56 at sunrise and 75 now heading for mid to upper 80s and sunny. I like sunny. We generated 15.8 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 453.8 so again we were not on track for the day but still are for the month. Meanwhile I’m taking advantage of the coolth to bake. 5 lbs chicken breasts in the oven right now and will come out in about 10 minutes at which time molasses spice muffin bread will go in. While that’s baking I’ll “frizzle” up a pound of ground beef, add a bit of this and that, put it in a baking dish, mix up a small cornbread recipe to pour over it, and bake that. Everything should be done by 9:30 leaving the house fine and the kitchen no more than comfortably warm.
Basket’s cat Belle crossed the Rainbow Bridge last night. I saw the tweet this morning. She’d been doing better but took a sudden turn for the worst and left from home. Which is a blessing as she hated going to the vet. Hard on Basket, of course. It always is as all of us know.
As far as anyone knows Aji’s dogs are still working their way home. We hope. & pray, one way or another. Everybody’s hanging in there and doing their best. I guess that’s all anybody can do. Things are just so bloody unfair – from what’s happening in Puerto Rico (and I don’t mean Nature’s part) in a larger sense to what’s happening with Aji and folks like her. The power and internet company (same parent) in that area of NM gets federal subsidies to provide service to the Reservation. Their actual lines and towers are focused on tourist areas and service on the Rez itself is spotty and only marginally dependable. For which they charge $250 a month. So just to stay in business their small business must raise over $350 a month not counting anything else. Cost of materials. Thank heavens they don’t have rent. Labor? It is to laugh. And they’ve got $3K in federal taxes to pay by next week. This is just the business. Not including living expenses or medical expenses or anything. Just the business. And that’s just flat out not fair. (But like Puerto Rico & the Jones Act, very WASP supremacist colonizer culture.)
Anyway, I’ve got my cooking to get back to. I’ll check back as soon as I can. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody, to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 63 and cloudy in Bellingham. I’m trying to find my smile this morning, but between a very hurting BCH leg and tRump angst I’m looking in all the wrong places! I logically know that keeping my leg up will ease the swelling and pain and that we are counting down to tRump’s final days but sometimes emotion prevails over logic. Fortunately I’ve got a very comfortable legs up resting place right now, and mindless laundry to focus on this afternoon.
And if my leg/attitude improves I can go to the garden shop later today. Nature therapy always helps.
As always, my best wishes to all.
{{{princesspat}}} Nature therapy really does always help. Healing Energy and moar {{{HUGS}}}
Hope you’re feeling better, princesspat!
Thursday Meese – 56 this morning and low humidity going up to 86 here in NY’s Hudson Valley
NY news
Apparently people are demanding that tRump quarantine before he goes to New Jersey after his visits to infection centers in Oklahoma and Arizona. Two members of his Secret Service team who traveled to Tulsa tested positive and they are going to be running all over his Bedminster golf club and infecting the workers who will in turn infect the local area. The White House is claiming that as king, he has the right to infect anyone he chooses to infect. Bastid!
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
I hope that somewhere in Joe Biden’s campaign ads there will be a reminder that “competence matters.” You can’t run the federal government properly when you hate the government and think that any spending to “help people” is wasted.
Good morning, meeses! Thursday …
It is 55 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 79. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
Biden is opening a lead in the national polls and, more importantly, in battleground states. He is now comfortably ahead in the three blueish states that we barely lost in 2016 – Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The change seems to that the “independent” voters (scare quotes because no one knows who the hell these people are!) who flipped to Biden from tRump in a big way. If these “independents” are those who were persuaded to “try Trump, he will shake things up” that would explain it – no one needs to be shaken that much and I think the mood of the country is “please, I need a nap.” Anyway, Republicans are left with “Joe Biden has a diminished mental capacity” as their theme which may be the least self-aware campaign tactic I have ever seen. Their guy is a #DroolingDotard who can’t create a coherent sentence and whose stream of consciousness speaking style is looking more and more unhinged.
The DNC has officially canceled the Fiserv Forum venue in Milwaukee and will not have an arena full of Democrats to nominate Joe Biden. This is good – I still have PTSD from the awful optics from 2016 of our nominee and her supporters getting boo’ed by the berners. I do think that had an impact on the perception of our nominee. I was also probably not the only person who did not think that Bill Clinton playing with balloons was cute but creepy and that it reminded people that Bill Clinton would be in the White House again – that was not comforting to me. Anyway, having less “excitement” will not dampen enthusiasm – this is not an election where we are electing a rock star who will meet all of our personal needs, we are putting in place a competent caring administration who will fix the mess left by the trumpers and the political party that enabled him to do whatever he wanted for 3 years and created this gawdawful mess we are in. That fires me up!
I am finally down to only two “must do or the world will end” projects and I have a good chance to finish them today. But only if I close my news tabs!!
See all y’all later!
I actually cheered out loud at this!
Wow, what happened to NASA? Did they have that already planned or did some decent people accidentally sneak into power there???!!?
This morning reminded me why there are rest days built in to training programs. 2 bursts of 1 minute, and 1 at 45 seconds. So, definitely not trying again till Saturday. Today: work and on my standing breaks, some ab work.
It was 58 at dawn, 74 now, heading for 90 and sunny. The “cool spate” has passed through and the overnights for the next 10 days are projected to be in the upper 60s again. Which is summertime pleasant as far as I’m concerned. Overnights above that get into the “do I not sleep because of the heat or not sleep because of the A/C triggering sinusitis?” dilemma. But sunny is good. Yesterday we got 24 KWHs and the m-t-d is 477 so we are definitely on track. We haven’t made it yet, but it looks good.
Aji’s dogs are still missing and sales are still desperately needed so prayers & “shares” (RTs or whatever way you can get the word out) are also desperately needed. They did get a small rain, enough the garden didn’t flat die as the sprouts are just pushing through to the surface, and the proto tornado decided not to form after all yesterday so a little good news at least. Amelia’s good news is of the same variety – the Instacart grocery shopping was very successful, she got enough energy to do a lot of cooking so there’s a bunch of zappable stuff in the freezer for when she doesn’t have any, and she got an Amazon card for her birthday which allowed her to do a little giving herself. But no energy to do doctor visit much less fundraising for July “rent”. Other folks I’ve not heard back from but they are online and tweeting so there’s that. Little bits of good news to keep us going as we work to deal with the masses of bad.
So on we go. Step by step and hoping the road we’re on is getting us out of the evil because we certainly can’t see the end of it. Or even what’s beyond the next hill (election). But it’s better than going deeper into the slime so there is that. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody, to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good Thursday morning, Moosekind! It’s cloudy here in Ashburn, already 78 F., with thunderstorms predicted for the afternoon. The high today will be 82 F. Miss Pink Cheeks, breakfasted, washed, and brushed, is playing on the iPad on the screened porch. She has started reading the Anne of Green Gables series.
Made blueberry bran muffins this morning, and had to resort to squeezing oranges for orange juice for Dearly and Miss Pink Cheeks, as we ran out of OJ yesterday. Since All This descended we’ve reverted to a lot of past behaviors, like baking bread and mixing regular milk with a reconstituted powdered milk. It’s weird. Next thing you know, I’ll be making my own granola.
The big business of the morning is taking Monty up to the front of Cardinal Clubhouse so he can go into the Woofies van for a bath and other kinds of grooming. Dearly will drive Miss Pink Cheeks home. She doesn’t want to leave us, but she has Sunshine Camp on Zoom from 1 until 3, followed by swimming at 4. Come to think of it, swimming might have to be canceled if there really are thunderstorms. In this area the weather forecasters are so profoundly, unapologetically wrong most of the time it’s amazing. I remember delivering Miss Pink Cheeks to an outdoor summer camp years ago when an 80% chance of rain was predicted for the day. It never happened.
Wishing a good day to all. I’d love a writing afternoon (I’m baked and cooked out), but as bfitz says, we shall see what we shall see.
Good morning, 60 and cloudy in Bellingham. Our son will finish the basement door project today, and tribute to a job well done it looks like nothing happened! Takes a lot of work,skill, and tools to make something look like it’s always been that way. The new doors keep RonK’s study warm and quiet and the glass panes allow light and keep the rooms feeling open.
I didn’t go to the garden shop yesterday, but I was productive in my sewing room. Seems like the mask project is ongoing, but after today I can put it away again. My daughter’s masks now all have elastic instead of ties, my son’s are re shaped so he can see while working, the left over ties will go to masks for friends, and a botanical floral fabric I love will become a new mask for me.
My legs feel a bit better this morning so I’ll stay close to my legs up resting spots for another day. Best wishes to all.
Friday Meese. 60 degrees here in the Hudson Valley of NY – going up to 86
Kudos to The Chicks for a powerful political statement
Puerto Rico
Yesterday, there was an issue with the software we use to work from home, so I used some emergency leave, then went into the office for a few hours. I just checked e-mail — one thing I can do without the software — and there’s no update from IR. Sigh. I just need to work 5 hours today.
And then there’s the dust. The big Sahara dust cloud has arrived. And it’s supposed to rain this afternoon. If ever there was a day to stay home/inside, that’s today.
{{{anotherdemocrat}}} I hope the rain washes out the dust. “Stay inside” is good. I hope your software glitch gets fixed soon. Healing Energy and moar {{{HUGS}}}
It’s 74 heading for 85 but overcast and muggy. I need to get the house closed up shortly. Probably should have already. Yesterday was beautiful. We generated 23.88 KWHs and reached 501 for the m-t-d so still very much on track. No guarantees, but on track. Unlike our country which is the reverse – going full bore the wrong way and no guarantees at all we can stop it in time much less get back on track. In both cases we shall see what we shall see. But there is nothing we can do but see in the former. We can do much to change the latter.
Some of us have been trying to get “closure” on jan4insight – just “hey, she’s dead” wasn’t it – but it’s taken a while. The only family member (1st cousin once removed) doesn’t respond, NM won’t release her ashes until somebody pays the cremation fees, and so on. Suzanne/Ashirs nani finally thought of an online “memorial” and set one up. Anybody who wishes to “leave a flower and respects” just creates an account with email address and a password. The site even has flowers to choose from if you don’t know how to import your own pictures, which I don’t. Anyway here’s the link. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/211767173/janet-elizabeth-burch
No changes anywhere – Aji, Amelia, Fineena, or anybody else. sigh. Nor with me for that matter. Not so much a sigh there since I’m OK – just a “I wish I could do more…” but there’s nothing new there either. So much Healing needed. Of earth and nation and individuals. So…Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody, to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good Friday morning, Moosekind! It’s an absolutely stunning day here in Ashburn, and as I was up at 5, I saw Aurora herald Her presence with rosy pink clouds against a blue sky. Very much enjoyed that, as there are few things more pleasurable than a summer dawn on a fine morning.
Currently it’s 72 F., going up to 88 F. Last night—in fact all yesterday—I was so tired I feared I was getting corona. Went to bed shortly after 8:30. Read for a while, fell asleep without a melatonin pill, woke up early. Feel fine at the moment.
Need to get my walk out of the way, then settle down to a day of laundry and writing.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.