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 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 (right before “Leave A Reply”) and use the Pages Tool, shown here with 3 pages of comments available.
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Good morning. Ran into the office, one of my applications from yesterday requested a Spanish speaker, so I brought that one in for someone else to call, and picked up some new applications. Did I mention it got hot, like just since the weekend? Overnight lows are now around 80, high in the mid-90s but it’s so humid it will feel like 105 to people outside. Sigh.
Happy Wednesday or something. It’s 74 heading for upper 80s and can’t decide whether it’s going to be bright and sunny or so dark we need the lights on. It’s the former at the moment. For which I’m grateful. We got enough sun yesterday to generate 15.8 KWHs. With the m-t-d at 95.5 we’ll at least get over 100 today. Which isn’t saying much for June – the one month of the year when it’s technically possible to get over 700 (although I’ve never actually gotten over 575).
Nothing seems to have changed for anybody. Sigh. Nothing’s changed politically but we knew that. Our team, to have any chance of staying in power long enough to make real progress has to both make enough progress nobody believes the Rs when they deny it and has to go through the useless drill of attempting to “work across the aisle” even though everybody knows from the get-go the Rs will not do it. We have to make the show of good faith because if we don’t that will be used against us. They’re wasting our precious time. It’s deliberate. We’ve dealt with the pandemic (mostly) and the economy (sort of) and that’s all the RW propaganda machine “lets” us in to do. Only truly massive turnout – like 2020 – will keep us able to do anything.
Clouds are back. My brain has been fuzzy this morning anyway and this doesn’t help. Coffee. Then twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 54 and partly sunny in Bellingham. We made progress with the garage project yesterday but I was to tired to plant anything after we finished. But RonK is to tired to work in the garage today so I’ll ignore it too and plant a few flowers. I need to work at my desk and do some laundry too so it will be a house and garden day. Best wishes to all.
Thursday Meese. 61 here in Kingston NY, going up to 82. Lookung forward to seeing the response to the Young Lords Documentary this weekend
A new film called “Takeover” follows the 12 historic hours on July 14, 1970, when members of the Young Lords Party took over the rundown Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx in New York City. The Young Lords were a radical group founded by Puerto Ricans modeled on the Black Panther Party. Democracy Now! co-host Juan González, a co-founder of the Young Lords, helped organize the action. Using archival footage and modern-day interviews, “Takeover” chronicles their resistance to institutions founded on wealth and white supremacy, and their collective struggle for quality, accessible healthcare. “The takeover really exemplified what the Young Lords were about,” says director Emma Francis-Snyder, who says she wanted to capture the heroism of the activists. “There’s so much emotion and planning and courage that comes along with direct action,” Francis-Snyder says. “We understood that to get the system to listen and change, you had to disrupt it,” adds González. “You had to find a way to force people to pay attention to the problems.”
Puerto Rico
Good morning, meeses! Thursday …
It is 66 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 90. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
And just like that, the Keystone XL pipeline project is cancelled. Elections matter, who is in the White House matters and people on the left who are already attacking Joe Biden for being a “terrible president who abandons Democratic Party principles” need to STHU. No one will agree completely with everything he does or the pace he is working at to resolve THEIR ISSUES but he is 1,000,000% better than the Republican alternative. I watched the left-of-the-left trash President Obama in 2009 for not fixing the 8 years of the Bush Administration on day one and I will not stand by quietly watching them do it again. We lost the 2010 midterms because the purity people stayed home and because they screamed about how our Democratic Congress and our Democratic President were failures. President Biden has to clean up the tRump mess and work with a razor thin majority in the House and a tie in the Senate. We can’t fix the Senate but we can have Joe’s back when the click-bait press and hair-on-fire progressive media go after him. If you are bored because we are not on red alert every day over a deranged overnight tweet or a new assault on our democracy and our values, find a hobby.
Busy day here. I am making progress on organizing my stacks and need to get back to it.
See all y’all later!
It is so hot, even at 6am — 77 degrees & 86% humidity. I did my walk/run, made it to 6 90-second segments. Ugh. Now I’m cooling off, eating breakfast & getting ready to work.
It’s 80 already, sunny (thank you), heading for 90 heat index close to 100 (as it was yesterday). PV system widget is down (system’s fine) so I’m going by memory but we generated over 17.5 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d was around 112. So that part’s better if not good.
Jill, Fineena, Lisa pretty much holding as far as I know. Last night Aji told us what she thinks she’s dealing with, what all the symptoms point to. Inflammatory breast cancer. The evil one. The one so fast moving it really does get visibly worse by the day. And takes 6-figures to fight. With a 40% chance at stage 3 of making it 5 years – and a 21% chance at stage 4 of making it 2. With treatment. Prayers. Any Healing anythings of any Tradition. All Healing anythings of many traditions.
My son just brought the Camry to me and I need to do a shopping stock up run. Be back later. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 54 and cloudy. I didn’t do much of anything yesterday and it was nice to just let it all be. I’ll need to water some plants today but I’m going to try to stay low key. Best wishes to all.
I’ve done the west side shopping and put everything up and cleared my twitter deck for the moment. In another 15 minutes or so I’ll go do my east side shopping while it’s still tolerable outside. Then I’ll be set for at least a month and maybe 2, depending. I truly hope everyone’s day is going well.
Good morning, meeses! Friday …
It is 72 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 91. Sunny this morning then a chance for thunderstorms in the afternoon and evening. A quick peek into next week shows the temperatures returning to the low 80s for a few days and then back up into the 90s. Our normal high for June is 78 degrees with our hottest month in July with a normal high of 82. This many days in a row of 90 degree weather is unusual. Almost like the planet is warming!!
Is there anyone shocked that the tRump “Justice” Department investigated House Democrats? The only question that remains is whether or not the career employees of the DOJ who went along with this blatant disregard for the separation of powers should have jobs. When the DOJ is run by a hack in service of a hack, there needs to be a “conscience clause” for those who work there, a way to opt out of being part of investigations and prosecutions that they know to be illegal and contrary to the oaths they took. Merrick Garland intends to return the department to its mission (the second time this century that a DOJ cleanup was needed after Republicans shat on the rule of law) but he needs to be careful to not defer too much to legal rulings made during the Sessions-Barr years. Case in point: the terrible misreading of the Westfall Act of 1988 that allows a president to use his bully pulpit to literally bully someone who he is fighting with based on a pre-presidency association. The OLC memo is wrong and needs to be revisited instead of spending taxpayer money to defend a literal pile of garbage from the legal repercussions of his garbagedom.
I am looking for a list of the federal judges nominated and confirmed this year. Lost in all the click-bait, the Biden Administration is steadily going about its work of filling the 100+ openings in the federal judiciary. That it is essential work given our thin margin in the Senate and the age of some of the Democratic Senators who that margin depends on. I have no doubt that a Senate Leader Mitch McChinless would simply stop holding hearings on any judicial nominees until a Republican was back in the White House.
Has anyone heard from Diana? I looked back at previous posts and did not see any mention of planning to be offline for a few days but there was a concern about vision issues. I hope she is well and just busy!
See all y’all later!
Here is what I found on the judicial nominations, hearings and confirmations: Federal Judges Appointed by Joe Biden (wiki). Three confirmed so far if this list is accurate. I had heard that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was scheduled for a Senate vote for the DC Circuit but that article does not show that there have been any hearings on her confirmation. She is on the short list for first Black woman Supreme Court Justice. I hope that is true and that she replaces the “not Black in his own mind” Clarence Thomas who is literally befouling the Thurgood Marshall seat on the court. Our country deserves better and Joe Biden owes us one for his role in confirming the truly awful Thomas.
The Senate Judiciary committee web page does not show hearings scheduled, only hearings completed so it as useless as one expects a Chuck Schumer led Senate to be.
Here is another link: Federal Judges Nominated by Joe Biden (Ballotpedia). This one shows that two nominees are waiting for a full Senate vote, Candace Jackson-Akiwumi for the 7th Circuit and Judge Brown Jackson for the DC Circuit. Nine are waiting for a committee vote and 5 are waiting for a hearing. I have bookmarked this and will monitor it and see if whoever is creating this page is keeping it up to date.
Friday Meese – bbiab – just put up a quick post
Normal weather here — 95 with a heat index of 105; but we were so cool for so long that no one is acclimatized to “normal”. The news is running stories on dealing with the heat. Both weekend mornings, it’ll be 73 degrees when I would go out for my walk/run, so that won’t make any difference. Today’s plan: work till 3:30.
Puerto Rico
Jeez!
It’s 78 heading for 82 with heat index of 100 – “normal” weather that we are so not used to (heat was on for a few hours 10 days ago, for pity’s sake) & everybody’s having trouble adjusting. Today should be the worst of it – at least for a couple of weeks. The daytime temps aren’t going to drop much but the humidity is so the heat index will drop close to the air temps. And with the humidity going down, the overnights will drop a good 10 degrees, back into the “nice” sleeping range. Meanwhile I’m up “early” to get all the windows open and fans going to cool the house down will the outside is cooler than the inside. ???? In another hour I’ll close everything up again. Yesterday we generated a hair over 20 KWHs and are starting the morning with 133 as the m-t-d. Not even on track for 400 but catching up.
Having watched this drill with MSM & Genocidal Q Party versus Dems for over 4 decades now (& been around even though not understanding what I was seeing for another almost 3 decades) R evil does not surprise me. They’ve been evil all along. They’ve been doing the same crap all along. And they’ve been winning. Not always elections but always power. And the more power they get the more overt they are in their evil. But that’s all it is. More in-you-face with the same stuff they’ve been doing since the get-go. Hitler learned from the KKK how to run a WASP supremacist society. Birchers learned from Hitler about propaganda. Deplorable, despicable, and evil – but not surprising.
Too early to have connected with anybody this morning but last night Aji posted she’d seen a dragonfly – big one, too – first of this season she was afraid wasn’t going to have any at all. And in her Tradition, dragonflies are messengers of hope. So. We hope. And do whatever our Traditions indicate by whatever name our Traditions call it to send her, and the rest, what they need to deal with the situations they are in.
I need to put the laundry on. I’m chancing hanging them outside since there’s nothing blooming out there to dust them with pollen (& and the bees are swarming my hummingbird feeder for food) and we’ve had enough rain that the dust isn’t going to dust them with dirt either. And I want to get them out before it becomes too hot for me to be out there. Twitter stuff, of course. That’s pretty much my schedule. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
I posted just about the same thing about our weather as you did. The long, cool spring was nice but now that it’s suddenly summer, it’s hard on people.
{{{anotherdemocrat}}} It really is. Our bodies don’t adjust to abrupt changes very well. sigh. Take of yourself as best you can. Healing Energy & moar {{{HUGS}}}
Good Friday morning, Moosekind! Guess what, y’all are in for a real treat. You won’t hear me complain about the lack of rain until early 2056. We are deluged, inundated, flooded! Send the ark! At this rate I won’t have to water my garden until July 4th. Right now in Ashburn it’s 67 F., going for a high today of 68 F., and raining quietly. The heavy rains of yesterday evening subsided during the night but began agan at 6 a.m. Our apartment building is on elevated land—I hesitate to call it a hill—so we’re not in any danger.
Jan, thanks for inquiring about my whereabouts. The left eye improves a little each day, but I’ve just been insanely busy. On Tuesday Miss Pink Cheeks, Dearly and I, and her little brother participated in a “car parade,” which involved driving slowly past the teachers standing outside her school bearing huge posters reading “Congratulations, sixth graders!” Student parents and siblings cheered as they lined the streets of the neighborhood. Nora saw some of her friends behind us in the parade and was excited about that. Of course, silly old me became rather emotional at this outpouring of feeling. It was all I could do not to burst into tears.
Fortunately we survived that and took Nora to get her first vaccine jab. We went to Kaiser in Tysons Corner, where they were giving out vaccine jabs on the roof of the parking garage. As Nora and I got out of the car to follow the line to the tent, she slipped her small hand into mine. “I’m scared,” she said in a low voice. I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and said, “Don’t be. It’s all over so quickly!”
She was a model child during the jab and the 15-minute resting period, so we took her to KungFuTea in Reston, where we treated her to her favorite drink. When I followed up with her parents yesterday morning, her mother texted that Nora had experienced only a mild reaction to the jab. Her second jab will be June 29.
We have another graduation this afternoon. Our youngest grandchild will graduate from Spanish immersion kindergarten. We’re not allowed to attend (parents only), but we’ll go over to the house to look after Mr. Rising First Grader while his parents work for the rest of the afternoon. Unfortunately we have to leave at 6:30 to pick up Monty. He’s going to be in doggy play care all afternoon. Just getting away from him for a few hours will be a vacation! He has turned into the noisiest, most obnoxious, cicada-chomping canine I’ve ever heard of. They don’t agree with him, either. Ugh.
Another reason I’ve been offline is that I spent an industrious afternoon cleaning out the walk-in closet, which is in a parlous state. My pandemic pounds show no sign of disappearing, so one must quietly accept that. Many of the outgrown garments will go to Goodwill; the newish and unworn garments will go to Darling Niece to sell on eBay. She’s a stay-at-home mom and can use the money.
Have y’all ever heard of the “Pegan” eating regime? Some cat on PBS (actual name, Mark Hyman), was yapping about it. He avers that following it will cure ALL our illnesses. Dearly and I watched some of his show yesterday. The Pegan diet involves no meat, no dairy, no gluten, no sugar, no processed food, and no bla bla bla. Listening to him had the effect of making me want to produce a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, hot, golden-topped American biscuits with butter and jam, and orange juice, so that’s exactly what I did this rainy morning. (I had mango and kiwi chunks because I don’t drink juice.)
Well, that’s enough from me. I’m more or less dressed but must get ready to go to the gym. Tonight will be spent reading more of the Nancy Pelosi biography by Susan Page. Wishing a pleasant day to all at the Pond!
You are indeed busy Diana! Nice to know you and your family are all well.
I read the moose from my phone yesterday afternoon and was glad to see your check-in!! Certainly you are free to “have a life” but we do worry when one of our normally daily visitors goes missing. :)
I will be in princesspat’s time zone next week so my “good mornings” will probably be later than usual.
Good morning, 60, cloudy and light rain in Bellingham. Our oldest daughter is 53 yrs old today so it’s been a fun morning of birthday texts and memories of holding my baby girl.
My experiment with a new med has to end now because the side effects are just to hard to manage. It’s frustrating to know that even though I can walk better I can’t tolerate the med. Oh well, hobbling around is something I know how to do and the side effects of that are easier to manage.
Best wishes to all.
{{{princesspat}}} Happy Birthday to your daughter & sux boo on the meds. Healing Energy & moar {{{HUGS}}}
Second post today – I’m on a roll
You roll good. ???? But I know it’s frustrating to be fighting the same fights you/we were fighting 50 years ago. You so very much more so than me. But the same bloody fights – we fought for ourselves then we fought for the kids and now we’re still having to fight for the grandkids. Keep on keepin’ on – or I guess keep on rollin’ {{{Dee}}}
Good morning, meeses! Saturday …
It is 68 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 84. Chance of thunderstorms this morning and then clearing up this afternoon. Yesterday we had storms in the area but not right on us – there was definitely “dog worrying” thunder in the distance.
The big news yesterday was not that tRump’s DOJ surveiled Democratic lawmakers but the Biden’s DOJ is ramping up enforcement of voting rights laws. I wanted to scream at my TV when people were calling out Merrick Garland for not doing something sooner. JHC on a popsicle stick! Up until about 2 weeks ago, we did not have an Assistant AG confirmed for the Civil Rights Division!!! Merrick Garland’s own confirmation – and the confirmations of his Deputy AG and third in command – were slow walked by the Republican obstructionists in the Senate so that he couldn’t hit the ground running. Now that people are in place, the Justice Department’s rebuilding process can begin in earnest. I want everything to have happened yesterday too but give Biden and his administration time to get settled in and finish shoveling out the stables. The Justice Department is in worse shape than most, probably worse than what Eric Holder found when he took over the mess the Bushies left. Republicans simply can’t be trusted to administer justice and will almost always abuse their power to advance their political agenda.
Busy day here – see all y’all later!
Saturday Meese. 59 and cloudy here in Kingston NY – only going up to 73 – good “work in the garden” day.
Puerto Rico