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!
Good morning, meeses! Friday …
It is 70 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 84. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
We have a presidential nominee. Not my first choice but a good choice for the times – someone steady and familiar who won’t scare folks. He will be the bridge between the Obama Administration and our future which, based on photos and clips from the Democratic National Convention, will be diverse and multi-generational and strong. I’m ready to be part of it! A poll showed that the under-30 crowd is not too thrilled with the Biden pick but they need to suck it up and help us get him elected. They can have the next one.
Yesterday my plans were thwarted as I spent the morning waiting for a tech visit that did not happen until 12:30. So I have a stack of work that has to get done this morning before I can sit down and watch the convention off my DVR. I am trying to figure out how to watch and will probably watch Michelle Obama then skip to Kamala and Barack Obama then the entire final night.
See all y’all later!
Friday . 58 degrees going up to 88 here in Kingston NY.
Am still on a Kamala high.
Dee, I’m so glad the South Asian and Jamaican communities are as happy as we are!
The MSM and Rethugs keep talking about an “enthusiasm” gap. Huh!
Puerto Rico
Loved last night’s speeches, and of course the young man Joe talked to about stuttering. Today: work till 3:30, probably listening to U2 radio. 19 days in a row of 100+ temperatures. If tropical depression 14 hits the right place — between Houston & Corpus Christi — we could get rain & cooler temperatures. If it goes further east, we’ll be on the hot, dry side.
{{{anotherdemocrat}}} ???????????? TD14 hits between Corpus & Houston. Healing Energy and moar {{{HUGS}}}
Good Friday morning, Moosekind! It’s fair, with pale sunlight and a pale blue sky veiled by thin white clouds. Currently in Ashburn it’s 72 F., going up to 85 F. later. Don and I both want to get our walks done early before the heat really gets going.
Yesterday’s meeting of the Biography Book Club was very successful. We all wore masks and sat six feet apart, although toward the end some of the ladies were convinced they couldn’t be heard and let their masks slip. I kept mine on throughout. We were each allowed one question per round until someone finally guessed the subject of the biography or autobiography. I correctly guessed Maria Hamilton for one member of the group, and it turned out that another member had also read Michelle’s autobiography. It was a long book, but I am so lost in admiration of Michelle Obama I will never be the same. I respect her right to say “NO” when asked if she’ll run for office. Not everyone finds politics attractive.
That said, I have a Zoom meeting of the Writers’ Group at 2 p.m. Hope the link works. The prompt this week is “How I want to be remembered.” I’m going to write that I want to be remembered as a Wiccan priestess. It’s true I didn’t complete the coursework required by the Re-formed Covenant of the Goddess International for ordination, but in Wicca every woman can be a priestess. I’ve done the work, all right: counseled some much younger family members who made life-changing decisions, led two different Dianic circles over 20 years, attended five different Witch Camps in three states, and of course, my writing is dedicated to the Goddess.
If this doesn’t get me banned from the Writers’ Group, I don’t know what will! You should have seen the expressions of distaste on their faces when I read my work aloud at previous meetings. They all looked as if they’d rather be slopping the hawgs or pitchin’ hay. It was hilarious.
Okay, that’s quite enough from me this morning. Hoping everyone at the Pond will have a good day, and that Louis DeJoy is being grilled like a chicken on the Hill even as I write.
{{{Diana}}} I hope you are remembered the way you wish to be remembered – but you haven’t left yet! If you want to be booted out of the Writers’ Group this is probably a good way to go about it. LOL. Healing Energy & moar {{{HUGS}}}
Thanks, bfitz! Before we moved here I didn’t realize that religion would be invoked so much, and when I say “religion,” you know I mean the mainstream religion.
Seems to me if they can talk about God and Jesus all the time, I can certainly talk about Goddess, and I do.
Just be careful about bringing logic into it. The first thing you have to give up to be an Xtian is your ability to think logically. And as you’re well aware, historically they’ve been known to get rather nasty about it. moar Healing Energy, moar {{{HUGS}}}
Yes, “in Wicca every woman can be a priestess.” The RCG always made me a bit itchy with their structures and hierarchy – seemed to me too much like traditional religions with people over other people. I have always been more of a “kitchen witch”, using what is available, everyone an equal.
Louis DeJoy was never going to be grilled in the Senate – they are tRump’s fluffers. The House hearing on Monday, if he doesn’t cancel at the last minute, will be more lively.
Jan, agree with you about RCG. Although the others in my group chose to be ordained, I just wanted to learn magick. After four years I realized that I’d learned more magick in one week at Witch Camp than I had in four years with RCG, so I left. I’m still in touch with many of them, though, on Facebark.
I’m more like you now—a solitary. One thing I did with the grandchildren when they were little was to teach them about the natural world around them. When they were toddlers I’d give them flowers and sticks to examine; later, we planted vegetables and picked them; we did all kinds of things. Ethan is being brought up in a mixed Jewish-atheist tradition, which means he gets to do the fun parts of the mainstream religion (which are really Pagan to begin with); the other two are being brought up in the mainstream religion, although they haven’t been to church since March.
Inching up towards summer again, but late summer. No more 50s at dawn for a while but at least staying in the 60s for the foreseeable future. It’s 66 now and heading up towards 90. This is the last day no heat index is projected but even next week it’ll only be a few degrees above the air temps. So much more comfortable than the 15-degree differences we had last month. We got another 19 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d of 366 is over what the 2.5K system produced for August 2014 and still on track to the 534 goal.
Good news (very good news) is Fineena doesn’t have leukemia. They don’t know what’s causing the white blood cell count, but it’s not that. Aji made another sale so getting close to covering the month (no repairs though, just regular bills and helping some Elders with food). Another decent sale will do it and a good sale might let them get the plumbing repairs as well. No change for anybody else. That I know of anyway.
Well, metaphorically speaking we have our “Supreme Commander of Operation Overlord”. The plans are made. A lot of the ‘behind the scenes’ work has already been done. Now we amass the materials, transports, and troops. Early voting is Airborne going in before the landing. Election day is D-Day. We hit the beaches and try to overwhelm the enemy. From November to January 20, 2021 is holding the beaches and transporting in equipment and supplies for the push. But if we manage to do all that as we did in June & July of 1944 – we start the push, we start liberating occupied territory, on January 21st. Gods & Goddesses, please help us make it so.
Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 71 and mostly cloudy in Bellingham. Neighborhood friends of ours are restoring the exterior of their old house, and unfortunately they had a house fire yesterday. So today they are waking up to a roof needing major repairs, a basically burned attic, water damage and collapsed ceilings through out the house, etc. Our son and I stayed on the sidewalk with her for awhile, then I brought her dog home with me. Maxi settled in just fine, but it was a long day.
I watched the Dem convention last night and felt a glimmering of hope re our future. However it’s going to be a long countdown to January 2021!
https://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article245116860.html#storylink=mainstage_card5
{{{princesspat}}} Yikes! I’m glad nobody was hurt. & hope their insurance will cover the repairs. Healing/Helping Energy and moar {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, meeses! Saturday …
It is 70 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 86. Sunny this morning and then clouding up with a chance for rain. We need the rain, we’ve had to water new-to-us trees due to the lack of moisture.
Later this morning, I am going to attempt to rebuild the web site. My plan is to save off our posts and comments from this past week, restore the database to last Saturday night and then reattach the saved posts. It should work but I have never done it so I am not sure. I have restored entire web sites but not just the database. I can also do the entire web site restoration – I have the backup – but that is more difficult. Worse case is that we lose one week of comments – that would be better in my mind than losing the last 7 years of comments. There is also a possibility that since last Tuesday, someone figured out why the comments disappeared and there is a fix for it. I will start there and hope for the best.
In any event, the MotleyMoose.net site will be in maintenance from about 11am CDT until the data is restored and rebuilt. I will have something online for tomorrow morning’s check-in. The Weekly Democratic Party Address is by Carolyn Maloney who is leading the battle to save the post office – there will be a vote today on her committee’s bill the “Delivering for America Act” which will block DeJoy’s destruction of the Post Office. If my web site work is successful, I will get the Fighting Back post in place later today.
See all y’all later!
I did some more research on the problem – the interwebs are reporting anger and angst over the WordPress 5.5 bludgeoning of legacy web sites! The good(ish) news is that the problem is unlikely to be fixed by restoring the database. That is good(ish) rather than good because that was not going to be fun. The comments are there, and the database knows the posts they are connected to, they are simply not being displayed on the page for older posts. The issue appears to be a feature that was deprecated by WordPress (ie the “old ways” no longer supported) which they are now realizing that 10s of thousands of web sites rely on. There is a fix to re-add the deprecated feature BUT (there is always a BUT) it will need to be addressed at some point because it makes the site less secure. It appears as though our theme “Magazine Premium” has not been updated since July 2017 so part of the solution will possibly be swapping out the theme with one from a company that more active in keeping their themes updated. If that happens, you may wake up tomorrow morning to a new layout! I have my eye on one that is similar (I can only handle so much change!) and that I will quickly be able to see if it “relinks” the comments. I have some nervousness about the fact that new posts are showing new comments fine and that the old posts are not displaying their comments. My troubleshooter’s brain is not sure how that can be if the theme itself is broken. We shall see!
Great Mother, Jan! Thanks for undertaking such a huge project. It would be a shame for all the comments to disappear. Checking in with friends here and keeping in touch is one of the best parts of my life, especially in these locked-down times!
So, I’m glad I got here early today, thanks for all your work, and please let us know if you need donations. I’m sure all this isn’t free.
I don’t think it will be that big of a project – just a little nerve-wracking as I dip a toe into the unknown. I have quite a bit of experience with WordPress and I happen to have been gifted a plethora of hours after my time-suck project ended. I did not realize just how much time (and anxiety) I was devoting to that project until I totaled up the time from last month alone (and the suck had been going on for 3 months) – it is like having an extra day added to the week! I shall spend that extra day doing something productive like upgrading our web site.
I need the Moose as my daily connection to political news and blogging peeps who I would not be connected to otherwise. I have been checking into blogs for almost 15 years now!
{{{Jan}}} Thank you and bless you for all this work. Moose Pond is very precious – bless you for inviting me to it years gone by – and the community is part of staying (relatively) sane in these times as well as keeping up with what’s going on. Let us know if we need to send money to help with this. It’s enough you do so much work. You shouldn’t be out of pocket too.
Saturday Meese. 61 here in Kingston NY going up to 88.
The Blue Wave
That’s a TERRIFIC ad!
Puerto Rico and USVI
Laura
Dear Goddess, I hope it’ll make a sudden swerve and bypass PR and VI.
Dee, what does the yellowish heart on your Twitter signify? I have seen it for a while and kept meaning to ask you.
Good gray Saturday morning, Moosekind! Outside it’s as if everything is watching and waiting for the rain we’re supposed to receive. At the moment it’s 72 F. in Ashburn, on its way up to 84 F. Thunderstorms are predicted for the afternoon, although I do wonder whether the rain will begin before then. It’s so gray.
Miss Pink Cheeks is here with us for the weekend, so we’re enjoying her company. Elder Son Eric has rented a beach house in Duck, NC, for next week, so Younger Son Trevor and family will be joining them. Dearly and I will be looking after Mort the Boxer in the mornings. We may spend a couple of days hanging out in each son’s house. It’s nice for Monty to be able to run around a fenced backyard, which he isn’t allowed to do here except in the dog park.
Yesterday’s Zoom meeting went better than I expected. There were only a few people attending. The two men looked stunned when I read my paragraph aloud, but the women seemed rather interested. One of them asked me to explain Wicca more at another time. The leader asked rather pointedly whether I was married. “Coming up to 53 years, with the same guy I started out with,” I replied, equally pointedly. They wondered whether I still led a circle, but we had to abandon that in 2015. We all lived too far apart and it was just too difficult to coordinate schedules.
Planning a jolly morning of scrubbing toilets with my Trump-headed toilet brush, and possibly an afternoon of writing. I need to work on that short story for the library contest.
I expect Louis DeJoy’s plump cheeks will turn puce with rage when Katie Porter gets her claws into him on Monday! I’m going to find out when the hearings begin and watch at least in the morning.
Wishing all at the Pond a good day.
Woke up to unexpected thunderstorms this morning. I don’t know where it came from, there wasn’t rain in the forecast till the tropical storms/maybe hurricanes come next week. So walk/run is postponed to tomorrow. Drinking tea, watching the news. Have a great day, y’all!
It was 60 at dawn, 65 now, and heading for 90 – but still with that lower humidity & no heat index. Yay! That’s so much more comfortable. The warmth is good for my hands. High humidity isn’t good for anything. (That I know of. Certainly not for me.) It’s sunny at the moment and supposed to be all day. Yesterday we generated 18.9 KWHs and the m-t-d is 385 – very much still on track and should reach 400 about mid afternoon.
I know there are a lot of really serious things taking everybody’s Energy, but if you’ve got a bit to spare, please send it to Amelia. There are some things she has got to deal with today (including her phone – seems Verizon’s computer glitch last month timed out the process for opening her own account and just reactivated her father’s – which nobody knew until he got his bill which he is nastily pissed about) and she hasn’t had enough energy recently to put in an Instacart order, much less go to the store & pharmacy.
Everybody else is hanging on and doing what they can find to do. Me included. Healing/Helping Energy… Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
The WordPress 5.5 problem appears to be our theme, Magazine Premium by c.bavota. As soon as I have a complete backup, I am going to switch to the MH Magazine theme which will be a reasonable replacement. It might take a while to arrange things as I want them so don’t fall in love with (or be distressed by) a feature you see on Sunday morning.
I had a checklist – do backups, first. Then “try thing 1”, “try thing 2”, cry, “try thing 3”. The good news is that “thing 1” worked!
Good morning, 64 and mostly sunny in Bellingham. I’m really slow and sleepy today…..just waking up and finding coffee so I’ll check back later when/if I have a thought to share!
Best wishes to all.
We are on the new theme and there are some things that will need to be tailored. The comments are not threading, for one, we have a mishmash of fonts, for another. I want to return to the categorized front page which I think is an option. I got bunch of themes as a package so I can do a different one of I can’t get this one to work.